“Bittersweetness: A Law to Be Laughed/Cried/Eaten/Drunk”
I entitle this meditation for World
Communion thinking of what Matthew Fox calls the “law of the universe – eat,
and be eaten!” We are all somewhere in the eternal food chain! And as
Jeremiah observes, God’s word, God’s law, are to be as tied up in our being,
our very guts, as laughter and tears, as food and drink. Our new
earthenware chalice and paten connect with the “pottery of tears” recently
dedicated at Sacramento Japanese UMC – made from soil of three
Japanese-American internment camps during World War II!
As we hear Jesus summarize the Law laid out
by the Ten Commandments, the last thing we could call Jesus in today’s
dialogue on judicial styles is a “strict constructionist.” Jesus is
furthest from that! He is clearly a “judicial activist,” perhaps a
“liberated renovationist!” Jesus knows what God has done for him, for his
Jewish people in bondage to Pharaoh. He knows what he is called to do for
others – for us – in our bondage to death and destruction. He knows we –
the church – are called to help liberate in the world. Constructionists are
preoccupied with the past, we hear Paul saying, living with illusions of
what lies behind us. Renovationists live the present for the future!
Renovationists make ourselves part of what’s happening now, to help bring
into being all we hope is yet to come! We do not have to look far around us
in our neighborhood here – all the new condos, new businesses – to realize
renovation is rocking in Reno!
We know Jesus makes sweeping changes that
shock his hearers. He announces them as, “You have heard it was said of old
. . . But I say unto to you” -- citing no other authority than his own!
There is no way to deny that in Jesus the living Law of a living Word of the
living God for a living people of a living church of the living Spirit
cannot be contained or controlled. Jesus says he comes not to abolish the
Law but to fulfill it, to “perfect” it as Methodists might say -- to
complete it and make it whole. And he is still doing so, right here and
now!
The promise of the prophet Jeremiah is that
God will no longer write the law only on stone, only as outside, external
authority. Rather, God will write directly on the heart of every believer,
as inside, internal authority -- so that each may come to God in our own
way, even name God in our own way -- by the gifts of our own experience and
our own reflection upon it. Jesus embodies both the letter and the spirit,
the content and the intent of the law as gospel, as good news – as that
which carries on and carries out God’s intent for the Law as we hear this
morning – “I am the Holy One, your God, who brought you out of bondage.”
God means the Law to help us remember who God is to us – the One who brings
out of bondage – not only once long ago out of Egypt in the Exodus – not
even just out of death in the Resurrection – but again, and again, and again
– in our own lives and in the lives of all persons, all peoples,
everywhere! That is why the Day of Pentecost, the coming of the Spirit upon
the church, is also the feast of the Law.
If, as Letty Russell describes, God’s intent
is to create a “household of freedom” in this world, with room in the house
for all of the family -- all of the families of God by whatever traditions
we name ourselves -- then the Ten Commandments are like the “house rules,”
the words and promises, the covenants and living agreements, between and
among all who live there. And just like our very own families and
households, if everyone is not included in setting the rules -- if everyone
does not take what we call “ownership” for themselves and invest themselves
in the good of the whole – the rules are not likely to be effective for
anyone. No one is finally saved, or freed, or healed, --apart from the
whole! Especially those who have been cast out of the household, and those
who never got “in” to begin with, have to be heard from, or else “insiders”
will never rest easy. That’s at least part of the picture of this parable.
The tenants feel absolutely no interest any longer in the well-being of the
absentee landlord!
In the “household of freedom,” there are
only partners, only participants.
We seem to have a way in our church and
culture of laying the law, the expectation of others, on people without at
the same time seeing them as our partners, our fellow participants, our
equals – both in access to opportunity and in parity of results. We turn
the law more into a burden of judgment than an instrument of justice. We
forget that the law does not belong to us, does not originate with us. The
law always comes from God, the source, the origin of us all. The law does
not give us our essential identity. The law cannot make or create us. Only
God can do that. The law can only help us live out our identity in right
relations and just behavior. Dr. King used to say, the law cannot make you
love me -- but the law can make you take your foot off my neck!
The first four commandments focus on right
relations with God.
1) Accept that “God” (should always think in
quotation marks!) is one source, one maker, creator of all – in that all
persons, all peoples, are equals.
