Spirit of Grace

Sunday 14 July 2019
The Fifth Sunday of Pentecost

Luke 10:25-37

The scene opens on Jesus as he is on his way to Jerusalem. He has sent out his seventy disciples already to spread the good news and heal, and they have returned with their reports. And now something happens that seems a bit strange to us, but it must have been quite ordinary for people at the time.

Someone comes up and asks Jesus a question. Most bible translations call him a lawyer or a legal expert., and that is accurate to some degree, but it is also a bit confusing. What he is is an expert in the bible. He knows the words of scripture inside and out, and it’s his job to know the bible and interpret it for the people in his community, in his village.

So this bible expert comes up to Jesus and asks him a question. Luke tells us that he asks the question in order to test Jesus. That’s the part that seems a bit strange to us modern readers. Why would someone who is otherwise a stranger come and ask Jesus a question in order to test him? He must be one of the people who is trying to bring down Jesus. Maybe he is even part of the conspiracy to get Jesus killed. It’s difficult to think of any other motivation this lawyer would have to test Jesus, and so we often jump to cast him in the role of villain.

In fact, he is not a villain, and people at the time would have had no such confusion. They would have immediately understood, without even thinking about it, what was going on. It was quite common, and is still common today in cultures that highly value honor, for men to engage in these sorts of verbal battles. Scholars today call them “challenge and riposte.” It’s a sort of game of wits in which the two participants put their honor on the line, and the winner comes out with more honor, the loser with less.

When the bible expert comes up and asks a question of Jesus in order to test him, he is making a challenge to Jesus’s honor, but it isn’t necessarily hostile or malevolent. This is simply what people did. It was a sort of game, and anyone who thought they knew the scriptures well might have come up and challenged this traveling rabbi with a question simply to prove which one of them had a better command of the bible.

So let’s get into what they actually say. The bible expert challenges Jesus with the question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus accepts the challenge and counter-challenges by turning the question back on the questioner, “You’re a bible expert. What does the bible say? What do you read there?”

You see, now our young lawyer thinks he’s got the upper hand in this argument. He has a textbook answer ready to go and once he gives it, Jesus won’t be able to say anything back. He will have won. So he gives his flawless answer, quoted from Leviticus and Deuteronomy, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all you mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” Nothing Jesus can say to that, or so he thinks.

Jesus concedes that the bible expert has gotten it right. Normally this would mean that Jesus had lost the battle of wits. But instead, Jesus counter-challenges not with a technical question, but with a call to action: “Do this, and you will live.”

The bible expert is caught by surprise. He had been on top in their little competition, but now Jesus has upped the stakes by implying that he, an expert in the scripture, has not been living out the scriptural call to love God and neighbor that he has been preaching. He can’t leave it at that. He’s got to respond. And so he asks Jesus another question, “And who is my neighbor?”

He seems to be trying to trip Jesus up again. Whom will Jesus include as neighbor, and who will Jesus leave out? According to the bible, it’s other members of the household of Israel who are neighbors, and maybe sojourners in the land of Israel, but no one else. Foreign merchants and tax collectors weren’t neighbors. The Roman soldiers and government officials weren’t neighbors. And certainly those heretics in Samaria were not neighbors. They were enemies, and there was no need to love them. They should only be hated and resisted.

Jesus, of course, has a very different answer. But he doesn’t answer the question directly. Instead, he tells a story. A man is traveling the sometimes dangerous road from Jerusalem to Jericho when he is robbed, stripped, and beaten half to death. A priest goes by, a levite goes by, but a Samaritan stops and helps.

Now, priests and levites were at the top of the Jewish religious hierarchy. They were people set apart to be pure and holy for God, and as such, they had several purity laws spelled out in the bible that they were bound to keep. They had to stay holy and undefiled so that when they served in God’s temple, the offerings they made would be pure and undefiled. They were not allowed to come into contact with human blood, and they certainly were not allowed to touch a corpse. The only time a priest could touch a corpse would be to bury his own parent, and even then he would be made ritually unclean and would be barred from serving in the temple for some time until he was purified. It would have been a major breach of protocol for a priest or a Levite to approach what would have looked to them like a naked corpse. It would have been an abomination before God to allow one of God’s priests to be defiled in such a way.

A Samaritan, on the other hand, would not have had the same concerns about staying pure, but no self-respecting Israelite would have wanted to be touched by a Samaritan. They were believers in God, and they read the bible just like Israelites, but both Israel and Samaria considered each other to be hopeless heretics and enemies. The last person this man on the roadside would have expected to help him was a Samaritan.

Jesus rejects the premise of the question, “Who is my neighbor?” and instead proposes another question, “Who acts as a neighbor?” Love in the spirit of God is not about asking, “Who is worthy of love?” It is about asking, “Who has the grace to love another, even an enemy?”

