Untouched By Human Hands (Galatians 1:11-24)

Remember back when we were kids, maybe the first or second or third grade, and they taught us how to write a letter?  We were taught how to begin it, then follow up with asking after the recipient’s health, and the help of her or his family.  “Dear Grandma, how are you?  I am fine . . . how is Grandpa?  I hope his goiter isn’t acting up . . .”  and there was an accepted form for a personal letter, and back in Paul’s Greco-Roman day there was a standard format for a Greco-Romanletter, and all of Paul’s letters follow it, to some extent, at least.  Greco-Roman letters generally begin with a Salutation—the dear Grandma part—and indeed, here in Galatians it’s found in verses 1 through 5, which we read last week. In it, he specifies who the letter is from—Paul an apostle and all members of God’s family with him—and to whom it is written—the churches in Galatia—and then he greets them: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to set us free from t he present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.”  Notice that he basically sums up the gospel just in this opening greeting—Paul never couldpass up a preachable moment.

Now:  in a normal Greco-Roman letter, the next part would normally be the “thanksgiving,” where the letter writer expresses her or his appreciation for its recipients in the form of thanks to God.  Listen to the thanksgiving from 1 Corinthians:  “I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus, for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind—just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you—so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Notice that here again, he can’t resist a sermon.

All this is to say that the parishioners in Galatia, sitting in church, listening to this letter from their beloved founder—the letters were always read aloud—as they sat there, they were expecting to hear a thanksgiving section, extolling their virtues—by the grace of God, of course—but instead they get: “I am astonishedthat you are so quickly deserting the one who called you”—that’s Paul—“in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel”  It’s as if a grandchild followed up the greeting to her grandmother with a whining complaint: “Dear Grandma, I am flabbergastedthat you didn’t give me a bicycle for my birthday . . .”  Grandma might faint dead away . . .

Of course, that is the effect that Paul is after, he wants to emphasize how upset he is, to impress upon them the gravity of the situation, as he sees it anyway, and the situation is this:  there is a group of Jewish Christians, perhaps from Jerusalem itself, which scholars call the Missionaries, visiting the churches in Galatia, the churches that he founded.  And they are preaching a version of the Gospel that Paul believes is false: namely, that you had to be a Jew and be circumcised and all that to be a Christian. And to Paul, this was nonsense, and worse, heresy, against the very foundation of Christianity, and as we spend some time in Galatians over the next month or so, we will come back to this question, which for Paul was a question of freedom in Christ, but for now it’s to set the stage for our passage, which seems prickly to say the least if not downright defensive.

And if it does, it’s probably because Paul feelsthat way, he feels under attack, and that at stake is nothing less than the Gospel and his standing as Apostle.  He tells them that the gospel that was proclaimed by him—gospel and the verb to proclaim come from the same root, so the Greek is something like “the proclamation that was proclaimed”—the proclamation that was proclaimed to him wasn’t of human origin, he didn’t get it hanging around the water cooler in Jerusalem with the boys, he didn’t read it in the paper or see it on Anderson Cooper, but it was a revelation from Jesus Christ.  And the Greek word rendered here as “revelation” is  apocaluptos, and maybe a more literal translation would serve better, as in “I received it through an apocalypse of Jesus Christ,” because it certainly created an upheaval in his life, an upending of his whole belief system, for he was a devout Jew, a Pharisee, by his own description “advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age.” 

He was devout, and as an expression of that devotion, he was actively trying to destroy this upstart religion called “the way.” And so though he might not have reallybeen knocked off his donkey like Luke claimed, his conversion had a lot of the apocalyptic about it:  going from persecutor in chief to church planter extraordinaire and though he never renounced Judaism that we know of, he argued vehemently that Christianity stood alone, and was available to Gentiles like you and like me.

But God called him from before he was born—the Greek is literally “from the womb”—and revealed—and once again, it’s apocalypted—and apocalypted God’s son to him, to preach among the Gentiles, he didn’t get anybody’s permission, he didn’t confer with anyone up in Jerusalem—although he did later visit Peter (whom he calls Cephas) and James, Jesus’ brother—and what he is trying to emphasize here is that his apocalypse is directly from God, he didn’t pass go, he didn’t collect $200, he didn’t set out to become a believer, God came to him,God converted him,God chose himbefore he was born, and Paul didn’t have a thingto say about it.

