Expect Much of God

Text: Luke 7:11-17 Other texts: 1 Kings 17:17-24 June 10, 2006

Bishop Dr. Munib Younan is the bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Jordan and the Holy Lands. He spoke this past Friday to the assembly of the New England Synod, a once-a-year gathering of lay people and clergy. He was the keynote speaker. The churches that he shepherds are some of the very few Christian churches left in Palestine and Jerusalem.

In his speech, Bishop Younan said that “the power of faith is the driving force of justice.” Such a statement implies that God is an active participant in the affairs of the world and of human endeavors. Such a statement implies that God expects much of us and that we are instruments of God’s mercy. But it also implies that we are right to expect much of God, and that we expect with certainty that God can and—we hope—will, intervene in history. As scripture tells us God has done in the past.

You might have seen that the first lesson and the Gospel reading tell essentially the same story. Or rather two stories with the same plot, character, and outcome. This is probably not a coincidence. The stories are alike in many ways. In both, a widow has lost her only son. In both, a godly person—Elijah in the first, Jesus in the second—is moved and his heart goes out to the mother. In both, that person touches the dead son. In both, the son is revived. In both, the son is given back to his mother. Those who heard or read the story about Jesus would certainly have known and recognized the story about Elijah, and the power of the first story would have lent both power and credence to the second. They would have said, “Ah ha! This man Jesus reminds me a lot of the great prophet Elijah. He is like the prophets of old.” That being a good thing.

We who are always aware of the resurrection of Jesus should not be too distracted by the resuscitation of the dead in this story. The raising of the dead is not exactly the point of either story. The stories are healing stories, though healing of a sort of extreme kind. But the people of Jesus’ time would not have seen a ton of difference between raising someone from the dead and healing someone who could not walk or enabling a blind person to see.

Cases like this demonstrated most of all that the healer—Elijah or Jesus—was an authentic prophet of God. Which is how each story concludes. “I know you are a man of God” says the widow to Elijah. “A great prophet has risen among us,” the crowd says of Jesus. Raising someone from the dead is not seen as a sign of divinity, it is a sign of prophecy.

A prophet speaks for God. A prophet acts with the power of God. It is not the prophet who does the work, but God. It is God who does the raising. The extreme nature of the healing (that is, reviving someone who is already dead) confirms the authenticity of the prophet. But it is God’s power at work. For the people who first heard these stories, it would be obvious that God could do such things. Not only in a theoretical or theological way, that God has the potential, but in a practical and everyday way. That God has the interest in doing so. That God does do things like this. It would go without saying that God has the power. People would have been interested to see in what way that power works.

But the question for many now in our time is not how it works but whether it works. Stories like the ones we are talking about make people wonder what the trick was. What the explanation was, what was really happening. Though it still might be obvious that God can do such things, it goes without saying, almost, that God would not. Times have changed over the past two thousand years.

We seem invested in the notion that God is a hands-off kind of god—except in a way I’ll talk about in a minute. I wonder whether we have an interest in keeping God at arm’s length. Sort of a kindly rich uncle whom we like and for whom we are grateful, but who doesn’t really mess with important family affairs. Maybe we prefer the world to be predictable (which it is not when God interferes with things, especially things like physics and biology). Maybe we protect ourselves from the potential of being disappointed in God. Maybe we are afraid of the intimacy that God provokes when we let God get too close. Maybe we are ashamed of ourselves and think that we are not worthy of God’s attention. I don’t know. But it seems that we prefer a God who is less than actively involved in the day to day events of our lives. When we do this, we make God more like a chaplain, someone who comforts us in times of trouble and, as they say in counseling jargon, is a quiet presence.

That is not how people thought who saw God’s presence in Elijah and Jesus.

What is clear from the stories in the Bible, including the ones we are talking about today, is that God likes people. This is demonstrably so. That is, God demonstrates that in what happens. And when God acts, it is because God is really interested in people in a major way. When Jesus sees the widow whose son has just died, he has compassion for her, it says in our translation of the Bible. But other Bibles get it better. It was heartbreaking, says one. Heart-wrenching. The word in Greek means his gut was all twisted around.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, the song goes, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost and now am found. If you ask people who have hit bottom, the very bottom, and raised up by God, God is much more than a quiet presence. God is an active and powerful and truthful friend, boss, and mentor. They were down and God pulled them up. No question.

Our fear, our sometimes stunted imaginations, and our poor sense of humor can keep God out except in an ethereal way. But if so, the power of faith is muffled and the future of justice is darkened. We seem to allow that God may expect much of us. We need to be willing to expect much of God. If we desire to move forward in any frame of mind other than wishful thinking or despair, we need to be willing to expect God to act in the present.

We harm ourselves and the world if we put stories like the ones we heard today in the relics section of our minds. Probably this will not be the last time someone raises a child from the dead. We need to allow ourselves to think that that is so. To have that be our posture. For as shocking as it sounds, God is still working.

