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June 10, 2007
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture: 1
Kings 17:17-24, Galatians 1:11-24, Luke 7:11-17
“Healing Death:
Why in the Name of God Is the Name of God Used This Way?”
My question in this title is, if we follow the
Jesus the choir just sang about -- anointed, crucified, resurrected, ascended
to be the Christ -- Christ now returning as Holy Spirit, embodied as Church,
baptizing in personal holiness, communing in social holiness – if we believe in
the healing of death, the creating of life -- how in the world can we ever use
the name of God to justify death? Any death? Singular, plural, or massive
death? God is not about sanctioning death. God is all about solving death --
subverting death, opposing death, overcoming death.
First, overcoming as much death as humanly
possible – all the deaths we as a species are responsible for, directly and
indirectly. Then, overcoming as much death as divinely possible, too! If we as
a species would ever stop killing, we might find out at last the wonders of life
God is capable of. But God is not going to do for us what we have to do for
ourselves. God gives us Jesus. That is enough.
I am thinking of “healing death” in two ways at least. One is when death
is truly in Gods hands – whatever we mean by that, however that looks to us.
I mean, when we can find no human cause of death or human complicity with death.
When we humans have done for the dying one all that could be done in every
dimension of our love and care for them. Then there may be what we like to
call “natural” death. Lives in bodies, like Millie’s, just finally wear
out in the end. Or lives in bodies infected or injured in such ways as
none of us can control, like Sharon’s, resist as long and as nobly as they can
but also give out in the end.
In that sense, sisters and brothers, none of is
made to last forever. Even Jesus is not made to last forever. Jesus dies a
horrible death. Only what we call God’s intervention in a way far beyond our
understanding gives Jesus life again. As John Ruby preached on a recent clergy
retreat, all of us share the same “life-threatening condition.” It’s called
life itself. None of us escapes it alive.
There is no way for us to avoid all the risks
of being alive, all the limits of being human. It is even riskier to be alive
and in love as well – to care about life, with a passion, which is the
“com-passion” Jesus shows in this and so many stories. If we did not love, if
we did not care, if we did not invest so much in persons we love – even in spite
of themselves! – then we would not hurt when we lose them. We would not miss
them so much when they’re gone from us in the flesh.
It is risky to care about justice and joy,
about plenty and peace for all people. It is risky really to care about kids –
to celebrate their graduations and steps into responsibility for this world. It
is risky to care about our kids, our grandkids, and our descendants to all
generations! It is risky to care for creation herself, for the conditions of
earth, its peoples, its creatures. If there is even a chance creation is in the
peril many who study it say it is, then its care must consume all our lives.
As followers of the risen Jesus, we are called
to choose life! Witness life! Serve life! Act up for life! Risk life! And
heal death as much as we humanly can. We hear about Elijah, unknown prophet
from the rural backwoods of Gilead, with his Rastafarian-sounding name – Elijah
means “Jah is my God!” He lives with this widow whose son becomes so ill there
is no breath left in him. The widow wants to know – as any parent would -- how
she is to blame for his illness, what else she could have done, how she may be
complicit in his death. Is there anything she can do to undo this tragedy?
What she could do with once more chance!
But God is not about finding blame but about giving life. God is not about
condemning but about saving life. God is not about destroying but about
creating life. God is not about harming but about healing life. God
is not about dealing death but is about lending life – every way that God
possibly can. Always and only the question is, what can we do to help?
What death can we heal? What suffering, what pain? What dying can we
prevent?
For we are not indifferent or indecisive,
passive or neutral in these matters. The more we love, the more we care, the
more we are willing and able to risk. And risk, in part, means confronting and
challenging God -- facing up, standing up, speaking up, even acting up before
God! What does Elijah say and do here? “O LORD my God, have you brought
calamity even upon the widow with whom I am staying, by killing her son?”
Brothers and sisters, as wondrous and mysterious and as far beyond all
countenancing, all comprehending, as God may be to us, we alone among species –
it seems – made as we are in God’s “image,” again, whatever that means, whatever
that looks like! -- are given the role of reflecting on God and of questioning
what we find there! Even complaining loudly to God.
