Wisdom Be a Lady (Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31)

In the ancient near east, in Palestine and Assyria and Babylon, a species of literature became popular in the centuries before Christ.  Called "Wisdom Literature," it centered around . . . wisdom.  Now that's a broad term, and it covers a lot of territory, but wisdom literature centered around how to live right, to live in harmony with your community and, importantly, with your god.  Greek wisdom literature tended toward the philosophical, with high-minded discussions of the virtues and ideals.  Hebrews, being of a practical bent, tended to produce sensible, down-to-earth wisdom literature.  And most of the surviving Hebrew wisdom literature is in the Hebrew scriptures, which we Christians call the Old Testament.  For the record, they are: Job, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach and, of course, the book we just read from, Proverbs. Two of these books, Wisdom and Sirach, are part of what we Protestants call the Apocrypha, and some folks include Lamentations and Psalms.  The former of which I tend to include myself, but the latter, not so much.

So . . . most of us know Proverbs from the classic proverbial form: Doing W will lead to X, but doing Y will lead to Z.  Here’s an example, from the tenth chapter, the fifth verse: “A child who gathers in summer is prudent, but a child who sleeps in harvest brings shame.” This was, of course, appropriate to a time long ago and a place far away, before the advent of child labor laws . . . but you get the picture: it’s practical advice that leads, presumably, to peace, prosperity and rightness with the Lord.

But there are also sections that speak more generally, more theologically, if you will, and our passage this morning is one of them . . . it’s appointed in the lectionary for Trinity Sunday, which is today, and I guess a good question is . . .  why? It doesn’t speak of the Holy Spirit, in Hebrew the ruach elohim, the Spirit of God, nor does it speak of the Son of God, who will not be born for centuries yet . . . it speaks of a woman, in less politically correct times called Lady Wisdom.

Now, this isn’t the firsttime Proverbs has spoken of a woman, and to understand Woman Wisdom, we have to look at the chapter just before this, where a very different woman is discussed.  The narrator calls herthe “loose woman,” and “the adulteress, with her smooth words.” And the narrator advises that a man call wisdom his sister, to keep from falling into the snares of the loose woman, and it gets downright explicit, describing a hapless male that falls into her clutches: “a young man without sense,” we’re told, just walking along the street near her corner, minding his own business in the twilight, in the evening, at the time of night and darkness.  And the loose woman comes toward him, decked out like a prostitute, wily of heart.  She is loud and wayward; her feet do not stay at home . . . at every corner she lies in wait. She seizes him and kisses him, and with impudent face she says to him: ‘. . . I have decked my couch with coverings, colored spreads of Egyptian linen;  I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon.  Come, let us take our fill of love until morning . . . For my husband is not at home; he has gone on a long journey.’”  And the young man—whose only crime is to have little sense, while the woman, notice is pure-D evil—the young man follows her, going like an ox to the slaughter, or maybe like a stag to the trap until an arrow pierces his entrails—hey, I’m just quoting scripture, here—and the narrator tells his audience not to let their hearts turn aside to her ways, for ”Her house is the way to Sheol, going down to the chambers of death.”

Contrast that to Woman Wisdom, who is described in our passage as standing in the gates, in a place usually reserved for (very male) judges, the wise men who decided disputes amongst the people, and it’s a place of honor not normally associated with women, and from that position—again from a part we did not read—she gives gentle advice: “learn prudence” she says, unlike the young man of the last passage, and hear her because—unlike the loose woman—she will speak noblethings, and from herlips will come what is right, because wickedness—like that spoken by the adulteress—is abomination to her lips.

And it’s important to see that here in Proverbs, we have a pattern that pervades a lot of literature, especially that written by men: a woman is either really, really good, perfect, really or she is really, really bad: wanton, scheming, with few redeeming values.  There’s no in between.   In the movies, there’s often the “good girl”—whom the hero, who’s a lot like the naïve man in proverbs when it comes to women—and the “bad girl,” who gets hold of the hero first, and twists him six ways to Sunday.  Finally, virtue wins, the bad woman gets hers, and the hero gets the woman who is virtuous, whose mouth utters truth and for whom wickedness is an abomination unto her lips.  A particularly clear version of this scheme is the Bond movie, where there is always exactly one “bad girl” and one “good girl,” and although Bond is virtuous, he is hardly naïve.

