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November 18, 2007
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture: Isaiah 65:17-25, Luke 21:5-19
“Joyful Endurance: The Gift of Regaining Our Soul/s”
Everyone knows the table grace with which the Thanksgiving race begins – “Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost, who eats the fastest gets the most!” No matter how quickly,
how boldly, how eagerly we begin the thanksgiving race of life, it goes not to the
swift, Paul assures us, but to those who endure to the end! To those saints
and elders, our faith-family and faith-friends who try – with all that we are, with
all that we have, with all that we do – to remain true to our hope and our trust
in what we may call the full promise and the big picture of God!
This congregation is contagious with joyful endurers -- who live with such determined
newness of our own lives everyday as to imagine we might live in a new world as
well! Gandhi says we cannot change the world. We only change ourselves.
But if enough of us do that – and we are everywhere! All over the planet!
Millions if not billions of us! Organized and otherwise! – If enough of us
make the changes in ourselves we want to see in the world, then it will be as if
the world changed! A world of justice and peace, grace and love, at last!
Listen to what the end of Isaiah promises -- which comes at the end of the Book
of Revelation as well -- where most hear only of death and destruction. Isaiah
promises new heavens and a new earth! God simply forgives and forgets all
“the former things.” God dwells and delights directly with us in gladness
and joy – beyond every sound of weeping or cry of distress. In the full promise
and the big picture of God who is all-in-all – above and beyond every border, every
boundary, every barrier that tries to separate, to conquer and to divide us – infants
and elders alike live with intergenerational provision and preservation! Even
the wolves and the lambs shall feed together at thanksgiving table!
And everyone neath our vine and fig tree
Shall live in peace and unafraid (Repeat)
And into ploughshares turn our swords
Nations shall make war no more (Repeat)
And everyone neath our vine ad fig tree
Shall live in peace and unafraid.
This is Thanksgiving time – to celebrate harvest that is “communal” (as our Words
for Meditation out it) – “as is our shared life in the church.” Celebration
of our collective, collaborative stewardship, sharing of all our gifts on this day,
enables us as “the assembly of the faithful.” Apportionments to the General
Church (as we are invited to pay them in full again this year!) and Local Church
Budgets for mission and ministries in congregation and in community – these are
direct and lasting investments in one another! In such saints and elders as
Mim Davis who have touched us through our stewardship witnesses. Also such
saints and elders as inhabit our lives even here, even now!
Such elders and saints as Dorothy Johnson, at age 90-something, who reads the invocation
and leads the benediction at each monthly meeting of the daytime FMW -- and
in between clips and sends me with comment everything I write or say in the paper
and everything there about our church and congregation.
Recently Dorothy commented on the 50th anniversary of the founding of
St. Paul UMC with the strong support of this congregation. (Do we know this
congregation will be 140 years old next year?) – “All of us at First Church contributed
money for the new one. It was our ‘baby.’. . . It was thought that those
members of our church who lived near there would transfer to the new one.
But NO! The members who lived nearer to the new church kept coming to First
Church. Isn’t it amazing the sentiment of some for their original church?”
For many of us even now, at every age and stage of life, this is our “original church!”
As we say of each day, this church is “the first church of the rest of our lives!”
Thanks to all the Mim Davises and Dorothy Johnsons and so many, many others.
Remember the words of the underdog fighter “Rocky” in the first film? He believes,
with everyone else, he has no chance of winning. “I just want to go the distance!”
he says. I just want to last to the end of the faithful fight, the end of
the thanksgiving race. I just want to live each day as fully as I possibly
can – knowing I never “get it” quite right – just lucky to “get it” at all!
I just want to go that distance; I just want to be in that number –when those saints
go marching in!
Each of us longs to come into the fullness of who we are – of what our own particular
given promise and picture of life may be. Every child –every infant and every
elder – of a promising God, and every last child on this earth has a right to, is
entitled to, the chance to discover and claim the fullest promise of each of our
lives – and our life together as God’s family and God’s friends! Cling to
the promise from Jesus this morning: No matter how hard, how tough, how challenging
and demanding things get – so long as we remain faithful to who, and to whose, we
are – who we know, and believe, and trust ourselves most fully and freely to be
– then, no matter how lonely, how solitary, how isolated, how cut off, we may find
ourselves being, and feeling – not a hair of our heads will perish!
