“Remembering
the Memorialized: Truth to Power with Love”
I remember a theologian raised in Nazi
Germany (Dorothee Soelle) warning those of us who preach and presume to talk
about “God” a lot, that we dare not say anything relating to God unless we
would say it to the victims or to the survivors of such faith-shattering
events as the Holocaust and Hiroshima/ Nagasaki. I would add, unless we
would say it to the victims or to the survivors of this or of any war. I
saw the article just last week on the soldier-hero of this war nicknamed
“Marlboro Man” from a picture taken after battle in Faluja. The guy is now
home in Kentucky or West Virginia, where he says his choices in life were to
be a coal-miner or a Marine. He’s suffering Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
and wondering if it was all worth doing. I dare not say anything relating
to God today that I would not look “Marlboro Man” in the eye and say to him.
Brothers and sisters, it’s not the
soldiers. We can do nothing but thank the soldiers and welcome them back
and take care of the wounds we can see and the ones we cannot. It’s not
them that worries me; it’s us! We are the ones with Holly Near’s (See Words
for Meditation) “foolish notion, / that war is called devotion / when the
greatest warriors are the ones who stand for peace.” I do not know what it
is about us that needs to keep offering the lives of mostly young men and
women in war. I know we are desperately militarizing our lives and schools
and culture and calling up more and more of the National Guard for fear that
we may run out of young men and women willing to serve. They say when all
we have in our arsenal of tools and responses is a hammer, we think
everything is a nail, a target, a threat to stop with a gun, with a weapon.
I think weapons themselves drive as much of war as ideology and testosterone
do. Why should anyone be able to make a profit from products designed just
to kill? Let us honor those indigenous and institutional witnesses who have
halted the “Divine Strake” test indefinitely. There is nothing inevitable
about every weapon.
There are some powerful lines coming up in
an anthem two weeks from today. They're from a World War I British poem
called “For the Fallen.” I read them at the AIDS Memorial Service last
Sunday. I agree with “Sweet Honey in the Rock.” All mothers’ grief is the
same grief – no matter how their children die. When mothers and others of
the world today all get together to say “No” to grief by any cause, then
this whole world will shake with the work of the resurrection – which does
not end as Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 15 until “the death of death
itself.” The death of death itself. Here are some lines that will be in
the anthem –
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears .
. .
They shall not grow old, as we that are
left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years
condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the
morning
We will remember them . . . .
As the stars that shall be bright when we
are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly
plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time
of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.
Jesus knows the power of memory. He has
been creating one these past weeks of resurrection appearances and
utterances to us. We remember the night of the resurrection, with disciples
locked fearfully up in their room. Jesus comes right through the walls to
breathe the fresh breath of new life, of forgiveness, on them and for the
whole world. If we forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven! That’s the
power Jesus chooses to share with us. Just last week Jesus calls us his
friends, not his servants, saying I have not withheld anything from you. I
have told you and shown you all that I know! All Jesus has left to do for
us now is to get out of our way, to make room for us in all the world, and
to send his Spirit upon us so that we can do not only the works that he did
but even greater works than his! Since Easter morning we have known what
Jesus says to Mary in the garden (the story we did on retreat): Do not hold
me! I am not yet ascended. I have yet to set you fully free -- even from
me! What an unusual leader.
We are to live, freely and fully live. We
are to let go of Jesus and let God be our power -- to trust in God and to
risk our lives, by the power of memory! As we re-member Jesus. I mean,
there are wars for us to end, sisters and brothers – this one and all
others. There are many young lives for us to save – figuratively and
literally. That’s the whole promise, the full revelation, Jesus expects
of us – the death of death itself! Why do we keep sweating the small
stuff? Jesus ascended has grasped the whole picture – even as this dove on
the bulletin cover grasps the whole world. We are not called to look up –
to think about “heaven” all the time. Jesus has “up” covered. We are
called to look out and look down – for the young and the old, the sick and
the poor, the meek and the lowly. And we are called to bring the whole
promise and full revelation of heaven on earth – for their sake! Jesus is
“running the universe,” says Ephesians, “everything from galaxies to
governments!” And Jesus is running the universe through us! The church is
not peripheral but central to the world. How will the world know Jesus but
for us?
Brothers and sisters, the Ascension is quite
literally a day of rising expectations! The very risen Christ has left the
whole world to us! Jesus resurrected and now ascended is so far “out of the
box” of anything ever imagined on earth! Imagine, for instance, anything
more “out of the box” today than the end of war! That is our witness: the
forgiveness, the healing of nations and the death of death itself! The
absent Jesus stands present, “presente!,” in us. Jesus has left his body
the church in charge! “A charge to keep!” An appointment, a confirmation!
