What do you think of when you hear the word “learning?” Does the word conjure up good feelings, memories of stimulating teachers and interesting projects? Were you like me, eagerly awaiting the first day of a new school year, going to school in new clothes, wondering what was in this year’s workbooks and textbooks? Later on, did you like your French, and music, and algebra classes? Were you surprised to discover that a good essay should have a beginning, a middle, and an end? Or does the word “learning” evoke negative feelings, memories of critical teachers and boring work? When this time of year came round, did you loudly chant, “No more pencils, no more books, no more teachers’ dirty looks?” Did you breathe a huge sigh of relief when you finally graduated from high school graduation? When you were baptized or confirmed, did you think that your formal learning in the faith was finally done? Do you believe the church should proclaim “the faith once delivered to the saints,” the saints of – pick your date – the first century, or the fourth century, or the Middle Ages, or the Reformation, or the 1928 prayer book? Should we as Christians and the church as a body be static and unchanging?
Once again this morning – and the for the last time this liturgical year – we hear Jesus’ speech to his disciples before his crucifixion, as recorded in the Gospel according to John. For the last two weeks, we have been reassured by Jesus’ promise to send the Holy Spirit to his disciples after his resurrection. Now we begin to get some clue as to what the Holy Spirit might actually do. We learn that, although the disciples had followed Jesus closely and had heard his teaching, they were still beginners in their new life of faith. They still had a lot to learn! “I still have many things to tell you,” Jesus told them, “but you cannot bear them now.” Can’t you hear them saying to themselves, “Say what, Lord? Haven’t we been through enough already?” Actually, they were just at the beginning of a faith journey. Jesus’ leaving them would not stop their learning. When Jesus did breathe his Spirit on them on Easter Evening, they were just at the beginning of growth in the life of the Spirit, growth that would last the rest of the lives. They didn’t have to understand everything all at once. The Spirit, they learned that last night, would guide them into all truth. The Spirit, the continuing guide by their side, would remind them of what Jesus had taught them. The Spirit would explain things to them, would share Jesus’ ongoing life with them, and would lead them forward into whatever God had prepared for them. Most importantly, the Spirit would draw them closer to Jesus, who would draw them more deeply into his own life with the Father, so that they too would be included in the community of divine love.
As fellow disciples of the same risen Lord, we too, with those first disciples, are called to be members of a learning community. Indeed the whole church is called to be a learning community – and has been since its very beginning. It took nearly four centuries for the early church to understand and clarify the meaning of God’s coming among us in Jesus. Although we now have creeds and a doctrine of the Trinity, for example, it wasn’t until late in the fourth century that the leaders of the church were able to say with some clarity that Jesus had shown us that we encounter God in three different ways, as God the mysterious creator of all that exists, as God the redeemer who died on the cross for us, and as God the Holy Spirit who continues to lead us and guide us. And throughout the rest of its history, right up to the present day, the church continues to be a learning community. As a church we have learned to value and appreciate the contemplative life, and we have deepened in our sense of responsibility to the poor. We have learned that all people, not just learned clergy, can and should worship and read the Scriptures in their own languages. We have learned that slavery is a sin. In our own day, we have learned that women and gay people can be ordained. The Spirit continues to remind us of our responsibilities to the poor, and that we too are called to partner with God in the bringing in of God’s kingdom of life and love.
In our individual parishes, we are also learning communities, or should be. Next week the paraments and liturgical color will change to green. We are now entering the season of Pentecost, the long season of growing in our life in the Spirit. Are we being led by the Spirit? Are we letting the Spirit guide us into all truth? If we are, then the first thing we have to do is to quit fighting with each other about interpretations of faith and Scripture. Jesus has promised us that the Spirit will guide us into all truth. We can trust that God will eventually show us how to reconcile our now differing understandings and practices as Christian bodies. Secondly, we as individuals need to acknowledge that our formation as Christians, our transformation into Christ, wasn’t completed at our baptisms or confirmations. The kind of learning that the Spirit leads us into takes a lifetime to master. Most of us probably cannot explain exactly what every line of the Nicene or Apostles Creed means. Many of us may not be sure that we even believe them all. That’s OK. The creeds represent what the church has come to understand as a faith community. We as individuals, as our faith deepens, evolve in our understanding of the teachings and doctrines of the church. Our understanding will change over a life time. What is important is that we continually stretch ourselves and allow ourselves to grow in our knowledge of God.
What is most important is that we realize that our knowledge of God isn’t primarily head-knowledge. To be sure, intellectual formation is important. Lay folks also need to know when and for whom the Scriptures were written. Lay folks need to know the history of the church. Lay folks also need to know something about theology, and especially what contemporary writers think about God, Jesus, the Spirit, and the church. But ultimately, if we are to deepen our knowledge of God, if we are to grow “into all truth,” then we must grow through our experience of Jesus at work in our lives. And we must let the Spirit lead us into those practices that help deepen us, that help us evolve into more faithful disciples of Jesus. We must allow ourselves to grow spiritually. That can only happen if a congregation offers regular opportunities for its members to grow in the spiritual life. What are some of those opportunities? Some of them may sound quite familiar, as they are really the classic spiritual disciplines that have sustained the church, and through which the Holy Spirit has been working, for two thousand years. We need to learn how to pray – not just the beautiful formal prayers of our Book of Common Prayer, but our own prayers, our own conversation with God. We might consider fasting, a very ancient discipline indeed, which is also a way to enlarge our insights into what much of the rest of the world experiences. We grow through service, as we follow our Lord’s model of caring for the poor, the sick, the lonely, and the unloved. We grow through experiencing the joy of giving, of helping individuals and groups, and of returning to God a small portion of what God has given us. We grow through confession, through acknowledging our sins and limitations to God and asking God to heal and strengthen us. We grow through experiencing God in silence, in creating a quiet space in our lives and our minds where God can do and be for us whatever God chooses. Finally, we grow through remembering that in God “we live and move and have our being,” through acknowledging, however briefly, God’s presence in all our minutes, hours, weeks, and years.
Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, the father of the nuclear submarine, was skeptical of business school graduates. In interviewing them over the years, he found that they knew the jargon of systems analysis, financial manipulation, and quantitative management. But he thought that most of them had no appreciation for the importance of technical knowledge, experience, and hard work. "What it takes to do the job will not be learned from management courses," said Rickover. "It is principally a matter of experience, the proper attitude, and common sense -- none of which can be taught in a classroom."
Experience, attitude, and common sense. None of them can be taught in a classroom. Experience of God working in us, transformation of life, and deeper love for God. None of them can be taught in a classroom or a sermon. And none of them just happens. The Spirit will guide us into all truth – we have Jesus’ promise for that. When we as congregations and individuals engage in those practices through which the Spirit can teach us, we can be assured of the Holy Spirit’s working within us, and through God’s Spirit we will be led more deeply into God’s own life. And by God’s grace, at the end of it all, we will be Christ’s own forever.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Greater Works than These
Dorothy Sayers, the mystery writer, scholar, and Christian apologist tells the story of a Japanese man. He is politely listening to a Christian who is trying to explain of the concept of the Trinity. The Japanese man is puzzled: "Honorable Father, very good. Honorable Son, very good. Honorable Bird I do not understand at all." He was referring, of course, to the descent of the Holy Spirit on Jesus at his baptism, where the Spirit was compared to a dove. Well, if the truth be told, most of us don’t understand the Honorable Bird any more than the Japanese man did, even though every year at Pentecost we celebrate God’s gift of the Holy Spirit to us, and even though every year we too try to wrap our minds around the doctrine of the Trinity, as we’ll do again next Sunday.
And truth be told again, getting a clear idea of the identity and work of the Holy Spirit isn’t easy either, partly because our Scripture readings give us different ways of thinking about the Spirit. In our reading from Acts, we can discern that the Holy Spirit is that aspect of God that powerfully fills a community of believers. Here we have 120 or so disciples, who have come together in Jerusalem. They are there ostensibly to celebrate the Jewish harvest festival of Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks, or Pentecost in Greek, which occurs fifty days after Passover. This is also the festival that commemorates the giving of the law at Sinai, the gift of God that made the Jews into a distinctive community. However, these disciples are also in Jerusalem in response to Jesus’ command that they wait there for the promised Holy Spirit to empower them. In our account in Acts, the coming of the Spirit is a very public event. Jews of every ethnicity can feel the “Holy Gust” and see the tongues of flame and know that God is powerfully present in their midst.
In our reading from Paul’s letter to the Roman Christians, we have a different way of understanding the Holy Spirit. Here, the Spirit is God working in us, in the “cellar of our hearts,” to draw us closer to Godself. What’s more important, the Holy Spirit dwells within us to remind us and reassure us that we are God’s beloved children, that we are part of a new and distinctive family, greater and more important to our lives than our blood family, and that all the members of that new family are our siblings.
