Life Together

Scriptures:     Acts 2:42-47, Psalm 23

I Peter 2:19-25,   John 10:1-16

In many churches, today is informally known as Good Shepherd Sunday, as the Scripture readings center on the theme of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, which is found in the 10^th chapter of John’s Gospel.   Jesus says, “I am the Good Shepherd; I lay my life down for the sheep.”  Actually, he also calls himself the gate keeper who lets the sheep in and out of the sheepfold, and even the gate itself!  John’s Gospel tells us that his disciples had a hard time getting their arms around what Jesus was saying, so he kept using different metaphors – “I’m the shepherd; no, I’m the gate keeper; no I’m the gate.”  Actually, Jesus is all of the above, so much so that it’s hard to find one image to capture all that Jesus does.

Sheep are relatively defenseless animals, domesticated to the point where the shepherd really has to provide for them and protect them.  Their main defensive instinct is, when they are threatened, to huddle together.  Sheep need three things – good pasture, preferably with interlopers like snakes and scorpion and larger predators removed, access to water, and safety.  It is the vocation of the shepherd to be sure the sheep get these three things.

Now, for us in the church, it’s possible that we may object to being compared to sheep – defenseless, kind of dumb, easily led and easily misled.  We’d rather think of ourselves as being brave as lions or wise as owls or quick as jackrabbits or, if we’re feeling a little grandiose, as inspiring as soaring eagles.   Or, if we feel threatened, we may think of ourselves as being, out of necessity, as stubborn as mules or as wily as foxes.  But sheep?  I don’t know of a lot of folks who take pride in looking on themselves as sheep.  Our American culture prizes individuality in a way that makes us unique from other countries; a favorite popular song from decades back ended with the chorus, “I did it my way.” Being part of a herd is the last thing we Americans want.  In fact, in today’s polarized politics, political operatives of one party routinely insult voters from the other party by referring to them as “sheeple”….people who can easily be herded like sheep, and led right off a cliff.  And who wants to own up to being a sheeple? 

And yet, even more fundamental to us than American individualism is that we are human beings, and as human beings we are social creatures.  Some people, once they leave their families of origin, spend their lives alone, but they’re the exception.  Most of us form families of one sort or another.  Our church, small as it is, could be considered a kind of extended family.  And beyond our families, most families live in some sort of community, though with the rise of suburbs and McMansions on large pieces of land, that sense of a larger community has broken down somewhat.  But, certainly Bridesburg is a very tight community; here in Bridesburg, everybody is aware of everyone else’s business. 

And as human beings, we respond to leaders.  In history class we learn about the great men and women of history, the Abraham Lincolns and the Adolf Hitlers, Joe McCarthy and the Red Scare of the 1950’s, Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s.  What we forget is that behind these famous leaders were a whole lot of followers.  Adolf Hitler would have been considered nothing more than a ranting nutjob, the kind of loudmouth you can find in any bar or at many family picnics, if millions of Germans had not liked what he said and decided they wanted to hear more.  Martin Luther King would have accomplished nothing if thousands of followers, black and white, had not followed him, often at great sacrifice.   And so, as much attention as we pay to the leaders, those who do great evil and those who accomplish great good, they would be nothing without their followers.

Certainly, in the church, we know the truth of Jesus’ words about the various persons and creatures who may want to enter the sheepfold – the shepherd, who wants to care for them, the hired hand, who is just there for a paycheck, the thieves and robbers who want to steal, and the wolves, who want to destroy.   Some pastors devote a great deal of time and effort, blood sweat and tears, into building up their congregations and caring for their people.   Some pastors do the bare minimum of showing up to lead Sunday worship, and bail out at the first sign of trouble, or at the first opportunity to serve a larger congregation that can pay more.  And the newspapers and TV news programs tell us from time to time about those pastors and TV preachers who are there only to enrich themselves at the expense of the members of the church, who are there only to fleece their flocks – the pastors who live in gated communities and drive Cadillacs while their members live in public housing and take the bus, the televangelists who toss the heartfelt and heart-rending prayer requests from their viewers into the dumpster, but use the checks enclosed with those prayer requests, often sent at great sacrifice, to buy estates and fleets of cars and even jets for themselves.  And from the news we know of those pastors who have caused great harm to their church members, the pastors, not all Roman Catholic, who abuse children, the cult leaders who cut their followers off from their families and dominate their lives, to the point where those followers will even kill themselves if their leader tells them to. 

