“Red, wide, and blew”
Pentecost C
Romans 8:14-17 / Acts 2:1-21 / John 14:8-17, 25-27
19 May 2013
The day of Pentecost has come and we are all together in this place … here we are, 50 days after Easter, that first and highest festival of the Christian Church, because without resurrection we would be once, always and forever DEAD … so Easter – Resurrection for Jesus, and his promise of eternal life for us in the future, and rich, full abundant life for us now … Easter is our “big day.”
Now, here, on Pentecost, this second festival of the Christian Church, we are here, gathered together to hear about, to mark the giving (and receiving) of the Holy Spirit, God’s Spirit, Jesus’ Spirit, to, upon the 12 apostles and, through them, God’s creation of the Church.
Yes – it is the second festival of the Christian Church … right after Easter, long before Christmas and Epiphany and all the others were publicly and corporately marked … Pentecost has been celebrated by Jesus-followers for 2000 years. Before that, it had been – and continues to be – a Jewish festival, the feast of Weeks, literally, a week of weeks, 50 days following Passover. Jews today call it Shavuot – the first fruits festival, the marking of the first harvest of wheat in the Holy Land after the Israelites had come there from slavery in Egypt – and Shavuot this year ran from sundown on Tuesday to sundown on Thursday.
But Lutherans … many Lutherans have been a little slow to warm up to the fire of Pentecost … getting a little oogie when someone starts to talk about the Holy Spirit, perhaps sliding down in the seats, thinking that someone’s going to come out and start speaking in tongues or something. (A well-ordered demonstration, with all the Scandinavian languages, now, is OK … but please stop there, thanks.)
Well, people of God called Nativity, I’ve never known you to get too oogie about anything, so we’re not going to curtail this Spirit-celebration today … because what this day is all about, is NOT just a one –time “Birthday of the Church” – no, it is the continual unleashing of God’s Spirit upon all the earth, all the peoples, all of God’s beloved, precious creation.
And what we learn from our three texts for today, is that that Spirit-unleashing can, will take many different forms, in and through God’s people.
But we will always be able to distinguish God’s Spirit at work through one constant mark.
Paul puts that forward in his letter to the Roman church.
For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ – if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.
God’s Spirit-sign is the sign of the Cross. Strength through suffering … Jesus’ suffering, and death on the Cross … his suffering brings us life. And as Jesus’ life, death and resurrection is marked with the Sign of the Cross, so too are ours to be, marked and sealed with the Cross of Christ, upon our heads and on our hearts, forever.
A true story titled “Young Men and Fire” – a book written by Norman MacLean, he who also wrote “A River Runs Through It” – that story is burned into my memory as a illustration / remembrance of what Paul is saying here in Romans.
“Young Men and Fire” is a story of some Montana smokejumpers, Forest Service firefighters who some 60+ years ago parachuted into Mann Gulch in NW Montana – the Gates of the Mountains area near Helena – to put out what they thought was a routine lightning strike fire.
However, this fire turned into a “blow up” and became, until recently, the most deadly forest fire for those fighting it, in American history.
MacLean’s story follows in painstaking detail what happened over the course of an hour and a half that hot August afternoon in 1949. After landing from the jump and securing their supplies, the smokejumpers set out to survey the fire to try and get a line around it.
But the day was no ordinary day and the fire, no ordinary fire. The air temperature was 97 degrees and the wind was so turbulent that one smokejumper got sick on the plane, didn’t jump and on landing in Missoula, quit the jumpers altogether.
MacLean relates how they never really got the fire line started, because the fire jumped from the heavily wooded ridge to the east, onto the more grassy upslope where the jumpers had landed. The foreman, Wag Dodge, advised his crew to start running uphill to escape the fire.
But there was no escaping it. The blow-up burned toward them so fast that it consumed 3,000 acres in 10 minutes’ time. Flames went into the air 10 stories high, and the temperature reached close to a thousand degrees.
Realizing he wouldn’t be able to outrun the fire, Dodge made a split second decision … he lit a small fire in the grass ahead of him and advised his crew to jump into the burned grass and cover themselves to survive.
But none did; they scoffed at him, “To hell with that, I’m getting out of here” Dodge later reported hearing one of the men say as they ran past him. Two who were already well out ahead did manage to outrun the flames and make it to the other side of the ridge. But eleven of the remaining thirteen died immediately from suffocation … the fire was so intense, it consumed all the oxygen out ahead of it. Two survived the blow up but died the next day in hospital from severe burns. Wag Dodge survived unharmed, by lighting his own fire and jumping into it. He said that the blowup fire swept around and over him so fiercely he was lifted up off the ground two or three times before it passed over him and burned itself out at the top of the ridge. But he survived … he lived to tell the tale so others would hear, and learn, and live, from his experience, in future fires.
And this is what Paul is saying here. The Spirit, God’s Spirit, leads us, calls us, to serve … to serve in the Sign of the Cross … that this faith, this life, it’s not all about us but it’s all about Jesus … and so, like Jesus, we follow the call to service … serving others, most especially those who Jesus went out of his way to be with and do for … those who some (who called themselves “religious”) … these religious, they shunned, they stayed away from, they disdained them … but Jesus did not … and just as he was willing to light and lay down in his own fire … the firestorm which is stirred up wherever the Cross is present and living and active in people’s lives … so we too, are called to lay down in the fire … to be willing to risk it all, for Jesus’ sake … for it is only through that fire … it is only through the Cross … that true, real, rich, abundant life comes … for Jesus, for us, for the world.
And Paul makes this even clearer for us:
For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption.
When you’re adopted, adopted into a loving, caring family, especially when you’ve known other than that … and there are many ways to be adopted … through legal means, through friendship means, through marriage and in-laws … when you are adopted into a loving, caring family, and you know real love, how it should be, there is no need for fear anymore.
Paul is telling his Roman Christian brothers and sisters here, that they indeed know this spirit of adoption through their baptism into Christ … as they have become church, adopted into God’s family because of, through Jesus, they no longer shall have a spirit of slavery … the attitude of the fearful world … a spirit of scarcity … there will never be enough to go around, so I had better gather and hoard all I can for myself and look out for myself … but instead, they will have a spirit of abundance, of blessings full and rich, deep and wide … and this spirit, God’s Spirit, Jesus’ spirit, will bring, is bringing faith into their lives, so that those Romans can risk in service …. service which may bring some suffering, it’s true, but service which will end in glory … Christ’s glory, their glory with him.
In other words, Paul says, Romans, you need to be able to lay down in the fire, to be willing to give it all up, in hearing the call to follow Jesus … and thus you will be filled to abundance.
