“All Hallows &
the ‘Re’ Words: Just a Tramp in a Church Full of Nuns!”
Let me unpack this title a little. All Hallows Eve and All Saints
Day invite us to live openly, honestly, creatively, even playfully with
our worst fantasies and our fears.
We bring our fears to life and to light as we put on the costumes
and masks. The demons and
witches, ghosts and skeletons, monsters and goblins represent fears of
evil and terrible spirits and ultimately fears of death. We leave “trick-or-treats”
to appease them and decorate graves to ward them off.
All the while we live by the faith,
the hope, the love of the saints, of those who have gone before us to
show us the way of Christ in this world.
Christ’s is a way of living, freely and fully, while forever
dancing the edges of danger, disaster, and death. Christ’s is a way of trusting
that God is for us, not against us, a source of forgiveness, not of
fear, who intends all the resources of faithful living, dying, and
living again to be as the pure gifts of God to us in all times and
places.
The German monk Martin Luther nearly
500 years ago put the “re” word of Reformation into the church by
challenging specifically the practice of indulgences. The church of that time claimed that saints earned extra
merits or credits with God. The
church then pretended to “sell” us such merits for release the souls
of our loved ones from purgatory, from that unending fear of death, and
for forgiveness of our own sins, -- not to mention for the fund-raising
of the church! Churches,
church leaders, then as now, may tempt us to place our trust more in
them than in God. Churches may turn our fears against us.
Therefore Luther chooses the eve of
All Saints Day, October 31, 1517, to nail to the door of the Castle
Church in Wittenberg no fewer than ninety-five different assumptions and
practices of the church to be questioned, challenged, debated.
Luther sees himself in a tradition of
those in the church who have lived by such “re” words as refusal,
rebellion, resistance, reform, revolution, repentance, repair, renewal,
restoration, restitution. I
invite us all to look up all the “re” words in our dictionary and
become aware of how much the impulse to change things, start things
over, begin things anew, is a part of our everyday life and work. Jesus himself is a reformer. So is St. Francis. So are the Luther and John
Wesley. So in our time are Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Oscar
Romero, many others.
So much comes back to this capacity
to live with and to speak faith to our fears.
Life in our own times torn by cycles
of violence and vengeance calls upon us to find new ways to live with
our fears in relation to and in behalf of the entire world. For me that is what this
election is all about, what life in our nation and world since 9/11 is
all about, and why no matter what happens Tuesday I invite us to gather
Wednesday at 11 am on the steps of the Federal Building with peace and
justice groups of our area to announce to whomever is to be president
that those of us who live by the “re” words will not rest until
things change, things start over and begin anew, for clearly the old
ways fail us and leave us to fear.
After all, this is the Protestant
Reformation birthday, and we are the Protestants! We are born to protest!
To stand with all the “little people!” Like Zacchaeus! Remember my voting mantra? Besides “early and often?” “The very old, the very young,
the very sick, the very poor, the immigrant, the imprisoned, and those
who have to sleep on the
ground!” May be I should
add, the ground itself! The
earth!
Martin Luther encourages us fellow
reformers with these words, “Of old, God came on Sinai with terror,
but now in forgiveness. There
He was to be feared in the midst of thunder and lightning. Now He comes with hymns of
praise. Then He commanded
that ‘whoever should touch the mount should be out to death.’ Now he proclaims ‘Tell the
daughter of Zion her king cometh unto her.’ There His presence was announced
by the sound of trumpets. Here
he stands weeping over Jerusalem. Formerly
the children of Israel fled before the voice of God. Now our longing to hear it
cannot be stilled.” To
repeat: now our longing to hear the pure voice of God, for us, not
against us; in faith, not in fear; in our own languages, in our own
lives – our longing cannot, and will not, be stilled!
The psalmist this morning longs for
the way of God’s statutes to observe with a whole heart, a path of
commandments and testimonies that will turn our eyes from being
self-serving and looking at gain and vanities and will give us instead
real life in God’s ways. Like
Luther, the psalmist sees beyond that reproach we come to dread from God
to the goodness and mercy God offers, -- steadfast love and the promise
of salvation, of fulfillment, in each one of our lives, and in all of
our life together! The psalmist vows to speak such truth of God in love to the
rulers and to the powers.
The prophet Habakkuk this morning
longs for help, to be saved from similar cycles of violence and
vengeance, wherein even the judgment of those in power who mean well
“comes forth perverted.” The
prophet vows to keep watch for God’s “re” word to him and to all
the people, -- to watch for a vision from God to fit this “end
time,” this time that Dr. King says “is always right to do right!” And then to write the vision BIG
& PLAIN, so no one, even running past, can miss it! I remember Fr. Daniel Berrigan
asking once, in context of protesting Vietnam and nuclear weapons (That
used to seem so long ago!), “Could it be the cold war may so freeze
our faculties that we can no longer read the large print of our own
Gospel?” Are we not a congregation watching, longing for such a
vision?