2) Accept that God is living and dealing
directly with each one of us -- let no “idols,” no “lesser gods,” of
religion or of culture (especially the gods of greed!) come between God and
us.
3) Accept that God wants to be with us and
for us, so use the name of “God” only in ways that serve life and love.
(How can “God” “bless” any war, any violence? Any death, any destruction?
Participants in war, victims of war, yes – God does try to bless. But wars
themselves? Organized violence? Count God out!)
4) Accept that God gives us the gifts of
life, not just once but every last day – the gifts of all times, the gifts
of all spaces – let us treasure them for God’s “holiness” -- God’s purpose
of freedom from all bondage.
There is a compelling convergence of “holy
days,” Sabbaths and jubilees even, this week and this month. Today is World
Communion among Protestants – protest-ants! – everywhere – originally called
by Methodists “Fellowship of Suffering and Service” because of the
devastations of World War II. Communion is literally “union with” – “God”
in union with all, all in union with one another – even as all share
laughter and tears, food and drink! Today is also the birthday of Gandhi –
to my mind the one who brought --in the sense of law and gospel, faith and
practice – more life, more love, more hope, more help to the world in the
last century than any other one person. If ever there is to be a nonviolent
alternative to the war and violence, the death and destruction we do to each
other and to our one earth, it is because Gandhi – following the best in all
faith traditions – shows us the way. Tuesday is the feast day of St.
Francis, who opposes the violence of the Crusades in his time and embodies
God’s life in and God’s of the earth.
Tuesday also is Rosh Hashanah, beginning the
Jewish New Year, with announcement of Jubilee, Sabbath of Sabbaths, when
“God” once again is reconciled and makes new, makes at-onement, in all the
world and in every relationship – leading us to the practice of repentance
and renewal, repair and restoration in all our relations – as persons, as
peoples, as nations, as world! Wednesday begins the Islamic month of
Ramadan, of abstinence from food and drink by day – reminding as every
tradition does -- though God is as close as laughter and tears, food and
drink, still they and all things only proceed and are known by God’s word.
I am invited as one of several speakers; we all are invited to attend, an
“interfaith dialog dinner” as part of Ramadan – this Thursday, 7:15 pm,
Reno-Sparks Convention Center, Room 2A-3A. This month the United Nations,
the living room of our world house, turns 60 years old. I am hungering for
company to attend a celebration in Sacramento this Saturday! Talk to me!!
The next six of the Ten Commandments (a
majority!) focus on right relations with one another. Once again -- as
“house rules” for all the family in the “household of freedom” God is
creating for all the world – these directions are both painfully local and
specific to each one of our relationships, and expansively global –
connecting the personal with the political, so that the world may endure for
us all. 5) Accept, and respect, that our lives connect with generations –
the past we inherit from and the future we borrow against – that others may
inherit from us – not in the greedy sense that the landlord sends his son to
claim in this story – which leads us to fear we now feel of the rest of the
world whose inheritance we consume -- but in the sense that the meek shall
inherit the earth.
6) Accept that our lives connect and relate
to all other lives – that to take any life is an act of violence against
ourselves.
7) Accept that we live by our words and
promises, our covenants and commitments – they are finally all we have – and
they are infinitely knowable, nameable, speakable, forgiveable, negotiable,
renewable.
8) Accept that God has provided plenty for
all – that all the resources of earth for life and for love are held in
common and meant to be shared equally with all God’s children. Any
consumption of resources that does not put the weakest first amounts to the
kind of “stealing” President Eisenhower says of the “military-industrial
complex” robbing the sick and starving children of the world
9) Accept that life is not fixed but
evolving – made up both of answers from on high and of questions to work on
together – “experiments in truth,” Gandhi calls them – that depend upon each
of us giving true witness -- giving vision and voice to life as only we can
know it. Trust what we see and hear for ourselves!
10) Accept that there but one house, though
many rooms, for us all – there is but one community, though many
neighborhoods, for us all. We are all in this together! Each one of us is
given gifts and graces for the good of us all. We are all meant to be
“homies” –brothers and sisters, neighbors and friends – to one another –
ecologically, economically, ecumenically – in life, in labor, in love – with
each other and with all persons, all peoples, here and everywhere, now and
forever. Amen.