About a decade ago, Campus Crusade for Christ initiated a marketing campaign built around the simple slogan  “I found it.”  They had flyers printed up with “I found it,” bright orange t-shirts emblazoned with “I found it,” and scribbled “I found it” all over campus chalkboards. Of course, it being Campus Crusade for Christ, the “it” they found was Jesus Christ, and aside from the problematic use of the neutral pronoun—Christ is an it?—and the reduction of the entire Gospel to just one word, the more insidious thing is that it assumes that it is in our power to “find,” that it is somehow in our control whether or not we do. As the episode with Paul shows us, we don’t find God, God finds us.  The hymn doesn’t say “I once was lost but now I found it,” it says I once was lost but now am found.  The lyric is in the passive tense—am found—just as is Paul’s story.  Paul no more reveals the gospel to himself any more than we findit ourselves.

What’s even moreproblematic, though, is when we think we can determine whether or not somebody elsefinds Christ does.  In Gold Beach, Oregon, the site of my first church, the ministerial association was peopled largely with pastors of a more traditional bent, and I remember one meeting where they were beating their breasts over the condition of the town, which they considered largely “lost,” and “unsaved.”  If they’d just work harder, redouble their evangelical efforts, they could change things, win the whole town over for Christ.  And the only other mainline pastor in town, the Lutheran Pastor Tim, said “Wait a minute . . . isn’t it God that saves people?”  and they had to admit that he had a point . . .

It isn’t anything we do that saves somebody any more than anything we do to save ourselves.  Just as God set Paul apart before he was born and called him by God’s grace, so God does to us. As biblical scholar Heidi Hustad Armstrong puts it, “all conversion stories begin with God’s decisive action. God always takes the initiative.”

The notion that people somehow won’t “be saved” if we don’t work thathard enough is a form of idolatry, with ourselves as the idol. We, the created, put ourselves in the place of our creator and that is never a good idea.  It can lead to arrogance, it can lead to dominance, it can lead to war . . . if it is up to us to save people, doesn’t it put ourselves over even our God?

In our passage, Paul insists that he didn’t get his version of the gospel from anyone other than God: “I did not confer with any human being,” he says, “nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were already apostles before me.”  He sounds impassioned, almost pleading:“In what I am writing to you, before God, I do not lie!” And though we can’t be sure, it may have been that he was being accused by the Missionaries of spouting a version of the gospel he got second-hand from the realapostles in Jerusalem.  Whatever the case, it’s easy to get the impression that it is alldefensiveness, all an attempt to set himself apart from others.  But as Armstrong puts it, he’s not saying “Look at how great Iam” but “Look at how great Godis, how great the Gospelis.”  It’s no wonder that he gets upset, so upset that that he just dives into his complaint, without observing the niceties of 1^st-Century correspondence.  For him, the thought that you have to do something to earn God’s grace—become a Jew, get circumcised—flies in the face of the God’s saving power, it negates the very heart of the whole thing.

Paul doesn’t tell us about his life to build himself up, he tells us about it to build the Gospel up.  He tells us about his conversion from a church hater and baiter—with no help from anybody else, untouched by human hands—to emphasize the primacy and astonishingly radical nature of grace.   Two-thousand years before John Newton, Paul would certainly have agreed with another line from Newton’s great song:  Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.  Amen.

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.

Who Are We to Love? (John 13:31-35; Acts 11:1-18)

      Who are we to love?  The two passages we read, together, explore that question, and I think it’s a perennial one that percolates along in our collective sub-consciousness, whether we know it or not . . . During my formative years – the 1960's – there was a major sea change in society’s answer to that question . . .  the “free-love movement” began as a serious asking of that question, a serious challenge to the ever-increasing alienation and hypocrisy and self-involvement that rampaged – and still rampages – through our culture. It’s hard to remember that that’s how it began, because all we can picture are the excesses, all the “let’s thumb-our-noses-at-our-parents” images shown on television, but it is was the era of “Jesus freaks,” of experiments in communal living which – after all – were modeled on the way the first Christians lived.  In the mid-60s the answer to the question was clear to the flower-children, at least: Who are we to love?  Why, everyone, of course . . . just as Jesus taught.