In recent decades, most mainstream religious denominations have put safeguards in place to weed out students going to seminary or otherwise preparing for ministry whose psychological problems would make them destructive to a congregation.  This is an advantage of being a member of a church that’s part of a denomination, as opposed to an independent church. In the United Church of Christ, we require background checks and letters of reference and psychological testing before people can become pastors, require them to write papers telling us about their faith journey and their sense of why they feel called to be a pastor. We require our pastors to take boundary training every three years to guard against pastors engaging in affairs with their congregants or otherwise behaving inappropriately.  Here in the Philly area, I’m co-chair of the Philadelphia Association Committee on Ministry – was just re-elected at the end of April for another two-year term - and it’s my job to read through all those background checks and reference letters and psychological reports and essays, read through stacks and stacks of paperwork, as part of safeguarding the churches in our area and making sure our churches have pastors who are spiritually and psychologically healthy.  And it’s a difficult conversation to tell someone who may have a sincere desire to be a pastor that they’re not ready, that before they can proceed further we want them to see a therapist, and that we want the therapist to send us progress reports – or to tell someone that, because of the red flags in the psychological report, we can’t allow them to be a pastor, that they’re just too emotionally damaged to be entrusted with the spiritual care of the lives of others. But I’ve been involved in even harder conversations after pastors have offended, many of them ordained back when those safeguards weren’t in place, and the congregation’s trust has been destroyed because the pastor was inappropriately involved with adult members or abused children, or stole from the church.  My efforts won’t protect you or the members of our other Philadelphia-area churches from boring sermons.  But they may protect you or your kids from abuse. 

But enough about pastors, good and bad.   I also want to talk about our reading from Acts, which talked about the life of the early church.  Remember what it said:  “They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.”

We can compare this to modern-day churches and see some things that are similar, and some that are different.  Today we still have teaching and fellowship, still eat together and pray together, still spend time at church together.   We still have glad and generous hearts….well, most of the time, anyway.  While we encourage our members to give to the church – ideally, a tithe, 10% of income - we don’t sell all our possessions and pool the money for the church.  We don’t demand as much of our members as the early church did.   And a few other things we see, or maybe we don’t see, in our church:  a sense of awe or excitement at the signs and wonders God is doing, and the Lord adding to us day by day those who are being saved.  I am convinced that God is doing amazing things here at Emanuel – we’ve had prayers for healing answered, and a real sense of caring has developed among our active members.  A number of us here today have joined Emanuel Church in just the past few years; and for some, Emanuel is their first church experience.   So there’s some similarity to the book of Acts – just on a smaller scale, and sometimes very gradual.  But this reading from Acts reminds us that being part of the body of Christ is far more than just showing up on Sunday mornings once a week, or maybe once every few weeks or months.  It’s a daily thing, a way of life, a commitment not only to God but to God’s people as well.  And I’m convinced that the commitment the early church members showed toward one another is because of the commitment that Jesus modeled toward the first disciples.  Jesus shared his life with his followers, and ultimately laid down his life for them – and so those followers went on to share their lives with one another, and even to lay down their lives for one another and for Christ.

Jesus calls us into community.  Jesus didn’t speak of his followers as being isolated, but as being together. He didn’t lead his followers into individual telephone booths, but into a flock.  When Mary encountered the Risen Christ in the garden and wanted to hold onto him, Jesus told her not to hold onto him, but to go to the other disciples – in that moment, Mary wanted Jesus for herself, but Jesus sent her back to the fellowship of the other believers.  Like Mary, we may come to Jesus as individuals, but Jesus always leads us back into community.  And so as comfortable as we may want to be with an idea of a relationship that involves just “Jesus and me” – and some churches unfortunately encourage this idea – inevitably as our faith matures,  “I” and “me” becomes “us” and “we”.  It is true that we need Jesus – but Jesus also reminds us that we need one another, that we need to be in community. And Jesus spoke of having “other sheep” – in his context the Gentiles – that he wanted to add to the flock, so they would be one flock under one shepherd.  In the same way we are to welcome those who have sometimes been rejected by the church, but are sent here by the Risen Christ.

