Heavens Above (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” have.  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 reflection of 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 imperfect reflection – into a perfect reflection of heaven.
      One of the problems many of us moderns have – although surely nobody 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 enlightened compared to those primitives in the pre-modern era, primitives like Michelangelo 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 ex-Bishop, John Spong – who I may have said before my friend 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, cause nobody in the modern world would believe that, 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 primitive guy Jesus said something about how those who are ashamed of him and his words of them he’ll be ashamed, but aside from that, whenever I read this morning’s lesson I think of Spong, who singled this episode out in one of his books, deriding it as Jesus 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 . . .

      In fact our passage is shot through with symbolism, beginning with its first line . . . Luke addresses it to Theophilus, and though there has been speculation over the years about who this person’s identity – Was he Luke’s patron?  Was he an elder of the church? – I rather think that Luke has written it to all of us, because after all, Theophilus is Greek for “God lover,” and we do all love God, don’t we?  Even though the idea of God itself is 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 for the God-lovers, it’s about the 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 here is 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 himself up, he was lifted up, as the two men in white said he was taken up, and we all know by whom . . . and what about those 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?  Angels 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 heavenly parent.

       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,” Jesus says, just before his departure, “but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now."  And of course, that is what we celebrate not many days from now at 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 this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”  Is it finally here?  And we know what kingdom they’re talking about . . . it’s the Davidic kingdom, the kingdom of their once and future King . . .

      After all this time they still don’t get it, they still don’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 are the Messiah, are you not?”  But Jesus just patiently lays it on the line: it’s not for y’all to know the times or periods that God has set . . . sorry.  I don’t care how many Y2Ks come and go or how many charts John Hagee puts up on the wall, it’s not for you to know.  Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins can write a whole library on the subject – and trust me, they will – but you’re not gonna figure it out.  It’s just not for you to know.

      But here’s what I will do for you, he says, I’ll give you power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be 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 word when 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 planet or 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-dangerous undertaking 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 – tells of the Spirit of God working in the world . . . Jesus himself tells 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 still like 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 wield some of that power . . . or at least that power can undergird 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 tags him 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 Holy Ghost powah!  I got the Holy Ghost powah!”  He’s happy about it, it animates him, it gives him joy . . . it gives him strength to 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 up that 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 . . . it’s not like we’re Muslims or anything . . . but we’ve all felt the ridicule as we bear witness in public, as we give credit to Christ for 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 being is to be his witnesses in Cincinnati, in all Ohio and Indiana and, lo! even to the ends of the earth . . . if we are not fulfilling this, if we’re not witnessing to Christ 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.

Faith 'n' Agora (Acts 17:16 - 34)

     Paul got thrown into jail a lot.  He was always getting arrested on some trumped up charge or another.  There were those two long-term prison stays of a couple of years or so apiece, one in Rome around 60 CE and another in Caesarea, about the timeline of which we aren’t certain.  Paul himself mentioned them in his Second Letter to the Corinthians, comparing himself to everything, where he boasts just a wee bit: “Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they descendants of Abraham? So am I. Are they ministers of Christ? . . . I am a better one: with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless floggings, and often near death.”

And to that I say . . . well.  If trials and tribulations are the measure of how great a minister you are, then I must not be much of one . . . don’t say it . . . but I’m a pretty typical, well-fed, well-looked-after American yuppie whose only trial is when they run out of black ice tea at Starbucks.  But for Paul, floggings, shipwrecks and imprisonments were just the cost of doing business, of proclaiming the gospel.  It’s been estimated that over and above the four years he spent in Roman and Caesarean prisons, another two years might have been added on by all the more minor, short-term jailings he endured.

Many of those episodes are described in Acts, and today we have one of the most famous: his speech on Mars Hill, in Athens.  Athens!  Cradle of Western Civilization!  Home of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle!  Home of Spiro’s Gyros, juiciest gyros this side of Corinth!  Or so I hear, anyway . . . But even without such delicacies, Athens was quite the place, even some 400 years after its prime.  It was still a center of learning and the arts, and it lived on its past glories.  Even Rome left it pretty much alone because after all, it was the Cradle of Western Civilization . . . Every philosopher worth his salt ended up there . . . they were as thick as thieves, they literally wandered the streets . . . philosophizing. It was a heady atmosphere . . . ideas perfumed the air like hyacinths, or like jasmine on a summer’s eve . . . they flew back and forth across the market square like demented shuttlecocks: an idea was thrown up by a Heraclitian, folded, spindled and mutilated by an Aristotelian, and then lobbed back the other way.  This was considered fun, but more important, serious business.

And that's what got Paul in trouble . . . philosophy, if you can believe it.  He'd gone down to the Marketplace—the Agora, in Greek—to do what anybody with a rhetorical bone to pick would: he set up on a corner and began to declaim.  And to dispute.  You know . . . standard philosopher stuff.  And it's important to understand why he felt compelled to do so:  he was deeply distressed, Luke tells us, at all the idol worship going on.  The little critters were everywhere, almost as thick as the philosophers, and it hurt his heart to see folks venerating those cold, dead things.

So he heads for the Agora, and begins to speechify, and there were some Epicureans and Stoics listening in—Epicurean and Stoic philosophers, that is, not food-lovers and guys not in touch with their emotions.  And they took especial umbrage at what Paul was saying.  They were materialists, they thought everything was made of matter, even the Gods . . . Just really, really good matter. Epicureans believed that the highest good was pleasure, and the highest pleasure was that of the mind . . . their gods were so interested in their own pleasure that they ignored people. For the Stoics there was a divine, rational principle in everything, and their goal was to live in harmony with it, which amounted to living in tune with nature. Both Epicureans and Stoics were rationalists, who thought the mind was superior to the emotions. In this, of course, they would have made good Presbyterians.