Trinity: The Nickname of God

June 3, 2007

Is it possible to love the Trinity? Is it possible to be loved by the Trinity? Not if the Trinity is an organization, an institution, even a team. Not if the Trinity is an association of three persons, like a small board of directors or a special task force. Who can love an organization, who can love a task force? How in the world would an association, a board of directors, love us?

Today is called Trinity Sunday. It is the only Sunday that is named for a doctrine. Who can love a doctrine? Did the church powers-that-be make a mistake? Or is there something else going on here?

Maybe we find a hint when we hear that this is also the first Sunday after Pentecost. This time in the church year is called ordinary time. Not a time, like Christmas or Easter, when we celebrate some extraordinary event in the life of Jesus. Not a time, like Advent or Lent when we prepare ourselves for those special events. Ordinary time is the time when in lessons, songs, and worship we focus on the day to day life of Christians. And, in parallel, the day to day life of Jesus as he went about the countryside, as he went door to door, as he went about his regular job—as we focus on his ministry. So Trinity Sunday is not part of any of the special seasons of the church. It is the first Sunday of ordinary time, and is therefore, we could guess, about our day to day life in the light of our following Jesus.

Yet it seems so complicated and weird and not at all connected to normal life. The Trinity is the idea that God is one God but in three persons. “God in three persons, blessed Trinity,” as we sang in the opening hymn. Some great theologians and philosophers—people who think about things like this—have dismissed the Trinity as unimportant or at least irrelevant in a practical way. When I was growing up, I asked my mother—a smart church-going person—about the Trinity, and she said to me, “Well, it’s a mystery.” By which I took at the time to mean: “Beats me. I have no idea.”

Yet something like the concept of the Trinity has seemed necessary from the very beginning of Christianity. It is an answer to some problems, which I’ll call problems number one, two, three, and plus. Three-plus problems.

Problem number one was an intellectual problem. Jews, Muslims, and Christians are pretty committed to worshiping just one God. There is only one God. God is one. I am your God; you shall have no other God’s. The worshiping of other gods besides God is represented in the Old Testament as adultery. But, says the intellect, then who is Jesus? If Jesus is divine—and the church was clear about that pretty soon—then is Jesus another God, making therefore two gods? What about the Holy Spirit, whom we are supposed to trust as the Spirit of God, the agent of the creation? Is the Spirit God, and if so, do we now have three gods? And wanting to keep God perfect and unchangeable—to my mind a dubious desire in any case—God cannot be divided or converted into modes, so to speak. So, primarily to protect monotheism in the face of the divinity of Jesus and the ongoing existence of the Holy Spirit, the Trinity says there is only one God (with a capital G) who exists in the form of three persons, equal, divine, and different.

Problem one starts with the oneness of God. The Trinity is about the inner life of God.

Problem number two was a problem of people’s experience of God. People tend not to treat the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the same way. Though you might know, intellectually, that the triune God—“triune” is the adjective for the Trinity—you might know that God created the universe, but you might have a hard time getting your head around the notion that Jesus created the universe. Even though we believe it and it even says so, sort of, in the Gospel of John. In a similar way, for a long time people had a hard time saying that when Jesus died on the cross that God died, too. What does that mean, God died? When you pray, you might say you pray to God or to Jesus, even though the word “or” there contradicts the notion that in essence there is only one listener. God or Jesus—isn’t Jesus God? The three persons seem different in our hearts and in our experience. We experience God in different ways at different times and, it seems, in different guises. So, to preserve our sense of the diversity of God in our own daily experiences, the Trinity says there is one God who meets us in different persons.

Problem one starts with the oneness of God. The Trinity is about the inner life of God. Problem two starts with the diversity of God. The Trinity is about the outer life of God.

Problem number three was an emotional problem. A problem of affection, maybe we can call it. People don’t only have thoughts of God. People don’t only have experiences with God. People also have a relationship with God. A relationship that is not just with one of three sorts at different times. When you come to church, whom do you praise, to whom do you sing? Not, I think, just one of three versions of God. Our relationship with God can be as complex—more complex—than with another person. God of the Bible—as opposed to God of the Greek and Medieval philosophers—is someone who had and has a relationship with God’s people, is open to prayer and grief, who listens to our arguments, who suffered as a person, and who guides us and comforts us [from LaCugna]. God and people act as friends, lovers, and sometimes worthy opponents. To know God in an ongoing and joyful and sometimes troubled relationship makes sense to us because that is how we live our own lives, in joyful and sometimes troubled relationships. Parent, child, friend, significant other, partner, associate, teammate. Physicists suspect that even the physical basis of all things is the relationship between fundamental particles, whose existence is called into being through interactions and relationships. The world is not things that interact but interactions that yield things. So, to acknowledge and praise the complex relationship we have with God, the Trinity says that God is not one or even three particles, but a being whose very existence depends on relationships with others.

Problem one starts with the oneness of God. The Trinity is about the inner life of God. Problem two starts with the diversity of God. The Trinity is about the outer life of God. Problem three starts with the affection of God. The Trinity is about the relational life of God.