The thing is, here in Proverbs—as in the Bond flicks—the only one allowed to be human in the triangle is the man.  Bond is quite a complex character—no, really!—but the Bond women are types: good and evil.  In Proverbs, the man is not bright—he has no sense—but neither is he super-bad, like the loose woman, nor wondrously virtuous, like Lady Wisdom.  In fact, though Wisdom clearly speaks in Chapter 8, the first half is written for and is a warning tothe man: don’t be like that putz who was lured into a night of debauchery by the prostitute, listen instead to the one whose words are “better than jewels,” who is more wondrous than anything you can desire; who is, in other words, perfect.

Over the centuries, the Church has played into this dualistic fantasy very nicely, thank you very much:  Mary the mother of Jesus is so perfect, according to the Roman Catholic Church, that she remained a virgin throughout her life, and the Gospels must be mistaken, somehow, when they talk about his siblings, or they’re really cousins, or something . . . and because the church already had it’s perfect Woman Wisdom in Mary, it had to create a loose woman to be the epitome of all feminine evil, and so they slandered Mary of Magdala, Mary Magdalene, even though there is not a shred of evidence—within scripture or without—that she was a woman of ill repute.

And over the years, woman have struggled against this impossibly high standard, reinforced by literature, the fashion industry and most insidiously the church, cause if you’re not Mary the mother of Jesus, if you’re not Lady Wisdom in all her perfection, then you must be Mary Madalene or the loose woman of Proverbs, because there ain’t no in between, the patriarchy won’t allow it.

And reading Proverbs, one might be forgiven for thinking that it is just one more example of sexist literature—how come one of the extremes isn’t male, huh, huh?—except for one thing, and it’s found in the second part of our passage: an exquisite example of Hebrew prose in which Wisdom tells us who she is . . . “The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth.”  Hmmm . . . does this sound familiar?  She continues:  “When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water.  Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth—when he had not yet made earth and fields, or the world's first bits of soil.”  And now it’s clear: Lady Wisdom is evoking the first chapter of Genesis, when the first thing that was there, beforehe created the heavens and the earth.  “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep.”  What is around when God creates the heavens and earth?  The deep, the waters . . . and Lady Wisdom is present beforethat.

But that’s not all this should remind us of  . . . in the beginning, before earth she was there . . . and in the first Chapter of John, someone else  was there in the beginning.  Remember? “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.”  Let’s see . . . in the beginning was the Word, and we know who that was, and in the beginning was also Lady Wisdom, and, of course, God . . .  and it’s getting kinda crowded, isn’t it?

And in fact, this is why this passage is appointed for us to read on Trinity Sunday, isn’t it?  Because through all the trappings of Pre-Christian literature, through all the male-dominated language, what shines through is the absolute complexity of God, the fact that God is bigger than anything our finite, gendered minds can think about it.  Of course, we’re not to take this literally, we’re not to believe that Wisdom is a Lady—any more than Luck—any more than we are to take the Adam and Eve story literally. And in fact, one of the hottest topics in biblical scholarship today is how to take this . . . is Wisdom intended to be a feminine aspect of God?  Does she represent a now-lost feminine, matriarchal view?  Is she a biblical remnant of a more fully-realized feminine portrayal of the divine?

One reason this is such a hot topic is that there is a lot of resistance from the more conservative scholarship contingent.   It was brought to a head around the turn of the millennium with the Presbyterian-sponsored “Reimagining Conference” which sought to broaden our ways of looking at and conceiving of God so that it is more inclusive, primarily of gender.  Now, nobody would argue that God is really an old white man, we all acknowledge—or we say we acknowledge—that God is neither male or female, black or white, etc, etc, etc . . . but maybe you remember the uproar when, rather than pray to father—as many of us were brought up to do—they prayed to mother. But what really got people going is when they addressed their prayers to Sophia.  And why did they do that?  Well,  what is SophiaGreek for?  You got it . . . Wisdom.

Sisters and Brothers, I have no idea what the absolute truth of the matter is, I have no idea whether Wisdom is a member of the Trinity, or a co-equal aspect of God . . . whether the “we” in Genesis points to God and Wisdom and Christ, or what.  All I know is that the author of Proverb struggled to put into words something that was far greater, far more transcendent, far more inclusivethan any of us can ever imagine.  As it says in Genesis, God created humankind, male and female God created them.   Lady Wisdom helps us affirm and celebrate that.  Amen.

