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March 12, 2006
John Auer, Pastor
Scripture:
Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16, Psalm 22:25-31, Romans
4:13-15, Mark 8:31-38
“But Nobody Told Me! The Arrogance of Our
Ignorance”
We must begin preaching the “good news” today
with the bad news that Tom Fox is dead. His body was found Friday in Iraq. He
was there with the Christian Peacemaking Team – made up mostly of Mennonites,
Quakers, and Church of the Brethren members from various countries. Tom Fox was
the only United States American among four CPTers “disappeared” last November
26. (www.CPT.org)
The other three, from Britain and Canada, were seen in a video last week but
nothing more is known about them. All four are named in our Words for
Meditation each Sunday of Lent.
Tom Fox is named in a special way today – before
we knew of his death, we included these words on his life – just the life of a
man who plays music and loves to cook – just the life of a person of faith, like
you, like me – perhaps from a congregation like this – daring to stand before
the whole world and ask what is going on, and whether it has to be just this
way? We included these words of his daughter, who just wants to hug him and
give him back some of the strength he has given her – some of the strength we
all look for in the saints of our lives.
We do not name these four because they are any
more faithful or holy or closer to God than anyone else. But because they
remind us of the cost of Christian discipleship, the cost of seeing Jesus more
clearly, of loving Jesus more dearly, of following Jesus more nearly. Our
seasonal themes for Lent and Easter (Since resurrection comes with crucifixion!
With state-sanctioned and church-condoned execution!) – Our themes are “The
Walls in Our Way” and “Our Way Past the Walls” – believing that Christ is our
Way, our Truth, and our very Life – and the Christian Peacemaker Teams, wherever
they are in this world of violence and war, call their work and witness that of
“Getting (Themselves!) in the Way!” What are the walls in our way – in our way
of getting ourselves in the way? In the way of whatever the violence, the war,
the damage, the harm, being done by our own lives – and/or by the lives of those
who surround us and who represent us?
I am reminded of Emerson (Ralph Waldo, that is) coming to see Thoreau who is in
jail for refusal to pay the tax to support the Mexican-American War.
Emerson asks his friend, “What are you doing in there?” Thoreau asks in
return, “What are you doing out there?” As Jesus puts it to Peter in this
morning’s gospel in effect – Who do you think you are? Telling me how to
be who I am? Which follows from Jesus’ just earlier question to his
followers, “Who do you say that I am?” To which, of course, Peter gladly
responds, “You are the Messiah!” The Christ! The promised and the
anointed one of God – whose coming signifies and embodies and offers for all
God’s creation the very “new thing” that God is doing!
Immediately Jesus tells them not to say that
about him to anyone else. Jesus knows what image is most often evoked by the
term “Messiah” – the image of a “King David” restored to worldly power and
glory! Power and glory that come through military action in the name of
national interest and national security! As if any one nation contained and
controlled the full promise of God for itself. The problem with this way of
seeing “Messiah,” lies in God’s promise to Abram and Sarai here – where God
makes covenant and commitment to these two unlikely old people – long past the
child-bearing and new thing-doing age! – not only to give them a child – but
also through them to give children to all the nations! To all the faith
traditions that arise in that part of creation!
As we heard from our friends in Sierra
Foundation last Sunday, Jews and Christians and Muslims alike look to these very
same parents in faith! God changes Abram’s name to mean, in effect, “ancestor
of a multitude.” The promise is not so much that out of many we all become one
in the end – because we know how fiercely we all compete to see who that “one”
will be! That is the problem God deals with in the Tower of Babel. God
scatters the peoples and fractures their one tongue into many. So out of the
one source, the one origin we all share in the one we call “God” by so many
names and portrayals, and in the creation itself – out of that source come the
multitude of peoples, the re-sources, so to speak – of nations, of
colors, of cultures, of creeds – all the diversities and the complexities of all
the species and especially of the intrepidly human species!
The psalmist here proclaims that “all the ends
of the earth shall remember and turn.” We shall repent of our illusions of any
special status, supremacy or superiority over others. We shall repent of our
illusions of any elected and elevated elitism, exceptionalism or exclusivism
apart from others. And we shall confess: We are all in this life, this
world, this all-too-human community, together!! “All the families of all
the nations!” Dominion belongs only to the one who creates all – all who
have gone before and return to the dust we are – all who will come after and
spring from the dust we are! Paul makes it clear that God’s promise to Abraham
has nothing to do with Abraham’s merit. The promise is not given for
anything Abraham does or will do. Rather God decides. God chooses.
God sees, God judges, God acts, and God reflects upon God’s action – It’s all
God!
If Abraham could know exactly what is required
of him to gain God’s favor – if he could answer all the right questions, fill
out all the right forms, then he would put God in position of owing him
something. God would be part of a contract, a bargain. God is not willing to
be so contained and controlled, so predicted and so restricted. “That’s not a
holy promise,” says Paul in the Peterson version. “that’s a business deal!”
God does not deal; God doles! God gives to whom God gives – even the gift of
life out death, Paul goes on to say – God gives existence to that which does not
exist; God gives hope where there is no hope. There’s a standing laugh line in
our family between our son Jeffery and us. Jeffery grew up on Fisher Price
toys, Richie Rich comic books, Dr. Who and Dungeons and Dragons. He always
liked to feel in control of his situations. He wanted to know what was coming
next! Often he would complain to us, “But nobody told me!” – by which he meant,
nothing is supposed to happen unless I expect it to happen!
