The Second Sunday of Easter Acts 2: 14a, 22 – 32
Sunday, May 1, 2011 I Peter 1: 3 – 9
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 20: 19 – 31
Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
John 20: 21
“As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” In our reading this morning from the gospel of John, the disciples are given a mission. On the evening of the day of Resurrection, the disciples are gathered in fear behind locked doors. Suddenly, Jesus comes among them, bidding them “peace” and sending them out into the world to continue Jesus’ ministry of reconciliation.
Now Easter was just last Sunday and I, for one, am still feeling a bit breathless. Our evangelist John though, is wasting no time, and just as soon as Christ appears to the disciples, Christ gives them a mission, sending them out as Christ was sent, to reconcile the world to God.
“If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” With those words, the disciples are given the power of God to bless and to curse, to make peace and to withhold peace. Reconciliation, for our evangelist John, means taking sin and the wounds that sin inflicts very seriously.
Today is the Sunday after Easter and is affectionately known as “Low Sunday.” Last Sunday, on Easter, churches were full, as was St. Asaph’s. Today, in most churches, finding a seat will not be difficult. And every year on the Sunday following Easter we hear the same text from the gospel of John, a text that commissions us, the church, to both forgive and refrain from forgiving sins. The joy of the Resurrection which we celebrated last Sunday confronts us now with the challenge of living together, of building a common life, and for our evangelist John, that means taking sin very seriously.
Sin is what Christ saves us from. For our evangelist John, Christ came into the world that we might know that we live in a world darkened by sin, a world in rebellion against God. The “light” of Christ which we celebrate on Easter and remember as the paschal candle burns through Eastertide reveals the darkness in which we live. In this darkness, we can see only ourselves and not those around us. Recognizing and dispelling this darkness, overcoming the power of evil and sin is what God did in the Resurrection and is what we are now commanded to continue. Sin is what separates us from God and sin is what separates us from one another. Sin is what Christ redeemed us from; naming and claiming that reality is, for John, part of the mission of the church.
Sin destroys community, disrupting the peace God wills for us. Sin separates us from others, dividing us, driving us apart. In the gospel of John, Jesus prays before the crucifixion that “we all might be one as he and the Father are one.” Being one is what evil seeks to destroy and what the peace of God overcomes. The Old Testament word for peace is “shalom,” a word meaning completeness and wholeness, the harmonious working together of seemingly disparate parts. To wish another “shalom” is to wish them their place in the universe, to acknowledge that you like I have a place and a purpose in God’s kingdom.
Sin has often been understood in purely individual terms, as if by avoiding the seven deadly sins of Catholic theology we can become sinless. For our evangelist John, sin is precisely what keeps us from being a community, from being one. Perhaps, ironically, any group that is predicated on the notion that we must be sinless before we can establish community is doomed to failure. Community is the context in which we come to know sin. Absent others, we all could be “good.” For John, forging a common life together is how we come to know sin and the practice of forgiveness. Without one another, you and I would never have a need to say, “I’m sorry.”
The church can be a rough and hurtful place and is not always a place of peace and joy. We can, and we do, hurt one another and often the wounds are deep. And rather than practice forgiveness, we often prefer to simply pick up our marbles and go home. Taking leave will always be easier than seeking reconciliation. Seeking reconciliation is a costly affair; reconciling the world to God cost Jesus his life.
Which is perhaps why Thomas this morning insists on seeing the mark of the nails in Jesus’ hands. For Thomas, the peace giver has to be the crucified one; only the one who has suffered has the authority to make peace. Thomas, in the words of commentator Richard Swanson, is the disciple who remembers, who will not forget that Jesus was crucified. Reconciliation is meaningless unless we acknowledge the deep wound of sin.
In the early days of the church, Christians often suffered persecution. Rather than be killed, some Christians would renounce their faith. Others chose martyrdom. Some of those who renounced their faith would later ask to be re-admitted to the church. Authors Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham describe what happened as a result in their book The Spirituality of Imperfection:
In the early days of Christianity, during times of persecution, some new believers committed the “unforgivable sin” of denying the Christian faith by sacrificing to pagan gods. Many who did this later repented and longed to be readmitted to the Christian community. But the leaders of that community disclaimed the power to reconcile the apostates – unless their pardon was asked by someone who had refused to deny the faith, someone about to be martyred for it. And so the former apostates sought out the imprisoned Christians marked for martyrdom, begging their intercession. After the death of the martyr, his or her intercessory requests were granted,…
Only the prayer of a martyr could restore to communion those who had abandoned the faith. Forgiveness was not cheap. Peace comes with a price.
If the words “I am sorry” acknowledge that we have hurt someone else, the question “What can I do?” recognizes that damage has been done which needs to be repaired. During the middle ages, an elaborate system of penance was developed to repair the breach caused by sin. But as we all know, a few “Hail Mary’s” and a couple of “Our Father’s” cannot begin to touch the damage done to a woman who has been raped, a child who has been abused or a father who loses his son to a drunk driver. The damage wrought by sin can take years to heal and sometimes never does heal. Sin creates a wound and only the wounded can offer forgiveness.
Every year our Jewish brothers and sisters celebrate Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. On this day, the Jews stand before God and before the Jews stand before God to ask for forgiveness, they are commanded to go to all whom they have offended and ask for forgiveness. And if those whom they have hurt are unable to forgive them, they are required to go again and, yet again. The Jews are required to ask for forgiveness from others and not to presume that the grace of God is in any way “cheap.” Sometimes what we have done to others cannot be forgiven when we ask; sometimes we must ask again; and sometimes, we are never forgiven by those we hurt. Sometimes, in the words of our gospel reading, our sins are not forgiven but rather “retained.” As we kneel Sunday after Sunday and make our confession and receive absolution, we may be well to remember that we are not the authors of our own forgiveness.
Life in community will inevitably lead us to hurt one another, as much as we would like to think otherwise. Saint Augustine would say we cannot not sin. But if we are to bear witness to the world that indeed, “God gave his only-begotten Son, to the end that all that believe in him should not perish” then you and I will need to work to heal the wounds that are inflicted upon us and by us, not by defending our righteousness but by confessing our sinfulness and acknowledging our common humanity, a people in need of redemption, a people dearly beloved by God, who were created not to be alone, but to be with and for others, a community Christ died for. Our life together may be the single most important witness to the world that God does indeed love the world and no one is beyond the pale of God’s love.
What we confess with our lips may we show forth in our lives.
Sunday, May 1, 2011 I Peter 1: 3 – 9
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 20: 19 – 31
Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
John 20: 21
“As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” In our reading this morning from the gospel of John, the disciples are given a mission. On the evening of the day of Resurrection, the disciples are gathered in fear behind locked doors. Suddenly, Jesus comes among them, bidding them “peace” and sending them out into the world to continue Jesus’ ministry of reconciliation.
Now Easter was just last Sunday and I, for one, am still feeling a bit breathless. Our evangelist John though, is wasting no time, and just as soon as Christ appears to the disciples, Christ gives them a mission, sending them out as Christ was sent, to reconcile the world to God.
“If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” With those words, the disciples are given the power of God to bless and to curse, to make peace and to withhold peace. Reconciliation, for our evangelist John, means taking sin and the wounds that sin inflicts very seriously.
Today is the Sunday after Easter and is affectionately known as “Low Sunday.” Last Sunday, on Easter, churches were full, as was St. Asaph’s. Today, in most churches, finding a seat will not be difficult. And every year on the Sunday following Easter we hear the same text from the gospel of John, a text that commissions us, the church, to both forgive and refrain from forgiving sins. The joy of the Resurrection which we celebrated last Sunday confronts us now with the challenge of living together, of building a common life, and for our evangelist John, that means taking sin very seriously.
