ST. DAVID'S UNITED CHURCH: May 2012

Sunday, May 20, 2012

ALL TOGETHER NOW

May 20, 2012

Easter 7

Acts 1:^{15-17 & 21-26}

John 17:^{6-11 & 20-22}

ad libbed intergenerational sermon including:

"Simon says" and Jesus says";
solisits and orchestras;
wonderful harmony and amazing dischord;
paying attention to what seems out of place - it may need nurture or it may be leading us.

Sunday, May 13, 2012

POURED OUT

May 13, 2012

Easter 6
Acts 10:44-48

John 15:9-17

(prayer)

Simon Peter was in Joppa – a coastal city of Judea (part of modern Tel Aviv). He was staying with another Simon, a tanner who lived by the seaside. One day, while there, Peter went up to the rooftop at noontime to pray. The bible doesn’t tell us ‘why the roof’. Maybe it was to be in the fresh air; maybe it was to be alone.

I like to imagine that (even though it was noon) that the sea breezes kept it comfortable. And I like to imagine that the view was spectacular: that the sights and sounds were nothing short of inspiring. I imagine that Peter went up to this high place to pray, because it was (for him) - as the Celts call it - a ‘thin place’ – where Peter felt especially in tune with his spirit – where Peter felt very close to God.

The bible says that Peter went up there ‘to pray’, but the rest of the narrative implies that his mode of prayer was not necessarily to speak to God, but to let himself go into to a state of meditation.

Maybe Peter should have waited until after lunch to go to pray, because his hunger seems to have influenced his prayers. Peter’s meditation led him into a trance-like state where he envisioned that, in his hunger, he was presented with a large choice of animals and a voice said, “Peter, rise, kill and eat!” But as can sometimes happen in these kind of dreams, what you want is exactly what you cannot reach – Peter is hungry, potential food is right before him and God is encouraging him to enjoy it; but all of the animals are ones that the Torah (the Hebrew Law) label as unclean and unavailable for food for people of faith.

Peter faces a dilemma: his gut or his soul?

He chooses the latter – ‘Thanks, but no thanks, God. I have never eaten any profane food.’ But this wasn’t a test of Peter’s adherence to the levitical cleanliness laws. The voice speaks again: “What God has made clean, do not call profane!”

This conversation repeated three times before Peter came out of this transcendental state and realized that he was just on a roof top in Joppa and that there was not large sheet of animals coming down from heaven.

As Peter regained his bearings, he noticed a group of ‘official looking men’ coming up to the house. Peter just seemed to know that he was to go with them. They said to Peter, ‘Cornelius, a centurion, an upright and God-fearing man, who is well spoken of by the whole Jewish nation, was directed by a holy angel to send for you to come to his house and to hear what you have to say.’ The next day, Peter went to meet with Cornelius.

Cornelius may have been a centurion in the Roman army, but he was not ambivalent to the place he found himself stationed. He admired the culture and spirituality of the locals. As a result, he was well-thought-of by the people.

Even so, Peter said to his host: ‘You yourselves know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile’

Now Peter is being a bit liberal in his interpretation of the Torah – contact with gentiles wasn’t strictly forbidden; after all even the Temple in Jerusalem was open to the gentiles...up to a certain point – further, in fact, than a Hebrew leper or a Jewish women (who was menstruating) was allowed to go.

Peter’s point was metaphorically true – formally prohibited or not, the gentiles were not spoken well of in the scriptures; the word ‘gentiles’ was a catch-all word, meaning everyone who is not Jewish. The Hebrew word translated as gentiles (םיוג - goyim) means ‘nations’, in other words the ‘other nations outside of Israel’.

Gentiles were not part of the ‘in crowd’ as far as Peter was concerned. As far as his proclamations about Jesus, Peter was speaking out of the belief that Jesus was the Jewish messiah: this was a message for people of his OWN faith community – it had nothing to do with gentiles.

And yet, it seems that that rooftop prayer-time changed Peter because he went on to tell his gentile host: ‘but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean...I truly understand that God shows no partiality.’

Then Peter shared the good news about Jesus. What we heard this morning from Acts chapter 10, was what happened as Peter was preaching – the Spirit was obviously present with these gentiles. And then in a similar way that the Ethiopian convert to Judaism asked in the passage we read last week from Acts 8: “Can the waters of Baptism be withheld?”

No, of course not.

I love the way the story of the church evolves in the book of Acts.

U It starts with Jesus’ original disciples (minus Judas) and those that were with him at the time of the crucifixion.

