The Fifth Sunday of Easter Acts 8: 26 – 40
Sunday, May 6, 2012 I John 4: 7 – 21
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 15: 1 – 8
“I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.”
John 15: 5
Today we celebrate St. Asaph’s Day, remembering our patron saint for whom this parish is named. St. Asaph does not appear on the calendar of saints in The Book of Common Prayer and has no “official” feast day in the Episcopal Church. We remember St. Asaph on the first Sunday in May in keeping with our Catholic brothers and sisters who celebrate the feast of St. Asaph on May 1. We do not know a whole lot about St. Asaph but what we do know is that Asaph was a bishop in Wales in the sixth century and the abott of a monastery.
Tradition holds that Asaph was a disciple of another saint, St. Kentigern when Kentigern was in exile in Wales. To be a disciple of a man in exile strikes me as a daring act and I like to think that St. Asaph was following in the footsteps of others who throughout the early centuries of the church were moved to live out their lives in some fairly unconventional ways.
What we also know is that Asaph lived at the beginning of what historians call the Dark Ages, a period of time lasting a thousand years following the fall of the Roman Empire when Europe was plunged into chaos. The intellectual and scientific achievements of Roman civilization were lost as barbaric tribes moved through Europe. As the great cities of Europe fell apart, monasteries became centers of learning and study, keeping alive the remnants of western civilization. Asaph was, therefore, not only a man of prayer but a scholar, one of many who kept alive the accomplishments of human civilization when the rest of the world was plunged into darkness.
In the sixth century, Saint Asaph had not a clue that the world was round or that western civilization would once again flourish or that the church would split nine hundred years later into the church Catholic and the church Protestant. Saint Asaph simply “abided” in his faith, learning from an exile, living in a monastery, saying his prayers and encouraging others to read and to write and to study. We, who are here this morning, are the fruit of the life and ministry of St. Asaph.
In our gospel reading this morning, Jesus tells his disciples: “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.” This morning our evangelist John uses the metaphor of a grapevine to say something about who we are as “the church.” The church is the vineyard of God, John tells us, meant to bring forth fruit.
I have never grown grapes and when I asked at our community supper this past Wednesday if others had, I learned that grapes do not simply just happen but must be cultivated with care. Indeed, if you leave a grapevine to do its own thing, the vine eventually will die, choked by its own growth. Branches need to be pruned and trained in order to produce grapes. Without a vine grower, in other words, to cultivate the vine, grapes will not come to pass.
What this means for us as the church is that whatever fruit we might wish to bring forth, we are ultimately dependent upon the grace of God. We can have the most inspiring worship this side of heaven, the most successful fundraising program in the diocese, and the wisest of vestries, but will not, thereby bring forth fruit absent God’s blessing. The fact, in other words, in the words of Thomas Merton, “that we think we are following God’s will does not mean we are actually doing so,” and we must depend upon God to guide us and prune us where God will. We can, therefore, risk making mistakes in our common life, because at the end of the day God, not any one of us, is responsible for whatever fruit comes forth. The church, at all times and in all places, is always the church of God and never “our” church.
And we are, not only dependent upon God to bring forth fruit through us, but also remain alive only as we abide on the vine. The vine is what gives life to the branches. Life, for our evangelist John is not what we have as creatures born with beating hearts, but rather what we receive from our relationship with Christ in communion with others. Relationships, not biology, bring us to life. We have life only as we abide as branches on the vine.
The cultivation of grape vines does not seem to be an especially mysterious activity. Folk have been growing and enjoying grapes for millennia. No one hearing Jesus use the metaphor of a grapevine would have any trouble understanding how grapes come to be. But when it comes to comparing who we are as “the church” to a grape vine, we encounter a number of assumptions we often make about the church that are challenged by this image of the church as God’s vineyard.
We assume that we are individuals who choose to go to church or not as we will. The church is a voluntary organization not unlike any other organization we might choose to join. In the words of theologian Daniel Migliore, “Being a Christian is an individual matter and is not essentially bound to life with others.” We are, we assume, not branches who must abide on a vine in order to live but rather have a life which we can choose to share with others or not as we so please.
Secondly, we often assume that religion is a private affair and that the church exists to meet our needs. That the purpose of this great adventure is to bring forth fruit for the world is sometimes lost to us as we seek to create a place where we can find comfort and solace away from the struggles and hard questions that are a part of the world in which we live. We can privilege our desire for comfort and peace over God’s desire to bring forth fruit.
“Life is messy,” a seminary professor once said and life in the church can be exceedingly so. Drawn together by God, bound together not by choice but by the grace of God, and called to live into the truth of the resurrection, is not for the faint of heart. I have often thought that the best argument for the existence of God is the church – no one but God could keep the church alive. Left to our own devices, the church would have died long ago.
But amazingly the church has abided, in spite of schism and controversy, good leaders and not so good leaders, wranglings over prayer books and vestments and what exactly happens to the bread and the wine when I say the words of consecration. At times, the church has forgotten that we are dependent upon God and not we ourselves. At times the church has resisted being bound to others called out and chosen by God and who may or may not be, like us.
