Showing posts with label Easter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Easter. Show all posts
Thursday, April 9
Next Worship Gathering will be April 19th
Our next worship service will be Sunday April 19th, the third Sunday of Easter. Yes Easter is a season of 50 days not just one Sunday. If you'd like to join us follow the links to our Google + event page or Facebook event page, for the details and location.
Friday, March 18
Holy Week and Easter Services
Holy Week and Easter
Joint Services with Immanuel; St Elias; and St. Francis.
Holy Monday April 18: Spoken Eucharist -passion according to Matthew, 7:30 pm
Holy Tuesday April 19:
Spoken Eucharist -the passion according to Luke, 7:30 pm
Holy Wednesday April 20: Spoken Eucharist -the passion according to Mark
The Three Days Maundy Thursday, April 21: Maundy Thursday service 7:30 pm Service of foot washing and Holy Communion
Good Friday, April 22: Good Friday service 7:30 Adoration of the Cross
Easter Vigil, Saturday April 23: Easter Vigil 8:30 pm* (Note: new time this year) with Batisms and Affirmation of Baptism, champagne reception
Easter Sunday April 24: Easter Sunday Service 10:30 am
Easter breakfast at 9:00 am Easter Egg hunt at 9:45 am *this is a correction from Previous announcement, which stated erroneously that the Easter Vigil would be at 7:30 p.m. |
Monday, March 29
Holy Week and Easter Services
Join us for our joint Holy Week and Easter worship services with Immanuel Lutheran Church and St Elias Christian Church.
Thursday April 1
Maundy Thursday Service: Foot Washing and Holy communion 7:30 pm
Friday April 2
Good Friday Service: Adoration of the Holy Life Giving Cross 7:30 pm
Saturday April 3
Easter Vigil 7:30 pm
Sunday April 4
Easter Potluck breakfast 9:00 am
Easter worship with Holy communion 10:30 am
We will not have a worship service at 5 pm on Easter Sunday April 4. Our regular 5 pm worship time returns Sunday April 11.
Thursday April 1
Maundy Thursday Service: Foot Washing and Holy communion 7:30 pm
Friday April 2
Good Friday Service: Adoration of the Holy Life Giving Cross 7:30 pm
Saturday April 3
Easter Vigil 7:30 pm
Sunday April 4
Easter Potluck breakfast 9:00 am
Easter worship with Holy communion 10:30 am
We will not have a worship service at 5 pm on Easter Sunday April 4. Our regular 5 pm worship time returns Sunday April 11.
Tuesday, May 5
Reconciler Update
We continue to be in a time of transition and change that we began last year when we began to question the necessity of the committee structure as a means to be church together. This has lead to a streamlining of our council and the creation of more fluid forms of being together and working together as a church community. As we have made these changes and have found other challenges to our original vision conversation with the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago and the Central Conference of the Evangelical Covenant Church has picked up again. We find ourselves in a good place to continue the conversation of continued relationship with the three denominations even as we are without an Episcopal Priest and have put on hold our search for an American Baptist pastor.
A week ago today I met with the Rev. Cannon Scott Hayashi, Canon to the Ordinary of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago (A Canon is a person who may be lay or ordained who serves on a Bishop’s staff or a cathedral. The Canon to the Ordinary is a person whose ministry is directly answerable to the bishop and who can function as a sort of chief of staff). We had a lively and helpful discussion about Reconciler and the possibilities of a continuing relationship with the Diocese. In the coming months as we reflect together on who we are as a congregation and how we wish to continue to be an ecumenical congregation Rev. Canon Hayashi's thoughts and reflections will be helpful. Though in our conversation it was made very clear that the way I and the founding pastors had conceived of affiliation with the three denominations a little over four years ago is not a possibility. So, as we live into some of the changes of the past year and decide how we want to move forward these changes I think our in line with what the three denominations we have been in conversation with about affiliation will be able to accept and may lead us to a more creative way of connection with Christians of various traditions outside our small congregation.
Also, Rev. Jolene Bergstorm Calrson is planning to visit us and Preside at Table on May 17th. Jolene has attempted to visit us several times in the past year and a half and has ended up have various scheduling conflicts that prevented the visit. The Central Conference remains supportive of Reconciler and we will have an opportunity to meet Jolene and let her get to know us a little better in a couple of weeks.
