“Small Talk,
Big Talk: Freedom Is One Long Meeting”
I actually met Emma Tiller on my own before I found out she was interviewed
in one of Studs Terkel’s fabled oral histories of Chicago – Division
Street or Hard Times. Emma Tiller was a veteran of the Civil
Rights movement in the South then living out her citizenship in the
community of the Cabrini Green projects. I was just an impetuous seminarian
doing an urban semester. I loved to go around saying such deep and
insightful things as, “I’m tired of all these meetings, how about some
action?!” Until one day Emma Tiller sat me down to tell me when I had been
through even a taste of what she had been through, I would know, “Freedom is
one long meeting.” Freedom is one long meeting!
One long one-on-one, face-to-face, give-and-take, two-way street – in
dialogue, in living conversation – sometimes in small talk (We all know
“small talk.”), sometimes in big talk (We all know “big talk.”) – with room
for all at the kitchen or dining room tables of life and of work – at home,
at church, in public – in the community, nation, and world. The world for
Emma Tiller was like the promise of Jesus -- In my Father’s house there are
many dwellings, many mansions -- and I am now making a place for you, and
for you, and for every person and every people! No one will be left out of
the meeting, left out of the conversation.
Sisters and brothers, we are living right now – in our Father’s House, in
our Mother’s House, in our Children’s House – in the “World House” of Dr.
King’s teaching. In the next two weeks I hope to keep on conversing about
the “household of God” (as alternative image to “kingdom of God”) in two of
Letty Russell’s books, Household of Freedom and Church in the
Round. In this our “homecoming” season, we celebrate “home” and
“household” as root words in ec-ology, ec-onomy, ec-umenicity – our life,
our labor, our love, together! We wonder how our whole world and our entire
earth might learn to “come home” again. October is United Nations month,
the 60th birthday this year.
The United Nations is where we hold global or world conversation. And world
conversation – the constant negotiation of covenants, as we call them –
staying forever at table together – is all that can keep us from war after
war after war. Please come to Sacramento with me October 8 for a day’s
reflection on our UN ministries. Of course, we need “national conversation”
as well – and we seem to be fleeing most fearfully from it at moments we
need it the most! Whatever we feel about Cindy Sheehan, that’s all she is
asking for! Why can’t we talk about this? What are so afraid of? Why do
we avoid her and run from her questions?
Listen to Jesus here, in light of baptism today. Life with our children --
with those who say “yes” and do “no,” with those who say “no” and do “yes” –
is one long meeting and conversation! Whenever we stop talking with them,
we’re in trouble!
Just as with any committed relationship – relationships thrive on words –
that’s all we have really to give one another – words, vows, promises – and
the actions that follow from them. We are a people of covenants, multiple
covenants, always in process and progress – infinitely knowable, speakable,
negotiable, forgiveable, renewable. It is not about reading each other’s
minds but speaking to each other’s hearts! Moms and dads, spouses and
partners, brothers and sisters, families and friends, communities and
congregations, nations and worlds – we’ve got to keep talking together!! If
we know that is true in our very own homes, how much more true must it be in
all of God’s world?! God, save the United Nations.
Our congregation as part of the living body of Christ engages in meeting, in
dialogue and conversation all the time. Wherever, whenever, Jesus says, two
or three are gathered in my name, there I am, conversing, communing with
you! Worship with fellowship is give and take, call and response, witness
and action, word and table, baptism and communion. Worship with fellowship
is dialogic and dialectic – made up of multiple points of view and vocation,
vision and voice.
Freedom is one long meeting. Martin Buber says all real living is meeting –
encounter, embrace, engagement, endurance with one another through all kinds
of weather. This time of year for children and young people returning to
school is full of life as meeting – renewing and making new relationships
like the river – we never step in the same one twice! We are always
changing, always changed. Life is just so alive – what flows forever
between our fantasy and our fate! We are forever renewing, beginning
again. This is Sunday -- “go to meeting” day!
Emma Tiller, not to mention Harriet Tubman, would remind us, the song
“There’s a Meeting Here Tonight” probably began as a way of passing the word
among slaves to gather at an appointed time and place to make a break toward
freedom!
