(Scriptures: Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31 Psalm 8
Romans 5:1-5 John 16:12-15)
The social networking site Facebook has been in the news recently. This website, which enables contacts from long-lost high school classmates, former supervisors and co-workers, and other people from your past whom, if you’re like me, you’d be just as happy to leave in the past, has gotten a lot of flak because of awkward and just plain faulty controls over private information. Those using Facebook and similar social networking sites have the opportunity to enter lots of personal pictures and data or no pictures and very little data, depending on how comfortable one is in hanging one’s private life out on the internet. One of the items to which users can respond is “relationship status.” For those so inclined, one can answer “married,” “in a relationship,” or “single.” There’s also a box for those whose personal life doesn’t fit into one of these tidy boxes. Those in this daunting situation can check off a relationship status box labeled, “it’s complicated.”
Which brings us to Trinity Sunday, celebrated today and other years on the Sunday after Pentecost, when we lift up our belief of one God in three persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This Sunday takes place on the Sunday immediately after Pentecost, when, after Jesus’ ascension to the Father, the Holy Spirit came down to empower the church its mission of proclaiming the good news.
It’s important to note that the word “Trinity” is found nowhere in Scripture. The concept of the Trinity was hammered out by the early church fathers between the years 300 and 400 of the Christian era, notably in the Nicene Creed in 325 AD, in opposition to conflicting beliefs, eventually labeled heresies, such as Arianism, which said the Christ, the Son, was created by God and therefore did not exist from the beginning of time. So, today we deal with church doctrine. For believers, doctrine functions somewhat as a map functions for a traveler. On one hand, a map is a diagram which brings together the observations of many explorers, and will give a traveler the lay of the land, so they don’t get lost. In the same way, church doctrine does not just fall out of the sky, but brings together the observations and testimonies of great Christians from centuries past. On the other hand, seeing a map of a foreign country is very different from actually going there. And so the doctrine of the Trinity is saying something about who God is and how God acts – but, as in my earlier example, having some comprehension of the doctrine of the Trinity is not necessarily the same thing as having a saving faith in the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The Trinity is a doctrine – perhaps the doctrine – which distinguishes Christians from Jews and Muslims. The Quran, in several places, while affirming Jesus as a prophet, denies the divinity of both Jesus and Mary – the Quran seems to see the Christians of its time holding forth Mary, not the Holy Spirit, as the third person of the Trinity. In New England and elsewhere, Unitarians parted company from Trinitarian Congregationalists on the doctrine of the trinity – while Unitarians affirm one God, they did not recognize three persons. And between the years 1000 and 1100, the Eastern and Western branches of the church split on whether the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father alone, or from the Father and the Son. In a sense, you could say that all these theological differences are like differences in the roadmaps used in navigating faith.
Yet the presence of one God in three persons is attested multiple places in the New Testament, most memorably in the final verses of Matthew’s gospel, where Jesus commands his disciples to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. In Acts 19, Paul encounters a group of believers, likely followers of one of Paul’s rivals, a teacher and evangelist named Apollos. These disciples had received only the baptism of John, and “had not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” Upon being baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, these believers received the Holy Spirit. We also see the three persons of the Trinity in today’s reading from John’s gospel, working in concert to proclaim the Gospel message to the disciples: Jesus said, all that the Father has is mine. And Jesus speaks of the Spirit: He will glorify me, for he will take what I have and declare it to you. So all three persons of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, work in concert to declare the Gospel to the disciples.
We may have some questions about the Old Testament reading from the book of Proverbs. We may wonder, “Why are we reading that on Trinity Sunday?” But some theologians identify Lady Wisdom, as personified in our Proverbs reading, with the Holy Spirit – and in so doing, affirm that the Holy Spirit has been encountered not only since the birth of Jesus to Mary, but has been active in various ways from the dawn of time.
Various attempts through time have been made to explain the doctrine of the Trinity. Various creeds, and the shield of faith diagram are examples we’ve already seen. St Patrick famously used the clover leaf, one leaf with three parts, as an analogy. Some have also compared the Trinity to water, which depending on temperature can exist as solid, liquid, or gas. Some think of the Trinity as God above us, Christ beside us, the Spirit within us. Along similar lines, some point to the functions of the three persons – God the Father as Creator, God the Son as Redeemer, and God the Spirit as Sustainer. Other theologians point out that these analogies, while helpful, miss the relational concept of the Trinity – that the three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are not only three ways in which the one God functions toward humankind, but that within God there is a relationship of mutual, self-giving love between each person of the Trinity and the others – like a dance of infinite self-giving love into which the one God in three persons invites humankind – while still existing as one God in three persons, not as three separate Gods.
I suppose if God had a page on Facebook, for a relationship status, God would have to put “it’s complicated.” To put it mildly, God is multidimensional, complex. But, even through the complexity, we can see that faith in the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to which we’re called, is also relational. To have a saving faith is not simply a matter of muttering one’s way through the Apostles’ Creed each Sunday, important though the Apostles’ Creed is. We’re not called to understand – if feel we fully understand God, we can be sure that we’ve only succeeded in giving God an extreme makeover in our own image – but we are called to trust – to focus our faith, hope, and love – all gifts from God – on the triune God from whom they came, and on our fellow human beings created in God’s complex, multidimensional image. And we are called to go, and make disciples, and baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit – to fulfill what is called the Great Commission.
The Great Commission is not exclusively the pastor’s job – indeed, it’s closer to the truth to say that my role is to prepare our members - to go out into all the world and make disciples, and teach, and baptize. We may feel drained and discouraged at times – but we can draw reassurance from our reading from Romans: “We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. Not only that, we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”
Hope does not disappoint us! The peace with God that we have been given through our faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, and God’s love that the Holy Spirit has poured into our hearts – all this we are to go, and to proclaim, and to teach, and to share with our neighbors. We whom God has invited into the great self-giving dance of divine love, we are not to keep this invitation to ourselves, but to go out and share the invitation with all whom we meet. For humanity’s relationship status with God is….complicated….but we, who have been reconciled with the Triune God through Jesus Christ, have been given the ministry of reconciliation, of inviting our neighbors to be reconciled with God through Jesus Christ.
May God, revealed to humankind as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, heal our complicated and often broken relationships with God, with one another, and with all we encounter. Amen.
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Feeling that life has become complicated? In prayer and worship, we ask God's help with life's complexities, and sometimes among caring congregation members, it's easier to sort things out. Come join us at Emanuel UCC on Sundays at 10 a.m. on Fillmore Street (off Thompson). www.emanuelphila.org
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Historical note: The Athanasian Creed
(This has gone out of common use, and Pastor Dave doesn't endorse the anathemas with which it begins and ends, but it does give lots of detail on the doctrine of the Trinity.)
1. Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith;
2. Which faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.
3. And the catholic faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity;
4. Neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance.
5. For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Spirit.
6. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit is all one, the glory equal, the majesty coeternal.
7. Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Spirit.
8. The Father uncreated, the Son uncreated, and the Holy Spirit uncreated.
9. The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Spirit incomprehensible.
10. The Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Spirit eternal.
11. And yet they are not three eternals but one eternal.
12. As also there are not three uncreated nor three incomprehensible, but one uncreated and one incomprehensible.
13. So likewise the Father is almighty, the Son almighty, and the Holy Spirit almighty.
14. And yet they are not three almighties, but one almighty.
15. So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God;
16. And yet they are not three Gods, but one God.
17. So likewise the Father is Lord, the Son Lord, and the Holy Spirit Lord;
18. And yet they are not three Lords but one Lord.
19. For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity to acknowledge every Person by himself to be God and Lord;
20. So are we forbidden by the catholic religion to say; There are three Gods or three Lords.
21. The Father is made of none, neither created nor begotten.
22. The Son is of the Father alone; not made nor created, but begotten.
23. The Holy Spirit is of the Father and of the Son; neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding.
24. So there is one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons; one Holy Spirit, not three Holy Spirits.
25. And in this Trinity none is afore or after another; none is greater or less than another.
26. But the whole three persons are coeternal, and coequal.
27. So that in all things, as aforesaid, the Unity in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity is to be worshipped.
28. He therefore that will be saved must thus think of the Trinity.
29. Furthermore it is necessary to everlasting salvation that he also believe rightly the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ.
30. For the right faith is that we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and man.
31. God of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds; and man of substance of His mother, born in the world.