We are, this day reminded that we are but branches dependent for our very life upon the vine that is Christ and subject to pruning toward the end that good grapes may come. That good will come of our life together is God’s promise to us but not beyond whatever pruning God chooses to do. We may need to be pruned of our fear that what we do or do not do will make or break our common life. We may need to be pruned of our desire that the church will stay the same throughout all ages. The vineyard of God is a living and growing organic reality and is not a static unchanging phenomenon. We may need to pruned of our desire that the church will always be a place of peace – producing grapes requires some blood, sweat and tears – not exactly a Calgon bath or a get-away vacation.
As we remember Saint Asaph this day and this image of the church as God’s vineyard, I trust we will be encouraged as we seek to live out a common life together. Saint Asaph could never have known how the world would turn. Saint Asaph knew of course, that the world was changing, and that life as he knew it was coming to an end. The great empire of Rome and all of Rome’s great cities were vanishing. Roads and aqueducts and the philosophy of Plato were all being destroyed and lost. The greatest civilization on earth was coming to an end.
And in the midst of all that some folk like Asaph preserved a seed having no idea how or if or when that seed would bear fruit. Asaph and other monastics copied manuscripts, studied the writings of the apostles, prayed together and, in the words of our text this morning, “abided.” A thousand years later, from the monastic communities would come hospitals (places of hospitality) and universities (communities of learning).
Asaph knew nothing about what would come to pass. Asaph did not do what he did because he knew that one day hospitals and universities would be as common place as vineyards. Asaph simply did what he believed God was calling him to do. That what Asaph did and others like him, preserved the history of western civilization which would be bequeathed to us a thousand years later was not anything Asaph could know. Asaph simply abided, fulfilling the promise we all make in our baptismal liturgy “to continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in the prayers.” Asaph “abided” and because Asaph, among others, “abided,” you and I enjoy a code of law, a tradition of public education and the institution of hospitals.
It is perhaps too much to say that all of this came about because Asaph said his prayers. But had Asaph and others not believed that God had raised Jesus from the dead and could do the impossible, if Asaph and others had quietly dismissed the writings of the apostles as nonsense, I daresay, our life would look a bit different than it does now. As it is, I am glad and grateful for folk like Saint Asaph. And I trust that we who follow in Asaph’s footsteps will, by the grace of God, abide so that the vineyard of God will continue to bear fruit.
Sunday, May 6, 2012 I John 4: 7 – 21
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 15: 1 – 8
“I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.”
John 15: 5
Today we celebrate St. Asaph’s Day, remembering our patron saint for whom this parish is named. St. Asaph does not appear on the calendar of saints in The Book of Common Prayer and has no “official” feast day in the Episcopal Church. We remember St. Asaph on the first Sunday in May in keeping with our Catholic brothers and sisters who celebrate the feast of St. Asaph on May 1. We do not know a whole lot about St. Asaph but what we do know is that Asaph was a bishop in Wales in the sixth century and the abott of a monastery.
Tradition holds that Asaph was a disciple of another saint, St. Kentigern when Kentigern was in exile in Wales. To be a disciple of a man in exile strikes me as a daring act and I like to think that St. Asaph was following in the footsteps of others who throughout the early centuries of the church were moved to live out their lives in some fairly unconventional ways.
What we also know is that Asaph lived at the beginning of what historians call the Dark Ages, a period of time lasting a thousand years following the fall of the Roman Empire when Europe was plunged into chaos. The intellectual and scientific achievements of Roman civilization were lost as barbaric tribes moved through Europe. As the great cities of Europe fell apart, monasteries became centers of learning and study, keeping alive the remnants of western civilization. Asaph was, therefore, not only a man of prayer but a scholar, one of many who kept alive the accomplishments of human civilization when the rest of the world was plunged into darkness.
In the sixth century, Saint Asaph had not a clue that the world was round or that western civilization would once again flourish or that the church would split nine hundred years later into the church Catholic and the church Protestant. Saint Asaph simply “abided” in his faith, learning from an exile, living in a monastery, saying his prayers and encouraging others to read and to write and to study. We, who are here this morning, are the fruit of the life and ministry of St. Asaph.
In our gospel reading this morning, Jesus tells his disciples: “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.” This morning our evangelist John uses the metaphor of a grapevine to say something about who we are as “the church.” The church is the vineyard of God, John tells us, meant to bring forth fruit.
I have never grown grapes and when I asked at our community supper this past Wednesday if others had, I learned that grapes do not simply just happen but must be cultivated with care. Indeed, if you leave a grapevine to do its own thing, the vine eventually will die, choked by its own growth. Branches need to be pruned and trained in order to produce grapes. Without a vine grower, in other words, to cultivate the vine, grapes will not come to pass.
What this means for us as the church is that whatever fruit we might wish to bring forth, we are ultimately dependent upon the grace of God. We can have the most inspiring worship this side of heaven, the most successful fundraising program in the diocese, and the wisest of vestries, but will not, thereby bring forth fruit absent God’s blessing. The fact, in other words, in the words of Thomas Merton, “that we think we are following God’s will does not mean we are actually doing so,” and we must depend upon God to guide us and prune us where God will. We can, therefore, risk making mistakes in our common life, because at the end of the day God, not any one of us, is responsible for whatever fruit comes forth. The church, at all times and in all places, is always the church of God and never “our” church.