Nonetheless. The concept of the Trinity in all these formulations is both too simple for God and too complex, and not simple enough and not complex enough. That is, who are we to say that we have figured God out so thoroughly? We know some things. God the creator is big—and little. God’s glory reaches beyond the stars, the psalm says. God in the person of Jesus is physical and earthy. God in the Sprit is near and surprising. But God is not just big. Not just physical. Not just near. Not just anything you can say or imagine. The Trinity is a way to say this. To say that God is “not just …”

Dorothy Sayers, mystery writer and Christian, once said “the Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, the whole thing incomprehensible.” Not to make fun—or not only to make fun—but to acknowledge the ineffable. What we can most know about God is that God is mostly unknown and unknowable. That is not a bad thing.

For God knows us. We know that God is mindful of us, as it said in the psalm “what is humankind that you remember them,… that you care for them?” We need to have a name for God, which is problem number three-plus. A kind of nickname, really. We know the name God told the Israelites. That’s God’s formal name. But we need a name that fits God like the nicknames we give our friends. Not a perfect name, nicknames never are. One that deals with God’s unity, God’s diversity, and God’s affection for us. So the church has picked such a name. The nickname of God, a name we can call God that seems to fit. The name is: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The Trinity is one name of God. It reminds us that God and we are connected. It reminds us that God is “not just …” something we can pin down. It reminds us that this big, small, physical, near God, more than we can imagine, is the God we love and the God who love us.

Speaking of Vision

Text: Acts 2:1-21 May 27, 2007

Where are we going? What are we going to do?

Just because our lives are full of uncertainty does not mean we like to be adrift, like dust particles in the sun. We do not want to be aimless. Without something to point at, without a direction. We do not want to wake up years from now and wonder how we ever got here, this spot in life that we never imagined.

We do want to imagine it, our future. Partly that is because we are not very fond of the unexpected (thinking usually that “unexpected” means “in trouble”). But also that is because we know that imagining the future has a lot to do with the way the future unfolds. We are smart and faithful enough to know that picking a destination will not necessarily get us to that destination (or even one nearby), but it will at least tell us how to start out from where we are now.

That is what prophets do. Prophets in the Bible. They create visions, in the modern corporate sense. Mission statements, sort of. A prophet’s job is to use words powerfully to inspire our imaginations, to feed our imagining. A prophet first tells us what is happening at the moment. These things are going great, these things not so great. They are professional clear thinkers. They wonder: how does God look at this state of affairs. God helps them to do this. And taking into account of what is, a prophet then tells us what might be. And having created such a vision, the prophet gives it to us to consider, to focus on, to ponder and discuss and agree or not. What the prophet does is state the problem, which then moves us to act.

A vision of the future is not a blueprint. It is not a plan. When we talk about visionaries—say in business like the founders of Google, or in service, like Paul Farmer who builds health clinics in the most destitute places in the world—we imagine that their vision was clear and specific. But that’s in hindsight. Visions of the future are like sketches, grand and indefinite overall, sharp and clear in places, fuzzy in others, with not all things thought out. A vision is like a map of a territory still unknown. We kind of know where we think we are going and what we hope we’ll find there, but these are uncharted lands and, since the destination is a proposal, not a place, we might arrive at a different spot altogether.

The disciples had gathered in Jerusalem. Up until now, Jesus has been their prophet, among many other things. But now Jesus has ascended in a cloud, leaving them here on earth, in this city. Leaving them to wonder: what now? Where are we going? What are we going to do?

Jesus has left them here on earth, but he had not left them here alone. He promised them just a few days ago that the Holy Spirit would guide them, and sure enough, the Holy Spirit comes to them in something like flames and something like a wind.

The Holy Spirit is good for this kind of job. The Holy Spirit is like a prophet more than like a planner. The Holy Spirit is not mostly a problem-solver. The Spirit is God who like the wind. No one knows where it comes from or where it goes. The realm of the Spirit is not MapQuest. The signs of the Spirit are things that are uncontained. Water, and wind, and fire. Things of movement and un-bounded. It is the Spirit of God who draws creation into being, blowing over the waters in Genesis chapter 1. Full of life and open possibility.

Pentecost, so named because it was the 50th day after Passover, was a harvest feast. The feast more importantly marks the giving of the law on Mount Sinai. It is a celebration because God gives the Israelites a direction. The law is a kind of vision. It is a vision of a world in which people are aligned with God, and therefore by definition a world that is good and without suffering. The law reinforces the hopes of creation.

The events at Pentecost renew that vision in a different time and under different conditions.

By the time of Jesus, Jerusalem was a cosmopolitan city, a center of commerce, political power, and intellect. It drew many people of many cultures from the ends of the earth, at least the ends as they knew it. People from as far away as Mesopotamia (what we now call Iraq, Iran, and Syria); Parthia (or Afghanistan, Kuwait, parts of Saudi Arabia); northeast Africa including Egypt; Turkey, southern Europe, and Rome. If you could sit in a park in Jerusalem in those days, you’d hear almost as many languages as there were people. Much as if you sat in Sennott Park across the street here in Cambridge this Sunday afternoon.