Anyway, these were the folks that Paul irritated, enough so that they hauled him before the council—the Areopagus—on Mars Hill. And though Luke doesn't tell us what he had said in the marketplace, he does give us his speech before the council.  He opens with a complement: “I see how religious, how pious y’all are, you even have an, ah, object of worship” (he meant idols, which were getting on his last nerve) “you have an object of worship dedicated to an unknown God.”  And I can just see the look of piety on Paul’s face—he’s only there to serve, you understand—“I can help you out there, I can tell you who that unknown God is, it's the one who made everything, the whole shootin’ match, who's Lord of heaven and earth, and who doesn't live in any old shrine, let me tell you.”

And now we can begin to see why he made the Stoics and Epicureans so nervous: they were materialists, they didn't believe in spirit, and they began to work it out in their heads . . . If this god doesn't live in shrines made by human hands, if it didn't need any food like other gods did, just where did this so-called Lord of heaven and earth live?  And more important, perhaps, what was it made of?

Well, as to the first question, Paul makes a remarkable statement: quoting their own poets he tells them that this deity is not far from each and every one of us, and further, that in that unknown god “we live and move and have our being,” and this is a extraordinary claim on multiple levels, not least if all its stunning universalism.  God's not far from any of us and in that god we—each one of us—love and move and have our being.

This was a far cry from the dominant view of the day . . . the prevailing notions of the Divine were very . . . territorial.  Each nation had a separate deity, each peoples their own god.  And those gods were not only different, but they were exclusive as well.  With those ancient gods, you were either in or out, and if you'd were in, the god would help you.  But if you were out . . . Well.  It would be best not to meet another peoples’ god in a dark alley.

What's more, each god had a place where they hung out, a place where they lived.  It was possible to meet them face-to-face, or walking down the road as Abraham did the Hebrew god at the oaks of Mamre.  Or Moses did on that mountain.  Or Elijah, who got a glimpse of that god’s backside on yet another mountain.

But Paul’s “unknown God” was radically different . . . he was near to each one of us, Paul said, each one.  Not just the Jews, not just the Medes or the Greeks or the Phrygians, but everyone.  And if this God was near everyone, how could it be localized to one place?   How could it be locked up in a little idol, a little effigy made of wood or gold or clay, one that you could up and take with you everywhere you went?  Far from us moving God, we move within God.  We walk in God, talk in God, chat with our neighbors in God, we are bathed in God.  But more than that, we have our being in God, we are sustained by God, we are shot through and through with God.  In fact, without God we would not exist.

Today, we call this view panentheism: pan (all) en (in) theis (God), and it did not become the dominant view in the Christian church.  Soon, God was in heaven—which was up there—and we were down here, as reflected in the Lord’s Prayer, where we pray to God “who art in heaven” and that God’s will be done, “on earth as it is in heaven.”  But in this episode from Luke, we can see that it was alive and well—at least in Paul and Luke—in Christianity’s earliest days.

Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman was famous for his atheism.  Or that's what he claimed anyway, but I always thought he protested just a little too much, because a good chunk of his films are about God’s distance or absence.  And how could you rail against God not being there if you didn't believe in God?  It seems to me that this is one consequence of our self-imposed alienation from God, our distancing of ourselves—promoted by our own religion—from the divine: we imagine God out there, away from us, who deigns to “come down” to help us.

Eastertide is a time of reflection on the nature of the Divine . . . It's why we "What if"?  What if our idea of God is wrong?  Or not wrong, so much as inappropriate—I don't that we can't get our finite minds totally around the notion of God.  A lot of us think of God as up in heaven, a bearded Santa Claus, who we call upon when we need something, and who may or may not respond, according to some obscure rules that we don't understand . . . What if God were all around us as Paul thought, within us, even, as Jesus taught in John's gospel, in the person next to us, as he teaches in Matthew?  How would it change the way we live our lives, treat one another, treat ourselves?  Amen.

Spiritual Milk (1 Peter 2:1 - 10)

      Last week, we saw how the first Christians attempted to live out their calling as followers of a risen God.  We saw how the devoted themselves to fellowship, to koinonia, and prayer and care for one another.  We saw that they had all things in common, that they sold all their possessions and gave the proceeds to whoever had need . . . for them, the post-resurrection reality was substantially different from that before, Christ’s teaching and living among them necessitated a re-thinking of how they lived their everyday lives.

      This week, we get another look at that post-resurrection reality, the state in which believers are now living after that first Easter morning . . . and it’s important to remember that fact: it’s a reality only in light of the revelation of God’s Word on that Easter morning . . . just before our passage is a rather famous assertion:  The grass withers, the flower falls, but the word of the Lord endures forever.  That word is the Good News that was announced to you . . . and so it’s only in the light of that Word—who remember is Jesus the Christ, crucified and then resurrected on the third day—that the reality described here stands.

