SERMON PENTECOST SUNDAY – YEAR B “FIRED UP!” ACTS 2:1-21 / MAY 24, 2015

sermon

pentecost sunday – year b

“fired up!”

acts 2:1-21 / may 24, 2015

Let us pray:  May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to you, O God, our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.

You may have had occasion to listen to ‘tapestry’ on cbc radio one, Sunday afternoons.   This radio show features documentary and interview programming related to spirituality, faith, and religion.    The program’s host Mary Hynes, not too long ago, interviewed Sara Miles, about her unexpected-and inconvenient- conversion to Christianity when she entered a church on impulse one Sunday.   Miles was raised as an atheist and she was happily living an “enthusiastically secular life” as a restaurant cook and journalist, indifferent to religion at best.   As she says in the prologue to her book, “take this Bread,”  “I was certainly not interested in becoming a Christian....Or, as I thought of it rather less politely, a religious nut.”

But as she entered the doors of St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal church in San Francisco on a whim, she ate a piece of bread and took a sip of wine and found herself radically transformed.    At the age of 46, this was her first communion and it changed everything. 

And recall that John Wesley, the co-founder of Methodism, on this exact date  - may 24^th 1738, had an experience that changed his life when, at a service of worship, heard the speaker tell of the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ.   In his words, “ I felt my heart strangely warmed.”   

and I’ve shared with you how, in my own life, at a time when I was most cynical of organized religion and would have nothing to do with the church, I went to a service at a friend’s request, to hear my friend sing, and had that very same experience of a strange, powerful warming sensation in my chest – after which my life was dramatically changed.   

I share these stories with you because on this Pentecost Sunday we focus on this biblical story in acts in which God’s spirit – God’s presence with us – encounters ordinary human beings and wonderful and unexpected things begin to happen.  Pentecost is, in a sense, the birthday of the church; but it was an important Jewish festival before it became a Christian one.   It was one of three ‘pilgrimage’ festivals that were ideally spent in Jerusalem and it occurred fifty days after Passover – which was the commemoration of Israel’s liberation from Egypt.  It recalled, not only the giving of the covenant to Israel at Mt. Sinai, but also the creation of a new kind of community –

A radically different way of living after Egypt.  And the early Christians incorporated these themes into their understanding of Pentecost as well.  For instance, the late, great biblical scholar Marcus Borg said, “the central affirmation of Pentecost is that the spirit promised by Jesus is now present among his followers and in the world.   The spirit is the spirit of God, the holy spirit, the spirit of Christ.” 

Borg concludes, “The claim is foundational to the new testament and early Christianity.”

Of course, most Christian people are familiar with the story of Pentecost that we find in acts, chapter two, written by Luke, where the symbols of wind and fire represent God’s presence in powerful and dramatic ways to the disciples of Jesus, who engage a diverse group of spiritual pilgrims – who speak a variety of different languages from various parts of the roman empire and who have made their way to Jerusalem to celebrate the festival of Pentecost.    These same pilgrims are enabled by the arrival of the lively, creative, unpredictable and uncontrollable spirit to comprehend a universally understood language.  It’s a reversal of the story of the tower of Babel that we find in genesis, where the narrator says, “God confused the language of all the earth.” 

So Luke is saying in his story that Pentecost is the beginning of the reunification of humanity – the creation of a new kind of community – which became the church.  And a once timid, frightened, and discouraged group of Jesus’ followers became forceful, confident, and unified advocates for their experience of the risen Christ, and a new faith movement – and community – was born.   This spirit of God works in and for the world as history moves toward the future fullness of god’s good purposes for the world.   So whenever we see signs of the coming age – in works of love, peace, and justice – we know God’s spirit is at work. 

But, of course, we also know the church has not always lived up to this high calling as recipients of the spirit for the good of the church community and the wider world.   In the engaging book, “living the questions: the wisdom of progressive Christianity” we read:  “in many faith traditions, it is tradition itself that is worshipped, held up as the whole purpose of the religious enterprise.   Be it infatuation with ‘smells and bells’ or resistance to inclusive language, many faithful people have confused defence of their understanding of right practice and right thinking with what they call faith.   

They insulate themselves from the unpredictable, demanding, transforming nature of the spirit with a fierce, pious, unbending commitment to the church and its traditions.

They practice what Richard Rohr has called a ‘cosmetic piety’ intended to look good on the surface, but lacking any real depth or complexity.  Defence of the changeless nature of their revealed truth becomes a virtue to be aspired to, regardless of how lifeless and rote the practice itself becomes.”

Pentecost, as Peter tells us in the book of acts, is a fulfillment of the prophecy of Joel, ‘in the last days, God said, I will pour out my spirit upon all people.  

Your sons and your daughters will prophesy, your young people will see visions, and your old people will dream dreams.....”    There have been times here at Augustine where that has happened – for individuals within the congregation – and collectively as a community of faith.       The fire of the spirit blew among you, fired you up, to become mighty prophets declaring that this community of faith would be an affirming congregation where people of all sexual orientations and gender identification would not only be welcome but would be brothers and sisters in Christ for and with one another.   

