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May 13, 2007
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture: Acts 16:9-15,
Psalm 67, John 14:23-29
“Open Heart, Open
Home: Not a Monument but a Movement”
Welcome to Riverfest! Are we fest-blest, or
what? We love this place! And the people who enrich our lives! Whoever they
are, wherever they come from, whatever they’re here for, however they present
themselves to us. Riverfest! The fourth annual Reno River Festival! In our own
front yard! 25,000 people this weekend! Where we have been for 80-plus years!
A downtown place, a downtown church, becoming a downtown people, a downtown
congregation! Like a tree that’s planted by the Truckee we shall not be moved!
They are still looking for a corporate sponsor – after the Capital Campaign,
shall we apply??
We are a place and a people of “open heart, open
home.” Not a monument but a movement – still in the making, still in the
revealing – to others as well as to us. Not a museum but a living memorial – a
tribute to those who go before us, a promise to those who come after! As we
inherit from the past, so we borrow against the future. We are but a channel of
one long river of faithfulness. Our campaign made me think this past week, when
my dad would have been 94 – as my mom is! – about loving not only people but
places – not only individuals and even families and households, but loving
institutions, agencies, organizations, congregations, denominations – God help
us! -- even nations, their governments, and their wars! Loving wars in such a
way they don’t have to be wars any more.
My dad and mom, as I savor them now, embodied
the love of people in the places of their lives – beginning with home and family
– but extending to workplace. My dad was a departmental chair, a supporter of
speech and debate programs everywhere, even in retirement a founder of the World
Communication Association. My mom raised us three kids, supported my dad in
all he did professionally. In many ways our household revolved around his life
and work. My mom also took leadership in everything from Scouts and PTA to
League of Women Voters and the Unitarian Church. Both my folks knew that loving
a person was one thing, loving an institution was another. In the same way
being “spiritual,” in our own personal relationship with “God,” is one thing.
Being “religious” is another! Being part of a messy old faith community – made
up of God only knows who and why -- God organized for witness and service.
Can we be “Christian” but not of the church, the
body of Christ, the people of God? The movement toward organized love and
respect in behalf of justice and peace in and for all the world? The directions
of the cross run both ways. One runs up and down, connecting us directly with
God, as remembered in our baptisms. The other runs side to side, connecting us
with each other, implicating and complicating us in the church, as practiced in
weekly and monthly communion! Ideally, church membership brings conscious
phases of passing out of our cultural preoccupation with personal satisfaction
into a corporate concern for the common life shared with others and for the
larger good of the whole world.
Especially in our United Methodist Church, we
are members of this congregation, members, in effect, of every other UM
congregation. Our membership is already “good” wherever we go. We are also
members of the district and annual conference, and members of the general
conference and general church all around the world. Whatever one is or does one
is or does in the name of all!
I thought of that as we agreed this past week to
host a “press conference” Friday on the steps of the church. I called it a
“press for peace” conference. We were invited to join up with the beginnings of
a national “speak out” on the war. One might not know it from the story in the
paper, but we who agreed in advance to speak included, Rabbi Myra Soifer of
Temple Sinai, Rev. Bill Chrystal of First Congregational and a former military
chaplain, Imam Abdul Barghouti of the Northern Nevada Muslim Community, and Dr.
Chuck Durante of Our Lady of Wisdom Roman Catholic Parish. Others assembled
then added their witness.
Riverfest all around us made me think of the
last chapter of Revelation: the “new Jerusalem” coming down out of heaven to
witness for God on this earth – no temple but God’s own self and the Lamb who
died for God’s justice and peace – no need of sun or moon but only the light of
God. And a veritable parade of all the nations! Bringing in signs of glory and
honor of what in today’s world would be 192 nation members of the UN – and
counting! And the waters of life -- the cosmic Truckee! – flowing from God and
the Lamb through the streets of the city! On either side the tree of life –
dare we say the cosmic Reno First UMC?! -- producing its fruits every month.
And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations! The leaves
of the tree are for the healing of the nations . . . .
We shared words from Julia Ward Howe’s original
“Mother’s Day Proclamation” in 1870 – addressing herself to mothers of all the
world and clearly connecting the personal love of mothers for quote “our own”
children with the general love of women – and we men if we let ourselves – for
all children. She begins,
Arise then . . . women of this day! Arise,
all women who have hearts! Whether your baptism be of water or of tears! Say
firmly: . . . Our husbands will not come to us, reeking of carnage, for caresses
and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have
been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, the women of one
country, will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be
trained to injure theirs.” From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up
with our own. It says: Disarm! Disarm!
Do we watch the picturing of our people dying in
Afghanistan and Iraq when they are shown at the end of the News Hour on PBS?
It’s one of our few real points of contact with them. So many 19 to 21
year-olds. Do we imagine their mothers? British songwriter Billy Bragg’s song
“Everywhere” reminds us –
Over here, over there, it’s the same
everywhere –
A boy cries out for his mama before he dies
for his home.