      Rid yourselves, 1^st Peter says, of all malice, guile, insincerity, envy and slander . . . a laundry list of maladies we are to avoid.  And note that that they all take two or more to tango, they’re not solitary sins before God—malice is toward someone or something; envy is of something somebody else has; and slander, of course, is about saying bad things about somebody else.  And thus, they interfere with living the Christian life which, as we saw last week, is meant to be lived with others.  Malice and insincerity.  Envy and slander: all are things that make living in that post-resurrection koinonia difficult, if not impossible.  And what are we to do instead?   We are to long for the pure, spiritual milk . . . Like newborn infants—like sucklings, like helpless, mewling kittens, like hairless, baby rabbits—like infants, longing for that pure, spiritual milk . . . and notice that 1^st Peter writes as if we have a choice, as if we have a choice between insincerity, malice and guile, and longing, desiring that spiritual milk.  We normally think of desire as involuntary, as in we like what we like, we can’t help it, sorry about that . . . but 1^st Peter acts like it’s our choice to long for this pure, spiritual milk . . . and if we drink of it, we may grow into salvation, into our vocations as children of God . . .

      Let’s pause right here and consider this remarkable imagery . . . the Gospel as pure spiritual milk, as if from a mother’s breast . . . it’s a feminine image, in a sea of masculine prose for the divine.  In the 1^st century, just as here in the 21^st, milk has a comforting image, a nourishing image, a down-home connotation . . . milk is nurturing, it comes from the mother’s breasts, so this is a pretty radical image of the Gospel—and the Gospel, of course, is personified by that Word incarnate, Jesus Christ of Nazareth.  The Gospel is likened here to milk—as nurturing, comforting, body-building, as milk, come from the breast of God . . . how does the commercial go?  Milk does a body good?  Well it certainly does . . . that pure spiritual milk, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Word incarnate, does the church body a world of good . . . it causes us to grow into salvation, into sanctification . . . if we have tasted that the Lord is good, that is . . .

      And it is this tasting that the Lord is good that defines believers for 1^st Peter, if we have indeed tasted the sweet nectar of salvation . . . and if we have tasted thus, if we are believers, we are to come to Christ, and in the Greek it’s clear that Christ is the living stone in this instance, so a better translation might be “come to him as to a living stone,” one that has been rejected by mortals, and yet chosen—and in the Greek it’s our old favorite “elected”—by God and precious in God’s sight . . . and this election, this choosing of Christ is the basis of our own election, our own choosing, and that of course is the true wonder of this living stone, this living milk from the heart of God . . . through our association with Christ, we are like living stones ourselves, and like those living stones, we are to let ourselves be built into a spiritual house and a holy priesthood.

      And so here’s another metaphor for what we are, what congregations are . . . alongside the family metaphors in the Gospels, the bodily metaphor in the writings of Paul, here we are likened to a spiritual house and a holy priesthood.  We are to be a building, a house, and the word in Greek is oikos, house, home . . . it’s where we get ecos as in ecology . . . and calling it a house or household or a home implies that someone lives there.

      So as living stones—molded in the image of Christ—we are to let ourselves be a house, a home . . . and a home is for something or someone to dwell . . . so the question is, who are we a home for?  Who are we—collectively, as a body—a home for?  Paul thought it was the Holy Spirit . . . he said—using his body metaphor—that your body, that is plural, as in the congregation, the body of Christ—is the temple of the Holy Spirit, and so is that what 1^st Peter is saying?  That we, as living stones, fed spiritual milk from God, are to be a house of the Holy Spirit, a place filled by it, animated by it, quickened by it?

I think so, though it’s not totally clear from the text, but I can tell you something that I do know:  this wing of the house, this particular branch of the body called Greenhills certainly is spirit filled . . . I see it every day, I see it when we greet visitors with kindness and empathy, as we embark on new ministries like the very successful community dinners, as we fulfill our promises to our mission partners like Soul and Winton House.  And I can't help but see it in our dynamic music program, singing to God's glory, helping young people to get the training and experience they need.

And I can feel the movement of that Spirit, rustling against my cheek, swirling around and through you all out there in the pews, over and under and beside us all, as we begin to awaken, as we begin to stir in our concern for this beloved congregation.  The Spirit is here in the whispers as we discuss the possibilities for renewal and hope for our future . . . make no mistake about it, the Spirit is with us, as halting and as incoherent and frail a vessels as we have been . . . I am enormously grateful for each and every one of you out there.  We members of Greenhills are a temple, collectively, a house, an ecosystem for the presence of the Holy Spirit, and I for one feel it every day.

But wait . . . there’s more!  We’re to be made a priesthood, a holy priesthood, set aside for a reason . . .  to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God . . .   Our sacrifices are not just material, though those are important, they’re spiritual as well . . . we’re to intercede for the world—that’s one of the functions of a priesthood—we’re to intercede for the world, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.  And the most obvious way we do that is through prayer, which floats up like incense, a pleasing odor to the creator of the universe . . .

But that said, I have to say as well that we often create a false dichotomy between spiritual and material in our teaching and—I know you’ll be shocked by this—our preaching.  (Ok, I’ll just up and say it . . . my preaching)  We separate our mission as a household of God into two separate spheres . . . the spiritual, which includes praying and contemplation and all that stuff, and doing, which includes social justice and making programs and plans and et cetera.  And like Presbyterian congregations tend to do, we make jokes about what a bunch of head cases we are, but we lose sight of the fact that they are two sides of the same coin, or of the same mission of God.  All the prayer in the world, all that vertical stuff between us and God, isn’t worth a hill of beans without action, without process, without doing in the world; by the same token, all the activity, all the horizontal work—in the community and within our own house—is incomplete without the listening, the stillness, the vertical dimension between us and God.

I think it’s one of our tasks in our Greenhills household to find a unique spirituality for ourselves , to discern what spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God look like for us,alongside and apart from what others have found.  Oh, we should listen to the advice of others, we should consider about Christian spirituality in its many forms, from social action to contemplative practice, from William Sloan Coffin to Richard Foster, but honed and particularized for our neck of the house-of-God woods.