Powered by the Holy Spirit, the disciples speak to the many who are gathered, speaking politely and necessarily in other tongues, as it says, so that those many kinds of people might hear in their own languages. As clearly spoken—or rather as clearly understood—as if the disciples were speaking in each listener’s native tongue. Speaking to others so that they might understand is part of the vision of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

And the other part is that many people might become prophets. Quoting the book of Joel, Peter says that the time has come for women and men, young and old, powerful and powerless—all to be prophets. And do what prophets do: name the present and name the future. And that means us, too—spiritual descendants of that crowd in Jerusalem. It is up to us to think clearly about what is going on and to create a vision for what might be. In our own lives, in the world, and in the church. And, as prophets do, ponder the question: what does God think of all this?

This story in Acts has been called the story of the birth of the church. But it is not the church which comes to life here. There have already been gatherings and planning meetings and a Council and a commitment to stay together. They had new members. What was born in Jerusalem that day was the church’s mission. The Spirit plays midwife, but not to the church. What the Spirit brings is not fellowship, but a vision.

What is our vision now, here at Faith church in Cambridge? You are prophets. What do you name here? What is happening here now? What might be? There are no other people in this world who can say. Just you and our brothers and sisters here.

Listen! Says Peter to the crowd. The word he uses means “let me put words into your ears.” In the story of Pentecost, many speak up and many listen. As it was in the earliest church, it is a time of change here. It is important that we take our role as prophets seriously. It is important, as it is from time to time, that we do not forget to replenish our dreams. It is time for us to put words into each other’s ears. Time to imagine our future. To wonder: what does God think of all this? To call on the Holy Spirit, uncontained power of life and possibility. To wonder: what shall we do? Where are we going?

Succession Ascension

Text: Acts 1:1-11 May 20, 2007

Welcome to Part 2 of “Jesus and His Ministry,” brought to you by Luke the Evangelist. In the last episode, we saw Jesus returning to the disciples after his tragic execution. He spent forty days with them, showing that he had been raised from the dead, talking to them, eating with them, reminding them that it was he who had gathered them, and giving them each a new commission and a new title: Apostle.

Thus begins, more or less, the book of Acts, the second part of a two-volume saga written by Luke about Jesus and his ministry on earth, volume one being Luke’s Gospel itself. Acts opens with this recap of Jesus’ actions after his resurrection. But it really assumes that you already know the story of the life of Jesus, that you’ve seen the earlier episodes of this show and are familiar with the characters and what Jesus did and said. But whereas for the other Gospel writers, the story is over, for Luke it is about to enter a whole new season. In the episodes ahead we’ll hear about the life of early Christians and the early church. But it is the same show, Jesus and His Ministry.

In the other three Gospels—Mark, Matthew, and John—there is no ascension event, and the end of the story of the life of Jesus is pretty much the end of the story. But if the story had ended there it would be unlikely that we would be sitting here. The disciples did not just disperse and go about their pre-Jesus business. Instead, they became apostles, speaking and acting as a result of their experience with Jesus, and bringing that experience into the lives of others who did not know Jesus face to face. And eventually into our lives.

The ascension of Jesus is like the hinge in Luke’s rendition of the story of Jesus and his followers. It appears in brief mention in the last verses of Luke (which we just heard) and slightly more fully in the first chapter of Acts. That’s because, though it marks the end of Jesus physical presence on the earth (which is the subject of the Gospel of Luke), it marks even more the beginning of the ministry of Jesus through the church (which is the subject of the book of Acts). The question that Acts addresses is: will the new age that Jesus proclaimed be able to continue now that Jesus is not the physically present charismatic and divine leader of his disciples?

It is a question of succession that all founding leaders face. When they are gone, will the enterprise flourish? The ascension of Jesus is not the first succession/ascension story in the Bible. There are two precedents: Moses and Elijah. Moses, the prophet-like-which-there-was-no-other, who led the people of Israel out of slavery, was by traditional stories carried up to heaven, and his lieutenant Joshua became Israel’s leader. Elijah, the great prophet, ascended in a whirlwind to heaven, and his associate and student Elisha took over his job. It was Moses and Elijah who stood with Jesus on the mountain when Jesus was transfigured. The three of them spoke together. Maybe they were discussing strategy. Some readers think that the two men dressed in white who speak to the disciples after Jesus ascends in a cloud are meant to be Moses and Elijah.

All these ascension stories are about the transfer of power. Moses to Joshua. Elijah to Elisha. Jesus to … ? Jesus to whom? Jesus not to another prophet nor to Peter, his buddy on whom the church will stand. In one sense, Jesus transfers his power to the Holy Spirit. But the Spirit’s job here is different from Joshua and Elisha. The Spirit empowers the disciples and guides them. You will be baptized by the Spirit, Jesus says. (Which baptism we’ll hear about next week at Pentecost.) You will receive a power from the Holy Spirit, he says. Jesus transfers his prophetic power to the church, his gathered followers. You.

This shift of power marks a difference in tone and action between the Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts. In the Gospels, the followers of Jesus are like vessels into which the words of Jesus and their experiences of Jesus are poured, filling them with hope and power and possibilities. The followers are called disciples, which means student. They sit at their master’s feet, their lord’s feet, and listen and learn.

