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June 11, 2006
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture: Isaiah 6:1-8,
Romans 8:12-17, John 3:11-17
“To the Trinity, and Beyond! Hold on to the
Hem of the Robe”
Happy Trinity Sunday! In the action adventure
film for children and their adults, “Toy Story,” cosmic space ranger Buzz
Lightyear is driven by his passion to go “To Infinity, and Beyond!” There is
something essentially insatiable about our curiosity into the absolute magnitude
of life’s spaces and the absolute multiplicity of life’s chases in all
creation! And if we find the creation so grand and so glorious as to wonder as
well about the absolute being of a creator, we imagine depth of encounter and
breadth of expression that go way beyond all available language and imagery! We
find ourselves, with Isaiah here, challenged to apprehend “To the Trinity, and
Beyond!” “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD God of hosts; the whole earth is full of
the glory!” And yet that very same Source of All has need of us -- even “a
people of unclean lips,” a people of disbelieving eyes and ears, minds and
hearts -- in order that someone go and bear witness to God.
Sisters and brothers, you and I, lost as we are
and waiting for revelation, are chosen and commissioned this day, by the help of
the Holy Spirit, to bear witness and to give service and aid, comfort and
counsel to God to the ends of the earth! God has need of us this morning -- we
dare not cower and cringe from the call! It is the call of a lifetime, says
Paul – no matter where we are in the life cycle. If Isaiah, and Paul, and old
Nicodemus (to whom Jesus is speaking in this story) can be born anew, “born from
above,” “born of the Spirit” -- at no matter what age or what stage of their
lives -- then we who are we to claim we are unready in any way? Paul says “we
don’t owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent!” We are done with letting
our power be limited to our own. We want to tap into God, to the infinite and
beyond, to the Trinity and beyond. We want to be born anew and from above. We
want to be born as on eagles’ wings -- glimpse the “big picture!”
We want to hold on to this hem of God’s robe
(Isaiah) that fills the whole temple. We remember the power of Jesus’ garment
-- tapped by a woman who has been bleeding for eighteen years and has been bled
as well by everyone taking her money and never giving her any cure or relief
from hurting and humiliation. She has to sneak her way through the clamoring
crowd to come anywhere near enough to Jesus to touch his garment – the sign of
the office he bears as God’s own flesh and blood on this earth. We never know
what powers may reside in the gifts and graces, the calling and responding of
our lives -- believing and trusting, exposing and risking ourselves in God. We
are stronger in faith than we know. God’s Spirit is offering us resurrection
life of Jesus to claim for ourselves!
This is no “timid, grave-tending life,” enjoins
Paul! We are called to be “adventurously expectant!” Every moment of life is a
gift; every step is a trip, an adventure. We greet God in each moment with our
own version of Isaiah’s “Here I am; send me” – “with a childlike ‘What’s next,
Papa? Mama?’” As we stand in awe before all the mystery of life itself and of
living life as God’s chosen and called – and wonder whether there must have been
some mistake? God must have got the wrong person? Who, me? Who, us? But we
do not have to know or be able to do it all for ourselves. “God’s Spirit
touches our spirits, and confirms who we really are!” We are as born anew
children – enlarging, expanding upon our encounter, our expression of God,
Parent and Source of all.
We are to tap into God’s Spirit as into the wind
– which Jesus says “blows where it chooses.” We may hear it, but we do not know
where it is coming from, where it is going – like those lonely, alluring train
whistles we used to hear in the night – remember? We only know we trust God and
risk ourselves to allow God to carry us wherever we cannot go for ourselves. We
only know God in Christ for us has revealed the hope of heaven for all the
earth. We are to go through what Christ does -- hard times and good -- trials
and acquittals (That’s why the Holy Spirit is as Advocate and Counselor to us –
so we will be well-represented at trial! When we go up against all the powers
that be!) -- dangers and narrow escapes (as are forever just missing Paul!). God
is still loving this world, still sending God’s children, Christ’s heirs of
every tradition, to embody God’s love whatever the cost. We do so that others
may come to believe in more than the moment but in the same struggle to witness
and serve eternal power and promise of heaven on earth! God in Christ, in us –
not condemning the world but saving, sustaining it!
So how do we risk going out, going public with
the good news, taking our witness and service into the streets, as led by Holy
Spirit on Pentecost Day – “To the Trinity, and Beyond”? To people of each and
of every tradition, and of no tradition at all? I am hoping we will embrace a
“summer of hospitality” – telling the stories of welcoming one another in
worship -- welcoming all who come to the Artown concerts and other events in
July -- and welcoming those who might stop for coffee during the day and enjoy
the comforting, counseling space of the parlor – which we want to be renovating
and beautifying soon. I’ve always heard that true hospitality does not change
the other person, as if we have all the answers. Rather, hospitality provides
the space, the tools, the options -- the comfort, the counsel, the advocacy
(those are terms of the Holy Spirit!) of the other just as they are – inviting
them to change themselves as they will – to tell their own story, dance their
own dance, sing their own song, claim their own God-image.
