Speaking to the Soul: Sermon for the Feast of Pentecost

There is a viral video that is making the rounds right now. A young woman decides to tell a story to her dog, named Zeus. But this story uses all of his favorite words, including “park,” good boy,” “handsome boy” “I love you,” and, the big one, “snacks.” Apparently at the sound of the first favorite word, her dog gets very excited and attentive.

But as the story goes along—and it’s not a long story—the dog realizes that these words are not promises, but instead are, from his perspective, a cruel joke. You can see the dog sitting there, thinking, “Park? We’re going to the park? Wait-- why are we not going to the park?” 

“Good boy? WHO’S the good boy? I am the only good boy! Who is this other good boy, because it can’t be me; she’s not petting me. Why does she keep sitting there and talking and not following through on her promises?”

With each new favorite word woven into the story of her imaginary trip to the park saying “I love you” to some unknown “handsome boy” and munching on “snacks,” the dog gets a stunned, shocked look on its face. The words lack any follow-through, and the dog realizes he’s been had. He finally stalks off in disgust as his owner keeps prattling on, and snickering at his response. As she ends the story with lots of uses of the word “snacks,” the lowest blow of them all, the dog has had too much, and starts barking—which in his language obviously means, as a toddler I once knew would say when she was disgusted with someone, “Shut up, you crazy lady. You’re drunk.”

In our story from Acts today, through a gift of the Holy Spirit, Jews from all over the Mediterranean and Middle East, gathered for an important Jewish festival in Jerusalem, suddenly hear the gospel of Jesus proclaimed in their own languages. Even though the people talking obviously are not native to their homelands and languages. These complete strangers, natives of dozens of lands in which Jews had been scattered during their many exiles, hear about a story of incredible power, filled with wondrous words, words of promise. And just like poor Zeus, when some of them hear this amazing gospel, itself filled with wonders too great to keep in, some of the listeners react in disbelief and suspect, despite the early hour of the morning, that those who are speaking to them in a frenzy of joy, are drunk.

In the reading from Acts 2:1-21, we are reminded of the power of words in the response of the disciples after the power of the Holy Spirit comes over them, giving them the gift of language. In a blink they are outside, in the streets, doing exactly what the disciples were told to do in our gospel reading—they are out in the world, testifying to the power of God as revealed in Christ to the people they encounter there. It’s probably the most excitement you and I have ever heard coming out of a church meeting.

In a kind of reverse of the curse of the Tower of Babel, now these disciples, many of them simple country folk, have just learned to speak other people’s language. I think that’s an important point for us too in the Church today: we are called to speak to people in their own languages first, rather than expect them to immediately understand the language of Christianity.

But the disciples’ first new language came as a challenge even earlier, for them as well as us. As soon as those early disciples answered Jesus’s call to follow him, they had to learn the language of Jesus—a strange language, then and now, awash in a grammar of grace rather than a grammar of vengeance.

This language, this grammar of grace, was filled with strange ideas, in which the greatest is the least, the least is the greatest, in which forgiveness and grace are more important than being right or self-righteous. Even after Jesus’s life on Earth was done, we can see that the disciples were still trying to make sense of that language. And we are too. We ourselves as Christians 2000 years later also continually work at acquiring that same language-- and it’s still just as alien and difficult for us as it was for them. The power of the Holy Spirit is here to help us continue learning Jesus’s counter-cultural grammar of grace and reconciliation.

The Holy Spirit, Triptych by Filippo Rossi

The Spirit hovered over the waters at creation, and God spoke goodness into the world. The Spirit breathed the Church to life at Pentecost, and blew those disciples out into the streets with the explosive power of love and truth to proclaim the good news to those who most needed to hear it—and in their own languages. The Spirit hovers over us even now, hoping to reinforce the goodness in our hearts. The Spirit is always trying to speak to the soul, using a language that we understood instinctively in childhood, but often have allowed to slip away as our hearts sometimes harden and we become more “worldly-wise.” That’s why the language of love that God imprinted on us at creation, during Jesus’s ministry and again at our baptism, often seems like a foreign tongue. It’s hard for us to trust in words like “grace,” “mercy,” and “forgiveness” for ourselves as being real, much less for us to speak and live them out to others.

As we were discussing these readings in Bible study this week, we reflected with a sense of wonder what it would be like to have those around us really understand what we are saying. Too much that we say gets lost along the way from one person’s mouth to another person’s ear. And the more people become different from us, the worse that lack of understanding often becomes. And yet here are these followers of Jesus, seized by the Spirit, pouring out into the streets and speaking and being understood by people who come from vastly different cultures from those of the disciples.