And we are, not only dependent upon God to bring forth fruit through us, but also remain alive only as we abide on the vine. The vine is what gives life to the branches. Life, for our evangelist John is not what we have as creatures born with beating hearts, but rather what we receive from our relationship with Christ in communion with others. Relationships, not biology, bring us to life. We have life only as we abide as branches on the vine.
The cultivation of grape vines does not seem to be an especially mysterious activity. Folk have been growing and enjoying grapes for millennia. No one hearing Jesus use the metaphor of a grapevine would have any trouble understanding how grapes come to be. But when it comes to comparing who we are as “the church” to a grape vine, we encounter a number of assumptions we often make about the church that are challenged by this image of the church as God’s vineyard.
We assume that we are individuals who choose to go to church or not as we will. The church is a voluntary organization not unlike any other organization we might choose to join. In the words of theologian Daniel Migliore, “Being a Christian is an individual matter and is not essentially bound to life with others.” We are, we assume, not branches who must abide on a vine in order to live but rather have a life which we can choose to share with others or not as we so please.
Secondly, we often assume that religion is a private affair and that the church exists to meet our needs. That the purpose of this great adventure is to bring forth fruit for the world is sometimes lost to us as we seek to create a place where we can find comfort and solace away from the struggles and hard questions that are a part of the world in which we live. We can privilege our desire for comfort and peace over God’s desire to bring forth fruit.
“Life is messy,” a seminary professor once said and life in the church can be exceedingly so. Drawn together by God, bound together not by choice but by the grace of God, and called to live into the truth of the resurrection, is not for the faint of heart. I have often thought that the best argument for the existence of God is the church – no one but God could keep the church alive. Left to our own devices, the church would have died long ago.
But amazingly the church has abided, in spite of schism and controversy, good leaders and not so good leaders, wranglings over prayer books and vestments and what exactly happens to the bread and the wine when I say the words of consecration. At times, the church has forgotten that we are dependent upon God and not we ourselves. At times the church has resisted being bound to others called out and chosen by God and who may or may not be, like us.
We are, this day reminded that we are but branches dependent for our very life upon the vine that is Christ and subject to pruning toward the end that good grapes may come. That good will come of our life together is God’s promise to us but not beyond whatever pruning God chooses to do. We may need to be pruned of our fear that what we do or do not do will make or break our common life. We may need to be pruned of our desire that the church will stay the same throughout all ages. The vineyard of God is a living and growing organic reality and is not a static unchanging phenomenon. We may need to pruned of our desire that the church will always be a place of peace – producing grapes requires some blood, sweat and tears – not exactly a Calgon bath or a get-away vacation.
As we remember Saint Asaph this day and this image of the church as God’s vineyard, I trust we will be encouraged as we seek to live out a common life together. Saint Asaph could never have known how the world would turn. Saint Asaph knew of course, that the world was changing, and that life as he knew it was coming to an end. The great empire of Rome and all of Rome’s great cities were vanishing. Roads and aqueducts and the philosophy of Plato were all being destroyed and lost. The greatest civilization on earth was coming to an end.
And in the midst of all that some folk like Asaph preserved a seed having no idea how or if or when that seed would bear fruit. Asaph and other monastics copied manuscripts, studied the writings of the apostles, prayed together and, in the words of our text this morning, “abided.” A thousand years later, from the monastic communities would come hospitals (places of hospitality) and universities (communities of learning).
Asaph knew nothing about what would come to pass. Asaph did not do what he did because he knew that one day hospitals and universities would be as common place as vineyards. Asaph simply did what he believed God was calling him to do. That what Asaph did and others like him, preserved the history of western civilization which would be bequeathed to us a thousand years later was not anything Asaph could know. Asaph simply abided, fulfilling the promise we all make in our baptismal liturgy “to continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in the prayers.” Asaph “abided” and because Asaph, among others, “abided,” you and I enjoy a code of law, a tradition of public education and the institution of hospitals.
It is perhaps too much to say that all of this came about because Asaph said his prayers. But had Asaph and others not believed that God had raised Jesus from the dead and could do the impossible, if Asaph and others had quietly dismissed the writings of the apostles as nonsense, I daresay, our life would look a bit different than it does now. As it is, I am glad and grateful for folk like Saint Asaph. And I trust that we who follow in Asaph’s footsteps will, by the grace of God, abide so that the vineyard of God will continue to bear fruit.
The Sixth Sunday of Easter Acts 10: 44 – 48
Sunday, May 13, 2012 I John 5: 1 – 6
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 15: 9 – 17
“I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”
John 15: 11
“This spring, escape from the doldrums of the every day with a memorable mountain adventure to Asheville,” reads the Official North Carolina Tourism website. “Let Asheville transport you to an unexpected world of natural beauty and lively mountain culture,” the advertisement continues. Surrounded by the beauty of the Blue Ridge mountains, Asheville, North Carolina, is home to the magnificent Biltmore Estate, a 250 room home built by George Vanderbilt between 1889 and 1895, the largest privately owned home in the United States.