32. Perfect God and perfect man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting.
33. Equal to the Father as touching His Godhead, and inferior to the Father as touching His manhood.
34. Who, although He is God and man, yet He is not two, but one Christ.
35. One, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of that manhood into God.
36. One altogether, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person.
37. For as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man, so God and man is one Christ;
38. Who suffered for our salvation, descended into hell, rose again the third day from the dead;
39. He ascended into heaven, He sits on the right hand of the Father, God, Almighty;
40. From thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
41. At whose coming all men shall rise again with their bodies;
42. and shall give account of their own works.
43. And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting and they that have done evil into everlasting fire.
44. This is the catholic faith, which except a man believe faithfully he cannot be saved.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Sunday, May 23, 2010
That's The Spirit!
(Scriptures: Genesis 11:1-9 Acts 2:1-21
Romans 8:14-17 John 14:8-17, 25-27)
Last week was Ascension Sunday, when we remember the disciples standing on the Mount of Olives, watching as Jesus was lifted up from their presence into heaven. Jesus had told them that he would be sending the Spirit, the Advocate, the Comforter – but they couldn’t have had much idea what Jesus meant. So they continued to gather, and awaited developments.
And what developments! Today we celebrate Pentecost, the great day of the Spirit’s coming, which has often been called the birthday of the church. The name of Pentecost did not originate with Christians – Pentecost was and is a Jewish festival, also called the feast of weeks, described in Deuteronomy 16: 9-12. It is celebrated 50 days after Passover – that’s where the “Pente” in Pentecost comes from, and seven weeks after the sickle is first put to the standing grain – when an offering of the first fruits of the harvest is made to God, in accordance to Leviticus 23:16. At one time, according to Deuteronomy 26, the feast of weeks was associated with God's gift to the children of Israel of the promised land. Later Jewish tradition associated Pentecost with the giving of the law on Mt. Sinai to Moses. Jews celebrate the festival to this day under the name of Shavuos or Shavuot.
So Acts tells us that “when the day of Pentecost had come, they – the disciples – were all together in one place.” Luke’s account of the coming of the Spirit is filled with vivid images: “Suddenly, from heaven, there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.” There were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem – and they all gathered, and heard the disciples speaking in the native language of each.”
Violent wind! Fire! And the good news of Jesus proclaimed in every known language! Just as the Jewish festival of Pentecost celebrated the offering of the first-fruits of the grain harvest, so our celebration of Pentecost celebrates the coming of the first-fruits of the Spirit. As the Jewish festival commemorated God’s gift of the law, we celebrate the gift of the Spirit. In our Genesis reading this morning, we heard the story of human desire to build the Tower of Babel to peer up into heaven, when God confused the languages. Pentecost is a reversal of this image – at Pentecost, God’s Holy Spirit came down to humanity, and everyone heard the gospel in their own language.
The images of Pentecost are ambiguous – fire can warm, but it can also burn. A breeze can refresh, but a tornado can destroy. Both are unpredictable. And the presence of the Spirit in the church is just as unpredictable – there’s nothing the least bit neat or tidy about the work of the Spirit. The Spirit will warm our gathering with the love of God, but it will also work to burn off anything that stands in the way of witnessing to God’s love. The Spirit will refresh us, energize us, but will also blow away those things in our lives, as individuals and as a congregation, that keep us stuck, that are not life-giving. And the image of devout Jews from all over the known world, all hearing the saving gospel in their many different tongues, may not seem as unpredictable as fire and wind – but don’t be too sure. The power of the Spirit in creating mutual understanding – where we understand not only each other’s words but each others’ hearts and minds – may be the most powerful and unpredictable of all the Spirit’s mighty works.
It’s important to remember that the Holy Spirit does not come among us just to spice up our worship or to provide miracles for the sake of entertainment. The work of the Spirit is to empower the church for ministry, and the Spirit always points the church and the world back to the saving work of Jesus. And so it was with Peter’s great sermon on Pentecost. The book of Acts tells us “that day about three thousand people were added.”
We may read these accounts and wonder what they have to do with us, with our daily lives, with our little congregation, Emanuel, tenaciously holding our ground on Fillmore Street and trying to reach out to our neighbors. There are many answers to that question, but this morning I’ll venture just one – only this, that it was the mighty work of the Holy Spirit that turned the followers of Jesus from a frightened few huddling behind closed doors, for fear of the religious authorities, to bold proclaimer of God’s saving grace that turned the world upside down – or rather right-side up. And it was only a few – the band of disciples that gathered on Pentecost was no megachurch, but just a small group. And a mighty wind came, and fire came down, and the Spirit moved, and neither the disciples nor the world around them was ever the same again.
When I was a little kid, I used to ask my grandparents, the Langes, who were very devout, why miracles in the Bible such as what happened on Pentecost don’t happen today. I was told that things like that happened way back in Bible times, but they don’t happen any more today. Forty years later, I’m here to tell you that, as much as I cherish their memory, I disagree with my grandparents’ answer to my question, that instead I believe with all my heart and soul that the power of the Spirit is as available to us today as it was to Peter and the other disciples on the day of Pentecost. On hearing Peter’s sermon, three thousand people turned to Jesus – not because Peter was a great guy or a great speaker, but that Peter was an ordinary guy willing to put his ordinary speaking ability in the hands of an awesome God.
And here we are, ordinary people with a wide and growing range of ordinary talents. Are we willing to put our ordinary talents and our ordinary lives and the great love that’s here at Emanuel in the hands of our awesome God? Will I preach a sermon some day and watch three thousand souls turn to Christ? Perhaps not, though I always tell myself “never say never.” Until then, I’ll preach to the best of my ability to whoever is willing to hear me out, and leave the results in God’s hands. But will we here at Emanuel someday help to turn our neighborhood of Bridesburg upside-down – or rather right-side up – with the saving message of Jesus’ love? That – exactly that – is my fervent hope and prayer for this congregation. We may remember earlier days when the pews and the offering plates were full, and despair that our best days are behind us. I don’t believe that for one second. I believe God is working among us, right here, right now, preparing our individual hands and hearts and minds and preparing our congregation for the Spirit’s mighty movement in our midst.
I don’t know of any invisible force field around Bridesburg that will keep the power of the Spirit out of the neighborhood. Especially here at Emanuel, whose name means God With Us, let us open our hands and hearts and minds to the Spirit’s power, our ears to the Spirit’s call, our feet to the Spirit’s guidance. May it be said of us, as it was said of the early church, "These are the people who have turned the world upside down with their teaching, and they’ve come here, to Bridesburg." Amen.
Romans 8:14-17 John 14:8-17, 25-27)
Last week was Ascension Sunday, when we remember the disciples standing on the Mount of Olives, watching as Jesus was lifted up from their presence into heaven. Jesus had told them that he would be sending the Spirit, the Advocate, the Comforter – but they couldn’t have had much idea what Jesus meant. So they continued to gather, and awaited developments.
And what developments! Today we celebrate Pentecost, the great day of the Spirit’s coming, which has often been called the birthday of the church. The name of Pentecost did not originate with Christians – Pentecost was and is a Jewish festival, also called the feast of weeks, described in Deuteronomy 16: 9-12. It is celebrated 50 days after Passover – that’s where the “Pente” in Pentecost comes from, and seven weeks after the sickle is first put to the standing grain – when an offering of the first fruits of the harvest is made to God, in accordance to Leviticus 23:16. At one time, according to Deuteronomy 26, the feast of weeks was associated with God's gift to the children of Israel of the promised land. Later Jewish tradition associated Pentecost with the giving of the law on Mt. Sinai to Moses. Jews celebrate the festival to this day under the name of Shavuos or Shavuot.
So Acts tells us that “when the day of Pentecost had come, they – the disciples – were all together in one place.” Luke’s account of the coming of the Spirit is filled with vivid images: “Suddenly, from heaven, there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.” There were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem – and they all gathered, and heard the disciples speaking in the native language of each.”
Violent wind! Fire! And the good news of Jesus proclaimed in every known language! Just as the Jewish festival of Pentecost celebrated the offering of the first-fruits of the grain harvest, so our celebration of Pentecost celebrates the coming of the first-fruits of the Spirit. As the Jewish festival commemorated God’s gift of the law, we celebrate the gift of the Spirit. In our Genesis reading this morning, we heard the story of human desire to build the Tower of Babel to peer up into heaven, when God confused the languages. Pentecost is a reversal of this image – at Pentecost, God’s Holy Spirit came down to humanity, and everyone heard the gospel in their own language.