But that’s exactly what we are called to do as the Church. We are called to speak to the soul of each precious person we encounter, and hear the echoed whisper of that goodness and love vibrating from them—especially when it’s hard for us to do so, when we allow our differences, our fears, or our suspicions to divide us rather than strengthen us. Words do matter when we are speaking to the soul, and the word is Love.

As I talked about last week, story is one of the most powerful forces in the world—and story is bound up in language—language that can hold nothing back, or language that can attempt to limit access to the good news. And we have to give up the idea that we can domesticate Jesus for our own purposes, or that we should hold the Holy Spirit at arms’ length because we fear being seized by love and sent out into those streets just like those disciples all those years ago.

Language is powerful—just as the wind that is often a symbol for the Spirit is powerful. Language can help span divides, soothe grief,-- and spark conflagrations too. Especially when language is used to divide, to wound, to taunt, or to assault the very basis of the truth, as we have experienced these last few years.

We are called, and empowered by the Holy Spirit, just like those disciples, to the proclamation of the power of love.

Willie James Jennings, in his commentary on the Book of Acts, call this moment, “The beginning of the miracle of Pentecost, the revolution of the intimate. This is the beginning of a community broken open by the sheer act of God, and we are yet to comprehend the extent to which God acts and is acting to break us open. Indeed it will be a community created by the spirit precisely in the breaking open.”(1) The gospel launches a revolution of the intimate, because in speaking of the love of God, we are called to be vulnerable and unguarded in sharing the story of God’s unifying love in a world that only profits by division and turning us against each other in competition or downright hatred.

The story we hear today is the story of the first great promotion of the gospel of Jesus since his execution and resurrection. These last 50 days, they had been an insular little community, locked behind doors, afraid even though the assurance that Jesus most often gave were assurances to not be afraid and instead be at peace. He said those two things—don’t be afraid and peace be with you—so that the disciples would be able to share in Jesus’s work, and he offers us the Spirit to help us now. 

Sharing in Jesus’s work of redemption, reconciliation, healing, and salvation in the here and now is, after all, the entire point of being a follower of Jesus. It’s not just to hoard away the gospel or cut off people from its promises. Our work, just like those disciples, is to go out and speak the good news to all we meet in language that they understand. It’s to let the Spirit lead us without fear.

Let’s face it—we are very much like those disciples locked away in that upper room. We too have been locked away out of fear for a very long time—it seems like forever—as this pandemic has come in waves and surges at us. Yet take a step away from this most recent scenario, and you could say that the institutional church is very much in the same spot.

Too often, we in the big-C Church sit back and wait for seekers to come to us, ignoring the fact that most of those who have turned their backs on religion have heard its practitioners using language that scapegoats others, or that emphasizes selfishness over mission in the world. Too often some who claim the name of Christ try to lock away the gospel. They talk more about who is not allowed in, about who is NOT allowed to be treated as full members of the Body of Christ. They even talk about withholding communion from people. They talk in the language of control and power, rather than in the language of good news about Jesus.

But on this birthday of the Church, we are being asked to take seriously our call to allow the Holy Spirit, as our companion in the Way of Jesus, into our hearts and then send us out into the streets.

To go out into the streets seek out those different from us. We are called to share our story—the story of how Jesus has changed your life and mine through his love, his healing, his transformative welcome of all. We are called not just to use beautiful words, like that poor dog heard from the lips of his owner, but to follow through with fulfilling the promises those words offer. Because the best words always are tied to actions.

We are called to meet people where they are, and speak the truth of love, especially in the face of hatred, paranoid division, and falsehood. We are called to care for the vulnerable—even the vulnerable ones we do not know. We are called to talk about mercy and grace, remembering the mercy and grace we ourselves know have received repeatedly, from God and others. Full stop.

If we talk about forgiveness, and we must, we ourselves must model forgiveness and mercy, bringing it to life in a world too given over to anger, suspicion, and nurturing grievances until they swell and explode like road kill in the summer sun.

If we talk about salvation, and we must, we have to model the kingdom values of Jesus—the grace that doesn’t keep score, but instead gives freely and generously to everyone, whether the world would count them as among the “deserving” or not. We must not look for the least we can do, but the best we can give.

If we talk about love, and we must, we must embody love. This is especially important in this time of division and hate, and in this time when too many openly scorn any idea that we have obligations to each other to act in ways that protect each other, even at our own inconvenience or sacrifice. The church, of all places, should be a place of concern for those we encounter, a place that strives to protect the weakest and most vulnerable, a place where we maintain our parishes not as locked rooms but as launching points to go out and proclaim the gospel in a language all will understand, however long that take.