Parthians, Elamites & Medes, Oh My! (Acts 2:1-13)

“When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place . . .” so begins the second chapter of Acts, and because we all have read the firstchapter of Acts—haven’t we?—we know who the “they” are.  They’re the apostles, recently augmented by one Matthias, chosen by lot to replace the, ahem, recently departed Judas.  Why, you might ask, was it so important to have twelve apostles?  After Judas left, couldn’t they have limped along with eleven, maybe inviting in a “guest apostle” or two when things got busy?  Well, there’s a symbolic reason if nothing else.  The number twelve is significant because as the first community of Christ, the first “church,” if you will, they represented the new Jerusalem and how many tribes of Israel were there?  Exactly . . . twelve.

Anyway, there they were, together in a house—traditionally the one with the “upper room,” though Luke doesn’t say so—they’re together in a house to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Pentecost.  Actually, Pentecost wasn’t what the Jewish people called it, in Hebrews it’s Shavuot,the Festival of Weeks, a major holiday celebrating the giving of the Ten Commandments.  Pentecost is Greek for “fiftieth,” so named by Greeks because it came fifty days after Passover.  We Christians celebrate the coming of the Spirit—some call it the birthday of the Church—fifty days after Easter, so we retain the same name:  Pentecost, that is to say, fiftieth.

And suddenly, a sound like a rushing of wind filled the house . . . and it wasn’t some little breeze, it wasn’t a genteel zephyr, come to softly rustle their hair, it was a violent wind, it  was powerful . . . if you’ve ever been through a tornado, I expect you associate this with the proverbial freight train sound that everyone and their brother likens to such an event . . . I know Ido . . . I think of the time my son Michael and I were huddled in a bathroom with four snarling cats and the same number of dogs, and though it was a relatively small tornado, and it didn’t last long, it was loud and scary. Even though it didn’t sound much like a train to me . . .

To Luke, it was a sound likea violent wind, and notice the “like” part—it clearly wasn’ta violent wind, but it was like one, and I bet they were “sore afraid,” or to put it in modern terms, scared out of their gourds.  I know Iwould have been . . . but wait, there’s more!  Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each apostolic head.   And once again, notice the hedging language . . . they were as offlames, likeflames, but clearly were not.  As we talked about last week, sometimes all we can do, when faced with the ineffable, is say what something is like . . . it’s why aliens in science fiction movies bear suspicious resemblances to humans or rocks or other animals.  Sci fi authors have just as much trouble imagining something outside the bounds of their experience as Luke did.

But though we think about the fire—that’s why we wear red on Pentecost—what Luke calls the things that appear is “tongues,” like that squishy thing in our mouths, only these are divided, as in a snake’s.  And I have a lot more trouble picturing thatthan flames, which is probably why Luke described them this way . . . actually, it sounds kinda gross to me . . . were they, like, tongues that had been ripped out of someone’s mouth?  Were they coated with someone’s previous meal?  It’s probably good that we emphasize the flame-y part.

Except . . . that the divided tongues represent the divided nations, the people of which spoke different languages, different tongues. . . and of course, we know how thatcame about, don’t we?  Pam just read it . . . after the flood, all people of the world spoke the same language, and they decided they were going to build a tower, a tower that would reach up to heaven.  And God said “let us go down and confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another's speech.”  And God scattered them over the face of the earth, and I don’t know about you, but this story sounds familiar . . . Adam and Eve eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge, so that they’ll know just as much as the Lord . . . the people of Shinar build a tower so they can reach heaven . . . God says of Adam “the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil” and casts them out of Eden . . . in the story Pam read, God worries that there will be nothing they cannot do, and says “let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another's speech."  In both cases, the humans threaten to get too big for their britches, to become like God . . . the sin of Babel, and the garden, is the sin of hubris, of supreme pride and arrogance . . . trying to become great on their own.  Trying to erase the distinction between creator and created . . .  