But the ascension is graduation day, commencement. And as in all graduations, the students are sent out into the world to take what they have learned and to act on it. They become apostles, a word which means one who is sent. The focus changes from knowledge to mission. The question changes from Who is Jesus? to What do we do now that we know who Jesus is? In the Gospel, the disciples hear the good news. In Acts, the apostles act.

The questions of Luke and Acts are our questions. Who is Jesus? What do we do in light of knowing Jesus? And they lead to a third question for each of us: Who am I?

Jesus has always seemed to the church to be a complicated divine brother. On the one hand, he comforts us and heals us and is with us in times of need. He teaches us and guides us and we rely on him. This relationship is a kind of personal piety. Jesus is for me and I turn to him. There is a lot of this Jesus in the writings of Paul.

On the other hand, Jesus is a counter-cultural reformer, assertive and challenging. He preaches about changes in the world, in the system, not just in each of us, that promote justice for everyone without regard for privilege. This relationship is demanding of our compassion and courage. Jesus is for the world, and expects much of us, his brothers and sisters. There is a lot of this Jesus in the Gospels and in the book of Acts. The church often has seen this as a conflict and at different times in history one or the other view has prevailed.

But there are not two different persons of Jesus. Or even two sides of the same Jesus that appear different, like in that old story about the blind men and the elephant. We are both comforted and sent. We are freed of fear of death so we can perform with courage dangerous acts of compassion. And when we act on the behalf of others, we find ourselves becoming closer to Jesus and fed by him. As the opening hymn says, “live in the light! … [and] be the light.” We have a relationship with a guy who is both divine and human. Who eats and walks and dies like a human and ascends like a god. A relationship like that is going to be intense.

We are both disciples and apostles. We are listeners and speakers. We are learners and teachers. We are beneficiaries of God’s grace and messengers of it. We cannot only sit at the feet of Jesus, comfortably informed. We cannot only be good worldly citizens, urgently active. As Christians, we belong to both Part 1 and Part 2, to both the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles.

In both parts, the followers of Jesus gather into groups. We are in this together, as the disciples who became apostles were in it together. We come to church to worship together, to join others in their times of thanksgiving and times of sadness, to be fed and energized. So that we may go out into the world strong and eager.

Peace is not doing nothing

Text: John 14:23-29 May 13, 2006

If we so much want peace, why don’t we have peace?

No one wants war, we say. If no one wants war, why do we constantly go to war? Why have humans warred for at least 4000 years straight?

The sentence really goes like this: “No one wants war, but …” “No one wants war, but we have to do something.” War is doing something. Peace, it seems like, is doing nothing. War is something we engage in. Peace, it seems like, is something we don’t do. When the situation calls for action, or seems to, war answers that call and peace seems not to.

Jesus speaks to his disciples, who are pretty upset and anxious. He’s finally convinced them that his death is inevitable and that they will be left without him. In the passage we just heard, he tries to reassure them. First, God will send the Holy Spirit—also called the Advocate in our Bible, but sometimes called Counselor or Paraclete after its Greek name—the Spirit who will continue to teach and guide them. And second, Jesus gives them a gift of peace. Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you.

But neither are especially helpful to the disciples. If the disciples thought that Jesus was giving them a cushy assignment, if they thought that they were off the hook, if they thought that the grace of God was something they could observe instead of take part in, if they thought that the peace Jesus was talking about was going to let them retire in fame and fortune—if they thought any of those things, they were going to be disappointed. Because from the time of Jesus’ two gifts to them—the Holy Spirit and the peace of Christ—they had nothing but trouble. After Jesus’ death and resurrection, the disciples preached and healed and lectured and worshipped, and by and large were put to death for all that.

Either the gifts Jesus gave were not very good ones, or Jesus meant something altogether different than what they expected.

It is evidently a strange sort of peace, a different sort of peace than they expect. I do not give to you as the world does, Jesus tells them. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid, Jesus tells them. Yet they live in fearsome and troubling times.

When Jesus says Do not be troubled in your hearts, the word he uses means “do not be perplexed.” Do not be confused. Do not be distracted. And when he says Do not be afraid, the word he uses means “do not be timid.” He is not trying to tell them that their hearts should not be moved, or their muscles atrophied.

The peace that Jesus brings does not numb our hearts, minds, or bodies. It does not make unpleasant things pleasant. It is not a drug that transports us to some unearthly place where we lie in a agreeable stupor while the cares of the world wash over us.

The peace that Jesus brings is not an anesthetic. On the contrary, it is a stimulant. It is a wider, more acute and clear awareness, not a fuzzier one.

The peace that Jesus gives is action. The opposite of peace is panic and paralysis. Inaction. Withdrawal from action. The opposite of peace is being bound and jailed by our troubled hearts and timid fears.