The Gospel according to John gives us yet another vivid picture of the Holy Spirit, although it is a different picture from the one in Acts. In John, the Holy Spirit also comes to empower a community of believers, but not with a “holy gust” or tongues of flame. Go back in your mind to what the disciples were doing on Easter evening in John’s account. They were huddled together in fear in a locked upper room, when suddenly they discovered Jesus standing among them. He had come to reinvigorate them and to fulfill the promise that he had made to them at his last meal with them, the promise that we heard in today’s reading. He had promised to give them another Advocate. Who is this Advocate? The Greek word is parakletos, translated also as comforter or helper, literally the “guide by your side.” In John’s Gospel, when Jesus came back to actually give the disciples this guide, he didn’t shake the upper room with great gusts of wind. Nor did he shoot flames of fire at the disciples. No, he did something very simple. He breathed on them, saying “Receive the Holy Spirit.” He filled them with his very own life breath. Think about that for a moment. What would that feel like to have Jesus’ very own life breath filling your lungs?
So we have different ways of picturing the Holy Spirit. We can think of it as “holy gust,” shaking everything up, we can think of it as that which draws us closer to God and other Christians, and we can think of it as life breath, filling us inwardly with something new, something from Jesus himself. Different as they may seem, these ways of picturing the Holy Spirit have something in common. In all cases, the Holy Spirit comes to us a for a purpose. We are not given the gift of the Holy Spirit so that we might have personal ecstatic experiences, as wonderful as they might be. There’s nothing new about that – the Greeks knew all about ecstatic experience. Nor are we given the gift of the Holy Spirit so that we might speak in unintelligible languages, even though many of our Pentecostal brothers and sisters equate baptism in the Holy Spirit with “speaking in tongues.” No, the gift of the Holy Spirit, which God gives us in our first and only baptism, is always given to individuals and communities for the purpose of advancing the mission of the church. Through the Holy Spirit we are empowered by God in order to extend God’s reign in the world. In the account in Acts, the holy gust and fire enable the disciples to communicate clearly with a wide variety of people, with “devout Jews from every nation under heaven,” to communicate clearly that in Jesus God had fulfilled God’s promises to humanity. And note that, although Peter was empowered to become the spokesperson for the disciples, all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and empowered to speak. So too are we empowered by the Holy Spirit to proclaim the good news. So too does the Holy Spirit give us the words and language we need to enable others to understand what God has done for us through Jesus.
In John’s account, Jesus promises the Holy Spirit to the disciples so that they will be empowered to do Jesus’ works and, what is more important, so that they may do “greater works than these.” So too for us. With the promised guide by our side, with Jesus’ breath of life within us, we too will be enabled to do what Jesus did: to serve the poor, to heal the sick, to feed the hungry, to reconcile those in conflict, and to forgive those who hurt us. And not only what Jesus did. But “greater works than these.” What might those be, I wonder? With the promised guide by our side, with Jesus’ breath within us, we too may also be led into an ever deepening relationship with God. By God’s grace, we may eventually be like Jesus, and everything we do will be God working through us, God incarnate in us. When we pray for the Holy Spirit to be at work in the Church and in our lives, this is what we seek: that God, through the power of the Holy Spirit, may work through us to accomplish God’s will in the world.
Is the Holy Spirit at work in our parish? I pray so. Perhaps the Spirit will come among us as “holy gust,” blowing away the cobwebs of the way we’ve always done things, leading us into new ways of doing and being, of worshipping and doing mission. Perhaps the “holy gust” will empower all of us to speak of our faith to others, to lead others to see themselves as God’s adopted, beloved children.
Is the Holy Spirit working in your life and mine? I pray so. Perhaps you’ve had an experience of the Spirit as “holy gust.” Some of us have. Experiences where all we thought we knew and were are swept away. Suddenly we see ourselves completely differently. Suddenly we know that God has new and different plans for us, and that God is empowering us for a new work. Most likely, though, your experience of the Spirit’s empowerment has been gentler, more gradual, perhaps something more like Jesus gently breathing on and in you. Perhaps your experience of the Spirit’s empowerment has been more like that “still, small voice” gently encouraging and strengthening you for God’s work in the world. Perhaps your experience of the Spirit, perhaps in prayer, has been like that of 13th century mystic Mechtild of Magdeburg, who knew herself through the Spirit to be “One in body and soul,/ Though outwardly separate in form” from God.
In my former life I was a scholar of the literature of India. I was also a flutist. When I think of the Holy Spirit working through me, I resonate especially with John’s image of Jesus breathing on and in me. I also resonate with a poem by the early 20th century Bengali poet, Rabindranath Tagore. This poem comes from his collection Gitanjali, “song offering,” published in 1913. As you hear it, think of the Spirit blowing through you, making the most beautiful music possible filling you, and enabling you to do the “greater works than these,” that God desires.
Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life.
This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales, and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new.
At the immortal touch of thy hands my little heart loses its limits in joy and gives birth to utterance ineffable.
Thy infinite gifts come to me only on these very small hands of mine. Ages pass, and still thou pourest, and still there is room to fill.
And truth be told again, getting a clear idea of the identity and work of the Holy Spirit isn’t easy either, partly because our Scripture readings give us different ways of thinking about the Spirit. In our reading from Acts, we can discern that the Holy Spirit is that aspect of God that powerfully fills a community of believers. Here we have 120 or so disciples, who have come together in Jerusalem. They are there ostensibly to celebrate the Jewish harvest festival of Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks, or Pentecost in Greek, which occurs fifty days after Passover. This is also the festival that commemorates the giving of the law at Sinai, the gift of God that made the Jews into a distinctive community. However, these disciples are also in Jerusalem in response to Jesus’ command that they wait there for the promised Holy Spirit to empower them. In our account in Acts, the coming of the Spirit is a very public event. Jews of every ethnicity can feel the “Holy Gust” and see the tongues of flame and know that God is powerfully present in their midst.
In our reading from Paul’s letter to the Roman Christians, we have a different way of understanding the Holy Spirit. Here, the Spirit is God working in us, in the “cellar of our hearts,” to draw us closer to Godself. What’s more important, the Holy Spirit dwells within us to remind us and reassure us that we are God’s beloved children, that we are part of a new and distinctive family, greater and more important to our lives than our blood family, and that all the members of that new family are our siblings.
The Gospel according to John gives us yet another vivid picture of the Holy Spirit, although it is a different picture from the one in Acts. In John, the Holy Spirit also comes to empower a community of believers, but not with a “holy gust” or tongues of flame. Go back in your mind to what the disciples were doing on Easter evening in John’s account. They were huddled together in fear in a locked upper room, when suddenly they discovered Jesus standing among them. He had come to reinvigorate them and to fulfill the promise that he had made to them at his last meal with them, the promise that we heard in today’s reading. He had promised to give them another Advocate. Who is this Advocate? The Greek word is parakletos, translated also as comforter or helper, literally the “guide by your side.” In John’s Gospel, when Jesus came back to actually give the disciples this guide, he didn’t shake the upper room with great gusts of wind. Nor did he shoot flames of fire at the disciples. No, he did something very simple. He breathed on them, saying “Receive the Holy Spirit.” He filled them with his very own life breath. Think about that for a moment. What would that feel like to have Jesus’ very own life breath filling your lungs?
So we have different ways of picturing the Holy Spirit. We can think of it as “holy gust,” shaking everything up, we can think of it as that which draws us closer to God and other Christians, and we can think of it as life breath, filling us inwardly with something new, something from Jesus himself. Different as they may seem, these ways of picturing the Holy Spirit have something in common. In all cases, the Holy Spirit comes to us a for a purpose. We are not given the gift of the Holy Spirit so that we might have personal ecstatic experiences, as wonderful as they might be. There’s nothing new about that – the Greeks knew all about ecstatic experience. Nor are we given the gift of the Holy Spirit so that we might speak in unintelligible languages, even though many of our Pentecostal brothers and sisters equate baptism in the Holy Spirit with “speaking in tongues.” No, the gift of the Holy Spirit, which God gives us in our first and only baptism, is always given to individuals and communities for the purpose of advancing the mission of the church. Through the Holy Spirit we are empowered by God in order to extend God’s reign in the world. In the account in Acts, the holy gust and fire enable the disciples to communicate clearly with a wide variety of people, with “devout Jews from every nation under heaven,” to communicate clearly that in Jesus God had fulfilled God’s promises to humanity. And note that, although Peter was empowered to become the spokesperson for the disciples, all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and empowered to speak. So too are we empowered by the Holy Spirit to proclaim the good news. So too does the Holy Spirit give us the words and language we need to enable others to understand what God has done for us through Jesus.
In John’s account, Jesus promises the Holy Spirit to the disciples so that they will be empowered to do Jesus’ works and, what is more important, so that they may do “greater works than these.” So too for us. With the promised guide by our side, with Jesus’ breath of life within us, we too will be enabled to do what Jesus did: to serve the poor, to heal the sick, to feed the hungry, to reconcile those in conflict, and to forgive those who hurt us. And not only what Jesus did. But “greater works than these.” What might those be, I wonder? With the promised guide by our side, with Jesus’ breath within us, we too may also be led into an ever deepening relationship with God. By God’s grace, we may eventually be like Jesus, and everything we do will be God working through us, God incarnate in us. When we pray for the Holy Spirit to be at work in the Church and in our lives, this is what we seek: that God, through the power of the Holy Spirit, may work through us to accomplish God’s will in the world.