And tongues divided by sin rest upon the heads of the twelve—who represent the New Israel—andthe Holy Spirit fills them and they begin to speakin those divided tongues themselves, they begin to speak in the Babel of that half-built tower—those divided  tongues wereupon them, after all—and because it’s Pentecost, there are people from all nations there, all the nations created when God scattered the people so long ago, and the thing is,the thing is,they each hear in their own language . . . Parthians, Medes and  Elamites . . . Mesopotamians, Judeans and Cappadocians . . . Phrygian, Pamphylians, Egyptians and Romans . . . each hear them in their own tongue, it is as if the curse of Babel, the sin of pride and idolatry that God had reacted to millennia before, has been erased, wiped out by the power of the Holy Spirit.

And though we remember and celebrate Pentecost for the coming of the Holy Spirit, I think it’s equally important that we consider what that Spirit did when it came . . . it’s not just a story of the coming of power, of empowerment of the nascent Church to do God’s work—although it certainly is that—it’s a story of redemption as well.  It’s a story that points to God’s continuing acts of redemption, and the role of the Spirit within them . . . the sin of Babel, the sin of the divided tongues, is the sin of Adam and the sin of Eve, a propensity of human beings to attempt to elevate themselves to the level and place of their creator.  The coming of the Spirit erases that, the nations can understand each other again, through the power of the Spirit of God.  And it’s a symbol of the unifying power of God, of erasing differences and God’s overwhelming love for everyone,as the bumper sticker says, no exceptions.

But not everybody thinks that’s a good thing, do they?  Luke says that while some are amazed and asks what it all means, others sneer saying “They are filled with new wine.”  And it’s easy to dismiss these people as sinners, as unbelievers, as somehow evil people, and yet . . . is that really the case?  Are they really all that different from a lot of people, who feel threatened by the different, by those who are not like them?

As the title of this sermon indicates, whenever I read this story I can’t help thinking of another one, about a girl from Kansas heading down a road of yellow bricks.  She’s with a couple of characters who couldn’t be more different from her—one made of tin and the other of straw—and as the forest gets darker and the road overgrown, and strange things chitter at them from the trees, they imagine the worst, chanting “Lions and tigers and Bears, Oh My!” . . . even though they haven’t seen one of those, even though none of them have ever seen one, they are afraid of what they do not know, afraid of the unknown.

And I imagine there is some of that in the reaction of the scoffers, a little “Parthians, Elamites and Medes, Oh My!” about them, a bit of “Phyrgians, Arabs and Jews, Oh No!” going on . . . it seems to be a human thing to be afraid of what we don’t understand, isn’t it? That’s why we call them “phobias,” from the Greek word for fear . . . we have Anglophobia, fear of the English, gerontophobia, fear of the aged, and homophobia, fear of gay people.  Our current obsession with Hispanics in this country is, in my opinion, a species of xenophobia, the fear or dislike of foreigners.

Now these would be harmless except for one thing: our fear turns to dislike which turns to hatred, and from there, it’s a short jump to demonization, a process the psychologist Carl Jung called “projection.”  Jung says we ascribe all the things inside of us that are socially unacceptable—things like greed, prejudice, dishonesty, laziness—onto those who are different from us.  Soon, we are blaming all our troubles on them, all the things that are wrong with our country, our society, our communities.  The German people—good Christians, a lot of them—became convinced that Jews were the source of all their problems.  The poor are often demonized—they’re lazy or stupid or licentious—and programs to help them are dragging our economy down.  And in a time of gridlock in congress and children being gunned down in schools, many are convinced that if we just got rid of “illegal aliens” everything would be ok.

Dorothy and friends feared the unknown, feared those lions and tigers and bears, but when they finally met a lion, they discovered that their fears were groundless, at least in the case of thatlion . . . once they spent some time with one, communicated with one, they found their fears to be groundless.  Familiarity may breed contempt, but it also breeds understanding and peaceful coexistence.  And it all begins with communication.

Friends, the message of Pentecost is not just the coming of the Holy Spirit, the coming of power, but it’s also what that power entails . . . it’s not the power of domination, as some would have it, or the power to accumulate wealth and influence.  It’s the power to communicate, the power to understand.  It’s the power and ability to reconcile ourselves and others to the nations, to people who are, like us, creations of a loving God.  Amen.