It’s easy for us to put up barriers between ourselves and others. It’s easy for us to draw lines between those who are inside and those who are outside, those whom we are willing to love and those whom we are not. This person isn’t religious enough. She’s too liberal. He’s too conservative. He’s too old. She’s too young. They look different than we do. They speak a different language. They have a different religion. They come from a different country. They aren’t worthy. They don’t belong. They are outsiders. It’s easy for us to say, “I’m willing to go this far, but that is simply too much.”

But if we are to take Jesus’s words seriously, then we have to challenge those ideas. We have to challenge the idea that there are some people who are outside the love of God, some people whom we can simply discount, ignore, or marginalize. For those who seek to follow Jesus, that simply is not the case. Jesus calls us to love God and to love our neighbors—all of our neighbors, even the ones we don’t like very much. As Jesus tells us, we are to love even our enemies.

And is that easy? No, it’s not. There are some people that we have good reason to be wary of. And we each hold prejudices that we have collected over a lifetime, some of which have been handed down to us from generations past. It is not easy to love people whom we find different, or offensive, or even dangerous. But with the help of God, we can go beyond tolerance, we can go beyond acceptance, and we can love all of God’s children with the love of God, just as we ourselves have first been loved by God.

Sunday 16 June 2019
Trinity Sunday

Romans 5:1-5

One of the great moral philosophers of our time has said, “Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” That philosopher, of course, is Master Yoda. He tells about something like a slippery slope. One thing leads to another, leads to another, leads to another, and before you know it, things have gotten a whole lot worse. So if you want to avoid suffering, then you should avoid hate. If you want to avoid hate, then you should avoid anger. If you want to avoid anger, you should avoid fear. It is a lesson in mindfulness. Beware of where your thoughts wander, because when your mind becomes comfortable with fear, it will more easily move to anger. And when it becomes comfortable with anger, it will more easily move to hate. And when your mind becomes comfortable with hate, it will be comfortable with suffering, more specifically, with inflicting suffering on others. So be mindful of your hatred. Be mindful of your anger. Be mindful of your fear.

In the reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans today, we hear about another kind of progression. And interestingly, it starts in the same place that Yoda ends. Hate leads to suffering, Yoda said. Paul begins with suffering. The translation we read this morning uses the word trouble. We even take pride in our sufferings, Paul says, because we know that suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope. Rather than sliding down a slippery slope, Paul finds that suffering and trouble actually lead, step by step, to something better. How does he make it to that conclusion?

He starts with trouble, suffering. The Greek word is θλῖψις. It literally means pressure, like physical pressure. The feeling of something weighing down, something pressing in. From that sense of compression, it has a metaphorical sense of oppression. It is generally something that comes from outside. It’s not an interior strife. It’s something from outside that puts pressure on your life. For Paul, it probably meant the added pressure that came along with being a Christian, or with being a missionary, in his time—the threat of persecution from the government, the pain of being excluded from family and friends who don’t understand, the suspicion from neighbors.

Some of those pressures are still relevant today. Here in the United States we aren’t under any threat from the government for being Christian. But we do still run the risk of looking strange, looking foolish for our faith. We live in a culture in which participation in a faith community is not the norm. And living by our Christian values, standing up for justice for marginalized peoples can land one in prison. Several of our Lutheran and Methodist sisters and brothers were arrested recently, protesting for humane treatment and access to legal services for those who are being indefinitely detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They put their own freedom on the line to fight for those whose freedom has been taken away altogether. Living out your Christian values can be risky. Living your Christian values can put you at risk. Living your Christian values can put you under pressure.

But pressure, suffering, might come from other sources. The suffering of grief, the suffering of medical issues, family strife, poverty, prejudice, discrimination, intolerance, hunger, homelessness. Any of these can add weight to your life, can add pressure. Pressure that splits a family in two, puts people on streets..

Paul knows that that kind of pressure can be destructive. He does not encourage people to go out looking for suffering. He does not suggest that people should remain in a state of oppression, but that they should struggle against it.

But he also knows that, by God’s grace, sometimes even suffering can be redeemed. Sometimes suffering can lead to something good.

And the next step on that road of transformation is endurance. Suffering produces endurance. This is a tough one. Endurance. Does it mean simply that you endure suffering, that you survive even though you are in a state of suffering? Does it mean quietly putting up with oppression?

I don’t think so. The Greek word is ὑπομονὴ. It literally means remaining behind, but it is commonly used as endurance, patience—those both sound pretty passive. But it also means perseverance, patient expectation, even obstinance.

