(Scriptures: I Samuel 16:1-13, 2 Corinthians 5:1-23 Mark 4:1-34)
Today’s Gospel reading gives us three parables about agriculture – about raising crops or, on a smaller scale, about gardening. I have to admit, I have struggled at times with preaching on these agricultural parables – because I’m not a farmer and it’s hard to preach on something outside my daily experience. I grew up in rural Berks County, in a small town surrounded by cornfields on all sides – this was years before Cabellas put Hamburg, Pennsylvania on the map for sporting enthusiasts. But while I had some exposure to farms when I was young, I’ve been living and working in the Philadelphia area now for more than 20 years. So my memories of farms and farmers have faded with the passing of the years.
This has changed recently, as an offshoot of the Occupy movement – Occupy Vacant Lots – has been reclaiming abandoned lots, with the city’s blessing, for small urban gardens. Feeling a bit nostalgic about getting my hands dirty, perhaps, I’ve hung out the with group as they worked on a lot on North 24th Street just below Cecil B Moore Ave and a series of small plots near 10th & Indiana, surrounding the Fair Hill Cemetery. Both plots are near public housing projects, and for me one of the unexpected blessings of the experience was watching the interactions between the Occupy folks and the folks from the projects. The hope – fulfilled in part – was that some of the project folk might get involved in the gardening – and enjoy the eating that came at the end. Because, really, the point of the garden is not just to raise food, but to create community where there was none.
This work had been going on for a number of weeks before I wandered onto the scene, and so much of the ground had already been cleared of debris; some had already been broken up to some extent. I was also told that the ground had been tested for hazardous materials – while the soil in these former industrial neighborhoods wasn’t exactly pure as the driven snow, it was deemed acceptable for gardening - and the gardens were being raised without fertilizer or pesticide or such. There were lots of different small plants being put in the garden – peppers, lettuce, tomatoes, eggplants – and I was grateful for the patience of those who were there, as I couldn’t always tell, for example, the difference between baby pepper plants from baby eggplant plants. While we pulled a lot of weeds, I also learned that some of what I had assumed were weeds to be pulled, were in fact edible and could be boiled for greens. We did pull lots of dandelions, but one of the folks wanted to take them home and boil up a mess of dandelion greens. I handed him my pile of pulled dandelions and said, “Bon appetite!” This gave me a bit of fresh insight into Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the weeds – a parable about, among other things, the mixed state of the church - in which the landowner cautioned against yanking out plants willy-nilly, because it was easy to mistake edible plants for weeds – or by application to the church, it’s easy to reject people whom God is calling to discipleship, but who may not fit the profile of “good church folk”. Certainly there were edible plants in the garden that didn’t fit the profile of the kind of veggies you’d find at Acme, but were good to have around all the same.
Jesus’ parable speaks of seed that fell on the path, on shallow soil, among thorns, and in good soil – and of course, the seed that fell among the good soil bore a bumper crop. One insight from my vacant lot adventures is – good soil doesn’t just happen. It’s hard work! The plots of land that are being turned into gardens, before the work began, had hard-trodden ground, rocks, thorn bushes, along with other delights - the occasional empty beer can or broken bottle or discarded tire, and so on and so on. You know how quickly beer bottles and such can build up in our cemetery, so you can imagine what these lots were like before the Occupy people arrived - nobody had been picking up trash from these vacant lots for quite some time. Good soil is what you hope to be left with after you’ve broken up downtrodden soil, removed the rocks, uprooted the thorns, and otherwise prepared the soil. And in the kingdom of heaven, people with hearts prepared for the gospel may sometimes just happen along, but more often God has to uproot the rocks and thorns – those things in our lives that block the growth of God’s word. When we are facing difficult changes and decisions in our lives, it doesn’t mean that God has abandoned us. Perhaps it just means that God is digging into our lives so he can pull some weeds out by the roots.
Perhaps the main lesson I learned from Occupy is that good soil can occur in unexpected places. You would expect to find good soil in the farm country of Berks County, where I grew up. In Brewerytown, in Fair Hill, in other parts of North Philadelphia, near housing projects – not so much. And yet, some hard work, some preparation, and Jesus’ parable re-enacts itself – “The seed sprouts and grows, we know not how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head” – or in the case of the lot gardens, instead of grain, tomatoes or peppers or such.“ In neighborhoods that many have left for dead, life blossoms amid the ruins.
And the same is true for the Reign of God. While God is present in places with stained glass windows and organ music, God also has a way of showing up in the most unlikely places, in the most unlikely faces. Situations that seem like a dead-end turn out to be unexpectedly life-giving. Persons who seem to have nothing of value to offer may come out with unexpected words of wisdom.
I’ve seen some of these seeds of God’s kingdom growing in some very unlikely places. Sr. Margaret McKenna runs a long-term recovery program at 20th & Norris Streets, bringing life and hope to an otherwise desolate neighborhood. Shane Claiborne’s Simple Way community in Kensington embraces what they call new monasticism to share in the life of their neighborhood, to live simply with their neighbors, that their neighbors may simply live.
How about here? Certainly Bridesburg does not seem to be the most promising place for God to do a new thing. Our congregation, the other congregations of the Bridesburg Council of Churches, find the spiritual soil of the neighborhood such that it’s a struggle to hang on, let alone blossom. Even All Saints, which would find the spiritual soil of this historically Roman Catholic neighborhood more favorable for growth, isn’t thriving as it once did. At first glance, it may seem that the spiritual soil in Bridesburg is as hard as a rock, overgrown with thorn bushes, perhaps depleted of nutrients for more delicate plants. To outsiders, a visit to Bridesburg can be one prickly experience.
And that’s where we, you and I, come in. I have to believe that God has put Emanuel Church here in Bridesburg for a reason, that we exist for some purpose of God beyond ourselves. And I mean that quite literally: I have to believe. I have to. After all, while I think Emanuel Church offers outstanding music – at least on the Sundays when Ralph is here, not so much when he’s away – and caring fellowship and good refreshments, and mercifully short sermons most of the time, is that reason enough to come here? As it happens, many of the pastors of the Council of Churches commute here – I come in from Conshohocken; Scott Bohr from the Presbyterian church comes in from Blue Bell; Tom Adams from the Baptist Church, God bless him, in his 80’s drives in every Sunday from Cape May, NJ. I assure you there are organ music and fellowship and dessert to be found in Conshohocken and Blue Bell and Cape May, NJ and any number of places in between. Any one of us can find outstanding organ music and good fellowship and tasty coffee and cake much closer to home. Why come to Bridesburg for all that? I come here, and the other pastors come here to their respective churches, because we believe in God and we believe in Bridesburg. I come because I have to believe that God calls our congregation together for worship each week here, in this place, for a reason – not to moan and groan about the hardness and overgrown and depleted state of the spiritual soil, but to change it, to do the hard work of pulling up thorn bushes and digging up rocks, to add mulch, to convert it to good soil that is receptive to the Gospel.
What might it look like to try some spiritual urban gardening here in Bridesburg? If our church is closed up most of the time, only open briefly on Sunday, we are like the hard ground of the path….there’s no way for folks to get in the door, no place for a seed to catch hold. So we need to find ways to have the doors open more often, and need to step outside our doors and take the Gospel to the neighborhood. If our church only welcomes certain kinds of people, or only welcomes them if they behave a certain way, we’re like the thin soil on rocky ground – newcomers might come and stay for a short time, but at some point in trying to integrate into the congregation, they feel like they’ve hit a brick wall, and stop coming. So we need to be a house of prayer for all kinds of people. If our lives outside the doors of the church don’t reflect the love of God, if our lives reflect the world’s priorities and not God’s priorities, if we are only out for ourselves and not for others, then the thorns have grown around our spiritual life and the fruit which God would have us bear, has been choked out. So in a culture full of idols such as money and privilege calling for our loyalty, we need to live in a countercultural way, so that our lives may bear fruit, that we may plant the seeds of the Gospel in the lives of others.
"Other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.” May God use our small congregation, Emanuel United Church of Christ, each of us here, to bring forth seeds of mercy and justice and lovingkindness, the seeds of the Gospel, the seeds of the Kingdom of God, seeds that will grow here in Bridesburg, in Philadelphia, and to the ends of the earth. Amen.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Family
(Scriptures: I Samuel 8:1-22, 2 Corinthians 4:1-18; 5:1 Mark 3:20-35)
I’d like to open this sermon by asking you to ponder a bit on the word “home” and what it means to you. When you think of the word “home”, what images come up? Perhaps the house you grew up in, the neighborhood where you grew up – for some of us – though not all - Bridesburg or somewhere else in the lower northeast. Perhaps images of mom in the kitchen making turkey for Thanksgiving, or images of dad or sisters or brothers or other family members. .Or if our memories of our families of origin are more ambivalent, perhaps the world “home” calls up images of the home we’ve made as adults, with a spouse or partner and maybe some kids. We can go on a vacation and have the time of our lives seeing unfamiliar sights, but at the end of it, we’re ready to go home.
Our culture has many sayings about home, some positive, some not so much. We hear that “home is where the heart is.” Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz said, “There’s no place like home.” Robert Frost wrote, in “Death of a Hired Man,” “Home is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” On the other hand, the title of Thomas Wolfe’s 1940 book, “You Can’t Go Home Again”, reminds us that though we can return to the geography of our childhood, it may no longer resemble the nostalgic images of home we carry in our minds – and that there’s often little satisfaction to be found in trying to relive the past. Some who grow up in rural areas with minimal economic opportunities or cultural activities leave their villages for the big city, and never look back. While many cultures are accustomed to having two or three or even four generations living under one roof, in our culture, grown children are expected to leave mother and father to set up homes of their own, and adult children in their 40’s who have never left home may get funny looks if they talk with others about living at home with mom.
In our reading from Mark’s Gospel, we watch Jesus come home, after a whirlwind ministry tour, to a very mixed reception from his hometown. Having done numerous healings and exorcisms, selected his disciples, and spent some time with God in prayer, Jesus needs some time to chill out – so he’s homeward bound.
His return home prompts a variety of reactions. The crowds continue to follow him, hoping for healing and release from suffering. His family and neighbors, though, aren’t so impressed. They watched Jesus grow up, watched him help his father in the family carpentry business, and can’t imagine why all these people would want to follow Jesus around. And the things Jesus is saying these days – my, he’s gotten big for his britches. Or so the neighbors think. Actually, they think Jesus has lost his mind – become some crazed religious nut – and so they’re chasing him around with the proverbial big net to try to catch him and restrain him. Their reaction would be comical if it weren’t so typical –when one member of a family behaves in ways that beyond the norm and the others try to get that person back in line - and in some ways, so sad. Some visiting religious scholars from Jerusalem are even less impressed – they think Jesus is demon-possessed, and that what he’s doing is the devil’s work.
As tired – and probably annoyed with family and religious leaders alike – as he is, Jesus tries to use the confrontation as a teaching moment. First he tries to reason with the religious leaders: Why would Satan want to cast himself out of somebody. Why would Satan work against himself, work to defeat himself. As Jesus tells it, the accusation of the religious leaders doesn’t even make sense.
