June 18, 2005
Conference Committee on Reconciliation Annual Luncheon, 6/18/05
Rev. John Auer

 

“If Everybody Is Somebody Then Anybody Can Be:
Incarn-action in Word, Sacrament, and Organizing”

I greet you in behalf of the first and so far the only “Reconciling” congregation in the state of Nevada!  An organizer friend of ours likes to say when you ask her if she knows a certain person, Not yet!  Well, is God done with Nevada?  Not yet!  You bet.  We live in the vast “not yet” of reconciling the free and full promise of God with the premise of being freely and fully human.  We are but one very young species among so many in this world.  Is God done with us?   Not yet!  I greet you in the spirit of those who have gone and are yet going before us and me in the ministry of Reno First.  Reconciling is a lifelong process, in our lives, in our congregations, denominations and nations.  Is God done?  Not yet!  You bet.

A quick word about reconciliation and the war.  In Reno on Memorial Day it took the Sierra Interfaith Action for Peace (which gets some Peace with Justice funding from our conference Board of Church and Society!) two hours to read more than 1600 names and to plant more than 1600 small flags in the grass of the Federal Building.  It took another two hours to read the names and to take the flags up.  At the same time, Jim Winkler of the national board keeps reminding us, February 15 just over two years ago 10 million people around the world took to the streets to say “NO” to this war and to war itself as a way of “reconciling,” in the world and dare we add, in the church as well.  More people want peace, more people want justice.  General and President Eisenhower used to say of peace in the world, someday people will want it enough that government leaders will have to get out of the way and let them have it.  We say the same today of justice in the church.   I pray in the words of Carter Heyward, “To forgive is not to forget but rather to remember whatever has been dis-membered.  We must recall as many, and as much, and as far back as we can bear.”  Amen.

I suspect it did not escape your attention that I come before you in the body – by grace if not gracefully! – embodied, incarnate, a word, a spirit made flesh – in a body that will not act right!  That is, will not act in the way I want it and tell it to act.  In fact, a body that “acts up!”  A body that is not so much coming together as falling apart – every part with a mind of its own – each going its own way all at once!  I live by the old Ecumenical Institute ditty to “Old MacDonald” – “I am always falling down / but I know what I can do! / I can pick myself up and dust myself off -- / and dance in a world brand new!”   

Our bodies may not be so much by choice as by appointment, as we like to say.  We show up in them each day, pay more or less attention to them, keep in touch with them the best we can, and realize that “they” is “us!”  For better and for worse, I am this body.  This body is me.  And if everybody is somebody then anybody can be!  Brothers and sisters, we are who we are in these bodies, in all these bodies – entrusted, entreasured in these earthen vessels.  Old bodies, new bodies, nobodies!  Individual bodies and corporate bodies!  Personal bodies, political bodies!  Bodies of church, bodies of state!  Global bodies and cosmic bodies!  There is no avoiding, there is no ignoring, there is no escaping, and there is no reconciling except as parts of these bodies in whom we all are.

Somewhere between the angels and the animals – the creator and the created ones – youngest of species, just one among many – perhaps most creative, most imaging of God – but thus far most destructive of species, with most to learn!  These bodies in whom we are divine and human, of earth and of heaven, spirit and dust, body and soul are as one.  These bodies in whom we are in God, God is in us.  God help us, there is no other way for us to be!  When will we ever get used to it and get on with it?  Growing in grace as a species of spirit . . . ,

Let us “re-member” who and whose we are.  Let us go back in time and place for a moment.  For some the sixties were times to sleep and party and wake up – at last, if at all – in high office!  To paraphrase the psalmist, obliviousness may tarry the night, but consciousness comes with the morning!  For many others the sixties were times of weeping, bleeding and dying – on both sides of the war and the war question – on both sides of that Mason-Dixon Line still running through so many of our institutions.  The sixties were times of coming to power, coming to pride.  For those who grew up vocationally around Rev. Jesse Jackson (Long live the Rainbow Coalition!) we moved to the beat of “I Am!”  “Somebody!”   