It’s not the message the world wants to hear. It’s not even the message WE want to hear, let alone speak to others.
And yet, what Paul is saying here in Romans, is the same thing Jesus’ followers were saying there, on that first Pentecost, as Acts conveys the word that those who heard them, saying, in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.
Luke – the author of Acts – is certain to say that All were amazed and perplexed and were asking one another What does this mean?
But there were others – others who put themselves outside the “all” of the gathered community through their scoffing and sneering – others who, for whatever reason, couldn’t, didn’t want to think anything of God was going on here, and so they scoffed, scoffed like those who saw Wag Dodge’s fire and refused to lay down in it, Ah, what a bunch of drunken bums. To hell with that, I’m getting out of here.
And so God leaves it to Peter … the one who denied Jesus just weeks earlier, the one who has bumbled his discipleship at every turn … Peter is the one who sets everyone straight.
Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem … he begins … and then he does a very strange thing … he takes a passage of Scripture which is all “gloom and doom” – from the prophet Joel – and, for those who are paying attention to him, turns this text on its ear.
This is the “Day of the Lord” text … a day of gloom and thick darkness … a day when the priests of the Lord are to weep between the vestibule and the altar … a day which is to drive God’s people to utter repentance for the overwhelming weight of their sins. We use this text to begin the Season of Lent, on Ash Wednesday, our rough Christian equivalent to Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, apology, repentance.
And yet, hear what Peter says here. He turns this “gloom and doom” text on its ear … he’s saying, hey, remember this word from our past … what we thought was going to be awful for us? It is here, here, right here, right now, your sons and daughters ARE prophesying, your young men ARE seeing visions, your old men ARE dreaming dreams. THIS is the time, right here, right now, God’s kingdom has broken, is breaking into this world … and God’s Spirit is here, as Jesus has promised, for US.
And that’s what Pentecost is all about. God’s Spirit … Jesus’ spirit, which he promised he would send to his followers, God’s Spirit, Jesus’ spirit, he has sent it and is still, is now sending it upon us, here today.
Through waters of Baptism … through Word of Proclamation … through Confession and Forgiveness … through the shared Meal in which Jesus shares his very self … here, we receive God’s Spirit of adoption … of freedom … of life … life which inexorably drives us out, drives us out to serve, to share, to live and to love one another as Christ has loved us.
Sometimes we will have to lie down in our own fires, that is certain. The world is no fan of the Sign of the Cross, strength through being with and for the suffering, living the life of servant-leadership and humility. Sometimes the world will be downright mean to us … sometimes, even those who we thought were with us, there for the festival, they will end up scoffing and sneering.
Pay no attention. That’s their fear talking. The spirit of slavery.
But we have received a spirit of adoption, and so we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.
That Spirit, God’s Spirit, Christ’s spirit, is active and alive and moving in and among and through us … manifesting itself in as many different ways as there are of us … moving us to service in as many different ways as there are of us … sometimes, when we need to lay down in our own fire, saving us … but always, always, leading us into God’s future, God’s future where Christ already is, the Lamb who is the Shepherd, the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End … always, always, for us. For you.
Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.
So Happy Pentecost! Blessed Spirit-Day! Come, Spirit of the Risen Lord Jesus, move us and fill us,
Spirit, Spirit of Gentleness!
You call from tomorrow, you break ancient schemes,
From the bondage of sorrow all the captives dream dreams;
Our women see visions, our men clear their eyes.
With bold new decisions your people arise.
Spirit of Restlessness, stir us from placidness … send us out boldly, to serve the world you love, in Jesus’ name!
Amen! Come, Holy Spirit!
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Sunday, May 12, 2013
12 May 2013
“One”
Acts 16:16-34 / Revelation 22:12-21 / John 17:20-26
Easter 7C
12 May 2013
Occasionally … in preparing for the weekly message … I look back on my sermons from years past, for an idea, maybe in the notes, incomplete then, which I could expand on anew … or, conversely, to see what I preached on ‘the last time around’ so I don’t go in the same direction this time.
This final Sunday in the Easter season is one which usually requires a good hard look at what’s gone before. Because the three Gospel texts offered – one for each of the three years in the lectionary cycle – they all and always come from the 17th chapter of John’s Gospel … known as “Jesus’ high priestly prayer.”
And that prayer – in all three readings, every year – it has as its focus Jesus’ hope that “they may all be one” – “they” being his disciples, in the text, of that time and place, but then, falling down through the ages to us.
For Lutherans, “that they may be one” has a particular text and context associated with it … if you know your Lutheran Reformation history, you’ll recall that that was the argument of the Roman Catholic bishops and priests and pope, over and against those who wanted to reform the Church, those who became known as Lutherans … the Roman Catholics argued that “all Luther and his followers wanted to do all along was to divide the Church,” while Lutherans countered with the words of Philip Melancthon, who wrote in Article 7 of the Augsburg Confession that the Church was already and always one, so long as Christians gather as worshipping community around the proclaimed Word of the Gospel, and the en-signed Word of the Sacraments, Holy Baptism and Holy Communion. Christians don’t need to agree on human matters, such as whether there should be a pope and bishops, whether we have Bach music or rock music in worship, whether the pastor wears a clerical collar or not … because Christ Alone makes us One around the Word and around the Font and Table.
That’s the Lutheran argument about “oneness.”
And so, looking back on those sermons over the years, I saw a similar thread running through each one … going something like this … since in Jesus we’re already One … there’s really nothing more that we can, should, need to do, to make us have “more One-ness” … that we can be in difference and disagreement over human things and still be the One, Holy, catholic and apostolic church.
That’s what I’ve said, pretty much the same, on our Gospel text, and its sister texts, year in, and year out, as long as I’ve been doing this.
But this year … no. I didn’t feel like I could go there.
Maybe it’s authenticity finally kicking in. Even the most casual observer can see that Christ’s church, Christian churches and congregations, certainly we are not united, “as one,” with each other. That which divides us seems to me to be greater than what brings us together … we differ over political issues … how our culture should treat the poor, oppressed, and vulnerable … who can be married … and differing over theological issues … who can serve as publicly called leaders in the church … who can commune at the Lord’s table?
How can we ever, possibly, be one, in any way, given how fractured we are?
And yet … and yet … we still have this text before us …
… so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
So what do we do with this Word? Or, rather, where does this Word lead us?
Well, after I took a long pause ... and a deep breath ... I was led straight into the Acts reading.
Here, we are in Philippi, Paul and Silas just having come over from Asia to Europe … from today’s Turkey to today’s Greece … in last week’s Acts reading (which immediately precedes this text today). And, almost immediately, things are not going well for Paul. He casts a spirit out of a slave girl … a spirit which has helped the girl’s owners to make a fair amount of money, money which was now gone. So for messing with the community’s economic stability, Paul and Silas are beaten, arrested, and thrown in jail.
