Pun intended? You can bank on it! Even
sermon titles get corporate sponsors today. Thanks to all who turned out,
like Jesus and this woman at the town well, for public witness at the state
legislature and city council this week. Thanks to all who organized both
events so well, or so wells! When we turn out to witness, we do so as a
body, individually and collectively. None of us speaks universally for
the congregation or for the United Methodist Church. Yet each of us
speaks as the congregation and as the United Methodist
Church. We are who we are in faith wherever we go, whomever we’re with,
whatever we say and do.
There is no getting away from ourselves. In
the nature of our covenant to be members together of one body, every part,
every member, of this congregation belongs equally to the whole body. The
vision, the view, the voice of each is respected. Even when we disagree, we
disagree in connection. We disagree in relationship. We disagree in love.
We take one another seriously (gladly but seriously) enough to embrace and
engage one another. We “come to Jesus” with one another, sit down at
“Jacob’s well” with one another, share some “living water” with one another
– as living parts of a living body of a living God’s living people bound by
a living Christ to follow a living Spirit toward a living truth!
There is nothing dead about us. We have
always only begun to fight, for who we are and for each other’s right to
be. In covenant to be the body together, we really listen to one another,
-- hear one another, -- give-and-take with one another, -- negotiate with
one another, -- compromise with one another, -- find common ground,
solidarity even in difference, with one another, -- love one another (not
always like but love one another) -- more freely, that is with less fear, --
and more fully, that is with less ignorance (for fear and ignorance feed
fiercely off one another) -- in order to appreciate all the more the
incredible creativity of this one God who so loves differences, complexities
and diversities, as to make so many of them! This is the lasting legacy of
such unsung, unofficed public servants and heroes as Tom Stoneburner in our
midst, -- the legacy of the agitator/organizer: to bring out all the ways we
already belong to each other!
I don’t think we quite conveyed that to city
council Wednesday night. We will live with the result, paying half of what
we are assessed for the train-trench project. We will make the best of it,
because at least when you pay, you get to play! We will be a player in
downtown development, -- not as a business, not as a residence, but in the
both-worldly uniqueness of being the church. The best idea I have heard yet
is that we raise the $9000 all at once in a huge night of public performance
sometime this fall, calling in all our friends who have come to know and
respect the reasons why we are, still, here! Like a tree, like a well,
planted by the Truckee! We shall not be moved.
This place called Reno’s First United
Methodist Church, -- with its proper street address, lot number, and
“assessed value,” as we were identified Wednesday night, -- is, in fact,
nobody’s “property.” It does not so much belong to us as we belong to it.
It is not so much real estate as it is sacred gift and trust, handed on to
us by mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters in faith, who would have
crawled, if they had to, to get here no matter how many trains! Meantime,
let us go to the legislature and do what we can to celebrate and support the
special vocation of churches and not-for-profits. That puts the burden,
where it ought to be, -- on us! To make indisputably plain how we live, and
give, life for others!
This week’s Lenten devotional message from
Mark Harrison, director of Peace with Justice programs for the General Board
of Church and Society, is entitled “Creating a Well Not a Wall in Iraq.” Or
anywhere else, for that matter. The fate of the Berlin Wall should help us
wonder at the wisdom of walls, whether between Israel and Palestine, or
Mexico and the United States. What if it could be the Berlin, or Whatever,
Well, not Wall? Wellspring of well-being for all peoples? There is such a
temptation today to become gated nations of gated communities, to settle for
gated and walled ways of life, through the selling and separation of systems
and structures meant for the good and the service of all. Do we belong to
each other, or not?
Mark Harrison says, in words that also sound
true of worship, -- “The well has significance throughout human history,
not only as the receptacle of the water that is needed to quench thirst,
cleanse our bodies and accomplish many of the essential tasks of daily
living. The well is also a meeting place, usually centrally located, where
people come together to draw water and to reconnect with one another.
Relationships are formed at the well.” Did any of us grow up with wells for
our homes? With wells for more homes than ours? With community wells? And
he asks, “Where are the wells of our time?” We would hope that the churches
are. Former councilperson Toni Harsh likes to say downtown is made up of
“four Ps” – people, parks, pulpits, and pubs! The Wesley brothers could
relate to that, going into the taverns to steal the tunes for our hymns!