Is the Holy Spirit at work in our parish? I pray so. Perhaps the Spirit will come among us as “holy gust,” blowing away the cobwebs of the way we’ve always done things, leading us into new ways of doing and being, of worshipping and doing mission. Perhaps the “holy gust” will empower all of us to speak of our faith to others, to lead others to see themselves as God’s adopted, beloved children.
Is the Holy Spirit working in your life and mine? I pray so. Perhaps you’ve had an experience of the Spirit as “holy gust.” Some of us have. Experiences where all we thought we knew and were are swept away. Suddenly we see ourselves completely differently. Suddenly we know that God has new and different plans for us, and that God is empowering us for a new work. Most likely, though, your experience of the Spirit’s empowerment has been gentler, more gradual, perhaps something more like Jesus gently breathing on and in you. Perhaps your experience of the Spirit’s empowerment has been more like that “still, small voice” gently encouraging and strengthening you for God’s work in the world. Perhaps your experience of the Spirit, perhaps in prayer, has been like that of 13th century mystic Mechtild of Magdeburg, who knew herself through the Spirit to be “One in body and soul,/ Though outwardly separate in form” from God.
In my former life I was a scholar of the literature of India. I was also a flutist. When I think of the Holy Spirit working through me, I resonate especially with John’s image of Jesus breathing on and in me. I also resonate with a poem by the early 20th century Bengali poet, Rabindranath Tagore. This poem comes from his collection Gitanjali, “song offering,” published in 1913. As you hear it, think of the Spirit blowing through you, making the most beautiful music possible filling you, and enabling you to do the “greater works than these,” that God desires.
Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life.
This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales, and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new.
At the immortal touch of thy hands my little heart loses its limits in joy and gives birth to utterance ineffable.
Thy infinite gifts come to me only on these very small hands of mine. Ages pass, and still thou pourest, and still there is room to fill.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
On Behalf of Those Who Will Believe
We are in trouble! The Episcopal Church is in trouble! St. Peter’s is in trouble! At its meeting in Omaha in February the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church heard a report showing that church membership and Sunday attendance has continued to decline. Overall, we saw a drop of 2.8% in membership and 3.1% in average Sunday attendance over the previous year. According to the report, parishes that lack a clear mission and purpose, that do not follow up with visitors, that engage in “rote, predictable and uninspiring” worship, that lack strong leadership, and that do not engage in outreach and mission are especially declining. At the same time that the Executive Council was hearing this report, many of us were sitting in Hobson Hall at the Procter Center hearing similar news. Church growth and development specialist Tom Ehrich told us that the high point for membership and attendance in the Episcopal Church – and for most mainline denominations – was actually 1964. In 1964, the US population was about 125,000,000. It now stands about 300,000,000. In 1964 the Episcopal Church had about 3.6 million members; it now has about 2.2 million. If you’re quick with your arithmetic it won’t take you long to figure out that in 1964 the Episcopal Church claimed about 1.67% of the US population, and that now we claim about .68%. If we had just held on to the same share of the population that we had in 1964, Ehrich told us, we would be a denomination of about 5 million, rather than one of 2.2 million. Of course, we can relate to those numbers right here. In our history day last year at St. Peter’s we heard about the sixty children in Sunday School, the raft of teenage acolytes, the vested choir, the ice cream socials, the youth groups, and, most importantly, the way in which the church was the center of everyone’s social life. And yet, though the faces shine out for us from the photos on the walls, we know as clearly as we know anything, that those days are behind us. 1964 will not come again. We will not be that church again. And there are all kinds of reasons why this has happened. Episcopalians have fought too much over trivial issues, most especially the desire of some to continue worshipping in sixteenth century English. In the last decade or so, Episcopalians have probably put too much emphasis on Sunday morning and too little on formation and mission. But most of our decline, and the decline of our sister churches, can be summed up this way: we live in a different world from the world of the middle of the 20th century. We may not like it, we may bewail and bemoan the dethronement of the church in the US and Europe, but there is no arguing with the cultural changes that have taken place around us.
The Christian communities who first heard the Gospel according to John were also living in difficult times. Scholars tell us that this Gospel was written between 90 and 100 AD, probably for Christians in Ephesus. These Christians, like many other early Christians, were in conflict with the wider culture around them, most especially the Roman Empire. They were also in conflict with the Jewish communities that began emerging in the aftermath of the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem in 70 AD. And they were also dealing with conflict within their communities. Some felt an affinity with Greek philosophies, others didn’t. Some wanted to stay connected with Jewish communities and others were for making a clean break with Judaism.
Facing such external and internal tensions, these early Christians could only have been encouraged and emboldened by today’s passage in John’s Gospel. Today’s reading comes out of the section that begins in chapter 13. You remember that on the last night of his life in this Gospel, Jesus washed the disciples feet, giving them a concrete model of loving service. He gave them a new commandment, to “love one another as I have loved you,” he answered their questions, and he promised that after his death he would be with them in a new way, through the power of the Holy Spirit. Then finally, Jesus turned away from his disciples. He “looked toward heaven,” and he began to pray. The whole seventeenth chapter, of which we hear today the last six verses, is Jesus’ prayer. And let’s be clear: this is Jesus’ prayer, Jesus’ intimate conversation with his Father, which the disciples in effect were privileged to overhear in this Gospel. This prayer is not addressed to them, it is not an exhortation to them to love or to be in unity with each other, as desirable as unity might be. This is Jesus’ prayer. And on the eve of his death, Jesus prayed for the Church. He entrusted to God the Father the disciples he had then, and those who would believe through them, i.e., the entire church to come. He prayed boldly for the Church: in one translation Jesus says, “I want those you have given me to be with me….” In effect, Jesus was asking God to make good on God’s promises to create, through the Holy Spirit, a community of love that would share the same divine life that Jesus shared with the Father.
Sisters and brothers, this is good news! Jesus prayed for the church on the eve of his death. Forty days after his resurrection from the dead, he disappeared physically from the Christian community, an event the church marked on Thursday in the feast of the Ascension, and now he continues to pray for the Church that he had entrusted to the Father’s hands. We know something about that God to whom Jesus entrusted the church in this prayer. Jesus in the flesh showed us something about his Father. He’s the kind of God who openhandedly welcomes back a lost son. He throws the ball back in the court of a woman’s accusers, telling them, “Let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone.” He’s the kind of God who dares to break bread with “all sorts and conditions of men and women,” who promised “living water” to a woman who’d had five husbands. He charged his friends, even those who had abandoned him to the religious and civil authorities, to “feed my sheep.” The God whom Jesus revealed to us, the God to whom Jesus entrusted the future of the church, is a God of lavish love, whose love for all people extends to us, and whose love we are impelled to share with others.
That church, which Jesus entrusted to his Father’s loving care, and for which Jesus continues to pray will grow and flourish. Make no mistake about that. We may not recognize the church that emerges from this current period of transition, any more than seventeenth century Anglicans would have recognized the church of 1960. And God willing we will be part of the birthing process of that new church. Tom Ehrich and other commentators strongly believe that growth is possible, even for the “frozen chosen.” We have a lot of work to do as partners with God in that process. We need to ask God for a clearer vision of what our parish is called to do. We need to commit our resources, our “souls and bodies,” to the task: we need to be willing to offer up to God our time, our talent, and our treasure. And we need to be willing to change how we do things. Perhaps we need to embrace different kinds of worship times and approaches. Perhaps there are new missions that will help us be more effective “fishers of people.”
Most important, we are called to join our prayers to Jesus’ prayers, to pray for our parish, our diocese, the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Communion, and ultimately the whole Body of Christ. We are called to trust in the Father’s continuing love for the church, fractured and fractious as we may currently be. A well-known preacher told of an experience he had when, as a young man, he went to become pastor of a church in Philadelphia. After his first sermon, an old gentleman said to him, "You're pretty young to be pastor of this church. But you preach the Gospel, and I'm going to help you all I can." The new preacher thought, "Here's a crank." But the man continued: "I'm going to pray for you that you may have the Holy Spirit's power upon you. Two others have covenanted to join with me in prayer for you." The preacher said, "I didn't feel so bad when I learned he was going to pray for me. The three became ten, the ten became twenty, the twenty became fifty, and the fifty became two hundred who met before every service to pray that the Holy Spirit might come upon me. I always went into my pulpit feeling that I would have the anointing in answer to the prayers of those who had faithfully prayed for me. It was a joy to preach! The result was that we received 1,100 people into our church in three years, 600 of whom were men. It was the fruit of the Holy spirit in answer to prayer!"
My friends, we at St. Peter’s are about to enter a new phase in our relationship together. We trust that by God’s grace we can grow and flourish again as a parish. We are certainly called to do all that we can humanly do, and we do have our work cut out for us. What is more important, we must continue to pray, and we must continue to pray especially for this parish. As we join our own prayers to Jesus’ prayer for the church, we rest in God’s lavish love, trusting in God’s goodness and knowing that the Father will empower us for the work we have been given to do.