A spiritual sacrifice, acceptable to God encompasses everything we do, everything we say, everything we pray, and as such it presupposes a balance between the doing and the being, the activity and the listening, that is bound to be unique for Greenhills Community Church,  Presbyterian at 21 Cromwell Road in Cincinnati, Ohio, 45218.  And the trick is, we must be continually involved in discerning that balance, and of what it should consist . . . We must put into place practices that allow us to continually and perpetually hone and tune that balance to fit our time and surroundings, what we call in church-speak our ministry context.

But you know what?  Saying we must put into place, we must discern is misleading . . . one of the first things that struck me about this passage is it’s continual passive construction . . . like newborn infants—the most helpless kind of human being—we are to let ourselves be built into that spiritual household, that holy priesthood . . . allow ourselves to be built, and we know who the builder is, don’t we?  We know who the construction foreman is on the spiritual household project, don’t we?  But we must allow it, we must let go and let that foreman do that foreman’s business . . . if we don’t, if we try and do it ourselves and build it in our image instead of God’s, then it’s doomed to fail.

 Brothers and sisters, we are a chosen race, a priesthood of the royal house of Christ the King.  And the one who did the choosin’ was God, not us . . . we didn’t elect ourselves, we were elected by God, and for a reason: proclaim the mighty acts of the Christ who called us out of darkness, as 1^st Peter says, into this marvelous light.  So let’s long for that spiritual milk, let’s pine for that milk from the bosom of God with every fiber of our being . . . let us put aside the power-mongering, the turf-protecting, and the malice and bickering that tear us down . . . we are a household of God’s spirit, a temple of God’s mighty motivating force in the world.  Once we were not a people, but now we are God’s people . . . once we had not received mercy, but now we have.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

A Movement Begins (Acts 2:42 - 47)

     Our passage is situated not long after Pentecost, not long after the flames, dancing around the apostles’ heads, not long after the babble of languages became one . . . structurally, it's a bridge between two sermons of Peter—yes, that Peter, old deny-him-three-times Simon Peter’ who must have been one heck of a preacher, ‘cause he stood up at Pentecost and let her rip, and Jesus’ followers grew by three thousand that day alone, and our passage describes what was going on in the early days of the Christian movement.  And I use the word movement advisedly, because that's surely what it was.  Even in Luke's dry recital, you can feel the urgency, the excitement.  They devoted themselves  to the apostles’ teaching. They devoted themselves to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, to prayers.  Everyone was amazed, awe came over each and every one of them because the apostles were doing signs and wonders, healing folks, driving out demons, multiplying fish and loaves.

And their faith spilled over into their actions: they were with each other every waking hour—when they weren't working, that is—and they had everything in common.  In fact, they sold everything they had, their goods and possessions, and distribute the proceeds to anybody who had need.  And they didn't abandon their old faith, either, they didn't quit being Jews:  they spent a lot of time together in the Temple, the very center of Judaism, and then went home to break bread, to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, and to eat their food with glad hearts.  And do you know what?  They had the goodwill of all the people, and day by day God added to their number.

It was a movement, all right, and as any sociologist could tell you, movements don't last.  As movements, anyway . . . to survive they have to change, they have to gain structure and leadership, and rules.  They go from being movements to institutions.  Something like that is going on with the Center for Action and Contemplation, the parent organization of the Living School which I have attended the past year and a half.  It began as a movement with a charismatic leader—Richard Rohr—and as he nears the end of his life, they are trying to figure out how to continue without his integrating presence.  And so they are becoming more institutionalized, and it's not always a pretty sight.  People who are good at teaching, especially teaching and organizing religious programming, aren't necessarily great at administering an institution.  I was able to spend some time last week with the new CEO they hired, and he's a good guy, but we'll see how he is able to navigate the rocky waters of managing employees used to the looser structure, along with strong-willed “talent” like Richard and Cynthia Bourgeault.  The change is beginning to show up in their communication with us, and it's making some folks uncomfortable.

But that's what happens as a movement ages, and the cool thing about Acts is you can kind of follow it, at least a little ways.  Acts is far from what we today would call a history, attempting to be unbiased and all that:  those beasts didn't exist back then.  But you can see the beginning of the cracks in the movement if you know what to look for.  After Peter’s next sermon, in Solomon’s Portico, the reactions were mixed.  They added a bunch of new members, but not everyone was thrilled: it landed Peter and John in the pokey.  Only one more mention is made of having all goods in common, and the story of Ananias and Sapphira are stark reminders that the practice lived and died at the mercy of human frailty. (Recall that they dropped dead after withholding the proceeds of a property sale.  Let that be a warning to you not to get behind in your pledges.)

We don't know how widely the practices in this passage spread; it could be they were localized, or they could be representative of wider ways of doing church.  We do know that there were a variety of ways to be Christian in that first century, but by its end, by about 100 Common Era, the institution of the church—with Bishops, Archbishops, etc.—was beginning to take hold.  Christianity was transforming from a movement to an institution.  It had to to survive.

And now it's two thousand years later, and the framework of that institution is getting a bit rickety, at least here in the West.  There are all kinds of reasons for this, debated hotly, of course, among us.  Being too conservative, being too liberal, too unbending, not unbending enough, not changing with the times, changing too much with the times.  This isn't the place to talk about it except to say that it all boils down to this moment, this place, and these pews . . . We are the result of that movement begun two thousand years ago, we are the children of that enthusiasm, that excitement, that vision.  We are the descendants of Peter and John, Barnabas and Paul and, yes, Ananias and Sapphira . . .

