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April 22, 2007
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture: Acts 9:1-6,
Psalm 30, John 21:1-19
“Extending the
Family: Brother Fish and Sister Sheep?”
Jesus in these stories gives what we might call a kind of “time-out” to both
Peter and Paul. In the best spirit, a “time-out” is meant to be a chance
to reflect upon a situation and our role and behavior in it – and upon our
responsibility, our opportunity and possibility for it. We are meant for
the chance to question ourselves – where we are, where we are coming from, what
we are doing. Saul/Paul gets knocked off his high horse (or low donkey)
and ends up with blindness to wipe away images of past security and superiority.
He gets plenty of time to question and to receive new images for the direction
and work of his life.
So with Peter – who has been questioning
himself pretty hard anyway, we imagine, since his denials of Jesus. Now he gets
fully dressed for church (like these candidates for baptism this morning!) and
“jumps in the lake” – passing through “death” to “new life” – cleansed of denial
and guilt for the past. Whereupon Jesus questions his work of love for all the
sheep (of Jesus’ own fold and beyond!) – so Peter may know the full cost of the
resurrection to him.
So with us. This kind of a week, for worse
and for better, leaves us, leaves me, wondering all over again who we are, what
we are doing. The best I can do in preaching this day is to lift up a few torn
tiny fragments of life together – encouraging us (and it does take courage!) to
live with questions a while before shouting out more answers. Maybe we need a
collective “time-out.”
From Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Letters to a Young
Poet” –
I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well
as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to
try to love to questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books
written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which
could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps
then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing
it, live your way into the answer.
I invite us to hear first from a letter sent
by our Bishop Beverly J. Shamana to all our congregations this week; then from a
statement by General Secretary Jim Winkler, General Board of Church and
Society. Then we will pause to reflect.
In these solemn and shocking days of pain
and loss over the horrific massacre at Virginia Tech University, I thank God
for you and for the larger body of Christ that is praying for the families,
friends, and campus community who have suffered such unspeakable loss in
this week. The whole human family has been profoundly grieved and wounded .
. .
As disciples of Christ we must also pray for
Sueng-Hui Cho and his family. The unfolding insight into his mental history
and isolation from campus life that drove him to perpetrate such horror on
other students and professors compels us to redouble our efforts and
partnerships to address the unmet mental and spiritual needs that contribute
to such acts of violence and contempt for human life.
We must also stand close to our Korean
brothers and sisters who share the deep pain of Seung-Hui’s rampaging and
have already felt the backlash of racial profiling, shunning, and acts of
bigotry.
We live in troubled times in a troubled
world but the witness of the Christian community is a powerful presence in
the long road to restoration.
Bishop Shamana concludes with giving thanks
for all Campus Ministers, for the Wesley Foundation on the Virginia Tech campus,
for Blacksburg UMC, the Virginia Annual Conference, and Bishop Charlene Kammerer.
Jim Winkler writes –
The General Board of Church and Society
of the United Methodist Church expresses our deepest sorrow and grief
for the victims of the shootings on the campus of Virginia Tech
University, the deadliest school shooting in the history of the United
States. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families of the victims
of this senseless tragedy as we pray for healing for all those involved
. . .
In 2005, the Federal Bureau of
Investigation reports that there were 10,100 deaths by firearms in the
United States. This represents an average of 4 deaths for every 100,000
people in the United States. By contrast, England, Wales, Scotland, and
Canada averaged .54 deaths for every 100.000. The presence of guns in
U.S. Society has not led to greater security but in fact has undermined
the general sense of safety . . .
The United Methodist Church Book of
Resolutions states that our Church recognizes and deplores “violence
which kills and injures children and youth.” This resolution “calls
upon all governments of the world in which there is a United Methodist
presence to establish national bans on ownership by the general public
of handguns, assault weapons, automatic weapon conversion kits, and
weapons that cannot be detected by traditionally used metal-detection
devices.”
Let us pause to reflect prayerfully . . .
I had so much I was planning to tell you
today! Maybe I’ll whet a few appetites. I bring love from my 94 year-old
mother – whose church was dedicating an outdoor signboard (They call it a
“Wayside Pulpit.”) with funds contributed at my father’s death – so I “worked”
the Word with Children at both services! And greetings from the great state of
Indiana – whose highway team of “Hoosier Helpers” replaced in 15 minutes a blown
tire for us on the way to Midway Airport! And who is in the midst of
celebrating a “Year of Kurt Vonnegut,” author -- born in Indianapolis and never
denied it! Scheduled to speak next week, Vonnegut, some would say typically,
went and died last week. I was going to read some of his powerful images for
“reversing” bombings and shootings, running them backwards until our
imaginations might change how we see our hardest realities.
I took a two-day workshop in “prophetic
preaching” (Don’t you think it’s time?) from retiring southside Chicago pastor
of Barak Obama for 20 years, Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright. Prophetic preachers are
not apt to send greetings but warnings! I bring you warnings from Jeremiah!
Then I want to thank us for the past month of Sundays – beginning with John
Dodson and Sharon Stephenson, then Palm/Passion Sunday, then Easter/Resurrection
Sunday, then last week Bob and Carol Olmstead – who humble us with good will and
generosity toward this place and people, this church and congregation, we love
so much – as we “launched” our new capital campaign last week!