I’d love to see bright banners and flags of
welcome on our building. I’d love to see brochures inviting others to join with
us – in whatever ways they choose. I’d love to see letters from us to editors
and to public officials – marches and demonstrations with us present and active
and/or praying for those who are. I’d love to hear testimonies in worship --
who we are, where we’ve been, what has helped us thus far on the way – and where
we want to be going, who we are becoming! Will you volunteer? To speak a few
moments of your life in ministry and in mission? Perhaps in visiting and caring
for others -- and vice-verse? All life is both giving and receiving, both
half-emptying and half-refilling.
And God is not done with anyone yet! Many of us
are not really as “old” as we fear we are – only that much riper to be “born
anew!” Julie and I just loved being in Anaheim recently for the quadrennial
United Methodist Women’s Assembly – a veritable Pentecost of age and nation,
color and language and condition and orientation -- 8000 women standing,
singing, swaying, shouting out for justice and peace! We even found our own
Jean Norris twice amidst the crowd! They made me think of the “Granny Brigade”
of eighteen women recently released from charges of blocking the entrance to a
military recruiting station, insisting that they be enlisted instead of
their grandchildren! I am sorry not to have known indigenous activist Maya
Miller who died a few weeks ago. But I’m not worried. I knew Thelma Smith,
Betty Hicks, Mim Davis, and many others we could name. I know Millie Keiper and
Ira Greene, Dorothy Johnson and Martha Jones, Mort and Elizabeth Wong, and some
other folks who can hook you up directly with God!
Brothers and sisters, we’ve got some Isaiahs,
some Pauls, some Nicodemuses among us! We’ve got some folks who are not afraid,
thought trembling, to stand before God each day -- to account for our lives and
our journeys in faith and in works – to give our reports and receive our new
orders. We know there is no one God will not meet, no place and no time God
will not go, nothing that God will not do to be God of our lives! The God that
hem of whose robe fills the temple surely needs no defending and no protecting
from us! Why do we think we have to protect and preserve God and the Church
from anyone else? Why do we think there is anything human about us that God
does not already know? That God does not make? And that God cannot love and
change as needed and use for God’s sake? I am so tired of hearing and fearing
we may say or may do the wrong thing, or let the wrong person or people into our
church or our nation.
Here’s a variation upon our Pentecost theme,
“The Walls Come Tumblin’ Down” – another way of saying, “To the Trinity, and
Beyond!” It’s from a commencement address by comedian Stephen Colbert at Knox
College, Galesburg, IL, which happens to be the alma mater of my mother!
Colbert warns the grads,
And when you enter the work force,
you will find competition from those crossing our all-too-poorest
borders. Now I know you’re all going to say, ‘Stephen, Stephen,
immigrants built America.’ Yes, but here’s the thing – it’s built now.
I think it was finished in the mid-70s sometime. At this point it’s a
touch-up and repair job. But fortunately Congress is acting and soon
English will be the official language of America. Because if we
surrender the national anthem to Spanish, the next thing you know,
they’ll be translating the Bible. God wrote it in English for a
reason! So it could be taught in our public schools.
So we must build walls. A wall
obviously across the entire southern border. That’s the answer. That
may not be enough – maybe a moat in front of it, or a fire-pit. Maybe a
flaming moat, filled with fire-proof crocodiles. And we should probably
wall off the northern border as well. Keep those Canadians with their
socialized medicine and their skunky beer out. And because immigrants
can swim, we’ll probably want to wall off the coasts as well. And while
we’re at it, we need to put up a dome, in case they have catapults. And
we’ll punch some holes in it so we can breathe. Breathe free. It’s
time for illegal immigrants to go – right after they finish building
those walls.
As the end of Romans 8 teaches, nothing ever
need separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord! We are related,
we are connected – to one and to all – even while we know from our very most
intimate of relations, things can and will come between us -- and some of those
things may prove insurmountable. We remain painfully human – caught always in
the creative/destructive tension between (as our Words for Meditation put it)
“the beyondness and the nearness” of God and of one another. Sometimes only the
direct action of God can bring down the walls. But we can do our best to see
that whatever the work we thought the walls were going to accomplish for us,
that work is really our own. No wall can run for us the risks we must run for
ourselves – and for others
Speaking of Thelma Smith, we remembered her life
in celebration last Sunday as “the powerful presence of absence.” That is what
Jesus says of himself in preparing his friends and followers for his absence
from them in the flesh. Even Jesus, most powerful of persons ever made flesh in
this world, will be more powerful in his absence than in his presence! Why?
Because his true life, like ours, lies in the Spirit of Life itself! The Spirit
of Love itself. The Spirit of Joy and Justice, the Spirit of Peace and Plenty,
the Spirit of Health and Wholeness. The nature of Spirit remains to blow freely
and fully wherever it will – dwelling in whomever it will – calling and
commissioning us in so many ways of ministry to one another and of mission to
the whole world! Even so Thelma now goes before us, with Jesus – not to mention
Isaiah, Paul, Nicodemus, and all the saints! – helping us make our own ways day
to day – reminding us of the promise – “To Infinity, and beyond!” “To the
Trinity, and Beyond!” – always coming, yet always at hand. Hold on to the hem
of that Robe! And, Amen.
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