Never Alone (Sermon May 17)

Scriptures:  Acts 1:1-11                       Ephesians 1:15-23

        I John 5:9-13                   John 17:6-19

When I was at Penn State in the early ‘80’s – the early 1980’s, not the early 1880’s – I was active at Faith United Church of Christ, a UCC congregation located along College Avenue, one of the two main drags through State College, the other being Beaver Avenue.  Faith UCC had and still has a strong ministry to Penn State college students – in those days they had a seminary intern who handled most of the ministry to the college kids, in addition to a pastor who had a heart for ministry to that age group, and I’d been intensely involved at Faith Church for the four years I was at Penn State.  Over the course of four years, I’d watched as the students ahead of me who were active at Faith Church prepared for graduation and went off into the dreaded real world, away from the bubble world of State College, otherwise known as Happy Valley.

Each summer, the church would put together a picnic for the college students, who would return to Faith Church for that one summer Sunday, for worship and a picnic afterward.  Thirty-plus years later, I still remember the odd mix of feelings I had at the picnic the summer after graduation.  A surprising number of folks, some who had graduated and some who still had a few more years ahead of them at Penn State, converged on State College that summer, we worshipped together at Faith Church, as we had so often for the past several years, and after church we went to a state park with a picnic area.  Pastor Meckstroth from Faith Church was there, as was Dan Dupee, the seminarian who had ministered to us for the past two years.  There were lots of familiar faces, and yet to me it felt very different from picnics of previous years.  In previous years, I and those who were in my graduating class could enjoy catching up and leave at the end of the day, knowing that we’d be seeing one another again in September.  But this time, we had already graduated, and so this picnic was essentially goodbye for those in my class – no longer would we be returning in September to class registrations and textbooks and number two pencils.  It really was the end of our time in Happy Valley.  The few weeks since graduation had already changed those of us who had graduated, and changed the conversations we had with one another - as those who had graduated were moving on with their lives, so was I.   It was the early ‘80’s, and the economy was in the toilet; by the time of the picnic a few of us from the Penn State Class of ’83 had already found jobs; many others hadn’t.  Some had set wedding dates; others hadn’t.  And so this picnic was an in-between time, a transitional moment, in a way confirming that one chapter of our lives had indeed ended and the next chapter had only just begun.  There was familiarity, but also distance and strangeness, even awkwardness, as we said a kind of final farewell not only to one another, but to the church and college ministry that had been such an anchor to us in our time at Penn State.

I say all that, not to treat us to a stroll down my weird version of memory lane, but to try to provide some sense of the emotions that may have been present at the moments captured in our readings, which represent in-between times.  In our reading from John’s gospel, in the preceding chapters, in what scholars call Jesus’ farewell discourse, Jesus had been giving his disciples his final instructions, final marching orders, in preparation for his upcoming arrest, trial, and crucifixion, and in today’s reading prays for them in what scholars call Jesus’ high priestly prayer.   And in our reading from Acts, of course, Jesus is saying farewell to his disciples before his return to the Father, what we call the Ascension.  Both of these are in-between moments, transitional moments, or to use another word, liminal moments, hinges on doors of the spirit that mark the threshold from one way of being to another.

I’d like you to remember the feelings of strangeness and awkwardness of that last after-graduation picnic I described in considering the account in Acts of the conversation between Jesus and the disciples just before his Ascension, his return to the Father.  In the Acts account, the awkwardness comes, in part, because of the contrast between the disciples’ vision of their future and Jesus’ vision of the disciples’ future.  The disciples ask Jesus, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”  We remember, of course, that at the time Jerusalem was under Roman occupation, and before Rome had been occupied by Greece, Persia, Babylon.  The disciples could hardly be blamed for figuring that if Jesus could overcome death itself, surely he could overcome Caesar in Rome and all the puppets Caesar had set up locally – Herod, Pontius Pilate, and so on.  Perhaps this would even be the time when the vision of Isaiah would be realized, when nations would come from the north and south and east and west to ascend the mountain of the Lord and bring blessings to God’s people in Jerusalem.

