“Living Wage, Waging
Life: The Cost of Falling Towers, Failing Wars”
With the terrorizing of the schoolchildren
in Beslan, Russia, have we reached a new low in the downward spiral of
violence and vengeance, crime and retribution, in which our whole world is
caught up? Especially as we have just come off watching all the astonishing
feats and encouraging friendships of the Olympics, is it not one of those
moments we need to take a collective “time-out” -- to allow the utter horror
of what we are doing to one another and to our selves to sink a little more
deeply into our hearts and collective soul? As with the victims and the
survivors of such times as Holocaust and Hiroshima, do we dare say anything
about God this morning, anything about life in faith this morning, that we
would not say in the presence of these children, dead and living? Let us
please take a moment to be silent in memory and hope for the children, their
parents and teachers, their families and communities, and, yes, even their
captors and killers, whose willingness to do them such harm we do not
pretend to fathom.
Why does God call Jeremiah the prophet to go
to the potter’s house for the hearing of God’s word? Because whether we
know it or not, whether we sense it or not, whether we like it or not, we
are all clay, earth, createdness, elemental stuff of life and faith, --
fallen, like towers, yet revivable; failed, like wars, yet redeemable – in
the hands of a living God -- yea, no matter even we pass through the valley
of the shadow of death, we fear no evil -- a loving God, a listening,
learning, changing, growing Spirit of compassion and solidarity with this
world, engagement and endurance with each and all of the parts of this world
-- a God who will not quit, who will not give up on us, who never is done
with us yet, -- a God in whose hands we must believe we are yet renewable
and reshapeable.
Even before the Russian children, -- you
know my mantra: Follow the money, follow the power; follow the children,
follow the pain – this was a day and a week of impossible convergence for
this preacher. Especially since I took the last two Sundays off (Thank you,
Ruth and Art – and Boonie for serving communion) and feel tempted to try to
make up for my own lost time! It’s Labor Sunday. We thought we would have
our courageous and bold sister in faith and work Mary Gaddis with us, to
testify to her own commitment to organized workers and to her experience
with Witness for Peace in Colombia, third largest recipient of military aid
from our government, where workers and organizers risk their lives daily.
Please see the film “Maria Full of Grace.”
It was just here and will be out on video. It does not take up the
political context in Colombia, but it does the demanding, demeaning,
despairing, destroying conditions of working people, -- in this instance
stripping the leaves off roses all day – and what it drives them to.
Tuesday is the primary election. Another of
my mantras is in the bulletin: We stand for, we vote for, those who cannot,
or will not, stand for themselves: the very young, the very old, the very
sick, the very poor, the imprisoned, and those who sleep on the ground.
Wednesday is the opening of “Julius Caesar” here in the sanctuary. We are
seeing how well performance arts of several kinds lend themselves to this
space. We are also seeing how well such sharing of this sacred space suits
our sensitivities and sensibilities. There is much precedent for this
connection. Worship, at best, is dramatic; drama, at best, is worshipful.
Besides “Caesar” revolves around powerful, push-button preaching at a state
funeral! (Does it not sound like some political conventions we have
known?) Then even Saturday comes the much-excavated, much-exploited,
much-excused anniversary of the falling of the towers, the failing of the
wars. Believe me, this preacher cannot be trusted with so much
convergence. I do not trust myself!
This is the changing of seasons for us, from
the sanctifying Spirit season of summer proceeding from Pentecost, to the
sustaining Spirit season of fall, continuing through Sunday of Christ the
King or the Cosmic Christ, the end of the earth-church year. We change
liturgical colors from “shades of red” to “gleanings of green.” (You’ll
have to check out the new car we felt forced to buy when the old one
“imploded” – same make, same model, ten years newer, $10,000 more
expensive! Tell me about how our wages keep pace with our costs of living!