Say it with me – I am!  Somebody!  I am!  Somebody!  I may be poor – I may be black – I may be a woman – I may be on welfare.  But I am!  Somebody!  I may be young, I may be old – I may be Greek, I may be Jew – I may be LGBT or Q.  But I am!  Somebody!  Respect me – Protect me – Do not reject or neglect me.  Cuz I am!  Somebody!  My mind can conceive it – My heart can believe it – My life can achieve it.  Cuz I am!  Somebody!  Everyone fill in your own blank now – I may be ________ -- I may be _________ -- I may be ________ .  But I am!  Somebody!  And not just “some body.”  But somebody!  A whole body!  All things about me!  Irreducible to any one or few of my parts!  And if everybody is somebody then anybody can be. 

If anyone is inherently baptizable and confirmable, then anyone is inherently, incarnately, consecratable and ordainable!  Unitable and marriageable!  The same God who “don’t make no junk” in the first place – but pronounces everything, everyone “good!” – also ain’t done with anything, anyone yet!  Sisters and brothers, what gets us and keeps us in the very same trouble it got and kept Jesus in -- and the same trouble Jesus calls us to now! – is precisely our own audacious “I Am-ness!”  Our “Somebodiness!”  I think Jesus had read Jeremiah 31 – God is not writing the law on the outside of us, on stone, anymore.  Rather, God now is writing God’s self on the inside of us, on the heart of each one of us!

Nobody has to tell us who God is for us anymore – We know!  Though we welcome anyone to tell us who God is for them.  We are the experts on who we are – on our own identities, our own integrities, our own gifts and our own callings!  We are like the woman asked by the clerk at the cash register when she goes to write a check, Do you have anything to prove who you say you are?   She thinks for a moment, then reaches into her purse, pulls out a mirror, looks into it, and proclaims, Yep!  That’s me, all right!  This audacious authority Jesus invites us to share with him – in fact, promises us in the Spirit, the word embodied in us, we will find for ourselves, and even in greater ways than he! 

This is what we mean by “Take thou authority!” – Take thou appointment! -- clergy and laity alike!  Wherever we are in the church, in the world.  Not only incarn-ation but also incarn-action!  Take thou authority for the word – for who we say we are.  Take thou authority for the sacraments – for what we do with who we say we are.  And take thou authority for organizing – the original “method” of “Methodists!”  (Bob Olmstead says founded today we would be called “Compulsivists” or “Anal-Retentivists!”)   As in the words of Joe Hill, Don’t mourn – Organize!  Authority for how we invite, encourage, enable, empower each other, even all others, to be and to so who we all say we are – together!

It’s not about “order.”  It’s more about orders!  Whose orders we take -- whose orders are binding on us – who and whose we are and are going to be.  Trust me and say these with me – Open doors!  Open minds!  Open hearts!  (Don’t stop now.) Open arms!  Open borders!  And open orders!! (Thanks, John Chamberlain!)  If everybody is somebody then anybody can be.  What gets and keeps Jesus and us in all this trouble we’re called to, says Dorothee Soelle, is Jesus’ and our complete consciousness of our identities as child and as children of God.  Without any other certifying or credentialing but this authority of his own being – so other than the traditional “authority” we grow so accustomed and so inured to – Jesus is forever saying, and doing – “You have heard it was said of old . . . But I say unto you! . . .”

Dorothee Soelle’s vital little book called Beyond Mere Obedience (in a newer edition, I think, Creative Disobedience) gives us so much of that call to resistance we hear in all our baptismal vows.  Resistance to evil, injustice, oppression -- wherever, whenever, among whomever, in whatever “high places” and forms we find them.   Dorothee Soelle came of age in Germany during World War II.  Let us never forget all of whom were so brutally condemned to the camps – by the “Patriot Acts” and other perfectly legal “constitutional initiatives” of their time – the overwhelming numbers of “yellow-starred” ones.  But let us specially not forget – when anyone tells us just to “get over our issues” – those “pink-triangled” ones condemned first.  Like canaries testing the mineshafts of open repression. 