U They add Matthias to get the “apostles’ number” back up to twelve.

U Then the Spirit moves on Pentecost and Peter’s sermon about the prophet Joel draws in hundred’s (even thousands) of new believers in the months that followed – this included Jews from beyond Judea and Galilee.

U Then the Jesus door opens to converts to Judaism, like the Ethiopian whom Philip met on the Gaza road.

U Now, the door was taken off the hinges as Peter welcomes gentiles who are open to the wonder of the Hebrew God.

U The next step would be to take away the need to have a pre-faith in the Hebrew God before being invited into the fellowship of Jesus. New believers would come to believe is Jesus’ God through Jesus.

U The story will go on to tell us that the early church will allow people from different faith backgrounds and cultures to co-exist in the church without have practice all the same traditions.

The obvious extrapolation of Peter’s words in Acts 10:34 is...that ‘if we truly understand that God shows no partiality, neither should we!”

// // //

It is everywhere in the Bible in one form or another – “Love cannot be stopped; Love never ends”. And yet, there are Christians who work very hard to talk themselves out of the truth of this truth. That is in spite of words like...

‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you’, Jesus says, ‘If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my [God’s] commandments and abide in [God’s] love. This is the fullness of joy, Jesus goes on to say.

I like the word “abide” in this passage. I know that it could also be translated as ‘live in my love’ and that’s fine: I want this passage to ask me to live my whole life in the context of God’s love. For me, the word ‘abide’ draws my mind to the imagery of ‘home’: maybe ‘reside in my love’ says that even better.

If God’s love endures, if Jesus showed that love and if we have been told to ‘do the same’, then I need some help to understand how it is that some people justify hate against anyone for any reason.

And let’s be honest, I not only talking about skinheads and terrorists and narrow-minded zealots, we all have issues with the edges of love.

Jesus wasn’t just laying out an easy path for his followers. It is deeply challenging to hear that love is not an option for us.

Yeah but, when Jesus said “love one another” he was only speaking to the disciples right? We only have to love others who are like us, who share our beliefs, right?

Loving the lovable is easy...it was Jesus who also said (Mt 5:46, Lk 6:32): “If you love those who love you, how good is that?”

Like a lot of people, I spent some time watching the media coverage of US President Barack Obama’s brave and right support of marriage equality this week (I’d like to say ‘welcome, Mr. President, to Canada, circa 2005’, but I don’t think I have ever actually heard a sitting prime minister in Canada ever say that they personally believed in same-sex marriage).

In the mix of the media coverage, of course has been the ‘other side’, sadly often draped in the vestments of religiosity.

And I must say, that I almost have more respect for those who say they oppose same-sex marriage because they don’t like homosexuals, than those who claim to have a Christ-like love for all, but can’t extend that to civil equality. Can love be truly 'love' if it is not lived out in practical and consistent ways? Otherwise, it is just a word or a concept, not something that is part of real life.

Live in my love.

Loving is easy, if we get to pick and chose who to love, or if we limit the impact that love will have in our lives.

Live in my love.

Abide in my love.

Reside in my love.

Let love take hold where you live.

Make love real in your life.

I cannot imagine that I am called to only love others who think and act like me.

I can’t imagine that I am to withhold my compassion for people-of-good-character, regardless of their race or gender or spirituality or sexual orientation or any other dividing line you can imagine.

And I need to imagine that I am to love even those who do not show love in their lives.

I must love the selfish.

I must love the hypocritical.

I must love the greedy.

I must love the politician I would never vote for.

I must even love those who hurt me, those who hate me, those who don't value me or my life at all.

I must love the criminal, the murderer, the sex offender, the terrorist, the pedophile ...the unlovable.

If God shows no partiality in the doling out of God’s love, if Jesus abides in this love and if I am invited to live in Jesus’ love, how can I set...any lower goal...for my life?

Will there always be work to do? Will the envelope of love continue to need pushing? Yes and yes.

Am I a bad person for needing to continue to evolve my ability to love? Am I a bad person for being unsettled at the edge of love. We call them unlovable for a reason. No, this is normal to find deep love, like Jesus talks about, very hard.

The really good news is that God’s love is already fully evolved and complete.

No matter what, I am the recipient of unconditional love.

Love, like God has, is not designed to be contained.

It is supposed to overflow like the cup in the 23^rd Psalm.

It is supposed to move indiscriminately like the Spirit-wind that blew through the city on Pentecost.

It is supposed to reach unexpected places like the Holy Spirit that poured out over the crowd at Cornelius’ house.