The fire of the spirit blew among you, fired you up, as those actively, compassionately caring for the homeless and the impoverished as you established and grew Oak Table community ministry.    

The fire of the spirit blew among you, fired you up, many times and in many ways throughout the history of this congregation.   and once again, the fire of the spirit blows among you, firing you up, as your young people see visions, and your old people dream dreams and all of you receive the power of the spirit to lead you to consider a building project on part of the church property that will give you new life and open up new possibilities for mission with and for your neighbours.    

Work at thinking of the Holy Spirit, not so much as a source of supernatural phenomena, and ecstatic experiences, and more as the energy of love, God’s love, among Christ’s people.    The holy spirit is the fire of God that warms our cold hearts toward each other and toward all of humanity, all of creation.   Within our depths as people of faith the Holy Spirit is the fire that stands over against the ice of our small-heartedness, and selfishness and deadness.  Within our depths the fire burns, and our greatest sin is that we try to quench it.

I spoke earlier of the Pentecost experience of Sara Miles.   How did her encounter with the spirit change her life?   Well, she started a food pantry and gave away literally tons of fruit and vegetables and cereal around that same table where she first received communion.   She then organized new pantries all over the city to provide hundreds of hungry families with free groceries each week.   The Holy Spirit, described in scripture by the symbols of unpredictable, uncontrollable wind and fire transformed Sara Miles’ life – and her community.   When the spirit is active and present, it’s not just about ‘me’, but about, ‘we.’  

It’s about the creation of a new kind of inclusive, welcoming community based on love.    And for sure it’s not often easy. Sara Miles discovered this as she trudged in the rain through bleak housing projects, sat on the curb wiping the runny nose of a psychotic man, struggled with her atheist family, and doubting friends.   The spirit brings change.  Some of it is welcome, some not, but always directed to the neighbour in need.   Christianity is not so much about things we should or shouldn’t do, or about just being nice.   it’s revelling in the beauty of creation, about taking part in the wonderment of it all by living, loving, and being. 

It’s about embracing the pain and the suffering of the world and transforming it into new life. 

It’s about harnessing the creative spirit that is so much a part of what it means to be truly human. 

One final story: about a confirmation class of three young persons.   In one session, the teacher was instructing them about the festivals and seasons of the Christian year, and when they came to the discussion of Pentecost, he asked if they knew what Pentecost was. 

Since none of them did, he proceeded to inform them that  Pentecost was when the church was gathered together and the Holy Spirit came like tongues of fire upon their heads.   Then he told how the disciples began to speak in all the languages of the world.   Two of the youth took this information in stride, but the third looked astonished, her eyes wide.  Finally, she said,

“Oh my, we must have been absent that Sunday.”  

The beauty of that moment was not that she misunderstood Pentecost, but that she understood the church.  In her mind, there was the possibility that the event of Pentecost could  have happened, as it could happen, as it does happen, even in our, Sunday service.  May it be so.  Amen.

Major Sources:

“Driveway Moments,” by The Rev. Dr. Scott Kenefake in http://day1.org/6617-driveway_moments 2015.

“The Sermon: An Approach,” by Dr. Robert S. Crilley in Preaching:  Word and Witness, Vol. 00:4 (Year B), pp. 140.  Editors:  Paul Scott Wilson and John M. Rottman.  Liturgical Publications, Inc.

New Berlin, WI.  2000.

“Fire and Ice,” by C. David Matthews in Pulpit Digest, May/June 1996, p.48.  Editor: David Albert Farmer.

Logos Productions Inc.  Inver Grove Heights, MN.

Pride Sunday

Musica Secreta

SERMON FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER – YEAR B “PETER, POLITICS, AND PROCLAMATION” ACTS 4:5-11

sermon

fourth sunday of easter – year b

“Peter, politics, and proclamation”

acts 4:5-11

Let us pray:  May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to you, O God, our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.

Within the liturgical year, it remains the Easter season.  And whatever else Easter is, let me just say it is certainly political.   

And what is politics but the exercise of power?  Politics is about power – who has it and for what purpose?   Easter is very political.  Just consider today’s reading from acts.     The events depicted there took place just after the first Christian Pentecost – after those first believers experienced the powerful presence of the Holy Spirit.   Peter and John were walking at the temple when a lame beggar asked them for help.  Peter took the beggar by the hand and said,  “I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give you; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk.”  To the astonishment of witnesses, the man was instantly healed.  A crowd gathered, wondering how such a miracle was possible, and peter saw an opportunity to proclaim the gospel.  

This upset the religious leaders and they had Peter and John arrested.   Why?  Not because of the healing of the lame person, but because they anticipated the answer to their question, “by what power, or in whose name, have you done this?”     the name Jesus was a common one enough in that time and place, but the particular ‘Jesus’ to which they referred, was a name and a power that was a threat to their power, their security.  Jesus was the one that they and the roman elite had crucified, the one some said was the ‘messiah’ and the one some declared had risen from the dead.   And here were these two uneducated, unsophisticated, men speaking up for Jesus, standing up to the powerful leaders and having their say.