Sin is what Christ saves us from. For our evangelist John, Christ came into the world that we might know that we live in a world darkened by sin, a world in rebellion against God. The “light” of Christ which we celebrate on Easter and remember as the paschal candle burns through Eastertide reveals the darkness in which we live. In this darkness, we can see only ourselves and not those around us. Recognizing and dispelling this darkness, overcoming the power of evil and sin is what God did in the Resurrection and is what we are now commanded to continue. Sin is what separates us from God and sin is what separates us from one another. Sin is what Christ redeemed us from; naming and claiming that reality is, for John, part of the mission of the church.
Sin destroys community, disrupting the peace God wills for us. Sin separates us from others, dividing us, driving us apart. In the gospel of John, Jesus prays before the crucifixion that “we all might be one as he and the Father are one.” Being one is what evil seeks to destroy and what the peace of God overcomes. The Old Testament word for peace is “shalom,” a word meaning completeness and wholeness, the harmonious working together of seemingly disparate parts. To wish another “shalom” is to wish them their place in the universe, to acknowledge that you like I have a place and a purpose in God’s kingdom.
Sin has often been understood in purely individual terms, as if by avoiding the seven deadly sins of Catholic theology we can become sinless. For our evangelist John, sin is precisely what keeps us from being a community, from being one. Perhaps, ironically, any group that is predicated on the notion that we must be sinless before we can establish community is doomed to failure. Community is the context in which we come to know sin. Absent others, we all could be “good.” For John, forging a common life together is how we come to know sin and the practice of forgiveness. Without one another, you and I would never have a need to say, “I’m sorry.”
The church can be a rough and hurtful place and is not always a place of peace and joy. We can, and we do, hurt one another and often the wounds are deep. And rather than practice forgiveness, we often prefer to simply pick up our marbles and go home. Taking leave will always be easier than seeking reconciliation. Seeking reconciliation is a costly affair; reconciling the world to God cost Jesus his life.
Which is perhaps why Thomas this morning insists on seeing the mark of the nails in Jesus’ hands. For Thomas, the peace giver has to be the crucified one; only the one who has suffered has the authority to make peace. Thomas, in the words of commentator Richard Swanson, is the disciple who remembers, who will not forget that Jesus was crucified. Reconciliation is meaningless unless we acknowledge the deep wound of sin.
In the early days of the church, Christians often suffered persecution. Rather than be killed, some Christians would renounce their faith. Others chose martyrdom. Some of those who renounced their faith would later ask to be re-admitted to the church. Authors Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham describe what happened as a result in their book The Spirituality of Imperfection:
In the early days of Christianity, during times of persecution, some new believers committed the “unforgivable sin” of denying the Christian faith by sacrificing to pagan gods. Many who did this later repented and longed to be readmitted to the Christian community. But the leaders of that community disclaimed the power to reconcile the apostates – unless their pardon was asked by someone who had refused to deny the faith, someone about to be martyred for it. And so the former apostates sought out the imprisoned Christians marked for martyrdom, begging their intercession. After the death of the martyr, his or her intercessory requests were granted,…
Only the prayer of a martyr could restore to communion those who had abandoned the faith. Forgiveness was not cheap. Peace comes with a price.
If the words “I am sorry” acknowledge that we have hurt someone else, the question “What can I do?” recognizes that damage has been done which needs to be repaired. During the middle ages, an elaborate system of penance was developed to repair the breach caused by sin. But as we all know, a few “Hail Mary’s” and a couple of “Our Father’s” cannot begin to touch the damage done to a woman who has been raped, a child who has been abused or a father who loses his son to a drunk driver. The damage wrought by sin can take years to heal and sometimes never does heal. Sin creates a wound and only the wounded can offer forgiveness.
Every year our Jewish brothers and sisters celebrate Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. On this day, the Jews stand before God and before the Jews stand before God to ask for forgiveness, they are commanded to go to all whom they have offended and ask for forgiveness. And if those whom they have hurt are unable to forgive them, they are required to go again and, yet again. The Jews are required to ask for forgiveness from others and not to presume that the grace of God is in any way “cheap.” Sometimes what we have done to others cannot be forgiven when we ask; sometimes we must ask again; and sometimes, we are never forgiven by those we hurt. Sometimes, in the words of our gospel reading, our sins are not forgiven but rather “retained.” As we kneel Sunday after Sunday and make our confession and receive absolution, we may be well to remember that we are not the authors of our own forgiveness.
Life in community will inevitably lead us to hurt one another, as much as we would like to think otherwise. Saint Augustine would say we cannot not sin. But if we are to bear witness to the world that indeed, “God gave his only-begotten Son, to the end that all that believe in him should not perish” then you and I will need to work to heal the wounds that are inflicted upon us and by us, not by defending our righteousness but by confessing our sinfulness and acknowledging our common humanity, a people in need of redemption, a people dearly beloved by God, who were created not to be alone, but to be with and for others, a community Christ died for. Our life together may be the single most important witness to the world that God does indeed love the world and no one is beyond the pale of God’s love.
What we confess with our lips may we show forth in our lives.
The Third Sunday of Easter Acts 2: 14a, 36 – 41
Sunday, May 8, 2011 I Peter 1: 17 – 23
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 24: 13 – 35
“When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.”
Luke 24: 30
I celebrated Easter of 2005, at St. Christopher’s parish in New Carrollton, Maryland. I was a senior seminarian and St. Christopher’s was my field education site, the place I went to every Sunday while in seminary to practice being a priest. St. Christopher’s is a parish “in the round” meaning the altar is set in the middle of the sanctuary with chairs placed all around. One of my responsibilities as a seminarian was to offer the chalice on Sundays. And I was doing so on that Easter Day, following the rector around the small circular altar space, made even smaller that Sunday by a profusion of Easter lilies in pots at the base of the altar.
After the first round of communicants, my rector turned to me and handed me a paten of bread, taking the chalice from me and giving it to one of our lay Eucharistic ministers.
Now in seminary one of the many things we learned is that only an ordained priest can consecrate and distribute the bread during communion. When the rector handed me the paten I was, to say the least, flabbergasted, and promptly knocked over one of the lilies. He is a wonderful and wholly orthodox priest and was, that day, breaking all the rules. I was, well, undone, so undone that I managed to take out most of the remaining Easter lilies that Sunday as I moved around the altar saying for the first time in my life: “The body of Christ, the bread of heaven.”
Not all Eucharists are that dramatic, but every time we celebrate the Eucharist, God brings the church into being, transforming a rather motley group of folk into the body of Christ. The Eucharist, that very simple act of taking bread and wine, asking God to bless them, breaking the bread and then sharing the bread and the wine with one another, is what makes us who we are and sets us apart from every other religious or secular group. Without the Eucharist there is no church, and without the church there is no Eucharist.
Which is why, for those of us who remember the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, we now celebrate the Eucharist every Sunday and not just on the first Sunday of the month, followed by three Sundays of morning prayer. The Eucharist is what makes us church and everything else we do flows from that central act. The Eucharist and not vestry meetings, not fellowship events, not outreach projects, not bible study, not prayer groups, makes us “church.” Who we are as Christians is completely and perfectly embodied in the Eucharist.
In our reading this morning from the gospel of Luke, two disheartened disciples are walking away from Jerusalem following the crucifixion on the road to Emmaus when they meet a stranger. At dinner, this stranger takes bread, offers a blessing, breaks the bread and gives it back to the two disciples and suddenly, the disciples discover they are in the presence of Jesus, Jesus whom they crucified. And from the very earliest of times, this act of breaking bread and sharing wine, was how the faithful worshiped their Lord.
