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December 10, 2006
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture: Malachi 3:1-4,
Philippians 1:3-9a, Luke 3:1-6
“Seeing in
Mirror, Dimly – and Whose Are All Those Faces?!”
Deep thanks to our new members and their
sponsors – for Spirit-led decisions and relations in the ever-elusive pursuit of
how we try to embody the Spirit of Jesus in and for all the world! Please get
to know new members -- and talk with sponsors so you may become one! It takes
all of us -- to keep holding up “mirrors” of who we are to each other, and
“magnifiers” of who, by grace, we are becoming. Joining a congregation is
always just beginning again on our quest!
Relating to congregations, various “bodies of
Christ” and communities of faith, helps us see for ourselves that we are not
alone in our mirrors! One way of saying we see dimly, for now, as Paul puts it,
is that we are growing in both awareness and acceptance of how many parts each
one of us is made up of! And how many ways we are connected and related– even
to everyone else! We see dimly now, perhaps necessarily focusing on ourselves
and our most immediate circles. But as we grow in grace, we begin to see --
face, to face, to face – without end! All of the faces of all of the children
of God in all of the peoples, all of the nations, all of the faiths and
cultures, languages and lifestyles – even all of the species! – of whom we are
always just one among so many.
All of the other faces, all of the connectedness
and the relatedness of our lives, are not meant to diminish us, but to expand us
– to enlarge, enhance, enrich, enthuse us -- and our sense of who all we are and
to whom we all belong! Especially in this season of rampant commercial and
sentimental distraction, it challenges us to stay focused! To stay focused on
the painfully real and worldly events if this season – as Luke lines them out
here – fifteenth year of whose reign as Roman emperor, who was governor of Judea
and who ruler of Galilee and other areas, who was high priest, etc. Very
concrete, specific, political. Of course we could fill in the names of our own
emperor, governor, etc. (Julie and I saw “The Nativity Story” this week and
commend it as the basic biblical story done well, and with a strong sense of
this same precise and dangerous history.)
That’s why we provide a small square of
reflective paper on each bulletin this morning! Feel free to keep glancing into
it – even carry it around with you! -- to see that it’s really you! And you
really are still there! Grounded and rooted in this real story of real grace
and real hope being born in most unlikely fashion to an unsuspecting world still
full of pain and oppression, greed and exploitation! Are we hanging in there
through this season? You just know I cannot get past this season of mirrors
without my story – The woman who wants to pay with a check is asked for some
ID! She thinks for a moment, reaches into her purse, pulls out her mirror,
looks into it, and proclaims, “Yep! That’s me, all right!”
All over the world today, much less throughout
all our own cultures and churches, we know the insistence of persons and peoples
in seeing and naming ourselves for ourselves -- and seeing as well that we alone
are the experts on who we already are and who we are called yet to be! We may
be watching, waiting, pausing, and praying for this panel of so-called “experts”
on Iraq and the Middle East. But there is no substitute for hearing directly
from one and from all Iraqis and Middle Easterners themselves! There is no
substitute for including them all in the growing “Image of God” we see in each
other and in ourselves! For they and we are one – of one origin, by many paths,
to one table! Open our eyes, that we may see! Open our ears, our mouths, our
minds! Open our hands, our doors, our hearts! Open our arms – and even our
orders and our borders . . .
Is it not all about how we SEE each other and
all of our selves? Whether (in Isaiah’s words) all flesh together “shall see
the salvation of God?” Fr. Richard Rohr exclaims, “How odd it is that God’s
salvation is so seldom recognized. How strange that what God is offering is so
rarely experienced!” Then he wonders if it’s because of how poorly – how
commercially and sentimentally, how predictably and boringly? – we have
presented salvation! What do we mean by “salvation” anyway? Promise of being
saved -- acknowledging that we are lost – that we are in wilderness and need of
rescue! Even as the family our hearts went out to in Oregon these past weeks.
Wilderness keeps on calling to us – with ways to prepare, paths to make,
valleys to fill, hills to make low, crooked to straighten, rough to make
smooth. It’s a call to new beginning -- evened and equalized playing field for
all of God’s children! It’s a Jubilee kind of salvation!
First, it is seeing, mirroring things as they
are. Then, it is remembering, magnifying things as they can be. Mary’s
Magnificat this season grows out of God’s “remembrance” of mercy and promise to
all of God’s people. Once we have seen in a mirror even dimly, then we keep
calling back to mind, keep putting back together again, that which, and whom, we
have seen there!
