“Faith to Fear: Are We
the Ones, or Shall They Look for Others?”
Ours is as much a world of empire and of
exile as was the world of Israel. To live in Advent is to live in the
promise of safe return, of coming home again to a place of peace, of
security, of abundance, -- a place of fertility and of fecundity, even in
the Great Basin desert, a place where not only the land but also the people
of the land are alive with the signs of hope and of wholeness – blind eyes
opening, deaf ears unstopping, lame legs leaping, speechless tongues
singing, wilderness waters breaking forth, burning sands springing with
water, -- we get the picture!
It is what we call the “messianic” picture,
the picture of all that will happen when the promise of God is fulfilled in
our lives and in the lives of all peoples. And the question of Jesus, and
of anyone who pretends to be acting upon the full promise of God for the
world, even as the leaders of our nation claim to be acting today, -- the
question is, are we the ones in whom the world may see the promise of God
fulfilled, or shall the world look for others? Does any one nation, much
less any one government, any one leader, bring all the answers, all the
solutions? Or must we keep seeking, keep finding, keep trying them, -- all
together?
Especially this third Sunday of Advent, this
foretaste of Christmas, we know we live forever in the paradox and the
tension between then and now, -- between the promised world and the real
one, between the new life busy being born and the old life still passing
away, between living by faith and living by fear. The gospel of Matthew,
source of our preaching texts in this new year, is intent upon showing Jesus
from the beginning as the messiah, the one who is promised, the one in whom
all answers, all solutions are possible, -- and yet the one in whom we are
always waiting and watching, imagining and dreaming, seeking and finding,
questing and changing, learning and growing, -- the one in whom God never is
done with us yet! In Matthew Jesus the teacher, Jesus the rabbi, goes
always before us, his learners, his followers, -- in the image of author
Marcus Borg, meeting him over and over again, as if for the very first time!
Living by Advent, living by promise, is
living by faith against faith, hope against hope, love against love, even
joy against joy. It is living by what is possible right in the midst of the
most impossible of circumstances and conditions. It is living out our
limits, singing out our sins, dancing out our demons, -- knowing that all us
are at once both saved and yet lost, both free and yet bound, both whole and
yet broken, both healed and yet sick, -- both fulfilled and very much still
in need. Can I get a witness, or what? All of us are caught up in one form
of madness or other, some of it of our own making and acquiescing, much of
it larger than we are and only approachable and addressable with much help
from everyone else.
I want us now to imagine ourselves in prison
with John, the cousin of Jesus, whose mother Elizabeth became impossibly
pregnant in her old age, at the very same time as the much younger Mary, so
that John could leap inside her with joy at the nearness of Jesus even while
still being shaped in the womb! The book of Hebrews calls upon us,
“Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them;
those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were bring
tortured.” We know about prisons and torture today. (This congregation
remembers, through the Kairos program, and our support of Ridge House --
Open House in their new facility at First Street and Vine, Monday, December
20, 6 to 8 PM – Bring a casserole, salad, or desert!) It should not be hard
for us to imagine imprisonment. Our nation practices more of it than most
any other – two million of us in prisons now, with more prisons in
construction. Almost everyone now knows someone who’s been there, who’s
there, or who will be there soon.
So John is like any heavenly trouble-maker
and gang-banger here on earth. He’s got his posse of followers and
disciples on the outside, carrying on his business in the streets, or in the
wilderness, which sometimes can be the same thing – the wilderness of the
streets – for some people. Prisons are still fertile places to
born-organizers like John, and still likely sources of prophets today. So
John has the eyes and the ears of his “home boys and girls” on the street.
What has he heard from them? His cousin Jesus is making a move at last,
rallying some of the very same people as John and many more! In fact, some
are saying he must be the one! The messiah! The one people have been
waiting and watching for, imagining and dreaming of, for centuries, since
King David! As we often say of kids in the car on long trips, everyone
wants to know, “Are we there yet?!” Or do we have to go on waiting and
watching, imagining and dreaming?
John tells his buddies to put the question
to Jesus much as I hear folks asking who will lead us today. Who will think
for us? Envision for us? Speak for us? Act for us? Who will take away
all our fear and our pain, our confusion and our doubt? Who will be our
hero now, as we may look back and think we had heroes once? But Jesus keeps
saying, to John and to us, in the words of the song, “We don’t need another
hero!” Rather, we need to find the hero in us! The heroic and messianic
dimensions of our own lives! Jesus does not see all power as his, as
concentrated in him, to use as he wants to, -- not for his own reputation or
reward, nor even for ours! The messiah is there IS no messiah, says Jesus –
and yet I am the one. And you are the one. And you are the one. And we
are the ones! If not us, who? If not here, where? If not now, when?
Prison is simply no object to God! There is
no place, there is no time, there is no person, there are no people on earth
beyond the full reach of God’s Jubilee promise! Recognition! Redemption!