Wouldn’t you know, that God has other plans for them.
There’s an earthquake, the walls of the prison come tumbling down, and everyone’s chains are broken.
The jailer … being part of an honor and shame based society … now thinks himself shamed, because surely, the prisoners had escaped. And being part of the Roman Empire … where “Caesar is Lord” is the word and rule of life … the jailer believes he has no choice but to take his own life.
But Paul wants to save him.
“No one’s left, don’t hurt yourself,” Paul cries to the jailer.
Then there’s that strange exchange of words. “What must I do to be saved?” the jailer asks them. Surely his “salvation” will be in preparing a good answer to the authorities, about what has happened.
Paul’s answer, though, is not so much about things temporal as things eternal.
Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.
And so this is what the jailer does … he cares for Paul and Silas, who baptize him and his family; he feeds Paul and Silas and shows them hospitality; and the text ends with that word of hope, the jailer and his household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God.
So what does this have to do with Jesus’ prayer that those who follow him would be one?
I think this story shows us a fine pattern to follow, in proclamation of the Gospel, toward, into a world of many cultures, which can, should, be a point of common agreement between those of us who may disagree over other matters.
• Peter and Silas offer, and the jailer hears the call to accept, resting his belief on the Lord Jesus Christ; rather than resting his belief on the power and authority of the world; for him, Caesar and Rome. Instead of resting his belief on that which ultimately causes him … that which ultimately causes us … to be restless and troubled … he hears and heeds the call to cast his burdens, the earthquakes and life-threat of this life onto Jesus. And the same is true for us, too.
So ... this is about the centrality of proclaiming Jesus Christ, and him crucified and raised, as the one thing necessary. That’s what Jesus has always said, it’s what Melancthon wrote in the Augsburg Confession, and it’s what we’re called to believe and proclaim … and so long as this is what we do and are about, we are church … this denomination called the ELCA, and this congregation which is part of the ELCA called Nativity.
• Then, see what follows next … as we read and hear of more places where people of faith can meet in service to the Gospel Word, in proclamation into the world:
o In offering healing – physical healing (as the jailer washes Paul and Silas’ wounds); emotional healing (to those who have been abused by the world, including churches, and people who have cast them aside … the poor, the powerless, the downtrodden, those without voice, those who have been shunned and disincluded for many reasons);
o In offering food and hospitality – as the jailer welcomes Paul and Silas into his home and feeds them, so we too are called to welcome the world; indeed, to go out and encourage hungry people to come and be fed; here in Renton, for example, through the ARISE shelter and the community meal and the new Center of Hope shelter for women and children, and,
o In offering hope – we can all rejoice that people have heard and welcomed the Word into their lives, are gathering around Word and Sacrament, and are hearing and being sent out to live Christ’s call to be fellow-servants to their brothers and sisters in the world. Why do we need to be jealous of another church’s membership roster? That they have a bigger or newer building than us? Why, instead, can we not live into the words Paul offers in his letter to the Corinthian church:
If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.
In these four ways … laid out so clearly here in this story from Acts … we have a fine place, a fine way, for Jesus-followers of all different “secondary persuasions” to live and serve together in the primary task of following our Lord:
• WORD
• Healing
• Hospitality and food
• HOPE
Now, of course, I’m not naïve … I realize that some, former colleagues, bishops, pastors and advisors, good friends, neighboring congregations … some right down our street from us … they will continue to insist that something else … namely, agreement with them about who can serve in the church, and who can be married … they will insist that these other matters are of primary importance and therefore those who hold views different from them can’t be, can’t share as church.
I realize that … and I disagree with them completely … but I realize that.
Much as I realize that I can’t walk into a Missouri Synod or Wisconsin Synod Lutheran congregation and receive Holy Communion. Even if our family heritage has been in one of these bodies … like some of you. Or that half of my colleagues in this cluster … the female ones … aren’t recognized as pastors by those bodies and congregations.
Much as I realize that none of us here can go down to St. Stephen’s or St. Anthony’s parishs and, with integrity, for them and for us, receive the sacrament of Holy Communion. Even if our family heritage is partly or entirely Roman Catholic ... like me ... like some of you.
So any reading of Jesus’ words in John 17 – especially, those we have before us today …
… so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
… any reading of those words needs to take into account their “already / not yet” status .. yes, already we are one, because of, through, IN Jesus … but we don’t show that One-ness … not yet … because of our selfishness, our politics, our sinfulness and separation from one another.
And that’s what Jesus is saying here. This is his prayer … and in his prayer, he realizes that “that they may be one” in all its totality, its completeness, its finality … will not be, in this world, in this life, right here right now. Oh, yes, we might, we will, have glimmers and sparks … churches, disciples, Jesus followers working together in that four part way … spreading the Word of Jesus, joining together to show the Word of Jesus by offering healing, hospitality, and hope … but there will still be some, like the elves in the final scene of C.S. Lewis’ “The Last Battle,” who will choose to sit with their backs turned to paradise because they just can’t join in.
Jesus knows this. And in the Gospel text Jesus tells us this … if we have ears to hear and hearts to follow.
That they may become completely one … and the word Jesus uses for completely, means “finally … totally … at the end of things.”
Yes. At the end of things we will be completely one with each other, one with Jesus, one with his Father and our Father. Everything else will have melted away, and all will be in Christ and Christ will be all … for us, for the world, for all of creation.
It’s also a Word that brings us well into the concluding word for today as well as the last book of the Bible … Revelation.
Once again, Jesus reminds us that he is the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Once again, that word for “end” is the same one Jesus uses for “completely” in that they may become completely one … which simply reinforces that, our, final hope is in the perfection and completeness and hope that comes with Jesus alone. The end is not bird flu or nuclear North Korea or votes in legislatures or by the electorate with which we agree or disagree … our end is in Jesus Christ, the son of God, who died and was raised For You.
And so what is left to do?
Go!
Go and tell!
That word in Revelation that is translated in English as “come” also means “go” – it’s not specific. Which is a fine way for us to conclude this word, these texts, today.
In the ambiguity of life … the fact that the matters of this life are most often not black and white, but grey, and ambiguous … in that necessary ambiguity, the One of which we can be certain is I AM … Jesus … who is the beginning, the end, the all in all.
For us.
For them … with whom we disagree, who disagree with us.
For all the world.
In him we can be … we are … we remain, One.
Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!
