“Grieving God: Why Can’t
We All Just Get Along?”
We call special attention to the UMCOR
(United Methodist Committee on Relief) website and the opportunities to
support the work of the church among those suffering from the hurricanes,
throughout the Caribbean and the southeastern United States (http://gbgm-umc.org/umcor/) Some
mean-spirited, cynical, or fundamentalist folks (none here, I know), and
even a few prophets (any here?), might observe the last election is catching
up with the official state of Florida. We reap what we sow. Yet we know it
is not the states but the people who suffer.
God is a grieving God. God does grieve.
“God Weeps,” as Shirley Erena Murray’s hymn puts it, “at love withheld, at
strength misused, at children’s innocence abused . . . “God bleeds – at
angers fist, at trust betrayed, at women battered and afraid.” “God cries –
at hungry mouths, at running sores, at creatures dying without cause.” And
“God waits – for stones to melt, for peace to seed, for hearts to hold each
other’s need.”
God is a grieving God. And we do grieve
God. As no other species we know of grieves God, this species does. So
much of the harm that we do does not need to be done. There are so many
better ways. Just one of those ways is named Jesus. For us that is a
chosen way, a way we choose, each for ourselves and together as
congregations. For we are a chosen people, a people who see ourselves set
apart, not for privilege, not for unneeded pride, but for response-ability;
that’s 2 words, response-ability to God.
For worse but also for better, we are the
species who choose to say of ourselves, we are, each one of us is, in the
image and likeness of God! And even within that species, we are the people
choose to say of ourselves, we hear God speaking, see God acting – hurting,
healing, confessing, repenting, grieving, recovering – all the time! We
hear God now with Jeremiah: “My joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is
sick. Hark, the cry of my poor people! . . . For the hurt of my poor
people, I am hurt. I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me.” Dismay has
taken hold of our God! For the sake of God’s poor! What are we to say?
What are we to do? Many years ago I learned from religious sisters in
Chicago taking part in public demonstrations and civil disobedience these
sung and chanted words I have kept on my protest signs since. These words
are always true, whatever the issue at hand. Maybe you will try them with
me – “Our God hears the cry of the poor – Blessed be our God!” (Repeat.)
These “Reproaches,” this “Lamenting with
God” read in place of the psalm today, we usually read on Good Friday, as
Jesus is crucified. Today they remind us we are, with our Jewish sisters
and brothers, in the midst of the Days of Awe, – the Jubilee days of atoning
for all that is past, and of opening to all that may be yet to come by new
and bold faith in our God. As part of the whole Jewish people – and
Muslims, always like it or not, are part of the whole Jewish people as well!
– we know in our hearts our very mission as chosen people, as those who
choose God, is to embody, even as a nation, the brokenness and the need of
all peoples on earth! We are to face ourselves in behalf of others, to see
how we are reflecting the image of God in ourselves, – to confess ourselves,
to repent ourselves, to grieve ourselves, – to reclaim, recover, repair and
restore ourselves to right relationship, to our covenant of life and of work
with our God!
A rabbi once told me, a big part of being
idolatrous for a Jew is becoming too “realistic,” too resigned to things as
they are in this world. As if we cannot re-imagine, re-envision a better
world! As of we cannot re-covenant, re-commit ourselves to the work of
bringing about a world better for all, for all of the children, for all of
the creatures of this great and grieving God! Who asks of us, in the
immortal words of, whom? Bonus points: Who first made headlines asking,
“Can’t we all just get along?”? Rodney King! 1992 rebellion against the
police in Los Angeles. Rodney King, as it turns out, perhaps like this
manager in Jesus’ story today, one of those scoundrels, one of those
tricksters, only the God of Jesus could love!
For the God of Jesus is a prodigal God! A
God who wastes, who squanders God’s love on us all! The same word for
squandering property is used here as is used with the so-called “prodigal
son.” As Margaret Westhafer loves to point out so well to visitors to our
sanctuary, in the “Trinity” window above the balcony, Jesus is portrayed as
the prodigal son! Jesus knows better than any thus far how much love God
wasted, God squandered on him! Who knows all the circumstances! No wonder
those 20 years of his life are left out of the gospels!
I come back to that key word of covenant
which is response-ability, literally, the ability to respond to the call of
God in our lives and our life together, – to respond with intentionality,
which is the discernment that goes with baptism, with recognition of the
personal gifts and callings of each and every one of us – “God don’t make
no, what? Junk!” And to respond with accountability (That’s the co-called
“operative” word now on 9/11 and the equally so-called “war on terror.” Is
there among us any covenant worthy of the word? Any discernable
intentionality? And distributable accountability?) For accountability is
the distribution that goes with communion, with recognition of the corporate
riches and resources belonging to all of God’s children, all of God’s poor,
everywhere in God’s world! I mean, talk about squandering! Water! Air!
Land! Resources! How much has God given us? How much have we squandered?
Who are these so-called “conservatives” who appear not to want to conserve –
much of anything?! I know and love some real conservatives, who still put
the “serve” in “conserve!”