Endurance is not passive. It is not simply taking pain. Endurance is about seeing the struggle through to the end. Endurance is not about laying down in the midst of struggle. Endurance is about standing up in the midst of struggle, getting up every time you fall down, moving forward, forward, forward, even in the face of opposition.

When you are in the midst of the struggle, it might not seem like endurance is a good thing. You might feel overwhelmed. You might feel as though no good could ever come out of your situation. You might well feel as though you wish you weren’t in the situation. And like I said, you shouldn’t go out looking for suffering just so you can develop endurance. But when you are in a situation of suffering, it just might be that your endurance is strengthened. It just might be that God pulls good out of the situation of your troubles, in the form of endurance, perseverance, even obstinance.

Struggle produces endurance. Endurance produces character. Doesn’t that sound like something a parent would say when their child complains about whatever it is that they are frustrated with? Oh, it builds character. Talking about character-building can be a bit dismissive of what it is that someone has endured. But Paul agrees with the common wisdom that persisting in the midst of suffering can produce character.

The Greek word is δοκιμὴ. It actually refers to a test or a proof, and then comes to refer to something that has been tested. It is the character of someone who has been proven because they have endured an ordeal.

When you sit down and think about yourself, about who you are as a person, as you think about what constitutes your character, your personality, what is it that produces that character, that personality? Perhaps some of it is just innate in who you are. But some of it comes from your experiences in life. And does your character flow from the experiences in your life that were easy? Or does your character flow from the experiences in your life that were hard? Some of both, I imagine, but likely the strongest parts of you were developed through your struggles, were the parts that were broken and then grew back stronger, like a bone or callus. There may also be tender places within you, the residue of old wounds, but even those tender places can be a source of strength. It is out of our own woundedness that we develop compassion. Sometimes enduring hardship can toughen you up. Sometimes enduring hardship can soften you up. Either of those might make you a stronger person. 

So suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character. But what comes next? What is the point of all of this suffering and persistence and character-building? What makes it all worthwhile? What does character lead to?

It’s not victory. It’s not dominance. It’s not safety or security. And it’s not resignation or apathy or despair. Paul tells us that character leads to hope.

And that may seem a bit unsatisfying. After all, hope is not fulfillment. Hope is not completion. Hope is still open and expectant.

Because the truth is that we can never ultimately fix our lives, and we can never ultimately fix our society. We can make progress, but there will always be more. There will always be another illness. There will always be another death. There will always be another broken relationship. There will always be another injustice.

And that can be very deflating. It can be very discouraging. Sometimes we feel so overwhelmed that we begin to think that nothing is worthwhile any more. Why even try if things are never going to be right? Why even try if things are always going wrong?

The why is, if we don’t try, things will never get better. But it’s also that if we don’t try, things can get a whole lot worse.

This is where the idea of the devil can actually be useful. Most of us probably don’t have a particularly strong sense of there being an actual being or person that is the devil. It’s not an essential part of the faith. It’s something we can disagree about and still be church together. I tend to think of the devil as more of a metaphor than an actual being. But that also means, especially in a society that is as stable as ours is, that things are always getting better. Technology advances, scientific discoveries advance. So should ethics and justice, right? But that also gives the impression that if we just leave things alone, the world will stay about the same.

If you believe in the devil, though, that doesn’t make any sense. The devil is intent on stirring up evil. The devil is working every day to make things worse. And that means that every day, people need to be resisting, need to be working to undo the evil that the devil is doing. And the truth is, new evil is always being stirred up in the world. If we just give up and do nothing, things won’t stay the same, things will get worse.

It’s a bit like laundry. No matter how hard I work at it, I can never get all of the laundry done. I can never make it so there is no dirty laundry. But if I get discouraged and start to think that there’s no point in doing laundry because the laundry never gets done, things won’t stay the same. Things will get worse. Things will get a whole lot worse, and very fast.

When we struggle to overcome suffering, injustice, and oppression, there is always going to be more work to do. It’s not like writing a paper or earning a degree, something that you can finish and it’s done. It’s like tending a garden or maintaining a house. The work is never done, because there is always something new to do. We can make things better. But if we stop the struggle, things won’t stay the same, things will get worse.

And that’s where hope comes into the picture. Suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope. The Greek is ἐλπὶς. It’s hope, but it’s not always positive. It can mean anxiety about the future. But it can also mean exception and the prospect of something new. Character produces hope, and hope gives us the strength to keep going. Hope inspires us. Hope gives us reason and purpose. Hope trusts that even when we cannot see it, the things that we do make a difference. Hope is the grace of God, the good that God draws out of suffering.

And it is with God’s hope, God’s expectation, that we live. It is in God’s hope that we are transformed. It is in God’s hope that we are made new. It is in God’s hope that we face whatever it is that we have to face. It is in God’s hope that we overcome. Thanks be to God.