Recently, though, Ashville achieved another distinction when NBC News named Ashville, “America’s New Age Mecca.” More than a tourist destination, Ashville is seen by some to be a door into a world beyond this world of flesh and blood, pain and grief, leading one New Age devotee to write:
Heading southwest on Interstate 40, I "felt it" about 20 miles northeast of Asheville, as I approached Black Mountain, and I felt it again around Waynesville, and Maggie Valley, about 40 miles to the southwest...it's a feeling of lightness and love that seems to permeate the physical body. I felt like crying...like I had come home. Mystics say these are the vortex entrance portals.
The desire to find such “lightness and love” is nothing new, although “vortex entrance portals” may be the latest way to describe how to do so. For thousands of years, human beings have sought to find a way to escape the reality that we live in a world that is not always loving and kind. The “portals” of Asheville, North Carolina, is perhaps the newest, but certainly not the first, way folk have sought to lift themselves out of this world and into another way of being, a way of being that is full of light and love and peace with none of the ugliness that infects the world in which we live.
The spirituality of the New Age is a spirituality with roots that go way back and is marked by a belief that some are given a special revelation or knowledge that will free them from the drudgery of life as we know it. Find the portal – which may be a mountain or a crystal – and you will find true joy.
In the history of Christianity, some found what we might describe as such a portal in the gospel of John, the gospel we have been reading during this Easter season. In the gospel of John, Jesus is the divine Son of God sent by God into this world to be the “way, the truth and the life.” Jesus’ divinity is emphasized in the gospel of John, whereas in the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, we encounter a very human Jesus who was born of a woman and who lived and died as one of us. The Jesus of John’s gospel is not born but is rather “sent” into the world, a world that is dark into which Jesus comes as the light.
The gospel of John was the last gospel to be written and once written, fueled interpretations of Christianity that the church would later pronounce as heresy. John’s gospel led some to say that Jesus was not really human but only appeared to be human and did not really suffer death and die. Jesus was “the way” out of this world of darkness and pain and suffering, a divine teacher sent to reveal secret knowledge about God. Jesus was the divine light who enabled others to become enlightened, to be released from this world of flesh and blood into a spiritual world of light and peace.
Such interpretations missed the essential truth about the Christian proclamation – we cannot escape this world of suffering and death but suffering and death will not have the last word. And that is the joy that Jesus shares with this disciples this morning in our gospel reading. “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” The joy that is promised to us is not an escape from the angst of life in this world but rather the assurance that through the suffering that will inevitably come, God will bring forth life.
This joy that Jesus desires for his disciples comes through loving one another. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” And the way Jesus loves his disciples is by dying for them. “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Out of love, Jesus pours out his life, gives up his life on the cross. The joy Jesus wishes for his disciples is the joy that comes by way of the cross.
Loving one another, in other words, will lead us right into the heart of darkness, to the cross, as we bear one another’s burdens which sometimes means watching those we love suffer. Loving one another will lead us into all joy but will not spare us from suffering and pain. The way to joy leads to the cross and the only way to escape that truth is to choose not to love.
You and I live in a culture that abhors pain and wishes to avoid as much suffering as possible. And even in the church, we sometimes hear a message that suggests our faith will spare us from the trials and tribulations of this world. Pray hard enough and you can win the lottery or cure your cancer. And if prayer doesn’t work maybe you can find a vortex entrance portal. No one chooses to suffer and there will always be folk who will offer us ways to escape.
Jesus is not an escape route and prayer is not magic. Jesus is the truth of who we were created to be – finite, limited and dependent creatures called to love God and one another with all that we have and all that we are, not withholding ourselves from others for fear we might suffer loss and grief, but offering ourselves freely toward the end that all might come to know the glory of God.
At the heart of John’s gospel is a revelation, the revelation that the glory of God is self-giving love. On the cross, Jesus reveals a love so profound that he offers up his very life to this God he calls “Father.” Withholding nothing, not even his life, Jesus returns all that he has been given by God, an act of love in response to the love of his Father who sent his Son into the world so that the world might know God.
Self-giving love and not vortex entrance portals or crystals or tarot cards is the way we come to know God. And, in this world, when we love in that way, we will not be spared anguish and grief – indeed, we will discover more grief than we know what to do with, sending us back to God trusting in His mercy.
Love in the gospel of John is not a warm and fuzzy feeling but a very real and costly sacrifice. That “feeling of lightness and love that seems to permeate the physical body” which engulfed our New Age devotee on his way to Asheville, making him feel like crying...like I had come home” is about as far removed from the message of John’s gospel as is the planet earth from the nearest star. Helping us to feel good is not why John wrote his gospel. John wrote his gospel that we might believe, to trust, that the way of Jesus, the way of self-giving love is the way and the will of God.
I, like all of you, would love to feel good all the time. I would love to wake up each morning knowing “all’s right with the world.” Some mornings, I do; other mornings, I do not. Some mornings I wake up and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that all is not right with the world, at least the part of the world that I can see. On those days, yes, I would like to find the nearest vortex entrance portal or whatever will allow me to escape. What I want is for God to do things my way and my way would be to make this world always lovely, never painful, always ablaze with sunshine and never shadowed by darkness.
Unfortunately, God has yet to ask for my help in ordering this world. What God has asked me to do is to love others and to pray that God’s will and not mine be done. And that may be harder than trying to find the nearest vortex entrance portal. That means that I must “abide” in God’s love - endure might be a better word. That means that on those days and in those times when all is not right, I need to trust that God has not fallen asleep at the switch but that even in the midst of perfectly dreadful circumstances, God is still loving me and the whole world into life.
