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October 29, 2006
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture: Job 42:1-6, 10; Mark
10:46-52
“Blind Faith: How
Afraid Are We of Our Dark?”
I am so thankful for the life and work, witness
and service of this congregation! For the second year in a row readers of the
“alternative weekly” Reno News and Review named us the “second-best”
church in Northern Nevada – second this year to the Buddhist Church – how
respectable can we be!
The Conscious Community Campaign, who got their start with monthly breakfasts
here three years ago, just held a celebration at Bartley Ranch with 800 people
attending! We helped give birth to this movement to bring people of all
faiths (and none!) together to name and work on the values we want for our
community and our world.
That is so much of who we are – why we begin
today our “Stewardship = Care + Giving” campaign to keep this ministry going
here in this place – not only for what and who we are to ourselves, but also for
the hope and possibility we represent for others!
Thank you for the grace to receive all the gifts of worship and fellowship last
week. The music by both the choirs! The greetings of so many
visitors. The shy exuberance of the Youth Group reporting back on their mission
trip. And, at the heart of it all, the foolish and sublime testimony of
Marietta Jaeger-Lane, in adult class and 10 AM worship -- moving “from fury to
forgiveness” in faithful response to the kidnapper and murderer of her daughter.
Marietta seemed to reach and touch each of one
us equally – no matter what our points of view or places on the journey of what
to do about all the violence in our way of life. Sometimes just the story of
one person’s life does more to illuminate us, to reveal our own deepest needs
and longings, than all the debate on all of the issues does.
Marietta’s story may come to embody “forgiveness” for us – even as the story of
Job embodies “suffering,” Ruth and Naomi embody “friendship,” St. Francis
“simplicity,” Dorothy Day “hospitality,” Gandhi “nonviolence” – and so many
more.
Those are our “saints,” whose life and faith so
inform ours that they actually live in us – far beyond their own lifetimes or
our literal relationships with them. They live because their “spirits” live.
They are the spirits who speak faith to our fears – so we can move as it were
from All Hallows Eve and all that spooks and tricks us -- through All Saints Day
and the witness next Sunday to those ancestors who have stood for us and with us
-- then to All Souls Day, or “Dia de los Muertos,” when we welcome the dead in
our lives, honoring them with memory and meal.
Ruth Stacy’s thoughtful commentary in the
bulletin reminds us how ancient is our “Blending of Seasonal, Pagan and
Christian Traditions.” I suspect not every congregation features bats and cats
and jack o’lanterns on its bulletin cover this morning! Nor begins its
worship with such murky reflections on the darkness – as we turn back our clocks
to cling to the light!
Just think about that first line – “The moon is angry / because we are afraid of
the dark!” We no longer give darkness its due. Reno/Sparks bathes us
in neon twenty-four hours a day. We are wired now all the time – to
instant communication and constant information. We seem never alone with
ourselves, with the depths of our darkness, of mystery and of misery.
Our darkness is lashed with “revolving
searchlights,” “the jangle of money,” “the blat of machinery,” “the tinny babble
of our nervousness!” And all of the “shock and awe!” Then “we shrink from each
other’s darkness.” Don’t trouble us with your bad news! Especially your wars.
But also your personal problems. Your unfortunate circumstances. Cover them
up, make the best of them – and what did you do to deserve them anyway?
This season is to acknowledge the covering
darkness of death that comes to us all – rich and poor, just and unjust, pagan
and Christian alike! These are the darkest, coldest, hardest days of the year
--final harvestings and the freezings of crops -- vast and hidden unknowns of
our own lives and relations – as well as of our nation, world, and cosmos.
The most famous hymn of Reformer Martin Luther
claims for this day –
And though this world, with devils filled,
should threaten to undo us,
we will not fear for God hath willed his truth to triumph through us.
The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him; his rage we
can endure, for lo, his doom is sure; one little word shall fell him!
Do we exude that same confidence now? That
everything’s under control? That “God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the
world,” as we so determinedly plead?
Here is comment on news of the war this week –
“If there really is light at the end of the tunnel, why after three and a half
years can’t we yet guarantee light in Baghdad? Symbolically enough, television
transmission of the Khalilzad-Casey press conference was interrupted by another
of the city’s daily power failures.”
Our Social Principles give us this litany of
hellish problems – “Injustice [always the key]! War! Exploitation!
Privilege! Population! International ecological crisis! Proliferation of
arsenals of nuclear weapons! Development of transnational business
organizations that operate beyond the effective control of any government
structure [but may well control our elections]! The increase of tyranny in all
its forms!” The Principles go on to insist what time it is now under God –
“This generation must find viable answers to these and related questions if
humanity is to continue on this earth!” If not us, who? If not now, when?
Speaking faith to our fears always requires that
we go where we have not gone before, see and hear what we have not seen and
heard before, meet those whom we have not met before, and experience what we
have not known before.
We must meet with the scandals of both of these
scriptures – the movements of the established Job and the marginalized Bartimaeus
– as they pass one another like ships in the darkest of nights. Both are
our colleagues and our examples.
Job ends up marginalized, in a heap of dust and ashes – mere shadow of his
former self – as he has contended with the “shadow side” of our God. In
the end Job who was healthy and happy, pious and prosperous, has been stripped
of every sign of his status and stature. He has no defense against, no
protection from God who, in turn, accepts no defense or protection from Job, or
from his fair-weather friends. God overwhelms Job’s every question, every
complaint with God’s own.