May we listen to the voice of our shepherd, and learn to sort out the voice of Jesus from the other voices clamoring for our attention.  And where Jesus leads, may we follow. Amen.

Beloved Stranger

Scriptures:     Acts 2:14, 36-41                     Romans 6:1-5

I Peter 3:13-22                      Luke 24:13-35

 

On a slow news day, every now and then the newspapers will print a story about somebody who, as they were eating breakfast, saw the face of Jesus in a sticky bun - or in a piece of French toast - or maybe in a water stain on the wall.   Now, these things tend to be fairly subjective – most people will look at the same sticky bun or piece of bread or water stain and won’t see anything, but some people, if they hold the sticky bun up and at this angle, and turn their heads just so, will see an outline of the face of Jesus.  Of course, what can you do with the sticky bun or piece of French toast in which the Savior’s face is visible, at least to you?  Eating it would seem almost sacrilegious, although, come to think of it, we do eat the body of Christ when we take communion.  Do you put it in a drawer and save it?  It probably wouldn’t be so good to try to hang a sticky bun or piece of French toast on the wall – folks visiting your house will look at you funny, though I assure you that if you do, ants will come from the east and the west, the north and the south to pay fervent homage to your new religious icon.

In our Gospel reading today, we hear of two disciples of Jesus who encountered the resurrected Jesus….as they were discussing with Jesus their grief at his execution.  The story has a playful, almost prankish feel to it:  two followers of Jesus, one of whom is named Cleopas while the other is unnamed, are walking from Jerusalem to their home in Emmaus, seven miles outside Jerusalem.  “Fleeing” might be a better word than walking, as if they were escaping from a crime scene – the unjust execution of Jesus - at which they had been witnesses, a crime which might have threatened them had they remained.  As they walk, a stranger joins them in conversation.  We are told that the stranger is Jesus, but that Jesus was unrecognized by them. We’re told that “their eyes were kept from recognizing him.”  Perhaps they were blinded by their grief.  Jesus could have started waving his arms and saying, “Yo, guys, I’m not dead; in fact, here I am right in front of your nose!”  But instead, Jesus listens as they wallow in their grief.  It might have been a bit like the scene in Tom Sawyer where Tom shows up at his own funeral, very much alive, but stays hidden a while to hear all the nice things people were saying about him.  Finally, when the two have talked themselves out, Jesus engages them in a sort of walking Bible study, pointing out passages that give them a different perspective on the events that had caused such pain.  When they arrives at their destination, they invite Jesus in – and as Jesus, the guest, takes the bread, gives thanks, breaks it, and begins to pass it around, in that moment, the two disciples suddenly recognize the One to whom they had been pouring out their hearts – and at that moment, Jesus vanishes.  After Jesus vanished, they said to one another, “Were not our hearts burning within us, while he was talking with us on the road, while he was opening up the Scriptures to us.”   Even though their eyes did not recognize Jesus, their spirits somehow knew that they were having an encounter with the Divine.  And the two disciples return to the scene of the crime, so to speak, no longer fearful of the authorities, to share their account of their encounter with the stranger who was the Beloved. 

For the travelers on the road, the Risen Christ appeared to them a stranger.  And yet the Risen Christ was the Beloved.  In most of the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus, the disciples do not immediately recognize him – primarily, I suspect, because they did not expect to see him.  For the two disciples, it was only when Jesus broke, blessed, and passed around the bread, as he had done so many times, as he had done when he fed the crowds, as he had done for his disciples at the last supper, that they recognized the Risen One in their midst.