Rocket Man (Acts 1:1-11)

      One of the most important things for us 21^st-Century types to understand is that the authors of the New Testament did not have the same world view we “moderns” do.  The ancients viewed heaven as having geographic reality just like earth; that is, they believed that heaven is a physical place that has a relationship to earth you could point to, and that relationship of course is “up.”  The abode of the gods was thought to be up above us, in the sky, and further, the Earth was thought to be an imperfect reflectionof this godly realm.  This of course is seen in Greek drama, where what happens in heaven is mirrored on earth but—for us imperfect mortals—often to tragic effect.  You can also see this in the New Testament . . . every Sunday we say: “Our father who art in heaven” – there’s heaven as a place – “Hallowed be thy name.  Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” We’re asking that things be done here on earth as they are done in heaven.  In fact, the whole notion of the Kingdom of God is shot through with this.  If God’s rule in heaven is just, if the poor are never hungry or oppressed, if the blind see and the lame walk in heaven,then the coming of the Kingdom of God is nothing less than making Earth – now an imperfectreflection – into a perfectreflection of heaven.
      One of the problems many of us moderns have – although surelynobody in this room – is an overweening arrogance about it all . . . we’re convinced that our world-view is superior, we call it an “enlightenment” world view, for Pete’s sake, as in, aren’t we enlightenedcompared to those primitives in the pre-modern era, primitives like Michaelangelo or Aristotle or Thomas Aquinas, Leonardo Da Vinci or Plato or Martin Luther . . . and this arrogance filters down lo unto the very basics of our faith . . . my favorite Episcopalian Bishop, John Spong – who I seminary buddy of mine calls Spronnngggg!– has made a career out of it, a career out of ridiculing pre-modern beliefs . . . he’s written the same book over and over again, telling us that we’d better get rid of all these quaint beliefs like the virgin birth or the resurrection or the insert-your-miracle-here, and I suspect that this obsession tells us more about John Spong, and his embarrassment over his faith, than it does about that faith itself . . . 

      And of course this pre-modern guy Christ said something about how those who are ashamed of him and his words of them he’llbe ashamed, but aside from that, whenever I read this morning’s lesson I thinkof Spong, who singled this episode out in one of his books, deriding it as Christ lifting off like a rocket ship, isn’t that quaint, and I think it betrays a remarkable literalness about the modern mind-set, a remarkable lack of imagination . . . Luke’s audience would have had no trouble seeing this as symbolic, they would have had no trouble viewing it on more than one level . . . like biblical literalism itself, the obsession with debunking the miracles in Scripture is a purely modern affliction, a kind of literalism in itself.  Only what it takes literally is the Gospel of Science, the Book of Philosophical Materialism, which states—chapter one, verse one—that something isn’t real if we can’t touch or measure it  . . .

      Be that as it may, our passage is in fact shot through with symbolism, beginning with its first line . . . Luke addresses it to Theophilus, and though there has been speculation over the years about this person’s identity – Was he Luke’s patron?  Was he an elder of the church? – I like to think that Luke has written it to all of us, because after all, Theophilusis Greek for “God lover,” and we do all love God, don’t we? Even though the idea of God is itself a pre-enlightenment notion?

      But the inscription reminds us of something else, it reminds us that the book of Acts is not just a history, not just a record of the activities of the early church, although it is surely that . . . the book of Acts is a Theological document as well, it has a viewpoint, an agenda, if you will . . . this is a story not only forthe God-lovers, it’s aboutthe God-lovers as well, it wants to project a certain image of them, it wants make certain theological points.

      And one of the points it wants to make hereis the obvious one . . . Jesus Christ was lifted up into heaven . . . and note the passive construction, it said he was “lifted up” and that of course implies somebody doing the lifting . . . Jesus didn’t lift himselfup, he was lifted up, as the two men in white said he was taken up,and we all know by whom . . . and what aboutthose two men in white, anyway?  White symbolizes purity, it symbolizes holiness and righteousness . . . in his Gospel account of the transfiguration, Luke describes Jesus’ clothes as “dazzling white.”  And then again, at the tomb, the women find instead of Jesus two men in dazzling clothes . . . are these men in our passage the same guys?  In a way, they’re acting like kind of a Greek chorus, telling the disciples what’s going on, giving them needed information . . . kind of like angels . . . are they angels?  Angel means messenger in Greek . . . and they’re delivering a message, all right . . . and here’s the point: God took Jesus – now the risen Christ – God took Jesus up to heaven . . . and if we don’t get the point, it’s pounded into us: the last verse repeats the word heaven three times: “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?  This Jesus who was taken into heaven, will return the same way you saw him go into heaven.”  Where has Jesus gone?  Into heaven,already . . . And of course, this gives us a clue as to his identity, doesn’t it?  The messengers are telling us that Jesus is the Son of God, returning to live in the home of his heavenlyparent.