We may not be perfect at it. We ourselves are still learning Jesus’s language of love, community, and reconciliation today. But it is the language that alone can unify creation as God intended from the beginning. It is the language of salvation, but not salvation for selfish ends. Rather, this language calls all disciples, them as well as us, to find the vocabulary for helping to repair the world and our relationships within it, with each other and ultimately, with God. This idea of responsibility of faithful people to repair the world is what our Jewish brothers and sisters call tikkun olam—the repair of the world.

In a world that focuses on the temporary, we are called to speak of the eternal. In a world that focuses on transaction in all relationships, we are called to transformation and embrace. As disciples, we are called to embrace rather than shun the power of the Holy Spirit, and speak to the soul. Let us dedicate ourselves, this Pentecost Day, to speaking—and embodying-- the miracle of love.

Amen.

Preached at the 10:30 am Holy Eucharist at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, on the Day of Pentecost, May 23, 2021.

Readings:

• Ezekiel 37:1-14
• Psalm 104:25-35, 37
• Acts 2:1-21
• John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

Citations:

1) Willie James Jennings, Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible (Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible), p. 27.

Skipping Stones: Sermon for Easter 5B

We all knew that 2020 was a tough year for entertainment. Movie theatres were shuttered; Broadway dimmed its lights. Sports were hit especially hard: Major League Baseball and the NFL played abbreviated seasons and still saw outbreaks among the players, and the NHL operated under bubbles in Canada. Thanks to the pandemic, the NBA’s season from start to finish covered 355 days. But for rock-skipping, one sport’s loss was another sport’s gain, and the Mackinac Island Championships last year were even featured on ESPN.

Yes, there are rock-skipping championships for grownups, and one of the quirkiest is on Mackinac Island in Lake Huron. Each year there is a tournament where grown men with nicknames like “Hard-Luck”, “Mountain-man,” and yes, unimaginatively, “Skip,” bend themselves double to send six rocks dancing across the waves in search of glory, a trophy, and 48 pounds of Mackinac Island fudge, which is considered a year’s supply in someone’s bizarre accounting. 

From the first "plink" to the "pittypat" of a smoothly spun stone launched at an optimal 20 degree angle at its release, a team of judges, with their tongues firmly in their cheeks and away from that fudge, count each distinct contact of stone and wave. Competitors still upright after hurling their stone stand squinting, praying to avoid a “gerplunk” in which the stone drops into the water like a, yes, rock; or an “agnew,” in which the stone hits a bystander, a judge or, worst of all, a real person wondering what the heck these weirdos are doing. 

At the very least, rock skipping seems to provide the answer to the question from Monty Python of whether witches float, and someone asks what also floats? Suggested answer? Bread, apples, and very small rocks. And ducks.

As for myself, I am, when it comes to rock-skipping, a purist. I believe in rock skipping for the simple joy of it, unsullied by the taint of competition. Rock skipping brings back a combination of childhood nostalgia and sensory memory: the feel of of finding your likely stones on rocky banks, inhaling the tangy scent of muddy lake water, and hearing Grandpa yelling at us dang kids to stop scaring the fish away.

Yet I have found the purest test of stone skipping was on still water, especially a pond on a still summer’s day, with skill and arm strength alone propelling that rock forward. Sometimes, the best part was after the stone had sunk beneath the surface in silence. Then, we could count the overlapping rings where rock and water had met. On days like that, we would reverently wait as the rings moved ever outward, their edges growing finer and thinner, until the surface of the water was once again smooth and undisturbed. We’d often let out a little sigh as the surface became glassy like a mirror rather than blurry and rippled once more. And then after a few moments, one of us would start the process of finding and launching a well-shaped stone all over again, just so we could admire that throw and the chain of beautiful rings linked and then wisped away like smoke. In my life skipping stones has been more of a contemplative practice.

Sometimes, then and now, I would think about how skipping stones can be a metaphor for life. The interplay of stones and water violates all illusions of predictability: here’s a heavy thing that just for a little while levitates and dances over the most yielding of surfaces. Sometimes we are the rocks, uprooted from where we’ve been hanging out by something beyond our control, suddenly spun and flung out and plunged into an environment we’ve never considered and didn’t ask for. Other times, we’re the placid body of water, minding our own business until some fool comes along and starts trying to disturb the calm surface we’ve so carefully cultivated.

