Oct 12, 2008:  PEACEMAKING:  INTEGRITY AND AUTHENTICITY
Philippians 4:1-9, Exodus 32:1-14, Psalm 106:1-6, 19-23
Eileen Parfrey -- Springwater Presbyterian Church

            Part of last summer’s sabbatical activity for me included conversations with Richard Caemmerer, the founder of Gruenewald Guild (a religious art camp for grown ups).  Somewhere in the middle of our three weeks of daily conversations, Richard made me cry.  I had arrived at Gruenewald assured by their website that there is artist in all of us, and I hoped to develop a hidden treasure of art talent.  My Gruenewald teachers were so affirming and skilled that I dared to hope that, with only a little more practice, I too could “be an artist.”  Richard and I talked every day about the role of art in worship, the place of art-making in church life and community-building, but he must have heard my longing.  As both the son of a pastor and an artist himself, he is on a first-name basis with the demands of each vocation, and he doesn’t think you can do both.  What made me cry was when Richard said to me, “Do not cast covetous eyes on someone else’s call.”   It was a hard thing to hear.  It felt like he’d said, “You’ll never be an artist, so give it up and go back to preaching.”  But the next day Richard started dropping into our conversations the words of today’s text, “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is pure” whenever we talked about the tension between art and theology.  What he meant was, pursue art, but be sure it is about your integrity, your authenticity.  Know who you are, Richard meant, and act in consistency with that knowledge.  Do not cast covetous eyes on someone else’s call.
            This—integrity, authenticity—is the spiritual practice used by the all-star players in the World Series of Holiness.  Two thousand years of Christian contemplative practice asks the question, “Who am I?” and answers it in the context of who God thinks we are.  Paul advises Euodia and Syntyche to resolve their differences by remembering who they are.  He tells a church, squabbling because they don’t know their mission, “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is pure.”  Remember who you are. Israel had cast covetous eyes on someone else’s call, forgotten who they are, and slipped into the apostasy of the Golden Calf.  That Moses changes God’s mind is because he had the gall and temerity to say, “Remember who you are and act like it toward Israel.”  God does not call us to do or be anything other than who we are.  We are only expected to do “Do the best we can with what we’ve got, where we’re at.” 
            As a congregation we’ve got a mission statement, which formalizes the “what we’ve got” and the “where we’re at.”  Its purpose is to guide our decision-making about what we do with our resources of time, talent, treasure.  As individuals, we usually don’t have anything as formal to guide our decision-making about our God-given resources of time, talent, and treasure.  But we rely on “who we think we are” to decide how we act.  If you think you can’t sing, you aren’t going to volunteer for the choir, but if you think you’ve been blessed with organizational skills, you might volunteer to clean up the church office instead.  If you think you’ve got more time than money, that’s what you’ll offer.  If you think you’re about brawn and action, you’re likely to show up for toting and hauling, digging and pruning.  But if you think you have nothing to offer others, you won’t.  Offer, I mean. 
            It’s October, Peacemaking Month at Springwater, and I’m going to use a loaded word—witness.  “Witness” can mean several things.  It can mean passive observation of something.  After an accident or a crime, police are interested in finding a witness.  Sometimes that witness is called into court and becomes another kind of witness—one sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.  But to be an effective witness, that person has to either observe or experience that to which they are witnessing, and that’s where the word gets loaded.  For people of a certain age and upbringing, the word witness means standing up and talking about Jesus.  I grew up in terror of that kind of witness. If you have not experienced something, you cannot witness to it.  It’s October, though, and there are some Springwater people who have a witness.  Not as in telling people about Jesus, but as in talking about their experiences.  In particular, I’m asking people in the next couple weeks to talk about some activity or pursuit or portion of their work life that expresses their faith, because it expresses who they are, in the context of God, who God thinks they are.    
         Our first witness is Mary Kirby.  Last year, when our congregation hosted the family living in a truck in back of our parking lot, Mary (and Kevin and their family) was the immediate face of Springwater hospitality to our guests. 
         Mary, can you describe the type of hospitality, the kinds of things, you and Kevin (and the kids) offered Ken and Linda?  [Mary’s answer]  You knew these folks were homeless, that their histories were complicated, and yet you invited them into your home.  How was that experience for you?  [Mary’s answer]  What do you think you learned or gained from the experience?  [Mary’s answer]
Homelessness, as you know, is a huge problem in America.  Our own Lynne Deshler is part of Clackamas County’s homelessness initiative to address the problem.  I just read Nickel and Dimed:  On (Not) Getting By in America, a book which shed light on some causes of homelessness.  The book is based on the experiences of author Barbara Ehrenreich, as she attempted to live on minimum wage jobs in three different American cities.  Ehrenreich concludes that food is a challenge, but the cost of housing makes it impossible to live on minimum wage.  She started each of her 30-day minimum-wage adventures with advantages most poor people do not have—she had a car, she had $600 in “seed money” to tide her over in a new community until she got work, and she had a safe place to return to at the end of her 30-day experiment.  Without the first and last months of rent—which she could not hope to save from her minimum wage jobs, even with $600 starter funds, even working two jobs—Ehrenreich could not rent even the most meager apartment.  She sublet illegally or lived in motels by the week.  The cost of a week in a substandard and unsafe motel was always more than a month in a relatively safe apartment, but she couldn’t get ahead enough to rent anything else.  Her conclusion was that it is not possible to “get by” in America.
             Bev Crow’s challenge to us, as we bid her farewell as our sabbatical interim pastor, was that we consider our mission “beyond the red tub.”  That’s a daunting task.  Generous as Springwater is, we cannot save the world.  Saving the world is beyond the scope of our call.  Do not cast covetous eyes on someone else’s call.  What we are called to do, however, is simply and only, the best we can with what we’ve got, where we’re at.  What we do depends on our integrity (how well we know ourselves) and how willing we are to be authentic.