How does that happen?   A power had been unleashed.   Jesus is not only resurrected.  He has also raised up a people who challenge business as usual.   Easter was not just something that happened to Jesus.  It also happened to these lowly men, Peter and John.   Look at them healing, preaching.   They now have the power to do what Jesus himself did – healing, proclaiming, showing forth the power of God in the world.

Christianity is always clashing religion and politics.   Jesus is very ‘political.’   To the credit of the rulers of this world, they at least had the good sense to look at Jesus and see that, in him, they were in big trouble.  Matthew says that when Jesus was born, the moment King Herod heard about it, he called together his political advisors and “was frightened, and all Jerusalem  with him.”    Herod had been in office long enough to know the threat to his rule when he saw one.  Herod knew that, in this baby at Bethlehem, everything his kingdom was built upon was in mortal peril.   So Herod responded in the way rulers often respond:  violence.  He ordered the massacre of all the baby boys in the town.    Every Sunday in the prayer of Jesus we say, “your kingdom come,” indicating that we are in a power struggle with the kingdoms of the world over who is sovereign over it. 

To be part of Jesus’ kingdom is to acknowledge who is in charge, whose will ultimately counts in this world.  There may be some faiths that  detach the individual believer from concern about earthly matters, who strive to rise above outward, visible concerns like swords and shields, wine and bread, politics and power.  Christianity is not one of those religions.    Bishop Desmond Tutu once quipped, “I am puzzled about which bible people are reading when they suggest that religion and politics don’t mix.”  

As C.S. Lewis once noted, Jesus spoke and acted in such a way that one either had to follow him or else decide that he was crazy.  

There was no middle ground in his kingdom.  You either had to move toward it, risk letting go and being caught up in his project, or else you had to move on, like the rich young ruler, realizing that you wanted to retain citizenship in the kingdoms of the world.   In our reading from acts, Peter and John have moved toward Jesus’ kingdom.  Their healing of the lame man was a sign that a new power was loose in the world.   As Christians, to us has been given the grace to know that we live between the times, having seen the fullness of God in Jesus Christ, having witnessed in Easter, the great triumph of God over the powers of evil.  Yet, we also live with the knowledge that all the world is not fulfilled as God’s world.  That tension, stretched as we are between what is ours now in Christ and that which is yet promised, is our role as God’s people.

There are two miracles depicted in our story from acts – the healing of the lame man, but also the bold witness of these lowly, powerless, uncredentialed, uneducated men who stood up to the authorities to witness to the power of God. 

And I wonder sometimes if Peter and John’s courageous speech to the authorities is any less miraculous for us, as the church.   The church’s speech in our pluralistic setting is increasingly muted and indistinct.   

Yes, we are guaranteed freedom of speech, but that “freedom” works out to be only operable, it seems, in acceptable times and places: Sunday mornings within a self-identified arena of worship, but not on Monday mornings in the workplace or classroom.   I read of an elementary school banning biblical characters in a ‘hero’ essay project after a child in second grade wrote about Jesus as her hero.   

We have become reticent to speak the name of Jesus.   Many Christians have lost the capacity to speak at all because they have become so respectful of public orthodoxy, so intent on maintaining our respectability.  The voices of our cultured despisers ring loudly, “by what power, by what authority do you say these things?”  We shrink back and speak only within the privacy of our own homes and houses of worship.   If we speak publicly, we had better be backed up by the credentials of the academy; by the support of experts or the successful; or by our good works, our track record of making an impact in our community.   Although it is our vocation as followers of Christ to announce good news, we are often silenced by deference to the authorities of our day cowed not so much by fear of arrest and death – as was the case for Peter and John – but for fear of embarrassment or social unacceptability, or out of respect for the sensibilities of those who are not Christian.  

But the story today from acts says something different.   The world knows that the dead stay dead, and the powerful get their way by punishing the lowly, and the wealthy consume at the expense of the poor.   But the act of Peter’s speaking and the content of his words testify to the same irrepressible reality:  the once muted church speaks because the dead don’t stay dead.   The authorities may have pronounced death on Jesus, but God has overruled their words by raising him from the dead.   Far more than a one-off anomaly, Jesus is the beginning of resurrection – the beginning of the Easter revolution that ends the settled order based on death.    The dead don’t stay dead, so the rule of power and wealth has come to an end.   New creation is at hand.  By what power does the once-silent Peter speak?   By the power of the resurrection and God’s gift of speech to the church, Peter and John say, “we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard.”

So, what can we learn from the early church about actually speaking our faith?    We need to lay aside our embarrassment, our discomfort about what some would accuse us of being – exclusive and disrespectful of non-Christians.   The message of acceptance, of new life, of hope in and through Jesus Christ is one that needs to be heard in the midst of all the other messages out there.   We don’t have to speak in such a way that we rule out those other messages in an arrogant way. 

Notice that even as Peter is speaking boldly to his interrogators, he rather politely says they are the ones to judge whether he should obey God or them.  

We can speak our faith, listening respectfully to others, while holding to our conviction that there is something unique about Jesus Christ.   When we do so, then perhaps we too will be unable not to speak.

SERMON THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER – YEAR B “WE WILL BE LIKE HIM” 1 JOHN 3:1-7 / APRIL 19, 2015

sermon

third sunday of easter – year b

“we will be like him”

1 john 3:1-7 / april 19, 2015

Let us pray:  May the words of my mouth and the mediations of all of our hearts be acceptable to you, O God, our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.