Sunday 2 June 2019
Ascension Sunday

Luke 24:44-53
Acts 1:1-11

The lectionary readings from today present us with a unique situation: the same event, described by the same author, in two separate books of the bible. The Gospel of Luke and the Book of the Acts of the Apostles are actually written by the same person.  In fact, they are a two-volume book, a history, written for a patron named Theophilus. The first volume, Luke, is about the life of Jesus, and the second volume, Acts, is about the birth of the church. And what we encounter in our readings today are the very last verses in Luke and the very first verses in Acts. It turns out that they both tell the same story: the story of Jesus’s ascension.

We know with certainty that these books were written by the same author. Nevertheless, if you look closely at the stories, you’ll see that they are a little bit different from each other. In the first version it sounds like the ascension happened on Easter evening in Bethany; in the second version it sounds like it happened forty days later in Jerusalem.

But despite the small differences in these two accounts, the core of the story is still the same. Jesus appears alive to his disciples. He tells them that his death and resurrection were all a part of the plan, that everything was to fulfill what was written in the Torah. He tells them that they are going to be his witnesses in all the world. And he tells them that the promise of God is about to be fulfilled; they are about to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit. But, Jesus says, they are going to have to wait. Don’t leave Jerusalem. Wait until you are clothed with power before you do anything else.

And that seems to me to be a very strange message to be coming from God. We usually think of God as declaring things, right now and for eternity: start immediately and keep doing it for all time. But in this case, God says, I have a great plan for you, a wonderful mission. This will be the very fulfillment of your lives… but just hold your horses a minute, don’t get ahead of yourselves. You’re not ready yet. Let’s take this nice and slow.

Now, much of the time we in the church don’t have any trouble taking things slow with God. Bureaucracy, committees upon committees, study groups, Conferences, Assemblies, and a two-millennia tradition of just waiting to see how things turn out haven’t made us the most nimble of organizations. Change seems to be a four-letter word in many congregations, and one of our most sacred creeds seems to be these seven words: “We’ve never done it that way before.” Of course there are exceptions to this, moments of radical response to God’s call. But much of the time God has a hard time getting us going, has difficulty getting us motivated to do something new, has to work really hard to get us to reach outside of our comfortable sanctuaries and into the world around us. Evangelism, mission, outreach, prophetic witness—can’t someone else take care of those things?

So since we are so used to hearing God say, “Hey, get up and do something,” it does seem a bit odd to hear this message to the first disciples: “Hey, sit down and don’t do anything.”

Last we week I told you the story or how I stopped being a music student and ended up on the road to ordained ministry. It started with a feeling of unease, and then with an experience of failure. My failure to be accept for composition school shook me up enough to make me reevaluate everything and head in a new direction.

But I didn’t tell you the whole story. In the midst of all this, in my sophomore year of college, while I was trying to figure out the direction of my life, I had one of the most profound spiritual experiences that I’ve ever had. One evening, looking at the sunset, everything seemed suddenly clear. All of the worries and the hang-ups and the insecurities that I had been cradling suddenly seemed silly. I truly felt God’s presence, and I knew that I wanted to turn my life over to God, to let God set the direction, to turn myself over completely to a life of service. At the time, I interpreted that as a call to international mission. And I was ready to go right away. I was ready to discontinue college, pack up, and travel to some distant shore where I was sure that everything would make more sense and be more meaningful.

But things didn’t work out quite the way I thought they would. God had a different plan. And the truth is that I wasn’t ready. I was enthusiastic. I was willing. But I didn’t really have much to offer in the mission field.

When I didn’t immediately become a missionary, I felt horrible—disappointed, guilty that I was letting God down or somehow evading God’s call, inadequate. But that was all a part of the process. I couldn’t have made the journey without taking each turn along the way. It took the moment of failure. It took the profound experience that re-inspired me. And it also took God saying, “Wait. It’s not time yet. You’re not ready. Be patient.”

For those who have heard God’s call, who seek to respond in faith, these can be very hard words to hear. It can feel like a betrayal or an abandonment. It can feel like somehow we are not good enough or strong enough to do what God is asking. If only we had the endurance, the determination, the faith, then maybe we could see it through.

But the truth is that God’s ways are not our ways. God’s time is not our time. And every time that we try to make God conform to our time schedules, we end up being made the fools. At least that’s been my experience. Maybe some of you have had better luck getting God stick to your timeline. If you have, let me know your secret. Sometimes God says, “Wait. Not yet. It’s not time. Be patient.”

That’s what Jesus said to those first disciples, “Wait here in Jerusalem until you are clothed with power from the Holy Spirit.” They could have ignored that and set out on their mission anyway. But they wouldn’t have been ready. They would have been trying to do God’s work on their own, instead of letting God work through them.