      The children of the sixties were searching for a better way, embodied by the Beatles song “All You Need is Love.”  But by the turn of the decade it had all come apart.  In 1970, like a-ticking-clockwork announcement that the ‘60s were indeed dead, along came another song – this time by rocker Stephen Stills.  We boomers – and you know who you are – might remember it – “If you're down and confused, And you don't remember who you're talkin' to, Concentration slips away, 'Cause your baby is so far away . . . and if you can’t be with the one you love, honey, love the one you’re with.”  And in the end, the idealism of the sixties gave way to a crass sexualization, where “free love” degenerated into “free sex.”  Who are we to love?  Honey? “Love the One You’re With.”  It’s love as self-gratification, where there’s a girl, right next to you . . . and she’s just waitin’ for somethin’ to do, and that girl is nothing much more than a way to satisfy your own needs, an object. And even though you may be the same to her, somehow I don’t think that’s what Jesus meant when he said “love one another.”

      And sixties flower children grew up to be today’s boomer bankers and lawyers and . . . preachers, and even though we think we know better, even though we’ve been told and may even believe that the 60s were disastrous for the notion of love, I’m not so sure many of us boomers – or many from other generations, for that matter – have any better answer to the question of just whom we are to love. In Peter’s day, the Israelites thought they knew the answer, too, and for them it was cut and dried: they are to love, they are to do for, eat with, associate with only folks just like them. They all dressed the same way, they all ate the same things, and they all worshiped exactly the same way.  And the ultimate brand of belonging, of we-are-us-and-nobody-else, was circumcision, a privilege reserved only for the males, and which marked them for life.

      And in the passage from Acts, Christian Jews, circumcised Christians, those who’d come to believe that Jesus was Lord, criticizePeter for eating with these uncircumcised Gentile believers.  They say “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?”  And by way of reply, Peter tells them of a vision sent to him by the Lord.  Now, this is the second time we hear of this vision in Acts . . . the first time is as it happens; this time, Peter recalls it verbatim.  It was in Joppa, he says, and I was praying and in a trance I saw a vision.  “Something like a large sheet was let down from heaven” and notice it was “something like” a large sheet, or literally a large piece of linen . . . it clearly wasn’tsuch a thing, but Peter doesn’t know how else to describe it . . . visions are often like that, what’s seen is too fantastic to describe accurately, and we’re left with only the dreamer’s impression, as she or he compares it to something known.  Ezekiel said something of the sort – only in Hebrew – when he had his vision of God: he saw “something like gleaming amber” with “something like four living creatures” . . . in the middle of each was “something that looked like coals” . . . visions of the divine are like that, beyond the ken of our abilities to comprehend . . . and the sheet was let down from heaven by its four corners – and what else do we know that’s supposed to be belowheaven and have four corners? – it was let down by its four corners, and on it Peter saw four-footed animals, reptiles, birds of the air, beasts of prey – all the critters of the earth, all squirming and slithering and galumphing across the sheet, and dig it – it’s like a silent newsreel, up on a screen, they’re without a sound, but in fascinatingly colorful motion . . . and a voice said to Peter “Get up, Peter, kill and eat . . .” and we can only imagine his reaction, it’s hard to feel it in our Gentile guts . . . it would be like on that TV show “Fear Factor” when the contestants are asked to eat sheep eyeballs or earthworm leavings or something, but for Peter it was probably worse . . . he was the product of a thousand years of purity laws, where eating indiscriminately of the beasts of the earth was considered blasphemous . . . unclean . . . profane . . . and so his reaction is only appropriate: By no means, Lord! Certainly not!  Nothing profane or unclean has ever entered mymouth! But the voice came back saying “What God has made clean, you must not call profane!”

      What God has made clean,you must not call profane . . . well, that was news to Peter, I’m sure . . . just when had God made all these things clean? Must’ve been when he wasn’t looking . . . but it all happened three times – and three is a verysignificant biblical number! – so God must’ve been serious, and then Woosh!the sheet was whisked off up into heaven, like the backdrop in an old-fashioned vaudeville show.  And that’s what it was: not vaudeville, of course, but a show nevertheless – it was a demonstration, a tableau, a helpful illustration.  And the symbolism is clear: four-corners . . . below heaven . . . filled with creepy-crawlies . . . the earth, and all that is in it, ready to be fried up for Peter’s use.  It was enough to give an observant Jew the vapors.

      And if that’s not weird enough, he says, three Caesareans – there’s that number three, again! – came up to him out of the blueand asked to go with them, and to a Gentile’s house, to boot.  Now, we know – because Luke has told us earlier in Acts – that this Gentile’s name was Cornelius, and he told Peter that an angelhad appeared to him, And Peter says: “As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them” – Cornelius and the other Caesareans, that is – “just as it had upon usat the beginning.”  And of course, what he’s talking about is at Pentecost – which we’ll celebrate in a couple of weeks – when the Spirit came upon the disciples in tongues of fire . . . and as Peter finishes his story, he says: “if God gave them the same gift he gave us when we believed, who was I that I could hinder God?”  And his Jewish-Christian audience falls silent, and then praises God, saying “God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.”