One of these days A.G. and I just might take a trip to Asheville. We love the mountains and I hear the Biltmore is a sight to behold. And when we do, I will let you know what happens on Interstate 40.
Sunday, May 13, 2012 I John 5: 1 – 6
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 15: 9 – 17
“I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”
John 15: 11
“This spring, escape from the doldrums of the every day with a memorable mountain adventure to Asheville,” reads the Official North Carolina Tourism website. “Let Asheville transport you to an unexpected world of natural beauty and lively mountain culture,” the advertisement continues. Surrounded by the beauty of the Blue Ridge mountains, Asheville, North Carolina, is home to the magnificent Biltmore Estate, a 250 room home built by George Vanderbilt between 1889 and 1895, the largest privately owned home in the United States.
Recently, though, Ashville achieved another distinction when NBC News named Ashville, “America’s New Age Mecca.” More than a tourist destination, Ashville is seen by some to be a door into a world beyond this world of flesh and blood, pain and grief, leading one New Age devotee to write:
Heading southwest on Interstate 40, I "felt it" about 20 miles northeast of Asheville, as I approached Black Mountain, and I felt it again around Waynesville, and Maggie Valley, about 40 miles to the southwest...it's a feeling of lightness and love that seems to permeate the physical body. I felt like crying...like I had come home. Mystics say these are the vortex entrance portals.
The desire to find such “lightness and love” is nothing new, although “vortex entrance portals” may be the latest way to describe how to do so. For thousands of years, human beings have sought to find a way to escape the reality that we live in a world that is not always loving and kind. The “portals” of Asheville, North Carolina, is perhaps the newest, but certainly not the first, way folk have sought to lift themselves out of this world and into another way of being, a way of being that is full of light and love and peace with none of the ugliness that infects the world in which we live.
The spirituality of the New Age is a spirituality with roots that go way back and is marked by a belief that some are given a special revelation or knowledge that will free them from the drudgery of life as we know it. Find the portal – which may be a mountain or a crystal – and you will find true joy.
In the history of Christianity, some found what we might describe as such a portal in the gospel of John, the gospel we have been reading during this Easter season. In the gospel of John, Jesus is the divine Son of God sent by God into this world to be the “way, the truth and the life.” Jesus’ divinity is emphasized in the gospel of John, whereas in the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, we encounter a very human Jesus who was born of a woman and who lived and died as one of us. The Jesus of John’s gospel is not born but is rather “sent” into the world, a world that is dark into which Jesus comes as the light.
The gospel of John was the last gospel to be written and once written, fueled interpretations of Christianity that the church would later pronounce as heresy. John’s gospel led some to say that Jesus was not really human but only appeared to be human and did not really suffer death and die. Jesus was “the way” out of this world of darkness and pain and suffering, a divine teacher sent to reveal secret knowledge about God. Jesus was the divine light who enabled others to become enlightened, to be released from this world of flesh and blood into a spiritual world of light and peace.
Such interpretations missed the essential truth about the Christian proclamation – we cannot escape this world of suffering and death but suffering and death will not have the last word. And that is the joy that Jesus shares with this disciples this morning in our gospel reading. “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” The joy that is promised to us is not an escape from the angst of life in this world but rather the assurance that through the suffering that will inevitably come, God will bring forth life.
This joy that Jesus desires for his disciples comes through loving one another. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” And the way Jesus loves his disciples is by dying for them. “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Out of love, Jesus pours out his life, gives up his life on the cross. The joy Jesus wishes for his disciples is the joy that comes by way of the cross.
Loving one another, in other words, will lead us right into the heart of darkness, to the cross, as we bear one another’s burdens which sometimes means watching those we love suffer. Loving one another will lead us into all joy but will not spare us from suffering and pain. The way to joy leads to the cross and the only way to escape that truth is to choose not to love.
You and I live in a culture that abhors pain and wishes to avoid as much suffering as possible. And even in the church, we sometimes hear a message that suggests our faith will spare us from the trials and tribulations of this world. Pray hard enough and you can win the lottery or cure your cancer. And if prayer doesn’t work maybe you can find a vortex entrance portal. No one chooses to suffer and there will always be folk who will offer us ways to escape.
Jesus is not an escape route and prayer is not magic. Jesus is the truth of who we were created to be – finite, limited and dependent creatures called to love God and one another with all that we have and all that we are, not withholding ourselves from others for fear we might suffer loss and grief, but offering ourselves freely toward the end that all might come to know the glory of God.
At the heart of John’s gospel is a revelation, the revelation that the glory of God is self-giving love. On the cross, Jesus reveals a love so profound that he offers up his very life to this God he calls “Father.” Withholding nothing, not even his life, Jesus returns all that he has been given by God, an act of love in response to the love of his Father who sent his Son into the world so that the world might know God.
Self-giving love and not vortex entrance portals or crystals or tarot cards is the way we come to know God. And, in this world, when we love in that way, we will not be spared anguish and grief – indeed, we will discover more grief than we know what to do with, sending us back to God trusting in His mercy.
