“Living
Death: Are We Playing This Game in Vain?”
Living Death: Are We Playing This Game in
Vain? I said at both the wedding and the memorial services yesterday,
whenever, wherever, in all the world, people gather for worship these days,
we are mindful, with Paul, of our own precarious balance in the dancing of
life with death. I hasten to say my answer, in faith, is No, we are not
playing this game in vain. There is hope for us. But just the temptation
to think of life as a game at this point -- with players and those who call
the plays and pieces in the game, with winners and losers, with a culture of
gambling and so-called “gaming” -- says something ominous to me about our
own sense of powerlessness in the process of protecting the deepest
interests not only of our lives but the lives of our children’s children to
many generations.
I appeal this morning of the anniversary of
9/11 and in the wake of Katrina to the mother, the father, the grandparent,
the uncle, the aunt, the neighbor, the friend to children in us all – those
children depicted in the “Hosanna Arch” above the chancel as participants in
our every worship! – for we are all children of Israel now! We stand in
need of new Exodus now, new deliverance from bondage to forces of death and
destruction, disenfranchisement and disempowerment -- markets of oil and of
war. If the waters God is troubling now even may, just may, be waters of
global warming, why, in God’s name, on this one precious earth, would we
gamble the lives and well-beings of our children?
Just imagine the organizing of the Exodus
Moses and others had to do – to get all their people, so accustomed to
slavery, together and out of there at one time. So many did not want to go
at all – as we may know by human nature – but also by how quickly so many
were ready to turn back to bondage at the slightest sign of struggle in the
wilderness. I always wonder if the many plagues of the story not only show
how hard-hearted Pharaoh could be, but also how hard-headed we people can
be! How many times does Moses think he has everyone ready at last – only to
circle back and find pockets of those who have just changed their minds?
Pastors and other would-be organizers know all about that! There is no
avoiding all the dynamics of the politics of liberation. Freedom is no Big
Easy.
Those who ponder the Exodus story in
tradition wonder if, in fact, it was possible that not a single Israelite
was lost – and was it possible that Israelites who made it mourned the loss
of so many Egyptians? Are we not taught that God wants to save all of God’s
children? Just imagine the pain and the grief of God in the world today.
We might ask as we hear this story, are we among the Israelites, or the
Egyptians? The fleers or the oppressors? Or something of each? A little
of both? Biblical stories are meant for us to find ourselves in them –
perhaps different places at different times of our lives – for we are always
bringing newness of our own changing, growing lives to the stories. We are
what makes the stories endure. They are not just good and timeless
stories. They are “our” stories -- the living stories of a living God for a
living people!
But whether we’re watching the Exodus out of
Egypt or New Orleans, out of New York City or Baghdad, God always joins on
the side of the poor and oppressed. It is not pleasant to reflect that the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon were not just arbitrary targets of
ruthless attack. We are not giving in to justification of that attack if we
acknowledge how and why such centers of “military-industrial complex” are
chosen. Otherwise, if we do not confront that, I fear we are not serious
about deep and abiding healing from 9/11 but only perpetuate its
conditions. We have seen these past weeks so-called how “homeland
security,” now another huge industry, cannot be achieved apart from the
security of the world, the security of the earth. Nations of all the earth
have tried in these days to surround us with love and with offers of
support. We seem so reluctant to reach out and receive it. If, in fact, we
owe our kids not only huge new debts, but the chance for enduring security,
how do we swallow some pride? Go deeper in what we are willing to ask and
willing to see? How we are willing to act on compassion for world-suffering
and commitment to God’s justice and peace?
Jesus is trying to call Peter and all of us
here to a practice of forgiveness in every last part of our lives and our
life together, as persons and as peoples. We may not be aware or like to
admit it, but peoples around the world do that to us all the time. Even
though their perspective on our government, our military, and our
corporations may be very different from ours, they forgive us again and
again as a people, either because we are ignorant of what is happening, or
because we feel just as helpless to change the game, so to speak. I dare
say peoples of Louisiana and Mississippi will do the same. As God is
forgiving, so life itself is “for giving” – that is, we are given life in
the beginning, so that we might give life to others. Life is a continuous
cycle of freely receiving and freely giving. Would much more have been
given faster and more freely in New Orleans were we not quite so hung up on
who-earns-and-owns-what of the life-sources God offers fully and freely to
all? Not only once but each day of our lives? If we are to ask questions
of “bad decisions” and of “looting” the common good, must we not be willing
to ask and pursue them at every level of our common life and response?