      Do you remember over in the book of John, and Jesus is talking to the Pharisee Nicodemus? And Nicodemus can’t quite wrap his mind around God’s plan for salvation, and Jesus tells him “Don’t be astonished . . . the wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it goes . . . and so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”  In our story, the circumcised Christians – and Peter before them – experience this first hand.  The Spirit of God blew someplace they couldn’t even imagine, and as it did, it worked a new thingin the world, or at least new to the likes of the circumcised Christians . . . and if these first century Christians, so much closer to the Christ-event than we are, were unprepared for the this new thing, how much less prepared are we today?

      Because I, for one, have to admit it . . . with all the worldly evidence againstthe Spirit’s moving around me, all the killing in Syria, the genocide in Africa and bombings and , it’s hard for me to see, or even to imagine,the Spirit working in our world.  It’s hard for me to picture what a new, surprising Spirit-action might be in our cold-steel scientific culture that denies even the existenceof a spiritual reality beneath the physical one we all can see.  And yet . . . we can be assured that the Spirit is moving, that it isworking even in our dangerous world.  And we can know, without a doubt,that its ways will be as different and surprising to usas they will to Peter and the other Christian Jews 2000 years ago.

      But what shouldn’tsurprise us about the actions of the Spirit are its motives, for although we probably can’timagine where God’s Spirit will blow next, we canbe pretty certain of the end-product: it’ll be an expression of God’s lovefor humankind.  Paul, as usual, said it well: “the Spirit helps us in our weakness,” interceding with sighs too deep for words.  Jesus sent the Spirit as an advocate for us, God’s children, and nowhere is that better seen than in our passage.  The Spirit descends upon Gentiles, working in them to the total astonishment of the Jewish Christians.  They are so dumbfounded that they are silenced at first, and then burst out in rejoicing, praising the Lord, for even though they are surprised, they know the truth of the matter.

      And the truth of the matter is that God’s love – shown through the sending of God’s son Jesus Christ – is for everyone, Jew or Gentile, man or woman, slave or free . . . everyone.  As John put it, God so loved the world . . . the world, not just Jews, not just Americans, not just Christians, that God sent his only begotten Son.  And that, brothers and sisters, brings it back to love . . . if God so loved the world, who are weto love?  In our story from Acts, the answer is clear: the Spirit of God demonstrated God’s love for Gentiles as well as for Jews, for people not-like Jewish Christians as well as those likethem.  The Jewish people had hitherto only loved the ones they’re with, only the ones in their tribe, their own family.  The Holy Spirit showed decisively that God’s love extends to the so-called unclean as well.

      So who are weto love?  Jesus, in our passage from John, puts it succinctly: “I give you a new commandment,” he says, “that you love one another.  Just as I have loved you,” he says, “you also should love one another.” And of course, that last is the clincher: it tells us just howwe are to love one another: as Jesushas loved us.  And Jesus loved us madly,indiscriminately and with passion, he served us, healed us and – in the end – diedfor us . . . and, as Peter and the circumcised Christians found out, he loved people who are not us.  And so now we come to it:  who are we to love?  Who Jesus loved, of course, and that is everyone.  And it’s not an option, is it?  It’s a commandment, we have no choice, as followers of Jesus Christ.  We must love everybody:  Republicans, Democrats and Independents.  Bankers, lawyers and drug addicts.  The English, the Chinese and Iraqi terrorists held as prisoners-of-war.  Jesus – who was, in fact, God – loved us, and we are to love everybody we meet, just like him.

      But dig it – with a simple change of tone, the subject of our question shifts to us: who are weto love?  Who are weto presume to love everyone, to even thinkwe can love as Jesus did?  For that matter,howare we to love people we can’t stand, people we’re afraid of, who may have harmed us or someone close to us?  That’s the subject of another sermon, of course, but here’s the answer in a nutshell: we’re Christians, of course . . . we’re the people to whom Jesus sent the advocate, the comforter, that very same Holy Spirit who came upon those Gentiles in front of Peter’s astonished face.  And as we struggle to do what Christ commands, as we struggle to lovein this increasingly chaotic world, we have the Spirit with us as he promised.  Because it’s all there, all caught up in the answer to our question:  who are weto love?  We’re children, of course, of a loving God.  Amen.

