Abiding in California
M11
Acts 8:26-40
Ps. 22:24-30
1 Jn. 4:7-21
Jn. 15:1-8
“Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15).
Between heaven and earth suspended on updrafts above the redwood forests and just below the chaparral of Mount Tamalpais hovers a red-tailed hawk. This keen-eyed hunter seems oblivious to this magnificent setting, to the skyscrapers of the financial district and the massive tanker slipping out through the Golden Gate past Seal Rock and Ocean Beach. Great bridges and cities seem so insignificant in comparison to Mount Diablo, the expansive Bay, the ancient forests of the Santa Cruz Mountains and the infinite Pacific Ocean.
On Friday night we celebrated a friend’s sixty-fifth birthday at the West Point Inn on Mt. Tam, accessible only by a two-mile hike, seventeen hundred feet above sea level. The huge city, the fourth largest metropolitan area in the country, seems so quiet up there (where the wingspan of a swallow at sunset seems larger than Sutro Tower in the distance). I sat there on the porch of that historic building and gave thanks to God that we live here together. I tried to understand what it means to make this place my home, what it means to abide here.
Abide is a thoroughly archaic word, eight of seventeen uses in the Oxford English Dictionary are obsolete. We never use it. We don’t say that people abide together before marriage. We don’t ask new acquaintances where they abide. I suspect that Christianity is the only thing keeping this word alive. Abiding represents a central idea in the gospel of John from the first chapter when John the Baptist’s disciples ask Jesus where he abides (Jn. 1:38) to the last supper when Jesus tells his own disciples to abide in his love. Jesus promises quite simply, “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you” (Jn. 15). What does it mean to abide in Christ?
Understanding what it means to be a Californian helps us to see the challenges that we face as we try to abide in Christ. I want to begin by thinking about three elements of abiding in California.
1. Fiction. I hope that by this time all of you recognize that California is more than a place. Even if you don’t claim it, it is part of your identity. Even if you don’t recognize it, its stories are yours. Its stories are you.
From the beginning California was a fictional place. In 1510 the Spanish writer Garci Ordonez de Montalvo wrote a bestselling novel (Las Sergas de Esplandian) about the siege of Constantinople. There at the battle was a race of Amazons under the command of Queen Calafia. They were from a place he invented. It was located “on the right hand of the Indies… very close to the Terrestrial Paradise. It was rich in gold and gems. He called it California.
The dominant stories of California share in common a hope for surprising and unexpected success. The fictional wealth of El Dorado motivated the Spanish explorers who discovered California. Gold rush dreams led to a population explosion and sudden statehood. The entrepreneurial story of changing the world and accumulating wealth and power along the way still exercises a powerful claim on our imagination. I don’t know how many, but this week more people moved here to become a star.
2. Conflict. California is not just a fiction. It is not just a dream or a hope. It is also a shared history of conflict. Some scholars have suggested that one third of all Native Americans in the continental United States lived in California before European contact. This population was almost completely wiped out in a way that highlights the difference between how the mission system operated in Mexico and here.
By the 1920’s there were more Latinos living in Los Angeles than any other American city. Millions of these Americans with their American born children were forcibly repatriated to Mexico during the 1930’s by a program which historians rightly call ethnic cleansing. The persecution of Japanese Americans didn’t begin during World War II when 110,000 of them who were locked up behind barbed wire in remote relocation camps (227). In the early years of the twentieth century the White California movement, which included the most powerful politicians and business leaders in the state, worked to segregate public schools and to prevent Japanese from even owning land (223).
Our history includes vigilante terror campaigns against non-white populations. It consists of large landowners in combination with law enforcement officials brutalizing the laborers and farm workers who were essential to California’s prosperity. Racism, exploitation and conflict are part of who we are as we abide in this place.
3. Technology. Our orientation to science and technology also sets us apart. By the mid 1920’s fifty thousand commuters were passing through the San Francisco Ferry Building each day making it the busiest terminal in the world except for Charing Cross station in London (186). This need combined with technology and boldness led to the construction of a trestle bridge at Dumbarton point and then to the Bay and Golden Gate Bridges. During the same period one third of all the country’s air traffic was operating out of fifty landing fields in greater Los Angeles (255). In many respects California inventors and companies made the airplane a California technology. Indeed, we are not the first generation here to depend for our livelihoods, recreation and for that matter our water on the most advanced technologies of our day. We forget that the transcontinental railroad was an engineering miracle.