But then Jesus goes on to say something that has had ordinary believers tied up in knots of false guilt, and Bible scholars tied up in knots of confusion trying to explain the verse. “Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.” An eternal sin….can never have forgiveness….wow! That’s a heavy statement to ponder. Lots of sincere Christians have lost lots of sleep wondering if some statement hollered in anger or some obscenity uttered in a time of stress constitutes blasphemy against the Holy Spirit and therefore has them locked outside the pearly gates.
This is one of those statements where, I think, context is key. And what is the context? What Jesus had been doing through the power of the Holy Spirit, the religious leaders were attributing to Satan. And what had Jesus been doing – works of healing and especially of exorcism.
There are some words of comfort and of challenge to be found here. The comfort is, that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit – attributing the works of God to Satan – is not something most people are tempted to do. If we’re concerned that some action of ours constitutes blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, the fact that we’re concerned and seeking repentance pretty much rules out any possibility that we’re beyond forgiveness.
The challenge is that the very people who might be tempted to this sin are, ironically, a certain kind of religious person – the kind who think they have everything all figured out, who have all the answers, who make snap judgments about what God does and does not do, who are very quick to attribute unwelcome developments in their life and unwelcome actions of others to the work of Satan. Hear me carefully on this: You really, really don’t want to risk the possibility of taking something that God is doing and say it’s the work of the devil. You just don’t. This is why, when I’m asked about speaking in tongues or being slain in the spirit or other charismatic worship practices that are unfamiliar in our tradition, whether they are the devil’s work – why I refuse to give an across the board ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer. Do some people fake speaking in tongues – I’d imagine that some do. Is speaking in tongues a response to the work of the Holy Spirit – For some people, I’m sure it is, just as it was in New Testament times. Often, when we encounter some religious practice with which we’re unfamiliar and we’re not sure if it’s of God or not, the most honest response and the most faithful response is simply – “I don’t know.” Which is why I say “I don’t know” a lot, and am not afraid or ashamed to do so. The words “I don’t know” keep us humble, which is good for our spiritual development. Often it’s best, if we encounter a religious practice we can’t support, to just let it go and await developments. Sort of like the parable of the wheat and the weeds – in this world, we can’t always tell wheat and weeds apart, so we’re in no position to start yanking plants out of the ground or yanking people out of Christian fellowship willy-nilly. Or like the counsel of the rabbi Gamaliel in Acts: if it’s of men, it’ll eventually fall of its own weight, but if it’s of God, you don’t want to be found in opposition to God. The problem with the religious leaders who opposed Jesus is that they lacked humility, they weren’t willing to say “I don’t know” and leave Jesus alone; they in their pride had to be seen as having all the answers. And that was their downfall.
At that point, Mom and the family are outside the house where Jesus is teaching, and they ask those inside to let Jesus know that Mom and the family want to have a word with him. And let’s listen to Jesus’ response: in effect: “Who is my family? You (referring to those listening to him) are my family! Anyone who does God’s will is part of my family.
At this point, in the very traditional culture of Jesus’ time, and even in our culture, Jesus’ answer to the question “Who is my family?” may sound, to their ears and ours, as if Jesus himself uttered blasphemy against prevailing ideas of family. In Jesus’ culture, family would have included not only parents and children, but grandparents (and great grandparents if folks lived long enough), aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews – the whole extended family. It would have been a large grouping linked by blood and biology, but with boundaries - those not so linked were not family. American culture puts much less value on the ties of extended family, so in our culture, family is mom, dad, two or so kids – and that’s it. To underline this point, I included in your bulletin a photo of a statue in Conshohocken, where I live, in honor of “The Family”. This statue, created by one J. Pavone and commissioned by an Italian-American veterans organization, virtually turns the American model of mom, dad, and two kids into an idol to be venerated.
They say that “blood is thicker than water”, but there are times when blood ties aren’t enough to carry the day. Our reading from I Samuel tells of such a time. Faithful Samuel has been judge over Israel for many years, from his youth until he was old and grey. In his old age Samuel appointed his sons as judges – hoping they would carry on after Samuel had passed from this life - but the sons were corrupt. While the sons shared Samuel’s bloodline, they didn’t share Samuel’s values or the same priorities. Because of the sons’ corruption, the people asked Samuel to anoint a king for them. Jesus said that “A house divided cannot stand”, and in the case of Samuel’s house, his children’s rejection of Samuel’s priorities led to the end of his family line of judges.
In saying “Anyone who does God’s will is part of my family”, Jesus is lifting up a new, broader vision of family, a vision of family defined, not by blood, but by a shared commitment to doing God’s will. In effect, Jesus’ followers become his family, a family of choice, we might say, in contrast with his family of origin.
What might this look like? One comparison arises out of the tragedy of our society’s response to HIV/AIDS in the 1980’s and early 1990’s, before the advent of life-prolonging treatments. Many of the early cases of AIDS were among gay men, and society’s revulsion against homosexuals, combined with its fear of a new, mysterious, fatal disease led many families to disown their gay brothers and sons, to throw them out on the street just at a time when they were dying and vulnerable and in need of support. Out of necessity, many of those thrown out of their homes found that their circles of friends became their new families, families of choice who would look in on them and care for them when their families of origin refused to do so, who would wait by their bedsides as they became sicker and stand by their graves when they died. For many rejected by families of origin, as their bodies – their outer natures - were wasting away, the support of friends, of their families of choice, renewed their spirits day by day.
It’s not that Jesus turned his back on his mom and brothers and sisters. From John’s Gospel, we know that Mary was present at Jesus’ crucifixion, and Jesus commended her to the care of John, the beloved disciple. It was perhaps in that tender moment amid the brutality of the crucifixion that Jesus invited his family of origin to join and become part of his family of choice. We also know that James, the brother of Jesus, was a leader in the early church in Jerusalem. So it’s important to say that Jesus did not reject his family of origin – but it’s also important to say that Jesus was not limited by it.
It has been said, jokingly, that the family ties that bind can also be the ties that gag. Jesus calls us to expand our field of vision beyond the cozy, sometimes cramped perspective of our own households – and certainly to resist the call of many in the church to turn the ideal of the family into an idol to be worshipped – but rather, to follow Jesus’ example in welcoming all who do God’s will as family. May we at Emanuel Church, in the words of Paul, be conformed to Christ’s image, so that we may become members of the large family of faith, of which Jesus is the first-born. Amen.
I’d like to open this sermon by asking you to ponder a bit on the word “home” and what it means to you. When you think of the word “home”, what images come up? Perhaps the house you grew up in, the neighborhood where you grew up – for some of us – though not all - Bridesburg or somewhere else in the lower northeast. Perhaps images of mom in the kitchen making turkey for Thanksgiving, or images of dad or sisters or brothers or other family members. .Or if our memories of our families of origin are more ambivalent, perhaps the world “home” calls up images of the home we’ve made as adults, with a spouse or partner and maybe some kids. We can go on a vacation and have the time of our lives seeing unfamiliar sights, but at the end of it, we’re ready to go home.
Our culture has many sayings about home, some positive, some not so much. We hear that “home is where the heart is.” Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz said, “There’s no place like home.” Robert Frost wrote, in “Death of a Hired Man,” “Home is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” On the other hand, the title of Thomas Wolfe’s 1940 book, “You Can’t Go Home Again”, reminds us that though we can return to the geography of our childhood, it may no longer resemble the nostalgic images of home we carry in our minds – and that there’s often little satisfaction to be found in trying to relive the past. Some who grow up in rural areas with minimal economic opportunities or cultural activities leave their villages for the big city, and never look back. While many cultures are accustomed to having two or three or even four generations living under one roof, in our culture, grown children are expected to leave mother and father to set up homes of their own, and adult children in their 40’s who have never left home may get funny looks if they talk with others about living at home with mom.
In our reading from Mark’s Gospel, we watch Jesus come home, after a whirlwind ministry tour, to a very mixed reception from his hometown. Having done numerous healings and exorcisms, selected his disciples, and spent some time with God in prayer, Jesus needs some time to chill out – so he’s homeward bound.
His return home prompts a variety of reactions. The crowds continue to follow him, hoping for healing and release from suffering. His family and neighbors, though, aren’t so impressed. They watched Jesus grow up, watched him help his father in the family carpentry business, and can’t imagine why all these people would want to follow Jesus around. And the things Jesus is saying these days – my, he’s gotten big for his britches. Or so the neighbors think. Actually, they think Jesus has lost his mind – become some crazed religious nut – and so they’re chasing him around with the proverbial big net to try to catch him and restrain him. Their reaction would be comical if it weren’t so typical –when one member of a family behaves in ways that beyond the norm and the others try to get that person back in line - and in some ways, so sad. Some visiting religious scholars from Jerusalem are even less impressed – they think Jesus is demon-possessed, and that what he’s doing is the devil’s work.
As tired – and probably annoyed with family and religious leaders alike – as he is, Jesus tries to use the confrontation as a teaching moment. First he tries to reason with the religious leaders: Why would Satan want to cast himself out of somebody. Why would Satan work against himself, work to defeat himself. As Jesus tells it, the accusation of the religious leaders doesn’t even make sense.
But then Jesus goes on to say something that has had ordinary believers tied up in knots of false guilt, and Bible scholars tied up in knots of confusion trying to explain the verse. “Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.” An eternal sin….can never have forgiveness….wow! That’s a heavy statement to ponder. Lots of sincere Christians have lost lots of sleep wondering if some statement hollered in anger or some obscenity uttered in a time of stress constitutes blasphemy against the Holy Spirit and therefore has them locked outside the pearly gates.
This is one of those statements where, I think, context is key. And what is the context? What Jesus had been doing through the power of the Holy Spirit, the religious leaders were attributing to Satan. And what had Jesus been doing – works of healing and especially of exorcism.
There are some words of comfort and of challenge to be found here. The comfort is, that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit – attributing the works of God to Satan – is not something most people are tempted to do. If we’re concerned that some action of ours constitutes blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, the fact that we’re concerned and seeking repentance pretty much rules out any possibility that we’re beyond forgiveness.
The challenge is that the very people who might be tempted to this sin are, ironically, a certain kind of religious person – the kind who think they have everything all figured out, who have all the answers, who make snap judgments about what God does and does not do, who are very quick to attribute unwelcome developments in their life and unwelcome actions of others to the work of Satan. Hear me carefully on this: You really, really don’t want to risk the possibility of taking something that God is doing and say it’s the work of the devil. You just don’t. This is why, when I’m asked about speaking in tongues or being slain in the spirit or other charismatic worship practices that are unfamiliar in our tradition, whether they are the devil’s work – why I refuse to give an across the board ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer. Do some people fake speaking in tongues – I’d imagine that some do. Is speaking in tongues a response to the work of the Holy Spirit – For some people, I’m sure it is, just as it was in New Testament times. Often, when we encounter some religious practice with which we’re unfamiliar and we’re not sure if it’s of God or not, the most honest response and the most faithful response is simply – “I don’t know.” Which is why I say “I don’t know” a lot, and am not afraid or ashamed to do so. The words “I don’t know” keep us humble, which is good for our spiritual development. Often it’s best, if we encounter a religious practice we can’t support, to just let it go and await developments. Sort of like the parable of the wheat and the weeds – in this world, we can’t always tell wheat and weeds apart, so we’re in no position to start yanking plants out of the ground or yanking people out of Christian fellowship willy-nilly. Or like the counsel of the rabbi Gamaliel in Acts: if it’s of men, it’ll eventually fall of its own weight, but if it’s of God, you don’t want to be found in opposition to God. The problem with the religious leaders who opposed Jesus is that they lacked humility, they weren’t willing to say “I don’t know” and leave Jesus alone; they in their pride had to be seen as having all the answers. And that was their downfall.