Or they could have gotten discouraged with Jesus’s rebuff and given up on the whole thing. If God doesn’t think it’s time now, then what is the point? But then they would have been missing out on all of the remarkable things that God had in store for them: Pentecost and the gift of the Holy Spirit, huge crowds flocking to the Gospel message, and a church that has grown now to encompass two billion people all around the world.

We have the same choice when God asks us to wait. We can go off, half-cocked into the world trying to do it all ourselves, and we will end up burnt out and discouraged. We can give up on God because of our impatience and miss the miracles that God has in store for us.

Or we can take the middle way. We can listen to God’s call, and seek to follow, but still have patience with God’s timetable and methods, continuing to listen for God’s prompting and leadership. It is a more difficult way. It requires us to meet our anxiety with radical patience and perseverance. It requires us to think outside of ourselves. But it is the only way that we can hope to be co-workers with God, to be laboring on God’s side.

Listen to God’s call. Be inspired. And do not be discouraged if God says, “Wait. Not yet. Wait until you are clothed with power from the Holy Spirit.”

Sunday 19 May 2019
The Fifth Sunday of Easter

John 13:31-35

For the past several weeks, we have been hearing post-resurrection stories from the Gospel of John. We have heard about Jesus’s appearance to Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb, and the way that he sent her out as an apostle to the apostles, to tell them the story of his victory over death. We have heard about how Jesus appeared to his disciples as they were hidden away in a locked room on the evening of the resurrection, how he told them to conquer their fear and go out in his name. We heard how he appeared to them a week later, while they were still hidden away up in that locked, upper room. We heard how he appeared to many of them a third time, while they were out fishing, and how he encouraged Peter, “If you love me, feed my sheep.”

Now we have to rewind back to an earlier part of the story. It’s no longer after Easter, in the wake of the resurrection; now it’s before Easter. It is the night before Jesus’s crucifixion, as he shares a meal with his disciples. In John, this isn’t the Passover, and Jesus doesn’t institute the sacrament of Holy Communion. But it is Jesus’s last meal. He spends most of it talking. Four entire chapters of John are taken up with Jesus talking at his last meal. We call it the farewell discourse. And the passage we have today comes toward the beginning of that discourse.

As Jesus gathers his disciples together for a final meal, he shocks them by acting like a servant and washing their feet. They don’t understand it. Peter tries to stop Jesus. But Jesus goes ahead with a selfless act of service. He washes the feet of each of the twelve. Not just Peter, James, and John, he washes all of their feet, even Judas. And he tells them that just as he has washed their feet, so they should wash one another’s feet. “I have given you an example,” he says. “Just as I have done, you also must do.” He shocks them with his ability to give of himself, and he calls on them to imitate his self-giving love.

As the night goes on, they move to the meal, and Jesus predicts that one among his disciples will betray him. “The one who eats my bread has turned against me.” When they ask him who it is, he replies, “It’s the one to whom I will give this piece of bread once I have dipped into the bowl.” And then he dips the piece of bread and gives it Judas. Even at the end, even knowing that Judas will betray him, he offers Judas one last gift. Evoking themes of eucharist, Jesus gives him a piece of his bread.

After Judas leaves to set in motion the plan that will kill Jesus, we arrive at the reading assigned for today. Still at the meal, Jesus speaks to his disciples about his impending death, which in the Gospel of John is always imagined as a glorification. Jesus is always in control, he hardly suffers, and even when he is nailed to a cross, John describes it as Jesus being lifted up.

It is in that vein that Jesus speaks here of his death, that is, his glorification. “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify the Son of Man in himself and will glorify him immediately. Little children, I’m with you for a little while longer. You will look for me—but, just as I told the Jewish leaders I also tell you now—‘Where I’m going, you can’t come.’”

It is no wonder that the disciples don’t understand what Jesus is talking about when he speaks so obliquely, so metaphorically. Who would guess that when he says he will be glorified that he means he will be crucified? Who would guess that when he says he is going somewhere his disciples can’t come that he means he is going to death? But this is indeed how Jesus speaks of his death, even as he is only hours away from it. And it is as Jesus is facing his own death—a death that he calls glorification—that he gives a new commandments.

Now that is a rather striking thing, giving a new commandment. Traditionally, there are 613 commandments in the Hebrew Bible, what we sometimes call the Old Testament. So why would we need a new one? Aren’t 613 of them enough?

Apparently not, because John’s Jesus tells his disciples that he is about to give a new commandment. And here it is: “Love each other.” Just that simple. Love each other.