What Jesus gives to the disciples—that is, to us—is Shalom. Shalom is a word and greeting that means peace. But the peace of shalom is not the peace of being withdrawn from the turmoil of the world. It is instead the peace of being right with God, of being in alignment with God’s hopes for the world and us in it. Another word for that alignment is “justice.” The peace that Jesus gives is intimately related to justice. When there is injustice, when the world is messed up according to God’s will, when things are out of alignment—as they so often feel to us these days—then we cannot call it peace.

The world is imperfect. Experience, scripture, and theology all agree on that. People do vicious things to others, and anger and fear and retribution and greed are strong motivators to us human creatures. Evil things can and do occur in the lives of individuals, in relationships, in families, in communities, in nations. Unfortunately, it seems, wherever people gather.

We do have to do something. There is no good word, oddly, for acting in peace. There is no equivalent for the phrase “waging war.” “Waging peace” sounds silly. Partly that is because, though we often think of war and peace as opposites, the end of war is not the same as peace. If injustice continues, even it there is no war, there is no peace. So acting in peace might better be called “working for justice.” And working for justice is hard work.

Peace is not doing nothing. It takes a huge amount of spiritual energy. More, even, than war. It takes courage and bravery and sticking to convictions. It takes confidence in oneself and in one’s buddies. It takes putting fears aside, or more likely living with fear. It takes sometimes-extreme Christ-like generosity. It takes, for Christians, faith in doing what Jesus did and taught. It takes more than what is humanly possible, and therefore takes in the end the willingness to put at least part of the responsibility for things in God’s hands. It takes listening for the Holy Spirit that Jesus tells us is sent in his name. None of this is easy.

The word Peace comes from a word meaning “to join.” When we share the peace here at Faith, we are joining with one another. The rite of sharing the peace just before Communion comes from the notion that we should be reconciled one with the other before we come to share Christ’s meal at the table. If we are all children of God in this world, then peace in the end means reconciliation. Not just not battling one another, but joining together.

I do not give you peace as the world does, Jesus tells his disciples. Do not be perplexed and do not be timid, he tells them. God will send the Holy Spirit, he tells them. The world hardly gives peace at all. But we have signed up as followers of Christ and get the same gifts the disciples were given. Clear thinking, courage, and the power of the Holy Spirit to strengthen us, guide us, and remind us of all that Jesus has said.

The Big Deal

Text: Acts 11:1-18 Other texts: John 13:31-35, Revelation 21:1-6

It seems to be a big deal.

This vision of Peter’s seems to be a big deal, because it appears twice in the book of Acts, once in chapter 10 and once, as we just heard it, in chapter 11. Peter had been hanging around with gentiles, people who were not Jews. He had been hanging around with them and eating with them. The Christian Jews in Jerusalem, sort of the headquarters for the new Jesus movement, were very unhappy. They were unhappy because Peter was doing something that no Jew should do, this eating food with gentiles.

We know how this story turns out in the end. The early Christians did in fact reach out to the pagans. Peter and especially Paul became missionaries to the gentiles. Because of their work, the group who would eventually come to be called Christians grew and spread in areas and in ways it might not have otherwise. Because you know how the story turns out, you might think that the Jerusalem leaders were making a mountain out of a molehill, were being alarmist, or at least were supporting the wrong missionary strategy.

But the problem they had with Peter was a real one. Jesus and his disciples were Jews. They were part of a community of people. As part of that community, they shared certain values, and hopes, and concerns. The particular community of which they were members was surrounded by a group of people—Romans and Greeks and other gentiles—who had different values and hopes and concerns, and who could not care less whether the Jewish community prospered or declined. They were an oppressed people in their own land.

The community that Peter and Paul and Jesus and other Jews shared was a holy community. Holy does not mean religious, or spirit-filled, or especially loved by God. It means separate. When God said “I am your God and you are my people,” God established a separate group of people. The word “gentile” means essentially “everybody else.” “Other people.” “People not us.”

To be separate implies or requires a boundary. On one side of the boundary people do things a particular way. On the other side, they do things a different way. That is one way you know who is in and who is out. One thing you do if you are a person like Peter is to eat particular kinds of food prepared in certain ways. And you do not share meals with people who eat other foods prepared in other ways.

There is nothing magical about the food itself. What matters is that the custom—or the rules, or the law—is important and one of the things that you do and are faithful to. It is like—to be a little trivial here—it is like wearing the right clothes if you are or want to be known as a particular kind of person. You don’t wear khakis and bow ties if you want be known as Goth. If you do, you won’t be Goth for long. And if you could and still be Goth, that would change what it means to be Goth. It would be threatening to Goth holiness, if I can mix those terms. That’s what the people in Jerusalem are worried about.

Peter was wearing the wrong clothes, a little. But more, he was welcoming others who wore the wrong clothes and had no interest in shopping for new ones. How come I can’t be Goth even though I’m wearing khakis?

Peter explains what he is doing by telling the big shots in Jerusalem about his vision. In the vision a large sheet comes down from heaven and it is full of food. What you have to know about this is that the food is not the right food for a Jew like Peter to eat. It is the wrong food. People in Peter’s community would not eat that food.

