“Divided, Not Conquered:
The Courage to Be of Differing Parts”
We will be continuing attention to “call” in
our lives and watching it grow over the next few months into “covenant” in
our life together, -- as church, as family, as workplace, as community, as
nation, as world. With the reception of new members, and our guest Yohann
Anderson (
www.songsandcreations.com ), we are saving the time for special
attention today. Yohann has written a new song in response to the
scriptures and our interpretation of them today! It follows the sermon.
For this is a musical, mystical, missional, Methodist congregation!
Music is such a living, moving, growing,
changing, illuminating and inspiring part of our life together! We are so
thankful for, Chancel Choir! Bell choirs! Tongan Choir! Children’s
choirs! Cheryl! Mike Cleveland! Linda and Ben! Viliami! Amy Gagliardo!
Holly and Michael’s music in the youth and children’s programs! Dale!
Ron! Julie Machado! Barbara McMeen! Many others! The “Amigos!” The
Artown events! Interest in new times of worship with differing music!
Interest in Fellowship Hall as venue! Folk! Rock! Gospel! Blues! You
name it!
Especially at this time of the year, in this
setting, so many overgrown forests in the midst of such drought, we might
not take kindly to someone who sounded like Jesus, saying “I came to bring
fire to the earth! I wish it were already blazing!” Then again, Jesus does
not expect the world will take kindly to him. On this day after our brother
Cameron Crain was totally immersed in more embracing than simply bracing
waters of the Truckee, -- following the intrepid path of Chris Larsen the
day before Easter, and with the vital assistance of Rev. Boone Johnson, --
this day we are blessed to receive five new members – we may be permitted a
little self-consciousness to hear Jesus speak of baptism as his death and of
how it is stressing him out to complete his work.
Do we not owe it to our new members, -- and
to those with whom we engage in the larger community of downtown, as we try
to expand our outreach and enhance our inreach, -- to be as honest as we can
about who we are? To confess we do not always embody the radical nature and
vision, the costly faith and works of this Jesus whom we have come to call
personally “Savior” and publicly “Lord?” To confess we do not always know
just how to receive the gifts of those who come into our midst expecting
that we are committed to following Jesus in ways that may cost us our lives,
and everything else about us?
And yet is there not hope for us, even in
spite of ourselves?! For the Jubilee Spirit of Pentecost is working within
and among us – preveniently, John Wesley, would say, in ways we are not even
aware of, -- as well as with justification and sanctification to sustain us
in ways we cannot accomplish or even imagine for ourselves! In Yohann’s
words for “passing the peace” this morning: “God loves you! And there is
nothing you can do about it!”
We gear up this political season -- Isn’t it
fun to be a state that is still “in play?” Our kids visit from California
and gape at our campaign ads as if from another planet! You mean there
really is a national campaign going on? With international, even global,
implications?! You might hardly know it! What are we as the church, the
prophetic community, called to do about that? We gear up for more of the
jaded and jading debate about “family” and all sorts of rhetorically-related
“values.” We know even “Jesus” and “faith” will be invoked. Do we think we
will hear of the Jesus who jibes us this morning, “Do you think that I have
come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, bur rather division!”
What do we make of that side of Jesus? How do those words fit our
commercials?
My “spin” is that Jesus is so powerfully
aware of how deeply and broadly we are invested in “war,” not in peace, --
in “war” consciousness, “war” economy, and the encroaching militarization of
our everyday life together. I mean, we had better believe, New York City is
going to look like fully “occupied territory” by the end of the month! Our
national capitol already does! “Commander in chief,” worthiness in war,
have replaced every other image and selling point for president in this
campaign! Jesus just knows how easy it is for us to sell out to all sorts
of false senses of personal safety and public security. Jesus knows how
privileged we have been as a nation of such unprecedented power and wealth.
Jesus knows how hard it is for us to live
“by faith,” – by the faith of the Hebrews in this letter, -- not only the
heroic faith to conquer kingdoms, administer justice, obtain promises, tame
lions, quench fires, etc., -- but also the humble faith to suffer mocking
and flagging, chains and prison, stoning to death, sawing in two, hiding in
skins of sheep and goats, wandering mountains, sleeping in caves. Is that
the part we tell new members to expect? Do we invite them to bring their
sheep- and their goatskins? Is that part of what we ourselves practice?
The “spiritual disciplines” of uncertainty and insecurity? Of danger and
difficulty? What is the so-called “moral equivalent” of all historic hassle
and struggle here, -- like a tree by the Truckee in downtown Reno and
Sparks? How are we called to seek out that kind of trouble? Or at least to
welcome it when it finds us?
Jesus asks us not so much to be “troubled”
by the world as to be, with him, “trouble-makers” for God! You have heard
my favorite poem, by Mari Evens, -- “When I / Die / I’m sure / I will have a
big funeral . . . / Curiosity seekers / Coming to see / If I / Am really
Dead . . . / Or just / Trying to make / Trouble.” Could have been written
by the risen Jesus. Do we tell new members what a “dysfunctional family”
the church and its congregations can be? “Five in one household divided,
three against two, two against three,” – fathers and sons, mothers and
daughters, in-laws and out-laws, the old and the new! The struggles among
generations to change according to the new challenges and opportunities
brought by new times and settings, -- in microcosm, our own new time and new
setting in the place and among the people where this creative congregation
of faithful forebears now find ourselves! Jesus says we will be as a family
forever falling and growing apart because that is the very way of trying to
live with the true risks of faith! Nothing ventured, nothing gained! No
cross, no crown!