Is that really a new commandment? Is it really possible that God’s people have never before been commanded to love each other? Well, not exactly. You might recall that in the other three gospels, Jesus gets into discussions about what is the most important commandment in the Hebrew Bible, and in them we emerge with what we often call the Great Commandment. The Great Commandment is actually two commandments that Jesus has taken from different parts of the Hebrew Bible and sewn together into one connected saying. The first comes from Deuteronomy 6:4: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your being, and all your strength.” Jesus cleverly pairs this commandment to love God with another Hebrew Bible commandment about love, this one from Leviticus 19:18: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” According to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus says that this dual commandment, to love God and to love neighbor, is a summary of every other commandment in the Bible. If you love God with your whole self and you love your neighbor as yourself, then you will inevitably follow every other commandment without even trying. Love for God and love for neighbor is what it’s all about.

But in the Gospel of John, Jesus takes a different approach. In John, Jesus gives a new commandment. And the new commandment is to love each other. Now, as we’ve just noted, that isn’t exactly a new commandment. And it is isn’t, not on its own. But the next part is new. “Love each other. Just as I have loved you, so you must love each other.”

The command to love the other is not new, but the way we understand that love is new. It’s no longer based on our own actions. We aren’t to love the other in the same way that we love ourselves. No, that isn’t a good enough model. Instead, Jesus makes the commandment new by making himself the example of love. Just as I have loved you, so you must love one another. 

And he has just lived out the model for them. He has taken off his robe, taken the towel of a servant, and washed the feet of his followers. Even though he is their teacher, even though he is their leader, even though he is their lord, even though he is their God, he takes on the role of a slave and washes their feet. Not just the ones who understand him; none of them understand him. Not just his best pupils or those with the most potential. He washes the feet of each and every one of them. Even Peter, who will deny him in the coming hours. But much more remarkably, he even washes the feet of Judas, whom he knows will be the one who betrays him to death. Judas, whom we are explicitly told was a vessel for Satan. Even evil Judas gets his feet washed by Jesus. And in fact, it is Judas who is singled out by Jesus to receive the gift of a piece of bread from his own hand.

You want a model for love: that is your model for love. Look at that Jesus-love. Look at the love that serves both friend and enemy. Look at the love that acts as a servant. Look at the love that sets aside Godliness in order to take on human form, to demonstrate God’s love for us. Look at the love that lays down one’s life for one’s friends. Look at the love that endures death so that we might understand the depth of God’s grace. This is love. This is how you should love one another.

And that is extraordinary. The love of God demonstrated to us in the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is beyond comprehension. The love of God demonstrated to us in the ongoing gift of the Spirit, in our continuing relationship with God in Jesus Christ is astonishing. And that is the kind of love that we are commanded to have for each other. Not just for our families. Not just for our friends. Love for strangers. Love for enemies. Love for all created beings. We are to love with the unimaginable love that Jesus has demonstrated for us.

And that is a difficult ask, isn’t it? To love the way that Jesus loved. To love with that kind of unselfishness. To love with that kind of compassion. To love beyond boundaries of difference. To love despite past wrongs. To love in a way that wishes the best even for those we despise. That is difficult. It is a humbling prospect.

But I think even that is not nearly as humbling as what Jesus says next. “I give you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, so you also must love each other,” he says. And then he says, “This is how everyone will know that you are my disciples, when you love each other.”

This is how everyone will know you are my disciples, when you love each other. It hits me like a punch in the gut. Jesus says that an extravagant, selfless love should be the marker of our identity. Reckless love is the sign that should tell others that we are disciples of Jesus.

But that certainly isn’t our reputation, is it? If you asked a non-Christian in our culture to describe how a Christian behaves, I’m not sure that selfless love is the first thing that would roll off their lips. In fact, we Christians have often developed a reputation for exactly the opposite: for bigotry, for exclusion, for a myopic obsession with rules and social convention, for a holier-than-thou attitude, for a sense of entitlement and privilege. And in many cases that reputation has been well-earned. How far away from the commandment to love we have fallen, with crusades, slavery, a doctrine of discovery, with oppression based on race, religion, nationality, sexuality. None of that is consistent with Jesus’s commandment to love. None of that is comparable with what Jesus says should be the marker of our faith. None of that is consistent with love.

But along with that tradition of lovelessness, there is another tradition that does not always get as much press. It was Christian love that introduced the concept of care for the poor to the western world. It was Christian love that invented the hospital. It was Christian love that drove the abolitionist movement. It was Christian love that founded schools and universities. Christian love contributed to temperance, women’s suffrage, civil rights, addiction recovery, prison ministry, chaplaincy, the hospice movement. And it is Christian love that every day prompts one person to forgive someone, that prompts one person to share with another, that prompts one person to raise their voice for the freedom of another.