In fact, Peter would have found the food disgusting. Not just surprised, but grossed out. Things we find disgusting are the internalized rules of our group, our community. Human creatures in the world do all sorts of things. The things that our particular group really does not do we find disgusting, abhorrent, an abomination. Words and feelings like that. Unnatural, people sometimes say. What our emotions or our guts are telling us is: that’s not the way we do things here. People who do things like that don’t belong here. So Peter in his vision says to God: “Yuck! No way am I going to eat that stuff. I never have and I never will.”

What God says to Peter is: It is not up to you, Peter, to say what is clean or unclean. What is holy and what is not. Our reading says “what God has made clean, you must not call profane.” But another Bible says “you must not call common.” That is, not-holy, not separated, just like everything else, common.

It is a little unfair, since God made the rules about what is clean and holy in the first place. Peter’s point is that God evidently can adjust the boundaries, and will, and most importantly, has. At least according to Peter’s vision. As a result, Peter visits a house where gentiles live, and he eats with them and eats their food. The Spirit, he says, “told me to go … and not make a distinction between them and us.”

Not make a distinction! Making distinctions is what it is all about. Who is in and who is out. Who has power and who does not. Who deserves favor and who does not. Who, even, is law abiding and who is not. Who gets to decide and who is affected by those decisions. Whom you feel comfortable with and who makes you uncomfortable. What you admire and what disgusts you. Whom you feel safe being around and who makes you cross to the other side of the street.

What Peter notices is that though we make these distinctions, God does not. And that if the Spirit has anything to say about it, we should not either. The people Peter visits have an experience of God that authorizes them to be on the inside. Or rather, that allows them not to be on the outside. It is their own experience, managed by the Spirit, that counts.

If we think we know for sure whom God likes, then first of all we are in danger of denying what God would allow. And second, we are in danger of denying ourselves an experience of God that might help us know God better. Peter turned away in disgust at first when he heard what God wanted. He was being asked to do what was not in the Bible; in fact, what the Bible said not to do. The Spirit can move us toward God in paths that cross boundaries that we protect. And our knowledge of doctrine and feelings of disgust are not reliable guides on those paths.

Jesus leads us to a new Jerusalem, as it says in Revelation. A place here on earth where God dwells among the mortals (that’s us). But being new means it won’t be the same as the old. Who knows how many ways there are to love God? In the psalm for today [Psalm 148] even the sun and the moon praise God, and the fire and fog do God’s will. We are only creatures, not always so smart or wise.

Peter, disciple of Jesus, heard Jesus say, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.” Now he hears the Spirit add a clarifying explanation: when I said love one another, I meant love without distinction.

We have claimed Jesus to be our Lord, meaning our boss, our leader. We have said that we hope to allow the Spirit to lead us in ways unknown. Maybe, as with Peter and his friends in Jerusalem, God is trying to tell us something that we do not already know.

It is a big deal.

Transformed Thomas

Text: John 20:19-31 Easter: April 15, 2007

Preacher: Vicar Anna Rudberg

It seems to me that Thomas has gotten pretty rough treatment through history. This passage in John has forever gotten him labeled as a man crazy about empirical proof, a man of shallow faith. His name has even come down through history as almost a caricature—Doubting Thomas—a name to describe the unimaginative one, the naysayer, the one who stubbornly sticks to only those things he can hold or touch, unable to make that “leap of faith.” But I’m not so sure that’s who Thomas really is. I think he’s actually a much richer character. And in fact, he has as much to teach us about believing as fearing, loving as mistrusting.

To begin with, Thomas is not the only one in the story who is having trouble completely buying what is happening. Pastor Tim described last week the other disciples’ reaction to the women’s discovery of the empty tomb. Are they overjoyed to hear the news? No, Luke says they dismiss the women’s story as an “idle tale.” Mark goes so far as to say even those at the tomb are so full of “terror and amazement” that “they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” And you have to admit, it’s a pretty logical response—resurrection is not something we’re accustomed to dealing with. Only days before the disciples have seen Jesus die, even helped lay him in the tomb, and now they’re not only hearing he’s alive, they’re actually seeing it. Basically, I think the disciples are not quite sure what to do, and it’s frightening.

It’s ironic actually; in the midst of Easter, the season of our greatest hope, of renewal, of life bursting forward, we find the disciples in this passage scared and alone. They are huddled together in the Upper Room, fearful to so much as open a window, let alone believe that any Good News that is filtering through to them.

While I think Thomas joins the disciples in their understandable fear, I also wonder if there isn’t another reason for his hesitancy to believe. I think Thomas is not only unsure of what is happening, he is also nervous to trust, to give hope a chance. I suspect we’ve all experienced something like that in our lives. Something we’ve wanted so badly that when it happens, it is too frightening to believe. Or maybe, like the disciples, we’ve lost something we care deeply about and when it returns we aren’t quite able to admit it’s real. Worst of all, is that we might be tempted to shut ourselves off completely, too scared to let ourselves be vulnerable out of fear that we’ll be hurt again.