Let us ask ourselves – Where are those places, those times, those people,
those events that are encouraging, not discouraging, connection,
cooperation, collaboration, -- common origin and common ground. (We thank
our sister Denise Hedrick this week for her work with Education
Collaborative matching gifts and resources of business and larger community
with public schools! Our sister Jane Nichols was a recipient at the first
EC Awards night!)
Mark Harrison goes on to say, “Jesus is a
well for those who follow him. Filled by the Spirit we also become wells
for one another. We can embody Jesus’ well, becoming people who are
reconcilers and healers in our communities and in the world. ‘Well-being’
is not merely a physical state of health. Wellness is openness to the
presence of God in others, even those who have a different story to tell
than our own. To be a well is to have a willingness to fill and be
filled. It is the regular practice of justice and mercy, forgiveness and
healing.” To fill and be filled! Lent teaches us kenosis,
self-emptying, as the only way to be filled again. And Mark Harrison asks,
“What does it mean to meet together and share water at the well,
particularly during difficult times and times of conflict?”
Further, he asks, “How does Jesus’ life
prepare us to advocate for people/ communities/nations experiencing
violence? Through Jesus’ interaction with a woman from Samaria, what
assumptions and systems did Jesus challenge? How does this determine how we
advocate for those affected (civilians and combatants) by the war in Iraq?
With healing and reconciliation at the core of Jesus’ ministry and purpose,
how can we engage world leaders to adopt a foreign policy that reflects
these core beliefs?” It’s not that I am the greatest preacher around. It’s
not that you are the greatest congregation around. Whatever the greatest
may mean. But together we got a thing going on. Not only for each other,
not only for our immediate neighborhood, not only for Reno/ Sparks,
California/Nevada, but for the whole church and whole world! What we are
together seems to be the most mystically, musically, missionally ambitious
ministry around! We want it all! And we want it for all of God’s people!
Just like the Israelites in the wilderness
here, we know all the grumblings, complainings, doubtings, and fearings that
somehow the “Moseses” of our lives and our journeys in faith, perhaps the
“Stoneys” of our communities (We may name them for ourselves!), just lead us
from crisis to crisis! From one “darned issue” to another! If it isn’t
poor people, it’s people of color! If it isn’t “them,” it’s women! If it
isn’t “them,” it GLBT people! If it isn’t “them,” it’ll be children! Or
animals! Or somebody else that just wants to be free! I mean, really, “Is
Yahweh with us, or not?” You mean, all of this mess over “issues” just
might be telling us, God is with us?! Even the issues might be of God?
When will this journey into freedom ever end? Sisters and brothers, this
God of our faith journey is, as Matthew Fox puts it, “One River, Many
Wells.” And liberation theologian Gustavo Gutierrez adds, “We drink from
our own wells!” Each one of us finds, before we can share with others
together, that deepest source of life and living, of identity and vocation,
of call and response, for ourselves! Nobody else can do it for us!
But this Jesus can sure help us get it
right. Jesus is the ever-hospitable one, ever at-home to us, wherever,
whenever, whoever, however we are. Jesus makes time for us, Jesus makes
space for us, to be just the person we are. But Jesus always invites us,
encourages and empowers us, to go more deeply into ourselves, into the
wellsprings of our life and living, than we ever have dared or determined to
go before. With Jesus our places of worship may become places of such
well-being, such wellness, for us and for others. Such places are neither
the mountaintop of Samaria, nor the temple of Jerusalem, nor any petty
partisan and sectarian place, as this woman and Jesus debate. Rather, our
places of worship are “new places” for us each week, “third places,”
alternative places to all other places in our lives, if we will – where we
are fully free, and freely full, to meet God and meet one another, in Spirit
and in truth.
Sisters and brothers, in this place, we can
begin to “let down,” – let down not only whatever our “buckets,” whatever
our “water jars,” whatever our “rocks” and our “stones,” our “hard places”
and our “rough edges,” -- whatever the burdens we carry, the barriers we
face – Notice how this woman, once she finds courage and power with Jesus,
just leaves by the wellspring of new life her water jar, sign of all the
confines, all the constraints of old life, as she runs off to spread the
good news! In this place, we can begin to let down as well every defense
and every pretense, every fear and every ignorance, of one another and of
our selves!
With that faith, in God, in Jesus, in
others, and in our selves, let us say, Amen.
Rev. John Auer