You, or someone, are now guaranteed I will be working another ten years! We
tried to get one that came with the same bumper-stickers! The point is,
it’s red – “inferno red,” officially – so we call it “Penny-Cost.”) In
place of the tempting triumphal image of Christ’s return as a mighty king
and an angry judge, we await the image of Christ -- already returned in
Spirit, as we are already subject to judgment – bursting forth in all the
earth! Explicit consciousness of new creation already at work -- that every
promise, every covenant, may be consummated!
We will be moving from our focus on “call”
in our lives, celebrating our personal gifts, to “covenant” in our lives,
sharing our mutual resources. Covenants figure in both our texts for this
morning. Covenants are about committed relationship. We find that to be
the source of real and lasting power in our lives and our life together –
the power of building trust together, of exchanging words and promises, to
the point where we are sharing as much of each other’s lives, bearing as
much of each other’s burdens, as is appropriate to the particular covenant.
Covenants are the signs of our belonging to and with and for one another.
Baptism is such a sign. Communion is such a sign. Marriage and holy union
are such signs. Membership in the church, membership in the union, are such
signs. Covenants are not contracts, crucial as contracts and the right to
bargain for them may be. Covenants go beyond contracts. Because they are
essentially relational, not legal, covenants are by nature infinitely
forgivable, infinitely negotiable, infinitely renewable, even infinitely
perfectable. That is why covenants are open-ended. They are “for life,” in
more ways than one.
For peoples of faith, all covenants come
from, and return to, the source of creation we call “God” by whatever name.
Covenant is God’s promise of unending, unrelenting relationship with the
people of God, chosen not for privilege but for response-ability. God is
forever creating us and our world, forever offering us new life. All God
asks is that we “let go and let God” -- that we open ourselves, risk
ourselves, place ourselves in the hands of God -- even as clay in the hands
of a potter, for we find the Word of Life comes to us in earthen vessels.
We can only live it by faith, yet faith can only be known by works, by the
fruits of our labors – those we are paid for and those beyond price.
Folksinger Charlie King puts in perspective, “Our work is more than our
jobs, and our life is more than our work.” Both religion and labor mean to
be acts of creation. No wonder congregations and unions address each other
as “sister” and “brother.” We mean to see that we are all in this
together! All over the world! Joint heirs to the love and provision of
life for all persons and peoples. Moses organizes the bricklayers in
Egypt. Jesus, himself an itinerant carpenter, as Paul is a tentmaker,
organizes fishers, farmers, tax collectors, perhaps even sex workers.
And once Jesus organizes us, as he says in
this gospel passage, he expects us to give him our all. What could be more
timely than this parable of the cost, the risk, to those who build towers
and those who make wars. Such towers as Jesus means here are built for
protection and defense of the vineyard against intruders and invaders. In
so many ways, to indigenous peoples and to the earth herself, we are all
like intruders, all like invaders. Certain towers become as symbols of
something lofty aloofness -- cut off, cut above -- avoiding, escaping,
ignoring life as it is on the ground for most people. Certain wars become
as harsh realities of the maldistribution of power and wealth in the world,
the fears of those who would have from the anguish of those who have-not,
the temptation of might above questions of right. Jesus is saying, all
towers, all building projects, as well as all wars, all destroying projects,
carry consequences! Count the costs.
And we need to count the costs of following
Jesus as well. The covenants of our citizenship and our discipleship often
put us in tension with one another. We can live, and even find new life
together, in the midst of that tension. But it takes trust, it takes
openness, it takes perseverance, endurance, long-suffering -- it takes
risks. We love a parade. We love a military salute. We love all the jets
and the flags. The rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air. But this
Jesus is set on a far different course. To follow him will be impractical
and unpopular, even with those we love most, our own families and friends.
To follow him is to find in our lives, our own times and places, our own
places of worship and work, the cross that is willing to give it all up for
the sake of the new creation – creation beyond all destruction, life beyond
all death, nonviolence beyond all violence, love beyond all fear. All other
relationship, all other trust, all other promises, all other covenants mean
only, at last, to serve the children to all generations – the children of
Reno and Sparks, the children of Russia, the children of Rwanda, the
children of Iraq, the children of Israel-Palestine -- the children of
everywhere!
Amen.
