May 30, 2004

Acts 2:1-11 + 1 Corinthians 12:3-7,12-13 + John 20:19-23

It is so easy to get caught up in the excitement of these readings today.The images are so powerful and vivid:not just tongues of fire and a mighty wind,but also these disciples who are so transformed by their experience in that room.From fear to courage,from locked doors to wide open windows,from the shame of their betrayal to the pride of their calling,from the silence of whispered wishes to the bold proclamation,even an unbeliever would have to be impressed and filled with awe.A transfomation of such significance can only be the work of God.Yet to look only at them,to wonder only about their witnessand to remember this story in terms of what they did and of how they spokeis to be removed from the story and stand like an unbeliever in the face of the facts.It is so easy, and we have all done it,so easy to hear these verses from Acts of the Apostlesand wonder “How did they do that?” How did they speak in all those tongues?all the while ignoring what they said!

The issue is not how they spoke in all those tongues;but what they had to say, and that fact that some actually LISTENED!I would like to put it another way –and give you something to take home today.Talking is not nearly as important as listening.It is the listening that makes a difference.Pay attention to the story of this day.The first important verse here for us is:“each one heard them speaking in his own language.”

Something happened that day because the crowd stopped to listen.That had to happen first.What good would the gifts of the apostles had beenif no one had been willing to listen?We are reminded today more about listening than about talking.If the apostles had not listened to Jesus, they would have had nothing to say.If the people in the streets had not listened to the apostles,nothing would have happened that would have made any difference.

The listening changed everything, not just the talking.What good can it do to say “I’m sorry.” if no one listens to the message?We have all become so good at talking,and most of us feel as though we have so much to say;but as one of the chief “talkers” in this community,I remind myself every day about the need to listen.Talking gets all wrapped up with power and the exercise of authority.No matter where it happens, at the seat of government, or the seat or religion,at the dinner table in your home or behind the wheel,there is always talking,and after awhile, some of us who find ourselves being “talked to” all the timestop listening, and in this there is great danger.

It seems to me that one of the gifts of the Spirit is the gift of listening –a little more involved, a little more important than “hearing”,it is part of the gift of Understanding and Wisdom.The image of the tongue, the tongue of fire, which artists have so quickly capturedought someday to be followed by an image of the ear.The miracle of the tongues takes us nowhere without the miracle of the ears.They are both essential to make the Pentecost experience complete.We are never going to have peace until we learn to listen:listen to the cry of the poor,listen to the anger of the oppressed,listen to the pain of the sick who get no health care or medication,listen to the silence of those treated unjustly,listen to hearts of the lonely,listen to the whispers of the old and abandoned who are no longer useful to us.The gift of Peace Jesus wishes for uswill only find a home in the hearts of those who stop talking and start listening.

May 23, 2004

Acts 1:1-11 + Ephesians 1:17-23 + John 17:20-26

For the past two Sunday John’s Gospel has described the relationship of Jesus with God and with his disciples through which we have examined the identity of Jesus and our own in the langugage of friendship, love and belonging. There was the shepherd who knew his sheep and whose sheep knew him. He laid down his life for them, and then he whispered the divine name into the darkness of the divine mystery and called God, “Father.” He spoke of the oneness between himself and this “Father”, and he called us “friends” because he had made known to us everything he had heard from this “Father.” He gave us everything the Father had given him.

This Gospel talk is “theological language.” It is not the stuff of a romance novel nor a suspense story. It is as different a language as  Greek or Arabic, Hebrew or Japanese is from our English. We are not going to understand the story if we do not learn the language

We may use the words, and they may sound familiar, but they will not lead us to Truth as we defined it last week unless we use them as they were intended.  It is the same for Unity. Biblical unity does not mean uniformity. Biblical Unity is rooted in a union of love and respect. This was the struggle of the earliest church. They had to realize that their unity in Christ did not mean uniformity in appearance nor in observance of the Jewish laws.

The words of Jesus spoken to us today call us to a vision of unity we have not yet fully realized. Somehow in these days and in this nation it seems more distant and impossible than ever. Our lives spiritually and politically have become so isolated that the unity for which Jesus prays almost seems beyond our reach. Unity that is not inclusive of human diversity is not unity at all. We are called to Unity, and the only way there is through Love.

Again, this is a new language. Unity in the language of God’s Word is not conformity; but oneness as the Father and the Son are One. Their difference is not lost in the unity of their love. Love in the language of the God’s Word is not sentiment and emotion. It is power and sacrifice and service.

The two fundamental needs of any human being are solitude and community. We want sometimes to be alone, but to be “all alone” is the essence of hell. It is not enough to be touched and greeted; our solitude must be protected and respected.  Love as we find it revealed in God’s Word is that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other. To be “all one” is the essence of heaven, sharing that total and eternal reality which Jesus taught us to call “Father”.

Today’s Feast is not about the going away of Jesus. It is about Unity. I believe that where Jesus is, we are to be found. While I cannot explain that mystery, I can hold to the conviction that in returning to God, Jesus has taken us with him. We are, in Jesus, back where we belong. If we do not hold to this hope, then the ascension seems to be a separation; but the Spirit insists that that we believe in the nearness of God.