We don’t have a perfect track record. But if we ever need to know what it is that makes us Christian, here it is: the command of Jesus to love the other. May God continue to show us, in Jesus, how to love the other, how to serve the other, so that we can honestly say that the world will know we are Christians by our love.

Sunday 28 April 2019
The Second Sunday of Easter

John 20:19-31

It’s still Easter. The disciples have gotten the news that Jesus is risen. They’ve heard the reports from the empty tomb. They’ve heard Mary Magdalene’s story of how she saw the risen Lord. And now, with the sun low in the western sky, they are not out proclaiming the good news, they are not spreading the word that Jesus is risen. No, as evening falls they are hidden away in some undisclosed location, with the doors closed, locked, and barred. And why are they cowering away in some dark corner? Because they are afraid of the Jews.

And I suppose it’s not so hard to understand why they were afraid. It was the Jewish authorities, after all, who had brought Jesus to trial in the first place. Now that his body has gone from the tomb, neither the Jewish leaders nor the Roman government would be very pleased. They’d likely come after all of Jesus’s followers to keep these rumors that Jesus has risen from the dead from starting some sort of riot or insurrection. Judea was a volatile place, and the government wouldn’t think twice about using military force to put down a few rebels. They had to be prepared for the coming battle. They had to develop their plans and strategies. If Jesus really was alive, then perhaps he would be amassing forces to overthrow the Roman military occupation and their lapdogs, the Jewish religious authorities. This might be the very moment that they had been waiting for since they first heard about the messiah. Jesus would surely rise up now and crush the foreign oppressors. The disciples just had to play it safe for a little while, stay under cover, until Jesus came to rescue them.

And so they remain locked away in a secret conclave on that evening of the first Easter, hiding out and assuming the worst—because they were afraid. The word in Greek is one that you know: phobia. The disciples were phobic of the Jews. And it was this Jew-phobia that kept them isolated, paralyzed, disconnected from the rest of the world. They couldn’t move, they couldn’t act, they couldn’t even find out what was really going on. All they could do was hide out and cower in fear.

And it seems to me that we are not unfamiliar with that kind of fear—the fear that paralyzes and keeps us locked away. We are a nation that seems to run on fear. You only have to turn on the news to see it. Story after story that highlights only the worst things in our society, only the most frightening, so that we can keep cultivating the idea that the world is going to hell in a hand basket. I guess the fear sells more commercials.

On channel 25 they’re afraid of a radical socialist takeover of the United States. Socialist healthcare, socialist eduction, socialist Green New Deal. If the liberals get their way then we might as well have lost the Cold War. The government will run everything and all the things that are good about our country will be lost forever. No more freedom. No more rights. No more liberty.

Over on channel 67 they’re afraid of a president run amuck. Election tampering, obstruction of justice, cruel immigration policies, a loss of integrity. If the conservatives have their way then we’ll be back in the dark ages. The government will give up on all its vulnerable citizens and won’t be good for anything except war. The poor will have no protection. No more freedom. No more rights. No more liberty.

Now, if neither of those world views suit your fancy, there are plenty of other things to be afraid of. There are natural disasters like tsunamis, tornados, earthquakes, and hurricanes. There are oil spills and nuclear accidents. There is the threat of global climate change.  There is our dependency on oil, and the world’s dwindling supply of petroleum resources. We’re afraid of diseases: cancer, AIDS, measles flu pandemic. We’re concerned about the economy, and the kind of chaos that might happen if it gets any worse. We’re afraid of change in all its forms: change in our personal lives, change in our families, change in our nation, change in society, and change in our church. We’re afraid about success and failure, and what others might think about our lives. Ultimately, we are afraid of death, of that great unknown, and whether or not our life will have been worthy of eternity. Sometimes we take all of these fears, roll them all up together into one neat package, and call it the End Times. Things seem so bad that we become afraid of the very end of the world.

Now, it’s certainly not wrong to be afraid. Fear is God’s way of keeping us out of undue danger. And there certainly are real threats in the world that trigger our fears. But, whether or not a fear is justified, it can still be a dangerous thing. Fear has the power to overcome us, to enslave us, bind us, and confine us. Fear causes us to separate ourselves from the world around us, to expect the worst, to suspect our neighbors. Fear brought the disciples to lock themselves away in a secret hiding place, to reject the world, to live in constant terror of the people in the their own communities, and it has the power to do the same thing to us. When we let fear control our lives, we stop living for God and for God’s kingdom and start living only for our own self-preservation. We become blocked from the grace that God provides, and our discipleship becomes sterile and fruitless, like those useless apostles hiding behind bolted doors.