As I grew older, I realized that there have been many people who have skipped across the surface of my life—random encounters with strangers in which, for some reason, eyes meet and notice is taken, and some small kindness is offered, some pleasant conversation is exchanged, some finding of common ground is recognized. Maybe it lasts only a few minutes. But we walk away reminded of the divine spark that rests within each of us and flares to life when we truly see each other and honor each other rather than hoping we avoid eye contact, when we recognize our commonalities rather than our differences or indifferences.

In our reading from Acts today, we hear the story of just such an encounter, as the Holy Spirit skips like a stone across the surface of the lives of Philip and an exotic stranger, leading them to plunge into a small body of water in an act of discovery, joy, and faith.

I imagine that that water alongside that road 2000 years ago was just as smooth and undisturbed as the sun reached its zenith. Most people had the sense to travel in the cool of the morning. And for the last several weeks, things had been in a turmoil in Israel, as if boulders had been tossed into the Sea of Galilee, all because of the work and the execution of a strange Galileean rabbi. His life and his death had created a lot of waves. The authorities were hoping that now that he and his little band were properly cowed, the tumult could cease and, at least on the surface, things could calm down once more.

They thought they had put an end to him and his so-called “good news,” which was nothing but a bunch or tricks and rabble rousing—at least from the leaders’ perspectives.

They did not count on the Holy Spirit. People often don’t. But here the Holy Spirit reaches down and plucks Philip out of what he has been doing, out evangelizing among the Samaritans, even though they were outsiders. Instead, the Holy Spirit sends an angel to tell him to go stand by that wilderness road leading from Jerusalem, even if the heat of the day made that sound crazy.

And instead of an empty road, along comes an ornate chariot, and in that chariot is an astonishing, arresting sight: a court official from Ethiopia, practically the ends of the known world, treasurer for the Queen herself, reading aloud from the writings of the prophet Isaiah. His dark black skin, his voice, and his smooth face implied that he was a eunuch and a foreigner—the ultimate outsider. Yet here were the words of the prophet Isaiah coming from his lips! His sumptuous clothing, carriage, and the fact that he was in possession of a scroll of a prophet indicated his wealth, sophistication, and power. His status as a eunuch made him non-binary in a world that insisted on either/or for everything, and made him not quite male in a world in which only males mattered.

But the Holy Spirit cares for none of these things, then or now. The next thing Philip knows, he has called out to the stranger, skimmed across that road and is clambering alongside the eunuch, first explaining the passage he was reading, and then the good news, or gospel, of Jesus. The passage from Isaiah becomes a stepping stone and a skipping stone at the same time, drawing together seeker and disciple despite all barriers. The gospel of Jesus is the fulfillment of the prophetic promises that all nations, and people of all whom humans might exclude through physical or national prejudices, would be drawn to God, and it is through Jesus that that happens.

Who knows how long Philip spoke? But no matter what, the eunuch heard, and believed. It was at that moment that the gospel of Christ, once confined among mostly the poor of Galilee and Jerusalem, suddenly spun across the surface of that Ethiopian’s life and began to expand from disbelief to certainty. The gospel spins out to the edge of the world, carried to someone as different from those early church member as he can be, in every single way.

“Here is water!” the Ethiopian exclaims. “What is to prevent me from being baptized?” Was it a demand? Or was it a plea, expecting rejection? Either way, Philip had no defense. He had no objection that seemed to stand any more, although others might point to his counterpart’s exotic status, his foreignness, his mutilated body, any number of things. But we do not hear any resistance from Philip. It’s shocking, after all, this profligate power of love that breaks down any and all barriers. It was one thing to preach the good news to the Samaritans—at least they were distant kin and neighbors of the people of Israel. But this man was an “other” and a stranger and outsider in every possible way.

Too often, we tend to avoid encounters with those around us, much less the forming of real relationship. We are too prone to hold ourselves aloof from those different from us—maybe through contempt, maybe through suspicion, maybe through fear of being vulnerable. All of those things could have prevented this encounter between these two very different people—but God broke through. And so without hesitation, this unlikely pair enters the water beside the road—and as they emerge, both are changed by the encounter with each other, which is also an encounter with God. Where these two men might have approached each other with hesitancy if not outright disdain, they instead become kindred in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, each praising and testifying to God in the aftermath, each flourishing as branches of Christ the true vine brought together by the love God has for all humanity.

Even this early in the Book of Acts, we see the gospel’s reach expanding and spreading like those interlocking ripples on the surface of the water—and Paul, Apostle and champion of the Gentiles, hasn’t even been converted yet—that’s the very next story. This story sets the stage for Paul’s mission, as the Church finds its way to being insular or inclusive—a question that hangs over every Christian parish to this day: Do we sit back and wait for people to come to us, or do we go out and let the love of God break down all barriers and divisions?