At that point, Mom and the family are outside the house where Jesus is teaching, and they ask those inside to let Jesus know that Mom and the family want to have a word with him. And let’s listen to Jesus’ response: in effect: “Who is my family? You (referring to those listening to him) are my family! Anyone who does God’s will is part of my family.
At this point, in the very traditional culture of Jesus’ time, and even in our culture, Jesus’ answer to the question “Who is my family?” may sound, to their ears and ours, as if Jesus himself uttered blasphemy against prevailing ideas of family. In Jesus’ culture, family would have included not only parents and children, but grandparents (and great grandparents if folks lived long enough), aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews – the whole extended family. It would have been a large grouping linked by blood and biology, but with boundaries - those not so linked were not family. American culture puts much less value on the ties of extended family, so in our culture, family is mom, dad, two or so kids – and that’s it. To underline this point, I included in your bulletin a photo of a statue in Conshohocken, where I live, in honor of “The Family”. This statue, created by one J. Pavone and commissioned by an Italian-American veterans organization, virtually turns the American model of mom, dad, and two kids into an idol to be venerated.
They say that “blood is thicker than water”, but there are times when blood ties aren’t enough to carry the day. Our reading from I Samuel tells of such a time. Faithful Samuel has been judge over Israel for many years, from his youth until he was old and grey. In his old age Samuel appointed his sons as judges – hoping they would carry on after Samuel had passed from this life - but the sons were corrupt. While the sons shared Samuel’s bloodline, they didn’t share Samuel’s values or the same priorities. Because of the sons’ corruption, the people asked Samuel to anoint a king for them. Jesus said that “A house divided cannot stand”, and in the case of Samuel’s house, his children’s rejection of Samuel’s priorities led to the end of his family line of judges.
In saying “Anyone who does God’s will is part of my family”, Jesus is lifting up a new, broader vision of family, a vision of family defined, not by blood, but by a shared commitment to doing God’s will. In effect, Jesus’ followers become his family, a family of choice, we might say, in contrast with his family of origin.
What might this look like? One comparison arises out of the tragedy of our society’s response to HIV/AIDS in the 1980’s and early 1990’s, before the advent of life-prolonging treatments. Many of the early cases of AIDS were among gay men, and society’s revulsion against homosexuals, combined with its fear of a new, mysterious, fatal disease led many families to disown their gay brothers and sons, to throw them out on the street just at a time when they were dying and vulnerable and in need of support. Out of necessity, many of those thrown out of their homes found that their circles of friends became their new families, families of choice who would look in on them and care for them when their families of origin refused to do so, who would wait by their bedsides as they became sicker and stand by their graves when they died. For many rejected by families of origin, as their bodies – their outer natures - were wasting away, the support of friends, of their families of choice, renewed their spirits day by day.
It’s not that Jesus turned his back on his mom and brothers and sisters. From John’s Gospel, we know that Mary was present at Jesus’ crucifixion, and Jesus commended her to the care of John, the beloved disciple. It was perhaps in that tender moment amid the brutality of the crucifixion that Jesus invited his family of origin to join and become part of his family of choice. We also know that James, the brother of Jesus, was a leader in the early church in Jerusalem. So it’s important to say that Jesus did not reject his family of origin – but it’s also important to say that Jesus was not limited by it.
It has been said, jokingly, that the family ties that bind can also be the ties that gag. Jesus calls us to expand our field of vision beyond the cozy, sometimes cramped perspective of our own households – and certainly to resist the call of many in the church to turn the ideal of the family into an idol to be worshipped – but rather, to follow Jesus’ example in welcoming all who do God’s will as family. May we at Emanuel Church, in the words of Paul, be conformed to Christ’s image, so that we may become members of the large family of faith, of which Jesus is the first-born. Amen.
Monday, June 4, 2012
Blessed Trinity
(Scriptures: Isaiah 6:1-8, Romans 8:1-17 John 3:1-17)
The Celts use the term “thin places” to refer to places where God’s presence seems especially near. The idea behind the phrase is that there’s a sort of invisible veil or curtain that separates the world we experience every day, the world we experience with our five senses, from eternity – and things are taking place in both worlds at the same time. That is to say, in this way of understanding, eternity is not just someplace we go when we die, but rather eternity is going on around us all the time, for the most part unseen and undetected. Except every now and then, in places experienced as “thin places”, it’s as if the veil or curtain between time and eternity is thinner than normal, and eternity almost seems to break through into time. The Bible records a number of such places – for example, in Genesis, after Jacob left his father to escape the wrath of Esau, at a certain place he later named Beth-El, he had the vision of a ladder from earth to heaven with angels ascending and descending the ladder. Jacob said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it! How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven!”
In today’s Old Testament reading, Isaiah experiences the Temple as such a “thin place”. From the imagery, it seems that while Isaiah was in worship at the Temple and the Temple liturgy was going on, he was caught up into a vision of a heavenly liturgy going on at the same time, in which the Lord was sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, being attended and worshipped by angels. We’re told that in this vision, the hem of his robe filled the Temple – perhaps for Isaiah in his vision, the veil in the Temple separating the people from the holy of holies comes to represent the hem of God’s robe.
Having experienced this almost indescribable scene, Isaiah becomes immediately aware of his own sinfulness and unworthiness. “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips, yet my eyes of seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” Last week at the Bible study we read this in the Good News translation, and the wording stuck with me: “I am doomed because every word that passes my lips is sinful, and I live among a people whose every word is sinful.” No attempt to excuse himself or minimize his sin – just acknowledgement and confession. And then an angel touches a live coal to his lips and pronounces him cleansed from sin. He hears the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go?” And Isaiah responds, “Here I am, send me.” If we think about it, this scene forms the pattern for our worship here at church – we assemble, sing a hymn of praise to God, and (except on communion Sundays) we pray a prayer of confession of sin, and hear the words of the assurance of pardon. Having been freed from our sin, we are freed to respond, as Isaiah did, “Here I am, send me” – by singing hymns of thanksgiving, by the giving of our tithes and offerings which can go places we can’t personally, and at the end of worship by being sent out into the world to serve the Lord.
Our reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans is, ultimately, the outcome of another such unexpected encounter with the divine. We know that while on the road to Damascus to hunt down and arrest Christians, he was given a vision of the risen Christ – and that vision caused Paul to turn from persecuting the church on the basis of the law as he understood it, to living in the Spirit and thus becoming the church’s greatest missionary. The cleansing from sin Isaiah experienced in his vision by way of the burning coal touched to his lips by the angel, in Paul’s telling, was given to him and is available to all through Christ. Thus, having written eloquently in Romans 7 about the inner struggle of one who delights in the law of the Lord, but finds himself captive to the sin of the flesh, Paul is then able to write, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus….For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit…..for all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. When we cry “Abba! Father! – even “Daddy!” – it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our Spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.
Our Gospel reading provides yet another account of an encounter with the divine, as Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night. It is a less dramatic encounter than the others, but transformative just the same. Nicodemus initiates the encounter – he comes to Jesus, not the other way around – and at the outset seems to be firmly in control of the conversation: “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” But then, as Jesus responds with a seeming non-sequitur – “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above” – in the ensuing conversation about being born of the Spirit – “the wind blows where it will, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with those who are born of the Spirit” - Nicodemus is thoroughly spun around, baffled, disoriented. And yet, out of his disorientation and confusion, faith slowly emerges, so that by the end of John’s Gospel Nicodemus is able to come forward publicly with Joseph of Arimithea to claim the body of Christ.
Today is Trinity Sunday, when we lift up the doctrine of the Trinity, one God in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The word “Trinity” is nowhere found in Scripture – the naming of the persons of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, appears in just one place in Scripture, in Jesus’ Great Commission at the end of Matthew’s Gospel – “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” The doctrine of the Trinity was not dropped down from heaven on a tablet of stone, but hammered out in the early church over centuries and finally adopted as orthodoxy at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. This doctrine is a human attempt to make sense of encounters with the divine such as those experienced by Isaiah, Paul, and Nicodemus, human attempts to describe the indescribable. Some speak of the Trinity in terms of function – God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are described respectively as Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer – the Father creates; the Son redeems, and the Spirit sustains. Others emphasize that the Trinity does not simply mean one God with three functions, but one God in three persons – that within the one God, within the Godhead, are three persons in an eternal dance of intimate love and mutual self-giving. We see some of this dance of self-giving in Jesus’ words from John’s Gospel - “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me….I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one.” So in effect it is Jesus who invites each of us to “come join the dance”.
I began by describing thin places, encounters with the divine, and ended with a description of the three persons of the Trinity in a mutual dance of self-giving - dynamic images, images of motion and mystery. Often when humans, especially church folk, try to describe the indescribable, they turn that which is living and in motion into something static, a fixed orthodoxy from which no one is to deviate – and then use that fixed orthodoxy as a club or brickbat with which to beat over the head those who disagree. And those creedal clubs and brickbats have drawn much blood over many centuries. (As St. Paul writes, the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.) And so, on this Trinity Sunday, I would invite us to focus, not so much on static creedal statements, however venerable, but on those moving, mysterious, unpredictable encounters as described in Scripture between humans and the divine. As is sometimes expressed in the United Church of Christ, we see the ancient creeds as testimonies of faith, not tests of faith – as descriptions of how our ancestors in the faith experienced the divine, not as prescriptions limiting how we today are to experience the divine. For we worship a God always in motion, a God who is still speaking, still acting, still creating and recreating. Remember that God’s name, which is usually translated “I am what I am” can also be translated “I will be what I will be.”
We had quite a discussion last week at the Bible study around the question, “Why do most of us not have visions today such as Isaiah had?” One thought was that it’s not given to everyone to experience visions. Some told of visions they’ve had. We also discussed that visions come in many forms – sometimes dreams, sometimes an inner voice or an intuition that we should follow this path rather than that path. One factor may be whether we are receptive to visions, to encounters with the Divine. We here in America live in a society where we believe that what we can see and hear and touch and taste and smell – what we can experience with our five senses, what we can explain by means of science and logic - is all there is. Other cultures are more open to the possibility that “there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy.” If we think we have everything all figured out – and if in our religious dogmatism we even think we have God all figured out - we may be blind and deaf to the leading of the Spirit. So I would encourage us, on this Trinity Sunday, to step off our society’s perpetual motion machine and spend time in prayer and meditation, to at least give God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a chance to get a word in edgewise. Who knows what may happen! We may be granted to see visions and dream dreams; or it may be given to us to experience God’s leading as a still small voice which we must strain to hear.