Almighty God, your only Son was taken into heaven and in your presence prays for us. Receive us and our prayers for the church and for the world, and in the end bring everything into your glory; through Jesus Christ our risen Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
The Christian communities who first heard the Gospel according to John were also living in difficult times. Scholars tell us that this Gospel was written between 90 and 100 AD, probably for Christians in Ephesus. These Christians, like many other early Christians, were in conflict with the wider culture around them, most especially the Roman Empire. They were also in conflict with the Jewish communities that began emerging in the aftermath of the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem in 70 AD. And they were also dealing with conflict within their communities. Some felt an affinity with Greek philosophies, others didn’t. Some wanted to stay connected with Jewish communities and others were for making a clean break with Judaism.
Facing such external and internal tensions, these early Christians could only have been encouraged and emboldened by today’s passage in John’s Gospel. Today’s reading comes out of the section that begins in chapter 13. You remember that on the last night of his life in this Gospel, Jesus washed the disciples feet, giving them a concrete model of loving service. He gave them a new commandment, to “love one another as I have loved you,” he answered their questions, and he promised that after his death he would be with them in a new way, through the power of the Holy Spirit. Then finally, Jesus turned away from his disciples. He “looked toward heaven,” and he began to pray. The whole seventeenth chapter, of which we hear today the last six verses, is Jesus’ prayer. And let’s be clear: this is Jesus’ prayer, Jesus’ intimate conversation with his Father, which the disciples in effect were privileged to overhear in this Gospel. This prayer is not addressed to them, it is not an exhortation to them to love or to be in unity with each other, as desirable as unity might be. This is Jesus’ prayer. And on the eve of his death, Jesus prayed for the Church. He entrusted to God the Father the disciples he had then, and those who would believe through them, i.e., the entire church to come. He prayed boldly for the Church: in one translation Jesus says, “I want those you have given me to be with me….” In effect, Jesus was asking God to make good on God’s promises to create, through the Holy Spirit, a community of love that would share the same divine life that Jesus shared with the Father.
Sisters and brothers, this is good news! Jesus prayed for the church on the eve of his death. Forty days after his resurrection from the dead, he disappeared physically from the Christian community, an event the church marked on Thursday in the feast of the Ascension, and now he continues to pray for the Church that he had entrusted to the Father’s hands. We know something about that God to whom Jesus entrusted the church in this prayer. Jesus in the flesh showed us something about his Father. He’s the kind of God who openhandedly welcomes back a lost son. He throws the ball back in the court of a woman’s accusers, telling them, “Let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone.” He’s the kind of God who dares to break bread with “all sorts and conditions of men and women,” who promised “living water” to a woman who’d had five husbands. He charged his friends, even those who had abandoned him to the religious and civil authorities, to “feed my sheep.” The God whom Jesus revealed to us, the God to whom Jesus entrusted the future of the church, is a God of lavish love, whose love for all people extends to us, and whose love we are impelled to share with others.
That church, which Jesus entrusted to his Father’s loving care, and for which Jesus continues to pray will grow and flourish. Make no mistake about that. We may not recognize the church that emerges from this current period of transition, any more than seventeenth century Anglicans would have recognized the church of 1960. And God willing we will be part of the birthing process of that new church. Tom Ehrich and other commentators strongly believe that growth is possible, even for the “frozen chosen.” We have a lot of work to do as partners with God in that process. We need to ask God for a clearer vision of what our parish is called to do. We need to commit our resources, our “souls and bodies,” to the task: we need to be willing to offer up to God our time, our talent, and our treasure. And we need to be willing to change how we do things. Perhaps we need to embrace different kinds of worship times and approaches. Perhaps there are new missions that will help us be more effective “fishers of people.”
Most important, we are called to join our prayers to Jesus’ prayers, to pray for our parish, our diocese, the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Communion, and ultimately the whole Body of Christ. We are called to trust in the Father’s continuing love for the church, fractured and fractious as we may currently be. A well-known preacher told of an experience he had when, as a young man, he went to become pastor of a church in Philadelphia. After his first sermon, an old gentleman said to him, "You're pretty young to be pastor of this church. But you preach the Gospel, and I'm going to help you all I can." The new preacher thought, "Here's a crank." But the man continued: "I'm going to pray for you that you may have the Holy Spirit's power upon you. Two others have covenanted to join with me in prayer for you." The preacher said, "I didn't feel so bad when I learned he was going to pray for me. The three became ten, the ten became twenty, the twenty became fifty, and the fifty became two hundred who met before every service to pray that the Holy Spirit might come upon me. I always went into my pulpit feeling that I would have the anointing in answer to the prayers of those who had faithfully prayed for me. It was a joy to preach! The result was that we received 1,100 people into our church in three years, 600 of whom were men. It was the fruit of the Holy spirit in answer to prayer!"
My friends, we at St. Peter’s are about to enter a new phase in our relationship together. We trust that by God’s grace we can grow and flourish again as a parish. We are certainly called to do all that we can humanly do, and we do have our work cut out for us. What is more important, we must continue to pray, and we must continue to pray especially for this parish. As we join our own prayers to Jesus’ prayer for the church, we rest in God’s lavish love, trusting in God’s goodness and knowing that the Father will empower us for the work we have been given to do.
Almighty God, your only Son was taken into heaven and in your presence prays for us. Receive us and our prayers for the church and for the world, and in the end bring everything into your glory; through Jesus Christ our risen Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Let All the Peoples Praise You
What would it be like to arrive alone at JFK airport in New York city with $200 in your pocket, having barely escaped with your life from war, rape, and murder in your homeland? So begins the remarkable story of Deogratias Niyizonkiza, a twenty-four year old third-year medical student from Burundi whose experiences are related by Tracy Kidder in his recent book Strength in what Remains. The year was 1994. Fleeing almost certain death as civil war between Hutus and Tutsis raged in Burundi, Deo managed to make his way to the U.S. using a commercial visa obtained by a friend. His $200 soon spent, he worked as a grocery store delivery boy and slept in a tent in Central Park before being discovered by a kindly older couple. With their help and with much effort, he managed to enroll in and graduate from Columbia University. However, before Deo could complete his medical education, he began to work for Partners in Health, the organization founded by Paul Farmer to provide healthcare to the poorest of the poor in Haiti. Inspired by the work in Haiti and hopeful that he could help his country heal from the aftermath of the terrible destruction, Deo vowed to found a clinic in his home village. With the help of Partners in Health and many generous donors, the clinic opened in 2007, shortly after Deo became an American citizen.
During his long ordeal in Burundi, on the streets of New York city, and while enduring the stress of being an undergraduate again in a foreign educational system, Deo, a Roman Catholic, was sustained by his deep conviction that God would eventually bring good out of all the misery he and his people had endured. Surely Deo’s conviction was founded, at least parrly on the assurances in our psalm today. For Psalm 67, as well as our readings from the Book of Acts and Revelation, remind us that, in the words of Daniel Clendinen, “God is not a territorial or parochial god.” God is also not a capricious God who plays favorites among the nations, caring for some and not for others. Rather, God’s salvation extends to all, and God “judges the people with equity.” God gives God’s blessing to all, and God’s love and care extend to the “ends of the earth.” Although the Jews were a minor and marginalized people within the grand scope of ancient near east politics, the psalm nevertheless reminds us that God’s vision and care take in the entire cosmos.
Our reading from the book of Revelation reflects a similar cosmic vision. Although in its details the heavenly Jerusalem, with its twelve gates, seems particularly Jewish, in fact it is a cosmopolitan city in which all nations are welcome: “the nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it…. People will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations.” More wonderfully, the leaves of the tree in the middle of the city, the Tree of Life, are for the “healing of nations.”
Our reading from the Book of Acts also reflects a vision of a God who cares for all. Last week in our reading from Acts we heard how Peter had the courage to preach to a Roman officer, a Gentile. In that bold action of Peter’s, the leaders of the earliest community of Jesus’ followers learned that, through Jesus, God had wrought salvation not only for the Jews, but for Gentiles as well, that God had welcomed all people into the Body of Christ. In today’s reading from Acts, we hear the story of how the early church took yet another step forward, from Judea into Europe. Impelled by the Holy Spirit through a vision of a man pleading for Paul to come to Macedonia, Paul crossed over from Asia Minor to Europe. Perhaps there were not the required ten males to organize a synagogue in the Roman city of Philippi, so Paul reached out to a group of women gathered by the river. The Spirit took hold of a wealthy woman from Thyatira, and so began the Christian community in Philippi, from whence Christian communities spread throughout Europe. Though the Christian community had come into being with a few disciples fearing for their lives after Jesus’ crucifixion, through Peter, Paul, Lydia, and many others, God’s love and care began to spread to “the ends of the earth.” Today, nearly one third of the world’s peoples are members of the Body of Christ, and Christians can be found in every country in the world.
What does this mean for us in Southern Ohio? To begin with, Christians are, as Clendinen tell us, “geographic, cultural, national, and ethnic egalitarians.” We acknowledge that God’s love extends beyond our parish, our county, our denomination, our nation, even our faith community. Bosnian Muslims, Orthodox Jews, African Pentecostals, Hindus, Episcopalians, and even atheists, can rely on God’s love and care. Nor do we put our country – or any country – at the geographic center of God’s world. Although love of one’s country is an honorable emotion, we do not put our loyalty to our nation above our loyalty to God, for we know that, as Paul reminded the Philippian Christians, “our citizenship is in heaven” – eventually in that heavenly Jerusalem depicted in Revelation! And we do not think that our own country has a special claim on God’s love, or that our own country is somehow more beloved of God than other countries. Rather, we know that all nations have a place in God’s heart, and that all nations will eventually be part of the glorious company of the redeemed.
