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July 11, 2004
John Auer, Pastor
Scripture text:
Amos 7:7-8, 14-15, Luke 10:25-37
“Plumbed! Gifted and
Called to the Depths of Our Being!”
We haven’t really lived till we’ve been plumbed, says Amos! Till something,
or someone, has gone to the depths, the guts, even the bowels of our being!
Till someone has got to bottom of us and even has messed with our plumbing!
I think many persons with cancer know what he’s talking about. I’ve already
learned so much from and with our dear sister Sharon Stephenson in the past
year. Now I am learning her plumbing as well! I know that for her,
and for all of us after our plumb jobs, compassion will trump constipation in
the end! A plumb line, a plumb bob, a plumb job, in this sense,
tests both the truth and the depth of our vertical connection, -- the connection
we may well call “God,” the direct line, the baptismal link, between our once-and-forever
Creator and us. For no matter how deep we think we have gone in relation
to God, to All the Mystery of Life, -- no matter how true we think we have been,
-- the plumb line says there is more, -- more depth, more truth, to God and
to us, -- as persons and as a people.
Pardon the expression, but such “movement” of our inner being toward depth and
toward truth is what these “Call Sundays” are all about -- with times set apart
in worship, and beyond, for prayer and for testimony to God’s gifting and calling
of us, each and all, to ministries and to mission. Throughout July and
August, we focus more on John Wesley’s sense of the “personal holiness” of our
lives, -- our baptism, the gifts and the callings we see in the light of God’s
unconditional love for each one of us. In September, October, November,
we “move on” to the “social holiness,” -- to communion, the connecting of gifts
and callings through the covenants and the commitments of our lives and our
life together. We are hoping, in our own time and way, to begin a process
of congregational “visioning” of where we want out ministries and our mission
to go, -- in 5 years? 10 years?
That will require all the depth and the truth within us each and among us all.
The essence of “call” is “compassion,” -- literally, passion with, or suffering
with. We say our hearts, -- but also our guts, the core, the full depth
of our very being, -- “go out” to another. Not only do we see and
hear their need and their pain. We find ways to share the pain, to identify
with and make it our own. We move from compassion and comprehension to
solidarity and shared struggle for relief of all the pain we can! We can
never relieve it all, but a lot of it is self- and other-inflicted. We
can do something about it! Compassion, biblically speaking, is much more
demanding of us than the ways we may think or may feel toward each other.
Compassion requires our prayerful and faithful action for justice and peace
toward one another, -- no matter what that may cost us!
We think back to our first encounter with God as a people of faith, beginning
with Moses, while we are yet slaves and sojourners in Egypt. Upon calling
to Moses from out of a bush, God reveals the very movements of God’s own being:
“I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt! I have heard
their cry on account of their taskmasters! Indeed, I know their sufferings!
And I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians! And to bring
them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk
and honey!” We might add, as God implies, flowing with milk and honey
for ALL of God’s children, -- Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites,
Jebusites! We Israelites, then and now, do not always remember to honor
the stranger, the sojourner in our midst. Neither do we Americans!
We forget we ourselves have been slaves! All the more
reason to claim the “slave” part of our own national history and identity. –
to think seriously of national reparations, a national museum, . . .
When I hear or sing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” I think back instantly
to the spring of 1968 and the murders of Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy. I
suspect it was then that our nation “lost heart” as a people seeing our disparate
lives as inextricably related and connected, as siblings all proceeding differently
from one source. I suspect we have not acted as if we are “all in this
together” since then. We remain as broken, fragmented, divided and conquered
as at the end of the war in Vietnam. We learn little of national introspection,
confession, contrition, circumspection in using our vast powers over others.
Does all our easy rhetoric about “compassion,” in light of our lust to “privatize”
care and to “outsource” all services, bring us the closer together? We
sorely need a transplant of our nation’s heart. And this is the work of
all preachers, all prophets, -- who are just folks like Amos, like you and like
me, called and commissioned by God! If not, we, too, will find good safe
reasons for slipping by on the far side of the pain.
May we say, then, that even before we respond to God’s call, God responds to
our calls? God responds to our cries for compassion and comfort?
Help and relief? Mercy and justice? The movements of God toward
any and all of us in our suffering are precisely the movements of this Samaritan
toward the one left for dead by the side of the road. Jesus here uses
no rhetoric to define “compassion,” the beginning of what Jesus means by “salvation,”
by “eternal life.” Jesus uses only the direct and nonviolent, the healing,
restorative actions of this story. The story speaks for itself.