As we prepare for communion, there’s a vision I’d invite us to consider – that our communion table is part of the Lord’s table, a table of fellowship that is not just here in this sanctuary, but a table that extends around the world, a table that extends, not just through space, but through time. At this table we in our small gathering are brought together with believers of many languages in many lands, that we gather here as your mothers and fathers and grandmothers and grandfathers did for many generations since 1861, remembering the words of Jesus, “This do in remembrance of me.” Having confessed our sins and received assurance of pardon, having joined with believers around the world at the table, may we hear God’s call, “Who will go for us”, and may we at Emanuel Church respond, “Here we are! Send us!” Amen.
The Celts use the term “thin places” to refer to places where God’s presence seems especially near. The idea behind the phrase is that there’s a sort of invisible veil or curtain that separates the world we experience every day, the world we experience with our five senses, from eternity – and things are taking place in both worlds at the same time. That is to say, in this way of understanding, eternity is not just someplace we go when we die, but rather eternity is going on around us all the time, for the most part unseen and undetected. Except every now and then, in places experienced as “thin places”, it’s as if the veil or curtain between time and eternity is thinner than normal, and eternity almost seems to break through into time. The Bible records a number of such places – for example, in Genesis, after Jacob left his father to escape the wrath of Esau, at a certain place he later named Beth-El, he had the vision of a ladder from earth to heaven with angels ascending and descending the ladder. Jacob said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it! How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven!”
In today’s Old Testament reading, Isaiah experiences the Temple as such a “thin place”. From the imagery, it seems that while Isaiah was in worship at the Temple and the Temple liturgy was going on, he was caught up into a vision of a heavenly liturgy going on at the same time, in which the Lord was sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, being attended and worshipped by angels. We’re told that in this vision, the hem of his robe filled the Temple – perhaps for Isaiah in his vision, the veil in the Temple separating the people from the holy of holies comes to represent the hem of God’s robe.
Having experienced this almost indescribable scene, Isaiah becomes immediately aware of his own sinfulness and unworthiness. “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips, yet my eyes of seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” Last week at the Bible study we read this in the Good News translation, and the wording stuck with me: “I am doomed because every word that passes my lips is sinful, and I live among a people whose every word is sinful.” No attempt to excuse himself or minimize his sin – just acknowledgement and confession. And then an angel touches a live coal to his lips and pronounces him cleansed from sin. He hears the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go?” And Isaiah responds, “Here I am, send me.” If we think about it, this scene forms the pattern for our worship here at church – we assemble, sing a hymn of praise to God, and (except on communion Sundays) we pray a prayer of confession of sin, and hear the words of the assurance of pardon. Having been freed from our sin, we are freed to respond, as Isaiah did, “Here I am, send me” – by singing hymns of thanksgiving, by the giving of our tithes and offerings which can go places we can’t personally, and at the end of worship by being sent out into the world to serve the Lord.
Our reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans is, ultimately, the outcome of another such unexpected encounter with the divine. We know that while on the road to Damascus to hunt down and arrest Christians, he was given a vision of the risen Christ – and that vision caused Paul to turn from persecuting the church on the basis of the law as he understood it, to living in the Spirit and thus becoming the church’s greatest missionary. The cleansing from sin Isaiah experienced in his vision by way of the burning coal touched to his lips by the angel, in Paul’s telling, was given to him and is available to all through Christ. Thus, having written eloquently in Romans 7 about the inner struggle of one who delights in the law of the Lord, but finds himself captive to the sin of the flesh, Paul is then able to write, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus….For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit…..for all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. When we cry “Abba! Father! – even “Daddy!” – it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our Spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.
Our Gospel reading provides yet another account of an encounter with the divine, as Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night. It is a less dramatic encounter than the others, but transformative just the same. Nicodemus initiates the encounter – he comes to Jesus, not the other way around – and at the outset seems to be firmly in control of the conversation: “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” But then, as Jesus responds with a seeming non-sequitur – “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above” – in the ensuing conversation about being born of the Spirit – “the wind blows where it will, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with those who are born of the Spirit” - Nicodemus is thoroughly spun around, baffled, disoriented. And yet, out of his disorientation and confusion, faith slowly emerges, so that by the end of John’s Gospel Nicodemus is able to come forward publicly with Joseph of Arimithea to claim the body of Christ.
Today is Trinity Sunday, when we lift up the doctrine of the Trinity, one God in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The word “Trinity” is nowhere found in Scripture – the naming of the persons of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, appears in just one place in Scripture, in Jesus’ Great Commission at the end of Matthew’s Gospel – “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” The doctrine of the Trinity was not dropped down from heaven on a tablet of stone, but hammered out in the early church over centuries and finally adopted as orthodoxy at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. This doctrine is a human attempt to make sense of encounters with the divine such as those experienced by Isaiah, Paul, and Nicodemus, human attempts to describe the indescribable. Some speak of the Trinity in terms of function – God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are described respectively as Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer – the Father creates; the Son redeems, and the Spirit sustains. Others emphasize that the Trinity does not simply mean one God with three functions, but one God in three persons – that within the one God, within the Godhead, are three persons in an eternal dance of intimate love and mutual self-giving. We see some of this dance of self-giving in Jesus’ words from John’s Gospel - “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me….I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one.” So in effect it is Jesus who invites each of us to “come join the dance”.
I began by describing thin places, encounters with the divine, and ended with a description of the three persons of the Trinity in a mutual dance of self-giving - dynamic images, images of motion and mystery. Often when humans, especially church folk, try to describe the indescribable, they turn that which is living and in motion into something static, a fixed orthodoxy from which no one is to deviate – and then use that fixed orthodoxy as a club or brickbat with which to beat over the head those who disagree. And those creedal clubs and brickbats have drawn much blood over many centuries. (As St. Paul writes, the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.) And so, on this Trinity Sunday, I would invite us to focus, not so much on static creedal statements, however venerable, but on those moving, mysterious, unpredictable encounters as described in Scripture between humans and the divine. As is sometimes expressed in the United Church of Christ, we see the ancient creeds as testimonies of faith, not tests of faith – as descriptions of how our ancestors in the faith experienced the divine, not as prescriptions limiting how we today are to experience the divine. For we worship a God always in motion, a God who is still speaking, still acting, still creating and recreating. Remember that God’s name, which is usually translated “I am what I am” can also be translated “I will be what I will be.”
We had quite a discussion last week at the Bible study around the question, “Why do most of us not have visions today such as Isaiah had?” One thought was that it’s not given to everyone to experience visions. Some told of visions they’ve had. We also discussed that visions come in many forms – sometimes dreams, sometimes an inner voice or an intuition that we should follow this path rather than that path. One factor may be whether we are receptive to visions, to encounters with the Divine. We here in America live in a society where we believe that what we can see and hear and touch and taste and smell – what we can experience with our five senses, what we can explain by means of science and logic - is all there is. Other cultures are more open to the possibility that “there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy.” If we think we have everything all figured out – and if in our religious dogmatism we even think we have God all figured out - we may be blind and deaf to the leading of the Spirit. So I would encourage us, on this Trinity Sunday, to step off our society’s perpetual motion machine and spend time in prayer and meditation, to at least give God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a chance to get a word in edgewise. Who knows what may happen! We may be granted to see visions and dream dreams; or it may be given to us to experience God’s leading as a still small voice which we must strain to hear.
As we prepare for communion, there’s a vision I’d invite us to consider – that our communion table is part of the Lord’s table, a table of fellowship that is not just here in this sanctuary, but a table that extends around the world, a table that extends, not just through space, but through time. At this table we in our small gathering are brought together with believers of many languages in many lands, that we gather here as your mothers and fathers and grandmothers and grandfathers did for many generations since 1861, remembering the words of Jesus, “This do in remembrance of me.” Having confessed our sins and received assurance of pardon, having joined with believers around the world at the table, may we hear God’s call, “Who will go for us”, and may we at Emanuel Church respond, “Here we are! Send us!” Amen.
Preaching to Dry Bones
(Scriptures: Ezekiel 37:1-14 Acts 2:1-21, Romans 8:18-27 John 15:26-27; John 16:1-15)
It was not a pretty sight. Ezekiel was led by the Spirit of the Lord, we’re told, to a valley full of dry bones. Perhaps this valley had been the site of some long-ago battle, and these bones represented some sort of mass grave. We’re told not only that there were lots and lots of bones, but that they were very, very dry. These bones were the last remains of people who had been dead for a long time; the flesh had long been picked by the vultures, and whatever flesh the vultures had missed had long ago rotten away. Even the marrow in the center of the bones had dried up. These bones were dead, dead, dead.
And the Lord asks Ezekiel what seems to be a very silly question: “Can these bones live?” If I were in Ezekiel’s place and heard the Lord’s question, it wouldn’t take me long to answer: “Are you nuts? Don’t you see how dead and dry and bare of flesh these bones are? Heck no, these bones can’t live.”
Fortunately, the Lord asked the question, not to me, but to Ezekiel. And Ezekiel came up with exactly the right answer: “O Lord, you know.” Ezekiel wasn’t going to go so far as to say they definitely would live, but he wouldn’t rule out the possibility – at least, not when the Lord of life and death is in the house.
Having asked Ezekiel what seems to be a silly question, he then asks Ezekiel to do what seems like a very silly thing: “Prophesy to the bones, and say to them, “O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I’d like you to picture yourself in that valley, talking to the bones, preaching to them, telling them that God still had plans for them, still saw the possibility of life where all there was to be seen in any direction was death. I know how silly I’d feel if I stepped out into our cemetery and started preaching to the headstones. But, again, fortunately it was Ezekiel, and not I, in the valley of dry bones.
Having preached as instructed, Ezekiel now had bodies in front of him – but with no breath in them, no spirit. So God tells Ezekiel to preach to the breath or spirit to go back into these bodies. And they come to life, a vast army. Ezekiel is told that the bones represent the people of Israel, who have lost all hope, and whom God proposes to call up out of their grave of despair, figuratively speaking.