Here we see the interlocking rings fanning out from the gospel as it dances improbably like a skipping stone. The disciples at first confined their preaching to fellow inhabitants of Israel, then to co-religionists living all around the Mediterranean. Then the ripples grew wider, and entered into Samaria, and now into the court of the ruling family of Ethiopia. God has been made visible in the most unlikely of places by the unlikely meeting of these two very different people, and neither one of them emerges from that water unchanged. For the Ethiopian, there is a new understanding of God, who sends Jesus to us despite the cost to show us the way of living that brings not just existence, but LIFE. For Philip, further proof that God shows no partiality and the gospel will break free and take root beyond any barriers humans might try to use to control it or limit it. But the Holy Spirit is asking us to skip across our resistance, our hesitancy, and be willing to spread let the gospel by our love, and let that love radiate out from us like ripples on water.

Love cannot be caged. The Holy Spirit will carry the gospel where she will through the discipleship of you and me, and those until it breaks loose of all barriers our prejudices and fears may try to erect around it. As today’s epistle so insistently reminds us, twenty-nine times over, the basis of true worship of God is rooted in love. Love as action. Love that does not exclude but calls all things and all beings to share in the joy of eternal life rooted in the now. Not in limiting the good news only to certain times or certain people, but in encountering each other with joy, empowered by the good news of Jesus, so that we recognize the bonds of love that are meant to link us all together. Like a stone skimming across the surface of the water, the gospel touches down where it will, and the effects of that good news ripple ever outward with no signs of abating.

Can we likewise welcome the Spirit’s dance over the still waters of our lives, stirring up joy and faith, come what may? Can we welcome the stirring up of our hearts’ waters for the sake of a world that desperately needs the good news of a God whose love binds us all together? The Ethiopian’s question hangs over us as well: What is to prevent us from embracing our baptism, from embracing the gospel and being transformed? Isn’t that transformation the meaning and essence of Easter and resurrection itself?

Love calls us forward and calls us to dance over the waves. Despite all barriers we might like to erect and despite all resistance we may have to being vulnerable to the promise of God’s love for us all. We have nothing to lose but our fear.


Amen.

Preached at the 10:30 online and limited in person service of Holy Eucharist at St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Ellisville, MO on May 2, 2021.

Readings:

Acts 8:26-40

Psalm 22:24-30

1 John 4:7-21

John 15:1-8

Citations:

1. Details about the Mackinac Island Stone Skipping Championship can be found here: https://stoneskipping.com.

2. For more on the physics of skipping stones, go here: https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.2631

Between and Beyond the Boundaries: Sermon for the Seventh Sunday of Easter, Year B

Early in the first Lord of the Rings movie, there’s a lovely little scene where one of the characters, named Sam, who is about to follow his beloved friend on a most unlikely and dangerous quest, suddenly stops dead in between two corn fields not far from their home.

“This is it,” Sam states with a bit of apprehension.

His friend Frodo, who has continued on a few steps ahead, stops at these words. “This is what?” he asks, confused.

“If I take one more step,” Sam states nervously, “it’ll be the farthest away from home I’ve ever been.” And he’s rooted indecisively to the spot.

His friend Frodo comes back to stand alongside him. “Come on Sam,” he says encouragingly. 

And Sam finds the strength to take that next step, and the two friends go off to face the great unknown-- together.

In this week's readings, there is a similar feeling of being stuck in place by the uncertain future that lies ahead for Jesus’s disciples. We are almost at the end of the Fifty Great Days of Easter, the principal feast in the Christian calendar. Just seven weeks ago we celebrated Easter Day, our alleluias joyfully set free as we welcomed the news of the Resurrected Jesus coming mere days after the devastation of the cross. But no sooner have the alleluias returned but Jesus finished up his final instructions and then ascended into heaven. The highs and the lows come fast and furious. Things are more uncertain than ever.

In the story of the launching of the Church, we see the disciples caught in a transitional time, a time where the memories of the past are still fresh, but the future has become as unpredictable as the dark side of the Moon. The disciples’ hearts are filled with a mixture of wonder and ache because Jesus has ascended, but the Holy Spirit has not poured over them and yet taken hold of them, heart and soul. They are in the time between the promise and the fulfillment.

Their time with Jesus was puzzling, often frustrating and at the end downright scary. Jesus often led those disciples to places they really did not want to go, but now he had come back only to leave again, and in their minds’ eyes they could still see his feet vanishing into a cloud like two tail lights on a 1959 Cadillac DeVille.