Now the “breaking of bread and the sharing of wine” is a pretty simple, unpretentious act. The first Christians broke bread and shared wine because Jesus told them to do so. Over the centuries, this simple act got complicated and laden with all kinds of theological speculation; eventually, in order to insure that no wine was spilled, the laity were offered only the bread.
The Reformation resisted this tendency and sought a return to “simpler” times. But the reformers often threw the baby out with the bath water and ended up by 1928, making Eucharist or Holy Communion, the high point of the month, not the principal act of worship every Sunday. With the advent of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, the Eucharist was recognized, as we read in the preface of the “new” prayer book, “as the principal act of Christian worship on the Lord’s Day,” returning the celebration of the Eucharist to its normative (and constitutive) place in our common life.
But mechanics still plague us. Should we use wafers or bread? Should we use wine or grape juice? Should we come and kneel at the altar rail or should I stand in the aisle and offer the bread? Should we kneel during the Eucharistic prayer or stand or just sit? And what should we do if bread falls into the chalice? And what about the bread and the wine that is leftover? Ought we pour all onto the ground or reserve some and maybe light a candle to indicate we have reserve sacrament? We can, just as the church has done historically, get pretty caught up with the details and lose sight of the big picture.
The Eucharist is our principal act of worship. What we do in the Eucharist – take, bless, break and give bread and wine – is what liturgical scholars call “primary” theology. Secondary theology is what we say afterwards to attempt to understand what this taking, blessing, breaking and giving all mean. I can tell a child that a man they have never met who died two thousand years ago is now present with them, loving them, or I can ask them to bring a loaf of bread up to the altar, listen as I give thanks to God for this bread, watch as I tear the bread in two and then give them, and everyone else here, a piece of bread to eat.
I suspect, if I asked afterwards, what just happened, no one, not least the young people would respond with the words of the Nicene Creed. This simple act of making Eucharist explodes the boundaries of anything we can say in words. As the liturgical scholar, Dom Dix reminded the Christian community in 1945:
For century after century, spreading slowly to every continent and country and among every race on earth, this action has been done, in every conceivable human circumstance, for every conceivable human need from infancy and before it to extreme old age and after it, from the pinnacles of earthly greatness to the refuge of fugitives in the caves and dens of the earth. Men have found no better thing than this to do for kings at their crowning and for criminals going to the scaffold; for armies in triumph or for a bride and bridegroom in a little country church; for the proclamation of a dogma or for a good crop of wheat; for the wisdom of the Parliament of a mighty nation or for a sick old woman afraid to die; for a schoolboy sitting an examination or for Columbus setting out to discover America; for the famine of whole provinces or for the soul of a dead lover; in thankfulness because my father did not die of pneumonia; for a village headman much tempted to return to fetich because the yams had failed; because the Turk was at the gates of Vienna; for the repentance of Margaret; for the settlement of a strike; for a son for a barren woman; for Captain so-and-so, wounded and prisoner of war; while lions roared in the nearby amphitheatre; on the beach at Dunkirk; while the hiss of scythes in the thick June grass came faintly through the windows of the church; tremulously, by an old monk on the fiftieth anniversary of his vows; furtively, by an exiled bishop who had hewn timber all day in a prison camp near Murmansk; gorgeously, for the canonization of S. Joan of Arc – one could fill many pages with the reasons why men have done this, and not tell a hundredth part of them.
In the Eucharist we really do sit down at a table with God. Think of all the times you have shared a meal with someone – elegant dinner parties, simple family meals, picnics outside with friends, a hurried breakfast on your way out the door, lunch on a tray with a loved one in a hospital room, a romantic dinner for two with candles, a box lunch at a professional conference, breakfast at 4 a.m. in bed fixed by your daughter on Valentine’s Day when she was far too young to be in the kitchen making pancakes! Remember what you did at those meal times – make plans for the day to come, rehearse the events of the day now past, celebrate and grieve, commiserate and chastise, worry and fret, hope and despair. What happens when we sit down to eat knows no boundaries, exceeds our capacity to put it all into words; is perhaps the one human activity that we must do but which eludes our capacity to say what it is exactly that we are doing. A meal is never solely about the scientific interchange of molecules, even if we eat alone.
“When he was at table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.” As we come this day to break bread together, expect to meet the Risen Christ.
Sunday, May 8, 2011 I Peter 1: 17 – 23
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 24: 13 – 35
“When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.”
Luke 24: 30
I celebrated Easter of 2005, at St. Christopher’s parish in New Carrollton, Maryland. I was a senior seminarian and St. Christopher’s was my field education site, the place I went to every Sunday while in seminary to practice being a priest. St. Christopher’s is a parish “in the round” meaning the altar is set in the middle of the sanctuary with chairs placed all around. One of my responsibilities as a seminarian was to offer the chalice on Sundays. And I was doing so on that Easter Day, following the rector around the small circular altar space, made even smaller that Sunday by a profusion of Easter lilies in pots at the base of the altar.
After the first round of communicants, my rector turned to me and handed me a paten of bread, taking the chalice from me and giving it to one of our lay Eucharistic ministers.
Now in seminary one of the many things we learned is that only an ordained priest can consecrate and distribute the bread during communion. When the rector handed me the paten I was, to say the least, flabbergasted, and promptly knocked over one of the lilies. He is a wonderful and wholly orthodox priest and was, that day, breaking all the rules. I was, well, undone, so undone that I managed to take out most of the remaining Easter lilies that Sunday as I moved around the altar saying for the first time in my life: “The body of Christ, the bread of heaven.”
Not all Eucharists are that dramatic, but every time we celebrate the Eucharist, God brings the church into being, transforming a rather motley group of folk into the body of Christ. The Eucharist, that very simple act of taking bread and wine, asking God to bless them, breaking the bread and then sharing the bread and the wine with one another, is what makes us who we are and sets us apart from every other religious or secular group. Without the Eucharist there is no church, and without the church there is no Eucharist.
Which is why, for those of us who remember the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, we now celebrate the Eucharist every Sunday and not just on the first Sunday of the month, followed by three Sundays of morning prayer. The Eucharist is what makes us church and everything else we do flows from that central act. The Eucharist and not vestry meetings, not fellowship events, not outreach projects, not bible study, not prayer groups, makes us “church.” Who we are as Christians is completely and perfectly embodied in the Eucharist.
In our reading this morning from the gospel of Luke, two disheartened disciples are walking away from Jerusalem following the crucifixion on the road to Emmaus when they meet a stranger. At dinner, this stranger takes bread, offers a blessing, breaks the bread and gives it back to the two disciples and suddenly, the disciples discover they are in the presence of Jesus, Jesus whom they crucified. And from the very earliest of times, this act of breaking bread and sharing wine, was how the faithful worshiped their Lord.
Now the “breaking of bread and the sharing of wine” is a pretty simple, unpretentious act. The first Christians broke bread and shared wine because Jesus told them to do so. Over the centuries, this simple act got complicated and laden with all kinds of theological speculation; eventually, in order to insure that no wine was spilled, the laity were offered only the bread.
The Reformation resisted this tendency and sought a return to “simpler” times. But the reformers often threw the baby out with the bath water and ended up by 1928, making Eucharist or Holy Communion, the high point of the month, not the principal act of worship every Sunday. With the advent of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, the Eucharist was recognized, as we read in the preface of the “new” prayer book, “as the principal act of Christian worship on the Lord’s Day,” returning the celebration of the Eucharist to its normative (and constitutive) place in our common life.
But mechanics still plague us. Should we use wafers or bread? Should we use wine or grape juice? Should we come and kneel at the altar rail or should I stand in the aisle and offer the bread? Should we kneel during the Eucharistic prayer or stand or just sit? And what should we do if bread falls into the chalice? And what about the bread and the wine that is leftover? Ought we pour all onto the ground or reserve some and maybe light a candle to indicate we have reserve sacrament? We can, just as the church has done historically, get pretty caught up with the details and lose sight of the big picture.