Love in the gospel of John is not a warm and fuzzy feeling but a very real and costly sacrifice. That “feeling of lightness and love that seems to permeate the physical body” which engulfed our New Age devotee on his way to Asheville, making him feel like crying...like I had come home” is about as far removed from the message of John’s gospel as is the planet earth from the nearest star. Helping us to feel good is not why John wrote his gospel. John wrote his gospel that we might believe, to trust, that the way of Jesus, the way of self-giving love is the way and the will of God.
I, like all of you, would love to feel good all the time. I would love to wake up each morning knowing “all’s right with the world.” Some mornings, I do; other mornings, I do not. Some mornings I wake up and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that all is not right with the world, at least the part of the world that I can see. On those days, yes, I would like to find the nearest vortex entrance portal or whatever will allow me to escape. What I want is for God to do things my way and my way would be to make this world always lovely, never painful, always ablaze with sunshine and never shadowed by darkness.
Unfortunately, God has yet to ask for my help in ordering this world. What God has asked me to do is to love others and to pray that God’s will and not mine be done. And that may be harder than trying to find the nearest vortex entrance portal. That means that I must “abide” in God’s love - endure might be a better word. That means that on those days and in those times when all is not right, I need to trust that God has not fallen asleep at the switch but that even in the midst of perfectly dreadful circumstances, God is still loving me and the whole world into life.
One of these days A.G. and I just might take a trip to Asheville. We love the mountains and I hear the Biltmore is a sight to behold. And when we do, I will let you know what happens on Interstate 40.
The Day of Pentecost Acts 2: 1 – 21
Sunday, May 27, 2012 Romans 8: 22 – 27
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 15: 26 – 27; 16: 4b - 15
All were amazed and perplexed , saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”
Acts 2: 12 - 13
In 2005, a small book was published that I doubt ever made it onto the New York Times Bestseller List. Indeed, outside theological circles, the book, called Living in Praise by David Ford and Daniel Hardy was probably not widely known. Like many other good things, this book escaped much popular attention. But the thesis of the book is simply profound: “At the heart of ordinary Christian life,” the authors argue, “is recognition of the love of God.”
Ordinary Christian life is all about recognizing the love of God, the love that brought this world and all of us into being, that sent Jesus Christ to restore God’s beloved creation and whose love continues to be at work within us and among us by the power of the Holy Spirit. For Ford and Hardy: “Praise of God recognizes all this and first of all enjoys and celebrates it.”
Enjoying and celebrating the love of God is what we are about.
Ford and Hardy’s bold statement that what lies at the heart of Christian faith is the recognition of the love of God sounds simple and uncomplicated, worlds away from the fractious councils of the Church that carved out the doctrine of the Incarnation and the Trinity in the fourth and fifth centuries, far removed from the sonorous words of the Nicene Creed in which we confess that Jesus Christ was “begotten, not made.” Enjoying and celebrating the love of God also seems light years away from weighty vestry discussions and our fairly regular preoccupations over money and members.
Indeed, to suggest that we are here to enjoy and celebrate the love of God seems naïve at best; at worst a wanton disregard of the problems that fill this world with so much pain and grief. Certainly Christian faith is more demanding than simply enjoying and celebrating the love of God.
For Ford and Hardy, faith is more than enjoying and celebrating the love of God, but faith is never less. Our Christian faith is rooted in and sustained by the love of God for us and for all of creation. And what makes us tick, what brings us to life, is our capacity to recognize God’s love at all times and in all places.
Today is the Day of Pentecost, the day when we celebrate God’s gift of the Holy Spirit, the power of God at work in the world, the love of God poured out for us and for all of creation in ways great and small, making all things new, inspiring us to live lives of praise and thanksgiving. In our reading from Acts, the Holy Spirit comes among the disciples like a violent wind and tongues of fire enabling them to speak and bear witness to others in languages not of their own. And the crowd who heard them, a crowd from many nations, was “amazed and astonished.”
This day is a day of amazement and astonishment as we remember and celebrate all the many ways God has made known to us God’s love for us. Today is a day of great joy, not forgetting the trials and tribulations of this life but celebrating the joy that comes from our faith in God and the many ways God makes known God’s love for us. Today, as we do every Sunday, we come together to worship, to praise God for who God is, to enjoy and to celebrate the truth of God’s love for us.
You and I live in a world that wants to believe we human beings are the measure of all things and that whatever happens to us, both for good and for ill, comes solely by our own hand. If we do well in life it is because we worked hard; if sorrow comes our way, we become stoic, saying: “Things could be worse.” Life is hard work and nobody gets a free lunch.
Life is hard and we can and do make choices that contribute to both our suffering as well as our joy. But life is not all about us. In truth, life has very little to do with us and just about everything to do with God, who is, as we affirm in the Creed, “the Lord and giver of life.” We live because God is and God loves and brings all of us into being and then keeps us in life by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Pentecost is all about recognizing and celebrating the power of God – the power of God to do a new thing, to bring forth life in the beginning out of nothingness, to bring forth a people who could celebrate this God, and who in the fullness of time, gave Godself to us that we might know nothing, not even death, will separate us from the love of God. You and I are not alone in this world and our power is not the only power at work in this world. This world is alive with the glory of God and as people of faith, we are called to see God’s hand at work in the world around us and to share our joy with an often skeptical and cynical world.