       But even though Jesus has gone from them, even though his heavenly parent has reached down and scooped them up, the apostles are not left high and dry.  As Jesus says “John baptized with water, but you’ll be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now."  And of course, that is what we celebrate not all that many days from nowat Pentecost . . . but the disciples, there at that last meeting with him, want to know what’s going to happen,  they want to know how it’s all going to go down, and so they ask the question they’d been asking from the beginning “is thisthe time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”  Is it finally here?  And we knowwhat kingdom they’re talking about . . . it’s the Davidic kingdom, the kingdom of their once and future King . . .

      After all this time they stilldon’t get it, they stilldon’t understand what’s going on . . . it’s as if they’re thinking “ok, we got that crucifixion and resurrection stuff outa’ the way . . . now let’s get on with the real deal, the real agenda . . . let’s get that kingdom restored.  After all, you arethe Messiah, are you not?” But Jesus just patiently lays it on the line: it’s not for y’allto know the times or periods that God has set . . . sorry.  I don’t care howmany Y2Ks come and go or howmany charts John Hagee puts up on the wall, it’s not for you to know.  Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins can write a whole libraryon being left behind– and trust me, they will– but you’re not gonna figure it out. It’s just not for you to know.”

      And while they’re wondering who Tim LaHaye  is and what he was left behind from,he goes on:  But here’s what I willdo for you.   I’ll give you powerwhen the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you willbe my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea and everywhere, to the ends of the earth. And this witnessing business is no small potatoes, no small deal . . . it takes power to witness, the power of the Holy Spirit will come upon the disciples at Pentecost.  And that makes sense, doesn’t it?  After all, the Greek for witness is “martyr,” and that title came to be associated with Christians whose witness included the ultimate act of self-giving, the giving up of their lives . . . those Christians took Christ at his wordwhen he said “those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their lives for my sake will save it.” Their witness was a sign-post pointing to Christ’s ultimate act of self-giving, his death on a Roman cross.

      Of course, that kind of total witness, whether it involves giving up your physical existence on this planetor not, isn’t easy . . . and that’s what the power of the Holy Spirit is for, it’s to support Christians in this risky, difficult, downright-dangerousundertaking of being a witness to Christ. And this imbuing of individual people with the Holy Spirit’s power is something entirely new that God is doing with us Christians . . . the Hebrew scriptures – which we call the Old Testament – tell of the Spirit of God working in the world . . . Jesus himselftells Nicodemus that “the wind, the spirit,blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes,” and it’s stilllike that, the Spirit of God is still loose in the world, wild, unpredictable and free, but now – through the agency of Christ – we are able to wieldsome of that power . . . or at perhaps more accutately, that power can under gird our actions, it can support our witness to Christ.

      Early on in the movie The Apostle,the title character Sonny Dewey is doing some tag-team preaching . . . y’all don’t know about tag-team preaching?  Well, it’s when one of the evangelists is preachin’ and steppin’ and hollering about the Lord, and another comes up and pops him on the back or the arm, he comes up and tagshim and takes over, and it goes on like that sometimes for hours, and Sonny is tagged by this humongous preacher in a white suit who starts stepping across the stage yelling “I got the HolyGhost powah!  I got the HolyGhost powah!”  He’s happyabout it, it animateshim, it gives him joy. . . it gives him strengthto live in a world that’s not always sympathetic to three-hundred pound black men . . .