What is more important, if we understand that God’s love extends to all nations, then we also know that we must care for people in other nations as much as we care for our own people. We must grieve the deaths of Iraqi civilians as much as we do those of American soldiers. We must mourn Chinese earthquake victims as much as we do victims of the floods in Tennessee. We must bemoan the pain and terror that the people of Burundi experienced as much as we grieve for those killed in the twin towers. If all of God’s people are precious in God’s sight, and if Jesus is our model, then all of God’s people must be precious in our sight as well.
What is most important, if we understand that God’s love extends to all nations, then we must also find concrete ways to reach out to other communities and nations. Of course, we have an obligation to care for those around us, the poor, the needy, the destitute, the victims of flood and fire that we can see. Of course, we are called to support food banks, diaper gifts, and shoe gift cards. But we also have an obligation to care for those whom we can’t see, those of other nations who are equally deserving of our love and concern. Certainly, we can’t care for the whole world, but we can care for at least one square inch of it. Can we adopt a school in Haiti, perhaps Lekol sen Trinite, where my daughter worked, or an orphanage in Honduras, perhaps El Hogar, where teams from this diocese have visited. Can we provide scholarships to nursing students in Liberia, as one parish in this diocese does? Can we support the work of Christian peacemakers? Can we provide mosquito nets to prevent malaria in Africa? Can we support the work of Partners in Health, International Child Care, or Doctors without Borders? In fact, look up Doctors without Borders on Facebook, and find out all the places in this world where they are at work!
We can also care for others through our purchasing power. Have you ever wondered about the working conditions of all those people in China, Mexico, Viet Nam, Jordan, and Romania, just to name a few, who make the clothes, electronics, and other goods we consume? Have you ever considered buying only fair trade coffee and chocolate, so that coffee and cocoa growers can earn a living wage? How about buying your Christmas and birthday gifts from Ten Thousand Villages or other similar organizations, to help support crafts people overseas?
In the early 1990s, Lynne Hybels, co-founder of Willow Creek Community Church in Illinois, visited refugee centers in Croatia . She heard the stories of women who had lost their homes, their husbands, their jobs, and their futures. Praying on the last day of her visit, she asked God, “Am I my sister’s keeper?” “Yes, yes, yes,” came the answer, “you are your sister’s keeper.” “God, who then is my sister?” She could sense the answer: they are all your sisters. On a recent trip to the Holy Land, she talked to women, Muslims , Jews, and Christians, Israelis and Palestinians, who are actively trying to better their lives and work for peace. Reflecting on this latest visit she reminds us that “I cannot possibly meet the needs of every member of my huge global family, but neither can I thoughtlessly dismiss their suffering. I have to pay attention. I have to care. And I have to pray, ‘God, what is mine to do?’
At the end of our service today, we will sing Isaac Watts’ grand old hymn, “Jesus shall reign.” I ask you to pay special attention to the fourth verse: “Blessings abound where e’er he reigns: the prisoners leap to lose their chains, the weary find eternal rest, and all who suffer want are blest.” My friends, may God enable us, as members of the Body of Christ, to share his love for all his children, from Americans to Zambians. May God help us to see his Spirit at work among all people, and may God enable us to be his partners in loosing his children’s chains and freeing his children from want.
____________________________________________
1. Kidder has told Farmer’s story in his Mountains beyond Mountains.
2. The quote and the inspiration for this sermon come from Daniel Clendinen’s essay this week on his site Journey with Jesus, at http://www.journeywithjesus.net.
3. Lynne Hybels, “This Changes Everything,” Sojourners, May, 2010.
During his long ordeal in Burundi, on the streets of New York city, and while enduring the stress of being an undergraduate again in a foreign educational system, Deo, a Roman Catholic, was sustained by his deep conviction that God would eventually bring good out of all the misery he and his people had endured. Surely Deo’s conviction was founded, at least parrly on the assurances in our psalm today. For Psalm 67, as well as our readings from the Book of Acts and Revelation, remind us that, in the words of Daniel Clendinen, “God is not a territorial or parochial god.” God is also not a capricious God who plays favorites among the nations, caring for some and not for others. Rather, God’s salvation extends to all, and God “judges the people with equity.” God gives God’s blessing to all, and God’s love and care extend to the “ends of the earth.” Although the Jews were a minor and marginalized people within the grand scope of ancient near east politics, the psalm nevertheless reminds us that God’s vision and care take in the entire cosmos.
Our reading from the book of Revelation reflects a similar cosmic vision. Although in its details the heavenly Jerusalem, with its twelve gates, seems particularly Jewish, in fact it is a cosmopolitan city in which all nations are welcome: “the nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it…. People will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations.” More wonderfully, the leaves of the tree in the middle of the city, the Tree of Life, are for the “healing of nations.”
Our reading from the Book of Acts also reflects a vision of a God who cares for all. Last week in our reading from Acts we heard how Peter had the courage to preach to a Roman officer, a Gentile. In that bold action of Peter’s, the leaders of the earliest community of Jesus’ followers learned that, through Jesus, God had wrought salvation not only for the Jews, but for Gentiles as well, that God had welcomed all people into the Body of Christ. In today’s reading from Acts, we hear the story of how the early church took yet another step forward, from Judea into Europe. Impelled by the Holy Spirit through a vision of a man pleading for Paul to come to Macedonia, Paul crossed over from Asia Minor to Europe. Perhaps there were not the required ten males to organize a synagogue in the Roman city of Philippi, so Paul reached out to a group of women gathered by the river. The Spirit took hold of a wealthy woman from Thyatira, and so began the Christian community in Philippi, from whence Christian communities spread throughout Europe. Though the Christian community had come into being with a few disciples fearing for their lives after Jesus’ crucifixion, through Peter, Paul, Lydia, and many others, God’s love and care began to spread to “the ends of the earth.” Today, nearly one third of the world’s peoples are members of the Body of Christ, and Christians can be found in every country in the world.
What does this mean for us in Southern Ohio? To begin with, Christians are, as Clendinen tell us, “geographic, cultural, national, and ethnic egalitarians.” We acknowledge that God’s love extends beyond our parish, our county, our denomination, our nation, even our faith community. Bosnian Muslims, Orthodox Jews, African Pentecostals, Hindus, Episcopalians, and even atheists, can rely on God’s love and care. Nor do we put our country – or any country – at the geographic center of God’s world. Although love of one’s country is an honorable emotion, we do not put our loyalty to our nation above our loyalty to God, for we know that, as Paul reminded the Philippian Christians, “our citizenship is in heaven” – eventually in that heavenly Jerusalem depicted in Revelation! And we do not think that our own country has a special claim on God’s love, or that our own country is somehow more beloved of God than other countries. Rather, we know that all nations have a place in God’s heart, and that all nations will eventually be part of the glorious company of the redeemed.
What is more important, if we understand that God’s love extends to all nations, then we also know that we must care for people in other nations as much as we care for our own people. We must grieve the deaths of Iraqi civilians as much as we do those of American soldiers. We must mourn Chinese earthquake victims as much as we do victims of the floods in Tennessee. We must bemoan the pain and terror that the people of Burundi experienced as much as we grieve for those killed in the twin towers. If all of God’s people are precious in God’s sight, and if Jesus is our model, then all of God’s people must be precious in our sight as well.
What is most important, if we understand that God’s love extends to all nations, then we must also find concrete ways to reach out to other communities and nations. Of course, we have an obligation to care for those around us, the poor, the needy, the destitute, the victims of flood and fire that we can see. Of course, we are called to support food banks, diaper gifts, and shoe gift cards. But we also have an obligation to care for those whom we can’t see, those of other nations who are equally deserving of our love and concern. Certainly, we can’t care for the whole world, but we can care for at least one square inch of it. Can we adopt a school in Haiti, perhaps Lekol sen Trinite, where my daughter worked, or an orphanage in Honduras, perhaps El Hogar, where teams from this diocese have visited. Can we provide scholarships to nursing students in Liberia, as one parish in this diocese does? Can we support the work of Christian peacemakers? Can we provide mosquito nets to prevent malaria in Africa? Can we support the work of Partners in Health, International Child Care, or Doctors without Borders? In fact, look up Doctors without Borders on Facebook, and find out all the places in this world where they are at work!
We can also care for others through our purchasing power. Have you ever wondered about the working conditions of all those people in China, Mexico, Viet Nam, Jordan, and Romania, just to name a few, who make the clothes, electronics, and other goods we consume? Have you ever considered buying only fair trade coffee and chocolate, so that coffee and cocoa growers can earn a living wage? How about buying your Christmas and birthday gifts from Ten Thousand Villages or other similar organizations, to help support crafts people overseas?