We’re told that the two travelers on the road did not recognize Jesus, because their eyes were kept from recognizing him.  Often we only see and hear what our minds allow us to see and hear.  Our eyes and ears and other senses take in so many sensations and so much information, but it is our minds that organize these sensations and this information in ways we can understand it – and in the process, filter a lot of it out.   And certainly those in power and their mouthpieces in the media encourage us to focus on what they want us to see and to ignore what they want us not to see.  And so we see but don’t really see, hear but don’t really hear.  Particularly in our overly-busy, overly-scheduled society, we often go through our days on autopilot – I know I do.  As Jesus did when he opened the Scriptures to them on the road, I believe it is part of our tasks as people of faith to take moments to turn off our autopilot, to turn off the media noise machine, to put aside the mental filters and see, really see, with the heart as well as the eye. 

I was on a bus ride to DC yesterday with an interfaith group – some were Christian; most were Jewish, a few had no commitment to a faith community – “spiritual but not religious”, you might say.  We were going to a climate march that was held there.  The leaders held an interfaith service on the bus trip.  After we got off the bus, the person who had sat next to me on the bus, an older Jewish man, and I were talking as we walked.  At a point, he spent some time lamenting the younger people, as he saw them, focused on their I-phones and shutting out the world.  And then he said something, in a way that struck me: “We don’t even see each other.”  We don’t even see each other.  And I certainly hadn’t really seen him earlier, when we were riding on the bus together, seated next to one another – The bus started out at 6:30 a.m., and I was tired, and he himself seemed fairly closed off….he was probably just as tired, and had likely found me closed off to him as well.  When he learned I was a pastor, he told me, “Well, I don’t know if you do a lot of marriage counseling” – I don’t – “but my daughter” – his daughter was a rabbi, and had led part of the interfaith service on the bus – “gave me a prayer that has transformed my life and my marriage.”  He said that every morning before he got out of bed, he prayed “I give thanks to you, living and everlasting King, for you have restored my soul with mercy.  Great is your faithfulness.”  For this man, in letting him wake up for another day, God had restored his soul.  But for him, it wasn’t enough just to give thanks to God….he had to respond: “and what am I going to do about it.”  God has restored my soul for another day.  What am I going to do about it?  And what he would do is to tell his wife thank you for being a part of his life for so many years.  And I met his wife later that day and she said the same thing.  The man emailed me this prayer, and just reading it on paper, my response was, “oh, that’s nice.”  But as the man opened up to me what this prayer had meant to him, I found my heart strangely warmed.  And indeed, as our group went through the day, as we worshipped together on the bus and marched together in the street, we went from being a collection of strangers on a bus to, at least for a time, a kind of beloved community.

We here at Emanuel are a community, and as new people arrive, they move from being strangers to being beloved - well, most of the time anyway.   Today we welcome a new member to the beloved community, Scarlett Marie,  so young, her whole life ahead of her.  In our reading from Acts, Peter tells the crowd, among many other things, that the promises of God are for us, and also for our children – and for those far away as well, but today we’re focusing on children – and it is on that basis – that promises of God are for us and for our children - that in our tradition we baptize children.   

In our tradition, baptism is one of the sacraments – the other is holy communion, which we’ll celebrate next Sunday.  Augustine defined a sacrament as an “outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace.”  An outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace.  Put another way, it is a time in which God is present in a special way.  Protestants recognize baptism and holy communion as two practices with direct connection to the practice of Jesus, who was baptized by John and who instituted holy communion at his last supper with his disciples.   In baptism, in this sacramental moment, we will hear Scarlett’s parents and godparents make promises, to raise Scarlett in the Christian faith.   And we will be making a promise as well, as we say, “We promise our love, support and care.”   As we say those six words, “We promise our love, support, and care” – and, of course, to love, support and care for Scarlett will mean loving, supporting, and caring for Scarlett’s family, I would encourage us to take ourselves off autopilot for a moment, really see Scarlett and Scarlett’s family, and really commit to love, support, and care for them.

The two returned to Jerusalem, and told those gathered there how Jesus was revealed to them in the breaking of bread.  May our eyes be opened so that God may reveal Godself to us – yes, here at church, but also in our families, in other people around us, and in the fragile beauty of nature.  May we have eyes to see, and hearts to respond.  Amen.