There’s an old story about a king who decided to create a special holiday to honor the greatest subject in his kingdom.1 When the day came, a large crowd gathered in the palace courtyard. The judges brought four finalists forward, from whom the king would choose the winner. The first person the judges presented was a wealthy philanthropist, who had generously given away much of his wealth to the poor and supported many humanitarian efforts. The second person was a celebrated physician, who had faithfully and conscientiously spent his life serving the sick. The third person was a distinguished judge, who was known for his wisdom, fairness, and brilliant decisions. To everyone’s surprise, the fourth person to come forward was an elderly woman. Her manner and dress were very humble. Was she really someone who would be honored as the greatest subject in the kingdom? What chance could she have had, compared with the others who had accomplished so much? Yet, there was something about her: she seemed to radiate love, understanding, and quiet confidence. The king was intrigued, yet also puzzled. He asked who she was. The answer came, “You see the philanthropist, the physician, and the judge? Well, she was their teacher!”
Those of you who were or are teachers know the importance of your work. If you’re fortunate, you occasionally got or get a glimpse of your impact on others – always, we hope, for good. And all of us should be able to remember the teachers who influenced us, the teachers who taught, encouraged, advised, and helped us.
The reason we know anything about Jesus is that he left us a teacher, the greatest Teacher there is. Throughout Easter tide we have been getting glimpses of the impact of the resurrection on the lives of Jesus’ first followers, and on our lives as his disciples. We have been pondering the question, “What does it mean to be disciples of the risen Christ?” Each week, the first lesson from the book of Acts has provided snapshots of the expansion of the first group of Jesus’ followers. Similarly, the reading from the Gospel according to John has reminded us of Jesus’ promises to his followers about what their lives would be like. It’s important to remember that John’s gospel was written in the late ‘80s or early ‘90s. Its audience was a community in conflict with both the Jewish religious leaders and the Roman civic leaders, a community that desperately needed reassurance that they had made the right choice in becoming followers of Jesus.
Today’s gospel lesson is a portion of Jesus’ last words to his friends at his last meal with them. Jesus knows that he is leaving them, and they probably do too. They are confused, upset, fearful, and full of questions. “Where are you going? “Show us the Father, they demand.” Today’s portion actually immediately follows a question posed by the other Judas: “Lord, how is it that you will reveal yourself to us, and not to the world?” Jesus doesn’t really answer the question. Instead, he tells his friends – and the audience of John’s gospel – what they really need to hear. Jesus makes a promise to them. He reassures them that they will not be left alone. They will not disappear as a community. They will not forever be weak, marginalized, and bereft of God’s presence with them.
Rather – and here’s the good news – Jesus assures his friends that after his death and resurrection, they will have a new way of experiencing his presence. Though he will no longer be physically present to his disciples, he will send them a Teacher. In Greek, the word is parakletos, “paraclete,” or Advocate, as our translation has it. The Greek word is a legal term meaning someone who is called to stand beside a person in a legal proceeding. But a better translation is “teacher,” since the paraclete is really called to teach, not to defend. Here Jesus can already see what his friends cannot as yet see. He promises his followers that the Teacher that will come to them will clarify everything that they don’t yet understand. The Teacher will remind them of everything that Jesus taught them. The Teacher will come to communities of the faithful to instruct and witness to them. The Teacher will give them all the resources they will need to continue as Jesus’ followers. Most important, the Teacher, the paraclete, the Holy Spirit will be Jesus’ ongoing presence with the community of disciples after the resurrection. When the faithful gather together in Jesus’ name, the Teacher will help them to experience the Holy One in their midst, will help them to know that they are connected to both the Father and Jesus.
In John’s gospel, the disciples received the Holy Spirit immediately after Easter, when Jesus came and breathed on them in the upper room on Easter even. In the synoptic gospels, the Holy Spirit came to the gathered disciples fifty days after Easter, at Pentecost. However, it happened, what is clear is that Jesus’ first followers did indeed receive the Holy Spirit, and that the first communities of Christians did indeed continue to be taught by the Spirit. The Holy Spirit helped Jesus’ first followers to spread the good news of Jesus’ death and resurrection. The Holy Spirit helped them discern how to incorporate gentiles into what was initially a community of faithful Jews. Even as the good news spread, as we’ve been hearing in our lessons from Acts, the Holy Spirit continued to instruct the new churches and enable communities of the faithful to see the world around them more clearly.