These technologies build on each other. The Pelton Turbine made hydraulic gold mining possible and washed away whole mountain slopes in the Sierra’s. This same technology vastly increased the production of hydroelectricity. This in turn made it cost effective to work with aircraft aluminum in Southern California. Pioneering work on vacuum tubes was done here in the 1920’s. In the 1930’s California led the world in atom-smashing. Then in the 1950’s it was semiconductors. This led to a leading role in the personal computer revolution and now the Internet. California is modern, always influenced by ever-receding dreams of becoming a technological utopia.
We abide here. Different regions in California place a different emphasis on these three elements but the shared fictions, our history of conflict and orientation toward technology define us as a people.
Jesus is right. If we only abided in California we would be lost. I suspect that we already know this. We are just as acquainted with the California nightmare as with the California dream. I believe that abiding in Jesus fundamentally changes our experience of the fiction, the conflict and technology. Because of him we can have lasting hope. The promise that we receive at our baptism is that California can never completely own us because we belong to our God.
Jesus describes this relationship by using the image of the grape vine. His primary point is that without our connection to God we cannot accomplish anything. Our success will always arise out of our relationship to God through the church. Secondly he says that the defining feature of our connection to God is the productivity of our lives. “By their fruits ye shall know them.” We are defined as Christians by our connection to Jesus through the church and by the fruits of our lives, not by what we believe as individuals.
An image of this that sustains me is the altar guild. No one here at Christ Church serves on the altar guild in order to be famous or rich. Each of these women spends a lot of time with Jesus and each other. They attend to the most meticulous details of our worship services together. They spend hundreds of hours each year dedicated to God’s glory making this church beautiful. When I was a child, my mother served on the altar guild and I would go with her to set up the weekday service. In the quiet of that silent church in the presence of those dedicated women, I felt the presence of God.
I have hinted at this. It is hard for us as Californians to understand abiding because it means really settling down, being present through thick and thin. The women of Christ Church’s altar guild have done this. But others of you know what it is like too. Those of you who really abide with your spouse realize that loving does not mean maintaining a certain mood. Contrary to what you see on TV, love is primarily a gift and a task, only secondarily is it a feeling.
In conclusion, our story of hope differs from that of other Californians. We do not put our trust in a twenty-first century Gold Rush. We are not first of all entrepreneurs or aspiring stars. Instead we believe that Jesus invites us into a community that will change the world and he gives us the power to do this. As Christian Californians we recognize our share in the history of conflict that surrounds and penetrates us while having faith that God can make us agents of reconciliation. We understand that technology is a kind of power but also that God is love and it is love that makes us whole.
I want to leave you with one final picture of what it means to abide in Christ. Last week I visited with a friend for what is likely to be the last time. Brian Thompson has accomplished a great deal in his life. I think he owned a bus company. Growing up he loved trains and as an adult he collected them. In fact all of you have seen these vehicles in Hollywood movies. This interest along with his unmatched passion for California history led him to start the railroad museum in Sacramento.
But above all Brian abides in Christ. These days his wife has Alzheimer’s disease and he is dying of cancer. He amazes the doctors not just by surviving beyond any of their expectations, but by living. Brian continues to live joyfully as a Christian fully connected to the body of Christ and because of this he I see him bearing fruit to the very end. As our last conversation wore down he said, “Malcolm you’ve got to tell them this. You never realize the depth of your faith until the chips are down.”
Brian’s confidence shows me the gift of the spirit. I still see him in my imagination, like the hawk flying over the ridges of Tamalpais, Brian is surrounded by beauty somewhere between California and heaven.
_____________________
Kevin Starr, California: A History (NY: Modern Library, 2005), 5. Page numbers in text refer to this book.
If I chose a fourth element that is essential to our identity as Californians it would be our orientation to our natural environment. This physical setting has a huge influence on how we see ourselves.