Twenty-one years ago this month, a campaign of vicious genocidal slaughter began in Rwanda.  In just three months, 850,000 Rwandans were killed.   Theologian and ethicist David Gushee asked how such brutality could have occurred in “the most Christianized country in Africa.”  Churches, seminaries, schools and benevolent organizations were scattered all over the country.  Ninety percent of Rwandans claimed to be Christians. 

“And yet,” Gushee writes, “all of that Christianity did not prevent genocide, a genocide church officials did little to resist, in which a large number of Christians participated”.   Pondering the failure of the church and Christians to prevent Rwandan genocide, Gushee also reminds us that Germany was a pervasively Christian nation, yet the vast majority of German Christians were loyal to – or at least silent in the face of – Adolph Hitler and Nazism.   Christians were complicit in the holocaust. 

Gushee could likewise have noted that white South African Christians were the architects of apartheid, that most American slaveholders were Christians, and that, during the crusades, Christian soldiers, marching behind the banner of the cross, killed thousands of Muslims and Jews.    And, of course, we can examine our own complicity as a denomination in the colonization of indigenous peoples – and in particular the establishment of residential schools as part of the government plan to take the “Indian out of the child.”

Who knows how much damage has been done by Christians who have failed to live by the ways of Jesus?  Priests abusing children committed to their care; ministers committing adultery with congregants; church officials embezzling church funds; angry demonstrators waving placards that blaspheme a God of love by claiming that God hates.    And what of the damage we do to our own hearts and minds when we are driven by greed more than humility, by competition more than mutuality, by selfishness more than service?

Reflecting on Rwanda, but his words apply more broadly, David Gushee said, “the presence of churches in a country guarantees nothing.   the self-identification of people with the Christian faith guarantees nothing. 

All of the clerical garb and regalia, all of the structures of religious accountability, all of the Christian vocabulary and books, all of the schools and seminaries and parish houses and bible studies, all of the religious titles and educational degrees  -- they guarantee nothing.”

And we have to ask, why is that?

Well, not everyone who claims to be a Christian has faithfully carried out Jesus’ command that “we love our neighbours as ourselves” and has not understood the lesson of the story of the Good Samaritan:  everyone is my neighbour.

And Christian people are influenced, not just by Jesus Christ, but by social, economic and political systems and by assumptions, ideas, loyalties and feelings that are at odds with the gospel.    In other words, it cannot be assumed that Christians are actually following Jesus.   and yet, I would argue, that it is urgent, for the sake of the church, and of the whole world, that we become people who are unswervingly committed to the will and way of Jesus – people who commit their lives to being more like him, agents of reconciliation and understanding, of healing and hope, of love and mercy.  God wants to make us like Jesus.   That is the clear message of our text from the first letter of john:

“When Christ is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.”   God intends to work in us, and on us until we finally reflect the spirit and character of Jesus.  

In her autobiography, Gertrude stein described an exchange she had with Pablo Picasso.   Even though he had painted a portrait of her, he did not immediately recognize her.  She wrote:  “I murmured to Picasso that I liked the portrait of Gertrude Stein.   Yes, he said, somebody said that she does not look like it, but that doesn’t make any difference, she will.”    You and I are to grow into the image of Jesus; and even though there are days when we do not seem to be very much like him, we will be one day.   In the end, as Carroll Simcox beautifully put it, “you and I shall be our real, complete selves for the first time ever.   We think of ourselves now as human beings.  We really aren’t that – not yet.  We are becoming human beings.....if you are living in Christ, believing in him, and trying  to follow him as the master of your life, you are by his grace, becoming ever more and more like him.”  

Now, to say that god is in the process of making us like Jesus Christ does not mean that god is cloning us into exact replicas of Jesus of Nazareth. 

In fact, a wonderful and gracious paradox at the heart of the gospel is that the more we become like Jesus, the more we become our truest selves.    Don Wardlaw once said, “to be yoked to Christ is to be a soul companion with the authentic self god intends for us to be.”   As we discover deeper dimensions of Christ-likeness, we uncover more and more of our honest-to-God selves.

Jesus is the pattern and the power, the model and the source, of authentic human life.   We are meant to have what he has:

A radical and liberating faith in god;

A child-like trust in the grace of god;

A trembling wonder before the mystery of life;

A durable hope that, because we are in god’s hands, death and sorrow and pain and tears are not the end, but joy and wholeness and laughter are;

an astonishing confidence that we and the world are headed, not toward midnight, but toward sunrise; and

an undimmed awareness that at the heart of all things is unconditional and compassionate love.

How can we become as human as Jesus?   Genuine transformation is not a self-help exercise or a do-it-yourself project.   It is God’s work.   Transformation happens as God convinces us that we are loved – that, like Jesus, we are God’s beloved children.  

