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July 30, 2006
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture: 2 Samuel
11:1-15, John 6:1-21
“Follow That
Child! The Personal Is the Political – the Communal Is the Cosmic”
Last Sunday when we ended the video on David and the history of Israel in adult
class, someone exclaimed, we’re just getting to the sexy part! We didn’t
show it today, so that means we start with this “sexy part” next Sunday, 9 AM –
don’t miss it! We may wonder how great the sex was for Bathsheba.
After a single assignation ordered by the king -- who also ordered his troops
off to war in the spring -- Bathsheba sends the age-old fateful message, “I’m
pregnant!”
That’s about the extent of what we hear from
her! We know her only as the daughter of one man, the wife of another, now the
victim of a third – whose story is the only one that seems to matter.
Commentator Joyce Hollyday observes, “We will never know what resistance or
willingness Bathsheba offered to the king’s demand. Was she, too, plagued with
guilt and shame? Or did she feel herself the very personal victim of the
passions, power, and prowess of a man infected with a foretaste of military
victory and a desire to conquer?” Talk about age-old fateful messages: One more
“mission accomplished!” One more leader hoisted on war’s own petard. The
personal becomes the painfully political.
Some time ago the mantra came to me, If we
follow the money, we follow the power; if we follow the children, we follow the
pain. War brings nothing but grief to our children, even as to the child born
of this assignation – and to brave soldiers like Joab and Uriah. They are
betrayed as all soldiers are by leaders who send them to fight where they will
not fight for themselves – nor often send their own children to fight! Let us
as congregation say of Jack’s baptism today, and of Sione’s last Sunday, we
commit seriously to the “good news” of their lives!
In our vows we say we surround them with
“community of love and forgiveness.” We witness them incorporated by the
Spirit “into God’s new creation,” and made to share the “royal priesthood” of
the Prince of Peace! Surely, we do not intend to hand them over to fight
someone else’s wars, to give their own lives for someone else’s dominant
fantasies, nor to kill someone else’s children.
How will we as a culture and we as a church
learn to follow the children again? How will we trust, as Isaiah says, of a new
way of peace for the world, that “a little child shall lead them?” How will we
follow the Jesus who orders “Let the children come to me” – for to such as these
the whole promise of God belongs!
Brothers and sisters, we are a congregation and larger community whose youth and
children are born to lead us – the youth whom we blessed last Sunday to leave on
their mission trip early this morning – the children who just completed a week
of Vacation Bible School. Behold the children of the “Hosanna Arch!”
The children lead us in prayer every Sunday! – if we will but follow them -- and
follow the Christ who is as the New Child of God in us each and among us all.
Children embody the message, in Michaela
Bruzzesa’s words: “A fully lived Christianity is one incorporated and expressed
not only by our minds, or even spirit, but also with the physical hunger and
desire of our bodies. “Unfortunately,” she goes on to say, “many Christian
churches have done a good job of removing our bodies from religion and
spirituality, making faith a journey for only the mind and soul.” With all
the children to keep us honest, how can we substitute mere abstraction for the
justice due to our physical bodies? Bodies “that God loved enough to try
out in person!” How can we dismiss as “collateral damage” to our ideologies the
devastation of war on all bodies – especially the children’s bodies?
Does David here even see God as the God of his
body – or only as God of his mind and his spirit? Does he see God as God of
the bodies of Bathsheba, and of their child? As God of the bodies of Joab and
Uriah? All of whom – all of whom David subjugates recklessly, carelessly,
unaccountably to his desires?
We may find “good news” even in that. We not afraid of any fear-mongering,
enemy-baiting, sin-labeling, war-profiting, first-stone-casting rigid religious
reactionaries -- right? Why? Because we read our Bibles, too! We find
our real lives here. This is not an exceptional story. David is not all
that bad a guy. We embrace the David within and among us! We do not
pretend his body, or ours, is any bed of roses. We confess sin is
universal! There’s nobody here but us sinners! Everyone’s born a
mixed bag of curses and blessings – starting with us.
Many “terrorists” end up as “heroes.” My mother would say it’s all a
matter of whose ox is being gored. Every child’s born -- and baptized or
otherwise received and offered as pure gift of God-- with the hopes and dreams
of the whole human race! Yet Julie worked our years in Fresno for
Exceptional Parents Unlimited -- founded to support parents and families and
their children aged zero to three – born with such special needs that many would
not survive beyond that.
What happens to our hopes and dreams for such children born into our lives?