Is Seeing Believing? (John 20:19-31)

Our lectionary reading is really two post-resurrection appearance stories, tied together by Thomas the Twin, who dominates the second half.  The first occurs in the evening of the first day of the week following the crucifixion, when Jesus comes to the disciples where they are huddled in a house, behind locked doors for fear of the religious authorities . . . last week we saw what had happened on the morningof that same day . . . Mary had come weeping to the tomb, had found it empty, and when Jesus appeared standing before her, she only recognized him after he called her by name, and she ran to tell the disciples she’d seen him.

All this to say that Jesus having been raised was not a new concept to the disciples, they’d heard it from Mary, and that may have been why they were gathered there in the house, behind those locked doors.  To discuss the possibility of his being alive, and perhaps to talk about what he would do to them if he were.  After all, hadn’t they betrayed him, hadn’t they deserted him?  Hadn’t they denied him not once, not twice, but three times?  If he really had come back, wouldn’t he want to punish them, to exact revenge for their folly? That’s certainly what an earthlymaster would have done to people who had abandoned him, betrayed him, and denied him, and it wouldn’t be rewarding them with an all-expense-paid trip to the Virgin Isles.

And Behold!  There he is!  Jesus, standing before them, just like he stoodbefore Mary, and the Greek verb to standis repeated here . . . he stands among them, like he stoodbefore Mary, and just as he will standbefore the them in later on, when Thomas is among them . . . he’s not floating, not hovering, he’s standing on two feet. Solid. Earthy.  Nothing ghostly about him at all, no siree Bob!  And now to their fear of the Romans, they might have added their fear of his wrath.

That’s why it’s so important that the first words out of his mouth are “Peace be with you” . . . it disarms for all time their fears of retribution, and points the way to the new creation, where revenge and reprisal are not the normative response, where payback is not the way business is done.   But wait . . . there’s more!  He then shows them his nail-scarred hands and his sword pierced side . . . and this flows out of the first pronouncement of peace, it is connected to it. By showing the marks of his death, his crucifixion, he is saying that this peace is more than just a lack of strife—though it certainly implies that as well.  But even more, there is a peace in the never-ending war with the Powers, the power of death over our lives.  And this peace is predicated on the fact—evidenced by those wounded hands and feet—that he has conquered death, he has triumphed over the powers that be. No longer will death signal an end, no longer will we cease to be, but in some unspecified fashion, we will exist beyond it.  Here was the proof, standing before them.

But Jesus says “Peace be with you” once again, and this time it is connected with a sending: “As the father has sent me, so I send you” and this sounds important and significant, an elevation of the disciples’ station in life, but I wonder: after the excitement of the appearance of their beloved master dies down, when they go to their pallets deep in the night to sleep, do they ponder that double-edged statement?  Did they think about what it meant to be sent just like Jesus? Did they remember just how God sent his only son?

Well.  As if to cement the deal, he breatheson them, and is it the same breath that blew across the waters at creation? Is it the word that became flesh, the word that was spoken to Mary in the garden?  Is Jesus bestowing something of himself upon his followers,  Something of his essence?  Earlier, he’d promised them an advocate, a Holy Spirit, which would teach them everything . . . and so here we have the fulfillment of that promise. No massive crowds, no tornado-wind-sound, no dancing tongues of flame.  Just the Spirit, the pneuma, born on the pneuma—which also means breath—of Christ.

The Spirit has been given to them as an advocate, to teach them, to empowerthem to be the ones who are sent . . . and the first thing Jesus tells them they are sent to dois to follow in his footsteps, to continue in his work of forgiving sins: whatever sins they forgive will be forgiven; whatever sins they retain will be retained.  Only . . . if what Jesus does is the model for what they are to do, if they are sent as Jesus is sent,I cannot imagine them as retaining many sins.  Jesus’ life and work was radical in its notion that everyone should be included, that no one is exempt from the reconciling grace of God.  If what Jesus has done is normative for us,there would be a whole lot of forgiving going on, and no retaining at all.

So that’s what the Holy Spirit teaches and empowers us to do: to display God’s forgiving grace to all we meet, to be signs and effectors,doers of that amazing grace.  No matter how hard we find it, no matter how difficult or abhorrent or downright painful it is, we have the Spirit of Godon our side, who teaches us and reveals to us and comforts us as and powers us as weare sent just as Godsent Jesus the Christ.