Much has changed in the church since Jesus first promised the gift of the Holy Spirit to his followers. Christianity became a favored religion in the late Roman Empire. The Eastern Church separated from the Western Church. The Western church splintered yet again during the Reformation. In 1620, as the community of Pilgrims was about to depart from Leiden for North America, John Robinson, their spiritual leader, told them in his farewell address, “I Charge you before God and his blessed angels that you follow me no further than you have seen me follow Christ. If God reveal anything to you by any other instrument of His, be as ready to receive it as you were to receive any truth from my ministry, for I am verily persuaded the Lord hath more truth and light yet to break forth from His holy word.” And so the Holy Spirit continues to this day to guide faithful Christian communities.
I believe that we are witnessing a time in which yet more truth and light are breaking forth from God’s holy word. The church is in yet another period of upheaval and transition. We have already witnessed the abolition of slavery and the breakdown of barriers based on ancestry, ethnicity, gender, and sexual preference. We are seeing liturgical change. I think that we will see institutional changes during this century, as the Holy Spirit shows faithful Christians new ways of gathering, organizing themselves, and reaching out to others. We must not resist change. We must not fear it. We must remain faithful to Jesus. We must continue to pray, study Scripture, serve those in need, and allow the Holy Spirit to teach us how to love. We must find ways both in the wider church and in this parish to make the changes in our church lives that the Holy Spirit is calling us to make. We must find new means, whether through social media, QR codes, Instagram, or media we cannot yet imagine, to communicate the good news. We must new times, places, and reasons for gathering together as Jesus’ followers. Above all, we must have faith that the Holy Spirit will continue to be in our midst and will continue to teach us all that we need to learn.
In a lovely sculpture, Vermont artist Jerry Geier gives us a wonderful picture of Jesus’ last meal with his friends. Unlike most renderings of this scene, Jesus and the disciples are dressed in modern clothes and are shown sitting around an ordinary dining table. Jesus’ back is towards us, so that we can focus on the faces of all his friends. Don’t they look like people you might meet at Foodland? They certainly don’t look as fearful in this sculpture as they seem to be in John’s gospel. Perhaps that is because they can already feel the changes that are coming. Notice the open window behind them. The curtains are already stirring, and a breeze is beginning to blow through that window. The promised Teacher will soon show up.
My friends, “Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” Have faith that the Holy Spirit will continue to teach us and lead us. We have Jesus’ promise.
1. Based Gregory L. Tolle, “The Great Teacher,” Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit, Series V, Cycle C (Lima, OH: CSS Publishing, 2006), 97-98.
Showing posts with label Sixth Sunday of Easter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sixth Sunday of Easter. Show all posts
Sunday, May 5, 2013
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Who's Missing?
“Oh my Lord,” said Peter, “it’s a second Pentecost! Didn’t God tell us through the prophet Joel, that God would ‘pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even on male and female slaves, in those days, I will pour out my spirit,’ God said. And it happened to us Jews in Jerusalem, as we waited there, just as Jesus had told us to, before he left us for good. We were able to speak in the languages of the other Jews who were gathered there in Jerusalem – and they understood us! And now it’s happened again!” Peter and the rest of the Jewish disciples had indeed experienced in Jerusalem an unprecedented and astounding outpouring of the Holy Spirit. And then, just as the Spirit had driven Jesus out into the wilderness, the Spirit drove Peter and his friends out into the squares and synagogues of Jerusalem, and then, even further out, into the synagogues of other towns. At last they came to Joppa, on the coast, where Peter preached about Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.