The images of Pentecost are ambiguous – fire can warm, but it can also burn. A breeze can refresh, but a tornado can destroy. Both are unpredictable. And the presence of the Spirit in the church is just as unpredictable – there’s nothing the least bit neat or tidy about the work of the Spirit. The Spirit will warm our gathering with the love of God, but it will also work to burn off anything that stands in the way of witnessing to God’s love. The Spirit will refresh us, energize us, but will also blow away those things in our lives, as individuals and as a congregation, that keep us stuck, that are not life-giving. And the image of devout Jews from all over the known world, all hearing the saving gospel in their many different tongues, may not seem as unpredictable as fire and wind – but don’t be too sure. The power of the Spirit in creating mutual understanding – where we understand not only each other’s words but each others’ hearts and minds – may be the most powerful and unpredictable of all the Spirit’s mighty works.
It’s important to remember that the Holy Spirit does not come among us just to spice up our worship or to provide miracles for the sake of entertainment. The work of the Spirit is to empower the church for ministry, and the Spirit always points the church and the world back to the saving work of Jesus. And so it was with Peter’s great sermon on Pentecost. The book of Acts tells us “that day about three thousand people were added.”
We may read these accounts and wonder what they have to do with us, with our daily lives, with our little congregation, Emanuel, tenaciously holding our ground on Fillmore Street and trying to reach out to our neighbors. There are many answers to that question, but this morning I’ll venture just one – only this, that it was the mighty work of the Holy Spirit that turned the followers of Jesus from a frightened few huddling behind closed doors, for fear of the religious authorities, to bold proclaimer of God’s saving grace that turned the world upside down – or rather right-side up. And it was only a few – the band of disciples that gathered on Pentecost was no megachurch, but just a small group. And a mighty wind came, and fire came down, and the Spirit moved, and neither the disciples nor the world around them was ever the same again.
When I was a little kid, I used to ask my grandparents, the Langes, who were very devout, why miracles in the Bible such as what happened on Pentecost don’t happen today. I was told that things like that happened way back in Bible times, but they don’t happen any more today. Forty years later, I’m here to tell you that, as much as I cherish their memory, I disagree with my grandparents’ answer to my question, that instead I believe with all my heart and soul that the power of the Spirit is as available to us today as it was to Peter and the other disciples on the day of Pentecost. On hearing Peter’s sermon, three thousand people turned to Jesus – not because Peter was a great guy or a great speaker, but that Peter was an ordinary guy willing to put his ordinary speaking ability in the hands of an awesome God.
And here we are, ordinary people with a wide and growing range of ordinary talents. Are we willing to put our ordinary talents and our ordinary lives and the great love that’s here at Emanuel in the hands of our awesome God? Will I preach a sermon some day and watch three thousand souls turn to Christ? Perhaps not, though I always tell myself “never say never.” Until then, I’ll preach to the best of my ability to whoever is willing to hear me out, and leave the results in God’s hands. But will we here at Emanuel someday help to turn our neighborhood of Bridesburg upside-down – or rather right-side up – with the saving message of Jesus’ love? That – exactly that – is my fervent hope and prayer for this congregation. We may remember earlier days when the pews and the offering plates were full, and despair that our best days are behind us. I don’t believe that for one second. I believe God is working among us, right here, right now, preparing our individual hands and hearts and minds and preparing our congregation for the Spirit’s mighty movement in our midst.
I don’t know of any invisible force field around Bridesburg that will keep the power of the Spirit out of the neighborhood. Especially here at Emanuel, whose name means God With Us, let us open our hands and hearts and minds to the Spirit’s power, our ears to the Spirit’s call, our feet to the Spirit’s guidance. May it be said of us, as it was said of the early church, "These are the people who have turned the world upside down with their teaching, and they’ve come here, to Bridesburg." Amen.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Love Prevails (A Sermon for Mother's Day)
(Scriptures: Acts 16:6-15, Psalm 67, Revelations 21:10, 22 – 22:5, John 14:23-29)
We’re getting closer to Memorial Day, the unofficial beginning of the summer vacation and travel season. Does anyone have their summer vacation plans made yet? People approach vacations in various ways – some make elaborate plans, carefully making their train or airline or hotel reservations months in advance in order to take advantage of discounts, carefully researching hotels in advance to compare the amenities each offers, putting together a travel itinerary so that not a moment of precious vacation time is wasted. Others take a more random approach, deciding on the spur of the moment where to drive or ride or fly, and sort of making up their vacation as they go. But no matter how carefully planned, travel plans can go awry. During my first trip with a group from the Pennsylvania Southeast Conference, UCC, to Cuba, in March, 2008, the travel agency who had handled our reservations forgot that we in the United States set our clocks ahead for daylight savings time a week before Cubans do – so we ended up missing our intended flight back to the States. Yikes! And can you imagine what it would be like to have flown to Europe just before the recent volcano eruption, only to learn that you wouldn’t be flying home anytime soon, not until the volcano stopped belching clouds of ash into the air.
In our reading from Acts, we meet Paul and his new traveling companion Silas at a critical point in their missionary travels, when their travel plans seemed to be going awry. It’s a time when Paul had lots of reasons to second-guess himself – he and his former missionary companion, Barnabas, had just had a huge fight and parted ways, Barnabas having traveled with John Mark, whom Paul distrusted, to Cyprus. So Paul and his new partner in mission, Silas, set out from Syria – only to find themselves forbidden by the Holy Spirit to travel east to preach in Asia. So they headed roughly northwest into Phrygia and Galatia, located in modern-day Turkey. Then they tried to go north into Bithynia, but we’re told that the Spirit of Jesus forbade them to go there too. I think at this point I’d rather be stuck in an airport waiting for a volcano to stop erupting. I’d imagine at this point Paul was thinking maybe this Silas is a jinx, bad luck, and maybe parting ways with Barnabas hadn’t been such a great idea. So Paul and Silas’s travel itinerary has come unraveled, and they’re stuck awaiting developments.
And at this point God shows them the next step: Paul has a vision of a man from Macedonia pleading, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” Macedonia was in modern-day Greece, a considerable distance west from Galatia, but Paul and Silas obey the vision and set out. Note the grammar carefully: It would seem that Luke, the author of Acts, went with them also – note that the narrative moves from saying “They attempted to go into Bithynia” to “We” – presumably including Luke – “We immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia.” So what follows is presented as an eyewitness account.
Paul, Silas, and Luke set sail from Troas and went through several cities to arrive in Philippi, which we’re told is a leading city in Macedonia and a Roman colony. If the name Philippi sounds familiar, it should – it’s the setting of the church to which Paul later wrote his joyful letter to the Philippians. The church at Philippi was one of Paul’s success stories, and today we read how that success story began, how the church was founded. After spending several days in Philippi, learning the lay of the land, they went outside the city gate to a place by the river where women prayed. Note the location - outside the city gate. Rome wasn’t going to stop these women – likely Gentile converts to Judaism - from praying to the God of Israel, but they weren’t going to make it easy for them, either – this women’s prayer circle was barely tolerated, barely allowed its little bit of breathing space out of the way, down by the river, outside the city gate.
We quickly meet one of these women, whose name is Lydia. We’re told that she was a dealer in purple cloth. In those days, because of the expense of producing purple dye, only the wealthy could afford to wear purple, so likely Lydia would have been a woman of some wealth and resources, used to dealing with men of even greater wealth. We’re told that the Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what Paul said – so much so that she was baptized. We perhaps get the picture that this woman of wealth and resources was not only a woman of faith, but was also a woman of strong character and will, for she had not only herself, but her entire household, baptized. And we’re told that she prevailed upon Paul and Silas and Luke to stay at her home. Having said “yes” to God, from Paul and his group she wouldn’t take “no” for an answer. It would seem her home because a gathering place for the new believers in Philippi; we’re later told that after Paul and Silas had been arrested for setting an enslaved fortune teller free from a spirit of divination, when he was later freed and his jailer baptized, along with his family, Paul and Silas returned to the home of Lydia to encourage the new believers before setting out for Thessalonica.