And is there anything we can learn from them?  Is there anything at all to say about this passage, other than the obvious?  It would be silly to say we should begin doing what they all did, selling all our goods and property and distributing it to all who have need . . . that ship has sailed.  The practice, even if it was at all widespread, was very short-lived in Christianity at large (except in monasteries, of course).  But an extreme, perhaps even sacrificial, generosity did remain, for a while, at least . . . And I think we have to ask ourselves: why are there poor, especially in the ranks of our sisters and brothers in Christ?  There are Christian sisters and brothers right here in Hamilton County who don't know where their next meal is coming from.  If we really “took care of our own,” shouldn't their numbers be on the decrease instead of on the rise as they are?

Well.  One of the issues with this passage is that the bits about having “all things in common” and selling their goods and possessions and distributing the proceeds to any who have need tend to wash everything else out, because, you know, it sounds like the S-word, like socialism, and we all know that's bad.  But there's more to the passage, and it lies in the actions of the early Christians, in what they were doing.  Yes, they were practicing charity.  Yes, their experience of the Divine radically re-ordered their economic priorities.  But their other practices were equally radical.

First, they “devoted themselves to the Apostles’ teaching.”  Devoted.  And though I'm not sure what that word implies, the way I read it is as somewhat more fervent than spending an hour in the pews each week, an extra one in Christian Ed and perhaps another at Bible study.  Devotion implies, to me anyway, a giving ones self over, a dedication to, something which I admit, I personally have trouble with.  There are so many distracting pleasures: the latest in that mystery series I'm reading.  My favorite tech web-sites—when is that new iPad going to be here?—and which has-been demi-celebrity is going to get thrown off “Dancing With the Stars” this week?  Then, of course, there's the family, and all the energy one puts into those relationships . . . And while they're good and necessary, how do they fit in with the notion of devotion to Christian teachings?

In addition, Luke says, they devoted themselves to fellowship, which is koinonia in Greek, and it's not a coincidence that it's the same word as “in common,” as in “they had all things in common.”   Not only did the gospel radically re-order their financial priorities, but their way of life as well . . . Their entire lives were lived in common with their fellow converts.  Instead of remaining holed up in family units, going to temple or synagogues within those units or as individuals, they devoted themselves to doing the difficult work of being in community.

That included a devotion to breaking bread together, and it's likely that this held kind of a double meaning for Luke . . . It's likely that he meant both the Lord’s Supper and general, communal meals, perhaps kind of like our pot-luck suppers, and that has been a mark of Christian gatherings for our entire history, hasn't it?  And it's more than just “you gotta eat sometime,” there's something satisfying, something sacred about gathering around the table together . . . and of course it's not just formal church gatherings.  Pam and I are associated with a group of Christian contemplatives, and whenever we meet, a meal together is a big part.   Some of our best ideas are hatched while breaking bread together.

One time, I was asked by a disaffected Methodist whether I thought you could be spiritual outside a church, and I answered “Sure.  But it won't be a Christian spirituality.”  Christianity is practiced in community, it's practiced with others.  We believe that the hard work of being in community is worth it, that it brings us closer to God, as well as each other.  And as our passage shows, it's been that way since the beginning.  They devoted themselves to fellowship and breaking bread together.

And there’s one more thing they devoted themselves to, and that's prayer. Again, that's devoted themselves to it.  Not just when there's something they wanted, or when they were feeling particularly thankful.  And I must admit that I have just as much trouble with this one as I do anything else.  I have my prayer times, and I give things to God in prayer, but devotion?  I don't know . . . And in everything, I rely on the grace of God, and sometimes God’s good humor.

One of the reasons I wanted to talk about this passage is that I spent last week in a Benedictine monastery.  There, the monks’ lives are ordered according to the Rule of Benedict, designed to guide its followers in living the Christian Life.  And the monks’ days are structured around prayer, fellowship, communal meals and study.  Their lives follow a rhythm, nestled in the work of God, the work of living in Christian community.

And while it would be silly to suggest we all need to join a monastery, I wonder what would happen if we modern Christians, members of this congregation and others that are showing their age, that are steadily shrinking, I wonder what would happen if we rededicated ourselves to prayer, fellowship, breaking bread and learning.  I know what God did back then: God did a completely new thing, he grew their numbers like a weed, exploding the Christian faith over the Middle Eastern landscape.

And I wonder: would God do the same?  Would God increase our number like God did back in the day?  Perhaps . . . But if it happened, if God enriched our lives, both together and in part, it might not look like a thing that's ever happened before.  Because that’s the nature of our God, the modus operandi, if you will: our God is always doing a new thing.  Amen.

How Then Shall We Know Him? (Luke 24:13 - 35)

      This Easter, we heard Matthew’s version of the resurrection story, but John’s is perhaps the best loved . . . remember?  Mary Magdalene finds the empty tomb, and brings Peter and the beloved disciple, but when they leave, she stays behind . . . and suddenly there’s Jesus, but at first she doesn’t know him, she thinks he’s the gardener or something . . . and last week’s story takes place in the home where the disciples had gathered in fear, and they believed in him, they recognized him as the risen Lord only after they'd touched and seen his crucifixion wounds, still visible in his resurrected body . . . and now, we come to the familiar story from Luke, perhaps the most beloved post-resurrection story of all . . . two disciples are walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus, and Jesus joins them along the way . . . he seems like them, just another weary traveler – and like those other disciples in the upper room, they don't recognize him right off the bat, it isn't until later, when he shows them hospitality at their destination, that they know he is the savior.