The writer of first John could not contain his wonder at that truth:  “see what love God has given us, that we should be called children of God, and that is what we are.”    The words God spoke to Jesus at his baptism are words God speaks also to us:  “you are my beloved child.  With you I am well pleased.”  We are invited to experience a relationship with God that embraces and transcends our fondest experiences of both father and mother.  God’s love for us is tender and strong, reassuring and challenging, nurturing and empowering.  God’s arms of welcome and affirmation are always open to us.  We are God’s children.  We are loved.  

That deep down assurance that we are loved empowers us to join Jesus in his compassion for our broken planet, his passion for peace, his hunger and thirst for justice, his welcoming embrace of the excluded and his tender mercy toward sinners.    Preacher Charles Spurgeon put it this way:   “practical godliness is the soul of godliness; that it is not talking religion, but walking religion which proves one to be sincere; it is not having a religious tongue, but a religious heart; it is not a religious mouth, but a religious foot.”

and the writer of first john makes it clear that being religious in this way, being children of God and followers of Christ means the world will not know us or understand us.  

If we let the love of god make us into children of God; if we become more and more like Christ, then we really should expect that many people will have trouble understanding our values and our strange sense of identity.   In a culture of individualism, we belong to a community, the body of Christ.  In an age that seeks security through violence, we seek solidarity, forgiveness, and peace.  In a society that finds personal identity through social networking, we find our true name in baptism and in following Christ.   We are odd, we are odd --- and we smooth over our oddities at our peril.   When we feel right at home in the world, we should wonder whether we have traded the joy of divine love for the comfort of social acceptance.   The source of our oddness is the love of god that makes us into God’s children.  Knowing that we are loved by such a love, confessing it, and consenting to it, we agree to be made different, to be more and more like Christ.

Beloved children of God, we are to remember those whom the rest of the world forgets, keep company with the fallen and downtrodden, work to turn strangers into friends, and labour for reconciliation among enemies.    The writer of first john declares, “beloved, we are God’s children now, what we will be has not yet been revealed.  What we do know is this:  when Christ is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.

And, beloved, what the world will be has not yet been revealed either.  But when it is, it will, at last, be as God always intended; a place of unmarred beauty, unbroken peace, unquenchable joy and unending love.    May we be among those, who by God’s power and in partnership with God,  make  it so.     Amen.

Major Sources:

“We Will Be Like Jesus” in http://day1.org/988-we_will_be_like_Jesus by The Rev. Dr. Guy Sayles.

April 30, 2006.

“Exposition: 1 John 3:1-10” by Charles Spurgeon in http://www.spurgeon.org/sermons/0062.htm

2001 - Phillip R. Johnson.

“Theological Perspective” by Ronald Cole-Turner in Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 2, 

pp. 418-422.  David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors.  Westminster John Knox Press.

Louisville, Kentucky.  2008.

Church Sign

SERMON – APRIL 5, 2015 EASTER SUNDAY – YEAR B ISAIAH 25:6-9 / JOHN 20:1-18

sermon – april 5, 2015

easter sunday – year b

isaiah 25:6-9 / JOhn 20:1-18

Let us pray:  May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to you, O God, our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.

Let me begin with a quote I read recently:    “Seeing is not believing.  Our senses can deceive us.”   Although it sounds like something a preacher might say, it is, actually, a quote from an astrophysicist from  an episode of the TV series “Cosmos:  A Spacetime odyssey.”     He goes on: “the cosmos...is stranger than we ever could have imagined.   Light, time, space, gravity conspire to create realities which lie beyond human experience.”  

He then proceeds to reflect on the incredible discoveries of what the night sky has been telling us that until recently we could not hear, let alone comprehend.  ‘mit’ physics Professor Max Tegmark,

not too long ago, wrote a piece in the New York times in which he reported on what he called “the bombshell announcement of the discovery of cosmology’s ‘holy grail’:  the telltale signature of ripples in the very fabric of space from our cosmic origins.     What these discoveries do, he tells us, “is teach us humans that we need to think big because we are the masters of underestimation.”   I like that.  

Our gathering on this Easter day in and of itself is evidence of a ripple in the very fabric of reality.  

The ripple is less about our origins than about our destiny. It all began early on the first day of the week.  Some of Jesus’ disciples discover an empty tomb.    

And soon after is heard the cry “Christ is risen!”   

A man dies a gruesome death, gruesome even by first century standards.   But the fact is, that was a story all too common to become a turning point in the history of western civilization.   It was not enough to reset the calendar of time, even though in that moment, at the time, this one man’s crucifixion surely loomed large.   However, if left to stand on its own, over time this one man’s death would have been stitched into the fabric of human history as one more predictable, tragic end to a noble life in an evil time.     There are too many of those to even count in the last century alone.    Who can blame his closest followers early in the first century for resisting reports that he had risen?   For all kinds of good reasons, such news was beyond their comprehension.  They were still reeling from the horror and terror of crucifixion.   They were rattled, afraid, grief-stricken, demoralized, devastated – undone.

In the months leading up to this day they had refused to accept his talk of crucifixion. 

If they thought he did not know what he was talking about when he talked of dying, they would surely have completely tuned out any talk of resurrection.    He had tried to tell them – but they could not hear it.  

They could not comprehend  it.  It was too big.  It was too good to be true.  