 Just like those disciples, we too live in a transitional time, both as a society and as a parish. As a society, we live in a very different context now as Christians than our parents and grandparents experienced. The number of people who profess faith in anything at all is shrinking with a vengeance. No longer can we assume that people we meet know the basics of ANY religious faith, not just Christianity.

The early Church was given the challenge to proclaim Christ as Savior to a world that had never heard of him, or of God. In our time, we still sometimes encounter that same issue, but, increasingly commonly, we actually face an additional challenge. I don’t know about you, but it’s one that I encounter frequently. Often, it’s not that people I meet have NO knowledge of Christianity, but rather that they have a skewed one. I meet many people who were brought up in the church, but who were hurt by it, or made to feel unwelcome, or even condemned by people who clothed that condemnation in the name of Jesus. Having a bad experience with self-proclaimed faithful people is much worse than having no experience of faith. It’s really hard to overcome a bad first impression.

So that’s another liminal space that the Church occupies. Because while it is absolutely to be Christ’s Body on Earth, there are also times when it is all too painfully obvious that the Church is also made up of fragile and even fallible people. The Church is both the communion of the saints and a hospital for the worst parts of our battered little psyches, and we fail to live up at times to the charge we have been given.

These are then also the times when we are called to confession, and to seek reconciliation. To remember that we are ever strengthened in our witness to the world by God’s unfailing grace respond to those the hurts in the world with grace, mercy, and love-- NOT anger and division.

The disciples faced many of those same challenges. In just a few short weeks, they had experienced losing their Messiah to death on a cross, only to learn three days later he had risen. For forty days they were taught further by him, only to watch him appear to leave them again. Through all these changes, their numbers had decreased until it seems there were only a few dozen disciples left perhaps 120 as our account in Acts suggests.

Like Sam, they could have stopped dead in their tracks and refused to move on into the unfamiliar future. But that’s not what they did. Instead, under the awning of Jesus’s continued intercession for them echoing from that prayer he had prayed for them before his crucifixion, they took the first brave step out into the liminal space between what was familiar and what was terrifying. And as Jesus had done on the night he was arrested, they too turned to prayer as the best way to try to discern what they should do next, especially as they considered how to fill their leadership needs.

That’s a powerful reminder for us as we try to discern our way through transitional times as a community, both on the parish level and as the global, capital C-Church. There are many lessons we can draw from their example as we confront times of change in our parish communities, especially in times when we are searching for new leaders. There are attitudes we can emulate from that time of Christian marginalization to our own time of discernment and change, as we try to make sense of this post-Christian landscape we inhabit between the Church we proclaim and the Church we are. And one of those most important, yet easily omitted attitudes, is prayer.

As our gospel reading reminds us, Jesus did not abandon them without a thought. Even on the night before his crucifixion, he stopped all that he was doing and prayed for his beloved disciples. And the central thing he prays for is for his disciples to be unified. Not uniform, but unified. Jesus prays for them to protected from the forces of division and fear that could break them apart.

And this is a precious realization for us today, too. As Christians, we pray to Jesus because he continues to intercede for us and to strengthen us in the work he has given us to do as the risen Son of God who knows all our challenges. As we work together to build up and strengthen the bonds of fellowship and service that bind us together, we are blessed and shielded that prayer of protection Jesus continues to pray for us. Calling us to renewal. Still calling us to do our best to discern God’s will in our lives, and seek unity in faithfulness and love that we may engage in humble listening to God in our responding prayer as we discern how to worship and witness.

Have you ever known you were being prayed for by someone else? It’s a powerful feeling of being tenderly cared for and cherished. Our readings today remind us of how important prayer is to help center and ground us in what really matters: the love of God. Prayer is the heart of our seeking, the first impulse of faith, opening ourselves up to the guidance of God, placing our needs before God who knows us completely and yet loves us completely. This is especially important in times of change, in transitional times. In our gospel reading, Jesus prays for his disciples, that they develop into leaders in their own right as he looks toward his eventual time of leave-taking from them.

Peter too, in our reading from Acts, centers the minds of the gathered disciples through asking God’s guidance in his prayer before making an important decision in a time of preparation and discernment. By doing so as well, we like Peter acknowledge and trust in God’s intimate knowledge of our hearts and minds.

Jesus’s prayer in our gospel, one we could really call "The Lord's Prayer,"  also reminds us that we have to adapt to changes in order to do our work of discipleship—that what worked at one point will not always work in the future.

Evidence of this is buried in the Book of Acts itself. The full title of the book is “The Acts of the Apostles.” Yet, more accurately, the book of Acts is the story of how the Holy Spirit worked through ordinary people to shine her light into the world. With the exception of Peter, most of the people whom Jesus had chosen as his inner circle, those known as the apostles, fade from prominence by the middle of the book.