The reign of God is a kingdom of justice, of peace, and love. It will never be achieved by human effort alone, but never without humans. And so, we pray every day and some of us more than that: “Thy Kingdom Come” and we work to bring it about. When I am just, when I am a peacemaker, when I love or am in love, I am in God. Perhaps if this truth enters more deeply into our lives and our search for understanding, we will know more truly the unity for which Christ prays and toward which the Spirit continues to draw us.

May 16, 2004

Acts: 15:1-2,22-29 + Revelation 21:10-14,22,23 + John 14,23-29

During these Sundays between Easter and Pentecost, there is no way of escaping reflections on identity: the identity of Christ the Risen the Lord, and the identity of his followers. We have heard this more clearly than ever the last two Sundays, and it comes again today.

Sometimes we identify a thing by its properties or a person by their gifts. We examine components, how they work and fit together, and then give a name based on those properties. Sometimes we do this by contrast. We look at one thing and then another, we observe what is different between them, and we name them by distinction. That is what is going on at this point in John’s Gospel.

John identifies Jesus as “Truth” by looking at his properties. “Truth” in John’s gospel has nothing to do with intellectual research. It is not the opposite of a “lie.”

“Truth” in Old Testament literature means the fidelity of God to His people. As the word develops in later literature, it came to mean the revealed mystery of God. “Truth” then, in John’s Gospel raises the issue of God’s faithful presence revealed.

When Jesus calls himself “The Truth” he is not speaking of honesty, he is speaking of his relationship with the Father. Those of us who live in the “truth” are people who live in the presence of God. To have the “truth” is not to possess something, but to be something. At the same time today, we consider identity the other way – by contrast to something else. The difference between disciples of Jesus and the world is precisely the love that consists in faithfulness to his word. We shall know who we are, and others shall recognize us by what we are not of this world.

In these weeks since Easter, we have walked with the disciples of Jesus into the mystery of what has happened to us because of the Resurrection. We have gone deeper into the mystery of what it means, and what our lives mean because of that Resurrection. A church, you and me, (not an institution), is filled with the presence of God. This world may not yet understand, believe, nor see God in us because too often we are more like this world than we are like the God whose life and whose spirit fills and sustains us. We are too slow to believe in the resurrection and what it means for us. We spend too much time thinking it is about Jesus, and that becomes a way of avoiding what it means for us. We spend too much time waiting for something to happen rather than making something happen with the gifts we already have. It is not a matter of having more or anything. It is a matter of doing something with what we have.

We are the Spirit filled Church. We are now all that Jesus has been. Our mission, our purpose in this time and in this life is identical to his. It is about Glory – about seeing the Truth in each other. It is about being the Truth.  That truth is a principal of moral living. It guides our decisions.

It guides our relationships It guides our vision of what we shall be. As long as there is revenge rather than forgiveness, there is no faith, no obedience to the Word, no life. As long as there is violence rather than peace, there is no faith, no obedience to the Word, no life. It has nothing to do with anyone else or “the world.” It has to do with us. When we are living in the Truth and filled with the Spirit, we will be different from the world, and only then will the world have hope, because without us standing in contradicion, the world is left to its violent, empty, desolate ways. It is Jesus, risen who speaks to us today. It is the Spirit that we hear in this place. It is God who says: “I will not leave you.” I will not leave you to kill and isolate, to alienate and destroy. I will send my Spirit to remind you, to teach you again what I have said through my Son. We do not have the luxury of amnesia – we do not get the excuse that we “forgot.” Baptized and raised with Christ Jesus, the presence of God will be made known in this world through us, or there is no God at all.

May 9, 2004

Acts: 14:21-27 + Revelation 21:1-5 + John 13:31-33,34,35

From the identity of Jesus and what it means in last week’s readings, we are led this week to consider our identity and what it means.

The “glorification” Jesus speaks of and anticipates in John’s Gospel chapter after chapter is that moment, that experience, when His oneness with God is unmistakable. It means that his presence can no longer be misunderstood nor seen as anything other than the presence of God. The death and resurrection of Jesus is his glorification. For those who recognize the meaning of his death and resurrection, the love of God is revealed. What seems to the unbeliever to be a scandal, a disappointment, the destruction of a human life, and the end of all hopeis really the moment of Glory.

All that Jesus had is given to the community. It was the heart of his final prayer in that upper room, and it was his mission, a mission he fulfilled. The love of the Son is revealed as the very essence of divine life, which is being poured out nto the community. All that Jesus had was love, and he gave it all. What the Father had given him was what he gave to his disciples. When he proclaimed that He and the Father were one, it was LOVE that they shared. What the Son provided was the mutual indwelling love of God. What Jesus gave was his flesh, his body, his blood, his will so that the Love of God would have a dwelling place, be accessible, be available, be ours.