In the early 1990s, Lynne Hybels, co-founder of Willow Creek Community Church in Illinois, visited refugee centers in Croatia . She heard the stories of women who had lost their homes, their husbands, their jobs, and their futures. Praying on the last day of her visit, she asked God, “Am I my sister’s keeper?” “Yes, yes, yes,” came the answer, “you are your sister’s keeper.” “God, who then is my sister?” She could sense the answer: they are all your sisters. On a recent trip to the Holy Land, she talked to women, Muslims , Jews, and Christians, Israelis and Palestinians, who are actively trying to better their lives and work for peace. Reflecting on this latest visit she reminds us that “I cannot possibly meet the needs of every member of my huge global family, but neither can I thoughtlessly dismiss their suffering. I have to pay attention. I have to care. And I have to pray, ‘God, what is mine to do?’
At the end of our service today, we will sing Isaac Watts’ grand old hymn, “Jesus shall reign.” I ask you to pay special attention to the fourth verse: “Blessings abound where e’er he reigns: the prisoners leap to lose their chains, the weary find eternal rest, and all who suffer want are blest.” My friends, may God enable us, as members of the Body of Christ, to share his love for all his children, from Americans to Zambians. May God help us to see his Spirit at work among all people, and may God enable us to be his partners in loosing his children’s chains and freeing his children from want.
____________________________________________
1. Kidder has told Farmer’s story in his Mountains beyond Mountains.
2. The quote and the inspiration for this sermon come from Daniel Clendinen’s essay this week on his site Journey with Jesus, at http://www.journeywithjesus.net.
3. Lynne Hybels, “This Changes Everything,” Sojourners, May, 2010.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Even the Gentiles
Why did those “circumcised believers,” those men in Jerusalem, criticize Peter? What were they so upset about? Why did Peter have to explain to them what he had done in his meeting with Cornelius and Cornelius’s household? In chapter 10 of the Book of Acts we learn that Peter had gone to Cornelius at God’s urging. While Peter was preaching to Cornelius’s household, the Holy Spirit had fallen on them all, and Peter felt compelled to baptize all of them. Then he stayed with them. And he ate with them. This, actually, was what so upset the Jerusalem men. They asked Peter, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” Dear God, what was it about eating?
Remember that Jesus and the first Christians were all Jews. For observant Jews, following God’s law, as it was outlined in Scripture, was the way to remain faithful to God and to preserve the identity and boundaries of the Jewish community. Actually, God’s law, as it is laid out in Scripture, is very explicit about what faithful Jews can and cannot eat. Leviticus 11, for example, gives us a lot of detail about clean and unclean foods. God is quite clear: “These are the animals which you may eat among all the animals that are on the earth: Among the animals, whatever divides the hoof, having cloven hooves and chewing the cud -- that you may eat.” The text then goes on to forbid the eating of camels, pigs, shellfish, a number of birds, including eagles, ravens, and owls, flying insects, locusts, lizards, and animals that died a natural death. In Deuteronomy 14 God tells the people that they may eat oxen, sheep, goats, deer, gazelles, roe deer, wild goats, mountain goats, antelopes, and mountain sheep. The passage ends by warning people that, "You shall not eat anything that dies of itself; you may give it to the alien who is within your gates, that he may eat it, or you may sell it to a foreigner; for you are a holy people to the LORD your God.” By eating with Cornelius’s household, then, Peter risked serious defilement as an observant Jew, since he would have been obligated to eat whatever was set before him, even if the meat were something that God had forbidden, or, worse yet, if it had come from a sacrifice at a pagan temple.
Of course, we don’t have such scruples about food and about eating with people. Or do we? Vegetarians or Vegans, i.e., vegetarians who don’t eat even eggs and dairy, certainly do. They routinely question restaurant servers. What’s in this dish? What was it cooked in? Some of us are worried about food-miles, i.e., how far our food has to travel to get to us. We look at labels to see where the food was grown. Then we ask, “Do I really want to eat that cantaloupe or those grapes, knowing that they came all the way from Honduras, or, worse yet, Chile?” Or maybe the food you’re serving me is loaded with pesticides, fertilizers, and growth hormones rather than being organic. And don’t we worry about who sits down next to us? Do we happily share a meal with the homeless man who clearly hasn’t bathed in days? Do I head for the people who look most like me, if I’m at a community dinner, or the people I know if I’m at, say, Diocesan Convention? Or perhaps, even worse yet, perhaps our home teams are football rivals. You had a pre-game dinner with them?
“Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” Because an angel had appeared to Cornelius directing him to send for Peter, and God had directed Peter to go to him, even though Cornelius was a Gentile. What is more important, God had declared that all foods were now lawful for Peter to eat, that no longer were any foods to be considered unclean: “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” While Peter was preaching to Cornelius’s household, the totally unexpected happened: the Holy Spirit came upon the Gentiles gathered there. Then Peter understood the meaning of his vision. He ordered that Cornelius’s household be baptized, for he realized that, “If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?" Who indeed! And when the Jerusalem men heard this, they too understood that God was doing something new, that God was welcoming into their community people whom they had formerly disdained, from whom they had kept apart. Then they praised God, saying, "Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life." At that point, the early church turned a corner. Peter and the other leaders in Jerusalem realized that disciples of the risen Christ would no longer only be Jews, but that God’s saving love was available to all people, that there were no people who were “profane” or “impure” to God, but that all were welcome as members of Christ’s Body. Although there were still a few more arguments in Jerusalem, which we hear about in chapter 15 of Acts, from then on, distinctions of ethnicity, gender, color, class, or nationality were no longer important in the Christian community. As the church began to grow and spread as a truly counter-cultural force in the hierarchical, patriarchal Mediterranean society around it, Christians realized joyfully that all were loved as equals in God’s eyes, and that through the power of the Holy Spirit they were creating a whole new community bound together by love rather than by social, familial, or ethnic distinctions.
My sisters and brothers, God gave Peter a vision of a new community, of a church that welcomed all, regardless of their ethnicity or social status. I wonder what our vision for the church is. As disciples of the risen Christ, as people who see ourselves guided by the Holy Spirit that he gave us, do we look forward to a church that welcomes all? We are reminded by Walter Brueggemann that, like Peter, we too are called to “move in generous love,” to reach out across all the boundaries that divide us: citizens and immigrants, Jews and Muslims, gay and straight, rich and poor. Is that our vision for this parish? Do we want to be more than a church for the wealthy? Do we want to be more than a church of those who happen to walk through our doors? Do we want to be a more inclusive parish, one that practices, truly practices, radical hospitality? What is our vision for this parish? What might God’s vision for this parish be, and how might we discover it? We know that we will never again be the church of 1964, but what will we be? What could we be with the help of the Holy Spirit? Could we be a parish that welcomes and cares for “all sorts and conditions of men?” With our particular gifts, how might we best generously reach out to others? Might St. Peter’s become ever more a parish committed to prayer, a center perhaps for more contemplative and intentional prayer? Might our good works then flow from our devotion to prayer? Might we reach out particularly to those in need of our gifts of prayer? Might Grace be an energetic partner in the work of the Meigs Cooperative Parish? Might this building be more than a gathering place for Sunday worshippers and become a center for mission all the rest of the week? Might this community be able to reach out in welcome rather than driving people away through hostility, indifference, and fear?
Henry Wardlaw, Archbishop of St. Andrew's in Scotland at the beginning of the fifteenth century, was a prelate known for his extravagant and generous welcome of all. The masters of his household were rightly afraid that he would exhaust all his funds in entertaining the great numbers who resorted to his palace. So they asked him to make out a list of the people to whom they should extend hospitality. "Well," said the archbishop to his secretary, "take a pen and begin. First put down Fife and Angus"—two large counties, containing several hundred thousand of people. His servants hearing this, retired abashed; "for," says the historian, "they said he would have no man refused that came to his house."
Are we ready to extend such radical welcome to all? Are we ready to let God’s Spirit lead us into being a more inclusive community? Are we ready to make the changes in our life as a parish that being more inclusive might require? Are we ready to put all our resources, of time, talent, and treasure, in the service of such a vision? Are we ready to hear God’s call to us and joyfully serve and welcome all those to whom God leads us?
Lord Jesus, keep working on us. Help us keep our eyes on the vision that you have for us!
Remember that Jesus and the first Christians were all Jews. For observant Jews, following God’s law, as it was outlined in Scripture, was the way to remain faithful to God and to preserve the identity and boundaries of the Jewish community. Actually, God’s law, as it is laid out in Scripture, is very explicit about what faithful Jews can and cannot eat. Leviticus 11, for example, gives us a lot of detail about clean and unclean foods. God is quite clear: “These are the animals which you may eat among all the animals that are on the earth: Among the animals, whatever divides the hoof, having cloven hooves and chewing the cud -- that you may eat.” The text then goes on to forbid the eating of camels, pigs, shellfish, a number of birds, including eagles, ravens, and owls, flying insects, locusts, lizards, and animals that died a natural death. In Deuteronomy 14 God tells the people that they may eat oxen, sheep, goats, deer, gazelles, roe deer, wild goats, mountain goats, antelopes, and mountain sheep. The passage ends by warning people that, "You shall not eat anything that dies of itself; you may give it to the alien who is within your gates, that he may eat it, or you may sell it to a foreigner; for you are a holy people to the LORD your God.” By eating with Cornelius’s household, then, Peter risked serious defilement as an observant Jew, since he would have been obligated to eat whatever was set before him, even if the meat were something that God had forbidden, or, worse yet, if it had come from a sacrifice at a pagan temple.