Acts 8:26-40
Ps. 22:24-30
1 Jn. 4:7-21
Jn. 15:1-8
“Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15).
Between heaven and earth suspended on updrafts above the redwood forests and just below the chaparral of Mount Tamalpais hovers a red-tailed hawk. This keen-eyed hunter seems oblivious to this magnificent setting, to the skyscrapers of the financial district and the massive tanker slipping out through the Golden Gate past Seal Rock and Ocean Beach. Great bridges and cities seem so insignificant in comparison to Mount Diablo, the expansive Bay, the ancient forests of the Santa Cruz Mountains and the infinite Pacific Ocean.
On Friday night we celebrated a friend’s sixty-fifth birthday at the West Point Inn on Mt. Tam, accessible only by a two-mile hike, seventeen hundred feet above sea level. The huge city, the fourth largest metropolitan area in the country, seems so quiet up there (where the wingspan of a swallow at sunset seems larger than Sutro Tower in the distance). I sat there on the porch of that historic building and gave thanks to God that we live here together. I tried to understand what it means to make this place my home, what it means to abide here.
Abide is a thoroughly archaic word, eight of seventeen uses in the Oxford English Dictionary are obsolete. We never use it. We don’t say that people abide together before marriage. We don’t ask new acquaintances where they abide. I suspect that Christianity is the only thing keeping this word alive. Abiding represents a central idea in the gospel of John from the first chapter when John the Baptist’s disciples ask Jesus where he abides (Jn. 1:38) to the last supper when Jesus tells his own disciples to abide in his love. Jesus promises quite simply, “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you” (Jn. 15). What does it mean to abide in Christ?
Understanding what it means to be a Californian helps us to see the challenges that we face as we try to abide in Christ. I want to begin by thinking about three elements of abiding in California.
1. Fiction. I hope that by this time all of you recognize that California is more than a place. Even if you don’t claim it, it is part of your identity. Even if you don’t recognize it, its stories are yours. Its stories are you.
From the beginning California was a fictional place. In 1510 the Spanish writer Garci Ordonez de Montalvo wrote a bestselling novel (Las Sergas de Esplandian) about the siege of Constantinople. There at the battle was a race of Amazons under the command of Queen Calafia. They were from a place he invented. It was located “on the right hand of the Indies… very close to the Terrestrial Paradise. It was rich in gold and gems. He called it California.
The dominant stories of California share in common a hope for surprising and unexpected success. The fictional wealth of El Dorado motivated the Spanish explorers who discovered California. Gold rush dreams led to a population explosion and sudden statehood. The entrepreneurial story of changing the world and accumulating wealth and power along the way still exercises a powerful claim on our imagination. I don’t know how many, but this week more people moved here to become a star.
2. Conflict. California is not just a fiction. It is not just a dream or a hope. It is also a shared history of conflict. Some scholars have suggested that one third of all Native Americans in the continental United States lived in California before European contact. This population was almost completely wiped out in a way that highlights the difference between how the mission system operated in Mexico and here.
By the 1920’s there were more Latinos living in Los Angeles than any other American city. Millions of these Americans with their American born children were forcibly repatriated to Mexico during the 1930’s by a program which historians rightly call ethnic cleansing. The persecution of Japanese Americans didn’t begin during World War II when 110,000 of them who were locked up behind barbed wire in remote relocation camps (227). In the early years of the twentieth century the White California movement, which included the most powerful politicians and business leaders in the state, worked to segregate public schools and to prevent Japanese from even owning land (223).
Our history includes vigilante terror campaigns against non-white populations. It consists of large landowners in combination with law enforcement officials brutalizing the laborers and farm workers who were essential to California’s prosperity. Racism, exploitation and conflict are part of who we are as we abide in this place.
3. Technology. Our orientation to science and technology also sets us apart. By the mid 1920’s fifty thousand commuters were passing through the San Francisco Ferry Building each day making it the busiest terminal in the world except for Charing Cross station in London (186). This need combined with technology and boldness led to the construction of a trestle bridge at Dumbarton point and then to the Bay and Golden Gate Bridges. During the same period one third of all the country’s air traffic was operating out of fifty landing fields in greater Los Angeles (255). In many respects California inventors and companies made the airplane a California technology. Indeed, we are not the first generation here to depend for our livelihoods, recreation and for that matter our water on the most advanced technologies of our day. We forget that the transcontinental railroad was an engineering miracle.