Speaking of not forgetting, let’s do a few “Presentes!” – for those who live on in our bodies and body together.  Feel free to add some names after these --  Marcia McLane and Barbara Moore – Presente!  Dick Hart and Mary Parker Eves – Presente!  Phyllis Athey!  Fines Crutchfield!  Julian Rush!  Harvey Milk!  Matthew Shepard!  Gwen Aruajo!  The “big picture” person of San Rafael – Jo Ann Sanders!  Our own incomparable Jeannie Barnett – PRESENTE!  Others?  Is that kind of exercise good for the body, and soul, or what? 

Dorothee Soelle says this trouble we share with Jesus is that we know the difference and yet the dynamic between “obedience” – “discipline” in the repressive, reactive, retributive sense! – and “fulfillment.”  That Jubilee of equality of access and parity of result.  That indispensable mixture of justice and mercy, liberation and love, obedience and fulfillment.  Not any one of them can stand alone.  Obedience on its own always becomes dualistic – dividing “power over” from “power under” – obey-er from obeyed – whereas fulfillment assumes there is plenty of power from our one God and daily creator, source to all our resources – God not of scarcity but of abundance!   So that all power is “power with!”  Power with God and with one another.  The trouble -- which is also the authority, even the baptismal authority – we share with Jesus is the authoritative trouble of our own God-createdness every day in the living and loving and manifest-making hands of the One who is making All things new!  Even here, even now, even us. 

The God of Jesus is making each one of us up as we go along.  It has not yet been revealed to us who and what all we are meant to be.  We call it in our congregation, “loving diversity with respect for the identity of each, / loving complexity with respect for the integrity of all” -- as a species and all the members of us -- as a body and all the parts of us.  I went on a clergy retreat in the seventies around issues of race, class and gender – which are both pastoral and prophetic, issues for priesting and for preaching.  It was in the Chicago area with ethicist Emilie Townes.  As we came for communion, each of us was given one of any number of breads of the world to offer – ricecakes, matzoh, cornbread, flat bread, crackers, tortillas – breads of all colors, shapes, textures and grains.  I just “happened” to end up with a dark east European rye.  As we made words for presenting our breads, I was embodied, incarnate all over again with the living presence of my grandfather – birth-named Johann Auernheimer.

My deep and abiding relief and release in that moment was to realize – I, too, am a person of origin, of creation, and thus a person of color, one color among many others.  I, too, am a person of gender, one gender among many others.  I, too, am of species, of nation, of class, of age, of language and of condition in life.  But one among so many others!  We say our God must love differences – we are created of and with so many of them!  Each of us is made up of so many people, so many parts, so many visions and voices.  The tower at Babel was a first try at globalization – from the premise that one size fits all.  God our creator makes short work of that!  At Pentecost, as I get it, globalization is more like “glottalization” – the promise that every size, every shape, every vision, every voice, every people, every part gets a tongue!  Even of fire!  And a place at the table!  A place in the trouble, the cross of Jesus for us all.

The National Council, the World Council, the United Nations are so embodied – so audible, so visible, so attackable, so vulnerable, so fragile, so frail.  They’re also the best we can do with who and what we are so far in this life together.  In San Francisco 60 short years ago with just 50 nation-members.  Today – with East Timor still most newly! – the UN is 192 nation-members, and counting!  Attacks on so -called “failed” states and peoples, and the arrogant attempts to re-make them in our own image – plus attacks on the environment and on evolution itself are attacks upon us – upon all of us.  They attack the very promise that God is with us, like potter with clay, still making and shaping us from the earth up. 