Some say this morning’s story of the Exodus
is the third of Creation stories through the waters that hold such powers of
both death and life. In the beginning God’s Spirit moved over the “deep,”
waters so named for a Near Eastern goddess of water. Every baptism is a
forgiving, a wading and washing in the sky waters and the earth waters of
God. Then, in the flood, the waters, the “deep,” cover the earth again.
Another “birthing,” renewing and cleansing, from greed, from ignorance and
from violence. Finally there is the escape from bondage through the sea.
The forces of death and destruction are drowned in their own refusal to
resist their own government, its military and its industry – another reason
for the plagues? To give the Egyptian people, even soldiers, chances to
discover and risk solidarity with the slaves kept in their names? A
brand-new family of Israelites is formed and given for all the world by
passing through the waters! New Orleans is one among many places and
peoples “passing through waters” of troubling changes and challenges to us
today. Will we receive?
It is not hard to imagine this as a time of
what Jesus calls “reckoning” for all the world, for all the earth. We live
in a time of instant and interconnected awareness of global crisis. We have
outlived all our excuses for ignorance of and for violence to one another.
We have outlived all our excuses for slavery and dependency, for invasion
and occupation, here and anywhere in this world. In biblical history, it is
not that God is seen as causing disaster, for worse and for better, in the
time that disaster occurs. It is that disaster occurs, and then the people
of God are changed and challenged to find new meaning and new practice in
light of what they have been through, what they have endured. It is up to
us, sisters and brothers, to begin to “make sense,” to analyze, grasp,
interpret, and act on the signs and signals of God in our time, in our
place. Jesus’ call to forgiveness has passed on to us. Remember that
Easter evening? When Jesus breathed the Spirit of forgiveness on us? And
charged us with forgiveness on all the earth? Our children to all
generations will know how we responded to this moment. With forgiveness and
newness of life, no matter what they cost us? Or with denial, guilt,
repression, “blaming the victim,” and more of the same?
The “slaves,” so to speak, are rising up
everywhere. The question, as in Jesus’ story, is whether those of us who
are not, or think we are not, slaves will stand in solidarity with those who
are most obviously suffering from unjust imprisonment, incarceration,
bondage of whatever description – at whatever the cost to us? The Bible is
basically the “history of God” in the lives of God’s people – though God
will not be confined or constrained to any particular people. When future
historians of God’s word and God’s work in our time and our place – assuming
there is such a future – and I do – I’m just saying! – what do we think they
will make of our “plagues”? Vietnam? 9/11? Iraq? The tsunami? The
hurricane? Go back as far and take in as much as we possibly can. Are we
plaguing ourselves, are we gaming ourselves, to death? Or to life?
We need our “Homecoming” next Sunday, our
coming back where and to whom we belong – where all is forgiven, as many
times as it takes, and we are affirmed as children of the God who is making
all things new – even here, even now – We need our “house meetings” that
will follow from “Homecoming” – we need them to be for us chances for us to
be called to the “Homecoming” and the “house meetings” of all of our
brothers and sisters everywhere in this world and on this earth we all share
so precariously. We need to know that each of our lives, our decisions, our
actions and our reflections, makes a difference. We need to know it is up
to us to prove whether we are playing this game, with the many deaths it has
taken, in vain? Or whether again, in the history of God, waters lead to
life?
Please, let us bring to Homecoming our every
power of awareness and attention, of involvement and investment in this
congregation for all of God’s people – from youngest to oldest, richest to
poorest, most hopeful, most despairing – an everyone still in between! From
yesterday’s marrying of Marie and Jamie in the morning, to the “burying” of
Betty Hicks at night – It takes all of us to be this church!!
I leave us this perspective of
slave-descendant Maya Angelou from the book All God’s Children Need
Traveling Shoes –
The women wept and I wept. I too
cried for the lost people, their ancestors and mine. But I was also
weeping with a curious joy. Despite the murders, rapes and suicides, we
had survived. The middle passage and the auction block had not erased
us. Not humiliations nor lynchings, individual cruelties nor collective
oppression had been able to eradicate us from the earth. We had come
through despite our own ignorance and gullibility, and the ignorance and
rapacious greed of our assailants.
There was much to cry for, much to
mourn, but in my heart I felt exalted knowing there was much to
celebrate. Although separated from our language, our families and
customs, we had dared to continue to live. We had crossed the
unknowable oceans in chains and had written its mystery into “Deep
River, my home is over Jordan.” Through the centuries of despair and
dislocation, we had been creative, because we had faced down death by
daring to hope.
We had faced down death -- by daring to
hope! Let a people who dare to hope say, Amen.
Rev. John J. Auer