      And so, these three resurrection stories – Mary in the garden, the disciples behind closed doors, the travelers on the Emmaus road – these three stories are in one sense about recognition or – more precisely – misrecognition of their Lord and savior . . . and of course it's eminently applicable today . . . when he was a young pastor, before he became the pre-eminent theologian of the last century, Karl Barth knew this as a seminal problem in Christianity today – we misrecognize the risen Christ, we see him as something he is not . . . Barth thought about it in terms of God's "otherness," saying that God is "wholly other than" the God of our religion.

      We can see that theme in these stories . . . just why did Mary, who knew Jesus as well as anyone, just why did she not recognize him?  Why didn't the disciples in the locked room – it's clear that they don't recognize him until after they've seen the wounds?  Here on the Emmaus road, Luke gives us the biggest clue . . . he says "their eyes were kept from recognizing him."  Note the passive construction of the verb – "were kept."  The disciples were prevented from recognizing him, as in by something or someone . . .  the question is, by whom? or by what?  Well, this being the Bible and all, we immediately jump to the conclusion "well, it was God of course, who did the preventing" . . . and that may have been what Luke intended to imply, but I wonder . . . why would God do such a thing?  Just for laughs?  So God could say to Gabriel "Did you see the look on their faces when they found out it was Jesus?"  Could be . . . I rather think God does have a sense of humor—after all, God did make me a pastor—but, I don't know, it seems to be a rather trivial thing, a rather childish thing for the Creator and master of the Universe to do . . . Maybe it was Jesus himself . . . maybe he shaved off his beard or averted his face or something . . . but again, why?  What earthly – or heavenly – reason would he have to do such a thing?

      Maybe our passage can give us a clue . . . he joins them on the road, and they're discussing everything that's happened – and Luke uses three different phrases for discussing, a total of four times, so he really means it, they really are deep in conversation – and Jesus asks "what are you discussing" and they come to a standstill, there on the dusty road, it was like they couldn't walk and confront the thing at the same time, and they're looking all downcast and Cleopas says "are you the only stranger who doesn't know the things that have taken place in Jerusalem these days?"  And Jesus says "What things?" – and note that he doesn't deny knowing about them, the Greek can mean just as easily which things – but they take it to mean that he doesn't know what went on, and this of course doesn't help with the recognition problem – surely Jesus would know what had been done to him . . .

      So they tell the whole sad story in a nutshell – Jesus was a prophet mighty in deed and word . . . the chief priests and leaders handed him over to be crucified . . . and here we thought he'd come to redeem Israel, but he up and got himself killed instead  . . . and to make matters even more confusing some women came to the tomb early this morning, when the dew was still on the roses, and they didn't see his body there, and they told us there were some angels who said he was alive. And when some of us went to the tomb, they found it just as they said, but they didn't see the Savior, and so there.  You'd be talking about it too.

      And I can just picture Jesus standing there, with an incredulous look on his face, How foolish you all are, how slow of heart to believe . . . here you've had the prophetic works right in front of you, and you still don't know what's going on . . . "Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?"  Note the interchange here – they had told him about Jesus, a prophet mighty in deed and word, who they thought had come to redeem Israel, but he'd been crucified instead . . . and Jesus counters this vision with reality . . . the Messiah – the one who would redeem Israel – would have to suffer before entering into his glory.  So it's the same old same old, the same old story we've heard before . . . the disciples thought him mighty in word and deed, that he was going to lead a revolutionary charge to redeem Israel . . . when in actuality, he displayed weakness, he allowed himself to be humiliated on a cross.  The Messiah they knew was one they'd constructed in their minds, built by their hopes of an Israelite nation restored to the glory of the house of David . . . the Messiah they knew was mighty in deed and word, but the resurrected Messiah, the one standing right in front of them on the Emmaus road, was a Messiah who'd suffered and died an ignominious death, who'd suffocated, nailed to a tree  . . .  was it any wonder they didn't recognized him?

      And so, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them all the things in the scriptures that were about him, all the predictions, all the pointers, all the precursors to him that were in the Hebrew Scriptures, that body of work we call the Old Testament . . . all the prophetic utterances – a man of constant sorrow . . . my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me . . . all the way back to the Torah, the books of Moses, he shows them how to interpret all their scriptures in a new light . . .  in light of himself, in what theologians would call a Christological light . . . how the Messiah must suffer these things, and enter into his glory.  And although they don't recognize him right there – that had to wait for one more sign – they looked back on it and said to themselves "Were not our hearts burning within us while he was opening the scriptures to us?"  Jesus' explanation had the force of revelation, it re-ordered the way they looked at scriptures, re-orientated their suppositions about the nature of the one they had followed in life.

      Have you ever had such an experience?  Have you ever read something or seen something or heard something that changed the way you looked at things, that affected you so much that you didn't look at the world the same from that time forward?  I have . . . I once read a book by a New Testament scholar that re-oriented me in the way I read the Gospels, that seemed so right and so explanatory that it changed the way I do exegesis, the way I interpret scripture.  It provided me with another filter, another lens through which to view Gospel and the world, and I remain changed by it to this day . . . and it was this kind of experience  – only infinitely more radical, after all it was Jesus himself – that the disciples had there on the Emmaus highway.  Jesus' teaching re-oriented their thinking, it related a new paradigm, a new way of connecting to scripture – and the world – that forever changed the way they operated.  "Were not our hearts burning within us?"