So in this season of Easter there is life but like when the disciples encountered the living Risen Jesus of Nazareth it is also life that at least I was not expecting. But then Resurrection life is like that, I suppose.
Announcements:
Rev. Jolene Bergstrom Carlson, Associate Superintendent of the Central Conference of the ECC will be visiting us and presiding at Table Sunday May 17th.
This Wednesday May 6th members of Reconciler are providing the meal for the Community meal with Immanuel Lutheran Church. Come and join us at 6 pm.
Following the meal The Community of the Holy Trinity* is leading a Vespers service using Taize music at 7 PM. Holy Trinity will lead the 7 pm Evening prayer service at Immanuel service the months of May and June.
You are invited by The Community of the Holy Trinity*to an Ascension Vespers with Holy Communion on Thursday, May 21st at 7 pm in the side Chapel of Immanuel Lutheran Church.
Our Next Council meeting will be a week from this Thursday, May 14th. 7:30 pm, all are encouraged to attend. Remember if you show up you are a member of council.
* The Community of the Holy Trinity is an intentional community that was founded by Rev. Larry Kamphausen and Kate Setzer Kamphausen in 2003 and another couple. Larry is both the Prior of the community as well as Pastor of Reconciler. While currently only Kate and Larry are both members of Reconciler and of Holy Trinity, over the past 4 years Reconciler and Holy Trinity have shared members from time to time. Holy Trinity has been a partner in ministry with Reconciler in various ways including providing space for our meetings and early on, before Reconciler and Holy Trinity moved to the Immanuel church campus, Reconciler used the community's chapel for its worship space. Currently both Holy Trinity and Reconciler use Immanuel's chapel for their worship space.
A week ago today I met with the Rev. Cannon Scott Hayashi, Canon to the Ordinary of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago (A Canon is a person who may be lay or ordained who serves on a Bishop’s staff or a cathedral. The Canon to the Ordinary is a person whose ministry is directly answerable to the bishop and who can function as a sort of chief of staff). We had a lively and helpful discussion about Reconciler and the possibilities of a continuing relationship with the Diocese. In the coming months as we reflect together on who we are as a congregation and how we wish to continue to be an ecumenical congregation Rev. Canon Hayashi's thoughts and reflections will be helpful. Though in our conversation it was made very clear that the way I and the founding pastors had conceived of affiliation with the three denominations a little over four years ago is not a possibility. So, as we live into some of the changes of the past year and decide how we want to move forward these changes I think our in line with what the three denominations we have been in conversation with about affiliation will be able to accept and may lead us to a more creative way of connection with Christians of various traditions outside our small congregation.
Also, Rev. Jolene Bergstorm Calrson is planning to visit us and Preside at Table on May 17th. Jolene has attempted to visit us several times in the past year and a half and has ended up have various scheduling conflicts that prevented the visit. The Central Conference remains supportive of Reconciler and we will have an opportunity to meet Jolene and let her get to know us a little better in a couple of weeks.
So in this season of Easter there is life but like when the disciples encountered the living Risen Jesus of Nazareth it is also life that at least I was not expecting. But then Resurrection life is like that, I suppose.
Announcements:
Rev. Jolene Bergstrom Carlson, Associate Superintendent of the Central Conference of the ECC will be visiting us and presiding at Table Sunday May 17th.
This Wednesday May 6th members of Reconciler are providing the meal for the Community meal with Immanuel Lutheran Church. Come and join us at 6 pm.
Following the meal The Community of the Holy Trinity* is leading a Vespers service using Taize music at 7 PM. Holy Trinity will lead the 7 pm Evening prayer service at Immanuel service the months of May and June.
You are invited by The Community of the Holy Trinity*to an Ascension Vespers with Holy Communion on Thursday, May 21st at 7 pm in the side Chapel of Immanuel Lutheran Church.
Our Next Council meeting will be a week from this Thursday, May 14th. 7:30 pm, all are encouraged to attend. Remember if you show up you are a member of council.