“Memory integrates,” Richard Rohr continues. It
“reconciles, and puts the individual members into perspective as part of the
whole.” “Our remembrance that God has remembered us will be the highway into
the future,” says Rohr, “the straight path of the Lord promised by John the
Baptizer. Where there is no memory, there will be no pain, but neither will
there be hope. Memory is the basis of both the pain and the rejoicing. We need
to re-member both of them . . .” Memory -- as we may enjoy Paul and the
Philippians remembering one another through thick and through thin in this
exchange – “Memory creates a readiness for salvation, an emptiness to receive
love, and a fullness to enjoy it!”
So let us be sure to use our small silver
squares for “reflection” this week – remembering that each time we see
ourselves, and each other person we see as a part of ourselves, we see “the
Image of God!” We do not look at ourselves with self-absorbed narcissism. Nor
do we look at ourselves with self-agonized guilt. This is no mere matter of
“mirror, mirror on the all, who’s the fairest of us all” – or the thinnest, or
fattest, or oldest, or youngest, or any other particularity of us. This is pure
opportunity for us to catch -- in bits and pieces, fits and starts, glimpses and
glances of ourselves as we are -- the wholeness we are becoming!
Along with our little piece of the one big
mirror -- like our little piece of the one big soul we all share! – we also may
carry with us this week these reflections of the poet Neruda, “Self-Portrait,”
our Words for Meditation. There is an audacious honesty to his “fearless
self-inventory,” as AA groups put it. He starts out tempted to arrange himself
in the mirror so as to meet an “appearance” he wants to maintain. We all tend
to want to position ourselves to our own best advantage.
But the challenge of mirror and magnifier to
each and all of us in this Advent is to go deeper than what we first see – to
get at that deeper identity in our diversity, that richer integrity in our
complexity. What we see can so much more than we usually get! “How am I
really?” asks Neruda. How deep are we able to go? We are encouraged to push
ourselves as deeply, as richly, as far as Neruda does.
Will you bring in your own “Self-Portrait?” Who
you find in the mirror this week?
The prophet Malachi here in the last book of
Hebrew scripture is asking the very same question! Malachi’s name means
“Messenger,” mirror and magnifier – one who brings prophetic “news” of who we
are, and of who God calls us to become! We of a congregation – made new by the
gifts of new members today! – we of covenanted relationships – are made for the
same mission of messenger -- mirror and magnifier to one another. We are
co-creators with God who makes us and keeps us and will be our God no matter
what – But God who insists upon keeping before us – even ruthlessly and
relentlessly, ever redeemably and renewably! – “the Image of God” in whose name,
by whose word we are made! God does not allow us to disappear into some vague
universality of sentiment in this season, but holds our very particular feet to
very particular prophetic fires!
Think of each morning we stand in front of the
mirror. What is the purpose? To see ourselves as we are! To see what might be
“out of place” with us, so to speak – individually and collectively. To see
what needs to be cleaned up about us! Am I right? What needs, in Malachi’s
words, to be refined? Even purified?! Without mirrors and magnifiers this
season of self- preparation, how do we know where we are? Where we stand? Who
we stand with? Where to start work on ourselves? To make ourselves awake,
alert, ready, presentable for the time of Christ’s coming to us! Orthodox
Christians keep candles burning at all times before the icons of the saints.
Thus there are Orthodox monks whose fulltime vocation is to keep polishing soot
off the icons. I ask new members and all of us to imagine we are so polished,
restored and made new on this day! With our very own “refiner’s fire” and
“fuller’s soap!” To offer ourselves afresh before God.
And I ask us to bear in mind this day is the
anniversary of Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed by the United
Nations in 1948 and still the most majestic mirror and magnifier of human flesh
and spirit as created in what we call “the Image of God.” I wish we had time to
read all 30 Articles in full. Here are just a few in part – “as in a mirror,
dimly” – but one day face, to face, to face, . . .
“All human beings are born free and equal in
dignity and rights . . . endowed with reason and conscience and should act
towards one another in a spirit of sister- and brotherhood. “Everyone is
entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth . . . without distinction of
any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other
opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status . . . .
“Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and security of person. “No one shall
be held in slavery or servitude . . . . “No one shall be subjected to torture or
to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. “Everyone has the right
to recognition everywhere as a person before the law . . . . “No one shall be
subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile. “Everyone is entitled in full
equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal .
. . . “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with privacy, family,
home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon honor and reputation . . . .
“Everyone has the right to a nationality . . . . “Men and women of full age,
without any limit due to race, nationality, and religion, have the right to
marry and to found a family . . . . “Everyone has the right to freedom of
thought, conscience, and religion . . . . “Everyone has the right to freedom of
opinion and expression . . . . “Everyone, as a member of society, has the right
to social security . . . . “Everyone has the right to work . . . . “Everyone has
the right to rest and leisure . . . .” Amen,
and amen.
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