      But – like last week in the upper room – it wasn't until Jesus showed them the nail-scars and the sword-pierced side that they recognized him, it wasn't until he demonstrated the breaking of his body and the spilling of his blood by serving them bread and wine that they got who he was.  Luke is very clear about it . . . "he took bread, he blessed and broke it, and gave it to them."  Took, blessed, broke and gave, the four movements of the Lord's Supper . . . it had been only four days since the disciples had seen the same thing before the crucifixion in the upper room . . . and for Luke's congregation, hearing the Gospel read straight through fifty-odd years later, it had only been about five minutes since they heard the same words during the Last Supper scene, and so nobody had to be told twice what this represented . . . it was the Eucharistic scene all over again, the movements that Jesus himself had instructed them to do in remembrance of him, as a reminder of what the Messiah is really like, and from whence their redemption really comes.  Far from being a mighty-in-deed leader of a glorious militant restoration of Israel, the Messiah's body was taken and blessed, broken and given so that they might have life.

      And for the past 2000 years, Christians have faithfully repeated what Jesus did on that Emmaus day . . . they interpret the scripture, relating it all to our story of Jesus, who is God with us – they call that preaching – and then they demonstrate, with concrete action the Lord’s Supper, just who Jesus is, and what his redemption means . . . Christians have been doing this for two millennia, and yet . . . how come they still misrecognize Jesus when they see him in their lives?  How come they confuse the Jesus of scripture – who came to bring good news to the poor and freedom to the oppressed – with some god who justifies an unprecedented concentration of wealth, of God’s good creation, intended for everyone, in the hands of so very few?  How come they misrecognize the Jesus of the upper room – nail scarred hands and sword-pierced side – with a God who bestows on their country some manifest-destiny, divinely-inspired right to use force to impose their way of life on those who don’t want it?  How can they confuse the Jesus of the Gospel, of the cross, whose body was taken, blessed, broken and given, with a violent, retributive god, a god of power and might, who favors a tiny handful of the world’s people at the expense of suffering billions?

      If, as Karl Barth thought, Jesus Christ is "wholly other" than the god of our religion, how then shall we know him?  How shall we quit misrecognizing him, how shall we know him when we see him, separate him from the false gods of our religious construction?  Jesus himself gave us the interpretive key – in Matthew he instructs us to see him in the "least of these," in the very people excluded by our idolatrous, false conception of god.  Irony of ironies . . . seeing him precisely where we refuse to look, exactly in those away from whom we turn our eyes . . .

      Ironic perhaps, but strangely fitting . . . on the Emmaus road, the disciples recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread, that four-fold sacrament we celebrate once a month.  In that sacrament, we re-member (among other things) the self-giving act of ultimate service that our Lord performed for us, scapegoat for our culture of violence and sin.  So it is only appropriate that we see, that we remember Jesus every time we see one of our own scapegoats . . . a mother with two jobs, working for minimum wage so that we can have cheap designer clothes . . . a mainstreamed psychotic, wandering the highways so society won’t have to pay for his hospitalization . . . a drug addict, languishing in prison, so we won’t have to pay for his treatment . . . a church worker, scapegoated, hung out to dry, so we don’t have to be involved in the program.

            Brothers and sisters, as we travel down our own Emmaus roads, every time we see one of the least of these, try to recognize Jesus there.  Try to see the risen Savior in her face, to feel the nail scars on her hands and observe her sword-pierced side.  If we try, if we really make an effort to do what after all, Jesus commanded us to do, we might just be surprised that it really works.  Amen.

Sunday at the Tomb with the Marys (Matthew 28:1 - 10, Easter A)

     “After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb.”  What a lot is packed into that one, terse statement.  What a lot of sorrow, what a lot of pain, what a lot of good, old-fashioned chutzpah. . . Here they were, Mary and Mary, two women, status barely above slave, heading to the tomb of an executed criminal.  You didn't see Peter doing that, or James or John or Andrew . . . They were hiding out, shaking like rabbits in some dark hole or another.  But the Marys go, even though they know what they'll find, because hadn't they been there, huddled across from the tomb when Joseph of Arimathea placed the body in it?  Hadn't they been there when he rolled a big old rock in front of its entrance?  Why did they feel the need to see the tomb?  It surely didn't look any different than it did two days before, on that Friday Christians would eventually call “good.”

The Marys wouldn't have called it that, of course; they doubtless would have thought it pretty perverse . . . Of course, that morning, they were on the other side of the resurrection, so they wouldn't have seen the good in it, just the suffering, just the pain as the nails were pounded in, just the gasping like a beached fish as he drowned in his own fluids.  And can I tell you a secret?  I've always thought calling that Friday “good” to be a little perverse myself . . .

Anyway.  The women were afraid, of course they were, but they went anyway, and was it just the grief of loved ones, not able to stay away?  Is it the desire common to the bereaved, then as well as now, to simply be where their loved ones are?  They had to know it was dangerous, they had to know it was guarded . . . They had to know that they might be branded as insurrectionists, guilty by association . . . That was why Peter and company were hiding out so courageously.

And as they crept out of their home, tendrils of mist wrapped around their legs, and they pulled their cloaks tighter at the chill.  The shops and houses around them were dim and indistinct, shadows looming in the silence.  A dog barked nearby, a half-hearted yip, just doing its job, you understand, just going through the motions before slinking back to its master’s bedside.   Nobody wanted to be up on this morning after Sabbath, this first day of the week, not even the dogs.