Interesting that we don’t have a saying, “it’s too bad to be true.”  Apparently, we need less convincing when it comes to what is bad.   We seem naturally to underestimate the power of the good.   There is this tension throughout the bible between the everyday realities in peoples’ lives  -- and the future realities that God promises and which, if we have eyes to see, do make incursions into the present in a variety of ways.   

The ripple effect of God’s good intentions and good promises are felt -  yesterday, today, and tomorrow.   This tension between everyday, mundane realities and the realities promised by God is well articulated in Isaiah, chapter 25.   Earlier in the chapter Isaiah speaks of the fear of the strong and ruthless, but refuge for the poor and needy; of the ruined city; yet, of the mountain laden with good things; later in the chapter the judgement of destruction against the people of Moab is juxtaposed with the image of this feast enjoyed by everyone around the world.  

There is this tension between the difficult circumstances people experience in life  -- and the goodness of life to be had in relationship with God and  in holding onto the promise of  God to transform  cursing to blessing;  hunger to feasting;  destroying to rebuilding; death to life.    

In Luke’s gospel we are told that when Jesus’ followers first heard the news, “it seemed to them an idle tale.”  Pick your translation:  empty talk, a silly story,

A foolish yarn, utter nonsense, sheer humbug.   So they ran to see for themselves.  They did find an empty tomb.  And the existence of an empty tomb raises questions -- questions  about where the body is.  

The empty tomb is evidence more of the desecration of the dead than the resurrection of the dead.   An empty tomb does not settle the issue.  An empty tomb raises concerns, but not the dead.    Many of you here know what it’s like to live in the wake of death.  You know it firsthand.  It’s engulfiing.  We feel it in our bones. 

Death ripples through time and rips through our lives – it tears us apart.  We know it well, all too well.   Then, as now, talk of resurrection sounds too good to be true.  Too big.  

This account from John that Keith read for us, like the other gospel accounts, were written at least 40 years after the events described took place.  

common to all these accounts is that no one saw it coming.  They were blindsided by the resurrection.  

You would have thought that 40 years after the events, the leadership of the early church would have ever so slightly shaped the stories to boost their authority and legitimacy – especially if the original accounts were  fabricated in the first  place.    I can imagine  Peter, James and John, for instance, going over the final edits of the accounts and proposing a rewrite like this:  “yes, we were there on the morning of the third day, waiting for the word we were sure was coming, because he told us it would be so.  And sure enough, the glorious news came: ‘he is risen!’  and we, his closest trusted and loyal companions, met  with him in Galilee as planned.  And well, the rest is history!”

But,  no. The story is unambiguous on this point: 

They were all overwhelmed with death – confused, perplexed and deathly afraid.   These accounts ring true, not because of resurrection, but because they reflect what we know beyond a shadow of a doubt to be true about death.   It makes perfect sense that resurrection would be, on the face of it, nonsense – that it would not dawn easily.   It makes sense that it would be remembered as utterly inconceivable, unbelievable.  As too big.  As too good to be true.

The text that was read from first Corinthians was written by the apostle Paul a mere twenty or so years after the time of Jesus.  It is the earliest written record of the resurrection we have in the New Testament. 

By that time, we read, it was regarded as “most important” in relation to the message about Jesus: 

That he died, was buried and was raised on the third day, and that he appeared to Peter, then the twelve apostles and, as well, to five hundred others.   And, Paul says, in his epistle,  that most of these witnesses were still alive.  By that time, resurrection had become the explanation for their whole existence.   By that time,

the resurrection of Jesus had become the foundational truth – central to the Christian faith, a truth that vindicated Christ – affirming his ‘messiahship;  giving legitimacy and authority as one who taught,

 and prophesied, and lived in the name and the way of God; a truth that meant God was with Christ in a unique and special way; a truth that assures us we can follow him as our saviour, as our teacher, as our priest, our king, our lord and any other score of titles that are real for us because of this truth of resurrection.    

By then, a mere twenty years after the events recounted in our gospel story today, the resurrection of Jesus had become a cornerstone of the Christian message – the good news, as they put it.  The good news about Jesus Christ, about God about humanity, about life. 

The fabric of death that enshrouded all of humanity had been ripped open, and there was  light  -- undying light.     It was the sign and seal of God’s  ancient promises;

A glimpse into the realities of a new world in the making where good overcomes evil; joy displaces sorrow;

Hope pushes aside despair; and life, new life takes the place of death. 

By then the early Christians had learned to think big.  

In Jesus, God had conspired to create a reality that until then had been beyond human experience and comprehension.  There was something deeper than death.  There was a love stronger than death.  

the evidence of this ripple in the fabric of time – the evidence of resurrection – lies not so much in these accounts, whether from the gospel writers or from Paul.  The evidence of the ripple of resurrection lies here with us, some two thousand years beyond its origin.  We are gathered to hear again that good news,

To remember and encourage one another to think big – for we are now, as they were then, ‘masters of underestimation.”  

Easter is not so much about believing in God as it is about trusting in God and God’s promises.  And how we look at the future may be very different if we don’t have that trust.  

And how we look at the future has the capacity to  profoundly define our present behaviour.   Does the creator of this ever-expanding universe ultimately care about her creatures?   Is history moving in some inexorable way toward a hopeful future?   Or are we riders upon a doomed planet, moving toward some black hole in meaningless space?  Is the cosmos friendly?  