The Eucharist is our principal act of worship. What we do in the Eucharist – take, bless, break and give bread and wine – is what liturgical scholars call “primary” theology. Secondary theology is what we say afterwards to attempt to understand what this taking, blessing, breaking and giving all mean. I can tell a child that a man they have never met who died two thousand years ago is now present with them, loving them, or I can ask them to bring a loaf of bread up to the altar, listen as I give thanks to God for this bread, watch as I tear the bread in two and then give them, and everyone else here, a piece of bread to eat.
I suspect, if I asked afterwards, what just happened, no one, not least the young people would respond with the words of the Nicene Creed. This simple act of making Eucharist explodes the boundaries of anything we can say in words. As the liturgical scholar, Dom Dix reminded the Christian community in 1945:
For century after century, spreading slowly to every continent and country and among every race on earth, this action has been done, in every conceivable human circumstance, for every conceivable human need from infancy and before it to extreme old age and after it, from the pinnacles of earthly greatness to the refuge of fugitives in the caves and dens of the earth. Men have found no better thing than this to do for kings at their crowning and for criminals going to the scaffold; for armies in triumph or for a bride and bridegroom in a little country church; for the proclamation of a dogma or for a good crop of wheat; for the wisdom of the Parliament of a mighty nation or for a sick old woman afraid to die; for a schoolboy sitting an examination or for Columbus setting out to discover America; for the famine of whole provinces or for the soul of a dead lover; in thankfulness because my father did not die of pneumonia; for a village headman much tempted to return to fetich because the yams had failed; because the Turk was at the gates of Vienna; for the repentance of Margaret; for the settlement of a strike; for a son for a barren woman; for Captain so-and-so, wounded and prisoner of war; while lions roared in the nearby amphitheatre; on the beach at Dunkirk; while the hiss of scythes in the thick June grass came faintly through the windows of the church; tremulously, by an old monk on the fiftieth anniversary of his vows; furtively, by an exiled bishop who had hewn timber all day in a prison camp near Murmansk; gorgeously, for the canonization of S. Joan of Arc – one could fill many pages with the reasons why men have done this, and not tell a hundredth part of them.
In the Eucharist we really do sit down at a table with God. Think of all the times you have shared a meal with someone – elegant dinner parties, simple family meals, picnics outside with friends, a hurried breakfast on your way out the door, lunch on a tray with a loved one in a hospital room, a romantic dinner for two with candles, a box lunch at a professional conference, breakfast at 4 a.m. in bed fixed by your daughter on Valentine’s Day when she was far too young to be in the kitchen making pancakes! Remember what you did at those meal times – make plans for the day to come, rehearse the events of the day now past, celebrate and grieve, commiserate and chastise, worry and fret, hope and despair. What happens when we sit down to eat knows no boundaries, exceeds our capacity to put it all into words; is perhaps the one human activity that we must do but which eludes our capacity to say what it is exactly that we are doing. A meal is never solely about the scientific interchange of molecules, even if we eat alone.
“When he was at table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.” As we come this day to break bread together, expect to meet the Risen Christ.
The Fourth Sunday of Easter Acts 2: 42 – 47
Sunday, May 15, 2011 I Peter 2: 19 – 25
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 10: 1 – 10
So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep.”
John 10: 7
Jesus says today in our gospel reading: “I am the gate for the sheep.” I have just spent the last week at MCV as my husband, A.G. underwent surgery bumping into all kinds of gates. The first gate I met appeared as I tried to park my car in the parking deck and met a lowered bar that would not move until I took a ticket. The next gate appeared as they wheeled A.G. away for surgery, telling me I was not allowed in the pre-op area. And when I wanted to know how A.G. was doing, I was denied any information unless I had a passcode. Now A.G. and I have been married for thirty-nine years and I found all those gates exasperating to say the least.
Gates provide protection, keeping those inside the gates safe. A.G. was probably safer at MCV than he is at home, but I found the many gates I encountered irritating. I wanted free access to the man I love and what I encountered was the suspicion I might do A.G. harm. So when I read today’s gospel, sometime between trying to park my car and get information from the doctors, I laughed. “I am the gate for the sheep,” Jesus says; “Well,” I thought to myself, “What happened to the good shepherd?”
On the Fourth Sunday of Easter, every year, we hear from the tenth chapter of the gospel of John, a chapter that tells us that Jesus is both the good shepherd and the gate of the sheepfold. Jesus the good shepherd conjures up all kinds of pastoral images; but Jesus the gate conjures up images of restriction and limited access. Jesus the good shepherd sounds welcoming and inviting; Jesus the gate sounds exclusive, an image made even harsher as Jesus calls all those who enter the sheepfold by any other way, “thieves and bandits.”
We are far removed from the late first century when the gospel of John was written, a time when Christians were separating themselves from their Jewish brothers and sisters. The Christian claim that Jesus was God Incarnate had become a “stumbling block,” in the words of Paul, for Jews who worshipped the one God who had freed them from slavery in Egypt. If God was one, Jesus could not be God and could not be worshipped as God. When the gospel of John was written, Jews and Christians were no longer worshipping together.
In time, the Christian claim that Jesus is the only Son of God as we confess in the creed, ignited efforts to rid the world of Muslim infidels during the crusades of the middle ages, mass baptisms of indigeneous peoples when Europeans discovered the “new world” in the fifteenth century and the systematic persecution and slaughter of Jews in the twentieth century. Throughout the history of the church, horrific acts of violence have been committed in the name of the good shepherd who is also the gate.
Embarrassed perhaps by this history, many Christians would prefer to believe that Christianity is pretty much like any other religion, even if that means leaving Christ out of the conversation. What’s important is believing in God and how you get there is up to you.
“The path of responsible Christology today,” writes theologian Daniel Migliore, “must surely negotiate between the extremes of exclusivism on the one hand and relativism on the other. Dialogue between Christianity and the other religions is right and necessary because a proper understanding of the biblical message demands it and the search for peace in the world requires it. The ‘finality’ of Jesus Christ, therefore, should not be understood by Christian believers as their present possession of the full truth. Jesus Christ is far greater than any Christology. The confession of Christ must therefore be expectant rather than overly defensive,”
An expectant faith, in other words, can never presume to know God fully; God will always remain “wholly other.”
We hear our gospel reading this morning in light of the recent death of Osama Bin Laden. As news of his death became public, so too did claims that Bin Laden’s death was “the will of God.” Such rhetoric is dangerous, an arrogant presumption that serves only to incite counter claims, fueling a fire that is rapidly burning out of control as Christian and Muslim extremists seek to destroy each other. These are perilous times, made more so by irresponsible theology.
In our reading this morning from the book of Acts, we learn that, following the resurrection, the disciples “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” In our baptismal covenant we promise to do the same. At baptism, we take on the responsibility to grow and to learn, to ponder the scriptures and to raise questions, to listen to the voices of those in every generation who have sought to understand our claims of faith, and to be nourished as well as challenged by the insights of one another. Faith neither presumes to know everything nor presumes nothing can be known. Faith, in the words of the eleventh century theologian Saint Anselm, “seeks understanding.”
Not long ago, I saw a poster hanging in an Episcopal church that proclaimed: “Baptism is not brainwashing.” We are not asked to simply swallow the doctrines of the church without question. We are asked to trust that the good shepherd will lead us where we need to go, even if that means challenging our most cherished beliefs about ourselves and about God. We make our confession of faith in a pluralistic world and need to be aware that what we say and what we do have the capacity to hurt as well as to heal. We follow a good shepherd who desires none of the sheep to be lost.