Nobody except the Marys, who slipped along like wraiths in the dawning, not speaking but communicating nevertheless: by attitude and gesture and the unspoken intuition of long association and love.  As they got closer to the tomb, the light brightened and a stone settled in their stomachs, a heavy, leaden feeling of hopelessness, and once again they wondered what they were doing, why they were reliving the anguish . . . what possible good could it do to look at the tomb one last time?

They rounded a corner, and there it was, cut into the hillside like a wound, and they have a split-second image of the stone and the half-asleep guards then behold! the earth began to shake and ripple like water and they were knocked to the ground.  When it was over, they picked themselves up and saw that the guards—the big, tough Roman guards—had fainted dead away, and the stone had been rolled back.

But that wasn't the most amazing thing, for there, perched on the stone was an angel, crackling like lightening yet white as snow.  His movements were quick and birdlike, and he looked pretty self-satisfied, just sitting on top of that rock, flicking his wings to get the feathers just so.  He cocked his head at the Marys, fixed the them with a beady eye, and said “Do not be afraid” and the women thought “Yeah, right, that ship has already sailed,” but as if he divined their thoughts, the angel said “No, really . . . Do not fear.  I know who you're looking for, I know you're looking for Jesus the crucified one.” And sure enough, the women’s fears abated, just a little—after all, if this creature knew their beloved, why maybe it wasn't going to eat them just yet.

“I know who you're looking for,” the angel said “but he is not here.  For he has been raised, as he told you.”  And at the word “raised” the Marys’ hearts skipped a beat, and the air was sucked from their lungs and they bent over to recover.  The angel smirked a little as he saw the effect of his words.  Well, they were told, he thought . . . It shouldn't have come as that much of a surprise . . .

“Come,” he said, jerking his head toward the mouth of the tomb, “come see where he lay.”  And as the women peered into the darkened maw and saw that indeed he wasn’t there, the angel gave them the rest of his message: “go quickly and tell his disciples ‘he has been raised from the dead, and he is going ahead of you, into Galilee.  There you will see him.’  That's my message to you.”  And the angel began to preen again, shaking his feathers, no longer acknowledging the women’s presence.

Which didn't hurt their feelings any, because they were so excited at the thought of seeing Jesus again, being bathed in his presence again, that they were shaking.  When they finally got their wits about them it was fully daylight, and they began to run back to town, heedless of the still-groggy guards, heedless of any religious authorities that might be prowling around, heedless even of the rough ground they had to traverse.

Well.  By some miracle, neither of them fell in their headlong flight, neither of them took a header, but they were brought up short one more time, for Behold! Jesus himself appeared before them, big as day and said “Greetings!” as if he'd never been gone, as if they hadn't seen him nailed to a cross, as if they hadn't seen that big old stone rolled in front of that tomb.  “Greetings,” he said, and they fell down on the ground at his feet in love and gratitude, then he, like the angel, told them not to be afraid, and again they were taken aback, this time because how could they be scared?  How could they be afraid of their beloved?

But Jesus said “Do not fear, go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”  And those last words hung in the air like a brilliant flare, “see me.”  See me!  And suddenly the women understood, as do we, why they'd stumbled out of their warm beds on this first day of the week, why they'd given up their restless mourning for action, why they had braved the authorities and their own renewed pain to be there on that first morning of the new creation: to see.

And we should have known, we should have known . . . The scene is full of seeing, it's wrapped in it . . . It's in the first verse and the last, and in ten verses it appears in some form or another no less than eight times (including four times that it's hidden in our translation … though it doesn't read as sight to us, it would have to Matthew’s congregation).  The Marys went to see the tomb, to behold it in sorrow, and they saw it all right, but it wasn't what they expected . . . They expected to see the tomb unmolested, they expected to see it sealed . . . They expected the body of their beloved to be safely inside, where they could always come to see him, or at least where he lay . . .

And that’s sad. That’s heartbreaking, but it's also safe, it’s expected, they know what to make of it.  They’d come and see the tomb—often at first, but with decreasing frequency—and they'd put flowers on it or little flags, and they could compartmentalize their memories of him, keep them in a little box, away from their everyday life . . . “We knew this guy once named Jesus, and we thought he would change the world, but he died instead . . . Funny, we try to conjure up what he looked like, but can’t . . .”

They’d come to see a memory, something already in the past, something they could enshrine in their hearts, maybe embellish a little—that Jesus . . . What a kidder.  They'd come to see a memory, but what they saw was anything but.  What they saw was God’s new thing, a living, breathing embodiment of Paul's exclamation:  “See?  A new creation!” Right there before them, in front of their very eyes, they saw.

Sisters and brothers:  on this beautiful Easter morning, what have you come to see?  Have you come to see the choir sing?  Have you come to see the strings play, or my stumbling efforts at a sermon?  Maybe you've come to see the lilies, they're gorgeous, aren't they?  And the strings were fabulous and the choir was glorious, and it sure wouldn’t be a worship service without them.

And . . . If you've come to see the living Christ, you've come to the right place.  If you've come to see God's new thing, welcome to the party.  If you've come to see all things made new, Christ through and through, infusing everyone, inhabiting everything, if you've come to relish and experience and encounter Jesus of Nazareth, have I got a deal for you.

But this isn't the only location, it's not the only place.  The angel told us that Jesus goes before us, to Galilee, to the place where dwelt his earthly mission, and so he does today.  He goes ahead of us, into all of creation, into mean streets and palaces, markets and residences, bars and bar-mitzvahs.  He goes before us into the world, where the ministry is, and spreads his arms, and do you know what he says?  Come see.