      And you know what?  We got the Holy Ghost powah as well . . .  we got that high-steppin’, blowin’ in the wind Spirit power to uphold us as we undertake the dangerous business of witnessing to Christ . . . what?  You say that you’ve never felt endangered by your witness for the Gospel?  You’ve never been afraid, you’ve never felt like you might be called upon to actually take upthat cross and follow Christ to the end? Ok, maybe not . . . I’ll buy that. There’s at least a veneer of religious tolerance in this country . . . and it’s not like we’re Muslimsor anything . . . but we’ve allfelt the ridicule as we bear witness in public, as we give credit to Christfor a good work – we always say we’re doing it in Christ’s name, don’t we? – or we bow our heads in a restaurant to give thanks . . . if we haven’t – and again I’m sure all of us in this room have – but if we haven’t, perhaps we ought to examine our witness to Christ . . . 

      Our whole reason for beingis to be his witnesses in Cincinnati, in all Ohio and Indiana and even to the ends of the earth . . . if we are not fulfilling this, if we’re not witnessing to Christ in everything we do, in thought word and deed, then what good are we to God?  After all, heaven is up there,not down here, and as that Greek angel chorus said “Why are we looking up into heaven?  Christ’s gonna come back here,back to earth.”  The action’s here on earth, the witness is here on this planet.  Fix not your hearts on heavenly things, brothers and sisters, but on our witness here on earth.  Heaven will take care of itself.  Amen.

The Advocate (John 14:23-30)

Peace I leave you, my peace I give you, let nothing trouble your heart; Peace I leave you, my peace I give you; Do not be afraid.

Once again, the lectionary has done us wrong. Our passage –  the one in the bulletin – begins right in the middle of one of Jesus' speeches. It's smack in the middle of the “Farewell discourse,” delivered  – according to John –  the night before the crucifixion. And to make matters worse, the lectionary is Jesus' answerto a question,and it doesn't even include the question. Listen to what John says: “Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, "Lord, how is it that you will reveal yourself to us and not to the world?"” And by way of answer, our passage begins: Jesus says “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” Say what? There's a fundamental disconnect here, or at least there seems to be . . . Judas asks about revelation, and Jesus answers with something that sounds totally off the wall, totally beside the point, something about the word and obedience and love.

Well, if it seems a bit dense to us here, imagine how it seemed to the disciples, there in the upper room, there in the smoky twilight, lamps glowering in the gloom. Jesus knew that his hour had come and the whole world darkened for the disciples, because they could see the their light going out, they began to imagine life without the Lord. Jesus was talking to them, telling them what it would be like when he was gone, when he was no longer there in the flesh, when they could no longer tramp Galilean roads together, or talk face to face or touch him, or hear him,  and they could hardly believe it. And as he washed their feet, there in the gathering darkness, he spoke of death and betrayal, and Judas Iscariot fled into the night. And he foretold much, not just Judas' betrayal but Peter's denial, three times before the cock crowed the next morning. And so the disciples sit there, eleven of them now, as night falls, and it's full of foreboding and fluttering spirits and it settles about them like a pall.

Jesus is speaking to them And he says “Those who love me will keep my commandments.” And sitting there in the gloom, they remember what he said not minutes before: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.  Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” And so they know what Jesus meant by “Those who love me will keep my commandments,”  but in the same breath, in the same thought,he speaks of another, whom the father would send, another Advocate, another Helper another Intercessor.  The spirit of truth and somehow, they knowthis Spirit, this Advocate because he says “he abides with you” like he's already there, already with them, right there in the room.

And yet . . . and yet, this Spirit is somehow not yet,for Jesus says he abides with you and“willbe inyou.” And somehow, they know that the commandments – that they love one another – that they keep Jesus' word –  are tied somehow to this Advocate, this Spirit of God that abides with them and will be in them.

“I will not leave you orphaned” he says “I am coming to you.” Somehow, some way     this Spirit is associated with Jesus just as Jesus abides with them so does the spirit; and just as the Spirit will be in them Jesus is coming to them. He has just predicted his betrayal, just predicted his doom, and the night surrounds them but he speaks words of comfort, words of hope – I will not leave you orphaned! I am coming to you! After his death, they will not be alone, for Jesus is coming to them, just as the Advocate is coming to them.