The gates I encountered at MCV this week all opened – I punched a button and got a ticket and the gate to the parking deck lifted up; I understood that pre-op is not a place for visitors but learned pre-op welcomed wives; I kept my passcode on the kitchen table and never needed it as I was able to be with A.G. in his room most of the week and did not need to call the nurses’ station to find out how he was doing. MCV took great care of A.G. and I brought him home on Friday.
So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep.” Gates are meant to keep us safe and to keep us, sheep that we are, from wandering around on our own, easy prey for predators. To say Jesus is the gate is not to say we are gatekeepers. God has not put us in charge and God is quite capable of furthering God’s purposes without any advice from us. What God has asked of us so far as those first disciples are concerned is that we devote ourselves “to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” Keeping that promise is not a one time event but a lifelong affair.
The paschal candle still burns in our midst and will for another four weeks. This candle reminds us that we live, as our evangelist John reminds us throughout his gospel, in a world of darkness, yearning for light. Groping in the dark is not, I suspect, how most of us would describe ourselves. We would prefer to think we are a bit more able than that. Sojourn for a while in a hospital and you come to realize just how fragile we really are - dependent, limited creatures struggling to survive in a world that is not in our control and wishing it were.
I am glad A.G. is back home and I am grateful for all the ministrations of the doctors and nurses. We have, this week, passed through another gate in our married life. One day the gate will close and will not open. Some of you have already encountered that gate. And to you I give thanks, for being in our midst, for bearing witness to your faith in spite of or maybe because of, what you have suffered.
I will tell you, though, I do not like gates and never have.
Sunday, May 15, 2011 I Peter 2: 19 – 25
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 10: 1 – 10
So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep.”
John 10: 7
Jesus says today in our gospel reading: “I am the gate for the sheep.” I have just spent the last week at MCV as my husband, A.G. underwent surgery bumping into all kinds of gates. The first gate I met appeared as I tried to park my car in the parking deck and met a lowered bar that would not move until I took a ticket. The next gate appeared as they wheeled A.G. away for surgery, telling me I was not allowed in the pre-op area. And when I wanted to know how A.G. was doing, I was denied any information unless I had a passcode. Now A.G. and I have been married for thirty-nine years and I found all those gates exasperating to say the least.
Gates provide protection, keeping those inside the gates safe. A.G. was probably safer at MCV than he is at home, but I found the many gates I encountered irritating. I wanted free access to the man I love and what I encountered was the suspicion I might do A.G. harm. So when I read today’s gospel, sometime between trying to park my car and get information from the doctors, I laughed. “I am the gate for the sheep,” Jesus says; “Well,” I thought to myself, “What happened to the good shepherd?”
On the Fourth Sunday of Easter, every year, we hear from the tenth chapter of the gospel of John, a chapter that tells us that Jesus is both the good shepherd and the gate of the sheepfold. Jesus the good shepherd conjures up all kinds of pastoral images; but Jesus the gate conjures up images of restriction and limited access. Jesus the good shepherd sounds welcoming and inviting; Jesus the gate sounds exclusive, an image made even harsher as Jesus calls all those who enter the sheepfold by any other way, “thieves and bandits.”
We are far removed from the late first century when the gospel of John was written, a time when Christians were separating themselves from their Jewish brothers and sisters. The Christian claim that Jesus was God Incarnate had become a “stumbling block,” in the words of Paul, for Jews who worshipped the one God who had freed them from slavery in Egypt. If God was one, Jesus could not be God and could not be worshipped as God. When the gospel of John was written, Jews and Christians were no longer worshipping together.
In time, the Christian claim that Jesus is the only Son of God as we confess in the creed, ignited efforts to rid the world of Muslim infidels during the crusades of the middle ages, mass baptisms of indigeneous peoples when Europeans discovered the “new world” in the fifteenth century and the systematic persecution and slaughter of Jews in the twentieth century. Throughout the history of the church, horrific acts of violence have been committed in the name of the good shepherd who is also the gate.
Embarrassed perhaps by this history, many Christians would prefer to believe that Christianity is pretty much like any other religion, even if that means leaving Christ out of the conversation. What’s important is believing in God and how you get there is up to you.
“The path of responsible Christology today,” writes theologian Daniel Migliore, “must surely negotiate between the extremes of exclusivism on the one hand and relativism on the other. Dialogue between Christianity and the other religions is right and necessary because a proper understanding of the biblical message demands it and the search for peace in the world requires it. The ‘finality’ of Jesus Christ, therefore, should not be understood by Christian believers as their present possession of the full truth. Jesus Christ is far greater than any Christology. The confession of Christ must therefore be expectant rather than overly defensive,”
An expectant faith, in other words, can never presume to know God fully; God will always remain “wholly other.”
We hear our gospel reading this morning in light of the recent death of Osama Bin Laden. As news of his death became public, so too did claims that Bin Laden’s death was “the will of God.” Such rhetoric is dangerous, an arrogant presumption that serves only to incite counter claims, fueling a fire that is rapidly burning out of control as Christian and Muslim extremists seek to destroy each other. These are perilous times, made more so by irresponsible theology.
In our reading this morning from the book of Acts, we learn that, following the resurrection, the disciples “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” In our baptismal covenant we promise to do the same. At baptism, we take on the responsibility to grow and to learn, to ponder the scriptures and to raise questions, to listen to the voices of those in every generation who have sought to understand our claims of faith, and to be nourished as well as challenged by the insights of one another. Faith neither presumes to know everything nor presumes nothing can be known. Faith, in the words of the eleventh century theologian Saint Anselm, “seeks understanding.”
Not long ago, I saw a poster hanging in an Episcopal church that proclaimed: “Baptism is not brainwashing.” We are not asked to simply swallow the doctrines of the church without question. We are asked to trust that the good shepherd will lead us where we need to go, even if that means challenging our most cherished beliefs about ourselves and about God. We make our confession of faith in a pluralistic world and need to be aware that what we say and what we do have the capacity to hurt as well as to heal. We follow a good shepherd who desires none of the sheep to be lost.
The gates I encountered at MCV this week all opened – I punched a button and got a ticket and the gate to the parking deck lifted up; I understood that pre-op is not a place for visitors but learned pre-op welcomed wives; I kept my passcode on the kitchen table and never needed it as I was able to be with A.G. in his room most of the week and did not need to call the nurses’ station to find out how he was doing. MCV took great care of A.G. and I brought him home on Friday.
So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep.” Gates are meant to keep us safe and to keep us, sheep that we are, from wandering around on our own, easy prey for predators. To say Jesus is the gate is not to say we are gatekeepers. God has not put us in charge and God is quite capable of furthering God’s purposes without any advice from us. What God has asked of us so far as those first disciples are concerned is that we devote ourselves “to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” Keeping that promise is not a one time event but a lifelong affair.
The paschal candle still burns in our midst and will for another four weeks. This candle reminds us that we live, as our evangelist John reminds us throughout his gospel, in a world of darkness, yearning for light. Groping in the dark is not, I suspect, how most of us would describe ourselves. We would prefer to think we are a bit more able than that. Sojourn for a while in a hospital and you come to realize just how fragile we really are - dependent, limited creatures struggling to survive in a world that is not in our control and wishing it were.
I am glad A.G. is back home and I am grateful for all the ministrations of the doctors and nurses. We have, this week, passed through another gate in our married life. One day the gate will close and will not open. Some of you have already encountered that gate. And to you I give thanks, for being in our midst, for bearing witness to your faith in spite of or maybe because of, what you have suffered.
I will tell you, though, I do not like gates and never have.