A little ways up the coast, in Caesarea Maritima, a Roman city, the centurion Cornelius was praying. A “righteous gentile,” Cornelius had a vision of an angel, who told him to send for a Jewish fisherman turned preacher named Peter. Meanwhile, Peter was having a vision of his own. He saw a great sheet come down from heaven, filled with animals that Jews were forbidden to eat. “Take and eat,” a voice told him. “No, Lord,” swore Peter, “I have never eaten anything unclean.” To Peter’s astonishment, the voice replied, “Don’t call anything profane that God has made clean.” Three times this happened, and then the whole sheet was drawn back to heaven. Still meditating on this astonishing vision, Peter heard Cornelius’s servants knocking on the door. They asked him to come with them to Cornelius’s house. Now Jews and Gentiles were forbidden by Jewish law to associate with each other. By even accompanying the servants of a Roman officer, Peter was risking ritual defilement and exclusion from his community. Nevertheless, encouraged by the Holy Spirit, Peter set off for the Roman city. When Peter heard Cornelius’s story, he finally understood the vision that he had been given. He said, “At last I see that God shows no partiality – rather that anyone of any nationality who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to God.” And he began to teach Cornelius and his household about the marvelous things that God had done in Christ.
Did Peter finish his sermon? No, as we discover in today’s reading, the last part of this wonderful story. The Holy Spirit had one more surprising trick up her sleeve. Before Peter could finish speaking, the Holy Spirit descended on all these Gentiles. It was astonishingly clear, even to these law-abiding Jewish disciples of Jesus, that the Spirit had come on the Gentiles as well. Out in the desert, the Ethiopian Eunuch, as we heard last week had asked Philip, “There’s water. Is there anything to keep me from being baptized?” In the same way, seeing the clear signs of the Holy Spirit among Cornelius and his family, Peter asked, “What can stop these people who have received the Holy Spirit, even as we have, from being baptized with water?” Not only were they baptized, but Peter and his friends actually stayed in the Gentile house forging bonds with these new believers.
It’s hard for us to appreciate what a frightening step baptizing and accepting these Gentiles as fellow followers of the Way was for Peter. The closest analogies we have in our own time perhaps are people who had the courage to leap over the rigid racial barriers of the pre-Civil Rights American South, the Hindu caste system, or South Africa under Apartheid. Inclusion of Gentiles in what was initially a Jewish movement was unprecedented in the ancient world. Unquestionably, the observant Jews among Jesus’ first followers were astounded that the Holy Spirit would command them to proclaim the good news to Gentiles. And we know from the rest of the Book of Acts that the earliest Christians continued to struggle with God’s command to include all ethnicities, genders, nationalities, and social classes in Jesus’ beloved community. Eventually, Paul, or perhaps one of his disciples, would write convincingly to the Christian community at Ephesus of the decision to reach out to Gentiles. “Christ is our peace,” he wrote, “who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of hostility that kept us apart. In his own flesh, Christ abolished the Law…. Christ came and ‘announced the Good News of peace to you who were far away, and to those who were near….’” (Eph.3:14,17). However, it was through Peter’s first tentative and reluctant encounter with Cornelius, through the driving force of the Holy Spirit, that God laid the foundation for what God is seeking to create through the church in every age: a community bound together through allegiance to Christ, in which all divisions are forever broken down.
As we look around at St. Peter’s, do we see such a community? In some respects, we are a diverse community. And yet, as I look around me, I wonder who is missing from our community. Who is unable to share their gifts with us? Are we, for example, able to accommodate someone in a wheelchair? We know that some of our people have difficulty hearing. What are we doing to include them in worship? Can we do more for those who have limited vision? Are we adequately serving families with infants? Are there Anglicans from other parts of the world who can teach us different ways of following Jesus? Might we do more for those who live next door or who meet downstairs? Whose gifts and contributions are we missing, and to whom might the Holy Spirit want to send us, if only we were paying attention?
Mark Pinsky tells the story of the residents of a group home for people with developmental disabilities in western Pennsylvania.1 In their first attempts to attend church, the residents had been asked not to return: they were too noisy, they were disruptive, and their physical or vocal limitations made members of the congregations they were visiting uncomfortable. Finally, Pastor Sue Montgomery of Nickleville Presbyterian Church agreed to work with the group home residents. Nickleville Presbyterian was a small congregation with a profound sense of hospitality and inclusion. Not only had the congregation supported a family that had not institutionalized a disabled child, they had learned how to minister to “all sorts and conditions” of people, to people with disabilities, to those who wrestled with questions of sexual identity, to those who had been in prison, and to those who struggled with addiction. Four people committed themselves to a ministry with the group home residents that the congregation called Training Towards Self Reliance.