Of course, we don’t have such scruples about food and about eating with people. Or do we? Vegetarians or Vegans, i.e., vegetarians who don’t eat even eggs and dairy, certainly do. They routinely question restaurant servers. What’s in this dish? What was it cooked in? Some of us are worried about food-miles, i.e., how far our food has to travel to get to us. We look at labels to see where the food was grown. Then we ask, “Do I really want to eat that cantaloupe or those grapes, knowing that they came all the way from Honduras, or, worse yet, Chile?” Or maybe the food you’re serving me is loaded with pesticides, fertilizers, and growth hormones rather than being organic. And don’t we worry about who sits down next to us? Do we happily share a meal with the homeless man who clearly hasn’t bathed in days? Do I head for the people who look most like me, if I’m at a community dinner, or the people I know if I’m at, say, Diocesan Convention? Or perhaps, even worse yet, perhaps our home teams are football rivals. You had a pre-game dinner with them?
“Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” Because an angel had appeared to Cornelius directing him to send for Peter, and God had directed Peter to go to him, even though Cornelius was a Gentile. What is more important, God had declared that all foods were now lawful for Peter to eat, that no longer were any foods to be considered unclean: “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” While Peter was preaching to Cornelius’s household, the totally unexpected happened: the Holy Spirit came upon the Gentiles gathered there. Then Peter understood the meaning of his vision. He ordered that Cornelius’s household be baptized, for he realized that, “If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?" Who indeed! And when the Jerusalem men heard this, they too understood that God was doing something new, that God was welcoming into their community people whom they had formerly disdained, from whom they had kept apart. Then they praised God, saying, "Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life." At that point, the early church turned a corner. Peter and the other leaders in Jerusalem realized that disciples of the risen Christ would no longer only be Jews, but that God’s saving love was available to all people, that there were no people who were “profane” or “impure” to God, but that all were welcome as members of Christ’s Body. Although there were still a few more arguments in Jerusalem, which we hear about in chapter 15 of Acts, from then on, distinctions of ethnicity, gender, color, class, or nationality were no longer important in the Christian community. As the church began to grow and spread as a truly counter-cultural force in the hierarchical, patriarchal Mediterranean society around it, Christians realized joyfully that all were loved as equals in God’s eyes, and that through the power of the Holy Spirit they were creating a whole new community bound together by love rather than by social, familial, or ethnic distinctions.
My sisters and brothers, God gave Peter a vision of a new community, of a church that welcomed all, regardless of their ethnicity or social status. I wonder what our vision for the church is. As disciples of the risen Christ, as people who see ourselves guided by the Holy Spirit that he gave us, do we look forward to a church that welcomes all? We are reminded by Walter Brueggemann that, like Peter, we too are called to “move in generous love,” to reach out across all the boundaries that divide us: citizens and immigrants, Jews and Muslims, gay and straight, rich and poor. Is that our vision for this parish? Do we want to be more than a church for the wealthy? Do we want to be more than a church of those who happen to walk through our doors? Do we want to be a more inclusive parish, one that practices, truly practices, radical hospitality? What is our vision for this parish? What might God’s vision for this parish be, and how might we discover it? We know that we will never again be the church of 1964, but what will we be? What could we be with the help of the Holy Spirit? Could we be a parish that welcomes and cares for “all sorts and conditions of men?” With our particular gifts, how might we best generously reach out to others? Might St. Peter’s become ever more a parish committed to prayer, a center perhaps for more contemplative and intentional prayer? Might our good works then flow from our devotion to prayer? Might we reach out particularly to those in need of our gifts of prayer? Might Grace be an energetic partner in the work of the Meigs Cooperative Parish? Might this building be more than a gathering place for Sunday worshippers and become a center for mission all the rest of the week? Might this community be able to reach out in welcome rather than driving people away through hostility, indifference, and fear?
Henry Wardlaw, Archbishop of St. Andrew's in Scotland at the beginning of the fifteenth century, was a prelate known for his extravagant and generous welcome of all. The masters of his household were rightly afraid that he would exhaust all his funds in entertaining the great numbers who resorted to his palace. So they asked him to make out a list of the people to whom they should extend hospitality. "Well," said the archbishop to his secretary, "take a pen and begin. First put down Fife and Angus"—two large counties, containing several hundred thousand of people. His servants hearing this, retired abashed; "for," says the historian, "they said he would have no man refused that came to his house."
Are we ready to extend such radical welcome to all? Are we ready to let God’s Spirit lead us into being a more inclusive community? Are we ready to make the changes in our life as a parish that being more inclusive might require? Are we ready to put all our resources, of time, talent, and treasure, in the service of such a vision? Are we ready to hear God’s call to us and joyfully serve and welcome all those to whom God leads us?
Lord Jesus, keep working on us. Help us keep our eyes on the vision that you have for us!
My Sheep Hear My Voice
“My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.” When was the last time you experienced real silence? Not recently, I’ll bet. It’s a noisy world out there. Many of us turn on our TVs and radios when we wake up and don’t turn them off until we go to bed. Programmed music accompanies every item that goes into our grocery carts. Advertisers shout at us as we pump our gasoline. Some restaurants are so noisy we can barely make conversation across the table. And then there is the self-inflicted noise from our cell phones and MP3 players. I confess that if it weren’t for my ipod, I probably wouldn’t make it here on Sunday mornings or be able to push myself out the door for my morning walk. It’s a noisy world out there! Is the voice of Jesus anywhere in all that din? Somehow, it’s hard to imagine him screaming our names at the top of his lungs trying to get our attention over all that noise. How will we hear him calling our names? Is it possible to find a quiet space in our lives so that we can hear Jesus’ voice? Not just on Sunday morning, but in the rest of our busy, noisy lives as well? Can we turn everything off and, like sheep, listen for the voice of the Good Shepherd, let him lead us beside the still waters, sit down with him, and truly listen to what he wants to tell us?
Today’s lessons invite us to see ourselves as sheep responding to the voice of a good shepherd. We know that over and over again Scripture uses this image of sheep and shepherd to describe our relationship with God. Psalm 23, in which we declare God to be our shepherd, is one of the most beloved in all the psalter. We sing in the Jubilate, one of the opening canticles in the service of Morning Prayer, “We are his people and the sheep of his pasture.” Kings are compared to shepherds, both good and bad. Jesus uses the parable of the lost sheep to suggest how dear each of is to God. Throughout the tenth chapter of John’s Gospel, which we hear every fourth Sunday of Easter, Jesus uses the image of the Good Shepherd to describe his relationship to the faithful.
Now I have a problem. I’m not sure I want to be described as a sheep. Isn’t there some other animal that better describes me spiritually? Sheep may be wooly and cute, but there’re also stupid, easily led, and influenced by a herd instinct, especially if one of them gets panicked. I, of course, am intelligent, capable of individual action, and above the influence of the “herd.”
What’s important here, what Psalm 23 is talking about, what Jesus is talking about in this Gospel passage is not sheep as such. Jesus is talking about relationship, specifically our relationship with God and other believers. Sheep are domesticated animals. They aren’t able to defend or protect themselves the way wild animals are. Sheep cannot make it on their own. They need the protection of the shepherd who has cared for them since birth. They also need the protection and support of the flock. Sheep who imagine that they are self-sufficient and strike out on their own easily get disoriented and lost. They must be brought back by the shepherd and rejoin the flock or, ultimately, they will die. So what is our relationship to God and to others? It is one of dependency, love, and trust, trust especially that, if we are joined to Jesus, and part of his flock, we will be cared for and safe. Through baptism we are already incorporated into Jesus’ resurrected life. We too can live life on a new plane, grounded in the Holy Spirit, and joined to Christ forever. As part of Jesus’ flock, as a community of those committed to him, we listen to his voice, obey his teachings, and do our best to follow him by doing the works that he did.
On the northeast coast of Italy in Ravenna, behind the famous church of San Vitale, lies an austere brick mausoleum built about the year 430 in honor of a Byzantine empress named Gallia Placida. If you go to Gallia Placida’s mausoleum you must stoop to go through the plain sunken doorway. However, once inside your eye is immediately drawn upward. The entire vault of the mausoleum is covered with astonishingly beautiful mosaics. Surrounding figures of the four evangelists, eight hundred mosaic stars in the night sky cover much of the vault. Cole Porter was said to have been so mesmerized by these stars, when he visited here in the 1920s, that he was moved to compose his famous song “Night and Day.” But what really catches the visitor’s eye here is the mosaic affixed over the entrance on the north side. Here we see Christ as the Good Shepherd. Although shepherds were despised working class men in the ancient world, this Good Shepherd is clearly a king. He has a large golden halo, wears a royal purple mantle over a golden tunic, and holds a tall cross. On either side of him are two groups of three sheep. Here’s the important part: the sheep peacefully gaze up at their Shepherd as he tenderly touches the nose of one of them.