On earth, as it is in heaven. For Jesus’ ascended absence lies not in death
but in eternal life – whatever that means! Life without end. Life the last
word, the “final answer.” Source of all faith, hope, and love. Jesus, our
Life in Love! Jesus, our Joy in Justice! Jesus, our Peace in Plenty!
Jesus, our Health in Wholeness!
Hey! Want to see Jesus? The so-called
“Second Coming?” Just look around!
Just look at us! Why does Jesus ascended
send the Spirit on us? According to his own words, Jesus sends the Spirit
to make us Jesus! Can’t we see the “us” in “Jes-us?”! Not to mention the
Jesus in us? We are the body of Christ! The head and the heart, the hands
and the feet, the eyes and the ears, the tongues and the tears of Christ!
We want to know God? Better go through Jesus. Want to know Jesus? Better
go through us! The kingdom of God, the promise of heaven, is in us! Not up
there – stop looking up there! Not even out there somewhere – but in here!
Around us, within us, between us, among us!
We are the living re-membrance, the living
memorial, to Jesus in all the world! How else does the world get to hear
him? Respond to him? Follow him? Trust, and risk all for him? Sisters
and brothers, where there is selfishness, let us be Jesus! Where there are
undue privilege and unfair power, let us be Jesus! Where there are
arrogance and ignorance of religious and political authority, let us be
Jesus! Where there is indifference toward the poor, let us be Jesus! Where
children are dying of hunger and preventable disease, let us be Jesus!
Where there are abuse and exploitation of children and women, let us be
Jesus! Where walls divide and conquer us from the immigrant and the
imprisoned, the occupied and the detained, let us be Jesus! Where there is
violence, where there is war, let us be Jesus. In other words, where there
is sin, where there is death, let us be Jesus. For if not us, who? If not
here, where? If not now, when? When? . . .
All these past forty days Jesus has been
making memory, living memory, as power for us. Not only in word but in
deed, it says in our church history lesson, “showing them in many convincing
ways that he is alive!” And where are we to wait for the Spirit? Back in
Jerusalem, back in the city! Back at the scene of the crime against Jesus.
Where we left Jesus, our master and friend, to suffer and die all alone!
That very most devastating and devastated of places will be the very place
of grace when the Holy Spirit comes upon us, and we are “clothed with power
from on high!” Power to get on with the work of the resurrection, even the
death of death itself. We have no choice, being Jesus, but to speak power
to power, power of life to power of death, power of truth to power of
denial, power of love to power of fear. Power itself is not an option for
us. The Holy Spirit gives it!
It is expected to get us in trouble. That’s
why the Spirit is Counselor! Advocate!
The option is how we use it. Basically, is
it lorded power? Power over? Or is it shared power? Power with? (Please
look over this list in Words for Meditation of one artist’s view of
“Americans Who Tell the Truth.” I recognize every name but one – Judy
Wicks. So one of my Memorial Day exercises is to “Google” her – as I
encourage us to do on Memorial Day with any of these names whom we do not
recognize. We may need them and their bold witness more than we know!) The
power of the Spirit, the power of forgiveness, is also the power of memory
and of re-membering. The Spirit comes to re-mind us of Jesus -- to give us
a new mind, the mind – as well as the heart, the body, the soul – of Jesus
himself! That we may re-present Jesus, make him present, “presente!,” again
for others.
We may hear how this power of memory lives
and works for Jesus at the end of John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of
Wrath. Tom Joad takes up the life and work of old family friend and
mentor in the organizing of migrant farm laborers – whose name happens to be
initialed “JC,” Preacher Jim Casy. He was crucified, clubbed to death by
strike-breakers. Tom says goodbye to his mother –
The sat in the coal-black cave of
vines. Ma said, “How’m I gonna know ‘bout you? They might kill ya
an’ I wouldn’ know. They might hurt ya. How’m I gonna know?”
Tom laughed uneasily, “Well,
maybe like Casy says, a fella ain’t got a soul of his own, but o’ny
a piece of a big one – an’ then –“
“Then what, Tom?”
“Then it don’ matter. Then I’ll
be around in the dark. I’ll be ever’where – wherever you look.
Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there.
Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. If Casy
knowed, why, I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad an’ –
I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ they know
supper’s ready. An’ when our folks eat the stuff they raise an’
live in the houses they build – why, I’ll be there. See? God, I’m
talkin’ like Casy. Come of thinkin’ of him so much. Seems like I
can see him sometimes.”
“I don’ un’erstan’,” Ma said. “I
don’t really know.”
“Me neither,” said Tom.
Me neither. Us neither, brothers and
sisters. We don’t know. That’s why we live by faith. We don’t understand
and we don’t know. But we trust, and we risk, in the memory and power of
Jesus, and of his Holy Spirit, the whole promiser and full revealer of life
without end, and of the death of death.
Amen.
