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June 3, 2007
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture: Proverbs 8:1-4,
22-31, Romans 5:1-5, John 16:12-15
“Consecration/Celebration: Naming God in This Place and This People”
Let us begin to give ourselves time and space to
absorb the enormity of the losses to family and to congregation of our very
different yet perfectly related sisters Millie Keiper and Sharon Stephenson.
What appropriate words to hear from Jesus on the last night of his life. He
says to his own closest friends and followers of the loss and grief, fear and
doubt, they are about to pass through for themselves – “I still have many
things to say to you, but you cannot hear them now.” Truly, there are times to
hear and times not to hear.
Jesus knows when we are inconsolable. He knows the times we will be
so focused and limited in what we are ready and able hear. Jesus has all
respect and patience for the times and spaces each one of us needs in our own
ways, as well as in the ways we will find together. There is no rushing
this process. The dead have a life and a legacy of their own. We
honor them.
Jesus also always knows – no matter how present, how passionate, how powerful as
he is for us -- even he is just the very beginning of each and all of our own
infinite and mysterious relationships with the one and even the many we call our
“God.” Jesus always points us beyond himself to God. Our own
relationships with God may produce the same good works as his. The God,
the Father/Mother, whom Jesus witnesses for us -- the Wisdom of all the ages
Jesus embodies for us – is both one and many who have no beginning, no end.
God is all the depth and height and breadth in
whom we are forever just now living and moving and finding our very being! The
bottom line with Jesus is our liberation in every way to be the one unique and
unrepeatably timely and precious person God makes us each to be. Jesus knows by
his own experience even on the cross that God is never quite done with us yet.
Even in death God acts, God speaks, God guides, God glorifies. As always, we
wait and we watch.
There are at least as many ways of hearing and
naming our God this Trinity Sunday as there are of hearing and naming ourselves
– in all our diversity, all our complexity. The gifts of hearing and naming
have like the gift of Wisdom herself been around from the very beginning with
God. As our Words for Meditation say today, the more our ancient and
new-sounding names for God, the more open our own souls to great possibilities!
When we limit ourselves to any one fixed and
static image for God – such as “God the Father” has been for countless
generations – we limit the many creative ways we can see ourselves and each
other. Life for us in Jesus is all about risking that infinite depth of God in
whom to discover and to explore all the depths in ourselves. Jesus is all about
setting us free “to reimagine ourselves,” says Matthew Fox. We are invited,
encouraged, empowered to live in and with the depth of God as “one river, many
wells.” To let God fully evolve and reveal on God’s own – not limiting the
unlimitable to our projections.
I love how this Eugene Peterson translation of Paul invites us in Jesus to walk
right in where we always wanted to be – “in the wide open spaces of God’s grace
and glory, standing tall, shouting our praise!” Sounds like Millie and
Sharon to me! God don’t make no junk, as we say, and God loves to show off
every person and creature God makes! Like Millie and Sharon, may we never
sell ourselves or each other short. Like them, may we never silence
ourselves or each other but always seek to bring out and build upon the best in
ourselves and each other.
And even more, says Paul, we are “to shout our
praise even when we’re hemmed in with troubles!” The other night when I visited
Millie and Nancy and others of family in the hospital, and offered in my usual
way to pray as our visit ended, I did not get out a word of prayer for Millie
before Millie started praying for us! And even when I finished my prayer,
Millie went back to footnote her own! Millie always wants us to get the point,
the whole point, nothing but the point!
Especially of both God’s and her love for us,
and how we can love one another.
And who will ever forget all the strength and courage Sharon summoned to spend
that last weekend with us – letting us give her a birthday party, coming to
worship, giving a word with the children. It seems that just happened –
yet already so long ago! Or Sharon calling during a campaign pot luck to
chide us for talking with her when we ought to be out writing checks!
Sharon knew no other way of being than infinitely alive for us in each and every
moment.
That, says Paul, is not denying, avoiding,
escaping our troubles, our turmoils, our trials and our tears in life.
Rather, that is allowing them to “develop passionate patience in us “ –
passionate patience! That’s what God in Jesus always has for us.
That “in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue.” Virtue is not so much
what we always choose or create for ourselves. Virtue is what we let God
reveal to us as we embrace all the “stuff” (I could use a stronger word!) that
happens to us – which in further turn keeps us “alert for whatever God will do
next!”
Have we ever known persons with such “alert expectancy” for life and for living!
Millie and Sharon, each in her own unpretentious and gracious way, remained so
attuned to the infinite mystery of God in their own lives. Each remained
so allowing for God to be as God will be in the lives of others – especially the
lives of the children. Each remained eagerly, actively waiting and
watching for what was next – even up to the end, and beyond! Never to be
shortchanged!
No matter how untimely we may find Sharon’s or
any death – and we dare not stop now, this Sunday after Memorial Day, to count
all the untimely and even preventable deaths in this world! – no matter how
untimely her death, the life of Sharon Stephenson never felt like it was
shortchanged. May the same be said of us! May we, as we have experienced again
this campaign – always be challenged, says Paul, to ”round up enough containers
to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy
Spirit!” God is so uncontainable!
We have been saying throughout this campaign we consecrate and celebrate here
today -- it is not about equal giving, it is about equal generosity. That
is such a big part of what and of how we celebrate in our communion together
with God and each other! It is the genius of Jesus so to hear and to name
himself in the bread we eat and the cup we drink. Each and every one of us
comes so equally to the meal. Each and every one of us takes so equally
from the meal.
God is so good, so gracious, so generous in the
provision for each and all. Our challenge and opportunity are to be as generous
in distribution as God is in provision. Millie Keiper made the bread for weekly
communion at 8 o’clock service for years! We have saved loaves of hers for
communion in her memorial celebration next Saturday at 2 PM. I suggest in
Millie’s name we also take up the interest of Dennis Graham and probably others
in offering home communion with those who cannot be with us. Please let me know
of your interest.
As Trinity Sunday says, the every essence and
nature of God are communion. Communion is what life in and with God and each
other looks like! It is in this moment, as Paul puts it here, that “we throw
open our doors to God and discover at the same moment that God has already
thrown open the door to us!” God is in Jesus -- as we say of God’s dwelling
place in the new city -- an open door who cannot be shut! There just ain’t no
shutting the door of God’s love!
God in Jesus is open minds, open hearts, open
arms to one another – open orders to the service of all in the church, even open
borders to the labor of all who seek to provide for their families as God
provides for us all. I hope we will find ways to keep the doors to our
sanctuary open more especially this summer – feel free to join me in welcoming
all who may find their ways in!
We said together last Sunday, Pentecost –
receiving of the Spirit, birthing the Church – is discovering God’s resurrection
of Jesus in ourselves and taking that resurrection into the streets! It is
proclaiming the truth of life over death in spite of all powers and all
principalities who pressure us to works of violence and vengeance, works of
death and despair in this world. When we take new life to the streets, says
Proverbs, we will find that Wisdom is already there! Calling and raising her
voice! Taking her stand! Because if we do not stand for something and with
somebody, we will fall for anything and for anybody. Wisdom has been with God
from the very beginning – the depth before every depth, the height before every
height, the breadth before every breadth. And we are there, too.
And what is Wisdom there, and here, and
everywhere to be and do? She, and we -- sisters and brothers of Millie and
Sharon each and all of us! – we are daily about delighting our God! We are
about rejoicing before God forever! Rejoicing in all this inhabited world!
Delighting in the whole human race!! Remember God’s prophet Buzz Lightyear in
the movie “Toy Story,” how he invites us again and again to travel – “To the
Trinity, and beyond!!” We ain’t seen nothing yet! And, Amen.
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