Even Matthias and Justus, the two candidates to replace Judas, are not mentioned again after this scene in our first reading.

Instead, much of the last half of the Book of Acts is taken up telling the story of the missionary journeys of a guy who first makes his appearance not as a disciple much less as a self-proclaimed apostle, but as a persecutor of the early Church. And along the way, some of the best work accomplished in converting people and caring for the marginalized is actually done by people who were not officially considered to be leaders, but were instead ordinary people, people whose hearts were converted by love that shone in a harsh world like the sun at midday. By ordinary people who placed their trust in God’s guidance and protection, from all we can tell, people like Philip, and Lydia, and unnamed others from around the Mediterranean shore. People just like you and me, who have been saved by the love of God so that we can channel God’s love and grace through the testimony of our everyday lives.

Led by the power of the Holy Spirit, these disciples were able to embrace the liminal, transitional space that they found themselves in. Their joy was a witness to the world, and ours can be too. They were able to develop into mature leaders as they sought their way after the resurrection because they rested upon the power of the Holy Spirit to lead them in faithfulness and hope that shone in the darkest of times.

Instead of stopping dead in that boundary space on the edge of the familiar, these few brave men and women embarked on a great campaign to proclaim Jesus’s gospel everywhere, from the neighborhood to exotic lands. And look around. We share in the same situation they faced. And we can learn from the best things they exemplified, because we are disciples, too.

In a few moments, we will observe Rogation Sunday, a time when the boundaries of the parish were blessed and prayed over just as Jesus prayed over his disciples.

Yet as we walk these grounds, may we also remember that through God’s grace and love, this parish actually has no boundaries at all, because it is called to embody God’s love in the world, and God’s love itself has no boundaries. That, too, is the testimony we are called to proclaim to the world.

As we stand at the edge of what has gone before, we can rest in the assurance that the love and fellowship of Christ and all the saints equip us for the work God has given us to do, and we can find the courage and joy to prayerfully and eagerly step out into the future together, upheld by our mutual love and witness.

Amen.


Preached at the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, Town and Country, at 10:00 am.

Readings:
Acts 1:15-17, 21-26, Psalm 1, 1 John 5:9-13, John 17:6-19

Images:
(1) and (2) screen shots from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.
(3) Depiction of the Ascension in the Chapel of Our Lady of Walsingham, United Kingdom.
(4) Jesus praying for unity among his disciples.
(5) Peter among the disciples.
(6) The anointing of Matthias.
(7) Rogation procession and blessing of the grounds, Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, May 13, 2018. Photo by Bill Scoopmire.

Don't Look Up-- Look Within: Homily for Ascension Day, 2018

Last week as I was mucking about online, this statement caught my eye when I saw it posted somewhere: “We will never change the world by going to church. We will only change the world by BEING the Church.”

In response to this statement, a friend of mine asked me about a claim she had heard from one of her friends, who is an evangelical pastor, saying that the Church needs to be more wide awake than ever so that it can continue to “run things” as it has supposedly done for the last 2000 years, to make America great again. 

That pastor’s claim to a very specific wedding of national political power to the message of Christ is particularly interesting as we celebrate Ascension Day—the day when Jesus launched the Church out onto the vast sea of mission. And it was a question that was on the minds of the apostles too, especially after Jesus’s resurrection.

It’s right there in our reading from Acts. After his resurrection, Jesus appears to the disciples several times, urging them to stick close to Jerusalem and wait. The disciples, with their heads still spinning from the events they have been through since Jesus’s arrest, once again show that their heads are still in the same place as my friend’s friend: they ask when Jesus is going to assume political power and make himself an actual king, restoring the fortunes of Israel to become the pre-eminent power in the world. They want to know when Jesus is going to make Jerusalem great again.

And Jesus shuts that down, and once again reminds them what he’s been about all the time they’ve known him: he has been about making disciples for the life of the world, about awakening us to our potential to act as God’s beloved friends in the ongoing establishment of the shalom—the peace, justice, and integrity of all things living in relationship and mutuality-- that God wove into the universe at its beginning. And now he entrusts that mission to us. Especially today.

As disciples of Jesus in the year of 2018, our situation is this: after Jesus’s bodily ascension, until Jesus’s coming again, we ARE the Body of Christ in the world. As Christ's Body in the world, we are not meant to "be in control" in an imperious, political sense any more than Jesus was "in control" in an imperious political sense. (Hint: that means "not at all.") Indeed, Jesus's refusal to be a political or military leader may have been the reason why some of his followers, including, famously, Judas, became disenchanted with him. We are meant to love, not compel. we are meant to be the Beloved Community-- a community that transcends national borders.