Jesus is daring to tell us, we can become
divided, but we do not have to be conquered by that! Difference,
distinctiveness, diversity, even division, are not necessarily destructive.
Out of chaos can come forth creation in the hands, by the heart and spirit
of the God who even now is troubling waters, of baptism and of everyday
life. Jesus is clear how painfully we may be called to a bundle of
contradictions! We are not so much to try to avoid or ignore or escape
contradictions, or to permit them so to embarrass us as to paralyze us with
frustration and fear, so that we turn first to defending and protecting
ourselves.
Rather we are to confess contradictions! To
empty them out of our pockets, and our pocketbooks, -- like so many “Tom
Sawyers” preparing to trade our lives to get someone to whitewash our fence
-- and dump them on our common, if strangely-shaped, table, -- where we can
sort through and share and cherish such treasures of contradiction and
difference together! Is it not remarkable that God must love differences so
much, -- God makes so many of them! And that we can learn to live with
them, even enjoy them, without tearing ourselves apart.
Contradictions and differences just remind
us how very human, how created we are. If we have not quite caught on yet,
we are the created, not the Creator! One species among so many, -- and not
the brightest one, at that, -- the only one that systematically destroys our
own kind! We are challenged by Jesus to get some perspective and even to
find some humor in just how mixed-up and crazy we can be! Thank God, in the
midst of such chaos as hurricanes and forest fires, we have, says Jesus,
learned a lot about weather conditions and their predictability. We are
able to minimize loss of precious life. But Jesus gently, -- or is it
fiercely? – chides us to know what time it is in our own lives and our life
together, -- no matter how skilled and sophisticated we think we have become
in relations to all things around us. What is going on with us? Really?
What is God doing within and among us? And what is God asking, requiring,
of us?
It is proverbial to our age, “we don’t need
a weatherman to know which way the wind blows!” Our dollar bills proclaim
the nation’s motto, “Y pluribus unum.” Out of many comes one. All we have
left to resolve is who decides what “one” we are to become! There are many
who portray themselves to be our new “messiahs.” But we have yet to receive
the one we are already sent! I think God’s motto is much more apt to be, “Y
unum pluribus!” Out of one come many! We have no idea how many, or how
much we will change! We are still evolving! God is still creating! Each
day a fresh gift to us! Each person, each people we meet, more complex,
more diverse than we ever imagined! We cannot go home again! An awesome
God has made everything new. We have got to take the best of what we
re-member from what worked in the past, and work it anew into the changes of
the present into God’s own and far better future! We need both tradition
and innovation, so-called “conservatives” and so-called “liberals.”
This is, and is yet becoming, a brand new
world. It is the biggest contradiction of all! Nothing under the sun is
new. Ecclesiastes has it right. Everything comes from the sun. Every
particle of every matter in the universe has existed from God’s first act of
creation. And yet! At one and the very same time! In the capstone of
contradiction! Everything is made new everyday! We may rail about
politicians changing their minds and flip-flopping on issues. To paraphrase
Barry Goldwater, consistency in defense of failure is no virtue.
Flexibility in response to change is no vice! Any of us who do not learn to
change our minds, to let ourselves be led by new developments, new
discoveries, of the complexity and the diversity of this world and all of
its peoples, -- we are the ones who get “left behind” in the end! There is
so much to learn to do new in this world! So much to learn to do new. God
does not need defense and protection from us. Nothing human ever is alien
to God who makes each and every last one of us personally!
Sisters and brothers, nor does this church,
this battered body of Christ, that has weathered our dysfunctionality now
for two thousand-plus years, and has lived to tell about it, the good news,
to this very day, -- nor does this church need defense and protection from
us! We have nothing to fear from one another but fear itself. Jesus says
nothing, no one, outside of us ever defiles us, -- only that which is
already in us and longs to be made new and set free. We are not perfect
yet, only “going on to perfection,” in Wesleyan terms. Someday we shall
find for ourselves, it is promised, that perfect love casts out our fear.
And it will not matter that we are “not of one mind” on many things. We
will find we can be of one heart. One heart of one God who is loving us all
back to life. Amen.
“Circle of Diversity”
We’re different not the same . . . let’s
not be so vain . . . thinking everyone should be alike. / Some short, tall
and wide, some a complete surprise . . . some see so differently many call
them lies. / But what can I say in God’s heart we all play and from outer
space we see no divisions. / So jump on God’s ship . . . Let’s all take a
trip and try loving compassion on our way.
CHORUS:
Circle of Diversity. A circle with no
end. A commonality of purpose . . . helps the circle mend. / Living inside
out, not outside in. Then the circle of diversity will rise. (End with
“PEACE”)
But where do we draw the line, when some
people cannot dine . . . around a common table meant for all? / And when
some people gain on the backs of those in pain . . . and only certain ones
are God’s children. / Then what do we do . . . when some break the rule of
wholeness within the heart of God? / Do we answer with wars . . . barge
through some doors? / Or do we heal with some creative answer? CHORUS . . .
PEACE, PEACE OH BEAUTIFUL PEACE . . .
FLOWING IN FROM THE SPIRIT OF GOD . . . SWEEP INTO OUR MIDST FOREVER I PRAY
. . . IN UNENDING WAVES OF LOVE.
composed for weekend workshop/worship at Reno’s First UMC,
August 2004, Yohann Anderson, (800) 227-2188, All Rights Reserved
Rev. John J. Auer