What happens to God’s hopes and dreams for children born into such wars? The
pretense, the cover-up, and the denial are always as bad as any problem we
create. I blame us as a church – insofar as our president says he is United
Methodist. Do we offer one another real opportunity and encouragement to
make confession? To stop doing what is destroying others and us? Any
creative constructive context in which to examine and critique ourselves?
With the end of finding the log in our own eyes – as well as splinters in eyes
of so many others?
What capacity do we build in one another to embrace the God-given rhythms of
repentance and renewal? To trust and to risk with God and each other
forgiveness of sin -- and release from the past – personal and political?
Sisters and brothers, our wars are not ordained by our God – by our one God –
Yahweh, Father, Allah, and by all other names. We stumble our ways into
wars. We may as well stumble our ways out of them! Then we may turn
to a far different way.
Follow that child! Follow that New Child of God in us each and in us all.
Follow that child who sees the glass always half-filled – and the loaves and the
fishes always more power-filled than we know. The word of God is our
bread, yes – but our bread is also the word of God! It all depends on
whose hands it’s in! Hands that are given to trust or mistrust it, to love
it or fear it, to treat it as abundance or to treat it as scarcity – in short,
to share it or hoard it. Jesus knows already that this child in the gospel
– any child, really! – is prepared by nature to share.
Gifts in the hands of a child are
undifferentiated as to what is “mine” and what is “yours.” Those are more
constructs of ideology that we must carefully teach!
Jesus just puts himself in the hands of and
follows the lead of this child. What happens defies any and every rational
explanation – that five barley loaves and two fish will feed five thousand
people! The rest of us are so predictably “realistic!” Philip speaks for us:
Don’t you know how broke we are?! No way we can pay for all this! Have you
talked to the church treasurer lately? Are we supposed to feed every last
hungry person on earth? Jesus is so human as to know that none of us hears
“good news” if we’re hungry. Without soup we will not hear sermons – no matter
what we like to think. We can try to so “holy” – especially about someone
else’s hunger! Or we can just be human like Jesus. Just follow the littlest
child in our midst – Jack Montgomery. Believe me, unless all the needs of his
body are met, there is no rest for the rest of us – is that right?
Children know intuitively, the personal is the
political. What is good for me must be good for you, too. Anything I have a
need for and a right to, others must also have need for and right to. All that
we have to ask ourselves about children in war is, would I want my kid in that
situation? In that kind of terror? Terror from below or above? If I would
not, then it’s wrong! It’s that simple. It’s not rocket science: If it’s bad
for my kid, for our kids, then it’s bad for their kids, too. The personal is
the political. If someone in need approaches me on the street, I ask myself,
would I want to trade places with them? Would I want their job, or lack
thereof? Would I want their housing? Their health care? If not, then I do not
need to judge them as much as I need to help them if I can. And that is as true
for as many others as I can possibly reach – through every available and
conceivable means – personal and political! What we do for any we do for all.
Gifts in the hands of Jesus – including the gift
of Jack! Including the gifts of us! – are just as undifferentiated. We are just
as power-filled. All that we need to begin to discover the gifts that we are,
the gifts that we share, is to sit down together. Three different times in this
story it is said that the people sit down! Why? To “lower” ourselves to one
level. To look one another in log-and-splinter-freed eyes as equals! To relax
and be free and take time with each other – as if we are honored guests! Not
servants forced to eat standing up and to run back to work before finished.
Rather, each one of us is entitled to dignity and respect -- just for being
human! Just for being all the different yet undifferentiated children of one
God. We are to be the very gift-offering of God for the peoples of God.
I close with a tribute to grandparents – How
many of us are there here? (Especially to Karen and Pat and the grandparents of
Jack Montgomery.) You play a crucial role to be sure that traditions within the
community serve the real-life good of the children. According to Hopi tribal
wisdom, representatives of the community sit all around the circle. At the
center is the children’s fire. And by the children’s fire sit the grandfather
and grandmother. Every proposal for change that is put to the community is put
back to the proposer as to what the spirit of the community would say about that
proposal. Everyone in the circle speaks for a point of view in the community.
Then the proposal is put to the grandmother and grandfather who guard the
children’s fire. If these two decide the proposal is not good for the
children’s fire, the answer is “no.” Only grandparents hold veto power in the
circle! “The concept of the ultimate question is simple,” writes Kathleen Guy.
“Does it hurt or help the children’s fire?” Does it hurt or help the children?
All the children? And if it would hurt the children -- any of the children –
then why in the world would we do? And the child in each one of us said, Amen.
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