The story of Ezekiel preaching to the dry bones seems like one of those impossible Bible stories that is so disconnected from our experience that it has nothing to do with our lives. And yet, this morning I’m here to say that God calls us in the church, calls us, who are Christ’s hands and feet in the world, to preach life into dead bones – all the time. We who claim as our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who was killed by men and raised by God, we who follow in the way of Jesus who raised Lazarus from the dead, worship a God who still brings hope to the hopeless, the joy of the Lord to those who despair, the peace of God that passes all understanding to those who are paralyzed with fear – in a word, who speaks the life of Christ into persons and situations that are seemingly as far beyond hope as that valley of dry bones. Every one of us carries burdens of anxiety over our own health and circumstances, and worries about those we love. But, as Christians, we worship a God who is greater than our problems. As I’ve heard it said, “don’t tell God how great your problems are; instead, tell your problems how great God is.” If you’re tempted to think of yourself and your life and your circumstances as hopeless – like a pile of dead, dry bones – Ezekiel’s got a sermon to preach to you. As we say in the United Church of Christ, never place a period where God has placed a comma. As Christians, neither life nor death nor height nor depth nor things present nor things to come nor anything else in all creation can separate us from the love of God. We worship a God who is still very much in the healing business, a God who still saves, a God who is powerful to still the wind and waves of trouble that buffet our lives. Even a valley of dead bones is not beyond God’s reach. God will put his renewing spirit within us, and we will know that the Lord has spoken and will act. Even if we feel so dried up and desolate of hope that we cannot find the words to pray, Paul assures us that “the Spirit helps us in our weakness, interceding with sighs to deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is in the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”
And, with God’s spirit within us, it’s our call to preach to those around us who have given up hope, whose hopes have dried up like piles of dead bones. It’s my call as pastor of Emanuel Church, and it’s your call as members of Emanuel Church, when God leads us to a valley of dry bones, to speak and act in ways that are life-giving. It’s not easy to speak life in places and situations where others see only death, not easy to speak and act in ways that are life-giving when even many churches all too often speak and act in ways that are death-dealing – but that is our call. (As Paul once wrote, the letter of the law kills, but the Spirit gives life.)
Our reading from the 2nd chapter of the Acts of the Apostles shows us what it looks like when the Spirit of God moves in the lives of God’s people, and God’s people are inspired to speak and act in new ways. Remember, Luke tells us that after Jesus’ ascension, the disciples were instructed to stay in Jerusalem and await the coming of the Spirit. And while they were waiting, not a lot happened. They did some organizational housekeeping, electing Matthias to fill the vacancy in the apostles left by Judas – though we basically never hear of Matthias again. But when the Spirit came with power on Pentecost, and all those on whom the spirit fell spoke in tongues and testified about God’s deeds of power – when some were frightened and others scoffed, it was Peter who received the power of the Spirit to preach the words of life, to speak God’s truth and love to those who were gathered. Indeed, God’s spirit not only empowers us, but instructs us, for as Jesus told his disciples, ‘When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, he will testify on my behalf. You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning…..I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth, for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mind and declare it to you.” It is an awesome thing to consider that the Spirit that in the Old Testament was poured out on special men and women of God, like Ezekiel, has now been poured out on us in the church.
I was at a clergy meeting earlier this week, and we did an extended study on these words from God to Ezekiel: “A new heart I give you, and a new spirit I will put within you. I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” And some of the clergy discussed – as we here have often discussed during the Bible study – why the churches struggle so, why so many, inside and outside of the church, seemingly have hearts of stone. You see, clergy get discouraged too. One of the pastors said, “What if we are living in a time like that of Isaiah…what if God has decreed that no matter what we do, the people will “keep listening but not comprehend, keep looking but not understand, that the peoples’ minds will be dull, their ears stopped, their eyes shut, so that may not look with their eyes and listen with their ears and comprehend with their minds and turn and be healed.” It’s a daunting prospect – God’s people through the ages after Isaiah departed this earth have drawn great inspiration from Isaiah’s writings, but consider how discouraging it must have been for Isaiah to be commissioned in a vision from God to preach, yet knowing from the outset that no matter how faithful he was, hardly anyone around him would respond. And yet, just as God called Isaiah to be faithful in his time, in the same way God calls us to be faithful in ours. So we must preach the word, in season and out of season. We must preach the word – even if all that’s in front of us to listen is a pile of dry bones.
“Can these bones live?” the Lord asked Ezekiel, and the Lord asks us. No matter how desolate, may we honor God by responding, “Oh Lord, you know”, and giving God’s spirit space and place to act. Whether the Spirit comes as the rush of a mighty wind and tongues of fire, or whether the Spirit speaks to us in a still small voice, may we hear, and when we hear, where the Spirit leads, may we at Emanuel Church follow. Amen.
It was not a pretty sight. Ezekiel was led by the Spirit of the Lord, we’re told, to a valley full of dry bones. Perhaps this valley had been the site of some long-ago battle, and these bones represented some sort of mass grave. We’re told not only that there were lots and lots of bones, but that they were very, very dry. These bones were the last remains of people who had been dead for a long time; the flesh had long been picked by the vultures, and whatever flesh the vultures had missed had long ago rotten away. Even the marrow in the center of the bones had dried up. These bones were dead, dead, dead.
And the Lord asks Ezekiel what seems to be a very silly question: “Can these bones live?” If I were in Ezekiel’s place and heard the Lord’s question, it wouldn’t take me long to answer: “Are you nuts? Don’t you see how dead and dry and bare of flesh these bones are? Heck no, these bones can’t live.”
Fortunately, the Lord asked the question, not to me, but to Ezekiel. And Ezekiel came up with exactly the right answer: “O Lord, you know.” Ezekiel wasn’t going to go so far as to say they definitely would live, but he wouldn’t rule out the possibility – at least, not when the Lord of life and death is in the house.
Having asked Ezekiel what seems to be a silly question, he then asks Ezekiel to do what seems like a very silly thing: “Prophesy to the bones, and say to them, “O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I’d like you to picture yourself in that valley, talking to the bones, preaching to them, telling them that God still had plans for them, still saw the possibility of life where all there was to be seen in any direction was death. I know how silly I’d feel if I stepped out into our cemetery and started preaching to the headstones. But, again, fortunately it was Ezekiel, and not I, in the valley of dry bones.
Having preached as instructed, Ezekiel now had bodies in front of him – but with no breath in them, no spirit. So God tells Ezekiel to preach to the breath or spirit to go back into these bodies. And they come to life, a vast army. Ezekiel is told that the bones represent the people of Israel, who have lost all hope, and whom God proposes to call up out of their grave of despair, figuratively speaking.
The story of Ezekiel preaching to the dry bones seems like one of those impossible Bible stories that is so disconnected from our experience that it has nothing to do with our lives. And yet, this morning I’m here to say that God calls us in the church, calls us, who are Christ’s hands and feet in the world, to preach life into dead bones – all the time. We who claim as our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who was killed by men and raised by God, we who follow in the way of Jesus who raised Lazarus from the dead, worship a God who still brings hope to the hopeless, the joy of the Lord to those who despair, the peace of God that passes all understanding to those who are paralyzed with fear – in a word, who speaks the life of Christ into persons and situations that are seemingly as far beyond hope as that valley of dry bones. Every one of us carries burdens of anxiety over our own health and circumstances, and worries about those we love. But, as Christians, we worship a God who is greater than our problems. As I’ve heard it said, “don’t tell God how great your problems are; instead, tell your problems how great God is.” If you’re tempted to think of yourself and your life and your circumstances as hopeless – like a pile of dead, dry bones – Ezekiel’s got a sermon to preach to you. As we say in the United Church of Christ, never place a period where God has placed a comma. As Christians, neither life nor death nor height nor depth nor things present nor things to come nor anything else in all creation can separate us from the love of God. We worship a God who is still very much in the healing business, a God who still saves, a God who is powerful to still the wind and waves of trouble that buffet our lives. Even a valley of dead bones is not beyond God’s reach. God will put his renewing spirit within us, and we will know that the Lord has spoken and will act. Even if we feel so dried up and desolate of hope that we cannot find the words to pray, Paul assures us that “the Spirit helps us in our weakness, interceding with sighs to deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is in the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”
And, with God’s spirit within us, it’s our call to preach to those around us who have given up hope, whose hopes have dried up like piles of dead bones. It’s my call as pastor of Emanuel Church, and it’s your call as members of Emanuel Church, when God leads us to a valley of dry bones, to speak and act in ways that are life-giving. It’s not easy to speak life in places and situations where others see only death, not easy to speak and act in ways that are life-giving when even many churches all too often speak and act in ways that are death-dealing – but that is our call. (As Paul once wrote, the letter of the law kills, but the Spirit gives life.)
Our reading from the 2nd chapter of the Acts of the Apostles shows us what it looks like when the Spirit of God moves in the lives of God’s people, and God’s people are inspired to speak and act in new ways. Remember, Luke tells us that after Jesus’ ascension, the disciples were instructed to stay in Jerusalem and await the coming of the Spirit. And while they were waiting, not a lot happened. They did some organizational housekeeping, electing Matthias to fill the vacancy in the apostles left by Judas – though we basically never hear of Matthias again. But when the Spirit came with power on Pentecost, and all those on whom the spirit fell spoke in tongues and testified about God’s deeds of power – when some were frightened and others scoffed, it was Peter who received the power of the Spirit to preach the words of life, to speak God’s truth and love to those who were gathered. Indeed, God’s spirit not only empowers us, but instructs us, for as Jesus told his disciples, ‘When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, he will testify on my behalf. You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning…..I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth, for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mind and declare it to you.” It is an awesome thing to consider that the Spirit that in the Old Testament was poured out on special men and women of God, like Ezekiel, has now been poured out on us in the church.
I was at a clergy meeting earlier this week, and we did an extended study on these words from God to Ezekiel: “A new heart I give you, and a new spirit I will put within you. I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” And some of the clergy discussed – as we here have often discussed during the Bible study – why the churches struggle so, why so many, inside and outside of the church, seemingly have hearts of stone. You see, clergy get discouraged too. One of the pastors said, “What if we are living in a time like that of Isaiah…what if God has decreed that no matter what we do, the people will “keep listening but not comprehend, keep looking but not understand, that the peoples’ minds will be dull, their ears stopped, their eyes shut, so that may not look with their eyes and listen with their ears and comprehend with their minds and turn and be healed.” It’s a daunting prospect – God’s people through the ages after Isaiah departed this earth have drawn great inspiration from Isaiah’s writings, but consider how discouraging it must have been for Isaiah to be commissioned in a vision from God to preach, yet knowing from the outset that no matter how faithful he was, hardly anyone around him would respond. And yet, just as God called Isaiah to be faithful in his time, in the same way God calls us to be faithful in ours. So we must preach the word, in season and out of season. We must preach the word – even if all that’s in front of us to listen is a pile of dry bones.
“Can these bones live?” the Lord asked Ezekiel, and the Lord asks us. No matter how desolate, may we honor God by responding, “Oh Lord, you know”, and giving God’s spirit space and place to act. Whether the Spirit comes as the rush of a mighty wind and tongues of fire, or whether the Spirit speaks to us in a still small voice, may we hear, and when we hear, where the Spirit leads, may we at Emanuel Church follow. Amen.
Chosen Witnesses
(Scriptures: Acts 1:1-11, Ephesians 1:15-23 John 17:1-25)
When I looked at this morning’s texts, the first thing that came to my mind was, of all things, a car commercial. You’ve likely seen it – a little girl, maybe Penny’s age, is sitting in the car’s driver’s seat, and daddy is telling her about adjusting the mirrors, instructs her to wear her seat belt, cautions her against driving on the freeway, and on and on. At the end of the commercial, we see that the driver is a young lady in her late teens or early 20’s, and the voiceover says, “You knew this day would come……” Daddy’s little girl is all grown up and ready for her turn in the driver’s seat.