Jesus expects us to find ourselves in it, -- to find parts of ourselves in each
of the players, and parts of each of them in us!
A Samaritan is the hardest “other” of all for Jews to accept. Substitute
whose name we will today – even a “terrorist”! Much less a Democrat or
a Republican! Yet a Samaritan is moved with compassion and goes to the
wounded one! A Samaritan pours oil and wine on and bandages up his wounds!
A Samaritan puts the man on the Samaritan’s own animal, brings him to an inn,
takes care of him! A Samaritan says to the open innkeeper, “Take care
of him. When I come back, I’ll repay you. No matter what it may
cost me!” No matter what it may cost us.
Lawyers like this one Jesus calls almost by definition always are looking for
limits to liabilities. (Isn’t that going to enliven this presidential
campaign! Now that John Edwards is in it. We may even have to face
the long-forbidden question: Are corporations liable for the social costs
of their actions, or just for their “bottom lines”?) Jesus calls this
lawyer, as Jesus calls us, not to spend too much time just thinking about salvation
or eternal life. According to Stephen Mitchell in our Words for Meditation,
the Samaritan “didn’t stop to think; the oil and the wine poured themselves,
the wound bound itself!” Like a miracle! Jesus calls us to do what
needs to be done! The question is not, who is my neighbor? Or what
kind of person or people? Are they worthy, are they “saved,” are they
deserving? The question is only, who I am?! What kind
of person am I, or people are we?!
Are we like God, as compassionate as we can be, or not? The lawyer wants more
information, more evidence and more proof. Jesus seems to be saying, we
know all we need to know! Now will we DO what we have to do? Will
we come out, start out, reach out, take that first step toward the God always
there to meet us and carry us on? Will we trust in our very own calls,
within and among us? Will we say of the other in need not, “There BUT
for the grace of God go I,” but rather, “There BY the grace of God go I, --
for we are all in this together!”? The very first sermon I ever preached is
entitled simply, “’You Got To,’ She Said,” – words of a young woman who’s just
lost her baby, in an abandoned barn during a rainstorm at the end of John Steinbeck’s
The Grapes of Wrath –
The pounding of the rain decreased to
a soothing swish on the roof. The gaunt man moved his lips.
Ma knelt beside him and put her ear close. His lips moved again.
“Sure,” Ma said. “You jus’ be easy.
He’ll be awright. You jus’ wait’ll I get them wet clo’es off’n my
girl.”
Ma went back to the girl. “Now
slip ‘em off,” she said. She held the comfort up to screen her from
view. And when she was naked, Ma folded the comfort about her.
The boy was at her side again explaining,
“I didn’ know. He said he et, or he wasn’t hungry. Las’ night
I went an’ bust a winda an’ stoled some bread. Made ‘im chew ‘er down.
But he puked it all up, an’ then he was weaker. Got to have soup or
milk. You folks got money to git milk?”
Ma said, “Hush. Don’ worry.
We’ll figger somepin out.”
Suddenly the boy cried, “He’s dyin’,
I tell you! He’s starvin’ to death, I tell you.”
“Hush,” said Ma. She looked at
Pa and Uncle John standing helplessly gazing at the sick man. She
looked at Rose of Sharon huddled in the comfort. Ma’s eyes passed
Rose of Sharon’s eyes, and then came back to them. And the two women
looked deep into each other. The girl’s breath came short and gasping.
She said, “Yes.”
Ma smiled. “I knowed you would.
I knowed!” She looked down at her hands, tight-locked in her lap.
Rose of Sharon whispered, “Will – will
you all – go out?” The rain whisked lightly on the roof.
Ma leaned forward and with her palm she
brushed the tousled hair back from her daughter’s forehead, and she kissed
her on the forehead. Ma got up quickly. “Come on, you fellas,”
she called. “You come out in the tool shed.”
Ruthie opened her mouth to speak.
“Hush,” Ma said. “Hush and git.” She herded them through the
door, drew the boy with her; and she closed the squeaking door.
For a minute Rose of Sharon sat still
in the whispering barn. Then she hoisted her tired body up and drew
the comfort about her. She moved slowly to the corner and stood looking
down on the wasted face, into the wide, frightened eyes. Then slowly
she lay down beside him. He shook his head slowly from side to side.
Rose of Sharon loosened one side of the blanket and bared her breast.
“You got to,” she said. She squirmed closer and pulled his head close.
“There!” she said. “There.” Her hand moved behind his head and
supported it. Her fingers moved gently in his hair. She looked
up and across the barn, and her lips came together and smiled mysteriously.
Amen.
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