Acts 16:16-34 / Revelation 22:12-21 / John 17:20-26
Easter 7C
12 May 2013
Occasionally … in preparing for the weekly message … I look back on my sermons from years past, for an idea, maybe in the notes, incomplete then, which I could expand on anew … or, conversely, to see what I preached on ‘the last time around’ so I don’t go in the same direction this time.
This final Sunday in the Easter season is one which usually requires a good hard look at what’s gone before. Because the three Gospel texts offered – one for each of the three years in the lectionary cycle – they all and always come from the 17th chapter of John’s Gospel … known as “Jesus’ high priestly prayer.”
And that prayer – in all three readings, every year – it has as its focus Jesus’ hope that “they may all be one” – “they” being his disciples, in the text, of that time and place, but then, falling down through the ages to us.
For Lutherans, “that they may be one” has a particular text and context associated with it … if you know your Lutheran Reformation history, you’ll recall that that was the argument of the Roman Catholic bishops and priests and pope, over and against those who wanted to reform the Church, those who became known as Lutherans … the Roman Catholics argued that “all Luther and his followers wanted to do all along was to divide the Church,” while Lutherans countered with the words of Philip Melancthon, who wrote in Article 7 of the Augsburg Confession that the Church was already and always one, so long as Christians gather as worshipping community around the proclaimed Word of the Gospel, and the en-signed Word of the Sacraments, Holy Baptism and Holy Communion. Christians don’t need to agree on human matters, such as whether there should be a pope and bishops, whether we have Bach music or rock music in worship, whether the pastor wears a clerical collar or not … because Christ Alone makes us One around the Word and around the Font and Table.
That’s the Lutheran argument about “oneness.”
And so, looking back on those sermons over the years, I saw a similar thread running through each one … going something like this … since in Jesus we’re already One … there’s really nothing more that we can, should, need to do, to make us have “more One-ness” … that we can be in difference and disagreement over human things and still be the One, Holy, catholic and apostolic church.
That’s what I’ve said, pretty much the same, on our Gospel text, and its sister texts, year in, and year out, as long as I’ve been doing this.
But this year … no. I didn’t feel like I could go there.
Maybe it’s authenticity finally kicking in. Even the most casual observer can see that Christ’s church, Christian churches and congregations, certainly we are not united, “as one,” with each other. That which divides us seems to me to be greater than what brings us together … we differ over political issues … how our culture should treat the poor, oppressed, and vulnerable … who can be married … and differing over theological issues … who can serve as publicly called leaders in the church … who can commune at the Lord’s table?
How can we ever, possibly, be one, in any way, given how fractured we are?
And yet … and yet … we still have this text before us …
… so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
So what do we do with this Word? Or, rather, where does this Word lead us?
Well, after I took a long pause ... and a deep breath ... I was led straight into the Acts reading.
Here, we are in Philippi, Paul and Silas just having come over from Asia to Europe … from today’s Turkey to today’s Greece … in last week’s Acts reading (which immediately precedes this text today). And, almost immediately, things are not going well for Paul. He casts a spirit out of a slave girl … a spirit which has helped the girl’s owners to make a fair amount of money, money which was now gone. So for messing with the community’s economic stability, Paul and Silas are beaten, arrested, and thrown in jail.
Wouldn’t you know, that God has other plans for them.
There’s an earthquake, the walls of the prison come tumbling down, and everyone’s chains are broken.
The jailer … being part of an honor and shame based society … now thinks himself shamed, because surely, the prisoners had escaped. And being part of the Roman Empire … where “Caesar is Lord” is the word and rule of life … the jailer believes he has no choice but to take his own life.
But Paul wants to save him.
“No one’s left, don’t hurt yourself,” Paul cries to the jailer.
Then there’s that strange exchange of words. “What must I do to be saved?” the jailer asks them. Surely his “salvation” will be in preparing a good answer to the authorities, about what has happened.
Paul’s answer, though, is not so much about things temporal as things eternal.
Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.
And so this is what the jailer does … he cares for Paul and Silas, who baptize him and his family; he feeds Paul and Silas and shows them hospitality; and the text ends with that word of hope, the jailer and his household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God.
So what does this have to do with Jesus’ prayer that those who follow him would be one?
I think this story shows us a fine pattern to follow, in proclamation of the Gospel, toward, into a world of many cultures, which can, should, be a point of common agreement between those of us who may disagree over other matters.
• Peter and Silas offer, and the jailer hears the call to accept, resting his belief on the Lord Jesus Christ; rather than resting his belief on the power and authority of the world; for him, Caesar and Rome. Instead of resting his belief on that which ultimately causes him … that which ultimately causes us … to be restless and troubled … he hears and heeds the call to cast his burdens, the earthquakes and life-threat of this life onto Jesus. And the same is true for us, too.
So ... this is about the centrality of proclaiming Jesus Christ, and him crucified and raised, as the one thing necessary. That’s what Jesus has always said, it’s what Melancthon wrote in the Augsburg Confession, and it’s what we’re called to believe and proclaim … and so long as this is what we do and are about, we are church … this denomination called the ELCA, and this congregation which is part of the ELCA called Nativity.
• Then, see what follows next … as we read and hear of more places where people of faith can meet in service to the Gospel Word, in proclamation into the world:
o In offering healing – physical healing (as the jailer washes Paul and Silas’ wounds); emotional healing (to those who have been abused by the world, including churches, and people who have cast them aside … the poor, the powerless, the downtrodden, those without voice, those who have been shunned and disincluded for many reasons);
o In offering food and hospitality – as the jailer welcomes Paul and Silas into his home and feeds them, so we too are called to welcome the world; indeed, to go out and encourage hungry people to come and be fed; here in Renton, for example, through the ARISE shelter and the community meal and the new Center of Hope shelter for women and children, and,
o In offering hope – we can all rejoice that people have heard and welcomed the Word into their lives, are gathering around Word and Sacrament, and are hearing and being sent out to live Christ’s call to be fellow-servants to their brothers and sisters in the world. Why do we need to be jealous of another church’s membership roster? That they have a bigger or newer building than us? Why, instead, can we not live into the words Paul offers in his letter to the Corinthian church:
If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.
In these four ways … laid out so clearly here in this story from Acts … we have a fine place, a fine way, for Jesus-followers of all different “secondary persuasions” to live and serve together in the primary task of following our Lord:
• WORD
• Healing
• Hospitality and food
• HOPE
Now, of course, I’m not naïve … I realize that some, former colleagues, bishops, pastors and advisors, good friends, neighboring congregations … some right down our street from us … they will continue to insist that something else … namely, agreement with them about who can serve in the church, and who can be married … they will insist that these other matters are of primary importance and therefore those who hold views different from them can’t be, can’t share as church.
I realize that … and I disagree with them completely … but I realize that.