// end //

I don’t pretend to think that the edge of this gospel is easy or comfortable, but I do think that it must be at the centre of our soul.

Let us pray:

God,

Keep loving us, even in our most unloving moments.

Amen.

#79MV “Spirit, Open My Heart”

Sunday, May 6, 2012

MUCH IN COMMON

May 6, 2012

Easter 5

Acts 8:26-40

John 15:1-8

(prayer)

The Revised Common Lectionary cycle of suggested Sunday readings normally has four passages for each week: one from the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), a Psalm reading, a reading from a New Testament letter (epistle) and a Gospel reading.

Any of you who have been watching my preaching patterns may have noticed that I tend to focus on two of the readings on most Sundays – which ones depends on what jumps out at me when I am planning the services.

In this season of Easter (it is still Easter through the Victoria Day long weekend: six Sundays after Easter Sunday), that the RCL has been suggesting a reading from the NT’s Acts of the Apostles in place of an OT reading.

The book of Acts is addressed to a person called ‘Theophilus’. It is not know if this was a real individual or if the name was to be representative of the whole group of believers. You see the name Theophilus literally means ‘Lover of God’. So was that a real person’s name or is that a general term? Either way, the book certainly was intended to be shared with all those who love God.

The book of Acts is the second part of a two-volume work of an early church author. Volume one is the book of Luke [also addressed to Theophilus] – which (as the author points out) was “about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning ²until the day when he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen” (Acts 1:1-2).

Volume two (Acts) picks up the story at the same point where Luke ended: the Risen Christ is instructing the disciples about what they were to do next. The book of Acts is the story of those next steps.

Acts chapter one, verse eight, sets the tone for the book. The risen Jesus tells his followers:

“you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth”.

In a way, the passage we heard from Acts 8 this morning begins the fulfillment of this quest Jesus gave his disciples.

Jesus’ initial followers were Galilean Jews. Peter, James John and the others were from the region of Capernaum, not all that far from where Jesus grew up. As Jesus traveled, people from other towns and places joined in as well, like Mary and Martha from Bethany. Jesus even had some followers from Jerusalem like Sanhedrin members, Joseph and Nicodemus.

During his travels, Jesus ventured into some gentile (non-Jewish) territories and shared his gift and message with people beyond ‘his people’. But it does seem to appear that (during Jesus’ lifetime), the movement was (by and large) a Galilean and Judean Jewish one.

One the first major expansions that the early church experienced as described in the book of Acts was that the group of believers expanded to include Jews from beyond the Holy Land – people from the (so called) Diaspora [the dispersal], Hebrew people who lived in other parts of the world; they were mostly greek-speaking and are sometimes described as ‘Hellenistic Jews’.

In Acts, we learn that the community of believers had grown so large that the twelve apostles were not able to meet the needs of everyone. Some of the Hellenistic believers were bothered that their widows and needy were not being attended to well enough. So it was decided to appoint seven people (from among these Greek followers of Jesus) to work along side the twelve. One of these seven was Philip.

The church of Jesus started as a Judean-Galilean movement, but those edges proved limiting and restrictive, so it expanded and included those from the Diaspora.

Today, we heard that the edges of the movement were pressured to move out again.

Philip met a man on the road from Jerusalem to the Mediterranean Sea. He was not Judean or Galilean. He was not even a born and bred Jew who lived in the Diaspora. He was from Africa – a life-long indentured servant/consort of the Queen of Ethiopia.

The back story is that he was not born or raised Jewish, but at some point in his life he converted to Judaism. He was (what is called) a proselyte.

His conversion may have been relatively recent as he was still unsure what to make of some of the major scriptural passages, like Isaiah 53. He asked Philip about what it meant.

Philip’s interpretation of these words in Isaiah were strongly influenced by his involvement in the movement of Jesus. In those words from 450+ years earlier, he saw the trial and crucifixion of Jesus.

The events of the Judean’s exile in Babylon and the image of suffering in that time are far removed from Jesus being brought before Pilate, but they do hold things in common.

The songs of the suffering servant from the exilic texts of Isaiah were deeply helpful to the followers of Jesus to help understand how his deep faithfulness allowed him to endure during those hours before his death – how Jesus refused to speak against the truth of his words and actions; how he did not cave under torturous flogging. The early church could relate to the utter abandonment of Isaiah’s suffering servant to the same experience Jesus had.

Philip was able to use this common ground to share the good news about Jesus with this faith-seeking man from Ethiopia.