In considering this passage, one thought that came to mind: It is striking that, out of a situation in which all the options that came quickly to Paul’s and Silas’ minds were blocked – by the Spirit of Jesus, no less – came a vision from God to take the Gospel in a new direction. And I think we’ve all been in some version of Paul’s and Silas’ situation – we have a decision to make, perhaps a decision about the direction in which our future will go – perhaps a career decision, a decision about where to live, a decision about a relationship, or perhaps we have a sense that God is calling us in some new direction. We look at the obvious options, but somehow things don’t pan out. We feel stuck. We wonder where God is in all this…is God out on a lunch break, or did God maybe take the afternoon off? It’s during these times when we need to hold on tight to our faith, to be patient and await God’s guidance. There’s a saying – don’t give up hope 5 minutes before the miracle happens. For we worship an awesome God who specializes in making a way out of no way. We may not have dreams about some dude from Macedonia asking for our help, but if we are patient and attentive, guidance will come. What may look like a breakdown in our plans may turn out to be God’s way to break through our expectations to lead us in a new direction.
And, of course, there’s another thought – love prevails. God’s love prevailed in sending Paul and Silas to Philippi. And in response, Lydia’s love prevailed – prevailed upon her household to be baptized, prevailed upon Paul and Silas to stay at her house, prevailed in allowing her house to become a headquarters for the gathering church of Philippi.
Some of us have been blessed with mothers – you didn’t think I forgot it’s Mother’s Day, did you – whose love was like Lydia’s, a powerful love that prevailed, that wouldn’t take “no” for an answer, that insisted on loving us, sometimes whether we wanted it or not. For those of us who grew up with that kind of love and emotional support from mom, we can give thanks to God for this early blessing in our life. And some of us haven’t had that kind of mother love in our lives – mom was absent, out to lunch, physically or emotionally, or mom had…shall we say….anger management issues (the kind that send their kids to the emergency room), or addiction issues, or our relationship with mom was in other ways…shall we say, complicated. Mother’s Day seems like a holiday for others, not for us. Perhaps we can find some consolation in being the ones whom God has raised up to break the cycle of abuse or neglect, to provide prevailing love for the children and family with which God has blessed us.
Jesus told his disciples, "Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” May God make our home with us, with our families, and may God’s prevailing love always be found here at Emanuel Church.
***************
Come to Emanuel Church and experience God's prevailing love, every Sunday at 10 a.m. We're on Fillmore Street (off Thompson). www.emanuelphila.org
We’re getting closer to Memorial Day, the unofficial beginning of the summer vacation and travel season. Does anyone have their summer vacation plans made yet? People approach vacations in various ways – some make elaborate plans, carefully making their train or airline or hotel reservations months in advance in order to take advantage of discounts, carefully researching hotels in advance to compare the amenities each offers, putting together a travel itinerary so that not a moment of precious vacation time is wasted. Others take a more random approach, deciding on the spur of the moment where to drive or ride or fly, and sort of making up their vacation as they go. But no matter how carefully planned, travel plans can go awry. During my first trip with a group from the Pennsylvania Southeast Conference, UCC, to Cuba, in March, 2008, the travel agency who had handled our reservations forgot that we in the United States set our clocks ahead for daylight savings time a week before Cubans do – so we ended up missing our intended flight back to the States. Yikes! And can you imagine what it would be like to have flown to Europe just before the recent volcano eruption, only to learn that you wouldn’t be flying home anytime soon, not until the volcano stopped belching clouds of ash into the air.
In our reading from Acts, we meet Paul and his new traveling companion Silas at a critical point in their missionary travels, when their travel plans seemed to be going awry. It’s a time when Paul had lots of reasons to second-guess himself – he and his former missionary companion, Barnabas, had just had a huge fight and parted ways, Barnabas having traveled with John Mark, whom Paul distrusted, to Cyprus. So Paul and his new partner in mission, Silas, set out from Syria – only to find themselves forbidden by the Holy Spirit to travel east to preach in Asia. So they headed roughly northwest into Phrygia and Galatia, located in modern-day Turkey. Then they tried to go north into Bithynia, but we’re told that the Spirit of Jesus forbade them to go there too. I think at this point I’d rather be stuck in an airport waiting for a volcano to stop erupting. I’d imagine at this point Paul was thinking maybe this Silas is a jinx, bad luck, and maybe parting ways with Barnabas hadn’t been such a great idea. So Paul and Silas’s travel itinerary has come unraveled, and they’re stuck awaiting developments.
And at this point God shows them the next step: Paul has a vision of a man from Macedonia pleading, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” Macedonia was in modern-day Greece, a considerable distance west from Galatia, but Paul and Silas obey the vision and set out. Note the grammar carefully: It would seem that Luke, the author of Acts, went with them also – note that the narrative moves from saying “They attempted to go into Bithynia” to “We” – presumably including Luke – “We immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia.” So what follows is presented as an eyewitness account.
Paul, Silas, and Luke set sail from Troas and went through several cities to arrive in Philippi, which we’re told is a leading city in Macedonia and a Roman colony. If the name Philippi sounds familiar, it should – it’s the setting of the church to which Paul later wrote his joyful letter to the Philippians. The church at Philippi was one of Paul’s success stories, and today we read how that success story began, how the church was founded. After spending several days in Philippi, learning the lay of the land, they went outside the city gate to a place by the river where women prayed. Note the location - outside the city gate. Rome wasn’t going to stop these women – likely Gentile converts to Judaism - from praying to the God of Israel, but they weren’t going to make it easy for them, either – this women’s prayer circle was barely tolerated, barely allowed its little bit of breathing space out of the way, down by the river, outside the city gate.
We quickly meet one of these women, whose name is Lydia. We’re told that she was a dealer in purple cloth. In those days, because of the expense of producing purple dye, only the wealthy could afford to wear purple, so likely Lydia would have been a woman of some wealth and resources, used to dealing with men of even greater wealth. We’re told that the Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what Paul said – so much so that she was baptized. We perhaps get the picture that this woman of wealth and resources was not only a woman of faith, but was also a woman of strong character and will, for she had not only herself, but her entire household, baptized. And we’re told that she prevailed upon Paul and Silas and Luke to stay at her home. Having said “yes” to God, from Paul and his group she wouldn’t take “no” for an answer. It would seem her home because a gathering place for the new believers in Philippi; we’re later told that after Paul and Silas had been arrested for setting an enslaved fortune teller free from a spirit of divination, when he was later freed and his jailer baptized, along with his family, Paul and Silas returned to the home of Lydia to encourage the new believers before setting out for Thessalonica.
In considering this passage, one thought that came to mind: It is striking that, out of a situation in which all the options that came quickly to Paul’s and Silas’ minds were blocked – by the Spirit of Jesus, no less – came a vision from God to take the Gospel in a new direction. And I think we’ve all been in some version of Paul’s and Silas’ situation – we have a decision to make, perhaps a decision about the direction in which our future will go – perhaps a career decision, a decision about where to live, a decision about a relationship, or perhaps we have a sense that God is calling us in some new direction. We look at the obvious options, but somehow things don’t pan out. We feel stuck. We wonder where God is in all this…is God out on a lunch break, or did God maybe take the afternoon off? It’s during these times when we need to hold on tight to our faith, to be patient and await God’s guidance. There’s a saying – don’t give up hope 5 minutes before the miracle happens. For we worship an awesome God who specializes in making a way out of no way. We may not have dreams about some dude from Macedonia asking for our help, but if we are patient and attentive, guidance will come. What may look like a breakdown in our plans may turn out to be God’s way to break through our expectations to lead us in a new direction.
And, of course, there’s another thought – love prevails. God’s love prevailed in sending Paul and Silas to Philippi. And in response, Lydia’s love prevailed – prevailed upon her household to be baptized, prevailed upon Paul and Silas to stay at her house, prevailed in allowing her house to become a headquarters for the gathering church of Philippi.
Some of us have been blessed with mothers – you didn’t think I forgot it’s Mother’s Day, did you – whose love was like Lydia’s, a powerful love that prevailed, that wouldn’t take “no” for an answer, that insisted on loving us, sometimes whether we wanted it or not. For those of us who grew up with that kind of love and emotional support from mom, we can give thanks to God for this early blessing in our life. And some of us haven’t had that kind of mother love in our lives – mom was absent, out to lunch, physically or emotionally, or mom had…shall we say….anger management issues (the kind that send their kids to the emergency room), or addiction issues, or our relationship with mom was in other ways…shall we say, complicated. Mother’s Day seems like a holiday for others, not for us. Perhaps we can find some consolation in being the ones whom God has raised up to break the cycle of abuse or neglect, to provide prevailing love for the children and family with which God has blessed us.