Jesus shuts that conversation down right quick:  “It is not for you to know the times and seasons that the Father has set by his own authority.”  In other words, MYOB – mind your own business.  But then Jesus gives them something else to occupy their minds: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”  And then as Jesus ascends, he is essentially lifted out of the picture; in the words of the creed, Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father, from whence he will come to judge the living and the dead.  And this is why many of our hymns today have a kind of coronation feel to them; using traditional language, having completed his task on earth, Jesus resumes his throne in heaven and reigns in power.  But the disciples don’t know all that; all they know is that they are standing there staring up in the air with their mouths hanging open, both at the absence of Jesus and at the task he has given them to carry out in his absence.  And then an angel comes to tell them to stop staring in the air with their mouths hanging open, and here endeth that reading.  Essentially this moment represents the handoff of ministry from Jesus to the disciples.  The students were about to become the teachers; the ministered-to were about to become ministers, the small flock that Jesus had tended would soon be shepherding flocks in their own right, under the guidance of the Spirit.  I’ll mention, as an aside, that the symbol of the United Church of Christ, the crown, cross, and globe divided into three sections, is a symbolic representation of this moment – the Lordship of Christ over the whole world, and the three sections of the globe representing Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and the ends of the earth.

Anyway…..It is for this handoff of ministry that Jesus is preparing his disciples in our reading from John’s Gospel.  The setting is the Last Supper.  Jesus knows that he is about to leave them – and, from their point of view, leave them behind.  And again, Jesus’ presence has a strangeness to it, sort of a there-but-not-there feel to it, as even before the arrest and crucifixion, Jesus says things like” I glorified you on earth” – past tense, action already fully completed, and this is before the crucifixion, remember – “by finishing the work that you gave me to do….And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you…..while I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me….But now I am coming to you.”  Even though Jesus is still seated at table with them, it seems like in one sense Jesus’ time on earth is already behind him, like he already has one foot out the door.  And yet he loves his disciples, and prays for them.

Jesus knows that, as the authorities – Jewish and Roman – by and large hated Jesus, opposed his message, and were about to arrest and crucify them, they would do the same to his disciples.  And so he prays for his disciples, that the Father would protect them, and that they would all be one.  And goes on to pray the same for all of us - that God would protect us, and that we would all be one -  again, as a aside, this is the motto of the United Church of Christ – “that they all may be one”.

As we’ve seen these past few weeks, in John’s gospel, there’s a lot of difficult language about “the world” – the Greek word is “kosmos” – language about the world hating Jesus, about the world hating the disciples, about being in the world but not of the world, even Jesus saying he’s not praying for the world, but for those God had given him out of the world.  Earlier in the prayer in verse 4, Jesus said, “I glorified you on earth…” – there’s a different Greek word for that, gyn, and Jesus isn’t speaking of hostility toward the earth, toward the planet itself…this isn’t some sort of gnostic, spirit is good/matter is bad thing.  And the famous verse that begins “God so loved the world” – uses the Greek word kosmos.  So John uses the word kosmos in several different ways, but in today’s reading, in which the kosmos hates Jesus and his disciples, he’s talking about the world’s domination system, the forces of Empire – Roman empire or that of any empire before or after, right up to the present day – which is governed by domination, oppression,  violence, death, as contrasted to the reign of God described by Jesus, which operates on the basis of self-giving love.  The forces of empire, the domination system, the kosmos has one way of doing things – domination, oppression, violence, death - and the reign of God has an entirely different way of doing things – love and life - and the two are utterly opposed, utterly incompatible.  And so Jesus is not only praying that the disciples will be protected from violence from the system, but Jesus is also praying that they won’t be co-opted by the system or buy into it.  And that is part of the reason for Jesus’ prayer for unity – if we’re united in serving the reign of God, we will be less likely to defect to serving the Domination system of Empire.  Of course, the church has a record that’s mixed at best – while the early church held up under persecution fairly well for the first 300 years, the adoption of Christianity by the Roman Emperor Constantine not only ended persecution against Christians – which is good – but co-opted them into serving the Roman empire – which has corrupted the church from that time to the present day, as through the centuries the church has blessed and baptized the corruption and violence of the wealthy and powerful to this day as “God’s will”.  What Roman persecution couldn’t accomplish, Roman co-optation did, to the church’s lasting discredit.