Our reading from the first chapter of Acts this morning shows Jesus and the disciples in a moment that perhaps is not so different. Jesus is about to ascend to the Father, and while he will be present spiritually, he will no longer be in the flesh walking beside them. The training wheels are coming off. While Jesus will be present to guide them, the disciples, in a sense, are going to be in the driver’s seat. I’m hoping that it isn’t pushing the metaphor too far to say that henceforth, Jesus will be like their GPS system, showing them the way forward, cautioning them – like a GPS saying “recalculating” – when they’re going off course. But GPS systems can be ignored and shut off, and history bears sad testimony that sometimes the church has ignored the guidance of the Spirit as well.
Even in today’s reading in Acts, it’s clear the disciples don’t yet know where they’re headed. They ask Jesus, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” After all they’ve been through together, they will don’t quite get it. But, like the father in the commercial, Jesus gives them cautions and instructions: He ordered them not to leave Jerusalem – sort of like daddy in the commercial cautioning “don’t drive on the freeway yet” - until they have received the power of the Holy Spirit. And Jesus told them, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” To the ends of the earth! – wow – better fasten your seatbelts, this is going to be quite a ride.
The car commercial I mentioned has no particular religious overtones, but from the concerned or worried tone of the father’s voice, you might think he’s sending up some silent prayers for his daughter’s safety. In our reading from John’s Gospel – sometimes referred to as Jesus’ high priestly prayer for his disciples - which takes place while the disciples are gathered at the Last Supper, just before Jesus departs for the garden where he will be betrayed, Jesus knows that he will not be with them much longer, and he prays aloud to his heavenly father to keep the disciples safe when Jesus is no longer with them in the flesh. Jesus prays that even though he will no longer be physically with them, that Jesus will in some mystical sense be in them, and they in him, just as he is in the Father and the Father is in him. You who are parents know what it is, when your children have come of age, to cut loose the apron strings and send them out into the world. You hope that of all you taught them, at least some of it has stuck; you’ll be there to step in if they get into serious trouble, but they will no longer be under your watchful eye every minute of every day. And this is how for Jesus and his disciples when Jesus makes this prayer - He prays that as they go forth, Jesus will be in them so that where they go, Jesus goes, and he prays to God to keep the disciples together – that they may all be one – when they are sent out into the world.
Last week during the Bible study, we looked at this reading from John’s Gospel, Jesus’ prayer for his disciples. And there was a question: “Do you really believe that we’re chosen by God?” And I answered “yes” – after all, earlier that morning we’d read Jesus’ words, “You did not choose me, but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.” But that question has been tugging at me since then all week – “Do you really believe we’re chosen by God?” And I thought about Emanuel Church, our presence here in Bridesburg these 150 years. And I do believe we, each of us here, has been chosen by God. It’s only because we were first chosen by God that we in turn can respond to God’s choice by choosing to be here. We did not choose Christ, but Christ first chose us. I remember the opening words of Emanuel’s 100th anniversary history, which were retained in the 150th anniversary booklet: “This is the history of your church from a humble beginning – the need of which God made known to a few in 1857 – to the present day.” So from the earliest days of your church history, there was a sense that those who founded this church were chosen by God to meet a distinctive need, to carry a distinctive message, to carry out a distinctive purpose. Remember also that in the earliest years of this church’s history, the congregation was served by Lutheran and Methodist pastors. While the members were grateful for the efforts of these pastors, they felt that in their Reformed tradition there was a distinctive voice, a distinctive Word of Good News, which would be silenced if the congregation followed these early pastors into the Lutheran or Methodist tradition. And I believe that to this day, even though Bridesburg has no shortage of churches, I believe that we as a congregation of the United Church of Christ have a distinctive word of welcome and good news to proclaim. So, yes, I believe we as individuals were chosen, and I believe our congregation was chosen by God to witness to the Gospel here in Bridesburg. It’s not because of any particular merit on our part – if we start feeling puffed up at being chosen by God, perhaps we can reflect that Balaam’s donkey was chosen by God to speak to Balaam. And certainly the disciples, as we read about them in the Gospels, were very ordinary people. And yet God chose them – as God has chosen us – has called them and us out of the world, to be sent back into the world bearing the Good News of Christ.
Jesus said, “I appointed you to go to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last.” Jesus has chosen and appointed us, not to pat ourselves on the back, but to bear fruit. Our reading from Acts gives us more specific information on what it means to bear fruit: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” In your bulletin, I printed an expanded image of our UCC logo – partly because I had available space – but mostly because this logo is drawn directly from today’s readings from John and Acts. The words “that they may all be one” are drawn directly from Jesus’ high priestly prayer in John’s Gospel.that we read today. The image in the center is drawn from Acts: The crown, cross and globe represent the Lordship of Christ over the whole world, and the division of the globe into three parts represents the words, “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem” – that’s one of the smaller parts – “in all Judea and Samaria” – that’s the other smaller part – and to the ends of the earth” – that represents the bottom portion of the globe. These verses – that we may all be one and that we may be witnesses to Jerusalem, to Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth – were the vision that guided those who brought together the Congregational Christian and Evangelical and Reformed Churches to form the United Church of Christ. And it provides a vision for us here in Bridesburg. We are to be united in Christ, and we are to be Christ’s witnesses – to those immediately around us, to those a little further distant, and around the world. Emanuel Church’s version of Jesus’ commission might sound like this: “you will be my witnesses in Bridesburg, in Port Richmond and Philadelphia, and to the ends of the earth.” This is the work for which God has chosen us and appointed us here at Emanuel Church. May we at Emanuel Church never balk at carrying out the great work for which we have been chosen. Amen.
When I looked at this morning’s texts, the first thing that came to my mind was, of all things, a car commercial. You’ve likely seen it – a little girl, maybe Penny’s age, is sitting in the car’s driver’s seat, and daddy is telling her about adjusting the mirrors, instructs her to wear her seat belt, cautions her against driving on the freeway, and on and on. At the end of the commercial, we see that the driver is a young lady in her late teens or early 20’s, and the voiceover says, “You knew this day would come……” Daddy’s little girl is all grown up and ready for her turn in the driver’s seat.
Our reading from the first chapter of Acts this morning shows Jesus and the disciples in a moment that perhaps is not so different. Jesus is about to ascend to the Father, and while he will be present spiritually, he will no longer be in the flesh walking beside them. The training wheels are coming off. While Jesus will be present to guide them, the disciples, in a sense, are going to be in the driver’s seat. I’m hoping that it isn’t pushing the metaphor too far to say that henceforth, Jesus will be like their GPS system, showing them the way forward, cautioning them – like a GPS saying “recalculating” – when they’re going off course. But GPS systems can be ignored and shut off, and history bears sad testimony that sometimes the church has ignored the guidance of the Spirit as well.
Even in today’s reading in Acts, it’s clear the disciples don’t yet know where they’re headed. They ask Jesus, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” After all they’ve been through together, they will don’t quite get it. But, like the father in the commercial, Jesus gives them cautions and instructions: He ordered them not to leave Jerusalem – sort of like daddy in the commercial cautioning “don’t drive on the freeway yet” - until they have received the power of the Holy Spirit. And Jesus told them, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” To the ends of the earth! – wow – better fasten your seatbelts, this is going to be quite a ride.
The car commercial I mentioned has no particular religious overtones, but from the concerned or worried tone of the father’s voice, you might think he’s sending up some silent prayers for his daughter’s safety. In our reading from John’s Gospel – sometimes referred to as Jesus’ high priestly prayer for his disciples - which takes place while the disciples are gathered at the Last Supper, just before Jesus departs for the garden where he will be betrayed, Jesus knows that he will not be with them much longer, and he prays aloud to his heavenly father to keep the disciples safe when Jesus is no longer with them in the flesh. Jesus prays that even though he will no longer be physically with them, that Jesus will in some mystical sense be in them, and they in him, just as he is in the Father and the Father is in him. You who are parents know what it is, when your children have come of age, to cut loose the apron strings and send them out into the world. You hope that of all you taught them, at least some of it has stuck; you’ll be there to step in if they get into serious trouble, but they will no longer be under your watchful eye every minute of every day. And this is how for Jesus and his disciples when Jesus makes this prayer - He prays that as they go forth, Jesus will be in them so that where they go, Jesus goes, and he prays to God to keep the disciples together – that they may all be one – when they are sent out into the world.
Last week during the Bible study, we looked at this reading from John’s Gospel, Jesus’ prayer for his disciples. And there was a question: “Do you really believe that we’re chosen by God?” And I answered “yes” – after all, earlier that morning we’d read Jesus’ words, “You did not choose me, but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.” But that question has been tugging at me since then all week – “Do you really believe we’re chosen by God?” And I thought about Emanuel Church, our presence here in Bridesburg these 150 years. And I do believe we, each of us here, has been chosen by God. It’s only because we were first chosen by God that we in turn can respond to God’s choice by choosing to be here. We did not choose Christ, but Christ first chose us. I remember the opening words of Emanuel’s 100th anniversary history, which were retained in the 150th anniversary booklet: “This is the history of your church from a humble beginning – the need of which God made known to a few in 1857 – to the present day.” So from the earliest days of your church history, there was a sense that those who founded this church were chosen by God to meet a distinctive need, to carry a distinctive message, to carry out a distinctive purpose. Remember also that in the earliest years of this church’s history, the congregation was served by Lutheran and Methodist pastors. While the members were grateful for the efforts of these pastors, they felt that in their Reformed tradition there was a distinctive voice, a distinctive Word of Good News, which would be silenced if the congregation followed these early pastors into the Lutheran or Methodist tradition. And I believe that to this day, even though Bridesburg has no shortage of churches, I believe that we as a congregation of the United Church of Christ have a distinctive word of welcome and good news to proclaim. So, yes, I believe we as individuals were chosen, and I believe our congregation was chosen by God to witness to the Gospel here in Bridesburg. It’s not because of any particular merit on our part – if we start feeling puffed up at being chosen by God, perhaps we can reflect that Balaam’s donkey was chosen by God to speak to Balaam. And certainly the disciples, as we read about them in the Gospels, were very ordinary people. And yet God chose them – as God has chosen us – has called them and us out of the world, to be sent back into the world bearing the Good News of Christ.
Jesus said, “I appointed you to go to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last.” Jesus has chosen and appointed us, not to pat ourselves on the back, but to bear fruit. Our reading from Acts gives us more specific information on what it means to bear fruit: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” In your bulletin, I printed an expanded image of our UCC logo – partly because I had available space – but mostly because this logo is drawn directly from today’s readings from John and Acts. The words “that they may all be one” are drawn directly from Jesus’ high priestly prayer in John’s Gospel.that we read today. The image in the center is drawn from Acts: The crown, cross and globe represent the Lordship of Christ over the whole world, and the division of the globe into three parts represents the words, “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem” – that’s one of the smaller parts – “in all Judea and Samaria” – that’s the other smaller part – and to the ends of the earth” – that represents the bottom portion of the globe. These verses – that we may all be one and that we may be witnesses to Jerusalem, to Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth – were the vision that guided those who brought together the Congregational Christian and Evangelical and Reformed Churches to form the United Church of Christ. And it provides a vision for us here in Bridesburg. We are to be united in Christ, and we are to be Christ’s witnesses – to those immediately around us, to those a little further distant, and around the world. Emanuel Church’s version of Jesus’ commission might sound like this: “you will be my witnesses in Bridesburg, in Port Richmond and Philadelphia, and to the ends of the earth.” This is the work for which God has chosen us and appointed us here at Emanuel Church. May we at Emanuel Church never balk at carrying out the great work for which we have been chosen. Amen.