Jesus told his disciples, "Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” May God make our home with us, with our families, and may God’s prevailing love always be found here at Emanuel Church.
***************
Come to Emanuel Church and experience God's prevailing love, every Sunday at 10 a.m. We're on Fillmore Street (off Thompson). www.emanuelphila.org
Monday, May 3, 2010
The Empowering Spirit
Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ –
“When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.” Acts 2:1-4
“But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them…’this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men will dream dreams...Then everyone who calls upon the Lord shall be saved.’” Acts 2:14, 17, 21
We have come through the Easter celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Our weekly readings from Acts remind us of how God’s power and grace worked through Philip, Peter, Paul, and other leaders of the early church, as salvation through Christ was opened to the Gentiles.
How did the bumbling disciples that we meet in the Gospels, who repeatedly misunderstood Jesus while Jesus walked among them and who met behind locked doors following the crucifixion for fear of the religious authorities, become the bold proclaimers of the Gospel that we meet in Acts? It was through the power of the Holy Spirit, who came upon the disciples on the day of Pentecost, which has been described as the birthday of the Church. Peter, quoting the prophet Joel, proclaimed that with God’s outpouring of the Spirit, “your sons and daughters shall prophesy, and your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams.”
The Holy Spirit can empower us, as the Spirit empowered the apostles, to transcend our limitations and do amazing things to the glory of God. What are your visions and dreams for Emanuel Church?
See you in church!
Pastor Dave
“When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.” Acts 2:1-4
“But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them…’this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men will dream dreams...Then everyone who calls upon the Lord shall be saved.’” Acts 2:14, 17, 21
We have come through the Easter celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Our weekly readings from Acts remind us of how God’s power and grace worked through Philip, Peter, Paul, and other leaders of the early church, as salvation through Christ was opened to the Gentiles.
How did the bumbling disciples that we meet in the Gospels, who repeatedly misunderstood Jesus while Jesus walked among them and who met behind locked doors following the crucifixion for fear of the religious authorities, become the bold proclaimers of the Gospel that we meet in Acts? It was through the power of the Holy Spirit, who came upon the disciples on the day of Pentecost, which has been described as the birthday of the Church. Peter, quoting the prophet Joel, proclaimed that with God’s outpouring of the Spirit, “your sons and daughters shall prophesy, and your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams.”
The Holy Spirit can empower us, as the Spirit empowered the apostles, to transcend our limitations and do amazing things to the glory of God. What are your visions and dreams for Emanuel Church?
See you in church!
Pastor Dave
Life In The Big City
(Scriptures: Acts 11:1-18
Revelations 21:1-6 John 13:31-35)
Most of us here today grew up in Philadelphia or nearby, and so it may be hard for many here to imagine what it is like for a small-town country bumpkin, a hick like myself, who would have been right at home on the set of the old TV show Hee Haw, to experience the city of Philadelphia for the first time – but I'll try to describe it to you. When I was in Cub Scouts – I don’t know how old I was, but I don’t think I was 10 yet - our Cub Scout leaders took us on a trip to the Philadelphia Mint. Of course, it was fascinating to walk through the Mint Building and see pennies and nickels and dimes and quarters being created. But at least as fascinating – and much more intimidating – for me was just being in the big city – remember that I was a little kid, not 10 years old, whose hometown – Hamburg, PA, located north of Reading – had a population of all of about 3500 or so. And this was back around 1970 or so, when Philadelphia had a larger population and a much stronger manufacturing base. As we were riding down the Schuylkill Expressway – a scary prospect all by itself, in which all the drivers around us seemed bent on killing themselves and each other – I remember we got to about Manayunk when we started to wrinkle our noses and ask each other, “Eww! What is that smell?” Not that farms don’t have their own unique and powerful odors, but in those days, what came out of the Philadelphia’s smokestacks was pretty ripe. The air seemed heavier, hazier, sometimes so much so that I coughed and wheezed. When we parked the cars – you could park near the Mint in those days, long years before the Oklahoma City bombing and 9-11 – it was a strange experience to see so many people, so many different kinds of people – white, black, Asian, various shades of brown - many hurrying by quickly on their way to various places. And they all talked funny. (Remember that I grew up in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country, and it wouldn’t be until I left my hometown to go to college that I realized that people outside Berks County found our Dutchified English a bit strange.) After our trip to the Mint, we went to a nearby restaurant for lunch. The heavily chlorinated water – good old Schuylkill punch, circa 1970 - nearly made me gag – I took one swig from my glass and spewed half of it across the table - and while the food on the menu was familiar – spaghetti, pizza – it tasted different from the way we made it back home – and I certainly wasn’t going to find any pot pie or potato filling or shoo fly pie like we had back home. By the time we piled into our cars and wearily rode back home, I felt like I had visited some alien alternative universe, and while I was glad to have had the chance to visit, I was very sure I didn’t want to live there. And as things worked out, I spent 20 years active at Old First Reformed UCC, right next to – guess where - the Mint, lived in South Philly for most of the 1990’s, and have worked for ten years for Temple Health, spending lots of time in struggling Philadelphia neighborhoods that would scare 20 years off the life of a lot of folks in my hometown of Hamburg. Who says God doesn’t have a sense of humor.
In recent weeks we’ve had a fascinating series of readings from Acts and from Revelations. In Acts, we’ve read about the growth of the early church, as the saving message of Christ was embraced not only by Jews but also by Gentiles. Today’s reading marks a pivotal moment, in Peter was called on the carpet and made to explain his willingness to share Christian fellowship with Gentiles. At the same time, in the book of Revelation, we are given a vision of the New Jerusalem, where the saints will dwell, with God in their midst.
It is striking that John, the writer of Revelation, envisioned our eternal home with God as a city. We remember how the author of Genesis saw the beginnings of the world and of the human race – Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. When we think of a new heaven and a new earth, it would not be unreasonable to think of God starting over, putting redeemed humanity in a new Garden of Eden, but that’s not the vision John, the writer of the book of Revelation, gives us. Last week’s reading from Revelation chapter 7 envisioned a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, all robed in white. We are to understand that these are the redeemed, those who have come out of the great ordeal of earthly life to spend eternity in God’s presence. And today’s reading explicitly speaks of the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down from heaven. While the Bible begins in a garden, John says that we will spend eternity, not in a garden, but in a city.
Now we who are city folk – and while I surely didn’t grow up in the city, at this point in my life I’m more comfortable in downtown Philadelphia than I am in my rural hometown – know that part of life in the big city is learning to get along with many different kinds of people. People travel from all over the state, all over the country, in fact all over the world – remember my Liberian friend who visits us at Emanuel from time to time - to make their home in Philadelphia. And these people dress differently, sometimes speak different languages, organize their families in different ways – and in order to get along, we learn quickly that not everyone is like us, and that we sometimes have to cut one another some slack and agree to disagree, to become comfortable with the idea that people who dress and eat and behave differently from us are not necessarily “bad” or “wrong” – just “different”.
This was the challenge faced by the early church when Gentiles – non-Jews – responded to the message of salvation in Jesus Christ that was proclaimed by the early church. Part of how the Jews maintained their identity through the centuries, and through traumas such as the exile in Babylon and being occupied by the Romans, was to maintain their own distinct customs – not only distinct ways of worshipping God, but distinct ways of eating and dressing, which were seen as commanded by God. Those who were not circumcised and did not follow the dietary and other purity codes of Leviticus were seen as not just different, but wrong, as unclean, as dirty. To eat dinner with a Gentile would have been about as appetizing for them as sticking our hand into a toilet bowl would be for us. But Peter had been given a striking vision – the same vision three times, no less – with the message not to call unclean what God has made clean. While Peter’s vision was at the most literal level about food, Peter’s visit from Cornelius the centurion quickly made clear that God was really talking about people. Had Peter turned away from this vision, Christianity could very easily have been just a small movement within Judaism, nothing that would not have turned the world upside down for God. And there was resistance – Peter’s hospitality to Cornelius and his family was a sort of a Biblical version of “guess who’s coming to dinner”, if you remember that 1967 movie about racial integration. It was because of Peter’s willingness to embrace the heavenly vision, and Paul’s willingness to become Apostle to the Gentiles, that ultimately we are gathered here today to praise and worship God.