We are still learning so much of and about ourselves!  There is still so much Wesleyan “perfection” to “go on” to and not yet, perhaps not ever reach.   We know we are finding new species, new galaxies all the time.  We are finding out new things about the species, the bodies, we are all the time!  Don Cunningham is always researching for us – One in every 2000 births is an “intersex” person – with ambiguous genitalia, or mixed gonadal tissue, or uncommon chromosomes.  Which means at least 15,000 intersex of us in California!  A million or more in the U.S.!  In a culture where one size still mostly tries to fit all – a culture so demanding of binary gender configuration! 

Don Cunningham guesses at least eight factors, maybe more, in all kinds of combinations, make up our gender and sexuality – never in “fixed” but always in growing, more “fitting” ways.  For God is not done with us yet – you bet!  God is not even done with God yet!  I think of who God is yet to become with the passing of every Trinity Sunday.  Carter Heyward reminds us in her classic book Our Passion for Justice: Images of Power, Sexuality, and Liberation, “For those who do not know, the Trinity is a homophilial/homoerotic image of relations between males!”  How can we be silent on this?  So basic to who we all are? 

God never did make us “male” or “female,” one or the other alone – in the beginning, or any time since.  In the power and practice of God – not so much “orthodoxy” as ortho-praxis” – often “paradoxy!” -- it is not good that anything or anyone be alone.  We are made for relationships!  Longterm committed healthy and loving relationships.  Not only with others – even with as many others as we can bear!  But also with ourselves – with our own truest most diverse and complex selves.  Selves we are still learning, still growing, still discovering, still discerning.  God does not make us “male” or “female,” one or the other, yet. 

I think the trouble we’re in with Jesus – and let’s be clear: the trouble so many say they have with “us,” whoever “we/they” may yet be – God is not done with anyone yet! – is not only trouble with us but trouble with Jesus!  The trouble with Jesus is, in the end, Jesus will not stay dead!  Jesus will not stay dead in the tomb!  Jesus will not stay in bondage in Egypt!  Jesus will not stay closeted anywhere!  But Jesus will, always and to all persons, “come out, come out” wherever he is!  Whatever is being done to us and to him.  That is the trouble with Jesus.  I preach when I can my favorite poem, called “The Rebel,” by Mari Evans – “When I / die / I’m sure / I will have a / big funeral . . . / Curiosity seekers . . . / coming to see / if I / am really / Dead / or just / trying to make / Trouble.”

That’s the trouble with Jesus!  You can’t keep him anywhere!  Can’t take him anywhere if he has to behave just so!  You can’t lock him up.  In any box.  Within any lines.  You can’t cut him off.  You can’t throw him out.  He keeps coming back – for more!  Don’t you just love the ending of Luke’s gospel?  Jesus is so much in touch with his body.  His friends think they’re seeing a ghost – puts them in pretty good company this week!  Jesus says, “Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself!  Touch me and see!”  Touch me and see.  Touch me and I shall reveal myself to you.  Touch me and you will be healed and made whole – even from all of the powers of death and destruction.  Touch me – you ain’t seen nothing yet!  And then, if we still don’t get it, like any good United Methodist after church, Jesus asks, “Have you got anything here to eat?” 

Jesus goes on in his last words to call us to be as his witnesses – the whole Book of Acts, of the Spirit’s gifts and callings to the least likely of persons and peoples, as our paradigm! – his eyes and his ears and all of his body parts in all the world.  Then Jesus orders us, “But stay here . . .”  Stay here!  Stay here in the city, scene of the crime, where I have been crucified and executed, again, and again, and again.  Stay here!  Stay here in the church, scene of the crimes, where I have been and am misused and abused, again, and again, and again.  Stay here!  Stay here, and everywhere.  At the scene of whatever the crime.  Against any one or more of God’s children.  My sisters.  My brothers.  And everyone in between!  Stay here – and here’s the real deal on “spiritual clothing” this week!” – “Stay here until you have been clothed with power from on high!” 

Stay here until I dress each of you – Fit for a king!  Fit for a queen!  And everyone in between!  For if everybody is somebody then anybody can be.  Thank you, and amen.

John Auer, Preacher 

 

 

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