* The Community of the Holy Trinity is an intentional community that was founded by Rev. Larry Kamphausen and Kate Setzer Kamphausen in 2003 and another couple. Larry is both the Prior of the community as well as Pastor of Reconciler. While currently only Kate and Larry are both members of Reconciler and of Holy Trinity, over the past 4 years Reconciler and Holy Trinity have shared members from time to time. Holy Trinity has been a partner in ministry with Reconciler in various ways including providing space for our meetings and early on, before Reconciler and Holy Trinity moved to the Immanuel church campus, Reconciler used the community's chapel for its worship space. Currently both Holy Trinity and Reconciler use Immanuel's chapel for their worship space.
Monday, April 28
Sixth Sunday of Easter - The Spirit of Truth
New Testament: Acts 17:22-31
Psalm: Psalm 66:8-20
Epistle: 1 Peter 3:13-22
Gospel: John 14:15-21
First Peter tells us to be ready to give a defense to any who ask. People I know, people we know, our culture asking, about our hope, our faith. Do we know how to answer? Are we ready to give a defense? As I prepared this sermon I was listening to David J’s album Urban Urbane. David J was a member of the seminal Goth band Bauhaus, who broke up and went on to do their own projects you may be more familiar the Peter Murphy or Love and Rockets and Daniel Ash. David J went on to do more experimental rock and jazzy projects. Urban Urbane as an album deals with as the album title indicates the realities and contradictions of our urbanized world. At the end of this album comes the son No Faith, hear is a questioner, asking the questions, and asserting both a longing for truth and the loss of truth.
No Faith by David J, Album Urban Urbane
Well, I don't know what
The question is
But, Lord give me an answer
Don't know the question
But please give an answer
Searching high, searching low
High, low
I got no faith
In no Catholic churches
Can't waste no faith
On no, no capital purchase
I got no faith in no
Cosmic casino
Run by some guru
In a white stretch limosino
Searching high and low
I got no faith
In no academican
I got no faith
In no evangelist
With a mission
I got no faith
In no government in session
Neo-fascists practiced
In the art of false impression
Searching high and low
Where to go?
I got no faith
In no national institution
Built on an arms deal
And compulsory contribution
No faith in the rich
No faith in the poor
Little faith in anarchy
And no faith in the law
Searching high
Searching low
I got no faith
In no, no human nature
Look at all the armies
And the rape of Mother Nature
I got no faith
In no marital status
Resulting in attrition
And eventual hiatus
Searching high
Searching low
High, low
High, low
How do we answer such questions, such a searching? We too struggle with these questions and yet we are hear. We have some hope in the midst of our own questions. We have been facing some of our own doubts In the face of the resurrection of Jesus in this season of Easter. There are claims of truth in the texts we have been reading, but we do not want to be exclusive. And so we wonder at the words of Jesus that say I am the Way the Truth and the Life. Even so Jesus’ words in John claim a unique position. The particularity of Jesus of Nazareth is necessary for knowing god. All three of our texts say things like the World does not know God, that even when cultures or religions may have some inkling of God, even as creator that that portion of knowledge is ignorance, if it does not lead to Jesus Christ the one risen from the dead. Our texts I think should cause us to doubt what we believe about truth, about inclusive and exclusivist positions concerning the Church.
Our position on truth is perhaps understandable. If truth is abstract and non-relational, if it is something I either poses or don’t, if it is something I can wield in self-righteous satisfaction and demand that others then do as I say because I have the truth and others do not, then our objections to an exclusivist truth are on the right track. Though this reading of our Scriptures is from a position of power and pride foreign to the texts themselves. What I ask of us tonight is to admit that the interpretations we have heard are mistaken and to look at the texts before us from their perspective when Christians were not the powerful but the persecuted, and hear then what our this attitude can tell us about truth and the accounting of our faith and hope.
There is no coercion in this presentation of truth, though there are clear boundaries, but they are permeable boundaries. No one is beyond the bounds of God’s love, not even the dead who died in the flood because they would not repent. In these texts there is no fortress wall, but in the end either you know God in Jesus Christ as the one who is raised from the dead and are saved or you do not. If you do not you are invited to know Jesus Christ. There is no other way to fully know God, who is creator, except as trinity, father Son and Holy Spirit, not because some human said so, but because God has only acted in full self-revelation in Jesus Christ. If you want to know the truth one must be in relationship with Jesus Christ, because Jesus Christ is God and God is truth. This is the logic of these passages.