Not one single thing -- however feeble, however fragile – we ever offer to God,
in the name of God, for the sake of Christ – Nothing of us will be missed or dismissed,
misused or neglected, abused or forgotten in any way. Just by our joyful,
hopeful endurance, we will gain our lives! Our souls! Our piece of the
big soul shared by us all! Our call is not always to be successful – whatever
that means – but faithful to the end! Keep showing up! Keep hanging
in there! Keep paying attention, being aware! Keep naming our vision
and speaking our voice! Not taking “no” for an answer to life! Bouncing
back! Even rising from the dead! The “as good as” dead! Sticking
around just to see what the end’s going to be!
In short, entrusting the whole of our lives to God – as clay in the hands of the
potter – who never gives up on the clay! Who keeps doing and undoing it –
molding/ remolding, shaping/reshaping, working/reworking! Not in endless cycles
of repetitive sameness, but always in fresh spirals of some barely perceptible progress!
For even the potter may not know who the clay will be shaped in the end! Coming
fully of age, to maturity and as much wisdom as we ever will get, seems to mean,
paradoxically– We are no longer surprised at anything! We have found the capacity
to “see it all!” And yet, our life is just full of surprises! It surprises
us simply to live! We never step in the same river twice. Every moment
is new in some way – whether we always see it or not. Growing into maturity
is growing from death-defined orthodoxy to life-beloved paradoxy.
I close – Hark, he closes! – with this “Guided Prayer for the Elders” and for the
“saint and elder” in us all (Close your eyes -- to listen and to imagine if you
like) --
Let us take time, thanksgiving time, to remember the promise of fullness, fulfillment,
of all of the times of our lives . . . Let us give thanks to be born . . . Let us
give thanks to be young . . . Let us give thanks to be reasonably adult . . . Let
us give thanks to be old . . . Let us give thanks to hear Moses in every time: “I
set before you this day death and life – Choose life!” Let us give thanks
to hear Jesus in every time: “I have come that you might have life and have it more
abundantly!”
Let us take time, thanksgiving time, time to take nothing for granted . . . time
to remember the journey to age, the journey to harvest, to wisdom, to maturing .
. . the journey in and through the life of the church . . . Let us honor the
saints and elders, faith-family and faith-friends, among and around us this morning
. . . those who live and work in care of and with the elders . . . and the “elder”
now coming to be in each one of us!
Let us give thanks for how our journeys in faith begin . . . for the gifts of
parents, families, friends, Holy Spirit – introducing us to faith community, life
in and through the church . . . We give thanks for the first commitments we were
enabled to make – at whatever the age or stage of our lives . . . for our first
senses of partnership with our Creator, and with all of creation . . . We give thanks
for the spirit of our adventure with God . . . for those who have been congregations
. . . mentors . . . co-creators with us through the years.
Let us give thanks to be thought of in the cosmic mind of God . . . to be born
first a child of the universe, and again to a life everlasting . . . We give thanks
to grow into adulthood . . . to accept life and to share it, to give life and to
receive it . . . We give thanks, just to give thanks! . . . We give thanks for all
chances to witness and serve . . . for the love and the justice of life in the church
and the world . . . We give thanks to come fully of age . . . to envision and to
embrace as much of the whole promise of life as we possibly can . . . and to reflect
the preciousness of every life . . . and of every living . . . .
We pray, All gracious, all-loving God, God of all times, God of all ages, as
the elders of this congregation, and in respect for the elders we all are coming
to be, help us to choose and accept your ministry and mission for us – to cherish
our older years, to witness to meaning and purpose of life in every way that we
can, to live our years fully, to risk being where we have not been before, to practice
not so much giving up as letting go, to prize the ways our bodies mark the gifts
of long life, to acknowledge our limitations with creative interdependency, to seek
community among generations, to balance times of reflection and action, to preserve
dignity and self-worth in our dependencies, to see the gift of years as chance to
forgive the hurt of years, to believe in suffering and loss your presence and even
your blessing are found, to walk always on hope for the newness of life, and always
to hold all your children in our hearts. Amen.
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