Easter VII: Wait!

Today is traditionally called Expectation Sunday, falling between the Ascension, when Jesus returns to the Father, and Pentecost.  The reference to expectation is understood in the light of the Acts text where Jesus' crew ask: when will get this show on the road?  Jesus answers that they don't need to know, instead that they are to go to Jerusalem and wait.  The Holy Spirit will act at the right time, whenever that may be.  So the Apostles collect the Blessed Mother, and a few others, and go directly to Jerusalem to wait.

Waiting is something that we red-blooded Americans hate to do, isn't it?  We want instant credit, quality fast food, not having to queue up for anything.  We are not very patient people.  And we like to call God's hand, because we can't wait, pray, discern.  To complicate matters, when the Spirit does move us, there never seem to be the kind of pyrotechnics the apostles and Mary will experience on Pentecost -- theophanies like earthquake, wind, and tongues of fire on everyone.  We could dig that.   It is harder to follow that still, small voice.  But we have to try, as individuals, as a community, and a national church within the worldwide Anglican Communion.  In past decades we spent much time and nervous energy dealing with ordination for women and, more recently, full respect and equality for gay and lesbian Christians.  We were led by good science and good exegesis. Discernment can be hard.

The right kind of discernment helps us to get priorities straighter.  This week our United Methodist brothers and sisters are still fighting over who can love whom, while abuse, hunger, discrimination, violence, and injustice abound all around us.

For two thousand years Christians have been called to listen and respond to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, but instead have listened to other voices.  Preferring war and imperialism, patriotism and nationalism, to the Gospel.  Preferring the accumulation of wealth and power.  Preferring racism, bigotry, and even slavery.  Preferring "Churchianity."   The good news is that every day is a new opportunity to make the right difference.

I want to close by illustrating my message with a passage from Testament of Hope by Saint Martin Luther King:

    "A voice out of Bethlehem two thousand years ago said all men are equal, that right would triumph.  Jesus of Nazareth wrote no books, owned no property to endow him with influence.  He had no friends in the courts of the powerful.  But he changed the course of mankind with only poor and despised people.  We will fight for human justice and brotherhood; we will secure peace and abundance for all.  And when we have won these in a spirit of unshakeable non-violence, then, in luminous splendour, the Christian Era will truly begin."

Easter IV: Areopagus

Each of the canonical gospels has its own special characteristics, agendae, and theology.  The Luke Gospel is distinguished not only by being by and for Gentile converts but also as the only canonical gospel that has a sequel, namely the Acts of the Apostles.  An important agenda item for the gospel was continuity between the Jewish and Christian covenants, thus extending into stories about the growth of the early Church was important.

The second half of Acts is centred on the apostle Paul and our reading today presents Paul at his finest.  Perhaps Paul's greatest contribution to the growing Tradition was speaking of salvation as attaining correct, and eternal, relationship with God through trust in Jesus Christ.  Today, missionary activity finds him in Athens, the intellectual capital of Greece.  He has been invited by locals to give explanation of the "new cult" he propounds.

The Acropolis, or "high city," of Athens sported the Temple of Athena, town patroness, towards the east end and at the west an area called Areopagus, or commonly "Mars Hill,"so named because it was believed that the god Mars had there acquitted himself of charges of having murdered the son of god Neptune.  Logically the area featured judicial procedures and eventually also became a place where various opinions could be aired.  So Paul is in the perfect place.

He delivers what is clearly one of the finest pieces of rhetoric we know.  He tells the Athenians that he has seen an altar "to the unknown god." Actually, it read "to unknown gods," but Paul's adaptation is apt.  He goes on to say that he will reveal the unknown god, who is in fact the one true God who created the universe and "in whom we live, move, and exist."  This God , Paul says, is certainly not anthropomorphic, does not live in temples, and cannot be represented in images.  This God now calls out to humanity and has commended himself through Jesus' resurrection.

So Paul has invited his audience to cast aside primitive theologies and move up to monotheism.  The ancient views of Deity must be shed.  This revealing point shows that Paul himself had moved very far from early Judaism's view of God as a sort of super-sized version of us on a bad-hair day -- one who is angry, bloodthirsty, capricious and treats his children far worse than human parents do.  Time to grow up, Paul says.

It is fair to say that God is not the one who changed over the scope of human history, but that human concepts of the Deity have evolved and become more healthy, in the light of human experience and reason.  In today's Gospel, Jesus speaks of the sending of the Holy Spirit, the "Spirit of Truth," who will, a little later in the same gospel, be spoken of as guiding the Church into all truth.  We see that as au unending gift which allows us better to understand God's will and to deal with new truth being uncovered every day.  We never live in the past or worship the past's archaic view of God.  We can have faith that is always fresh in a God who is always revealing.

Easter V: Working John 14

If you have ever attended a funeral in an Episcopal Church, you have likely heard the opening lines of the fourteenth chapter of the John Gospel.  The disciples are already grieving because they know Jesus is going to be executed.  They will have lost their master and their movement.  Jesus comforts them by saying, "Set your troubled hearts at rest.  Trust in God always, trust also in me," assures them there are many "dwelling places" in heaven, and tells them "I am the way, the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except by me."

What are intended as words of comfort and encouragement have been turned into a weapon used by fundamentalists against non-Christians and even some others within our faith tradition.  Looking at the opening chapter of the Gospel we realize that the logos of God, the rational principle of the universe, fully inhabiting the person of Jesus, is the "I' when Jesus speaks in this gospel.  Might we find, then,  that the principles of the world's great religions are essentially identical?  I believe so.   Let us ask ourselves:  What is the way that Jesus was?  What is the truth he calls us to reflect?  What is the life he has summoned us to live?

First of all, Jesus was a pacifist; he called for absolute non-violence.  Some will say, and not without justification, that the contexts of modern times are different from ancient Palestine.  What about the Second World War? ISIS?  The point is well-taken, but consider whether violence is used as our first option or only as a last resort.  Consider 9/11.  As I watched the television coverage of the attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon, the Bible verse running through my mind was, "Vengeance belongs to me, I shall repay, says the Lord."  How would our putatively "Christian Nation" respond? Well, we immediately invaded a country that had nothing to do with the attacks, killing substantial numbers of people, and eventually destabilizing a whole region.  We are still trying to clean up our mess.  Suppose we had chosen a Christian response.  Suppose we had poured a trillion dollars into human development in the region and denied ISIS their constituency.  The Middle Eastern situation would look substantially different now.

Jesus also stood for social justice and against the accumulation of gross wealth and power.  What if our nation today were committed to Jesus' values instead of supporting an ever-widening wealth gap and fostering divisions among people instead of reconciliation?   What if we were to address, as a matter of public policy, basic human needs like health care and shelter, instead of promoting the business-as-usual of capitalist consumerism and ignoring the consequences?

At its root, all of Jesus' values reflected in his life and teachings, call us to self-denial and loving service of others, putting neighbour ahead of self.  We can still do that, as individuals, as people in communities, and as a nation.  If we choose to take Jesus seriously for a change.