Much as I realize that I can’t walk into a Missouri Synod or Wisconsin Synod Lutheran congregation and receive Holy Communion. Even if our family heritage has been in one of these bodies … like some of you. Or that half of my colleagues in this cluster … the female ones … aren’t recognized as pastors by those bodies and congregations.
Much as I realize that none of us here can go down to St. Stephen’s or St. Anthony’s parishs and, with integrity, for them and for us, receive the sacrament of Holy Communion. Even if our family heritage is partly or entirely Roman Catholic ... like me ... like some of you.
So any reading of Jesus’ words in John 17 – especially, those we have before us today …
… so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
… any reading of those words needs to take into account their “already / not yet” status .. yes, already we are one, because of, through, IN Jesus … but we don’t show that One-ness … not yet … because of our selfishness, our politics, our sinfulness and separation from one another.
And that’s what Jesus is saying here. This is his prayer … and in his prayer, he realizes that “that they may be one” in all its totality, its completeness, its finality … will not be, in this world, in this life, right here right now. Oh, yes, we might, we will, have glimmers and sparks … churches, disciples, Jesus followers working together in that four part way … spreading the Word of Jesus, joining together to show the Word of Jesus by offering healing, hospitality, and hope … but there will still be some, like the elves in the final scene of C.S. Lewis’ “The Last Battle,” who will choose to sit with their backs turned to paradise because they just can’t join in.
Jesus knows this. And in the Gospel text Jesus tells us this … if we have ears to hear and hearts to follow.
That they may become completely one … and the word Jesus uses for completely, means “finally … totally … at the end of things.”
Yes. At the end of things we will be completely one with each other, one with Jesus, one with his Father and our Father. Everything else will have melted away, and all will be in Christ and Christ will be all … for us, for the world, for all of creation.
It’s also a Word that brings us well into the concluding word for today as well as the last book of the Bible … Revelation.
Once again, Jesus reminds us that he is the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Once again, that word for “end” is the same one Jesus uses for “completely” in that they may become completely one … which simply reinforces that, our, final hope is in the perfection and completeness and hope that comes with Jesus alone. The end is not bird flu or nuclear North Korea or votes in legislatures or by the electorate with which we agree or disagree … our end is in Jesus Christ, the son of God, who died and was raised For You.
And so what is left to do?
Go!
Go and tell!
That word in Revelation that is translated in English as “come” also means “go” – it’s not specific. Which is a fine way for us to conclude this word, these texts, today.
In the ambiguity of life … the fact that the matters of this life are most often not black and white, but grey, and ambiguous … in that necessary ambiguity, the One of which we can be certain is I AM … Jesus … who is the beginning, the end, the all in all.
For us.
For them … with whom we disagree, who disagree with us.
For all the world.
In him we can be … we are … we remain, One.
Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!
Sunday, May 05, 2013
5 May 2013
“What’s so funny about understanding peace and love?”
John 14:23-29 / Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5
6 Easter C
5 May 2013
The final three Sundays of the Easter season include Gospel texts from before the first Easter … they come from the sections of John’s Gospel which we typically associate with Jesus’ acts on Maundy Thursday, the night in which he was betrayed.
Last week we heard the new commandment, the mandate from which Maundy Thursday gets its name, as Jesus gave his disciples the word to “Love One Another.” That “love” is the third Greek word for love; the first, signifying the love shared between lovers; the second, friendship-love, nation-love, sports-team love; but that third word, agape, means Jesus’ kind of love; sacrificial, self-giving, cross-shaped, thinking of others before thinking of oneself-love … in other words, how Jesus lived his life here among us, on earth as it is in heaven.
This week’s Gospel builds on last week’s Word, to be sure … as Jesus begins, he’s still referring to his word from a chapter earlier:
Those who love me will keep my word … whoever does not love me does not keep my words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me.
That “word” is, indeed, Jesus’ command to “Love One Another” … and so we get a positive reinforcement … and a negative corollary-expansion on that command:
• When we love one another with Jesus’ kind of love, we are keeping Jesus’ commandment ;
• But if we don’t love one another, if we don’t show Jesus’ kind of love to our neighbor, that sacrificial, self-giving, cross-shaped, thinking of others before thinking of ourselves-love … then, Jesus is saying, we don’t love him.
If we don’t love one another, we don’t love Jesus. Period. No matter how much church we are a part of, how long we’ve been a church member, how many committees or councils or task forces we’ve served on, how many crosses we hang around our necks or put up on our walls.
It’s a harsh word, but then, it needs to be. Jesus’ point is, his kind of love, this sacrificial, cross-shaped love, is not to be taken lightly. This is a matter of life ... ours, and our neighbors.
It’s a word we’re called to understand, to take into our hearts and souls and minds and bodies. That’s why this word is set within the liturgical context of Maundy Thursday … Jesus’ actions of washing his disciples’ feet … and giving the Eucharist, Holy Communion ... Jesus’ dying gift to and for us, what we who follow Jesus do in remembrance of him from this night in which he was betrayed forward … even to today. For it’s through worship… and, specifically, being community in communion with Christ, and each other, that we will become people who live into Jesus’ new commandment, to “love one another.”
But there’s a second half to today’s Gospel word for us, too.
And this brings us a word about Peace.
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.
Once again, we’re reminded of an earlier / later word from Jesus … earlier, because we heard it four weeks ago, on the Second Sunday of Easter … later, because it’s from when the crucified, died and raised Jesus appeared among his friends in the room where they’d locked themselves away, for fear of what had happened to Jesus happening to them … when the risen Jesus walked past the locked door and into their fear-locked midst, and said, Peace Is Here! Catch my Spirit!
Here, though, still on the night in which he was betrayed, Jesus is giving those same friends and followers an extended Word about this Peace he is leaving with them.
• It is Peace Not As The World Gives. Again, it’s a Word meant to make us think.
o How does the world claim to give us peace?
Health
Wealth
Popularity
“Security” of many and various kinds
And this peace, it tends to be personal ... and private.
And yet, here, Jesus’ words, reminding us of “his kind of love,” echo that … “Jesus’ kind of peace” is different … it’s HIMSELF … the lamb who is the shepherd, the alpha and the omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. So when he walks in on his friends later, after his dying and rising, and says Peace Is Here!, they could (and would) remember these words he spoke to them this night, before their hearts were even more deeply troubled … from seeing Jesus die on the cross.
The peace which Jesus gives, is given in community … here, to his friends together … later, to those same friends together … and thus, to us too, together, again, we are called back to the night in which Jesus was betrayed … the night when Jesus implores us to eat, to drink in remembrance of him … thus communion, the Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper … this is the meal of peace for us … the opportunity for the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, to come to each and all of us to give us Jesus’ kind of peace, which in turn propels us out from that meal to share Jesus’ kind of love into the world God loves.