What is of God are all things good and true and lovely - the beauty of music and the laughter of a child, the wonder of poetry and the insights of science, the glory of a sunlit day and a star filled sky, a good meal shared with friends, a funny joke, and the joy of friendship. The love of God surrounds us on all sides if we have eyes to see. Everything good and true and lovely is a gift to us from God; nothing that is good or true or beautiful comes solely by our own hand and we, alone of all God’s creation, are able to bear witness to God’s glory and give thanks.
Unfortunately, we are, much of the time, more concerned about our own goodness and beauty and truth than we are about celebrating the goodness, truth and beauty of God.
Too often we in the church have been reluctant to claim the goodness of God, the abundant and generous love of God that is given to us without charge or what we in the church call “grace.” We come to church on Sunday but fail to appreciate that what we are doing is giving thanks. We come to church often because we think we “ought to” and not because saying “Thank you” to God is just good manners, a fit and appropriate response to the goodness and love of God which we humans alone in all of creation are able to make.
Worship, what we do every Sunday, is not a means to an end. Worship is the end, the reason for our being, what we were created to do. We alone of all of God’s creation can bear witness, can worship and we do so because we can. We may in worship be transformed and inspired but we do not worship so that we will “get something out of it.” We worship because we are human and only humans can worship. We worship because worship is what we were created to do.
Of all thy creatures both in sea and land
Only to man thou hast made known thy ways
And put the penne alone into his hand
And made him secretarie of thy praise.
Those are the words of the seventeenth century Anglican poet and priest George Herbert. For Herbert, you and I alone of all of God’s creatures are able to praise God. Praising God is a distinctively human ability and to us alone God gives the capacity to worship. Only human beings are able to give thanks to God for God’s goodness and love and giving thanks to God is what worship is all about.
From time to time, I lose sight of my being and purpose. I forget that I am one of God’s secretaries in the words of George Herbert. I forget that my job is to give thanks. I worry and I fret about all manner and sorts of things over which I have no control but wished I did. Our Easter forums are one such thing. I fretted over initiating them, about facilitating our five forums and now about where they will lead. I fret that we are not of like mind and wish God would come down and make Godself known clearly and loudly.
What I have been given and you as well, are abundant pictures of God’s love. I am remembering at least three – Lindsey Williams, who was walking her dogs on Maundy Thursday, 2010, and seeing our doors open, happened into our midst and ended up teaching Sunday School, as she waited for God to clarify her vocation to serve the church; Chris Wallace, the army chaplain who just happened to call to find out about the Episcopal Church this past spring and ended up forging a relationship with us he will take to Afghanistan; and Josie Spencer whose baptism this past February could not have happened soon enough.
Josie Spencer was four when she castigated me last fall for giving her a blessing and not the bread. “I am mad at you,” Josie said one Sunday. “I want the bread!” she said, with hands on her hips. In February, Josie was baptized the day Bishop Ted came among us and after Josie was baptized and received the bread for the first time she came away from the altar rail and gave to all present a “thumbs up!” Josie had gotten the bread and that was everything.
The bread of heaven is everything and God showers us with this bread all the time, just as God rained down manna from heaven on the Hebrews in the wilderness. You and I do not get answers as much as assurance, witnesses to God’s love. I am left to wonder if assurance and not answers is really what we want. Maybe knowing God loves us no matter what – even when we are wrong- is more important than getting it right. Just a thought on this Day of Pentecost.
Sunday, May 27, 2012 Romans 8: 22 – 27
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 15: 26 – 27; 16: 4b - 15
All were amazed and perplexed , saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”
Acts 2: 12 - 13
In 2005, a small book was published that I doubt ever made it onto the New York Times Bestseller List. Indeed, outside theological circles, the book, called Living in Praise by David Ford and Daniel Hardy was probably not widely known. Like many other good things, this book escaped much popular attention. But the thesis of the book is simply profound: “At the heart of ordinary Christian life,” the authors argue, “is recognition of the love of God.”
Ordinary Christian life is all about recognizing the love of God, the love that brought this world and all of us into being, that sent Jesus Christ to restore God’s beloved creation and whose love continues to be at work within us and among us by the power of the Holy Spirit. For Ford and Hardy: “Praise of God recognizes all this and first of all enjoys and celebrates it.”
Enjoying and celebrating the love of God is what we are about.
Ford and Hardy’s bold statement that what lies at the heart of Christian faith is the recognition of the love of God sounds simple and uncomplicated, worlds away from the fractious councils of the Church that carved out the doctrine of the Incarnation and the Trinity in the fourth and fifth centuries, far removed from the sonorous words of the Nicene Creed in which we confess that Jesus Christ was “begotten, not made.” Enjoying and celebrating the love of God also seems light years away from weighty vestry discussions and our fairly regular preoccupations over money and members.
Indeed, to suggest that we are here to enjoy and celebrate the love of God seems naïve at best; at worst a wanton disregard of the problems that fill this world with so much pain and grief. Certainly Christian faith is more demanding than simply enjoying and celebrating the love of God.
For Ford and Hardy, faith is more than enjoying and celebrating the love of God, but faith is never less. Our Christian faith is rooted in and sustained by the love of God for us and for all of creation. And what makes us tick, what brings us to life, is our capacity to recognize God’s love at all times and in all places.