The Fifth Sunday of Easter Acts 7: 55 – 60
Sunday, May 22, 2011 I Peter 2: 2 – 10
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 14: 1 – 14
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”
John 14: 3
Since ordination I have had the distinct and delightful pleasure to celebrate two weddings. Both brides were known to me prior to ordination and so, celebrating their marriages was a special occasion for all of us.
My role during the wedding service is fairly simple: after the couple make promises to each other, I pronounce a blessing in the name of the church. I offer that blessing after I have spent time with the bride and the groom, sometimes for months before the service, ascertaining that they do indeed intend to keep those promises for the rest of their lives, aware that on the day of their wedding, they will make those promises madly in love with someone who is nothing short of perfect.
What I do at a wedding, in other words, is to offer a blessing in the name of the church, praying that God will give these two people the grace to fulfill the promises they make to one another. And the promises they make each to the other are profound as they face each other and say: “In the name of God, I take you, to be my wife or husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better and for worse, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death.”
My breath always catches when I say those words. My breath catches because I know without the grace of God, none of us can fulfill those lofty promises. My breath catches because I also know sometimes, those very same promises become, not an instrument of God’s grace, but rather a hindrance, and sometimes we need to be released from those promises by divorce.
For the church, the promises made at a wedding establish a distinctive relationship, a relationship of faithfulness and intimacy that these two people will share with no one else. These two folk are neither bound together by blood nor common interests nor chemistry, but rather by promises, promises that they make to each other without a clue as to what the future will hold. These promises are intended, in the words of The Book of Common Prayer, to bring them both mutual joy, comfort and help. As we all know, sometimes these promises do, sometimes they do not. To say, “I take you” always comes with a risk.
For the church, the union of husband and wife bears witness to the relationship between Christ and his Church, a mysterious relationship of faithfulness and intimacy, which God establishes through Christ for our joy, our comfort, and our help.
In our reading this morning from the gospel of John, Jesus is saying goodbye to the disciples on the eve of his death. The disciples are confused and puzzled and do not understand why they cannot follow where Jesus is going. And Jesus makes a promise: “I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”
“I will take you to myself.” Those are wedding words, words of promise and faithfulness. On the eve of his death, Jesus pledges himself to the disciples forever, much as a bridegroom pledges himself to his bride for the rest of his life. Jesus is making a covenant with the disciples, a covenant that sounds a lot like marriage, a covenant that not even death will dissolve.
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling-places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.” The words we hear this morning are more often heard at funerals than at weddings. These words are often spoken to give comfort to those of us who are grieving the death of someone we love. We want to know that someone we have loved and lost is now safe in God’s very spacious house.
But these words bespeak a far more breath taking vision than simply the comfort of knowing our loved ones are “in heaven.” Jesus is telling his disciples that they belong to him, now and forever, much as a man and a woman pledge that they will be with one another for the rest of their lives. In life, Jesus loved his disciples; in death, Jesus will continue to love them. Nothing the disciples can do can change that. Everything is rooted in the faithfulness of Christ. Unlike a worldly marriage, in our text this morning the one who “takes” us to himself is Christ, and Christ is pledging in this text “to have and to hold us from this day forward, for better and for worse, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish,” and not until death, but forever.
Funerals, like weddings, usually bring together people from a host of religious backgrounds and many from no tradition whatsoever. People come to funerals and weddings because they care about the bride or the groom or the person who has died or their families. People come to weddings and funerals because people care and care deeply about others. We have been created to care and to love, created in the image of a God who cares and who loves and whose love for us we have seen in a man named Jesus who healed the sick and gave sight to the blind and fed the multitudes - a love that now, Jesus says, will not be severed by his death.
Many folk will go to a wedding or a funeral but would never think to darken the doors of a church. How odd, I think. From whence comes this impulse to love? And why do we draw back when we are asked to love God, love the God who loves us no matter what, “to have and to hold from this day forward, for better and for worse, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish,” in this life and in the life to come?
Perhaps being cherished by God is just more than we can handle. Perhaps “cherished” is something we have never known and so cannot even begin to imagine. Perhaps someone sometime did cherish us but now we are feeling like that was a once in a lifetime experience, never to be repeated.
God cannot help but “cherish” us because we are God’s creations. God brought us into being and God does not make mistakes. Remember how you felt when you first fell in love; imagine God feeling that way now about you.
Jesus does not love the disciples because they are saints. The New Testament bears eloquent witness to the reality that they were not. Jesus loved the disciples because Jesus chose to do so. Jesus’ love depended upon nothing other than Jesus’ desire to love.
That love which Jesus professes so eloquently this morning was intended not to give the disciples a warm and fuzzy feeling about their worth, but to give them the assurance that they were loved and that that love was based upon God’s will not their merit. The disciples, long before Waylon Jennings, could, in other words, stop “looking for love in all the wrong places.” The disciples could, assured of Christ’s love, go out and bear fruit, the kind of fruit that we can bear when we know that nothing we can do can separate us from Christ’s love.
Sunday, May 22, 2011 I Peter 2: 2 – 10
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 14: 1 – 14
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”
John 14: 3
Since ordination I have had the distinct and delightful pleasure to celebrate two weddings. Both brides were known to me prior to ordination and so, celebrating their marriages was a special occasion for all of us.
My role during the wedding service is fairly simple: after the couple make promises to each other, I pronounce a blessing in the name of the church. I offer that blessing after I have spent time with the bride and the groom, sometimes for months before the service, ascertaining that they do indeed intend to keep those promises for the rest of their lives, aware that on the day of their wedding, they will make those promises madly in love with someone who is nothing short of perfect.
What I do at a wedding, in other words, is to offer a blessing in the name of the church, praying that God will give these two people the grace to fulfill the promises they make to one another. And the promises they make each to the other are profound as they face each other and say: “In the name of God, I take you, to be my wife or husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better and for worse, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death.”
My breath always catches when I say those words. My breath catches because I know without the grace of God, none of us can fulfill those lofty promises. My breath catches because I also know sometimes, those very same promises become, not an instrument of God’s grace, but rather a hindrance, and sometimes we need to be released from those promises by divorce.
For the church, the promises made at a wedding establish a distinctive relationship, a relationship of faithfulness and intimacy that these two people will share with no one else. These two folk are neither bound together by blood nor common interests nor chemistry, but rather by promises, promises that they make to each other without a clue as to what the future will hold. These promises are intended, in the words of The Book of Common Prayer, to bring them both mutual joy, comfort and help. As we all know, sometimes these promises do, sometimes they do not. To say, “I take you” always comes with a risk.
For the church, the union of husband and wife bears witness to the relationship between Christ and his Church, a mysterious relationship of faithfulness and intimacy, which God establishes through Christ for our joy, our comfort, and our help.
In our reading this morning from the gospel of John, Jesus is saying goodbye to the disciples on the eve of his death. The disciples are confused and puzzled and do not understand why they cannot follow where Jesus is going. And Jesus makes a promise: “I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”
“I will take you to myself.” Those are wedding words, words of promise and faithfulness. On the eve of his death, Jesus pledges himself to the disciples forever, much as a bridegroom pledges himself to his bride for the rest of his life. Jesus is making a covenant with the disciples, a covenant that sounds a lot like marriage, a covenant that not even death will dissolve.
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling-places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.” The words we hear this morning are more often heard at funerals than at weddings. These words are often spoken to give comfort to those of us who are grieving the death of someone we love. We want to know that someone we have loved and lost is now safe in God’s very spacious house.
But these words bespeak a far more breath taking vision than simply the comfort of knowing our loved ones are “in heaven.” Jesus is telling his disciples that they belong to him, now and forever, much as a man and a woman pledge that they will be with one another for the rest of their lives. In life, Jesus loved his disciples; in death, Jesus will continue to love them. Nothing the disciples can do can change that. Everything is rooted in the faithfulness of Christ. Unlike a worldly marriage, in our text this morning the one who “takes” us to himself is Christ, and Christ is pledging in this text “to have and to hold us from this day forward, for better and for worse, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish,” and not until death, but forever.