Three things I’d like to draw our attention to concerning our relationship to this truth that is being in relationship with God. 1) Our relationship to truth is in our being priests. We are to handle our words, and those we speak to about the truth as if they are holy things as though we are priests attending to our most sacred duty. 2) While we are called to recognize that other cultures and religions may have some sense of the truth of God, we are also called to proclaim that only in relationship to Christ can that portion of truth be fulfilled. 3) The truth is about entering the divine relationship of the Holy Trinity who is truth, which thus the truth compels us to obey Jesus’ command to Love, but it is only in the relationship to Jesus that we find this love that is truth.
First Peter is a bit of a rambling epistle and so there is much packed into this brief epistle and this brief passage. It is difficult to pin down one theme. But a theme in this epistle is our priesthood as members of the Church. Our priesthood is derivative from Christ’s. The holiness then spoken of our priesthood is not our possession, but something we receive. Peter begins his epistle calling us back to the time of the Exodus when God took slaves out of Egypt and then called them a nation of priests a holy people, not because of their worthiness but because of what God had done. Our priesthood is not a source of pride but of humility.
We encounter the priestly theme in our passage when Peter moves from discussing our suffering and persecution to how others and we may respond to our suffering. So, in the midst of our struggles in life we are to sanctify Christ in our selves, in our hearts, we are to remember our priesthood our being set apart. Then so having remembered our set apartness in Christ, we are to handle the demand and our answer as to why we have any hope, with gentleness and fear (RSV says reverence). We are to handle the question and our answer, the questioner and the relationship with the carefulness of handling holy objects. This approach to our defense or answer is one of careful attention as a priest attending to the most sacred duty. There is no pride or cavalier attitude allowable in the moment of handling holy things. Our faith, the reason we can have hope in the world and those who notice our faith and our hope, are not to be treated cavalierly or roughly but with holy fear. We are called to answer gently. We are not to act rashly or out of anger or even out of a need to persuade. We are also not to act as if Jesus Christ makes no difference. We are to handle the situation as holy that is to se that occasion and our faith and the person we encounter as a holy thing that we offer to God as priests. We do so because Christ did this and acted as priest not only for the living but also for those souls who having rejected the truth of God in the times of Noah were preached to by Christ. In baptism we are like Noah saved form the flood, for in it we are given a clean conscience through the Resurrection of Christ. We are priests; we have hope and faith because of the work of Christ and our identification with the priestly work of Christ in baptism. As priests we are to proclaim this truth about Christ and the salvation that is found in being identified with Christ’s.
This is also the proclamation Paul gives in Athens when he finds a very religious and inclusive people, so inclusive that they include an altar to their ignorance, to the unknown God. Athens is perhaps not far from where we are at in our context today. In some sense we still harkens back to this seat of philosophy and intellectual center, Plato and Socrates. Our philosophers, intellectuals and many beyond the walls of the academy share this attitude today both of intellectual dispute, search for truth and attempt to be inclusive of all assertions of truth. We learn from Paul that we don’t have to condemn this that we can look into our culture and find the portions of the truth that is known or discovered. Paul goes beyond praise and demonstrates from their own poets’ praise of Zeus that they know something of this God, who is creator, even if this knowledge is, in comparison to knowing Christ, ignorance. Paul recognizes that in culture there may be bits of truth, the beginnings of God’s self revelation, but he is clear to the Athenians that this truth is ignorance if it is not joined with the knowing God in Jesus Christ, who is raised from the Dead.
The particularity of this claim of truth and that the truth is manifest in someone raised from the dead is too much for the Athenians. It is also too much in our context. Perhaps too much for we who have faith in Jesus Christ? I too have struggled with this. What of those who remain with only the portion of truth? In college I had a professor who was Buddhist with whom I studied Buddhism. If it were not for Christ raised from the dead I could have easily become a Buddhist or Hindu. In my conversations with my professor we talked and I saw in him the gentleness of Christ and the presence of the Spirit, and yet I also had to admit that it was partial, that I could recognize the Spirit because I knew Christ. My professor thought challenged me, to recognize the difference and incompatibility of Buddhism and Christianity. I could not follow Buddha and believe that Jesus was raised from the dead and God. Christianity did not claim that Jesus was a Buddha one who had just achieved enlightenment like everyone else can with enough time. We believe that God was in God’s fullness in Jesus Christ, and the Resurrection is the sign of that the universal truth was in one particular human being. Some of those philosophers and religious reject the Paul’s proclamation of this truth, and remain in the ignorance of the altar to the unknown god, others hearing this connection between their acknowledgement of ignorance of the truth ask to hear more, and some like Dionysius the Aeropagite, accept Paul’s proclamation. Paul wavers neither from commending the small bits of truth their culture has come to nor from asserting that Jesus Christ, the one risen from the dead is the only full revelation of God. The only way to come into the full truth their culture and religion already recognizes is to accept the risen one.