The man is intrigued. The story of Jesus enthralls him and excites him. The text of Acts doesn’t give us the details of the conversation, but as the two of them travel along the road and passed by a pond (or river), the Ethiopian wanted to make a commitment: “What is to prevent me from being baptized – right here, right now?”

First it was the Hellenists, now foreign converts ... Jesus’ instructions were being followed: “You will be my witnesses to the ends of the earth.”

How wide will this circle go?

Different people - whose faith was founded differently - found something in common.

The evening of the Last Supper is the setting where the Gospel of John includes several chapters of Jesus’ instructional teachings for his followers. It is in that section that we hear such famous lines as:

· “The world will know you are my disciples if you love one another.”

· “In my Father’s house there are many rooms.”

· “I do not call you servants any longer, I call you friends.”

· “No one has greater love than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

And today’s gospel reading: “I am the vine, you are the branches.”

I said that the context of this section in John is the last supper, but interestingly enough, John is the only gospel that doesn’t describe the meal on that night that Jesus would be arrested.

I think it would be a mistake to interpret that to mean that the author of the fourth gospel did not know about the meal that would be the foundation for Christian Communion. No, instead this author (writing as much as a couple of decades later than the other gospels) is a master of symbolism and the power of words to mean more than the literal. John may not have a direct communion story: but John is the book where Jesus says:

‘I Am the Bread of Life’, and

‘I Am the True Vine’.

The last gospel may not mention communion, but it talks about communion a lot.

In a short while, we will come to this table, in this church, in Leduc, in 2012 and share in something that Jesus spoke about with his disciples on the night he shared that special last supper.

As different and unique as we are, we are held together by our Christ.

Jesus says that he is the vine and we are the branches. The reality is that the branches are part of the vine – they are not separate, they are connected. The branches are the edge of the vine – the place where the vine’s growth is nurtured.

The leaves on the branches bring energy to the vine and allow that vine to bear fruit.

The vine needs the branches and the branches cannot exist without the vine. Jesus puts it this way: ‘Live in me as I live in you’.

What we hold in common, unites us. But there is no expectation (or need) that we be the same.

Philip and the Ethiopian came to faith in Jesus by markedly different paths, but Christ was their unity.

When we are invited to share the bounty of this table, the gifts of the loaf and cup are for all.

New to this church, just visiting or been coming for a while, you are invited to come and eat by the One who said, I am the bread of life.

Young and not so young, quick and slow, you are invited to come and drink by the One who said, I am the true vine,

You of deep faith and you who are in the midst of searching, you are invited to this table of plenty by the One who said, Love one another, as I have loved you.

Not one of us is here today, by the exact same path – and our journeys to come will vary as well – but, right here, right now ... We Are One.

As I began today, I noted that my pattern is to focus on just a couple of the suggested readings for a given Sunday. But today must be an exception because the theme of a unity within diversity, where all are enveloped in the inviting and loving nature of God, permeates the Psalm and Epistle readings as well. I feel compelled to share them too.

We are used to hearing the start of Psalm 22 on Good Friday because Jesus quotes it from the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” But the Psalm goes on to proclaim that God ensures that all are included.

Psalm 22, verses 25-31.

²⁵ From you comes my praise in the great congregation; my vows I will pay before those who fear the Lord.
²⁶ The poor^* shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek the Lord shall praise the Lord. May your hearts live for ever!

²⁷ All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord; and all the families of the nations shall worship before the Lord.^*
²⁸ For dominion belongs to the Lord, and the Lord rules over the nations.

²⁹ To the Lord,^* indeed, shall all who sleep in^* the earth bow down; before the Lord shall bow all who go down to the dust, and I shall live for the Lord.^*
³⁰ Posterity will serve the Lord;
future generations will be told about the Lord, ³¹ and^* proclaim the Lord‘s deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that the Lord has done it.

And a few selected verses from 1^st John chapter four:

⁷Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.

¹¹Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.

¹³By this we know that we abide in God and God in us, because God has given us of the Spirit.

¹⁶So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.

^18aThere is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.

²¹The commandment we have from Christ is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters^* also.

(next section largely from Seasons of the Spirit)

If we are ever tempted to think of God’s love being available to only certain people, in certain situations, who have certain practices and ways of expressing faith, we will do well to re-read the scripture passages for the 5^th Sunday of Easter in Year B of the Revised Common Lectionary. God’s love is there for all of us, in any time and place.

We have much in common.

What is to prevent us from being bathed in that love?

Let us pray:

God may we believe the truth of your uniting love. Amen.

>>offering<<