If God is who we say God is – Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier/Sustainer of Life –
God needs no defense or protection from us! God is perfectly able to fend
for God’s self. God does not have to be treated so carefully, cautiously,
delicately, deferentially. Remember the work of Jesus when he descends to
the dead before Easter: if we want to see heaven on earth, we got to raise a
little hell! Remember how Abraham argues with God over the fates of the
cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Remember how Jacob wrestles all night for a
blessing from God. Remember how Moses contends with God for and against
the people he leads. And how God heard the people as slaves in Egypt
because they complained so! Remember how all the psalmists and prophets rant
and rail and rage before God.
Remember how Jesus turns all of God’s laws and
traditions upside-down – and replaces what Jeremiah calls the writing on stone
external to us with the writing of God directly on each of our hearts. Jesus
gives, his Spirit enlivens, each of us in our own living, breathing, seeing,
hearing, feeling, thinking, speaking, acting relationships with God!
If the God so close to Jesus as to be called “Abba! Daddy!” cannot learn and
grow and suffer and change with Jesus who risks his whole life and work to the
point of feeling forsaken on the cross -- then what hope is there for us in this
world that seems so bent upon death and destruction?
What kind of God with a choice in the matter
would leave us in deadly despair?
So Elijah calls God to account for the goodness
and mercy of God. Perhaps our model for such confrontation and challenge with
God is the widow who argues her case so persistently, even disruptively before
the judge that the judge finds in her favor -- just to get rid of her! Surely
we know people who make such holy pests of themselves – they are the least among
us, those with nothing to lose. They do get God’s attention – even as Elijah
does for the widow here. The Lord listens! And the life of the child comes
into him again. All I can say about this is, we cannot find ourselves on God’s
winning side without risking ourselves on God’s losing side. Again, we are not
indifferent or indecisive, passive or neutral in behalf of those we love and
care for – whether we even know them or not!
I learned the hard way from my seminary
experience as a chaplain in a children’s hospital. I spent most of a night in a
waiting room with parents of a 10 year-old who never recovered from what was
supposed to be routine surgery. All during my time with the parents, I kept
trying to outguess God, to stay a step ahead of what was happening to their
daughter, so I would not be wrong in my prayers – so that I would not leave God
embarrassed and shamed by my lack of faith or ability to put into words anything
that might be remotely helpful to them. Finally, I just walked out on them. I
could not take it any more. As I look back, I was so afraid to be wrong about
God! Afraid to be on the losing side of prayer. I wanted my prayers to win all
the time. I covered all options so I could not possibly lose.
After all these years I see that faith is not
about winning! In fact, we hope and dream and live and work for so much to make
this world better, we are bound to feel like losers much of the time. How much
can we “win” against war and violence in our lifetimes, for instance? How much
against poverty and disease? Against global warming and environmental
devastation? Our Bible is written by losers! The one we call Lord and Savior
ends up alone on a cross between strangers. Even God wins some and loses some.
Just think of how many disconsolate mothers and fathers grieve for the threats
and the deaths to their kids in the world today. Surely God has not willed nor
wants their grieving.
When survivor Elie Wiesel is asked where God
was in the Holocaust, he says, on the gallows, in the ovens. In Jesus our God
suffers and weeps. And Jesus expects greater works of us. This self-searching
Paul we hear from today never thought of himself as giving up all the perks and
privileges of such a “winner” by law and tradition, such a super-achiever –
instead to embrace and to carry on the life and the work of this “loser” so
mocked and scorned by the world.
We owe it to ourselves today, and to all we love and care for, everywhere in
this world, to confront and to challenge, to enrich and enlarge, all the ways we
see and hear God, all the images and all the names by which God is known to us.
Sisters and brothers, we can name God in any image and call God by any name we
choose! Drawing upon all those resources of our faith – scripture and
tradition, yes, but also experience and reason. And doing so in the company of
brothers and sisters who share with us the struggle of life into faith.
For God is writing directly on each of our hearts! God is speaking
directly to and acting directly in each of our lives! As Hafiz the Sufi
poet advises in our Words for Meditation, let us not settle for too small a god!
Let us seek a God who lives all the way down to us, and all the way up to our
expectations – especially for justice and peace, plenty and joy in this world!
We owe it to our graduates and our retirees and all those in transitions of
life.
Let us not abandon our visions, our voices, our
hopes, our dreams! Let us stand up for what and for whom we believe in the
healing of death, the risking of life for this world! Stand up, stand up for
Jesus, stand in his strength alone! The arms of war have failed us, we dare to
trust our own. Take on the gospel mission, each day set out with prayer; where
duty calls or danger, be never wanting there. Amen.
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