It is the risen one, or rather the one who is to be raised, who speaks to us about our being sent the Spirit of Truth, if we show our love for Jesus by keeping his commandments and thus being in relationship with him. Through Jesus we have relationship with The Father and the Spirit of Truth. These are intended as words of comfort Jesus gives to the disciples knowing he is going to his death and they will be fore a time scattered. There is an assurance that the disciples will not be bereft of relationship to Jesus or God. The assurance that we are not left alone as Jesus’ followers. These words then are not intended to boost our egos as believers, but to give comfort and assurance of relationship. If these words are used for a basis of self-assurance and pride then such an interpretation is a lie foreign to the Spirit of Truth. The Spirit, the advocate, the one who is given so that we may remain in relationship with Jesus Christ, who is one with God the Father, is the Truth as Jesus is the Truth, because all are one and God in relationship in truth and love. Remember the commands Jesus gives are summarized in the command to love one another, spoken at the beginning of this speech of Christ’s that he gives just before he is arrested, which we heard weeks ago on Maundy Thursday. The assurance of these words is that in all that is going to happen in all the confusion that the followers of Jesus are not being left without relationship to Jesus and to God, who is trinity. The Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, are all the truth, we are to relate in love to the truth and obey the truth out of love. This truth should bring us to love one another and neighbor, because truth is a person, and the truth is to be in relationship with the God of Jesus Christ.
All our passages are about truth because God is the truth, the god revealed to us in Jesus Christ who is raised from the dead. There is no other God, but this God, no other full revelation of this God than in the incarnation of the Son as Jesus of Nazareth. This truth as such can only be received in relationship. This isn’t about my experience or my truth this is about the Spirit of Truth who is given to those who enter into relationship with God through the one who is the incarnation of God and thus died and rose from the dead. This is not faith in me as a preacher, or us as Christians or the Church as separate from Jesus Christ, but faith in the Raised one Jesus Christ. Through faith we enter this relationship. By God’s saving acts in Jesus Christ we are made holy and made to be priests. We are to handle ourselves our words about the truth, which is God, and those who demand an answer to why we have hope and faith with reverence and gentleness. We are to be gentle, to act out of love, to hold all things reverently. In so doing we both acknowledges that in various cultures and religions there is some truth and that there is only one complete revelation of God. There is only one who has the whole truth and that is Jesus Christ, because Jesus is God. All other knowledge experience and understanding of God, is partial and thus also an ignorance. But we are to show forth the love, to show that truth is a person, with whom through the incarnation we can have a relationship. We then as Christians as members of the Church, the body of Christ, are possessed by the truth we do not posses it. We only can proclaim what we have received, we are made holy not by our having something but by the act of God in Jesus Christ through Baptism. Salvation is about being in relationship with God. From this relationship come the proclamation and the truth claims of the Church. Everything is bound up with Christ, the one risen from the dead, as the full revelation of God. God came in our midst to reveal God’s self to us and save us through that revelation because without it we only had our ignorance, our meager groping after the truth and God. In the end all other truth claims even ones that get it partially right are ignorance in comparison to knowing and having a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, who is the truth, and who give us the Spirit of truth, which is expressed and given in gentleness love and compassion.
Psalm: Psalm 66:8-20
Epistle: 1 Peter 3:13-22
Gospel: John 14:15-21
First Peter tells us to be ready to give a defense to any who ask. People I know, people we know, our culture asking, about our hope, our faith. Do we know how to answer? Are we ready to give a defense? As I prepared this sermon I was listening to David J’s album Urban Urbane. David J was a member of the seminal Goth band Bauhaus, who broke up and went on to do their own projects you may be more familiar the Peter Murphy or Love and Rockets and Daniel Ash. David J went on to do more experimental rock and jazzy projects. Urban Urbane as an album deals with as the album title indicates the realities and contradictions of our urbanized world. At the end of this album comes the son No Faith, hear is a questioner, asking the questions, and asserting both a longing for truth and the loss of truth.