Our United Church of Christ congregations in the Philadelphia area have had many “guess who’s coming to dinner” moments. While many longtime UCC congregations, like First Church in Hamburg, where I was confirmed, like Emanuel Church, were founded by German immigrants, others who are now coming to dinner, many of our newer and most dynamic, rapidly growing congregations, come out of different traditions – African American and Hispanic Baptists and Pentecostals, immigrants from India, and most recently, a diverse Methodist church in Chestnut Hill, many of whose members look like us, but who come out of a different theological tradition.
The national United Church of Christ has recently released an internet ad called “The Language of God.” You can find it on the national UCC website, or on the Penn Southeast Conference website. Accompanied by a series of fast guitar notes and interspersed with words like “Faith, Love, Justice, Community, Praise” are many kinds of images, representing not only who the UCC was in the past and is now, but who we hope to be, in our embrace of young and old alike, rich and poor, a wide, wide variety of cultures and languages and family configurations. Some of the images are heartwarming – there’s one really cute frame where a little kid’s eyes are focused on a ladybug at the tip of his nose – and others may be unsettling. Do we really want people like that in worship, at the coffee hour? Who invited them to dinner?
Peter’s vision reminds us that, ultimately, it’s not you nor I nor the national offices of the UCC – important as these invitations are – but God who invites a whole variety of people to dinner, to our coffee hour, and ultimately to the heavenly banquet, the feast of the Lamb. God commands us to share the Good News that others have shared with us, but ultimately it is God that opens the hearts of those around us to the message we proclaim. Whom God invites to our church, to our sanctuary, to worship, to coffee hour, we dare not turn away. And I think we can testify that the life of our congregation has become richer because of those whom God has sent our way in recent years.
Today we sit in the city of Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. At some times – when we read about gun violence and drug dealing – our city’s name may seem like some sick warped joke. At other times – when we have a neighborhood cleanup or when our neighbors help us – we may get a glimpse of the ideals that prompted our city’s founders to choose the name, Philadelphia. But all we experience here – the joys and sorrows, times of tragedy and times of celebration, times when we join hand in hand and times when we work each others’ last nerve – all that we experience here, God uses to prepare us for life in that other big city – the eternal city, the new Jerusalem, where there will not only be no smokestacks belching pollution and nor traffic jams on I-95, but no sorrow, no sighing, no pain nor death nor mourning, for God himself will dwell in our midst and wipe away every tear, where the thirsty will not gag on chlorine-laden Schuylkill punch, but receive water as a gift from the spring of the water of life. Amen.
***********
Come refresh yourself at the wellspring of faith that is Emanuel United Church of Christ, 2628 Fillmore Street (off Thompson), Sundays at 10 a.m. www.emanuelphila.org
Revelations 21:1-6 John 13:31-35)
Most of us here today grew up in Philadelphia or nearby, and so it may be hard for many here to imagine what it is like for a small-town country bumpkin, a hick like myself, who would have been right at home on the set of the old TV show Hee Haw, to experience the city of Philadelphia for the first time – but I'll try to describe it to you. When I was in Cub Scouts – I don’t know how old I was, but I don’t think I was 10 yet - our Cub Scout leaders took us on a trip to the Philadelphia Mint. Of course, it was fascinating to walk through the Mint Building and see pennies and nickels and dimes and quarters being created. But at least as fascinating – and much more intimidating – for me was just being in the big city – remember that I was a little kid, not 10 years old, whose hometown – Hamburg, PA, located north of Reading – had a population of all of about 3500 or so. And this was back around 1970 or so, when Philadelphia had a larger population and a much stronger manufacturing base. As we were riding down the Schuylkill Expressway – a scary prospect all by itself, in which all the drivers around us seemed bent on killing themselves and each other – I remember we got to about Manayunk when we started to wrinkle our noses and ask each other, “Eww! What is that smell?” Not that farms don’t have their own unique and powerful odors, but in those days, what came out of the Philadelphia’s smokestacks was pretty ripe. The air seemed heavier, hazier, sometimes so much so that I coughed and wheezed. When we parked the cars – you could park near the Mint in those days, long years before the Oklahoma City bombing and 9-11 – it was a strange experience to see so many people, so many different kinds of people – white, black, Asian, various shades of brown - many hurrying by quickly on their way to various places. And they all talked funny. (Remember that I grew up in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country, and it wouldn’t be until I left my hometown to go to college that I realized that people outside Berks County found our Dutchified English a bit strange.) After our trip to the Mint, we went to a nearby restaurant for lunch. The heavily chlorinated water – good old Schuylkill punch, circa 1970 - nearly made me gag – I took one swig from my glass and spewed half of it across the table - and while the food on the menu was familiar – spaghetti, pizza – it tasted different from the way we made it back home – and I certainly wasn’t going to find any pot pie or potato filling or shoo fly pie like we had back home. By the time we piled into our cars and wearily rode back home, I felt like I had visited some alien alternative universe, and while I was glad to have had the chance to visit, I was very sure I didn’t want to live there. And as things worked out, I spent 20 years active at Old First Reformed UCC, right next to – guess where - the Mint, lived in South Philly for most of the 1990’s, and have worked for ten years for Temple Health, spending lots of time in struggling Philadelphia neighborhoods that would scare 20 years off the life of a lot of folks in my hometown of Hamburg. Who says God doesn’t have a sense of humor.
In recent weeks we’ve had a fascinating series of readings from Acts and from Revelations. In Acts, we’ve read about the growth of the early church, as the saving message of Christ was embraced not only by Jews but also by Gentiles. Today’s reading marks a pivotal moment, in Peter was called on the carpet and made to explain his willingness to share Christian fellowship with Gentiles. At the same time, in the book of Revelation, we are given a vision of the New Jerusalem, where the saints will dwell, with God in their midst.
It is striking that John, the writer of Revelation, envisioned our eternal home with God as a city. We remember how the author of Genesis saw the beginnings of the world and of the human race – Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. When we think of a new heaven and a new earth, it would not be unreasonable to think of God starting over, putting redeemed humanity in a new Garden of Eden, but that’s not the vision John, the writer of the book of Revelation, gives us. Last week’s reading from Revelation chapter 7 envisioned a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, all robed in white. We are to understand that these are the redeemed, those who have come out of the great ordeal of earthly life to spend eternity in God’s presence. And today’s reading explicitly speaks of the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down from heaven. While the Bible begins in a garden, John says that we will spend eternity, not in a garden, but in a city.
Now we who are city folk – and while I surely didn’t grow up in the city, at this point in my life I’m more comfortable in downtown Philadelphia than I am in my rural hometown – know that part of life in the big city is learning to get along with many different kinds of people. People travel from all over the state, all over the country, in fact all over the world – remember my Liberian friend who visits us at Emanuel from time to time - to make their home in Philadelphia. And these people dress differently, sometimes speak different languages, organize their families in different ways – and in order to get along, we learn quickly that not everyone is like us, and that we sometimes have to cut one another some slack and agree to disagree, to become comfortable with the idea that people who dress and eat and behave differently from us are not necessarily “bad” or “wrong” – just “different”.
This was the challenge faced by the early church when Gentiles – non-Jews – responded to the message of salvation in Jesus Christ that was proclaimed by the early church. Part of how the Jews maintained their identity through the centuries, and through traumas such as the exile in Babylon and being occupied by the Romans, was to maintain their own distinct customs – not only distinct ways of worshipping God, but distinct ways of eating and dressing, which were seen as commanded by God. Those who were not circumcised and did not follow the dietary and other purity codes of Leviticus were seen as not just different, but wrong, as unclean, as dirty. To eat dinner with a Gentile would have been about as appetizing for them as sticking our hand into a toilet bowl would be for us. But Peter had been given a striking vision – the same vision three times, no less – with the message not to call unclean what God has made clean. While Peter’s vision was at the most literal level about food, Peter’s visit from Cornelius the centurion quickly made clear that God was really talking about people. Had Peter turned away from this vision, Christianity could very easily have been just a small movement within Judaism, nothing that would not have turned the world upside down for God. And there was resistance – Peter’s hospitality to Cornelius and his family was a sort of a Biblical version of “guess who’s coming to dinner”, if you remember that 1967 movie about racial integration. It was because of Peter’s willingness to embrace the heavenly vision, and Paul’s willingness to become Apostle to the Gentiles, that ultimately we are gathered here today to praise and worship God.