So how do we hear the Good Shepherd’s voice? Our faith is not a set of intellectual propositions. For the sheep who belong to the Good Shepherd, faith is an experience, it is an experience of God’s deep and abiding care for us, all of us. The ground of our faith is an intimate relationship with the Good Shepherd and with the rest of the flock. How do we begin to hear the Good Shepherd’s voice in our lives? Can we let the resurrected one get close enough to us so that he can touch our faces as he did the sheep in the mosaic in Ravenna? If we are attentive in Sunday worship, we can sense his presence with us in the Eucharist, and we may fleetingly hear his voice. However, many of us don’t hear Jesus’ voice in worship. We may come late and miss the quiet time before worship begins. Often, there’s just too much noise, even here, with the prayers, the readings, the sermon, and the hymns. Worse yet, our eyes are focused on the printed page, and we read instead of listen.
My sisters and brothers, I’d like to suggest two ways in which we may begin hearing the Good Shepherd’s voice. The first is in silence. Find that time in your day, even if it’s only five minutes, when you turn off the TV, silence your cell phone, and put the ipod away. Let the Good Shepherd lead you to some quiet spot. Sit with him. Center down, as the Quakers say, find that quiet core of yourself. Acknowledge your dependence on him. Be grateful for his love and care for you. Pray. For some people, a verse of Scripture leads to prayer. For others, gazing at an icon is a stimulus for prayer. For others saying the rosary leads to deeper prayer. For others, simply concentrating on a single word quiets the mind and turns us Godward. Finally, just sit in silence and listen. Don’t think you have to work at your faith, as if it were another chore to be crossed off the to-do list. Just listen. His word for you will be there in the silence.
Often we also hear the Good Shepherd’s voice in the voices of others. As sheep, we are members of a flock, members of each other. Often the Good Shepherd cares for his flock through the actions of others, as we see Peter doing in our first lesson. Often, too, we can hear Jesus’ voice in the prayers, exhortations, testimonies, and confessions of others. We can hear Jesus’ voice when someone else proclaims the good news of God in Christ, when someone else tells us of their own faith journey and of how God has cared for them. We can hear Jesus’ voice when someone else brings us back into the community. We can hear Jesus’ voice when someone urges us to undertake mission, to follow Jesus’ example in caring for the rest of God’s children. We hear Jesus’ voice when someone else comforts us in grief and sorrow, dries our tears, and reassures us of God’s deep and abiding love. What is most important, others can hear Jesus’ voice in our voices. Speak the comforting word. Help other sheep to remember that they too are members of the Good Shepherd’s flock, and that the Good Shepherd has laid down his life for them. Find those large and small ways to practice compassion and sacrifice for the rest of the sheep. And pray for others.
In the words of a fifth-century prayer, let us pray,
O Lord Jesus Christ, Good Shepherd of the sheep,
who came to seek the lost, and to gather them into your fold,
have compassion on those who have wandered from you,
feed those who hunger,
cause the weary to lie in your pastures,
bind up those who are broken-hearted,
and strengthen those who are weak,
that we, relying on your care
and being comforted by your love,
may abide in your guidance to our lives’ end. Amen.
Today’s lessons invite us to see ourselves as sheep responding to the voice of a good shepherd. We know that over and over again Scripture uses this image of sheep and shepherd to describe our relationship with God. Psalm 23, in which we declare God to be our shepherd, is one of the most beloved in all the psalter. We sing in the Jubilate, one of the opening canticles in the service of Morning Prayer, “We are his people and the sheep of his pasture.” Kings are compared to shepherds, both good and bad. Jesus uses the parable of the lost sheep to suggest how dear each of is to God. Throughout the tenth chapter of John’s Gospel, which we hear every fourth Sunday of Easter, Jesus uses the image of the Good Shepherd to describe his relationship to the faithful.
Now I have a problem. I’m not sure I want to be described as a sheep. Isn’t there some other animal that better describes me spiritually? Sheep may be wooly and cute, but there’re also stupid, easily led, and influenced by a herd instinct, especially if one of them gets panicked. I, of course, am intelligent, capable of individual action, and above the influence of the “herd.”
What’s important here, what Psalm 23 is talking about, what Jesus is talking about in this Gospel passage is not sheep as such. Jesus is talking about relationship, specifically our relationship with God and other believers. Sheep are domesticated animals. They aren’t able to defend or protect themselves the way wild animals are. Sheep cannot make it on their own. They need the protection of the shepherd who has cared for them since birth. They also need the protection and support of the flock. Sheep who imagine that they are self-sufficient and strike out on their own easily get disoriented and lost. They must be brought back by the shepherd and rejoin the flock or, ultimately, they will die. So what is our relationship to God and to others? It is one of dependency, love, and trust, trust especially that, if we are joined to Jesus, and part of his flock, we will be cared for and safe. Through baptism we are already incorporated into Jesus’ resurrected life. We too can live life on a new plane, grounded in the Holy Spirit, and joined to Christ forever. As part of Jesus’ flock, as a community of those committed to him, we listen to his voice, obey his teachings, and do our best to follow him by doing the works that he did.
On the northeast coast of Italy in Ravenna, behind the famous church of San Vitale, lies an austere brick mausoleum built about the year 430 in honor of a Byzantine empress named Gallia Placida. If you go to Gallia Placida’s mausoleum you must stoop to go through the plain sunken doorway. However, once inside your eye is immediately drawn upward. The entire vault of the mausoleum is covered with astonishingly beautiful mosaics. Surrounding figures of the four evangelists, eight hundred mosaic stars in the night sky cover much of the vault. Cole Porter was said to have been so mesmerized by these stars, when he visited here in the 1920s, that he was moved to compose his famous song “Night and Day.” But what really catches the visitor’s eye here is the mosaic affixed over the entrance on the north side. Here we see Christ as the Good Shepherd. Although shepherds were despised working class men in the ancient world, this Good Shepherd is clearly a king. He has a large golden halo, wears a royal purple mantle over a golden tunic, and holds a tall cross. On either side of him are two groups of three sheep. Here’s the important part: the sheep peacefully gaze up at their Shepherd as he tenderly touches the nose of one of them.
So how do we hear the Good Shepherd’s voice? Our faith is not a set of intellectual propositions. For the sheep who belong to the Good Shepherd, faith is an experience, it is an experience of God’s deep and abiding care for us, all of us. The ground of our faith is an intimate relationship with the Good Shepherd and with the rest of the flock. How do we begin to hear the Good Shepherd’s voice in our lives? Can we let the resurrected one get close enough to us so that he can touch our faces as he did the sheep in the mosaic in Ravenna? If we are attentive in Sunday worship, we can sense his presence with us in the Eucharist, and we may fleetingly hear his voice. However, many of us don’t hear Jesus’ voice in worship. We may come late and miss the quiet time before worship begins. Often, there’s just too much noise, even here, with the prayers, the readings, the sermon, and the hymns. Worse yet, our eyes are focused on the printed page, and we read instead of listen.
My sisters and brothers, I’d like to suggest two ways in which we may begin hearing the Good Shepherd’s voice. The first is in silence. Find that time in your day, even if it’s only five minutes, when you turn off the TV, silence your cell phone, and put the ipod away. Let the Good Shepherd lead you to some quiet spot. Sit with him. Center down, as the Quakers say, find that quiet core of yourself. Acknowledge your dependence on him. Be grateful for his love and care for you. Pray. For some people, a verse of Scripture leads to prayer. For others, gazing at an icon is a stimulus for prayer. For others saying the rosary leads to deeper prayer. For others, simply concentrating on a single word quiets the mind and turns us Godward. Finally, just sit in silence and listen. Don’t think you have to work at your faith, as if it were another chore to be crossed off the to-do list. Just listen. His word for you will be there in the silence.
Often we also hear the Good Shepherd’s voice in the voices of others. As sheep, we are members of a flock, members of each other. Often the Good Shepherd cares for his flock through the actions of others, as we see Peter doing in our first lesson. Often, too, we can hear Jesus’ voice in the prayers, exhortations, testimonies, and confessions of others. We can hear Jesus’ voice when someone else proclaims the good news of God in Christ, when someone else tells us of their own faith journey and of how God has cared for them. We can hear Jesus’ voice when someone else brings us back into the community. We can hear Jesus’ voice when someone urges us to undertake mission, to follow Jesus’ example in caring for the rest of God’s children. We hear Jesus’ voice when someone else comforts us in grief and sorrow, dries our tears, and reassures us of God’s deep and abiding love. What is most important, others can hear Jesus’ voice in our voices. Speak the comforting word. Help other sheep to remember that they too are members of the Good Shepherd’s flock, and that the Good Shepherd has laid down his life for them. Find those large and small ways to practice compassion and sacrifice for the rest of the sheep. And pray for others.
In the words of a fifth-century prayer, let us pray,
O Lord Jesus Christ, Good Shepherd of the sheep,
who came to seek the lost, and to gather them into your fold,
have compassion on those who have wandered from you,
feed those who hunger,
cause the weary to lie in your pastures,
bind up those who are broken-hearted,
and strengthen those who are weak,
that we, relying on your care
and being comforted by your love,
may abide in your guidance to our lives’ end. Amen.
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