No, as Christ's Body in the world, we are called to literally embody his greatest commandment, which is repeatedly made very clear to us: to love all persons, and to love God, who dwells in all things. And loving one another is not about "lording it over one another," as Jesus reminded his disciples in Matthew 20:26.

Jesus promises the apostles the power of the Holy Spirit, and then he ascends into heaven, and that’s often where we get distracted. Right there with the apostles, we tend to focus on the image of Jesus flying up into heaven rather than think about what that leave-taking means. It’s a scene that has been depicted in art thousands of times over the centuries, by everyone from Donatello (the sculptor, not the teenage mutant ninja turtle) to Salvador Dali, in icons, and paintings, and reliefs and stained-glass windows. One of the weirdest ways to depict the scene shows only Christ’s feet dangling at the top edge of the scene, as if he were doing an Olympic high dive in the wrong direction.

But even the angels who suddenly appear at that moment remind us that focusing on looking upward is pointless, a hindrance to getting about the holy charge that Christ has placed upon us of witnessing to his truth in the world. It’s an awesome responsibility and an honor. It's a sign of how very much Jesus loves us that’s every bit as breathtaking as his laying down his life for us on the cross. Jesus loves us so much that, by the power of the Holy Spirit, he commissions each and every one of his followers to carry on his holy work of redemption, reconciliation, and healing into the world: to carry him and bear his image within ourselves for the sake of the world.

The question those angels ask is one that we need to hear today, too: "Why are you standing there looking up toward heaven?" And that may sound harsh—I imagine the apostles were once again feeling a sense of loss, and like most of us, didn’t want to tear their eyes away. But the Ascension does not represent Jesus’s leave-taking from the world. Rather, it represents a placing of the mantle upon our shoulders, and reminds us to redirect our orientation from receiving to giving.

Because we are not called just to watch and wonder. We are called to witness, and to love, not bully, as we do it.

Through our love—the love that we live, the love that we speak, the love that we advocate for the powerless and the marginalized—we are Christ in the world. Why are we looking up to heaven? Look within ourselves—Jesus is alive and well in our hearts and minds and souls whenever we live into the commandment to love and serve and honor each other.

Jesus speaks to all of us right here: “You will be my witnesses in St. Louis, in the hearts and the minds of our neighbors, and to the ends of the earth.”

What if we lived our lives as if we were the only representation of Jesus that others could know?

Because, often, we are.

Jesus’s ascension into heaven is not an end, but a beginning. It enables the true beginning of the Church being called to its mission to BE Christ’s body in the world.

The ascension of Christ into heaven does not mean that Christ is gone, or that Christ is remote, sitting enthroned in heaven and now aloof from our earthly concerns. Christ does not ever cease being incarnate, fully human as well as fully God. Yet his earthly ministry at the Ascension is translated into an act of true faith and trust in us as his followers. As the incarnate Son of God, Jesus reminds us all of the divine image that rests within us, and all that he teaches us is meant to call us into living into the beauty of that image, to remember God’s ongoing acts of creation within us.

The gift of the Ascension is the gift of true discipleship. It’s the gift of living into the image of God planted within us. It’s the gift of Christ placing the yoke squarely upon our shoulders--in proclaiming the life-giving gospel, in healing the sick and the sick-at-heart, in revealing God’s love visibly and tangibly in the world, through who we are and what we do as Christ’s representatives.

As Christians, we can’t spend our lives gazing upward to heaven- we've got things to do.

And we don’t need to, anyway. Christ is right here, within the hearts and spirits of those who seek to do his will in actions and words and attitudes both great and small. By his earthly example, Jesus modeled for us God's love and mercy that we all can emulate, even to our enemies, to those who set themselves against us. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, at his ascension Jesus empowers us to be a testimony to justice and peace, and to band together in the name of love, amity, and charity.

Take heart, Beloveds: Jesus, our Shepherd and Savior, is not gone. He abides in us and invites us to abide with him. He calls us to share in his priesthood by proclaiming mercy, reconciliation, and love throughout the world by our words and our deeds, and to serve the oppressed and the outcast for the glory of God.

“We will never change the world by going to church. We will only change the world by BEING the Church.”

Don’t just stand there, looking up. Look within—Jesus is there, sanctifying us to be his Body in the world. Alleluia!

Preached at Christ Church Cathedral on May 10, 2018, at 12:10 pm.

Readings:
Acts 1:11
Psalm 47
Ephesians 1:15-23
Luke 24:44-53