 

And yet….and yet….. Jesus prayed for his disciples, and prayed for us – and the answer to that prayer is still working itself out.  In today’s readings, the disciples are at an in-between place, a liminal space, on the threshold between one space and another, between the time of walking with Jesus and the time of being guided by the Spirit.  Next week is Pentecost, when we’ll celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit, which transformed Jesus’ often-bumbling disciples into women and men who turned the world upside down in Jesus’ name. 

We, too, are in an in-between place.  We live between the “already” of the beginnings of the reign of God and the “not yet” of still living as broken people in a broken world.  It’s a strange and awkward place to be, not unlke the strangeness and awkwardness of that last picnic with my classmates in State College, as we’re caught between the ways of Empire and the ways of the  Spirit, and often find ourselves attempting the impossible task of living in both worlds. 

The good news is that we are not in this in-between place alone.  Indeed, we are never alone.  When Jesus walked the earth, he could only be in one place at one time; if Jesus was in Galilee, that meant he wasn’t in Jerusalem, and vice-versa.  But with the coming of the Spirit, Jesus is with all of us and in all of us wherever we go.  The coming of Jesus and the sending of the Holy Spirit are God’s ultimate solidarity with each of us, and with us as the church, and with humankind and all of creation.  Jesus ascended, but the Spirit descended.  When we are undergoing life transitions – starting or ending a job, starting or ending a relationship, leaving home for the first time or starting a home with a spouse or partner – we are not alone.  When a baby is born, and we’ve brought new life into the world, we are not alone.  When loved ones pass, and when we ourselves are on our deathbeds, we are not alone.  From cradle to grave, and at every point in-between, we are not alone.  We are not alone.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Connected (Sermon May 24)

Scriptures:  Ezekiel 37:1-14, Acts 2:1-21, Romans 8:22-27,

John 15:26-27, 16:1-15

“The foot bone connected to the ankle bone / the ankle bone connected to the leg bone…..”

No, I’m not going to sing that song again – you’re welcome - though it may crop up from time to time during the sermon.  Today is Pentecost, one of the key festivals of the church.  On Pentecost, the church celebrates the coming of the Holy Spirit on the early believers, as described in the book of Acts.  However, Pentecost is derived from the Greek term for the Jewish festival Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks.  While Shavuot has ties to the harvest, it is also celebrated to commemorate the giving of the Law to Moses on Mt. Sinai.  For Christians, we could say, what the law is to those of the Jewish faith, the Spirit is to Christians – God’s presence among us to guide and empower us. 

And there really are strong parallels – those who have gone to a synagogue service on Shabbat may remember that when the scroll of the law is brought out, it’s passed around among the congregation, and congregants kiss it and dance with it…from the time the scroll is taken out of the ark until it is returned to the ark, it is treated like a beloved, dearly-missed friend, with great joy when brought forth and a tinge of real sadness when returned to the ark.  And, of course, when the Holy Spirit was let out of the box, so to speak, its arrival among the earliest Christians came with the rush of a mighty wind, and with divided tongues of flame appearing on the heads of the believers – and with the ability to speak and hear in other tongues, with mutual understanding.

 “The leg bone connected to the knee bone/the knee bone connected to the thigh bone….”