Within two years the group home residents were active members of the congregation. They are now full participants in Sunday morning worship and members of the extended church family. They read the lections, play instruments or sing, assist with prayers, and receive offerings. Now the congregation is ministering to residents of other group homes, with on-site services and worship in church. Even staff members, who had never before attended church, have blossomed in their participation as they lead the group home residents in proper worship behavior. People with disabilities have even participated in raising funds for the town’s food pantry. Pastor Montgomery admits that including people with developmental disabilities into their parish life has not been easy. The congregation has had to make changes to accommodate the group home members. Regular members have had to overcome their fear, uncertainty and discomfort. They have had to learn tolerance, understanding, and acceptance. They have had to come to see the group home residents the way Jean Vanier came to see the residents of the L’Arche communities: as beloved children of God, who have their own gifts to give us, their own joys to teach us, and their own deep sense of God’s love to share with us.
“At last I see that God shows no partiality…. What can stop these people who have received the Holy Spirit, even as we have, from being baptized with water?” Who is missing at St. Peter’s? I invite you to take the slip of paper in your bulletin right now. There’s a pencil in every pew. I invite you right now to answer these questions: who is missing from St. Peter’s? Who would I like to invite here? Where would I be willing to go and help lead a worship service? Put your paper in the offering basin. Sign your name if you can. And give thanks to God, that God shows no partiality, that Christ has broken down the barriers that separate us, and that the Holy Spirit is with us still, sending us out to share the Good News with all our sisters and brothers.
1. “A Spirit of Hospitality,” Alban Weekly, April 23, 2012, accessed at http://www.alban.org/conversation.aspx?id=9913&utm_source=Alban+Weekly+2012+April+23+A+Spirit+of+Hospitality&utm_campaign=amazing+gifts+facebook&utm_medium=email on May 10, 2012. Adapted from Mark I. Pinsky, Amazing Gifts: Stories of Faith, Disability, and Inclusion (Alban Institute, 2012).
A little ways up the coast, in Caesarea Maritima, a Roman city, the centurion Cornelius was praying. A “righteous gentile,” Cornelius had a vision of an angel, who told him to send for a Jewish fisherman turned preacher named Peter. Meanwhile, Peter was having a vision of his own. He saw a great sheet come down from heaven, filled with animals that Jews were forbidden to eat. “Take and eat,” a voice told him. “No, Lord,” swore Peter, “I have never eaten anything unclean.” To Peter’s astonishment, the voice replied, “Don’t call anything profane that God has made clean.” Three times this happened, and then the whole sheet was drawn back to heaven. Still meditating on this astonishing vision, Peter heard Cornelius’s servants knocking on the door. They asked him to come with them to Cornelius’s house. Now Jews and Gentiles were forbidden by Jewish law to associate with each other. By even accompanying the servants of a Roman officer, Peter was risking ritual defilement and exclusion from his community. Nevertheless, encouraged by the Holy Spirit, Peter set off for the Roman city. When Peter heard Cornelius’s story, he finally understood the vision that he had been given. He said, “At last I see that God shows no partiality – rather that anyone of any nationality who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to God.” And he began to teach Cornelius and his household about the marvelous things that God had done in Christ.
Did Peter finish his sermon? No, as we discover in today’s reading, the last part of this wonderful story. The Holy Spirit had one more surprising trick up her sleeve. Before Peter could finish speaking, the Holy Spirit descended on all these Gentiles. It was astonishingly clear, even to these law-abiding Jewish disciples of Jesus, that the Spirit had come on the Gentiles as well. Out in the desert, the Ethiopian Eunuch, as we heard last week had asked Philip, “There’s water. Is there anything to keep me from being baptized?” In the same way, seeing the clear signs of the Holy Spirit among Cornelius and his family, Peter asked, “What can stop these people who have received the Holy Spirit, even as we have, from being baptized with water?” Not only were they baptized, but Peter and his friends actually stayed in the Gentile house forging bonds with these new believers.