Is our existence upon this earth an expression of vanity and futile striving after the wind?  Is God reliable in fulfilling his promises?    The bible is, in many ways, a story of that tension between every day experience and the reality pointed to by the resurrection, a story about hope amidst hopeless circumstances which the resurrection we celebrate today underscores.     

And so, the ripple effect of resurrection, impacts our present lives, our daily living.  For there are ‘little resurrections’, wherever the gospel is preached.  persons who have dwelt in darkness who believe in the promise of God’s victory over death will move from despair to hope.   More than that, we are those, like the first followers of Christ, who are called to be active in ‘resurrection ways’, turning the world upside down. 

We are empowered by the resurrection of Christ to touch a broken world with healing hope, transforming love, and abundant life.  Christ was raised from the grave in order to bring power for the living of our days. 

So that we can go forth from the tomb of our resignation and face the future unafraid, for God keeps promise with us.  Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!   Alleluia.  Amen.  

Major Resources:

“Easter Evidence,” by David J. Wood in http://www.faithandleadership.com/david-j-wood-easter-evidence.

May, 2014.

“Commentary on Isaiah 25:1-9” by James K. Mead in http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=163.

“God, the Promise Keeper,” by George Thompson in Pulpit Digest, March/April 1998, pp. 63-70.

Editor:  David Albert Farmer.  Logos Productions Inc.  Inver Grove Heights MN. 

Holy Week, 2015

Thursday, April 2, 6:30 p.m.:  Maundy Thursday service

Friday, April 3, 10:30 a.m.: Good Friday service

Sunday, April 4, 10:30 a.m.: Easter Sunday

SERMON FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT – YEAR B “A CURIOUS PARADOX” JOHN 12:20-33 / MARCH 22, 2015

sermon

fifth sunday of lent – year b

“a curious paradox”

john 12:20-33 / march 22, 2015

Let us pray:  May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to you, O God, our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.

“Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”    One of my favourite Christian writers, Frederick Buechner, offers his thoughts on this passage of scripture which I’d like to share with you

 “....doing the work you’re best at doing and like to do best, hearing great music, having great fun, seeing something very beautiful, weeping at somebody else’s tragedy – all these experiences are related to the experience of salvation because in all of them two things happen:  firstly, you lose yourself, and secondly, you find that you are more fully yourself than usual.   

A closer analogy is the experience of love.  When you love somebody, it is no longer yourself you is the centre of you own universe.  It is the one you love who is.   You forget yourself.   You deny yourself. 

You give of yourself so that by all the rules of arithmetical logic there should be less of yourself than there was to start with. 

Only by a curious paradox there is more.   You feel that at last you really are yourself.   

The experience of salvation involves the same paradox.   In Matthew’s gospel Jesus put it this way:  “Those who lose their life for my sale will find it.”    You give up your old self – seeking self for somebody you love and thereby become yourself at last.  ‘You must die with Christ so that you can rise with him’, Paul says.   You do not love God so that, tit of tat, God will then save you.  To love God is to be saved......you do not love God and live for God so you will go to heaven.    Whichever side of the grave you happen to be talking about, to love God and live for God is heaven,  is eternal life. ...  ‘we love,’  John says, ‘because God first loved us.’  Who knows how the awareness of God’s love first hits people.  Every person has his or her own tale to tell, including persons who wouldn’t believe in God if you paid them.   Some moment happens in your life that you say “yes” to right up to the roots of your hair, that makes it worth having been born just to have happen  --laughing with somebody until the tears run down your cheeks,  waking up to the first snow,  being in bed with somebody you love.”

Buechner concludes, “Whether you thank God for such a moment or thank your lucky stars, it is a moment that is trying to open up your whole life. 

If you turn your back on such a moment and hurry along to business as usual, it may lose you the ball game.  

If you throw your arms around such a moment and hug it like crazy, it may save your soul.”   

Jesus’ saying about loving our life and thereby losing it, about hating our life in this world and thereby gaining eternal life, indicates that there is one way we lose ourselves which is destructive   - when we adhere to wordly values vis a vis God’s values; and there is another way we lose ourselves which, ironically, gives us true and meaningful and full life, which is the life  that is in right relationship to God.   

The fact of the matter is that it’s not always a pleasant thing to lose oneself for the sake of conforming to God’s will, God’s way and thus to be saved; that is to be fully and truly who we are meant to be.    

Some of you may recall that old black-and-white movie, On the waterfront, starring a young Marlon Brando. This film classic explores union corruption and the struggle for integrity within human life and relationships.   An early scene depicts a murder in the street in front of a cathedral.  The victim’s sister rushes into the street and kneel’s by his lifeless body. 

A priest representing us religious folk emerges from the church. 

He looks fearfully about, rushes to the young woman, and pleads with her to flee with him to saftey in the church.  She turns angrily to him and with emotion-laden voice says, “God does not hide behind cathedral walls.”     God calls us to places and situations that may, like in the scene from on the waterfront, put us at risk for the sake of the other – a kind of ‘hating self’ so as to be true to the way and the will of God, a way of losing self for God’s good purposes, so we might be even more than we normally would be.