And the world will no longer see Jesus, but somehow the disciples will . . .  and they will knowthat Jesus is in the father, and they are in Jesus, and Jesus is in them.  And Judas – notthe Iscariot –  asks what Jesus is talking about. “How is it that you will reveal yourself to us, and not to the world?” And his answer is “Those who love me” he says, “willkeep my word. and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” And now the disciples – then and now – begin to see . . . Jesus is talking for and aboutthe community, those who love him, those who keep his word, his commandments. And it's clear that wordand commandmentare one and the same thing, two ways of approaching the mystery of Jesus. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And the word is not Jesus' but it is from the Father who sent him – it is the word of God.

And those who keep his word, those in the community of faith, those who Paul would call “the body of Christ,” the father will love them, and Jesus says “we will come to them and make our home with them.” Not to the world, but to the believers, and like those other disciples, I'm wondering right about now who the “we” in “we will come to them” are . . .

And we're told a mystery there in the flickering light – like a ghost story told around a camp-fire – and a chill goes up our spine as he tells us they will come and make their home with us. And he tells us these things while he is still with us, But the advocate will come, The Holy Spirit who will teach us everything and will remind us of all that he has told us.

They will come, the advocate whom the father will send in his name, the advocate will come to teach us, and re-mind us and re-acquaint us, and re-invigorate us –  The advocate, the holy spirit of God will come upon us, And will be in us, and we will be in that Spirit. We heard Jesus say “I am going away, and I am coming to you,” and we wonder “how can he be going away from us and coming tous? how can this be?” And he comes to us and says “Peace I leave you my peace I give to you . . . Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid . . .

And we huddle around the lanterns, at the table around the lamps, and outside the spirits flap and flutter, and these mud walls seem too thin to keep the world out, too flimsy and feeble and shaky. The world roars outside, people are plowing SUVs into each other, carnage on the highways, and there are wars and rumors of wars and somebody's killing somebody else . . .

And Jesus was killed on the cross, and he will be killed tomorrow, and we are terrified that he is not here, will not be here with us any more . . . The firelight flickers, and the darkness grows, and we hear the gentle words “I will not leave you orphaned . . ” But the world rages outside the lamplight and the winds howl and children die of starvation, minute by minute and there are bombs in backpacks, and they shoot each other in suburban schools. And our Lord Jesus . . . he has been spiked to a tree, and he will be hung up to die, and he rose again on the third day, but he's gone now, we saw him, carried up to heaven on a cloud, like some golden elevator, or rocket-ship, leaving grey and cold in his place. Darkness swirls outside, and demons howl in the night, and centurion boots sound on the flag-stones, but inside, in the lamplight, he is with us still, and he tells us “I will ask God and God will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever . . . this is the Spirit of Truth, whom that world outside cannot receive . . .”

But the homeless drift in silent purgatory around asphalt lanes, they sleep in doorways, and on steps and they bat at phantoms and spirits and they are outside us outside the flickering light, outside the dim warmth, dark ruby wine and yeast-bread, and inside, in the upper room, he is still with us, Jesus, lover of our souls, and he says these things while he is still here, before he goes up on that cloud to join the Father, to join God Almighty, and he says  “in a little while, the world will no longer see me, but you all will . . . because I live, you all will live . . . you allwill know that I am in God, and you in me, and I in you. I in you.” 

But the one to whom the world belongs, the ruler of this world will come, hascome, and his spoor is all around, his leavings foul the earth, and he is everywhere. he's in the gun-running, and the lay-offs, and the killings. he's in drive-bys and mass murders and corporate raids, in concentration camps, refugee camps, and slave camps, His boots sound in the courtyard outside the garden, out of range of the fire-light and the flag-stones rattle and hum, and the leather creaks and he is near. But inside the room, in that upper room there is lamp-light still, though the darkness thickens where the world's ruler presides, And Jesus tells us, gently, softly that he has no power over him, and he has no power over us, And the Advocate abides with us, and he will be in us, and he will remind us of all Jesus has said to us . . .

And the answer to Judas' question – “how is it that you will reveal yourself to us, but not to the world?” – is in that Spirit, that spirit of truth that comes  to those who love God. The spirit that's in the World, but that the world sees only through a glass, darkly . . . The spirit that is Jesus and not-Jesus at the same time, that is God, and not-God at the same time . . . How is it that Jesus reveals himself to us, and not to the world? How is it that Jesus reminds us of all he has said and done and been?

Peace I leave you, my peace I give you, let nothing trouble your heart; Peace I leave you, my peace I give you; Do not be afraid.  Amen.