No wonder it takes a trickster, a hustler
like this manager in Jesus’ story, to live to struggle another day amidst
all the systems and structures of oppression and exploitation we face in
this world. Notice first of all there are only charges that he is
squandering his boss’ property. There is a boss system in place here. The
boss is bound by no covenant-standard of intentionality/accountability –
just as we love in our political and social culture just to those old
charges, and counter-charges, out there, no matter what origin or what
proof! What passes for news coverage in our culture threatens to become an
industry of gossip! Put the burden on someone else to disprove it! We live
in a world of images and ideologies anyway, which is by nature (our
“un-nature”) a world of insinuation and innuendo. So hearing these charges
is all this boss needs. The manager is history! Never happens to managers
in our so-called “middle-class” world of today, does it? The manager, Jesus
might say, knows “what time it is!” What hour has come in his life and his
work! Time for him to trick someone – fast! The hour for him to hustle –
now!
See, I’m from Chicago, so I ought to know.
You tell me: It’s not what you know, it’s, what? Who you know! It’s how
you’re related, how you’re connected (We are not called a “connectional”
church for nothing!), who are your friends in high places! There are some
concepts of “shame” and “honor” in this story and in Jesus’ culture, perhaps
even in our own, – the honor we call “among thieves?” In Chicago we call it
“patronage,” and it is a system of client and patron just like this one.
Who is the ultimate “patron” in American mythology? Perhaps “the
Godfather?” I mean, if you have the Godfather on your side, who can stand
against you? But if you lose favor with the Godfather . . . Who will make
your connections to power? Who will open your doors to opportunity? Who
will provide you effective agency, much less “clout?” BIG Chicago word!
Clout!
What the manager sees, and I suspect what
Jesus sees in the manager, is that clout is not only “top down.” Clout is
also bottom up! In fact, perhaps all real and lasting clout can only be
bottom up! The top can only hold the bottom down for so long, anywhere in
this world! Grassroots! Not hier-archical but “lower-archical!” Not
“patriarchal” but “matriarchal.” As Matthew Fox would have it, not “Jacob’s
ladder” so much as “Sarah’s circle!” So the manager looks not above him, to
whom he is so indebted and owes so much. The manager looks below him, to
whom may be so indebted and owe so much to him, if he moves swiftly and
boldly enough! For with Jesus, time is always of the essence. It is always
much later than we think! And as Dr. King says, the time is always right to
do right! Here and now! To “honor” someone in this sense is to respond to
them, to be of value, of service to them, to look out for their interests
however we can.
And to “shame” someone in this sense is to
take away their support system! To hang them out to dry on their own! To
take away their base, which means their clout. Everyone of us, finally, is
response-able for acting in our own interests.
Fr. Michael Lapsley, who lost a hand to
apartheid in South Africa, now works with “ex-combatants” in the
Institute for Healing Memories there. Think about that for a moment. Think
about an institute devoted to healing of memories, in any one or more of our
lives! Even our lives as families, as congregations, as communities, as
nations. Why won’t “Vietnam” go away? Not only dirty politics, but the
persistent painful voice of an open wound and unhealed memory. And think
about the number of “ex-combatants,” including many civilians who never
intended to see combat, in today’s world. In fact, think of the numbers of
ex-combatants returning to our own culture! Not to mention ex-convicts,
many of whom have gone through much the same trauma. We get “vets” of both
kinds coming by the church all the time! Where else can they go for
healing?
Father Lapsley describes the “Ndabikum
Project.” “Ndabikum means ‘It’s my business’ or “It’s up to me.’
The challenge that Ndabikum has made to ex-combatant clients,” says Lapsley,
“is that they should take responsibility for making a change in their own
lives. The aim of Ndabikum is that the participants in their program should
be committed to striving to become independent by restoring in them a sense
of self-worth and the ability to act in the world.” A sense of self-worth,
and an ability to act on our world! To make a real difference again! Or
for the very first time? Does that need exclude any of us? Don’t we all
need that kind of confession, repentance, grief, and recovery? I say, More
power to us! More power to us.
In closing, I think of the offertory prayer
Julie and I used to say every week at our first church together, aptly named
for this season “Parish of the Holy Covenant,” in Chicago. It was a small,
tight band of mostly middle-class, white, upbeat sixties’ activists, who
literally saw, with Wesley, the world as their parish! They used to pray
boldly each Sunday –
“We accept, O Lord, the whole world, its
peoples, its structures, its joys, its sorrows, as our responsibility.
Now receive the offering of our lives, a living sacrifice, that with
thee we might promote peace and humanness, among all persons and within
all structures, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
When we tried to take this same prayer to a
wise and survival-worn congregation of mostly poor and black folks on the
Southside, they made just one huge little change – “HELP US, O Lord, to
accept the whole world, its peoples, its structures, its joys, its sorrows,
as our responsibility. Now receive the offering of our lives, a living
sacrifice, that with thee we might promote peace and humanness, among all
persons and within all structures, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Help
us!
Amen.
Rev. John Auer