Some Greeks came earnestly seeking Jesus  - the one who had caused such a commotion in Jerusalem.   They wanted to see and hear and to know this one who spoke of the kingdom of God and raised Lazarus from death. 

They wanted to be a part of that kingdom of life.   

And they got their wish.   They saw Jesus.   He didn’t perform any miracles for them.   He invited them, as he does us, to follow him even though the path might lead through suffering and death.   Those who want to see Jesus today, what do they want to see? – Crowns without crosses, discipleship without sacrifice, love without hate, service without cost or pain?   

Jesus was prepared to suffer and die in service to God and humanity, and lose himself this way rather than fleeing and hiding,

Thereby saving himself only to lose his real and authentic self.      Jesus’ crucifixion, as John’s gospel declares,  judges “the world” and drives out the “ruler of the world.”   The world (kosmos) here is not synonomous with God’s creation, but is rather the world that exists in estrangement from God and is organized in opposition to God’s purposes.  The ‘world’ is a superhuman reality, concretely embodied in structures and institutions.  This ‘world’ aggressively shapes human life and seeks to hold human beings captive to its ways.   Kosmos is probably best translated as “the system.”   And this system is driven by a spirit or force (“the ruler of the world”), whose ways are domination, violence, and death.   Indeed, in this scripture text, the crucifixion is interpreted as an exorcism,

in which ‘the system’ is judged and its driving force  (its ruler) is ‘cast out’  by means of the cross.  

We live within a system that consumes and consumes even though we know such consumption is not giving us life, and we know it is killing others in sweatshops throughout the system.   We live in a system shaped by hierarchies of winners and losers.  And the spirit that drives such a system creates the structures and institutions that perpetuate oppression and injustice.   Another aspect of the system that is particularly prevalent in our contemporary context is violence.  

The ‘myth of redemptive violence’, as Walter Wink describes it, is the primary myth of the system.   According to this myth, the way to bring order out of chaos is through violently defeating “the other.’ 

And the way to deal with threats from enemies is by violently eliminating them  -- as the system seeks to do to Jesus.   This myth plays itself out everywhere in our culture.  We see it in the old, almost archetypal, Popeye cartoons in which Popeye restores order by eating his spinach and beating up Bluto.  We see it in video games and movies that train our children in this myth from their earliest days.   More seriously, we see it in acts of terrorism and in nations’ response to terrorism.  

Many of us have trouble even imagining alternatives to this myth  -- a grim signal of our captivity to it.  Throughout his journey to the cross, Jesus enacts his freedom from this myth, refusing to respond in the system’s own violent terms.   On the cross Jesus publicly and dramatically judges the system by exposing it for what it is – not the divine regent of the world, but an opponent of God’s purposes; not the way of life, but the way of death.   And by exposing the system in this way, Jesus drives out the force behind the system; for once we have seen the system for what it is, we begin to be set free from its captivating ways.  

We are set free to die to a life shaped by the system, in order to live fully and freely in the way of Christ.

Martin Luther King jr.’s  non-violent campaigns illustrate Jesus’ work.  When the white powers-that-be turned the hoses and dogs on the marchers – and the images splashed across television – the reality of white racism was graphically and publicly exposed for all to see.  And King knew exactly what he was doing:  “let them get their dogs,” he shouted, “and let them get the hose, and we will leave them standing before their God and the world spattered with the blood and reeking with the stench of their Negro brothers.”    It is necessary; he continued “to bring these issues to the surface, to bring them out into the open where everybody can see them.”   And King was to some degree successful.  Once exposed, the spirit of racism began to lose some of its power over many people.

According to John, Jesus’ death and resurrection is a judgement against the imperial powers and ultimately – and paradoxically – a victory over them.  It has been observed that the language of elevation and glorification for Jesus is reminiscent of roman imperial propaganda.   Indeed, the whole discourse in John about Jesus’ elevation and glorification may be seen as an ironic enthronement in which Jesus by his death on the cross offers the ultimate challenge to roman authority.  

John alerts us to the seductive power of the world.   But there can be no compromise.  Jesus is king.  The emperor is not.   As we walk the final days of lent through holy week, this truth both sustains and challenges us as we contemplate Jesus’ death and resurrection.  May we not lose ourselves in the ‘madness’ of worldly goals and ambitions; rather, may we lose ourselves in our love of God and our following of Jesus Christ so that we might be more fully alive, more real, filled with the abundant and eternal life God yearns for us to have.   Thanks and praise be to God. Amen.

Major Resources:

“Weekly Sermon Illustration:Salvation” by Frederick Buechner in http://frederickbuechner.com/content/weekly-sermon-illustration-salvation

“The Sermon: An Approach” by Raymond Bailey in Word & Witness, Vol. 97:2 (Year B), p. 80.

Editor:  Paul Scott Wilson.  Liturgical Publications Inc.  New Berlin, WI.  1997.

“Homiletical Perspective” by Charles L. Campbell in Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 2,

pp. 140-145.   Editors:  David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor.  Westminster John Knox Press.

Louisville, Kentucky.  2008.