But I’m troubled by that word Jesus shares here, do not let your hearts be troubled. The word Jesus uses for “troubled” carries with it a sense of “rough seas, troubled waters.”
In our Gospel text, Jesus’ friends are in a time of “rough seas, troubled waters.” Their rabbi, their friend, on this night in which he was betrayed, has just told them that he is going away from them. If they are listening, if they are paying attention, they are surely wondering “what will happen to us now?” Even though Jesus’ words here speak of the Advocate, the Spirit, who will come among them to teach and remind them … still, their hearts are surely most troubled.
And what of us? We can’t say we’re much better off than Jesus’ friends in our text. We also have lots of rough seas in our lives, don’t we? Troubled waters, upset times, even upsetting the baptismal waters on which our faith sails, personally, corporately.
On Thursday I was part of the annual Clergy Institute at Temple De Hirsch Sinai in Seattle. Our speaker was Professor Patricia Killen, formerly of Pacific Lutheran, now at Gonzaga in Spokane … she, the author of “the None Zone,” the volume from eight years ago or so that was the definitive word on what we who live in the Pacific NW have always known … that we are the lowest “churched” area in the United States … and the place where, when “religious preference” is asked, “None of the Above” is the single most numerous answer.
Professor Killen spoke to the same gathering eight years ago; I heard her then, and you’ve heard her work, through me, in sermons and adult education sessions since.
Thursday she returned to give us an update.
The first news she shared … is that the basic ‘lay of the land’ has not changed. For the past 40 years, religious affiliation in the Pacific NW has stayed steady, at about 30% of the population. However, Professor Killen noted that, in that same time, the total population of the NW has increased 70%. So we remain a place where immigrants from other areas of the US come and for the most part “drop” whatever religious affiliation they had in their former homes.
She did note that the rise of conservative evangelical churches has peaked, both here in the NW, and across the country, and conservative evangelical congregations are losing members at a rate which is at least equal to, if not greater than, other mainline churches … especially, these churches are losing young people … as they find that their political views, particularly on marriage, and the role of women, are at odds with what their churches are teaching.
Professor Killen also said that her research, which predicted that the NW was a bellwether for the rest of the United States in terms of religious affiliation, has been proven correct. As the NW has always been “post-modern” in a sense … large institutions here are generally mistrusted, and individual experience reigns supreme … THAT’s the center of post-modernism ... that sense of post-modernism when it comes to religious faith, is moving and growing across the country, as the number of “Nones” … as in “none of the aboves” continues to grow … especially among Millennials (those born after 1980) and in that group in particular, women. Professor Killen said that in the United States, young people under 35, and especially, young women, are leaving organized religion at an unprecedented rate in American history … and with women, she said, so go the children. With just a few exceptions, Sunday morning religious gatherings in America are increasingly older, and smaller, than they’ve ever been.
Look around you here … even though we, Nativity, are one of the nine churches in our synod that is growing … we, just like about every other church, has a big donut hole when it comes to disciples who are between the ages of 18 and 35. They just aren’t here, or in many other worshipping communities.
She did say again, though, that we shouldn’t associate “Nones” with “no faith.” That continues to not be true. What has changed is that we’ve gone from a “taproot” culture … with “big trees” holding down the soil … “Roman Catholic” … “Protestant Christian” … “Jewish” … and so on … to what Professor Killen calls a “rhizome” culture … think, a bed of irises … with lots of shoots sprouting up all over the place. While “Sunday church” isn’t important to Millennials in record numbers, many of those same Millennials say they are spiritual … they pray in about the same numbers as every other age group … they also explore spirituality … though not in corporate worship … through care for the environment, as well as ancient rituals … prayer labyrinths, community compline gatherings, and so on. People in the “None Zone” and across America are discarding some historic beliefs and practices while discovering new forms of belief and practice. And they want to take part in service events, serving in ways that make a real difference in the world … what Professor Killen calls this “the new philanthropy.”
Ah, “troubled waters” to be sure, especially for those of us who would like things to be the way they were in the 1950s or 1970s or even the 1980s. For those of us who would like the church to be the way it was in the 1950s or 1970s or even the 1980s. But things won’t be that way anymore, probably ever again. We live in a time of axial change … great society change, great church change. Our own state has voted ourselves into the cusp of that change ... primarily driven by those same under 35 millennials. Change is here.
Your hearts may be troubled.
So is there a Word of Peace for them ... for you ... for us?
Once again this week, I think we can find Peace in the words of that oft-most-troubling final book of the New Testament, Revelation.
As the book comes to its conclusion, we hear this word of peace and hope as we see the New Jerusalem, the New Heavenly City, coming down out of heaven … the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it … the nations will walk by its light … there will be no night there.
Words of comfort and hope, to be sure. But what kind of comfort and hope, for us?
Another Pacific Northwest theologian and author, Barbara Rossing, has written of these verses in this way:
I like to ask people the name of their own town or city out loud. Then I invited them to re-phrase the vision of the New Jerusalem in terms of their own city’s renewal … what would your ‘new’ city look like, envisioned in light of God’s vision of hope? This is an exercise in ‘borrowing the eyes of God’ … we see our world as God sees it.
Seeing this way means seeing now through eyes of the end. Remember that in last week’s Revelation – word we heard that Jesus … not war, not disease, not even death … Jesus is the beginning and the end. And Jesus is already the beginning and the end … he has secured all of history for us, through his suffering and death and resurrection.
So the word of the New Jerusalem is hope … hope for the original hearers of Revelation, those early Christians, living in their own time of troubled hearts … living in the lie of the “Roman peace”... “peace as the world gives” but which was no peace at all … it was really nothing more than endless war, bloodshed, suffering, and increasing alienation and persecution for those who followed Jesus. The word of the New Jerusalem gave them hope to think of their own “New City,” whatever that might be, a future with hope because Jesus was already there and had secured it for them.
And so the word of the New Jerusalem is hope for us too … all of us, regardless of how we have come to worship this morning ... full of praise, in quiet remembering of the night in which Jesus was betrayed, or with troubled hearts.
The Word of the New Jerusalem ... for us ... is that God is about making all things new, and bringing them into the future – with hope – which is already secured by Jesus Christ.
So what, how do you envision God’s New Nativity? This community of faith, made up of many different disciples, coming from many different places and lives ... all of us, wanting, needing, to understand the peace and love that comes from Jesus Christ alone?
Like the disciples, we could remain troubled by the question, by the future.