No Faith by David J, Album Urban Urbane
Well, I don't know what
The question is
But, Lord give me an answer
Don't know the question
But please give an answer
Searching high, searching low
High, low
I got no faith
In no Catholic churches
Can't waste no faith
On no, no capital purchase
I got no faith in no
Cosmic casino
Run by some guru
In a white stretch limosino
Searching high and low
I got no faith
In no academican
I got no faith
In no evangelist
With a mission
I got no faith
In no government in session
Neo-fascists practiced
In the art of false impression
Searching high and low
Where to go?
I got no faith
In no national institution
Built on an arms deal
And compulsory contribution
No faith in the rich
No faith in the poor
Little faith in anarchy
And no faith in the law
Searching high
Searching low
I got no faith
In no, no human nature
Look at all the armies
And the rape of Mother Nature
I got no faith
In no marital status
Resulting in attrition
And eventual hiatus
Searching high
Searching low
High, low
High, low
How do we answer such questions, such a searching? We too struggle with these questions and yet we are hear. We have some hope in the midst of our own questions. We have been facing some of our own doubts In the face of the resurrection of Jesus in this season of Easter. There are claims of truth in the texts we have been reading, but we do not want to be exclusive. And so we wonder at the words of Jesus that say I am the Way the Truth and the Life. Even so Jesus’ words in John claim a unique position. The particularity of Jesus of Nazareth is necessary for knowing god. All three of our texts say things like the World does not know God, that even when cultures or religions may have some inkling of God, even as creator that that portion of knowledge is ignorance, if it does not lead to Jesus Christ the one risen from the dead. Our texts I think should cause us to doubt what we believe about truth, about inclusive and exclusivist positions concerning the Church.
Our position on truth is perhaps understandable. If truth is abstract and non-relational, if it is something I either poses or don’t, if it is something I can wield in self-righteous satisfaction and demand that others then do as I say because I have the truth and others do not, then our objections to an exclusivist truth are on the right track. Though this reading of our Scriptures is from a position of power and pride foreign to the texts themselves. What I ask of us tonight is to admit that the interpretations we have heard are mistaken and to look at the texts before us from their perspective when Christians were not the powerful but the persecuted, and hear then what our this attitude can tell us about truth and the accounting of our faith and hope.
There is no coercion in this presentation of truth, though there are clear boundaries, but they are permeable boundaries. No one is beyond the bounds of God’s love, not even the dead who died in the flood because they would not repent. In these texts there is no fortress wall, but in the end either you know God in Jesus Christ as the one who is raised from the dead and are saved or you do not. If you do not you are invited to know Jesus Christ. There is no other way to fully know God, who is creator, except as trinity, father Son and Holy Spirit, not because some human said so, but because God has only acted in full self-revelation in Jesus Christ. If you want to know the truth one must be in relationship with Jesus Christ, because Jesus Christ is God and God is truth. This is the logic of these passages.
Three things I’d like to draw our attention to concerning our relationship to this truth that is being in relationship with God. 1) Our relationship to truth is in our being priests. We are to handle our words, and those we speak to about the truth as if they are holy things as though we are priests attending to our most sacred duty. 2) While we are called to recognize that other cultures and religions may have some sense of the truth of God, we are also called to proclaim that only in relationship to Christ can that portion of truth be fulfilled. 3) The truth is about entering the divine relationship of the Holy Trinity who is truth, which thus the truth compels us to obey Jesus’ command to Love, but it is only in the relationship to Jesus that we find this love that is truth.
First Peter is a bit of a rambling epistle and so there is much packed into this brief epistle and this brief passage. It is difficult to pin down one theme. But a theme in this epistle is our priesthood as members of the Church. Our priesthood is derivative from Christ’s. The holiness then spoken of our priesthood is not our possession, but something we receive. Peter begins his epistle calling us back to the time of the Exodus when God took slaves out of Egypt and then called them a nation of priests a holy people, not because of their worthiness but because of what God had done. Our priesthood is not a source of pride but of humility.