In most traditions, “low Sunday” of the
church year is “after Easter” – with us it is “after Olmstead!” Julie and I
figure if we give all we can to the campaign, it will take 10 gifts like the
Omsteads’ to reach our goal -- or 80 gifts like the Auers’! We are happy for
as many as possible to “follow” the Olmsteads! But as long as each of us
does all we can, we’ll be fine. And if preachers were trading cards, like
ball players, 8 “Auers” for an “Olmstead” would be a pretty good deal!!
I want to give the last word from Virginia
Tech for now to poet Nikki Giovanni, professor of English there, who at
Tuesday’s convocation (ironically the day our taxes were due) spoke words of
resurrection in the midst of that crucifixion. I ask us to listen for how one
word about resurrection in life is the good old United Methodist word –
“connection.” One way to rise again, however slowly, from the dead – one way
to respond to tragedy as it isolates and disembodies, disempathizes and
disempowers us – is to grow in our sense of identify with others – all others!
-- of whom we are part. To grow in our sense of where we belong, who our
family is, our community, our congregation, our nation, even our world and our
earth! To start “re-membering” in the sense of piecing back together in
new and different ways all that has been fractured and fragmented in and of our
lives. I believe that’s what Peter and Paul go through in these stories.
Hear the poet -- and how far she goes toward
lifting us – together with all whom we can imagine! -- to see beyond what has
happened to us –
We are Virginia Tech.
We are sad today, and we will be sad for
quite a while. We are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning.
We are Virginia Tech.
We are strong enough to stand tall
tearlessly, we are brave enough to bend to cry, and we are sad enough to
know that we must laugh again.
We are Virginia Tech.
We do not understand this tragedy. We
know we did nothing to deserve it, but neither does a child in Africa
dying of AIDS, neither do the invisible children walking the night away
to avoid being captured by the rogue army, neither does the baby
elephant watching the community being devastated for ivory, neither does
the Mexican child looking for fresh water, neither does the Appalachian
infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his
father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the
land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy.
We are Virginia Tech.
The Hokie Nation embraces our own and
reaches out with open heart and hands to those who offer their hearts
and minds. We are strong, and brave, and innocent, and unafraid. We
are better than we think and not quite what we want to be. We are alive
to the imagination and the possibilities. We will continue to invent
the future through our blood and tears and through all our sadness.
We are the Hokies.
We will prevail.
We will prevail.
We will prevail.
We are Virginia Tech.
Whereupon the entire crowd stood and cheered
with growing abandon – and finally broke into the campus cheer, “Let’s go Hokies!”
“Hokies” are, of all things to be a “nation” of, wild turkeys! Just think of us
as a nation of wild turkeys . . .
What the poet does in the midst of dying and
death is to declare a word of life and living – as the extending of our family
of identification – of compassion and solidarity. Our sense of family begins
again with the risen Jesus and with him includes all oppressed and exploited
victims everywhere! Our extended sense of family, of belonging, of
table-fellowship, is expressed in Native American tradition as we just prayed –
“the family does not end with sons, daughters, mothers or fathers but continues
to include aunts, uncles, cousins and – yes – even friends and strangers.” We
include the perfect number of species of fish Jesus leads the disciples to
catch, and the incessant lost sheep he leads us to love. We include specially
this Earth Day -- we belong to all of creation, to every last creature in it!
Baptism this morning reminds of extending the
family of Christ in this place. And this campaign we share to give of ourselves
for this building extends our family. We inherit this building and the
ministries of witness and service that happen here from all who have gone before
us. And we borrow this building from all who will come after. We are
identified, we are connected, we are related – for seven generations, and
beyond! We have seen so many wild and wondrous extensions of the families and
family of this congregation – to children including adoptive and foster
children, to grandchildren, to Big Brothers Big Sisters, to persons through
times of all kinds of need, to homeless families with children, to those in and
coming out of prison, those in need of food, even those in need of stairwells
and window wells to sleep in! This congregation as family extends itself every
day! That’s why we love this place and all who enrich and extend us here and
beyond.
What is Jesus doing in these stories of
resurrection – with Mary in the garden Easter morning, with the disciples
locked in their room Easter night, with Thomas who doubts, with those who give
up and go home to Emmaus, with those who give up and go back to work today– even
with Saul who persecutes Jesus and the earliest church – What is Jesus doing
here but restoring connection? Relationship? Family? Table-fellowship?
Through touch and taste, and sight and sound, and even the smell of fish
barbecuing in the morning by the lake?
I had the charming chance this week to talk with students from three
alternative schools bravely participating in an Oxfam “hunger awareness”
workshop. It required many of them to survive the day on a piece of bread
– as so many of the world’s people do – while a few got much more than enough!
They learned not just with their heads with but their hearts and their guts.
They learned the compassion and solidarity of identifying far beyond their own
environment and experience – of suffering with, even standing with those
in struggle – of rising as one to the life of increased community, extended
family, with all the world!
I had found three table-prayers to take along
and forgot them. So I share them as last words with you –
From poet Robert Herrick –
What God gives and what we take,
‘Tis a gift for Christ His sake:
Be the meal of beans and peas,
God be thanked for those and these:
Have we flesh, or have we fish,
All fragments are from his dish.
From
mystic Meister Eckhart –
There is no such thing as “my”
bread. All bread is ours and is given to me, to others through me,
and to me through others. For not only bread, but all things
necessary for sustenance in this life are given on loan to us with
others, and because of others and for others and to others through
us.
And from the people of Latin America –
O
God, to those who have hunger give bread, and to us who have bread give us a
hunger for justice.
A hunger for justice. Amen.
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