It’s hard for us to appreciate what a frightening step baptizing and accepting these Gentiles as fellow followers of the Way was for Peter. The closest analogies we have in our own time perhaps are people who had the courage to leap over the rigid racial barriers of the pre-Civil Rights American South, the Hindu caste system, or South Africa under Apartheid. Inclusion of Gentiles in what was initially a Jewish movement was unprecedented in the ancient world. Unquestionably, the observant Jews among Jesus’ first followers were astounded that the Holy Spirit would command them to proclaim the good news to Gentiles. And we know from the rest of the Book of Acts that the earliest Christians continued to struggle with God’s command to include all ethnicities, genders, nationalities, and social classes in Jesus’ beloved community. Eventually, Paul, or perhaps one of his disciples, would write convincingly to the Christian community at Ephesus of the decision to reach out to Gentiles. “Christ is our peace,” he wrote, “who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of hostility that kept us apart. In his own flesh, Christ abolished the Law…. Christ came and ‘announced the Good News of peace to you who were far away, and to those who were near….’” (Eph.3:14,17). However, it was through Peter’s first tentative and reluctant encounter with Cornelius, through the driving force of the Holy Spirit, that God laid the foundation for what God is seeking to create through the church in every age: a community bound together through allegiance to Christ, in which all divisions are forever broken down.
As we look around at St. Peter’s, do we see such a community? In some respects, we are a diverse community. And yet, as I look around me, I wonder who is missing from our community. Who is unable to share their gifts with us? Are we, for example, able to accommodate someone in a wheelchair? We know that some of our people have difficulty hearing. What are we doing to include them in worship? Can we do more for those who have limited vision? Are we adequately serving families with infants? Are there Anglicans from other parts of the world who can teach us different ways of following Jesus? Might we do more for those who live next door or who meet downstairs? Whose gifts and contributions are we missing, and to whom might the Holy Spirit want to send us, if only we were paying attention?
Mark Pinsky tells the story of the residents of a group home for people with developmental disabilities in western Pennsylvania.1 In their first attempts to attend church, the residents had been asked not to return: they were too noisy, they were disruptive, and their physical or vocal limitations made members of the congregations they were visiting uncomfortable. Finally, Pastor Sue Montgomery of Nickleville Presbyterian Church agreed to work with the group home residents. Nickleville Presbyterian was a small congregation with a profound sense of hospitality and inclusion. Not only had the congregation supported a family that had not institutionalized a disabled child, they had learned how to minister to “all sorts and conditions” of people, to people with disabilities, to those who wrestled with questions of sexual identity, to those who had been in prison, and to those who struggled with addiction. Four people committed themselves to a ministry with the group home residents that the congregation called Training Towards Self Reliance.
Within two years the group home residents were active members of the congregation. They are now full participants in Sunday morning worship and members of the extended church family. They read the lections, play instruments or sing, assist with prayers, and receive offerings. Now the congregation is ministering to residents of other group homes, with on-site services and worship in church. Even staff members, who had never before attended church, have blossomed in their participation as they lead the group home residents in proper worship behavior. People with disabilities have even participated in raising funds for the town’s food pantry. Pastor Montgomery admits that including people with developmental disabilities into their parish life has not been easy. The congregation has had to make changes to accommodate the group home members. Regular members have had to overcome their fear, uncertainty and discomfort. They have had to learn tolerance, understanding, and acceptance. They have had to come to see the group home residents the way Jean Vanier came to see the residents of the L’Arche communities: as beloved children of God, who have their own gifts to give us, their own joys to teach us, and their own deep sense of God’s love to share with us.
“At last I see that God shows no partiality…. What can stop these people who have received the Holy Spirit, even as we have, from being baptized with water?” Who is missing at St. Peter’s? I invite you to take the slip of paper in your bulletin right now. There’s a pencil in every pew. I invite you right now to answer these questions: who is missing from St. Peter’s? Who would I like to invite here? Where would I be willing to go and help lead a worship service? Put your paper in the offering basin. Sign your name if you can. And give thanks to God, that God shows no partiality, that Christ has broken down the barriers that separate us, and that the Holy Spirit is with us still, sending us out to share the Good News with all our sisters and brothers.
1. “A Spirit of Hospitality,” Alban Weekly, April 23, 2012, accessed at http://www.alban.org/conversation.aspx?id=9913&utm_source=Alban+Weekly+2012+April+23+A+Spirit+of+Hospitality&utm_campaign=amazing+gifts+facebook&utm_medium=email on May 10, 2012. Adapted from Mark I. Pinsky, Amazing Gifts: Stories of Faith, Disability, and Inclusion (Alban Institute, 2012).
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.
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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.
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