Beyond the light and sound show spectacle described in Acts is the phenomenon of Jewish believers from all those countries – “Parthians, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia…” and so forth – being together in one place, in Jerusalem.   The listing of countries in Acts basically represents all the countries in the known world of the day, and maybe even one or two countries from the past that no longer existed as such.  All of the races and tongues in the world were in the house that day, we’re told.  And with the coming of the Holy Spirit, these people of many different races and languages could hear the apostles, all from Galilee, proclaiming the Good News of Jesus in their own language.   It’s easy for us in our day to miss the full meaning of the phrase “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans.”  Yes, it was a geographical reference to people from Galilee, but since the geographical area in question was a rural area some 90 or so miles north of Jerusalem, most of whose residents were uneducated and illiterate, the question also has the sense of saying “How can these country bumpkins, these hicks, these hayseeds -– how can we be hearing these refugees from the show Hee Haw preaching the gospel to us in our own languages?”

“The thigh bone connected to the hip bone / the hip bone connected to the spine bone…..”

One of the roles of the Holy Spirit is to bring the church together and to hold the church together, to connect us to the church and keep us connected.  On the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit undoes the disconnection created at the Tower of Babel, when we’re told that God confused the languages of those building the tower.  On that day, in order to stop willful humankind in its tracks, God brought disconnection.  On the day of Pentecost, God brought new connection to humankind through the presence and work of the Holy Spirit.  The vision of Ezekiel in the valley of the dry bones gives us a sense of what this looks like – dry, separated bones brought together, connected with sinews, covered with skin, and animated with breath.  For Ezekiel, this vision represented the renewal of the people of Israel, whom Ezekiel viewed as being as lifeless as a pile of dry, separated bones, brought back to life by the Spirit.  For us as Christians, the work of the Spirit in the church looks very much the same, bringing our individual, disconnected lives together into the body of Christ, Jesus being the head, and breathing life into us so that we can love and serve God and neighbor.  Those connections are local – and I love seeing members of Emanuel helping and supporting one another, love seeing comments back and forth on FB from members of our congregation.  And those connections are global – we are connected to fellow believers all over the world, as, for example, through our UCC Global Ministries, we are connected to Rama, the four-year-old Palestinian girl at the Rawdat al Zahur school in East Jerusalem, a Global Ministries partner.  Before, we may not have paid much attention to the unrest in Israel/Palestine, but through our church, we’re connected to a four-year-old girl who lives in the middle of all that turmoil.  We’re also connected to rescue workers in Nepal, and to churches trying to bring real and lasting peace to divided communities across the country and around the globe.  And I don’t mean this just as a plug for our denomination’s global ministries; as members of the body of Christ our lives are connected to the lives of other Christians around the globe, regardless of religions denomination or nationality or race or gender or any other identifier.  And as members of the body, we are to love and serve our neighbor, regardless of faith tradition or lack thereof.

“The spine bone connected to the neck bone/the neck bone connected to the head bone.”

The Holy Spirit keeps us connected to one another because the Holy Spirit is God’s connection to us.  Jesus said that when he departed, he would send the Holy Spirit, which he named with the Greek word “Parakletos” – paraclete.  This is a Greek word for advocate, like an attorney.  Jesus tells us that the message from the Holy Spirit will be the same as the message Jesus brought, and that both come from God the Father.