Funerals, like weddings, usually bring together people from a host of religious backgrounds and many from no tradition whatsoever. People come to funerals and weddings because they care about the bride or the groom or the person who has died or their families. People come to weddings and funerals because people care and care deeply about others. We have been created to care and to love, created in the image of a God who cares and who loves and whose love for us we have seen in a man named Jesus who healed the sick and gave sight to the blind and fed the multitudes - a love that now, Jesus says, will not be severed by his death.
Many folk will go to a wedding or a funeral but would never think to darken the doors of a church. How odd, I think. From whence comes this impulse to love? And why do we draw back when we are asked to love God, love the God who loves us no matter what, “to have and to hold from this day forward, for better and for worse, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish,” in this life and in the life to come?
Perhaps being cherished by God is just more than we can handle. Perhaps “cherished” is something we have never known and so cannot even begin to imagine. Perhaps someone sometime did cherish us but now we are feeling like that was a once in a lifetime experience, never to be repeated.
God cannot help but “cherish” us because we are God’s creations. God brought us into being and God does not make mistakes. Remember how you felt when you first fell in love; imagine God feeling that way now about you.
Jesus does not love the disciples because they are saints. The New Testament bears eloquent witness to the reality that they were not. Jesus loved the disciples because Jesus chose to do so. Jesus’ love depended upon nothing other than Jesus’ desire to love.
That love which Jesus professes so eloquently this morning was intended not to give the disciples a warm and fuzzy feeling about their worth, but to give them the assurance that they were loved and that that love was based upon God’s will not their merit. The disciples, long before Waylon Jennings, could, in other words, stop “looking for love in all the wrong places.” The disciples could, assured of Christ’s love, go out and bear fruit, the kind of fruit that we can bear when we know that nothing we can do can separate us from Christ’s love.
The Sixth Sunday of Easter Acts 17: 22 – 31
Sunday, May 29, 2011 I Peter 3: 13 – 22
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 14: 15 – 21
And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.
John 15: 16
Several weeks after my Mom died, as I have shared with some of you, I called my Dad who lived in New Jersey, to see how he was doing. “O.K.,” Dad responded to my query, “except the hot dogs are hard.” Dad loved hot dogs but Mom had always done the cooking. “How long are you cooking them?” I asked, trying to be helpful. “Cooking them?” Dad said, “I thought you just took them out of the freezer and ate them.”
When my Mom died, life changed for my Dad and for me and for my brother and sister. We all had to learn how to live in a world which no longer included my Mom. Each of us had to begin anew, negotiating the world without a person who was, for all of us, a hugely significant part of our lives.
When someone we love dies, we are thrust not only into a world of grief, but also into a strange new world, a world that no longer turns the way it used to, a world in which we must learn to do things differently, and learning new things is never easy. For sure, as the proverbial adage tells us, “life goes on,” but for those of us who have lost someone we have loved, life itself is changed and will never be quite the same again. When you lose someone you love, you must begin again and beginning again is incredibly hard.
Today is the Sixth Sunday in Easter and we have one Sunday to go before the great fifty days of Easter comes to an end and we put away the paschal candle for another year. This Sunday we hear a part of Jesus’ farewell discourse to the disciples from the gospel of John on the eve of his death. On this Sunday, we hear Jesus tell the disciples he will not leave them orphaned. Today Jesus tells the disciples that God will give them “another Advocate,” the Holy Spirit, “the Spirit of truth.” In the grief, confusion and disorientation that will follow the crucifixion, Jesus promises the disciples they will not be alone.
Our evangelist John, unlike Matthew, Mark and Luke, has a very distinctive way of speaking about the Holy Spirit. John calls the Holy Spirit an “Advocate.” The Greek word John uses is παράκλητον, a word that can mean advocate, comforter, encourager or defense attorney. The King James version of the Bible translates the word simply as “comforter” which misses much of the meaning. Worse, I suppose, is to call what John is speaking of, a “ghost.”
The church has not always known what to do with our text this morning. Jesus seems to be saying that after his death, the disciples will come to know a different sort of presence, not Jesus in the flesh, but like Jesus, the real presence of God. This Spirit will bring comfort and encouragement to the disciples following Jesus’ death as well as advocate for them much as an attorney does for their client in court.
As the church sought to craft a common confession of faith in the centuries following the death and resurrection of Christ, the last claim to be made was the claim that the Holy Spirit was “the Lord and giver of life” “who with the Father and the Son” “is worshipped and glorified.” Not everyone in the church believed that this “Spirit” was divine in the way we say Jesus is divine. Finally, in 381 A.D., at a council in Constantinople, the Nicene Creed became the sole confession of faith, affirming the full divinity of the Spirit.
But the Creed did little to end the church’s perplexity about the ways and work of this Holy Spirit. Throughout the history of the church, movements have sprung up claiming to be empowered by the Holy Spirit, acting upon an authority outside the bounds of the institutional church. In the twelfth century, Peter Waldo, a rich merchant in France, became convicted he was to live a life of poverty and preaching, and was subsequently condemned by the church for preaching without permission.
Suspicions around the work of the Holy Spirit have not come to an end. I can remember my Episcopalian grandmother labeling some Christians as “Holy Rollers,” distancing herself from what she viewed as undignified displays of religious fervor. And I suspect many of us here today would be less than comfortable with the style of worship in a Pentecostal church.
And, yet, after centuries of suspicion regarding the Holy Spirit, even we Episcopalians are beginning to re-appreciate the significance of the Spirit and the spiritual life which begins by coming to church but certainly does not end when we leave. Recently, the diocese has changed the process required for ordination to the priesthood or the diaconate, asking seekers to those orders to spend time in a period of “spiritual discernment” before any papers are filed or psychological evaluations are made. The diocesan hope is to take seriously the power of the Holy Spirit and to create a space in which a seeker might hear more clearly what God would have them do before they embark on a particular path.
Spiritual discernment, though perhaps new to us Episcopalians, is an ancient practice of sifting through the many spirits which seek our allegiance, seeking the Spirit of God and God’s will for us. Discernment can be practiced by anyone either individually or with a small group of companions. When I was growing up, no one ever spoke of such a thing – decisions were made generally based upon cultural expectations and rarely with a sense that God might have something to say about what we do or do not do.
And “discernment” is not the only way we Episcopalians are trying to get in touch with the Spirit. Long a denomination that expended much effort in educating our youth, we are now appreciating that adults need to spend time studying the Bible. We also are recognizing the importance of retreats, time spent away from our normal routines, time to ponder, to pray and to reflect. We are, slowly and sometimes painstakingly, learning from our more charismatic brothers and sisters, that the Spirit of God is an active presence in this world and in our lives. Oh, for sure, we are a long way from fainting in the aisles, but we are beginning to recover some sense of the Spirit and our capacity to discern this Spirit’s presence. We are, in others words, acknowledging the power of the Holy Spirit to shape us and to lead us, in ways we cannot always predict nor “institutionalize.”
The Holy Spirit is, in the words of the catechism in the back of The Book of Common Prayer, “God at work in the world.” To confess faith in the Holy Spirit is to trust that amidst all the many powers at work both within the world and in us, God is acting to complete God’s purposes in God’s own way. We cannot presume to know in advance God’s plans and God is clearly not bound by any conventions we might have for determining what is and what is not “of God.” By the power of the Holy Spirit we are baptized into God’s life; God is not baptized into ours.