Because their other option on that night in which he was betrayed would be to have Jesus stay with them … to try to keep things the same way they’d always been, forever. But we all know that wouldn’t / couldn’t happen, just as it won’t happen for us.
This is not the same congregation it was 44 years ago … 20 years ago … 9 years ago … 1 year ago … even a week ago. We continue to grow and change because that is Christ’s call to us, to love in Jesus’ kind of love and have peace in Jesus’ peace, as he continually draws us closer to him in the future with hope he has already secured for us.
So what, how do you vision God’s new Nativity?
Here’s how I believe Jesus is calling us to see, to vision, and to act ...
As a place, a people where God’s Spirit is active and inviting, where all people are welcome and encouraged to share their story, and where Jesus has crossed it ... regardless of their age, race, gender, marital status, physical or emotional illness, political preference or income level.
As a place, a people where we go the extra mile to seek out and embrace those who have been marginalized, who have been forced to the edges of society, as well as those who have been turned off to “church,” so that they feel invited, honored, respected, and encouraged in their seeking to live a life of faith … and that we as a faith community would be open and welcoming of different ways to express – through Word, worship, art, prayer and song - what it means to be a Pacific Northwesterner, a Christian, a Lutheran.
As a place, a people who fully embrace our foundation of faith in Jesus Christ AND fully live in and into our increasingly diverse world.
What, how do you vision God’s new Nativity?
Friends, be at peace in Jesus’ love, for he is already there, for us, securing our future with hope … and love … and peace.
Amen.
John 14:23-29 / Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5
6 Easter C
5 May 2013
The final three Sundays of the Easter season include Gospel texts from before the first Easter … they come from the sections of John’s Gospel which we typically associate with Jesus’ acts on Maundy Thursday, the night in which he was betrayed.
Last week we heard the new commandment, the mandate from which Maundy Thursday gets its name, as Jesus gave his disciples the word to “Love One Another.” That “love” is the third Greek word for love; the first, signifying the love shared between lovers; the second, friendship-love, nation-love, sports-team love; but that third word, agape, means Jesus’ kind of love; sacrificial, self-giving, cross-shaped, thinking of others before thinking of oneself-love … in other words, how Jesus lived his life here among us, on earth as it is in heaven.
This week’s Gospel builds on last week’s Word, to be sure … as Jesus begins, he’s still referring to his word from a chapter earlier:
Those who love me will keep my word … whoever does not love me does not keep my words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me.
That “word” is, indeed, Jesus’ command to “Love One Another” … and so we get a positive reinforcement … and a negative corollary-expansion on that command:
• When we love one another with Jesus’ kind of love, we are keeping Jesus’ commandment ;
• But if we don’t love one another, if we don’t show Jesus’ kind of love to our neighbor, that sacrificial, self-giving, cross-shaped, thinking of others before thinking of ourselves-love … then, Jesus is saying, we don’t love him.
If we don’t love one another, we don’t love Jesus. Period. No matter how much church we are a part of, how long we’ve been a church member, how many committees or councils or task forces we’ve served on, how many crosses we hang around our necks or put up on our walls.
It’s a harsh word, but then, it needs to be. Jesus’ point is, his kind of love, this sacrificial, cross-shaped love, is not to be taken lightly. This is a matter of life ... ours, and our neighbors.
It’s a word we’re called to understand, to take into our hearts and souls and minds and bodies. That’s why this word is set within the liturgical context of Maundy Thursday … Jesus’ actions of washing his disciples’ feet … and giving the Eucharist, Holy Communion ... Jesus’ dying gift to and for us, what we who follow Jesus do in remembrance of him from this night in which he was betrayed forward … even to today. For it’s through worship… and, specifically, being community in communion with Christ, and each other, that we will become people who live into Jesus’ new commandment, to “love one another.”
But there’s a second half to today’s Gospel word for us, too.
And this brings us a word about Peace.
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.
Once again, we’re reminded of an earlier / later word from Jesus … earlier, because we heard it four weeks ago, on the Second Sunday of Easter … later, because it’s from when the crucified, died and raised Jesus appeared among his friends in the room where they’d locked themselves away, for fear of what had happened to Jesus happening to them … when the risen Jesus walked past the locked door and into their fear-locked midst, and said, Peace Is Here! Catch my Spirit!
Here, though, still on the night in which he was betrayed, Jesus is giving those same friends and followers an extended Word about this Peace he is leaving with them.
• It is Peace Not As The World Gives. Again, it’s a Word meant to make us think.
o How does the world claim to give us peace?
Health
Wealth
Popularity
“Security” of many and various kinds
And this peace, it tends to be personal ... and private.
And yet, here, Jesus’ words, reminding us of “his kind of love,” echo that … “Jesus’ kind of peace” is different … it’s HIMSELF … the lamb who is the shepherd, the alpha and the omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. So when he walks in on his friends later, after his dying and rising, and says Peace Is Here!, they could (and would) remember these words he spoke to them this night, before their hearts were even more deeply troubled … from seeing Jesus die on the cross.
The peace which Jesus gives, is given in community … here, to his friends together … later, to those same friends together … and thus, to us too, together, again, we are called back to the night in which Jesus was betrayed … the night when Jesus implores us to eat, to drink in remembrance of him … thus communion, the Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper … this is the meal of peace for us … the opportunity for the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, to come to each and all of us to give us Jesus’ kind of peace, which in turn propels us out from that meal to share Jesus’ kind of love into the world God loves.
But I’m troubled by that word Jesus shares here, do not let your hearts be troubled. The word Jesus uses for “troubled” carries with it a sense of “rough seas, troubled waters.”
In our Gospel text, Jesus’ friends are in a time of “rough seas, troubled waters.” Their rabbi, their friend, on this night in which he was betrayed, has just told them that he is going away from them. If they are listening, if they are paying attention, they are surely wondering “what will happen to us now?” Even though Jesus’ words here speak of the Advocate, the Spirit, who will come among them to teach and remind them … still, their hearts are surely most troubled.
And what of us? We can’t say we’re much better off than Jesus’ friends in our text. We also have lots of rough seas in our lives, don’t we? Troubled waters, upset times, even upsetting the baptismal waters on which our faith sails, personally, corporately.
On Thursday I was part of the annual Clergy Institute at Temple De Hirsch Sinai in Seattle. Our speaker was Professor Patricia Killen, formerly of Pacific Lutheran, now at Gonzaga in Spokane … she, the author of “the None Zone,” the volume from eight years ago or so that was the definitive word on what we who live in the Pacific NW have always known … that we are the lowest “churched” area in the United States … and the place where, when “religious preference” is asked, “None of the Above” is the single most numerous answer.