And now we’re told that Thomas isn’t there, Thomas the Twin, who is nevercalled doubting Thomas anywhere in the gospels, and this introduces and gives a basis for the third post-resurrection story that John tells us, and the second half of today’s lesson . . . and I personally think it’s a set-up, that—like Peter—Thomas represents more than himself, he represents a general attitude, a seeing-is-believing one that is not too far removed from the one that prevails, or has prevailed, in our Western society in the twentieth and now twenty-first centuries.  His outburst—dutifully reported by John—sets us up to hear and interpret Jesus’ lesson at the end.

"Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands,” he says “and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe."  And when, a week later, Jesus appears standing before them, just as he’d stood before Mary, just as he’d stood before the disciples the previous week, Thomas is with them.  Once again, Jesus wishes them peace, and—knowing what Thomas had said—offered to let him touch his hands and side.  “Do not doubt,” he says “but believe.” 

But Thomas no longer needs to put his finger in the nail-holes or his hand in the side, like the other disciples, he believes it’s him just by sight.  “My Lord and my God!” he says.  And here’s the set-up:  Jesus, never one to pass up a teachable moment, uses Thomas’ having to see to believe, his refusal to believe just because he’s been told, to make one last point: “Have you believed because you have seen me?”  he asks, and of course, the answer is “Uh . . . yes . . .” and I can just see Thomas looking hang-dog and shuffling his feet.  “Blessed are those who have notseen and yet have come to believe.”

And this word “blessed” in Greek is a technical term, and I’ve seen it translated as “happy,” but it has a distinctly different connation from simple happiness: when you see the word blessed, it implies that it’s God bestowing favor, bestowing a blessing, upon the recipient.  If it’s happiness, the happiness is God’s doing. And so Jesus is making a theological statement here: God blesses those who have come to believe without seeing. And one other thing we should notice: the careful translation of pisteuow,the Greek for both belief andfaith, as “come to believe.”  In the Greek, it’s the participle form of the verb, which implies ongoing belief, without a definite beginning, and more importantly, without a definite cause. Thus, it does not imply that the blessing is a reward for those who come  to belief without seeing deciding to believe on their own.  Indeed, believing without seeing is a major theme in the Gospel of John. Elsewhere, Jesus explains that belief comes not from our seeing miracles, not from what we see convincing us to believe, but  “from above,” by which he means God.  God is the author of our belief, according to Jesus, not us.

And so, given all of this, given the setup of Thomas not believing until he sees, and Jesus’ simple declaration—and I don’t think he’s chiding him here, he’s just stating a fact, blessed are those who come to belief without having seen—and given that Jesus is adamant elsewhere that God and God alone is the author of our belief—I think that we can identify the nature of the blessing, and it’s not what we normally might suppose. It’s not eternal life or salvation or however you want to term it.  After all, it’s pretty clear that Thomas—and the other disciples, for that matter—who believed only after they saw will inherit the Kingdom of God.  I think the blessing, the favor bestowed upon those who come to belief is the belief itself.

Think about it: even in those days, there was an “I’ll believe it when I see it attitude.”  It took Jesus showing the disciples his pierced hand and side before they would acclaim him Lord.   Many of his followers only believed afterthey saw him doing miracles, feeding multitudes, driving out demons, and raising the dead.  And how much more cynical have we become in this post-modern era, when the single-minded pursuit of science and rationality has sucked all the mystery, all the inscrutability, all the enchantmentout of life.  The modern age has flattened our existence out into the dreary proposition that the only things that are realare things that are material, that we can hold in our hands, and the only things we can knoware things that can be repeated and “proven” by the scientific method.

Meanwhile, spirituality is relegated to a part of our lives that the world labels “religion” or “faith,” and it’s separated from our material lives by the extreme rationality of our time.  How much more of a blessing, then, is our belief in a good and beneficent God in the face of all this mind-numbing mundane-ness?  How much more wonderful that we have been granted belief without seeing, without touching, without weighing or measuring or investigating?

But the nail-scarred hands and the sword-pierced side provide us with a description, an explanation, a pictorial portrayal of the nature of the belief, of the message contained within, and when the disciples see them they—as well as we—know what it is.  Through the life, death and resurrection, God has vanquished the powers that be.  Death, where is your victory?  Grave, where is your sting.  Hallelujah, Amen.