While the disciples were still locked away in that back room, Jesus mysteriously appeared to them. And he immediately spoke to them these words: “Peace be to all of you.” Jesus came to them in the midst of their disabling fear and spoke peace. “Let your fear go. Fill yourselves with peace instead.” But the disciples weren’t able to hear him. They were too caught up in their phobias and paranoias to understand Jesus’s message to them. Yes, they were happy to see Jesus, they were glad to be in the presence of the risen Lord. But they were unable to really listen to what Jesus was saying to them.

So Jesus tries again, repeats his previous words: “Peace unto all of you.” And then he adds, “God has sent me out, rolled away the stone and set me loose from death. Now it’s your turn.  Unlock these doors that keep you buried in this room just the same as if it were a grave. Roll away the stone of fear that makes you a slave to sin and death. Now, I am sending you out into the world. Even death can’t keep me locked away; don’t let fear keep you locked away. You’re supposed to be apostles, aren’t you? And an apostle is one who is sent out. Well, I’m sending you out. Leave your fear behind and get going.”

Jesus will not let them stay snuggly hid away in their safe little bomb shelter. He won’t allow them to remain comfortably separate from the world outside. No, Jesus sends them out into the world, tells them to get past their fear and do the work that they are meant to do.

That same message applies to us today. Jesus is sending us. If we hold on to our fears, allow them to control us, then we will be unable to answer Jesus’ call to us. Change, and disease, and disaster, and terrorism, and death, will keep us bound up in chains that prevent us from doing what God intends for us. Fear will render us useless.

Now, that message might seem a little harsh, a bit unsympathetic on Jesus’s part. Are we being told to just get over it? To pretend that we don’t have any fears? Overcoming fear takes more than just getting a lecture.

Fortunately, Jesus doesn’t leave us there. If fact, Jesus does something absolutely extraordinary. What Jesus does is so amazing, that it is very difficult to understand. If you check your Bible at John 19:22 you’ll probably find something like, “he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” That in itself is quite remarkable, but it’s not as simple as it seems at first. Once again, the frailty of the English language fails to capture what is happening in this passage.

First, Jesus does not breathe on the disciples, which seems pretty strange already. No Jesus actually breathes into the disciples. The Greek word used here is the exact same word in the exact same form that is used when God breathes the breath of life into Adam in Genesis 2. Jesus isn’t just breathing on them, he is breathing a new life into them, making a new creation out of them, just as God made a new creation by breathing into Adam. Jesus is the Word made flesh, and he is breathing that divine Word into the disciples. He is making them into new beings, creatures filled with the Word and Spirit of God.

And that’s not the end of the mystery. Jesus says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” In Greek, this can also mean, “Receive a holy breath,” which makes sense since he is breathing into them. Or it can mean, “Understand this holy saying,” which also makes sense, because Jesus is about to deliver a wisdom saying to them. The Greek reader would probably understand all of these meanings to be happening simultaneously. Receive the Holy Spirit, receive a holy breath, understand this holy saying—they are all true to what is happening.

And then Jesus delivers the saying. The New Revised Standard Version translates it this way: “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” So we usually think, Oh, the apostles have received the Holy Spirit, so now they must have the authority to forgive sins or retain them. This is some sort of special privilege and power that they’ve been granted.

But once again, it’s not that simple. Listen to another translation of those same words: “If you should happen to let go of the sins of anyone, that person is set free; if you lord it over anyone, then that person has been enslaved.” Now things start to make sense. Jesus is not granting the disciples some sort of special power, he is giving them a piece of wisdom. He’s saying that if we choose to forgive someone or not to forgive them, that it actually has an effect on that other person. If we forgive them, then we set them free. If we withhold our forgiveness, then we are enslaving that person with the chains of our own negative emotions. To grant forgiveness is a beautiful gift that releases good into the world. Withholding forgiveness is an injury to others, and limits the avenues that God has to pour forth grace. Understand this holy saying, says Jesus, if you forgive, you grant freedom; if you withhold forgiveness, then you just create more ways to hold people down.

And what is fear but a wrong left unforgiven? When we hold on so tightly to all of our hurts, every bad thing that we’ve ever experienced, then we start to live in fear of everything that could possibly go wrong in the future. Living a life without forgiveness inevitably leads us into a life of slavery—slavery to our own fears—slavery that reaches even to those around us, binding us all in a web of terror.

But Jesus offers us a different way. He says, “Peace. Peace to all of you. Be released from your fear.” And offers us the gift of the Holy Spirit, he breathes peace into us, breathes forgiveness into us, breathes new life into us, and makes us a new creation, free from slavery to fear and death, free to go out as Christ’s representatives into the world. Christ is calling. Christ is making us new. And Christ is sending us out into the world that we might share in his ministry and be always and everywhere breathing peace.