These technologies build on each other. The Pelton Turbine made hydraulic gold mining possible and washed away whole mountain slopes in the Sierra’s. This same technology vastly increased the production of hydroelectricity. This in turn made it cost effective to work with aircraft aluminum in Southern California. Pioneering work on vacuum tubes was done here in the 1920’s. In the 1930’s California led the world in atom-smashing. Then in the 1950’s it was semiconductors. This led to a leading role in the personal computer revolution and now the Internet. California is modern, always influenced by ever-receding dreams of becoming a technological utopia.
We abide here. Different regions in California place a different emphasis on these three elements but the shared fictions, our history of conflict and orientation toward technology define us as a people.
Jesus is right. If we only abided in California we would be lost. I suspect that we already know this. We are just as acquainted with the California nightmare as with the California dream. I believe that abiding in Jesus fundamentally changes our experience of the fiction, the conflict and technology. Because of him we can have lasting hope. The promise that we receive at our baptism is that California can never completely own us because we belong to our God.
Jesus describes this relationship by using the image of the grape vine. His primary point is that without our connection to God we cannot accomplish anything. Our success will always arise out of our relationship to God through the church. Secondly he says that the defining feature of our connection to God is the productivity of our lives. “By their fruits ye shall know them.” We are defined as Christians by our connection to Jesus through the church and by the fruits of our lives, not by what we believe as individuals.
An image of this that sustains me is the altar guild. No one here at Christ Church serves on the altar guild in order to be famous or rich. Each of these women spends a lot of time with Jesus and each other. They attend to the most meticulous details of our worship services together. They spend hundreds of hours each year dedicated to God’s glory making this church beautiful. When I was a child, my mother served on the altar guild and I would go with her to set up the weekday service. In the quiet of that silent church in the presence of those dedicated women, I felt the presence of God.
I have hinted at this. It is hard for us as Californians to understand abiding because it means really settling down, being present through thick and thin. The women of Christ Church’s altar guild have done this. But others of you know what it is like too. Those of you who really abide with your spouse realize that loving does not mean maintaining a certain mood. Contrary to what you see on TV, love is primarily a gift and a task, only secondarily is it a feeling.
In conclusion, our story of hope differs from that of other Californians. We do not put our trust in a twenty-first century Gold Rush. We are not first of all entrepreneurs or aspiring stars. Instead we believe that Jesus invites us into a community that will change the world and he gives us the power to do this. As Christian Californians we recognize our share in the history of conflict that surrounds and penetrates us while having faith that God can make us agents of reconciliation. We understand that technology is a kind of power but also that God is love and it is love that makes us whole.
I want to leave you with one final picture of what it means to abide in Christ. Last week I visited with a friend for what is likely to be the last time. Brian Thompson has accomplished a great deal in his life. I think he owned a bus company. Growing up he loved trains and as an adult he collected them. In fact all of you have seen these vehicles in Hollywood movies. This interest along with his unmatched passion for California history led him to start the railroad museum in Sacramento.
But above all Brian abides in Christ. These days his wife has Alzheimer’s disease and he is dying of cancer. He amazes the doctors not just by surviving beyond any of their expectations, but by living. Brian continues to live joyfully as a Christian fully connected to the body of Christ and because of this he I see him bearing fruit to the very end. As our last conversation wore down he said, “Malcolm you’ve got to tell them this. You never realize the depth of your faith until the chips are down.”
Brian’s confidence shows me the gift of the spirit. I still see him in my imagination, like the hawk flying over the ridges of Tamalpais, Brian is surrounded by beauty somewhere between California and heaven.
_____________________
Kevin Starr, California: A History (NY: Modern Library, 2005), 5. Page numbers in text refer to this book.
If I chose a fourth element that is essential to our identity as Californians it would be our orientation to our natural environment. This physical setting has a huge influence on how we see ourselves.
posted by Unknown at 2:30 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home