Jeffery has kept on growing, thank God – which
is to be hoped for us all! Abraham and Sarah bear witness this morning, it’s
never too late in our lives – in our relationships, our families, our work, our
congregations and our communities – even in our nations and world – it’s never
too late for God to surprise us and do a “new thing!” Or for us to learn to see
old things again in new ways! “Ignorance may be bliss,” our friend Greg
Stewart, local Unitarian-Universalist pastor, says in a column yesterday on
“intelligent design.” “But ignorance is not blessed!” In the same way we may
say, the faithful of God may be saved, but the faithful of God are not safe!
Not if we’re following Jesus. There may be more scientific researchers in this
congregation than we know. I am aware of Ann-Mary Macleod, Mike Robinson, Dick
Siemon, Rupert Seals – Are there others?
Rupert’s recent column on the creative tensions
of science with religion points out that religion gave rise to hospitals and
universities. Religion practices awe and respect for the majesty and the
mystery of both life and death. Religion enjoys the subsequent challenge and
chance for us human and most conscious beings to wrangle and wrestle openly with
our questions and with our glimpses of insight and answer. God will not be
contained or controlled by any of our so-called “theories.” The source and
resourcer of life we call “God” is beyond any tempting or testing, beyond any
predicting or restricting. “The Creator certainly knows evolution,” Rupert
writes, “since He/She invented it. It is also plausible that the Creator
intervened in evolution from time to time. But neither concept is testable
by science.” A thousand of our years are but a day in the sight of God –
and vice verse! Why are we buying into so many false arguments?
Accepting so many “false facts?” And picking so many false fights?
There is an arrogance to our ignorance. There
is a smugness to our self-righteousness. My mentor Jim Reed started many a
sermon with a cartoon from the morning paper. Well, here’s one from last
Sunday, at least – “Doonesbury.” In the first frame a young student works on an
experiment and exclaims, “Drat! These pesky scientific facts won’t line up
behind my beliefs!” An older man in a white coat advises, “Then challenge them,
Stewie!” “Holy flat-earther,” says Stewie, “It’s White House situational
science adviser, Dr. Nathan Null!” “That’s right, Stewie,” says Dr. Null, “and
I’m here to remind you . . . situational science is about respecting both
sides of a scientific argument, not just the one supported by facts! That’s why
I always teach the controversy! Like the evolution controversy, or the
global warming controversy . . . not to mention the tobacco controversy, the
mercury controversy, the pesticides controversy, the coal slurry controversy,
the dioxin controversy, the everglades controversy and the acid rain
controversy.” “You’re right, situational scienceman –“ promises Stewie, “I’ll
never
trust science again! It’s just too
controversial!” Dr. Null turns to us readers, ominously, to ask, “Stewie
gets it now, folks! Do you?” Do we?
Do we get it? Do we buy all the righteous
arguments for war? For a messianic intervention that will wipe all the “evil”
people off the face of the earth, or leave them all behind – while all the
“saved” are “safely” swept up into heaven forever? Or restored to their
rightful places in charge of the earth? Does that sound like Jesus here in this
gospel? Talk about running smack into a wall! Isn’t that just what happens to
Peter and us? When we expect only good times and upbeat prospects for the one
whom we call “Lord” and “Leader” and say we follow? When we would rather our
leaders in power of both church and state would promise us “peace, peace” – when
there is no peace? That’s one of the biblical words about walls in our Lenten
brochure -- how leaders mislead us and whitewash our walls with false facts and
cheap assurances. Ezekiel assures us, neither such walls nor such leaders will
stand!
Robert Frost says his poem “Mending Wall” means to help us see how complex and
challenging, diverse and difficult, thinking really is! The poem “lures
the unwary reader into believing that thinking is merely voting, choosing up
sides, taking out of the poem what most fits our own preconceived ideas.
The poem, says Frost, is subversive – like Jesus, we might add! – “its ultimate
purpose is to challenge us to go behind what we might find initially appealing
in the formulas that lie on its surface!” Frost concludes, “’Mending Wall’
is less a poem about what to think than it is a poem about what thinking is, and
where it might lead.”
What else is Jesus’ life, what else is Jesus’
work with us and for us? Isn’t it less about what or how to believe? And more
about what believing is? And where believing might lead us? Think about it,
please! Pray about it. Believing, according to Jesus, might lead us to imagine
a brand-new way of right relations – a non-violent way to address ourselves to
conflicts and controversies! Believing in him might lead us to follow, to act
like him – non-violently -- in the midst of our own tempted and tried, troubled
and tormented lives! Liberation theologian Gustavo Gutierrez urges us to see,
“Orthodoxy, sacred opinion, demands orthopraxis, namely, a behavior which is in
harmony with the opinion expressed. In the final analysis our faith in Christ
is at stake in our daily following of Jesus, in our works and making Jesus’ way
our own.” Making Jesus’ way our own.
None of us knows what that looks like for anyone
else. Each one of us works out what it means to be “saved” – not “safe” but
“saved,” set free, healed, made whole – for ourselves. Remember Jeremiah 31:
God is not writing on walls of stone any more but on the walls of our hearts!
Each one of us, while connected to every other, and often in need of the
strengths of the body together – Each of us comes to know for ourselves God’s
word, God’s will, God’s work for our lives! No matter how much else in the
world we may profit or gain, if we forfeit the essence of who we are – and who
we are in Christ, then who will be us? Who we were to be? What we were to do?
Tom Fox need not fear. His life is clear. His friends say of him, “We mourn
the loss of Tom Fox, who combined a lightness of spirit, a firm opposition to
all oppression, and the recognition of God in everyone.” Lightness of spirit.
Firm opposition to all oppression. Recognition of God in everyone. Let us go
and do, and be, likewise, go and do likewise, go and do likewise.
Amen.
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