In the terms of the poem
“Costumes” by Sharon Charde, part of our Words for Meditation this
morning, we, in line with Luther, are like tramps in a church full of
nuns. The poet remembers a
Halloween when her mother so carefully and completely dresses her
sisters as nuns, “who carried her pride / in their holiness and hers
out / into the night to the neighbors / along with their brown paper
bags / for candy. I [says
the poet] did not want to walk with them!” (Remember certain costumes and
masks you did not want to be seen with?) Rather,
the poet, a “re” word person, dresses like a tramp! “Ripped men’s pants tied with a rope, / an old felt hat
and a scary mask. / I dressed as the other sex, clear / even then it was
a costume I’d need / in the world I hadn’t entered yet, / . . . clear that a woman’s life / had rules I would have to
rescind.” The people of
faith, the church of Christ, as a whole, the United Methodist Church,
this congregation in particular, -- we all need plenty of “re” word
people to be as tramps among all the nuns!
Jesus seems to collect such tramps as
his disciples. This
morning’s is Zacchaeus, chief tax collector and very rich. We can be rich and still be a tramp for Jesus. Only we’ve got to be ready to
use our wealth (as some are doing this year) to take outsiders in and
turn insiders out! Fellow
citizens of Jesus would hate and fear all of the tax collectors. Jewish tax collectors were as
“traitors,” out of oneness and solidarity with their own people. They were not paid by the Romans
per se but were willing to set their own rates of taxation, pay off the
Romans, and pocket the rest! Moreover,
their contact with Roman occupiers and exploiters of their land made
them ritually unclean. Tax
collectors could be called “ultimate outsiders,” excluded from
covenant and community both socially and religiously.
In spite of, or even because of, his
“outsider” status, Zacchaeus wants to see Jesus. Don’t we all? Perhaps Jesus is known for taking outsiders in! And for turning insiders out! But Zacchaeus cannot see through
the crowds because he is “short in stature,” or “vertically
challenged,” as Pastor Denise preached Friday night. Persons who see themselves, or
are seen by others, as “short” often aspire to “higher” places. Something about Zacchaeus is
open to the “re” words, -- repentance, reform, restitution, renewal
-- open to change, to question, to
challenge, and to confession, -- open to fresh start and new
beginning. Something sends
Zacchaeus “up a tree!” A
sycamore tree! Where he can see Jesus.
And maybe that is not all he can see!
My mother is fond of saying,
especially to my sisters, “position is everything.” We know our position in life, our “social location” as
it is know, gives us our perspective on life. Where we are standing, and whom
we are standing with, largely determine what we can see! If we are standing only among
the powerful and the wealthy, especially if that is all we have known,
or all we have aspired to in our lives, for instance, then it will be
very difficult for us to see life through the eyes, the experience, of
the poor and the weak. If
we always have lived in, and aspired to, relative isolation from others,
which may lead to a sense of exclusion and exception from others, and of
elitism over them, then it will be very difficult for us to see
ourselves as related and as connected to everyone else, children of one
God, especially to those who seem in whatever ways so different from us.
I just want to suggest that by
climbing this tree Zacchaeus not only could see Jesus. Zacchaeus could see everyone
else as well! He could see
all of the other “little people!”
Especially he could see all those so-called “losers” who
found in Jesus their way of relating, connecting, belonging to one
another and to a promise of God their common creator, -- to a new world
so much larger than any one person, any one people, any one color, any
one country, any one class or condition, any one language or lifestyle! All of a sudden, Zacchaeus could
see what our dear friend and fellow disciple Jo Sanders, who lived so
long and so well with her cancer and her aneurysm, and who died in San
Rafael last week, used to call “the big picture” of life revealing
that we are, all of us, in this life, this work, this world together!
In the vision of poet Paul Dunbar,
whose poem “The Mask” is our Call to Worship today, the experience
of really “seeing Jesus” is seeing beyond all the obvious, seeing
beyond every appearance of things and of people, seeing well beyond
“the mask” we all wear but especially the occupied and the
exploited, those who cannot pretend to be who they really are, those
living in fear, bearing in pain, long before we felt terror -- “the
mask that grins and lies,” that “hides our cheeks and shades our
eyes -- / This debt we pay to human guile; / With torn and bleeding
hearts we smile, / And mouth with myriad subtleties.” Sounds like an election campaign
to me!
Zacchaeus may be trying to hide
himself from Jesus in fear, or may be trying to making himself visible
to Jesus in faith. There
can be a very thin line between faith and fear. But Jesus will not pass him by! Jesus calls out to him in
instant relationship, instant connection, instant oneness and
solidarity. And that alone
changes Zacchaeus’ whole life! In
the words of our anthem this morning, “Hush! Hush! Somebody’s callin’ my
name!” And your name. And your name. And your name, and all of our names! Listen! Sounds
like Jesus! Come on down! Come out! Come out, wherever we are! Whatever we may be hiding, in
whatever fear! Jesus is here! A
whole new world is at hand! A
new life awaits us all! Beginning
with each one of us. To
which we may say, amen!
Rev. John Auer