Our United Church of Christ congregations in the Philadelphia area have had many “guess who’s coming to dinner” moments. While many longtime UCC congregations, like First Church in Hamburg, where I was confirmed, like Emanuel Church, were founded by German immigrants, others who are now coming to dinner, many of our newer and most dynamic, rapidly growing congregations, come out of different traditions – African American and Hispanic Baptists and Pentecostals, immigrants from India, and most recently, a diverse Methodist church in Chestnut Hill, many of whose members look like us, but who come out of a different theological tradition.
The national United Church of Christ has recently released an internet ad called “The Language of God.” You can find it on the national UCC website, or on the Penn Southeast Conference website. Accompanied by a series of fast guitar notes and interspersed with words like “Faith, Love, Justice, Community, Praise” are many kinds of images, representing not only who the UCC was in the past and is now, but who we hope to be, in our embrace of young and old alike, rich and poor, a wide, wide variety of cultures and languages and family configurations. Some of the images are heartwarming – there’s one really cute frame where a little kid’s eyes are focused on a ladybug at the tip of his nose – and others may be unsettling. Do we really want people like that in worship, at the coffee hour? Who invited them to dinner?
Peter’s vision reminds us that, ultimately, it’s not you nor I nor the national offices of the UCC – important as these invitations are – but God who invites a whole variety of people to dinner, to our coffee hour, and ultimately to the heavenly banquet, the feast of the Lamb. God commands us to share the Good News that others have shared with us, but ultimately it is God that opens the hearts of those around us to the message we proclaim. Whom God invites to our church, to our sanctuary, to worship, to coffee hour, we dare not turn away. And I think we can testify that the life of our congregation has become richer because of those whom God has sent our way in recent years.
Today we sit in the city of Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. At some times – when we read about gun violence and drug dealing – our city’s name may seem like some sick warped joke. At other times – when we have a neighborhood cleanup or when our neighbors help us – we may get a glimpse of the ideals that prompted our city’s founders to choose the name, Philadelphia. But all we experience here – the joys and sorrows, times of tragedy and times of celebration, times when we join hand in hand and times when we work each others’ last nerve – all that we experience here, God uses to prepare us for life in that other big city – the eternal city, the new Jerusalem, where there will not only be no smokestacks belching pollution and nor traffic jams on I-95, but no sorrow, no sighing, no pain nor death nor mourning, for God himself will dwell in our midst and wipe away every tear, where the thirsty will not gag on chlorine-laden Schuylkill punch, but receive water as a gift from the spring of the water of life. Amen.
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Come refresh yourself at the wellspring of faith that is Emanuel United Church of Christ, 2628 Fillmore Street (off Thompson), Sundays at 10 a.m. www.emanuelphila.org
Wondrous Love
(Scriptures: Acts 9:32-43
Revelations 7:9-17 John 10:22-30)
In our reading from Acts, the sequel to Luke’s Gospel, we see the Apostle Peter continuing in the way of Jesus, teaching and doing miracles of healing as Jesus did. Indeed, the two miracles described in our reading may remind us of two of Jesus’ healings. In Luke chapter 5, we may remember the account of the paralyzed man, whose friend lowered him through a hole in the roof in front of Jesus, who healed him. Jesus had asked the skeptics among the crowd, what’s easier to do, tell this man that his sins are forgiven, or tell him to arise, take up his bed, and walk – and Jesus does both. In Acts, Peter, who has been going here and there among the believers and at the moment is in Lydda, northwest of Jerusalem, near Cesarea and Azotus tells Aeneas, “Jesus Christ heals you, get up and make your bed.” Through the Holy Spirit, Jesus’ power of healing had been conferred on Peter and the other Apostles. We are also to understand, from Aeneas’s name – a Greek name – that the message of Jesus is spreading into the Gentile community, possibly through the earlier efforts of Philip, who we’re told in Acts chapter 8 had been carried by the Holy Spirit to preach the good news in Azotus and Cesarea.
And then we read the lovely story of the raising of Tabitha, who we may better remember by her Greek name, Dorcas – and whose name in both Aramaic and Greek means “a gazelle” – a lovely, small, very swift species of deer or antelope. We’re told she was devoted to good works and acts of charity. She must have been very prominent in her community, having been one of the few women in the book of Acts specifically identified as a disciple. After her death, those with her sent for Peter, who had been staying in the village just down the road from Joppa, where Tabitha, also named Dorcas, lived. We’re given such a vivid picture of the moment when Peter arrived at the home of Dorcas, the widows surrounded him, weeping and showing Peter all the clothing that Dorcas had made – we can easily picture all this in our minds – so much so that, indeed, it was not that many decades ago that many churches had womens’ sewing circles called “Dorcas guilds” in her memory, that made clothing and altar coverings and the like. (Did Emanuel used to have a Dorcas guild?) We’re told that Peter put them all outside, prayed over Tabitha’s body. He turned to the body and said, “Tabitha, cumi” – “Tabitha, get up” – and then Tabitha sat up. Peter helped her to her feet and called everybody back inside to see that she was alive. Again, this story may remind us of Jesus’ healing of Jairus’ daughter – in the Mark version of the story, the name of Jairus’ daughter is Talitha – only one letter different from Tabitha – and so Jesus’ words to Jairus’ daughter – “Talitha, cumi” – Talitha, get up” were almost identical to those used by Peter. So the book of Acts is showing a continuity between the works of Jesus and the works of the early church – that Jesus’ loving acts of healing were being carried forward by Peter and others in the early church.
Luke ends this section of Acts by telling us that after raising Dorcas, Peter stayed for a while in Joppa in the house of Simon the tanner. After all the drama of the raising of Dorcas, we may breeze by this final line, but we might want to linger just a moment. Tanners – those who tanned or prepared leather - in that time were considered ritually unclean or at least marginal by observant Jews, as they worked day by day with dead animals, making leather from animal skins. The leather tanning process in those days raised quite a stench – it stank to high heaven, in fact, so tanneries were located on the outskirts of town, away from respectable people. So by starting this section of Acts with the healing of the Greek man Aeneas and ending with Peter staying in the home of a tanner, amid the stench of the dead animals, it would seem that Luke is preparing us for the spread of the Gospel in ever-widening circles, to those on the margins of Jewish society and to the Gentiles. And, indeed, in Acts chapter 10, we read about the conversion of the Gentile Cornelius and Peter’s vision in which God instructed Peter not to call unclean what God called clean.
What are we to make of all this? In our reading from John’s Gospel, Jesus, in a dispute with the Temple religious establishment, says that, “The works I do in my Father’s name testify to me….my sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.” Through the work of the early church, the works done by Peter and the other apostles continue to testify to Jesus, and through Peter and the apostles those called to follow Christ hear Christ’s voice – telling them to rise from their sickbed, calling them to sit up from their deathbeds, following them to the margins of respectable society, willing to bring new life even amid the stench of death. In Revelations, we’re given a glimpse of the heavenly vision, as Christ the Resurrected Lamb of God is worshipped by angels and saints. Christ, God the Son, had earlier left all this, had left the glories of heaven to come in human form, to bring salvation so that we might join him in glory. All our readings today testify to God’s passionate love for us, a love that will not let us go, will not leave us nor forsake us, a love that will seek us even in the midst of stench and sickness and death to call us to new life. Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.”
Flannery O’Connor’s 1950’s Southern Gothic novel “Wise Blood” described the memorable character Hazel Motes, who despite being the grandson of a fundamentalist revival preacher had lost his faith. In his despair Motes tried to start up the “Church of Christ Without Christ”, a church “where the blind don’t see and the lame don’t walk and what’s dead stays that way.” When we read about the healing of Aeneas and the raising of Dorcas, we may wonder what all that has to do with us today. When our children ask us about it, we likely tell them, “well, that was back then…things like that don’t happen today.” And maybe in the back of our minds we wonder if it really happened back then – or did Dorcas maybe just faint or did Aeneas have some sort of psychosomatic illness that kept him bedfast, or did Luke just make the whole thing up. But I’d challenge us to resist temptations to try to explain away these healings and raisings – but rather to challenge ourselves, why don’t things like this happen more often in the church today? Dorcas’s friends had no qualms about asking Peter to come and expecting him to do something, even though Dorcas by appeared to have been dead and gone. Peter had no qualms about asking God to heal Aeneas and raise Dorcas. We worship the same risen Christ, who loves us just as he loved Peter and Aeneas and Dorcas – where is the power of healing that was present then? Or have we at some level bought into the despair of Hazel Motes, who tried to found a church without Christ because he expected God to do exactly nothing for him or anyone else one way or the other. As the letter of James says, “We have not, because we ask not.”