In the end God is not accountable to us. We have no claim upon God, no
bargaining power. Even though God makes covenant always to be our God, God
is God – God is who God will be -- never knowable or controllable, only barely
addressable! How do we answer a whirlwind? How do we speak of things
too wonder-filled, too awe-inspiring for us ever to comprehend?
How do we learn to live with our limits – though always testing and pushing
against them? How do we find the grace to say we don’t know? It has
not yet been revealed to us? We see in a mirror but dimly? We are
doing the best we can with what we have got so far? The last thing we seek
is rewards and fake happy endings for our all troubles. The first thing we
seek is relationship, ongoing conversation, communication -- however unbalanced,
between creature and Creator – for that is the nature of faith!
This has not been like a game to Job – but more
like a deep and dark dream! A mystical engagement with (as is said in
dedications of infants in Africa) “the only Power greater than our own!” Job is
sadder but wiser, beaten but unbowed. Job is “at one” with a whole lot more
people now who never had what he began with!
Bartimaeus, on the other hand, blind beggar,
already is about as marginalized and ostracized, about as "good as dead” as he
can get! Truly, his “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose!”
When Bartimaeus hears it’s Jesus passing by, he sets about screaming, “Jesus,
Son of David, have mercy on me!” His friends, like Job’s, want no trouble, no
embarrassment, no conflict and no controversy with God. But Bartimaeus
will not be denied.
When it comes right down to it, either we deny
God – project our needs and desires onto God who God is NOT our own needs and
desires – but often is furthest from them!! Or else we have to defy God –
refusing to accept an appearance of God’s ignorance or indifference toward us.
We insist upon a relationship, no matter what – no matter what it may cost us.
Bartimaeus whips off the cloak of the beggar, the sign of his meager “office” in
life. He springs to his feet – he is risen -- not “dead” any more! He is ready
for anything to happen!
Jesus surprisingly (save that he’s Jesus, not us!) does not presume to know what
this blind beggar wants. Jesus asks him to speak, to name for himself –
“What do you want me to do for you?” Earlier in this chapter, on this
deadly journey up to Jerusalem, Jesus puts that very same question to his
sighted “insiders,” his closest friends and followers – those who so sure we
possess the most sight into and claim upon him.
We proceed to ask of him the very thing he cannot grant! We want to sit at
his right and left hands. WE want to exercise power for him. Jesus
has to tell James, John, and us that the power is not his. It is God’s –
the very same unaccountable, unknowable and uncontrollable God of Job!
Jesus may address God more intimately than anyone ever has – and invite us to do
the same in his name. But Jesus never promises us any more leverage with
God.
Bartimaeus just asks to see – again! He has once seen. He knows
seeing starts with him, within him – with his faith in what and in whom he
cannot see! With his yielding of all other claims, that he may be filled
with a whole new way of seeing! What if we start to see what we never have
seen before? As if for the very first time with new eyes? Informed
by brand-new experience and insight?
Some of us may have gone through during and
after Marietta spoke last week. She said things we never had heard, even
imagined before. Once we begin to hear and see in new ways -- once we become
conscious, aware, of the power of God not only at work in Jesus but also in us –
in even greater works than he has done! – then how can we ever turn back? How
can we ever give up? Truly, our eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the
Lord! We have looked out over and seen the Promised Land. We may not get there
ourselves -- but it’s there!
I close with parts of a most provocative letter,
“Dear Brother Job . . . ,” written by biblical scholar Elsa Tamez. She speaks
from the perspective of those who have always lived in the trash heap of dust
and ashes – who never so much as gained a portion of all that Job lost! After
assuring him of their solidarity with him in his loss, the poor and the needy
urge Job to go on fighting -- for them!
You have every right to defend yourself because you’re human,” they say.
“It is the right of every man and woman to protest against unjust suffering!”
From their all too-down-to-earth perspective, they see how brave Job has been –
“You have dared to touch the untouchable: God! You have dared to touch the
perfect God, the Totally Other who ordains the world without error; the God who
distributes justice left and right.”
Empowered by Job’s example, the poor and needy turn their own cries to God –
“Let God talk! Let God explain the silences, the unbearable silences.
How unbearable are God’s silences. God’s absence invokes death. Our
God, our God, why have you abandoned us?”
They will not settle, as from Job’s friends –
and perhaps so many of our own pulpits! – for any more “Empty theology! A
theology closed on itself! A theology that tries to defend God with incredible
lies!” Rather, they are willing to live with their darkness, with the dark and
the shadow side of their God. They sound almost like Martin Luther at first! –
Or is it Hugo Chavez at the UN?
God’s silence is mysterious. Some times it
fills us with fright and paralyzes us in the face of the legion of devils that
squeezes out the life of the people. But without this silence of God, we can’t
become men and women.
When God speaks all the time, people become
deaf. They don’t hear the cry of the poor and of those who suffer. They become
full; they no longer walk and hope. They don‘t dare to do anything. They no
longer endure.
God remains silent so that men and women may
speak, protest and struggle. God remains silent so people may really become
people. When God is silent and men and women cry, God cries in solidarity with
them but doesn’t intervene. God waits for the shouts of protest.
Here is how these universal “trash-heapers”
close their plea, to Job and to us –
Now, brother Job, you have come to know God.
You’ll never again be that rich gentleman who had all his wants and needs taken
care of, and who gave of his surplus to those who had nothing. You’ve had the
intimate experience of being wretched [Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that
saved a wretch like me!] and no one can erase this experience from your personal
history.
God restored you because you struggled
against and with God until you were blessed. What will you do now? God
restored you, but what of us?
Sisters and brothers, what will we do now? God
restored us, but what of them? What of them . . . . Amen.
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