Jesus uses some language that may have been clear to his disciples – certainly to the writer of John’s gospel – but obscure to us.  According to John’s gospel, Jesus said, “And when he” – that is, the Holy Spirit – “comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because they do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; about judgment, because the ruler of the world has been condemned.”  So I’d like to unpack this a little.  Jesus came into the world, teaching and healing and speaking about the reign of God.  Jesus came into the world as the perfect expression of God’s infinite love – and the powers that be in the world killed him.   And his death came, not just as an act of random street crime or such perpetrated by those at the bottom of society, but as the officially sanctioned verdict of the Temple religious leadership and the leaders of the Roman government, the most advanced civilization of its day – and this leadership is what Jesus is pointing at under the heading of “the world” or using the Greek word, “kosmos”.  The best God could offer – Godself, coming in perfect love and ultimate humility – was killed by the best that humanity, acting apart from God, could offer.  Jesus is saying that in so doing, the Temple leadership and the Roman leadership is bringing judgment and condemnation, not on Jesus, but on itself.   And so the Holy Spirit will prove the world –about sin, because they looked at the divine, life-giving love of Jesus and treated it as sin worthy of death, of righteousness, because they thought that in killing Jesus, they were doing God’s will, thus showing how far they themselves were from God’s will – as it was Jesus who would be going to the Father, not them – and of judgment, because in condemning Jesus, they condemned themselves.  The sense is that the world’s judgment backfired, condemning itself rather than Jesus. 

This is a hard teaching, but it reminds us of the role of the Holy Spirit in helping us discern what in our culture is of God, and what isn’t – because, just like the Roman culture in Jesus’ day, much that our culture – our political leadership, our media, even our popular religion, as expressed by the televangelists – is diametrically opposed to what Jesus did and taught, is not just mistaken, not just off-base, but is utterly and blasphemously sinful, and much that our culture despises is evidence of the working of the Spirit.   God still works through men and women of God who of course are not perfect, but reflect God’s love in the midst of their brokenness, and the world still kills these men and women – and today is the 35^th anniversary of the assassination of Archbishop of El Salvador Oscar Romero, who was gunned down saying mass –he had just raised the bread and said the words “This is my body” when the bullets rang out – gunned down by representatives of a military dictatorship – a military dictatorship supported and even trained by our own US government at the School of the Americas by the way - for the crime of advocating for the poor of El Salvador – and that’s just one of countless modern day examples. And, of course, Archbishop Romero has just been beatified.  Our culture has us looking at reality as if in a funhouse mirror, calling evil good and good evil, inflating the value of things that are meaningless and shrinking the value of things that are eternal.  And it is the work of the Holy Spirit to correct our vision, to give us a God’s-eye view of reality.  And, Jesus warned his disciples, and warns us, when we live according to the vision of the Spirit and the values of the Gospel, we will be opposed. I’m talking about the reality of sharing God’s love in concrete ways with the poor and sick and possessed, as Jesus did, really getting down in the trenches as Jesus did with the poor and dispossessed to empower them, in ways that threaten our society’s myth of prosperity.  And when we threaten society’s myths, society will threaten us, as Archbishop Romero threatened the myths of the El Salvador government of his day, and was killed by them – and yet his example lives on, and was just lifted up by the church.

So why do it?  Why bother?  Why not just go with the flow?  Because living according to the Spirit is like being on fire – remember those tongues of flame on the heads of those gathered at Pentecost.  Living by the Spirit not only clarifies our minds, but empowers us at the core of our being, giving us energy to do things we never thought possible, bringing out qualities of endurance and generosity and compassion within us we never knew were there. Living in the Spirit is not just about going to heaven – about pie in the sky when we die, though there is that, and I’d like mine a la mode.  But living in the Spirit is being on fire for God now, today, this moment, and every moment thereafter.   As St. Catherine of Siena said, and as Dorothy Day reminded her followers, “All the way to heaven is heaven, because Jesus said, ‘I am the way.’” And yes, sometimes our bodies can’t keep up, and yes, we’ll still get tired and cranky now and then….for me, this whole weekend has been a struggle between my Spirit saying “yes” and my body saying “no more”….but the Spirit gives resources, prayer, Scripture, the fellowship of believers – to revive us.

“Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones hear the word of the Lord”.  May we at Emanuel Church also hear the word of the Lord, that we may be connected with the sinews of being in relationship with our sisters and brothers in Christ, covered with skins to protect us from evil, and filled with the Spirit of the Lord, empowered to live lives on fire with love for God and neighbor.  Amen.