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Rev. Nancy Rockwell
Epiphany 3 24 January 2010
Here then is the third story of the revelations, the showings of Jesus and people, including us. There are no stories in which Jesus alone is revealed, for the lightbeam is wider than that, and we are all caught in its shining. All manner of things are exposed in this light.
So far we've heard about Jesus coming up from the Jordan river at his baptism and words of his belovedness -- his new name, Beloved -- fell upon the ears of all the crowd at the river's edge, some of them wet themselves. That day belovedness crept into the ears of everyone who longed to find God, and every day since then, and even now. That name, Beloved, pours like water over our heads. Do you believe it? About yourself I mean, now, not just Jesus?
And last week we heard about the wedding at Cana, where the wine ran out, and his mother pushed Jesus to do something, and Jesus complained, ‘What's it got to do with me?' and she pushed again, and he turned the family bath water into elegant wine, and so much - maybe 800 bottles of it! - and the servants, who saw it all, were awed, of course, and the family was, well, stunned and confused, and relieved to be no longer embarrassed in front of the wedding guests, but soon now they would discover they had no more bathwater. Once again, belovedness is linked to water, and to washing. Would you pay such a price for joy?
Now, here, today, is this tale of Jesus going home to preach, just as he is beginning to get a reputation as a rabbi. And he reads from the prophet Isaiah, a portion of a long chapter in which Isaiah speaks of the Spirit of the Lord anointing him to bring good news to the poor, the despised, the blind, the brokenhearted. And Jesus stops reading there, though Isaiah's words, which everybody knew, continued, about how those messengers were to be called oaks of righteousness, who will build up the ruined cities and repair the devastations of many generations. Jesus looks up, and says to those listening, "Today this Scripture has been fufilled your hearing." And suddenly the light is shining, not on him, but on them. Because fulfilled in your hearing could well mean, you know, that you're the ones who are to do these things. Often it is said Jesus meant, "Hey, I'm the one!" And that made people mad. But that really doesn't sound like Jesus, to brag like that. And in everything he opened up the work and its fruits to everyone, so more likely he was saying, You are the ones. And that made them mad.
God knows they wanted someone to do these things, as we do. But the implication, that Jesus was what they were getting, not a Superman, and that theirs were the heads and hearts and mouths to say Yes to what they had heard as task, well, it made everyone angry. Luke says they chased Jesus out of the synagogue and pushed him to the edge of a cliff, and according to Luke they would have pushed him over, but he somehow slipped into the crowd and was able to get away.
Friday night George Clooney and Wyclef Jean and Anderson Cooper and about a hundred super star musicians like Madonna, put on a TV fundraiser for Haiti, and movie stars galore were answering the phone, and they let us listen in to some of the phone conversations between thrilled folks donating what modest amounts they could and millionaire stars saying thanks to them. All those movie stars saying, You're the ones, to all of us. And this garnered millions for Haiti, and the organizers, Clooney and friends, who are all rich guys, knew that the most money you can get is when ordinary people by the millions give the small amounts they can share. And people have been doing that, giving to the Red Cross and Paul Farmer's Partners in Health, and churches like the UCC and Doctors Without Borders, and what has been shown is that, even in a world in the icy grip of recession, there is enough money out there to build Port au Prince anew.
Provided no one steals it. And that's going to be the hard part, to keep it from being stolen. Because human greed is as prevalent as human goodness. And human greed has played a large part in the history of Haiti for hundreds of years now. And in large part the devastation we can barely stand to watch is the result of the poverty and neglect that have been wrought in Haiti by many. Who's to blame? Someone said to me after the early service, Don't blame the French - it was the English, or maybe the Dutch, or the Americans - hmmm.
Paul the Apostle, in his letter to the Corinthians, talks about the claims we have on one another, describing us as parts of one body, which is the Beloved body, which is the whole world, the creation, all people, the church, anyway you want to describe it. The movie Avatar, the highest grossing film in history, presents a planet where everyliving thing is interconnected in a network in which the greatest wisdom lives in the roots of the trees, who talk to each other. And the blue people of that world have fibers in their hair that can literally be plugged into to animals and trees, so they can communicate. And I asked Erik Hobbie, one of our scientists, what about that idea, are the trees talking? And Erik said, there is a lot more communicating going on out there than we have recognized till recently. We thought all that was happening was competition, but there is really a huge amount of communication. Paul wrote that the network of the Beloved body includes slaves and free folks, men and women, Jews and Gentiles, rich and poor, all connected to each other like hands and feet, like eyes and ears. ‘ The eye cannot say to the hand,' writes Paul, ‘I have no need of you.' And neither can we say of Haiti, we have no need of you. And the world does seem to know this, just look at the out-pouring.
But we're not so simple-minded that we don't want to blame someone for what happened here, and God is an easy target. How could God be absent here? Or have allowed this? Or not have found a way to prevent, or at least to warn that one of these seismic shifts that does no one any good was about to come out of the core of creation? How can we believe in the goodness of creation when such things happen? Or the presence of God among us when people are still alive after ten days inside these concrete tombs? Or the Belovedness of people when the pain is unrelenting, and the despair is everywhere?
But when you hear Haitian people singing hymns in the midst of the rubble, how can you remain unmoved? When young girls and old women are pulled out of the concrete singing hymns, who am I to say there is no God? When strangers, themselves victims, gather around the newly rescued to wash and clean them, when the able, who are devastated by loss, help the weak, when so many respond so quickly, who are you and who am I to say that what we have heard about is not true and is not to be our calling, to say that we will not do what we, the people of Exeter, can do as our part of the body that, yes, can die, but will rise and rise again?
Alone, I know I won't do much. A check here and maybe there. But together with you, in the life of the church, I know I will do more than I imagined I could. My eye is on the prize, and Beloved, you are the prize. And my ears are open. Amen.
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