Reparation! Restoration! God takes away every excuse from our lives. No
one is too feeble, say these scriptures; no one is too weak, no one is too
anxious, no one is too blind, no one is too lame, no one is too sick, on one
is even too dead, no one is too poor. And even though Jesus does not name
it here, as a Jubilee people we know of this Jubilee Jesus: No one is too
captive, too imprisoned, too indebted, too enslaved! People of more faith
in Jesus than in John got to look beyond prisons altogether!
Every one of us is called this morning,
right here in the Great basin desert, to bloom where we are planted! Jesus
takes the burden of John’s question of whether Jesus is the one to come, or
must we wait for another, and Jesus places that question back on us! In
fact, the whole world wants to know: Are we the ones who are to come, or
must the world wait for others? Must all others in this world even wait for
themselves, to become the same ones all are waiting for?! This is not about
John, Jesus says to us now. This is about you! All of you. John may be
the greatest ever to witness and serve God before my coming, Jesus says to
us. But since I have come, -- from old ways of judgment to new ways of
mercy, from violent revenge to nonviolent renewal, -- the least of you who
follows me is greater than John For you have been filled with new ways!
Jesus is always about empowering us! About
sharing God’s power, God’s ever-creating, redeeming, sanctifying and
sustaining power, with us! That is why we go through again these cycles, or
spirals, of the church year, beginning again with Advent, and why we combine
the church year with the earth year, the natural year, -- because God is
power in all things! In all peoples, in all times and places! God is at
work even now, bringing forth earthly powers each day, and inviting us,
calling us, encouraging us and empowering us, to tap into all of God’s
powers. As we sing together to start our worship each Sunday of this
season: “God the sculptor of the mountain, God the miller of the sand / God
the jeweler of the heavens, God the potter of the land / You are womb of all
creation, we are formless; shape us now!” (John Thornburg & Amanda Husberg,
“God the Sculptor of the Mountains”) Is anyone here not essentially
formless yet this morning? In need of caring and nurturing, of reshaping
and recreating now?
And when we go out from worship each Sunday
this season, we are invited to take with us a piece of the mountain, a piece
of the rock that is Jesus for us! One in whom the sun shines, the water
runs gentle, the trees give us company – Isaiah’s very way of promise for
our place and time! We are to grow from the rock. The gentle stream is to
run through us. We are to grow as a tree, planted by the Truckee, not to be
moved, but to be opened, and offered, with life and with love, for all
others, as well as for all of ourselves! Nothing needs to be hidden,
nothing withheld. “Earth cure me. Earth receive me woe. Rock / strengthen
me. Rock receive my weakness. Rain / wash my sadness away. Rain receive
my doubt. / Sun make sweet my song. Sun receive the anger from my
heart.” (Nancy Wood, Hollering Sun; found in Earth Prayers from
around the World)
Jesus expects us, like John, to leave this
place, to leave whatever the prisons and bondages of our lives, with a
sharpened sense of our own powers to join Jesus in his messianic life and in
his messianic works. Jesus expects to put God’s powers in us to use! In
action! Even those powers that so often seem like something terribly
“unpowerful” and unproductive in us – even our rage, our hatred, our
hostility, our despair, our desperation with life – Can I get a witness? Or
am I just talking about myself? Jesus asks to evoke our own powers of all
kinds, to let them out, to name them, to embrace them, to work with them –
all as the sum of the parts of whom each of us is, by God’s grace, the whole
person who is even more, even greater than the sum of our parts!
For Jesus asks us this morning to let go and
let God – let God use our all-too- human weaknesses for God’s strengths, our
self-destruction for God’s new creation, our hurting for God’s healing, even
our dying for God’s living. Jesus is not naïve, not stupid about who we
are, where we have been, where we may be stuck even now. Jesus the ever
Prodigal Son has been there and is there with us even now. Jesus loves us
with urgency, with holy Advent impatience, both to see ourselves just as we
are, yet also as we are still only becoming! Jesus does not need to be
defended from or protected against us or against any “unworthies” like us,
who may not look like us, talk like us, think like us, act like us, -- even
pray, and worship, and witness, and serve even just as we do, or as we do
not.
Jesus asks us in all things to let our
actions speak for themselves, as his actions speak for him. Jesus asks us
to trust in our own judgment, to be the experts on our own experience, and
to learn and to name for ourselves who we are and who we are becoming. You
remember my story of the woman who goes to check out what she has bought?
And wants to pay with a check? And is asked to show proof of who she is?
And thinks a moment, then reaches into her purse, pulls out her mirror,
looks into it, and proclaims loudly, “Yep! That’s me, all right!” She is
not waiting on anyone else to tell her who she is. Only we can prove who,
and whose, we are. Only we can be the persons, the people, God even now
makes us to be, the Holy Spirit even now calls us to be, Jesus the messiah
even now leads us to be -- not only once, but again and again! Our whole
lives through.
We are the ones who are promised! We are
the ones we’ve been waiting for! Let the church say, Amen!
Rev. John Auer