That is what we are about as a church, living people of God, living body of
Christ – always breaking toward new freedom! Which means doing more time in
the desert, more time in the wilderness wandering – times of one long
meeting -- of people from bondages of whatever kind -- with God who is
forever free to be God in whatever way God will be – and who forever calls
persons and peoples toward freedom. Check out this wonderful poem of
Madeleine L’Engle, our Words for Meditation, “Moses: dialogue with God” –
ending with each of us asking, “Who am I?” and God responding, “You are that
I will be. Come.” Come! Poor Moses -- who tells God to begin with how
trouble he has with talking! – caught in the middle interpreting – God to
the people, the people to God. The “thankless task” of prophets and
pastors, preachers and priests – including us all! -- to this day.
Freedom is one long meeting, and the “small talk” counts as much as the “big
talk.” Word and table, worship and fellowship always go together, support
one another. Our “coffee hour,” reception/refreshment time, is
indispensable to the whole experience of “meeting” here every Sunday for
breaking toward freedom. I fantasize sometimes we end up deciding to go
from here to lunch together, to take in a movie together, to walk by the
river together – whatever we do to build the “togetherness” living between
and among us. Thank You to all who do “coffee hour” each week! Thank You
to all who do Sunday School – Our Methodist movement is founded on what John
Wesley calls “class meetings!”
We simply cannot get enough in this world today of bonding and building
relationships together – as persons, as families, as households, as
churches, as communities, nations and worlds. With all the pressures on us
to separate and to oppose and compete with each other – to be every one of
us for ourselves – at odds and at wars with each other. We need all the
“togetherness” we can get!
Thank You to all who do so many acts of “hospitality” to and for this
congregation – from greeting and ushering (in English and in Tongan!) to
“house meetings” and to “IHN” again in November and everything in-between.
Organized people -- relational power – power of meeting together -- is the
only accountable option to organized money -- corporate power – crossing all
borders and running the world for the wealthy today. Come out for adult
class – starting next Sunday with a series of “Great Themes of the Bible” –
Call, Creation, Covenant, Christ, Community and Commitment. Come out for
membership exploration at the parsonage beginning next Sunday. Come, be
part of the life-conversations!!
Where else are we going to meet – to talk, to learn, to grow, to change, to
help and support one another through changes – expanding our sense of
vocation, our view, our vision, our voice? We are all “in the house,” as we
say, all the time! (As of last night, I gladly report once again, There is
no “lack of talent” in this house!) Friend and colleague Rabbi Myra Soifer
reflects on Jewish meanings of “house” and of “home.” “Jews as a people are
always looking for a home,” she says, for a “promised land” – and just about
every institution in Hebrew thought and language is a “home/house” of some
kind or other. The synagogue is “house of study,” “house of prayer,” “house
of assembly” – like church! The school is “house of books.” The hospital
is “house of sick people.” The cemetery is “house of the buried.” Brothers
and sisters, the one we call “God” is our “house of life,” our “house of
love” – and welcome to it! The One in whom we live and move and find our
very being! Life with God is meeting – dialogue, conversation – encounter,
embrace, engagement, endurance – with all humanity.
Jesus is our “meeting point” with God. For us Jesus sets aside every perk
and privilege of being a god – don’t we wish we could get leaders in our
world today to do that? He takes on the status of “slave” -- Paul’s way of
saying there is nothing God in Jesus – whom we call “Christ,” Messiah,
because of his implications for all the world, all the earth – There is
nothing Jesus won’t do for us! For each and for every last one of us – no
matter how deeply in bondage we are – in addiction, in alienation – in any
last tempting, last trial, last turmoil, last trouble we may find ourselves,
even here and even now! Jesus is in us and around us! Between us and among
us! With us and for us! Right where we are! It’s all about each and every
last one of us breaking toward freedom whatever that means to us. It is a
humbling process. The words humble and humor, human and humus, the earth,
all go together -- Dust we are, to dust we are fast returning. Our time
under God is now! There is no better moment for us than right now. There
is no better place for us than right here. If not us, who? If not here,
where? If not now, when? Freedom is one long meeting! Amen.
Rev. John Auer