Professor Killen spoke to the same gathering eight years ago; I heard her then, and you’ve heard her work, through me, in sermons and adult education sessions since.
Thursday she returned to give us an update.
The first news she shared … is that the basic ‘lay of the land’ has not changed. For the past 40 years, religious affiliation in the Pacific NW has stayed steady, at about 30% of the population. However, Professor Killen noted that, in that same time, the total population of the NW has increased 70%. So we remain a place where immigrants from other areas of the US come and for the most part “drop” whatever religious affiliation they had in their former homes.
She did note that the rise of conservative evangelical churches has peaked, both here in the NW, and across the country, and conservative evangelical congregations are losing members at a rate which is at least equal to, if not greater than, other mainline churches … especially, these churches are losing young people … as they find that their political views, particularly on marriage, and the role of women, are at odds with what their churches are teaching.
Professor Killen also said that her research, which predicted that the NW was a bellwether for the rest of the United States in terms of religious affiliation, has been proven correct. As the NW has always been “post-modern” in a sense … large institutions here are generally mistrusted, and individual experience reigns supreme … THAT’s the center of post-modernism ... that sense of post-modernism when it comes to religious faith, is moving and growing across the country, as the number of “Nones” … as in “none of the aboves” continues to grow … especially among Millennials (those born after 1980) and in that group in particular, women. Professor Killen said that in the United States, young people under 35, and especially, young women, are leaving organized religion at an unprecedented rate in American history … and with women, she said, so go the children. With just a few exceptions, Sunday morning religious gatherings in America are increasingly older, and smaller, than they’ve ever been.
Look around you here … even though we, Nativity, are one of the nine churches in our synod that is growing … we, just like about every other church, has a big donut hole when it comes to disciples who are between the ages of 18 and 35. They just aren’t here, or in many other worshipping communities.
She did say again, though, that we shouldn’t associate “Nones” with “no faith.” That continues to not be true. What has changed is that we’ve gone from a “taproot” culture … with “big trees” holding down the soil … “Roman Catholic” … “Protestant Christian” … “Jewish” … and so on … to what Professor Killen calls a “rhizome” culture … think, a bed of irises … with lots of shoots sprouting up all over the place. While “Sunday church” isn’t important to Millennials in record numbers, many of those same Millennials say they are spiritual … they pray in about the same numbers as every other age group … they also explore spirituality … though not in corporate worship … through care for the environment, as well as ancient rituals … prayer labyrinths, community compline gatherings, and so on. People in the “None Zone” and across America are discarding some historic beliefs and practices while discovering new forms of belief and practice. And they want to take part in service events, serving in ways that make a real difference in the world … what Professor Killen calls this “the new philanthropy.”
Ah, “troubled waters” to be sure, especially for those of us who would like things to be the way they were in the 1950s or 1970s or even the 1980s. For those of us who would like the church to be the way it was in the 1950s or 1970s or even the 1980s. But things won’t be that way anymore, probably ever again. We live in a time of axial change … great society change, great church change. Our own state has voted ourselves into the cusp of that change ... primarily driven by those same under 35 millennials. Change is here.
Your hearts may be troubled.
So is there a Word of Peace for them ... for you ... for us?
Once again this week, I think we can find Peace in the words of that oft-most-troubling final book of the New Testament, Revelation.
As the book comes to its conclusion, we hear this word of peace and hope as we see the New Jerusalem, the New Heavenly City, coming down out of heaven … the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it … the nations will walk by its light … there will be no night there.
Words of comfort and hope, to be sure. But what kind of comfort and hope, for us?
Another Pacific Northwest theologian and author, Barbara Rossing, has written of these verses in this way:
I like to ask people the name of their own town or city out loud. Then I invited them to re-phrase the vision of the New Jerusalem in terms of their own city’s renewal … what would your ‘new’ city look like, envisioned in light of God’s vision of hope? This is an exercise in ‘borrowing the eyes of God’ … we see our world as God sees it.
Seeing this way means seeing now through eyes of the end. Remember that in last week’s Revelation – word we heard that Jesus … not war, not disease, not even death … Jesus is the beginning and the end. And Jesus is already the beginning and the end … he has secured all of history for us, through his suffering and death and resurrection.
So the word of the New Jerusalem is hope … hope for the original hearers of Revelation, those early Christians, living in their own time of troubled hearts … living in the lie of the “Roman peace”... “peace as the world gives” but which was no peace at all … it was really nothing more than endless war, bloodshed, suffering, and increasing alienation and persecution for those who followed Jesus. The word of the New Jerusalem gave them hope to think of their own “New City,” whatever that might be, a future with hope because Jesus was already there and had secured it for them.
And so the word of the New Jerusalem is hope for us too … all of us, regardless of how we have come to worship this morning ... full of praise, in quiet remembering of the night in which Jesus was betrayed, or with troubled hearts.
The Word of the New Jerusalem ... for us ... is that God is about making all things new, and bringing them into the future – with hope – which is already secured by Jesus Christ.
So what, how do you envision God’s New Nativity? This community of faith, made up of many different disciples, coming from many different places and lives ... all of us, wanting, needing, to understand the peace and love that comes from Jesus Christ alone?
Like the disciples, we could remain troubled by the question, by the future.
Because their other option on that night in which he was betrayed would be to have Jesus stay with them … to try to keep things the same way they’d always been, forever. But we all know that wouldn’t / couldn’t happen, just as it won’t happen for us.
This is not the same congregation it was 44 years ago … 20 years ago … 9 years ago … 1 year ago … even a week ago. We continue to grow and change because that is Christ’s call to us, to love in Jesus’ kind of love and have peace in Jesus’ peace, as he continually draws us closer to him in the future with hope he has already secured for us.
So what, how do you vision God’s new Nativity?
Here’s how I believe Jesus is calling us to see, to vision, and to act ...
As a place, a people where God’s Spirit is active and inviting, where all people are welcome and encouraged to share their story, and where Jesus has crossed it ... regardless of their age, race, gender, marital status, physical or emotional illness, political preference or income level.
As a place, a people where we go the extra mile to seek out and embrace those who have been marginalized, who have been forced to the edges of society, as well as those who have been turned off to “church,” so that they feel invited, honored, respected, and encouraged in their seeking to live a life of faith … and that we as a faith community would be open and welcoming of different ways to express – through Word, worship, art, prayer and song - what it means to be a Pacific Northwesterner, a Christian, a Lutheran.
As a place, a people who fully embrace our foundation of faith in Jesus Christ AND fully live in and into our increasingly diverse world.
What, how do you vision God’s new Nativity?
Friends, be at peace in Jesus’ love, for he is already there, for us, securing our future with hope … and love … and peace.
Amen.
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