The work of the Holy Spirit is to re-present Christ to us, to enable us to see Christ in our midst. This may happen, and I hope it does, on Sunday mornings in church, but it also is just as likely to happen in a hospital or a courtroom or a homeless shelter. God is quite free to reveal Godself wherever God chooses to do so.
For our part, we can trust that God does indeed reveal Godself to us or simply believe all this talk of God’s Spirit is little more than magical thinking, snake oil to placate the pious few. We can get up in the morning and wonder where and how or even, if, we will meet the face of God as we have seen that face in Christ or we can get up and hope that we will get done during the day everything we want to get done and if the day goes badly, ask God to fix those things that went wrong. We can, in other words, be alert and attentive to God’s presence “at all times and in all places” or simply hope that God will bail us out when we find ourselves in a mess.
God is, always and everywhere, and we have been given the capacity as human beings to discern God’s presence in a world that often feels Godless. And this great gift that we have been given to discern God’s presence, however haltingly and awkwardly, is not meant to turn us into “spiritual gurus” but rather is meant to bear witness to the world that indeed God does love the world and is at work, even now, to bring all things and all of us, round right.
Sunday, May 29, 2011 I Peter 3: 13 – 22
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 14: 15 – 21
And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.
John 15: 16
Several weeks after my Mom died, as I have shared with some of you, I called my Dad who lived in New Jersey, to see how he was doing. “O.K.,” Dad responded to my query, “except the hot dogs are hard.” Dad loved hot dogs but Mom had always done the cooking. “How long are you cooking them?” I asked, trying to be helpful. “Cooking them?” Dad said, “I thought you just took them out of the freezer and ate them.”
When my Mom died, life changed for my Dad and for me and for my brother and sister. We all had to learn how to live in a world which no longer included my Mom. Each of us had to begin anew, negotiating the world without a person who was, for all of us, a hugely significant part of our lives.
When someone we love dies, we are thrust not only into a world of grief, but also into a strange new world, a world that no longer turns the way it used to, a world in which we must learn to do things differently, and learning new things is never easy. For sure, as the proverbial adage tells us, “life goes on,” but for those of us who have lost someone we have loved, life itself is changed and will never be quite the same again. When you lose someone you love, you must begin again and beginning again is incredibly hard.
Today is the Sixth Sunday in Easter and we have one Sunday to go before the great fifty days of Easter comes to an end and we put away the paschal candle for another year. This Sunday we hear a part of Jesus’ farewell discourse to the disciples from the gospel of John on the eve of his death. On this Sunday, we hear Jesus tell the disciples he will not leave them orphaned. Today Jesus tells the disciples that God will give them “another Advocate,” the Holy Spirit, “the Spirit of truth.” In the grief, confusion and disorientation that will follow the crucifixion, Jesus promises the disciples they will not be alone.
Our evangelist John, unlike Matthew, Mark and Luke, has a very distinctive way of speaking about the Holy Spirit. John calls the Holy Spirit an “Advocate.” The Greek word John uses is παράκλητον, a word that can mean advocate, comforter, encourager or defense attorney. The King James version of the Bible translates the word simply as “comforter” which misses much of the meaning. Worse, I suppose, is to call what John is speaking of, a “ghost.”
The church has not always known what to do with our text this morning. Jesus seems to be saying that after his death, the disciples will come to know a different sort of presence, not Jesus in the flesh, but like Jesus, the real presence of God. This Spirit will bring comfort and encouragement to the disciples following Jesus’ death as well as advocate for them much as an attorney does for their client in court.
As the church sought to craft a common confession of faith in the centuries following the death and resurrection of Christ, the last claim to be made was the claim that the Holy Spirit was “the Lord and giver of life” “who with the Father and the Son” “is worshipped and glorified.” Not everyone in the church believed that this “Spirit” was divine in the way we say Jesus is divine. Finally, in 381 A.D., at a council in Constantinople, the Nicene Creed became the sole confession of faith, affirming the full divinity of the Spirit.
But the Creed did little to end the church’s perplexity about the ways and work of this Holy Spirit. Throughout the history of the church, movements have sprung up claiming to be empowered by the Holy Spirit, acting upon an authority outside the bounds of the institutional church. In the twelfth century, Peter Waldo, a rich merchant in France, became convicted he was to live a life of poverty and preaching, and was subsequently condemned by the church for preaching without permission.
Suspicions around the work of the Holy Spirit have not come to an end. I can remember my Episcopalian grandmother labeling some Christians as “Holy Rollers,” distancing herself from what she viewed as undignified displays of religious fervor. And I suspect many of us here today would be less than comfortable with the style of worship in a Pentecostal church.
And, yet, after centuries of suspicion regarding the Holy Spirit, even we Episcopalians are beginning to re-appreciate the significance of the Spirit and the spiritual life which begins by coming to church but certainly does not end when we leave. Recently, the diocese has changed the process required for ordination to the priesthood or the diaconate, asking seekers to those orders to spend time in a period of “spiritual discernment” before any papers are filed or psychological evaluations are made. The diocesan hope is to take seriously the power of the Holy Spirit and to create a space in which a seeker might hear more clearly what God would have them do before they embark on a particular path.
Spiritual discernment, though perhaps new to us Episcopalians, is an ancient practice of sifting through the many spirits which seek our allegiance, seeking the Spirit of God and God’s will for us. Discernment can be practiced by anyone either individually or with a small group of companions. When I was growing up, no one ever spoke of such a thing – decisions were made generally based upon cultural expectations and rarely with a sense that God might have something to say about what we do or do not do.
And “discernment” is not the only way we Episcopalians are trying to get in touch with the Spirit. Long a denomination that expended much effort in educating our youth, we are now appreciating that adults need to spend time studying the Bible. We also are recognizing the importance of retreats, time spent away from our normal routines, time to ponder, to pray and to reflect. We are, slowly and sometimes painstakingly, learning from our more charismatic brothers and sisters, that the Spirit of God is an active presence in this world and in our lives. Oh, for sure, we are a long way from fainting in the aisles, but we are beginning to recover some sense of the Spirit and our capacity to discern this Spirit’s presence. We are, in others words, acknowledging the power of the Holy Spirit to shape us and to lead us, in ways we cannot always predict nor “institutionalize.”
The Holy Spirit is, in the words of the catechism in the back of The Book of Common Prayer, “God at work in the world.” To confess faith in the Holy Spirit is to trust that amidst all the many powers at work both within the world and in us, God is acting to complete God’s purposes in God’s own way. We cannot presume to know in advance God’s plans and God is clearly not bound by any conventions we might have for determining what is and what is not “of God.” By the power of the Holy Spirit we are baptized into God’s life; God is not baptized into ours.
The work of the Holy Spirit is to re-present Christ to us, to enable us to see Christ in our midst. This may happen, and I hope it does, on Sunday mornings in church, but it also is just as likely to happen in a hospital or a courtroom or a homeless shelter. God is quite free to reveal Godself wherever God chooses to do so.
For our part, we can trust that God does indeed reveal Godself to us or simply believe all this talk of God’s Spirit is little more than magical thinking, snake oil to placate the pious few. We can get up in the morning and wonder where and how or even, if, we will meet the face of God as we have seen that face in Christ or we can get up and hope that we will get done during the day everything we want to get done and if the day goes badly, ask God to fix those things that went wrong. We can, in other words, be alert and attentive to God’s presence “at all times and in all places” or simply hope that God will bail us out when we find ourselves in a mess.
God is, always and everywhere, and we have been given the capacity as human beings to discern God’s presence in a world that often feels Godless. And this great gift that we have been given to discern God’s presence, however haltingly and awkwardly, is not meant to turn us into “spiritual gurus” but rather is meant to bear witness to the world that indeed God does love the world and is at work, even now, to bring all things and all of us, round right.