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Love Without Borders
(Scriptures: Acts 10:44-48; I John 5:1-6; John 15:9-17)
The organization Doctors Without Borders describes itself as “an international medical humanitarian organization working in nearly 70 countries to assist people whose survival is threatened by violence, neglect, or catastrophe.” The organization is committed to bringing quality medical care to people in crisis without regard to race, religion, or political affiliation. The success of Doctors Without Borders has inspired other professionals, such as Architects Without Borders and Engineers Without Borders, to use their varied skills and training to provide humanitarian assistance to persons in crisis, without regard to nationality, literally providing humanitarian aid across national and cultural lines; in short, assistance without borders.
This coming Thursday, May 17 is Ascension Day, when we remember that Jesus, in the words of the Apostles Creed, “ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty, from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.” Since this church has not traditionally held Thursday Ascension Day services, we will read the Ascension Day texts next Sunday.
Today’s readings from John’s Gospel are part of Jesus’ farewell discourse to his disciples, before his betrayal in the garden. Time was fleeting, and the time for small talk was past, and so in the remaining time, Jesus underscored what was most important. Time was fleeting, time was short, and so Jesus used the time remaining to leave his disciples with words to guide them when he would no longer be with them.
And what Jesus left his disciples was an appeal to their love for Jesus, and a command to love one another in the same way Jesus had loved them. “A new commandment I give you, that you love one another. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love.” This love isn’t a matter of emotions – which come and go – but of will and commitment. Sort of like the love between spouses or longtime partners, which goes on even through those moments when one spouse or partner may be working the other’s last nerve. Or the love between parent and child, when love continues, even during those times when they may find little to like about one another. In the short time left to him, Jesus sketched out his vision for the quality of community his disciples would create, a community grounded in mutual love. And, indeed, more than 100 years after this conversation, outsiders to the Christian community would comment, “See how these Christians love one another.”
Jesus’ command for us to love one another is a great challenge – especially since, given the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in the world, we don’t know who will be called into the Christian community. Jesus doesn’t call us to be a small, closed community, a holy huddle, barricaded against outsiders, but a community that’s always ready to welcome the stranger, always ready to embrace the spirit of God working within each of those whom God sends our way. Remember our reading from last Sunday – Jesus is the vine, and we are the branches. Those branches that bear no fruit will be cut off from the vine. And in order to bear fruit, we must welcome and love those whom God sends to us. Otherwise, we will rapidly dry up, shrivel up, and fall from grace.
“This is my commandment, that you love one another.” The Christian church extends beyond our door; indeed, the table of the Lord extends around the globe. We may well ask, “How can we love those whom we have never met.” The familiar words of the prophet Micah provide the answer: What does the Lord require – that we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. Doing justice, acting in mercy, creating a society grounded in justice and mercy, are ways God has provided us to act in love toward those whom we’ll never meet. To use a popular phrase, as Christians, we are called to think globally and act locally. We must act in love toward those brothers and sisters right in front of us, and act in ways that are just and merciful to those whom we will never meet, but who just as surely are sister and brother to each of us.
Of course, today is Mother’s Day, founded by Anna Jarvis, who is buried in West Laurel Hill Cemetery in Bala Cynwyd, just outside the city. Anna’s mother, Ann Jarvis, was inspired by Julia Ward Howe’s Mothers Day Proclamation – which is at the end of this post – to work for peace and reconciliation, as she tended to wounded Union and Confederate veterans alike, without regard to which side they had taken in the Civil War. Ann Jarvis died in 1905, and her daughter Anna Jarvis campaigned to establish Mothers’ Day to honor her mother – and by extension, the radical vision of Julia Ward Howe’s proclamation. President Woodrow Wilson established Mothers Day as a national holiday – but it rapidly became a windfall for sellers of flowers, candy, and greeting cards, so much so that Anna Jarvis rapidly became embittered that it so quickly became a Hallmark holiday, so much so that indeed by the end of her life, Anna Jarvis campaigned against it. Anna Jarvis especially detested commercial Mothers Day cards. As she wrote: “A printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world. And candy! You take a box to Mother—and then eat most of it yourself. A pretty sentiment.”
So on this Mother’s Day, 2012, I would challenge us to look beyond the Hallmark holiday that Mothers’ Day has become, to see the vision that Julia Ward Howe espoused – a vision in which the mothers of one country would refuse to send their sons off to kill the sons of mothers in other countries, a vision in which mothers around the globe would work for peace and justice. May we in the church join Doctors Without Borders, Architects without Borders, and Engineers without Borders, to offer Love Without Borders. I can think of few better ways to honor the original intent of Mothers’ Day – and the commandment of our Lord Jesus Christ to love one another. Amen.
Mother's Day Proclamation (Julia Ward Howe, 1870)
Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe out dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.
The organization Doctors Without Borders describes itself as “an international medical humanitarian organization working in nearly 70 countries to assist people whose survival is threatened by violence, neglect, or catastrophe.” The organization is committed to bringing quality medical care to people in crisis without regard to race, religion, or political affiliation. The success of Doctors Without Borders has inspired other professionals, such as Architects Without Borders and Engineers Without Borders, to use their varied skills and training to provide humanitarian assistance to persons in crisis, without regard to nationality, literally providing humanitarian aid across national and cultural lines; in short, assistance without borders.
This coming Thursday, May 17 is Ascension Day, when we remember that Jesus, in the words of the Apostles Creed, “ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty, from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.” Since this church has not traditionally held Thursday Ascension Day services, we will read the Ascension Day texts next Sunday.
Today’s readings from John’s Gospel are part of Jesus’ farewell discourse to his disciples, before his betrayal in the garden. Time was fleeting, and the time for small talk was past, and so in the remaining time, Jesus underscored what was most important. Time was fleeting, time was short, and so Jesus used the time remaining to leave his disciples with words to guide them when he would no longer be with them.
And what Jesus left his disciples was an appeal to their love for Jesus, and a command to love one another in the same way Jesus had loved them. “A new commandment I give you, that you love one another. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love.” This love isn’t a matter of emotions – which come and go – but of will and commitment. Sort of like the love between spouses or longtime partners, which goes on even through those moments when one spouse or partner may be working the other’s last nerve. Or the love between parent and child, when love continues, even during those times when they may find little to like about one another. In the short time left to him, Jesus sketched out his vision for the quality of community his disciples would create, a community grounded in mutual love. And, indeed, more than 100 years after this conversation, outsiders to the Christian community would comment, “See how these Christians love one another.”
Jesus’ command for us to love one another is a great challenge – especially since, given the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in the world, we don’t know who will be called into the Christian community. Jesus doesn’t call us to be a small, closed community, a holy huddle, barricaded against outsiders, but a community that’s always ready to welcome the stranger, always ready to embrace the spirit of God working within each of those whom God sends our way. Remember our reading from last Sunday – Jesus is the vine, and we are the branches. Those branches that bear no fruit will be cut off from the vine. And in order to bear fruit, we must welcome and love those whom God sends to us. Otherwise, we will rapidly dry up, shrivel up, and fall from grace.
“This is my commandment, that you love one another.” The Christian church extends beyond our door; indeed, the table of the Lord extends around the globe. We may well ask, “How can we love those whom we have never met.” The familiar words of the prophet Micah provide the answer: What does the Lord require – that we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. Doing justice, acting in mercy, creating a society grounded in justice and mercy, are ways God has provided us to act in love toward those whom we’ll never meet. To use a popular phrase, as Christians, we are called to think globally and act locally. We must act in love toward those brothers and sisters right in front of us, and act in ways that are just and merciful to those whom we will never meet, but who just as surely are sister and brother to each of us.
Of course, today is Mother’s Day, founded by Anna Jarvis, who is buried in West Laurel Hill Cemetery in Bala Cynwyd, just outside the city. Anna’s mother, Ann Jarvis, was inspired by Julia Ward Howe’s Mothers Day Proclamation – which is at the end of this post – to work for peace and reconciliation, as she tended to wounded Union and Confederate veterans alike, without regard to which side they had taken in the Civil War. Ann Jarvis died in 1905, and her daughter Anna Jarvis campaigned to establish Mothers’ Day to honor her mother – and by extension, the radical vision of Julia Ward Howe’s proclamation. President Woodrow Wilson established Mothers Day as a national holiday – but it rapidly became a windfall for sellers of flowers, candy, and greeting cards, so much so that Anna Jarvis rapidly became embittered that it so quickly became a Hallmark holiday, so much so that indeed by the end of her life, Anna Jarvis campaigned against it. Anna Jarvis especially detested commercial Mothers Day cards. As she wrote: “A printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world. And candy! You take a box to Mother—and then eat most of it yourself. A pretty sentiment.”
So on this Mother’s Day, 2012, I would challenge us to look beyond the Hallmark holiday that Mothers’ Day has become, to see the vision that Julia Ward Howe espoused – a vision in which the mothers of one country would refuse to send their sons off to kill the sons of mothers in other countries, a vision in which mothers around the globe would work for peace and justice. May we in the church join Doctors Without Borders, Architects without Borders, and Engineers without Borders, to offer Love Without Borders. I can think of few better ways to honor the original intent of Mothers’ Day – and the commandment of our Lord Jesus Christ to love one another. Amen.
Mother's Day Proclamation (Julia Ward Howe, 1870)
Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe out dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.
"I Am"
(Scriptures: Acts 8:26-40, I John 4:7-21 John 15:1-11)
This past Friday, I made my first run to the beach – maybe my fading bit of sunburn might have been a clue. At my day job, I’d just been through a fairly harrowing succession of critical projects with tight deadlines – preparing next year’s budget, closing the March financial statements in preparation for audit work, and completing our annual 990 filing as a nonprofit with the IRS. So I needed a break. I took the train to Atlantic City….I enjoy train travel, and like the sights as the rail line passes through various communities – Cherry Hill, Lindenwald, Hammonton and so forth, down through Egg Harbor and Absecon, before ending in Atlantic City. In Philly, the weather was far from promising – it was drizzling when I left – and it was misty for a good bit of the day in Atlantic City, though the sun finally broke out of the clouds in the afternoon. I walked a bit on the boardwalk – past all the garish sights and amplified music coming from the casinos – and eventually took a walk to the beach. In stark contrast to what I’ll probably see a month or so from now, the beach was nearly deserted. Every now and then, one or two people would walk along the water’s edge, but otherwise I pretty much had the place to myself – what a strange experience for Atlantic City. I find the sound of the waves relaxing – constantly ebbing and flowing – in and out, in and out - yet seemingly always the same. In my day job I’m often tied up in knots with worry about missing deadlines…..but as I listened to the sound of the waves, back and forth, I could let go of my worries and just rest in God’s love. It was a wonderful – and most welcome - opportunity to spend some time in meditation with God. The contrast between the carnival atmosphere on the boardwalk – and don’t get me wrong; I enjoy the boardwalk as well – but the contrast between that and the quiet ebb and flow of the waves reminded me that, though I often get caught up in the carnival of daily life, to the point where I feel like I’m on a merry-go-round, longing to step off onto solid ground to give my queasy stomach some relief, our loving God, like the ocean, is always there; behind the many voices striving to capture our attention is God’s voice, quiet yet persistent, like the waves flowing toward shore and then receding.