I remember when I was younger we once had a bedraggled little puppy wander onto our farm. Now if that little guy wasn’t the most unfriendly little thing—it wouldn’t let you hold it or even get too close, but preferred to just stare back with a wary eye from a safe distance. Each day my brother and I would lay out a pan of kitchen scraps and try to entice him closer, but the pup wouldn’t even look twice at it. In the morning, though, the plate would be licked clean. It took weeks for that puppy to learn to trust us, but ever so slowly he did, until eventually he grew to become our loyal dog, Nicky, sweet and affectionate.

Loving someone means being vulnerable and that’s frightening. It’s tempting to want to protect ourselves against that. I’m sure Shadow had had a tough puppy-hood and wasn’t about to let some fickle owners hurt him again. I think of how easy it can be to never take that step to love again, to never make yourself vulnerable. With that in mind, I try to imagine how Jesus’ disciples have just been feeling—their greatest hope, their hero and teacher, their MESSIAH, has been KILLED. This man in whom they had so many hopes, so much trust, is suddenly gone. They must feel abandoned, lost, and frightened. Reaching out to Jesus means opening up to be vulnerable again.

In that sense, Thomas models a powerful transformation. In the face of great pain, having just lost the leader he loves, he at first hesitates, chooses to doubt. But then, he reconsiders, he squares his shoulders and makes himself vulnerable by trusting again. With this act he embodies, OUR part, as follower’s, of the Easter story. Jesus has lived into his part the Easter promise, and now he waits for us to live into our response. Just as Jesus is resurrected from death into new life, Thomas is resurrected from disbelief into new hope. For what is the resurrection if it is not responded to, if it is not believed, accepted, rejoiced? But this takes trust, it means living into the vulnerability to love again. In this pivotal moment, Thomas reaches out to love his Lord in a new way, as a Christ who is both present and yet not of this world. What a powerful thing that is, to make that decision to believe. It is only appropriate then that Thomas’ cry is one of truest and rawest proclamations in all the Bible “My Lord and my God!”

And this cry moves us to the third resurrection of the story. It is the rebirth of a new kind of church. Up until this point the “church,” or what will become the church, has essentially been a group of people who are in constant contact with their charismatic leader, Jesus. They hear him preach, they witness miracles, they are cured or know people who are cured. They are able to see Jesus, touch him, hear him—just as Thomas wishes to do. Jesus realizes, though, that this is all about to change. He will soon leave them and they will have to go on alone, building a church based on his teachings and on faith, but without his physical presence. From now on, they will have to speak of their experience of Jesus to a people who never met him. And in a matter of 50 years, even those who had met Jesus in person also will be gone. The church is about to become those Jesus speaks of, who “have not seen and yet have come to believe”.

Thomas models just how difficult that transition is going to be, and Jesus realizes it. It is not easy to believe without physical proof. How daunting for this fledging church to reach out to people who will have to believe without seeing. Even worse, Jesus knows he’s going to be depending on these disciples, the very ones who themselves have trouble believing without seeing. How can they expect others make this decision when they can hardly decide for themselves?

But Jesus doesn’t make them do it alone. He doesn’t berate Thomas for his disbelief, but he meets him where he’s at. Jesus doesn’t leave his disciples stranded but gives them the tools with which to do it. He breathes on them... He strengthens them with his spirit. He gives them the mandate and the confidence to speak his message for him—to forgive sins, to preach the good news. Although Jesus command for them is challenging, he does not abandon them.

And that is the church that we’ve inherited. A church that follows a God that challenges, but also gives the tools to overcome those challenges. A church based on a promise but not physical proof. Unlike Thomas, we don’t ever get to see the incarnate Christ. When we gather together as a Christian body, as we do today, we hold little hope that Jesus will walk in in physical form to speak and counsel and heal. But even if we don’t see him in “in the flesh,” we still see Jesus in the world, don’t we? And I think this is one of the most powerful parts of the Thomas story. I mean, did you ever stop to wonder why Thomas asks to touch Jesus wounds? Why not ask to shake his hand or maybe to embrace him? Perhaps it is because it is through these very wounds that Thomas feels the closest to Jesus. Just as Thomas is suffering, so is his Lord, and perhaps this is where Thomas feels the greatest empathy, the greatest sense of connection. And is it not the same for us today? That sometimes the most profound way that we’re able to reach out to God is through the wounds of the world? When we reach out in love to others, when we respond to those in need, stand with those who are lonely or forgotten, are we not also reaching out to God ourselves? When we dare to speak out against injustice or take up the voice of the unheard, is that not our own cry to God? When I consider my own life, it is at these times of reaching out that I most strongly feel in harmony with what Jesus calls us to do. It is at these times that I most clearly feel the presence of God.

Just as in this passage Thomas is resurrected through the wounds of Christ from disbelief to hope and love, so too are we. In the face of all the pain and hurt and abandonment—Christ’s wounds in this world—we are called not to retreat, not to huddle in our Upper Room. Instead we are called to know those wounds; to not be afraid to touch them, to feel them. We are called to feel the breath of Christ and be strengthened. To reach out towards our broken world and see in it what Thomas sees, “my Lord and my God.”