Do we imagine how such a young person might call
out for their mother in mortal combat? Who else is supposed to take such care
of us and keep us so safe as a mother? I have heard what a difference it made
to the God of violence and vengeance to have a child of God’s own! Imagine what
God learns from Mary.
And imagine of the strength of these women (and
men!), these seamstresses -- these quilters, if we will – in the early church.
Dorcas clothes the poor. Peter dreams of a huge sheet full of all the animals.
Lydia deals in very expensive purple cloth. Even Paul makes tents to sell, so
as not to have to take money from the church. Now there’s a concept for the
Capital Campaign! Make the pastor work for a living! We heard the story of
Dorcas two weeks ago. To her alone is the feminine of the word “disciple” is
applied. She knows the suffering of widows losing their husbands at sea in the
port city of Joppa. She sews clothes for them, tunics and coats, for warmth by
day and comfort by night. Her home is a center of compassionate care for
others. Home a center of care for others.
When she dies and her grieving friends send for
Peter, head of the church, he drops everything and comes immediately. Dorcas
becomes the only person raised from the dead by a disciple of Jesus! The early
church knows, as the prophets preach, that the community is only as strong, not
as our military might. The community is only as strong as our care for the
widows and orphans, for the weakest and neediest ones among us. The homes of
widows in the early church become, as we say in the wedding service, “havens of
blessing and places of peace.” Widows know how to receive care and to give it.
May it be so with us.
(See
www.itstimereno.org/gatherings.asp for offering “home” to neighbors!)
Notice in today’s story from Acts how the early
church “lurches” from vision to vision for its life and work – as provided by
the wild and free Holy Spirit! The Spirit keeps going before the church
organizers – making a way out of no way, calling and urging them on – creating
basic relationships out of which/whom the “institutional church” might grow. As
soon as Paul and others get to Philippi, to Europe for the first time, they seek
out that “place of prayer” where the women already gather at the river! The
women know how to gather – They gather at the river! They gather at the well!
They gather wherever, whenever they can.
Think of the powerful “place of prayer” in our
campaign and throughout our church life together – which the women (mostly) of
prayer group have offered for nearly 25 years! Women know how to share, how to
organize in support of each other and of the community. Women care, and act as
if they care, what kind of a future we leave to our children and grandchildren.
Lydia immediately opens her home to Paul. She is the head of the household –
Europe’s first “convert” -- “woman of cloth” in more ways than one! Perhaps
even an early “priest” – presiding at Sabbath meal, speaking the blessing,
breaking, distributing bread.
When Lydia is baptized and “joins” the church,
her whole household joins with her! That means, all ages -- slave and free,
male and female, Gentile and Jew! The early church is “house church,” “base
community” – small groups meeting in homes for prayer, for study, for
fellowship, and for mission. How do we do the same? How do our homes become
bases for our works of justice and peace? How do we bring those same qualities
of “home” to our larger gatherings? More closely knowing and supporting each
other in ministries of our everyday lives?
Sisters and brothers, this is not “my” church!
This is your church, our church – It takes every one for us all to be who we are
in the body of Christ’s living Spirit!
Jesus here promises that God and he will always
be in communion with us – pitching their tent, making their home with us. Their
presence, their passion, their power will be in and of, for and with the church
– because the Holy Spirit will come to be our Advocate, and Advocate for the
whole world! The Spirit is voice for the voiceless, vision for the visionless,
vote for the voteless, even victory for the victoryless! God’s hope for the
world through Jesus and the church is the hope of Pentecost – gathering from
ever nation in negotiation of every difference – so that each ends up hearing
the other as if in their very own language! That is our way of loving Jesus, of
keeping his word alive, of putting his life into practice!
Our way of “institutionalizing” Jesus, if we
will – of building him in, not just to our personal but to our corporate life –
our life of witness and service in all the world. Jesus asks not that we
worship him but that we follow him! He is our living memorial, as real and as
near and as filling and empowering as the very bread we eat and the cup we
drink! He is not a monument to the past but a movement into the future! The
Spirit is always still teaching and revealing Jesus to us!
In Jesus -- who is not only of dying but also of
living -- forever! -- we are always learning, growing, changing – expanding our
vision, our voice, our vote – even our “victory!” For the victory of life over
death as we know it in Jesus is not of our own. It certainly is not a victory
of our military-industrial-security complex! I mean, talk about the worst kind
of “institutionalizing” of our shared values and commitments! How many
billions of dollars a day? As Jesus says of our hearts, just follow the money –
there our hearts are! Who’s profiting by this and all wars and weapons?
Rather, the victory of this “peace” Jesus leaves
us. This is his “testament” to us -- the peace beyond every anxiety, every fear
– the “shalom,” the well-being and common good, the harmony and the whole
symphony. For God, like a cosmic mother, will wipe away every tear. Neither
mourning nor crying nor pain will be any more. Even death itself will pass
forever – every weapon and every war! -- into the newness of life. If we can
believe that, let us say, Amen!
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