Last week we heard Jesus say “I am the good shepherd”, and this Sunday we hear the words of Jesus, “I am the vine, you are the branches. We are told that we are to abide in the vine, and the vine to abide in us, and that if we abide we will bear fruit, much fruit, fruit that will last. Indeed, Jesus tells us that if we do not bear fruit, we’ll be cut off from the vine – and that if we do bear fruit, we’ll be pruned so that we bear yet more fruit. This reminds us that even those things in our lives that may at one time have been life-giving for us, we may be called upon to set aside, to give up, in order to keep moving forward in response to the call of Jesus.
What does it mean to abide in Jesus, and to have Jesus abide in us? It is to be fed and nourished by Jesus, to have Jesus at the center of our existence. Our lives are always changing, with lots of sound and fury – but if we abide in Jesus, no matter what is going on outside us, within us the Spirit will always be moving, like the constant waves of the ocean.
Our reading from Acts gives us a picture of what it looks like to abide in Jesus and bear fruit. The stories of Philip in the 8th chapter of Acts begin with a severe persecution in Jerusalem forcing many new converts to scatter and move out into other areas. But, what others intended for evil, God used for good; as the disciples were scattered, they brought the Gospel with them and wherever the persecution drove them, they took the opportunity to proclaim the Gospel. Philip first proclaimed the Gospel in Samaria, and then we’re told the Spirit led Philip south to Gaza, along the Mediterranean sea. Philip is led to join the chariot of an Ethiopian eunuch returning from Jerusalem back home. Philip proclaims the word, and as they pass by a pool of water, the eunuch asks, “What is to prevent me from being baptized?” According to the letter of the law as written in Deuteronomy 23:1, because of the man’s status as a eunuch, he cannot be admitted to the assembly of the Lord. But in the life of the Spirit, these distinctions become meaningless. Led by the Spirit, the eunuch commands the chariot to stop and requests baptism, and led by the Spirit, Philip baptizes the eunuch. Philip is then carried away by the Spirit to the next town, and the eunuch returns to Ethiopia, rejoicing. And the words of Jesus as recorded in John’s Gospel came true in this account – as did the words of the prophet Isaiah, who said that eunuchs who keep the Sabbath and choose the things that please God and hold fast God’s covenant, will be given an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. The eunuch, who could not have children because of his status, carried the Gospel back to Ethiopia and bore many spiritual children; just as the church in India traces its beginnings to Thomas, so the church in Ethiopia traces its lineage to this meeting between Philip and the eunuch. Philip was faithful, and the eunuch was faithful, and in the words of Jesus, both their lives bore fruit that lasted to this day.
In the reading from the first letter of John, we are told how we can tell we are abiding in the true vine – and that mark of abiding is love. We’re told that “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” So many religious leaders, on TV and in churches, use fear to try to scare their followers into the Kingdom of God, and the result is religion that is rigid, tense, full of fear. But John writes that perfect love casts out fear – and that, indeed, if our religion is based in fear, God’s love in us is not fully mature, is not complete. We’re also told that this perfect love of God cannot exist side-by-side with hatred of God’s people.
In the Scriptures of the past two weeks and in our hymns today, we consider many of Jesus’ “I am” statements: I am the good shepherd, I am the true vine, and, as we go to communion, we’ll sing “I am the bread of life”. Just before we leave, we’ll sing the hymn “I am the light of the world”, reminding us that as we leave we are to carry that light with us, as Philip did, and sharing that light with others. The God we know in Jesus Christ is so transcendent, so beyond us, so unknowable, that no single comparison can adequately describe his love and justice and mercy. And yet because God is love, he chose to make himself known to us in Jesus. My time at the beach on Friday reminds me that, just as a fish is surrounded the ocean, immersed in it, cannot exist without it, in the same way as we abide in Christ we are surrounded and immersed and filled with God’s love, wider and deeper than the ocean. As Christians we cannot live apart from that love any more than a fish can live long outside water, or a branch can live apart from the vine. Our joys, our sorrows, will come and go, but like the ocean, God just….is….always there, always in motion, always creating and recreating, always reclaiming and redeeming.
“God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them….There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because he first loved us.” May we abide in this perfect love of God, and because we abide, may this congregation, Emanuel Church, as small as we are, bear fruit that lasts for many generations. Amen.
This past Friday, I made my first run to the beach – maybe my fading bit of sunburn might have been a clue. At my day job, I’d just been through a fairly harrowing succession of critical projects with tight deadlines – preparing next year’s budget, closing the March financial statements in preparation for audit work, and completing our annual 990 filing as a nonprofit with the IRS. So I needed a break. I took the train to Atlantic City….I enjoy train travel, and like the sights as the rail line passes through various communities – Cherry Hill, Lindenwald, Hammonton and so forth, down through Egg Harbor and Absecon, before ending in Atlantic City. In Philly, the weather was far from promising – it was drizzling when I left – and it was misty for a good bit of the day in Atlantic City, though the sun finally broke out of the clouds in the afternoon. I walked a bit on the boardwalk – past all the garish sights and amplified music coming from the casinos – and eventually took a walk to the beach. In stark contrast to what I’ll probably see a month or so from now, the beach was nearly deserted. Every now and then, one or two people would walk along the water’s edge, but otherwise I pretty much had the place to myself – what a strange experience for Atlantic City. I find the sound of the waves relaxing – constantly ebbing and flowing – in and out, in and out - yet seemingly always the same. In my day job I’m often tied up in knots with worry about missing deadlines…..but as I listened to the sound of the waves, back and forth, I could let go of my worries and just rest in God’s love. It was a wonderful – and most welcome - opportunity to spend some time in meditation with God. The contrast between the carnival atmosphere on the boardwalk – and don’t get me wrong; I enjoy the boardwalk as well – but the contrast between that and the quiet ebb and flow of the waves reminded me that, though I often get caught up in the carnival of daily life, to the point where I feel like I’m on a merry-go-round, longing to step off onto solid ground to give my queasy stomach some relief, our loving God, like the ocean, is always there; behind the many voices striving to capture our attention is God’s voice, quiet yet persistent, like the waves flowing toward shore and then receding.
Last week we heard Jesus say “I am the good shepherd”, and this Sunday we hear the words of Jesus, “I am the vine, you are the branches. We are told that we are to abide in the vine, and the vine to abide in us, and that if we abide we will bear fruit, much fruit, fruit that will last. Indeed, Jesus tells us that if we do not bear fruit, we’ll be cut off from the vine – and that if we do bear fruit, we’ll be pruned so that we bear yet more fruit. This reminds us that even those things in our lives that may at one time have been life-giving for us, we may be called upon to set aside, to give up, in order to keep moving forward in response to the call of Jesus.
What does it mean to abide in Jesus, and to have Jesus abide in us? It is to be fed and nourished by Jesus, to have Jesus at the center of our existence. Our lives are always changing, with lots of sound and fury – but if we abide in Jesus, no matter what is going on outside us, within us the Spirit will always be moving, like the constant waves of the ocean.
Our reading from Acts gives us a picture of what it looks like to abide in Jesus and bear fruit. The stories of Philip in the 8th chapter of Acts begin with a severe persecution in Jerusalem forcing many new converts to scatter and move out into other areas. But, what others intended for evil, God used for good; as the disciples were scattered, they brought the Gospel with them and wherever the persecution drove them, they took the opportunity to proclaim the Gospel. Philip first proclaimed the Gospel in Samaria, and then we’re told the Spirit led Philip south to Gaza, along the Mediterranean sea. Philip is led to join the chariot of an Ethiopian eunuch returning from Jerusalem back home. Philip proclaims the word, and as they pass by a pool of water, the eunuch asks, “What is to prevent me from being baptized?” According to the letter of the law as written in Deuteronomy 23:1, because of the man’s status as a eunuch, he cannot be admitted to the assembly of the Lord. But in the life of the Spirit, these distinctions become meaningless. Led by the Spirit, the eunuch commands the chariot to stop and requests baptism, and led by the Spirit, Philip baptizes the eunuch. Philip is then carried away by the Spirit to the next town, and the eunuch returns to Ethiopia, rejoicing. And the words of Jesus as recorded in John’s Gospel came true in this account – as did the words of the prophet Isaiah, who said that eunuchs who keep the Sabbath and choose the things that please God and hold fast God’s covenant, will be given an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. The eunuch, who could not have children because of his status, carried the Gospel back to Ethiopia and bore many spiritual children; just as the church in India traces its beginnings to Thomas, so the church in Ethiopia traces its lineage to this meeting between Philip and the eunuch. Philip was faithful, and the eunuch was faithful, and in the words of Jesus, both their lives bore fruit that lasted to this day.
In the reading from the first letter of John, we are told how we can tell we are abiding in the true vine – and that mark of abiding is love. We’re told that “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” So many religious leaders, on TV and in churches, use fear to try to scare their followers into the Kingdom of God, and the result is religion that is rigid, tense, full of fear. But John writes that perfect love casts out fear – and that, indeed, if our religion is based in fear, God’s love in us is not fully mature, is not complete. We’re also told that this perfect love of God cannot exist side-by-side with hatred of God’s people.
In the Scriptures of the past two weeks and in our hymns today, we consider many of Jesus’ “I am” statements: I am the good shepherd, I am the true vine, and, as we go to communion, we’ll sing “I am the bread of life”. Just before we leave, we’ll sing the hymn “I am the light of the world”, reminding us that as we leave we are to carry that light with us, as Philip did, and sharing that light with others. The God we know in Jesus Christ is so transcendent, so beyond us, so unknowable, that no single comparison can adequately describe his love and justice and mercy. And yet because God is love, he chose to make himself known to us in Jesus. My time at the beach on Friday reminds me that, just as a fish is surrounded the ocean, immersed in it, cannot exist without it, in the same way as we abide in Christ we are surrounded and immersed and filled with God’s love, wider and deeper than the ocean. As Christians we cannot live apart from that love any more than a fish can live long outside water, or a branch can live apart from the vine. Our joys, our sorrows, will come and go, but like the ocean, God just….is….always there, always in motion, always creating and recreating, always reclaiming and redeeming.
“God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them….There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because he first loved us.” May we abide in this perfect love of God, and because we abide, may this congregation, Emanuel Church, as small as we are, bear fruit that lasts for many generations. Amen.
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