Once we understand this, the commandment to “Love one another” is not simply as a moral mandate. It becomes an expression of the belief that the very life of the community, in love for one another, is the further outgrowth of the divine revelation we have received through the Son. One follows the other. “Love one another as I have loved you.” Means that the dymanic of love between us is the same mutual love found between God and Jesus, His Son. If Jesus says: “The Father and I are one.” as we heard in last week’s Gospel, then our love for one another puts us in the same relationship. If Jesus is the sign of God’s presence, then our love for one another is the same sign, and by our surrender to that love, to that presence, to that relationship, we too are “glorified”, and others will see and find what we have seen and found in Jesus. This kind of love is new to the world, and this kind of love makes the world new.

It is a love that means opening doors we may have closed against others. It is a love that means we will respond to appeals that cry out for our help, to forgive oversights or mistakes that someone may have made. This is a love that means opening our eyes to facts that we might otherise overlook: that the poor in the world belong to our family; that those who live in despair might be saved by our care for them; that peace can come to the world through our efforts.

That vision of a new heaven and a new earth we just heard about remains in the future only because we have failed to live it in the present. The resurrection of Jesus makes all things new, not just for him, but for us all. The glorification for which he longed is already accomplished. It is now and it is within our power to fashion a world, a country, a neighborhood, a family where there is genuine love for one another and sincere concern for the well-being of all.

We have been raised with Jesus, and no power on earth can really conquer us.  We have received the Spirit he promised. We have the gifts it takes to set this world on fire with love. It is no longer the gifts of the Spirit for which we wait, now it is the fruits of those gifts that remain to be manifest: LOVE, JOY, PEACE, PATIENCE, GOODNESS, FRIENDLINESS, FAITHFULNESS, GENTLENESS AND SELF CONTROL. As we look toward Pentecost, it must not be simply a matter of what gifts we receive, but rather of how those gifts are manifest in our lives, because in Jesus Christ, we and the Father are one.

May 2, 2004

Acts: 13:13,43-52 + Revelation 7:9,14-17 + John 10:27-30

“THE FATHER AND I ARE ONE!” It is verse thirty of chapter ten. This is the ultimate expression of what “Jesus” means. In those six English words, the identity of the risen Christ is proclaimed. In them we understand all that John has to say about Jesus. This is why his listeners picked up rocks to stone him. This is why believers have gone to their death in every generation since then. The Gospel of John, and the other gospels too for that matter, are not history reports of what Jesus said and did, they are about who Jesus is and what it means.

This Sunday the Church reflects upon who Jesus is and what it means. Next Sunday we shall reflect upon who we are and what it means. In all the other Gospels, Jesus is portrayed in one way or another as a Jew. He is a Pharisee, a Rabbi, a teacher: always in the context of Judaism. In John’s Gospel this is not so.

Listen in the Easter weeks as we work our way through the identity of Jesus from John’s perspective. Notice how Jesus stands outside of Judaism. He talks to the Jews, they react to him. Some are against him. Some are with him, but he is always distinct from them.

What is emerging in this Gospel is an image of God revealed by Jesus. This talk of Shepherd” and the image that goes with it must be heard in the context of Jesus. In the Hebrew scriptures “Shepherd” and “King” are linked together. Remember David the “King”. Remember where he came from – he was the shepherd boy. When John has Jesus speak of himself as “Shepherd” don’t be getting all sentimental and romantic with thoughts of little wooly lambs cuddling up to someone who just crawled out of a dryer with sheets of “Bounce” clinging to his white robes.

This is revolutionary talk. These are the images of a King, a Leader, whose presence and whose message sets people against one another. Hear that talk about sheep of one-fold and sheep of another. Yet this is noble talk, and in Israel, these are images of God; and so those six words of verse thirty in chapter ten are an Act of Faith, a proclamation that Israel’s Lord is present in Jesus Christ. There is then a political dimension to the Gospel, and people who belong to the “flock” of Jesus, who live by the Word of God who are God’s people are political revolutionaries.

They will stand against laws, office holders, and regimes because their first loyalty and their own identity is with God. This is not just spiritual stuff.

It is real.

It is social.

It is political.

It is economic.

It is not just about the soul, it is about the whole human person. Jesus cured people. He did not just go around and say: “God loves you.” He made a difference now, in this world, in time; not in some far off-distant “heavenly” realm. To see Jesus as an “a-political” person alters sharply the biblical figure of the Lord as Shepherd. The Bible is not a book that has an exclusively “spiritual” meaning. To think that way is to seriously misinterpret it. It is always concerned about the whole life of people. Atheists and atheistic governments have always known that which is why they out-law or ban the Bible from their realm.

Our response to Jesus Christ is not then simply a spiritual response either. It is a total response of the whole person. It does not simply make us pious. It makes us just. It does not simply make us holy. It makes us free. It does not just give us a vision of the Kingdom of God. It gives us the way to get there. Our response is not simply to pray, but to act. There is a difference in us, in our behavior, not just in our soul.

Proclaimed in these days between Easter and Pentecost, this Gospel looks ahead to what we shall become by the power of the Spirit. We shall become, or because of it, we are a force that can bring a breath of new life and the power of the Spirit like Fire to transform our world because we can see and we believe that God has come to be with us and has called us by name.