So let’s ask. I’m grateful every Sunday during the time for prayer requests, to get as much of a response as we do. This congregation is not at all shy about praying for healing, and a number of those who have appeared on our prayer list have been restored to good health. Perhaps intercessory prayer – praying for ourselves, each other, our neighbors, and our world – is a ministry to which God has called our congregation in a special way. Clearly we need to exercise discernment – before going to God in prayer, we need to open our ears and hearts and minds to hear Christ’s voice, to discern how God is calling us. We need to be sure that when we pray, our spirits are in tune with God’s spirit. All that said, having opened our Spirits to God’s spirit, let us go to God in prayer with the confidence that God is more willing to hear our prayers than we are to ask.
“My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.” May this eternal love of God, who never lets us go, continue to sustain each of us and our congregation, and may Emanuel church be a place of healing and support for our beloved neighborhood of Bridesburg. Amen.
********
Come experience the wondrous love of Christ at Emanuel United Church of Christ, 2628 Fillmore Street (off Thompson), Sunday mornings at 10 a.m. www.emanuelphila.org
Revelations 7:9-17 John 10:22-30)
In our reading from Acts, the sequel to Luke’s Gospel, we see the Apostle Peter continuing in the way of Jesus, teaching and doing miracles of healing as Jesus did. Indeed, the two miracles described in our reading may remind us of two of Jesus’ healings. In Luke chapter 5, we may remember the account of the paralyzed man, whose friend lowered him through a hole in the roof in front of Jesus, who healed him. Jesus had asked the skeptics among the crowd, what’s easier to do, tell this man that his sins are forgiven, or tell him to arise, take up his bed, and walk – and Jesus does both. In Acts, Peter, who has been going here and there among the believers and at the moment is in Lydda, northwest of Jerusalem, near Cesarea and Azotus tells Aeneas, “Jesus Christ heals you, get up and make your bed.” Through the Holy Spirit, Jesus’ power of healing had been conferred on Peter and the other Apostles. We are also to understand, from Aeneas’s name – a Greek name – that the message of Jesus is spreading into the Gentile community, possibly through the earlier efforts of Philip, who we’re told in Acts chapter 8 had been carried by the Holy Spirit to preach the good news in Azotus and Cesarea.
And then we read the lovely story of the raising of Tabitha, who we may better remember by her Greek name, Dorcas – and whose name in both Aramaic and Greek means “a gazelle” – a lovely, small, very swift species of deer or antelope. We’re told she was devoted to good works and acts of charity. She must have been very prominent in her community, having been one of the few women in the book of Acts specifically identified as a disciple. After her death, those with her sent for Peter, who had been staying in the village just down the road from Joppa, where Tabitha, also named Dorcas, lived. We’re given such a vivid picture of the moment when Peter arrived at the home of Dorcas, the widows surrounded him, weeping and showing Peter all the clothing that Dorcas had made – we can easily picture all this in our minds – so much so that, indeed, it was not that many decades ago that many churches had womens’ sewing circles called “Dorcas guilds” in her memory, that made clothing and altar coverings and the like. (Did Emanuel used to have a Dorcas guild?) We’re told that Peter put them all outside, prayed over Tabitha’s body. He turned to the body and said, “Tabitha, cumi” – “Tabitha, get up” – and then Tabitha sat up. Peter helped her to her feet and called everybody back inside to see that she was alive. Again, this story may remind us of Jesus’ healing of Jairus’ daughter – in the Mark version of the story, the name of Jairus’ daughter is Talitha – only one letter different from Tabitha – and so Jesus’ words to Jairus’ daughter – “Talitha, cumi” – Talitha, get up” were almost identical to those used by Peter. So the book of Acts is showing a continuity between the works of Jesus and the works of the early church – that Jesus’ loving acts of healing were being carried forward by Peter and others in the early church.
Luke ends this section of Acts by telling us that after raising Dorcas, Peter stayed for a while in Joppa in the house of Simon the tanner. After all the drama of the raising of Dorcas, we may breeze by this final line, but we might want to linger just a moment. Tanners – those who tanned or prepared leather - in that time were considered ritually unclean or at least marginal by observant Jews, as they worked day by day with dead animals, making leather from animal skins. The leather tanning process in those days raised quite a stench – it stank to high heaven, in fact, so tanneries were located on the outskirts of town, away from respectable people. So by starting this section of Acts with the healing of the Greek man Aeneas and ending with Peter staying in the home of a tanner, amid the stench of the dead animals, it would seem that Luke is preparing us for the spread of the Gospel in ever-widening circles, to those on the margins of Jewish society and to the Gentiles. And, indeed, in Acts chapter 10, we read about the conversion of the Gentile Cornelius and Peter’s vision in which God instructed Peter not to call unclean what God called clean.
What are we to make of all this? In our reading from John’s Gospel, Jesus, in a dispute with the Temple religious establishment, says that, “The works I do in my Father’s name testify to me….my sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.” Through the work of the early church, the works done by Peter and the other apostles continue to testify to Jesus, and through Peter and the apostles those called to follow Christ hear Christ’s voice – telling them to rise from their sickbed, calling them to sit up from their deathbeds, following them to the margins of respectable society, willing to bring new life even amid the stench of death. In Revelations, we’re given a glimpse of the heavenly vision, as Christ the Resurrected Lamb of God is worshipped by angels and saints. Christ, God the Son, had earlier left all this, had left the glories of heaven to come in human form, to bring salvation so that we might join him in glory. All our readings today testify to God’s passionate love for us, a love that will not let us go, will not leave us nor forsake us, a love that will seek us even in the midst of stench and sickness and death to call us to new life. Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.”
Flannery O’Connor’s 1950’s Southern Gothic novel “Wise Blood” described the memorable character Hazel Motes, who despite being the grandson of a fundamentalist revival preacher had lost his faith. In his despair Motes tried to start up the “Church of Christ Without Christ”, a church “where the blind don’t see and the lame don’t walk and what’s dead stays that way.” When we read about the healing of Aeneas and the raising of Dorcas, we may wonder what all that has to do with us today. When our children ask us about it, we likely tell them, “well, that was back then…things like that don’t happen today.” And maybe in the back of our minds we wonder if it really happened back then – or did Dorcas maybe just faint or did Aeneas have some sort of psychosomatic illness that kept him bedfast, or did Luke just make the whole thing up. But I’d challenge us to resist temptations to try to explain away these healings and raisings – but rather to challenge ourselves, why don’t things like this happen more often in the church today? Dorcas’s friends had no qualms about asking Peter to come and expecting him to do something, even though Dorcas by appeared to have been dead and gone. Peter had no qualms about asking God to heal Aeneas and raise Dorcas. We worship the same risen Christ, who loves us just as he loved Peter and Aeneas and Dorcas – where is the power of healing that was present then? Or have we at some level bought into the despair of Hazel Motes, who tried to found a church without Christ because he expected God to do exactly nothing for him or anyone else one way or the other. As the letter of James says, “We have not, because we ask not.”
So let’s ask. I’m grateful every Sunday during the time for prayer requests, to get as much of a response as we do. This congregation is not at all shy about praying for healing, and a number of those who have appeared on our prayer list have been restored to good health. Perhaps intercessory prayer – praying for ourselves, each other, our neighbors, and our world – is a ministry to which God has called our congregation in a special way. Clearly we need to exercise discernment – before going to God in prayer, we need to open our ears and hearts and minds to hear Christ’s voice, to discern how God is calling us. We need to be sure that when we pray, our spirits are in tune with God’s spirit. All that said, having opened our Spirits to God’s spirit, let us go to God in prayer with the confidence that God is more willing to hear our prayers than we are to ask.
“My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.” May this eternal love of God, who never lets us go, continue to sustain each of us and our congregation, and may Emanuel church be a place of healing and support for our beloved neighborhood of Bridesburg. Amen.
********
Come experience the wondrous love of Christ at Emanuel United Church of Christ, 2628 Fillmore Street (off Thompson), Sunday mornings at 10 a.m. www.emanuelphila.org
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