Today is the Day of Pentecost, the day when we celebrate God’s gift of the Holy Spirit, the power of God at work in the world, the love of God poured out for us and for all of creation in ways great and small, making all things new, inspiring us to live lives of praise and thanksgiving. In our reading from Acts, the Holy Spirit comes among the disciples like a violent wind and tongues of fire enabling them to speak and bear witness to others in languages not of their own. And the crowd who heard them, a crowd from many nations, was “amazed and astonished.”
This day is a day of amazement and astonishment as we remember and celebrate all the many ways God has made known to us God’s love for us. Today is a day of great joy, not forgetting the trials and tribulations of this life but celebrating the joy that comes from our faith in God and the many ways God makes known God’s love for us. Today, as we do every Sunday, we come together to worship, to praise God for who God is, to enjoy and to celebrate the truth of God’s love for us.
You and I live in a world that wants to believe we human beings are the measure of all things and that whatever happens to us, both for good and for ill, comes solely by our own hand. If we do well in life it is because we worked hard; if sorrow comes our way, we become stoic, saying: “Things could be worse.” Life is hard work and nobody gets a free lunch.
Life is hard and we can and do make choices that contribute to both our suffering as well as our joy. But life is not all about us. In truth, life has very little to do with us and just about everything to do with God, who is, as we affirm in the Creed, “the Lord and giver of life.” We live because God is and God loves and brings all of us into being and then keeps us in life by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Pentecost is all about recognizing and celebrating the power of God – the power of God to do a new thing, to bring forth life in the beginning out of nothingness, to bring forth a people who could celebrate this God, and who in the fullness of time, gave Godself to us that we might know nothing, not even death, will separate us from the love of God. You and I are not alone in this world and our power is not the only power at work in this world. This world is alive with the glory of God and as people of faith, we are called to see God’s hand at work in the world around us and to share our joy with an often skeptical and cynical world.
What is of God are all things good and true and lovely - the beauty of music and the laughter of a child, the wonder of poetry and the insights of science, the glory of a sunlit day and a star filled sky, a good meal shared with friends, a funny joke, and the joy of friendship. The love of God surrounds us on all sides if we have eyes to see. Everything good and true and lovely is a gift to us from God; nothing that is good or true or beautiful comes solely by our own hand and we, alone of all God’s creation, are able to bear witness to God’s glory and give thanks.
Unfortunately, we are, much of the time, more concerned about our own goodness and beauty and truth than we are about celebrating the goodness, truth and beauty of God.
Too often we in the church have been reluctant to claim the goodness of God, the abundant and generous love of God that is given to us without charge or what we in the church call “grace.” We come to church on Sunday but fail to appreciate that what we are doing is giving thanks. We come to church often because we think we “ought to” and not because saying “Thank you” to God is just good manners, a fit and appropriate response to the goodness and love of God which we humans alone in all of creation are able to make.
Worship, what we do every Sunday, is not a means to an end. Worship is the end, the reason for our being, what we were created to do. We alone of all of God’s creation can bear witness, can worship and we do so because we can. We may in worship be transformed and inspired but we do not worship so that we will “get something out of it.” We worship because we are human and only humans can worship. We worship because worship is what we were created to do.
Of all thy creatures both in sea and land
Only to man thou hast made known thy ways
And put the penne alone into his hand
And made him secretarie of thy praise.
Those are the words of the seventeenth century Anglican poet and priest George Herbert. For Herbert, you and I alone of all of God’s creatures are able to praise God. Praising God is a distinctively human ability and to us alone God gives the capacity to worship. Only human beings are able to give thanks to God for God’s goodness and love and giving thanks to God is what worship is all about.
From time to time, I lose sight of my being and purpose. I forget that I am one of God’s secretaries in the words of George Herbert. I forget that my job is to give thanks. I worry and I fret about all manner and sorts of things over which I have no control but wished I did. Our Easter forums are one such thing. I fretted over initiating them, about facilitating our five forums and now about where they will lead. I fret that we are not of like mind and wish God would come down and make Godself known clearly and loudly.
What I have been given and you as well, are abundant pictures of God’s love. I am remembering at least three – Lindsey Williams, who was walking her dogs on Maundy Thursday, 2010, and seeing our doors open, happened into our midst and ended up teaching Sunday School, as she waited for God to clarify her vocation to serve the church; Chris Wallace, the army chaplain who just happened to call to find out about the Episcopal Church this past spring and ended up forging a relationship with us he will take to Afghanistan; and Josie Spencer whose baptism this past February could not have happened soon enough.
Josie Spencer was four when she castigated me last fall for giving her a blessing and not the bread. “I am mad at you,” Josie said one Sunday. “I want the bread!” she said, with hands on her hips. In February, Josie was baptized the day Bishop Ted came among us and after Josie was baptized and received the bread for the first time she came away from the altar rail and gave to all present a “thumbs up!” Josie had gotten the bread and that was everything.
The bread of heaven is everything and God showers us with this bread all the time, just as God rained down manna from heaven on the Hebrews in the wilderness. You and I do not get answers as much as assurance, witnesses to God’s love. I am left to wonder if assurance and not answers is really what we want. Maybe knowing God loves us no matter what – even when we are wrong- is more important than getting it right. Just a thought on this Day of Pentecost.