We encounter the priestly theme in our passage when Peter moves from discussing our suffering and persecution to how others and we may respond to our suffering. So, in the midst of our struggles in life we are to sanctify Christ in our selves, in our hearts, we are to remember our priesthood our being set apart. Then so having remembered our set apartness in Christ, we are to handle the demand and our answer as to why we have any hope, with gentleness and fear (RSV says reverence). We are to handle the question and our answer, the questioner and the relationship with the carefulness of handling holy objects. This approach to our defense or answer is one of careful attention as a priest attending to the most sacred duty. There is no pride or cavalier attitude allowable in the moment of handling holy things. Our faith, the reason we can have hope in the world and those who notice our faith and our hope, are not to be treated cavalierly or roughly but with holy fear. We are called to answer gently. We are not to act rashly or out of anger or even out of a need to persuade. We are also not to act as if Jesus Christ makes no difference. We are to handle the situation as holy that is to se that occasion and our faith and the person we encounter as a holy thing that we offer to God as priests. We do so because Christ did this and acted as priest not only for the living but also for those souls who having rejected the truth of God in the times of Noah were preached to by Christ. In baptism we are like Noah saved form the flood, for in it we are given a clean conscience through the Resurrection of Christ. We are priests; we have hope and faith because of the work of Christ and our identification with the priestly work of Christ in baptism. As priests we are to proclaim this truth about Christ and the salvation that is found in being identified with Christ’s.
This is also the proclamation Paul gives in Athens when he finds a very religious and inclusive people, so inclusive that they include an altar to their ignorance, to the unknown God. Athens is perhaps not far from where we are at in our context today. In some sense we still harkens back to this seat of philosophy and intellectual center, Plato and Socrates. Our philosophers, intellectuals and many beyond the walls of the academy share this attitude today both of intellectual dispute, search for truth and attempt to be inclusive of all assertions of truth. We learn from Paul that we don’t have to condemn this that we can look into our culture and find the portions of the truth that is known or discovered. Paul goes beyond praise and demonstrates from their own poets’ praise of Zeus that they know something of this God, who is creator, even if this knowledge is, in comparison to knowing Christ, ignorance. Paul recognizes that in culture there may be bits of truth, the beginnings of God’s self revelation, but he is clear to the Athenians that this truth is ignorance if it is not joined with the knowing God in Jesus Christ, who is raised from the Dead.
The particularity of this claim of truth and that the truth is manifest in someone raised from the dead is too much for the Athenians. It is also too much in our context. Perhaps too much for we who have faith in Jesus Christ? I too have struggled with this. What of those who remain with only the portion of truth? In college I had a professor who was Buddhist with whom I studied Buddhism. If it were not for Christ raised from the dead I could have easily become a Buddhist or Hindu. In my conversations with my professor we talked and I saw in him the gentleness of Christ and the presence of the Spirit, and yet I also had to admit that it was partial, that I could recognize the Spirit because I knew Christ. My professor thought challenged me, to recognize the difference and incompatibility of Buddhism and Christianity. I could not follow Buddha and believe that Jesus was raised from the dead and God. Christianity did not claim that Jesus was a Buddha one who had just achieved enlightenment like everyone else can with enough time. We believe that God was in God’s fullness in Jesus Christ, and the Resurrection is the sign of that the universal truth was in one particular human being. Some of those philosophers and religious reject the Paul’s proclamation of this truth, and remain in the ignorance of the altar to the unknown god, others hearing this connection between their acknowledgement of ignorance of the truth ask to hear more, and some like Dionysius the Aeropagite, accept Paul’s proclamation. Paul wavers neither from commending the small bits of truth their culture has come to nor from asserting that Jesus Christ, the one risen from the dead is the only full revelation of God. The only way to come into the full truth their culture and religion already recognizes is to accept the risen one.
It is the risen one, or rather the one who is to be raised, who speaks to us about our being sent the Spirit of Truth, if we show our love for Jesus by keeping his commandments and thus being in relationship with him. Through Jesus we have relationship with The Father and the Spirit of Truth. These are intended as words of comfort Jesus gives to the disciples knowing he is going to his death and they will be fore a time scattered. There is an assurance that the disciples will not be bereft of relationship to Jesus or God. The assurance that we are not left alone as Jesus’ followers. These words then are not intended to boost our egos as believers, but to give comfort and assurance of relationship. If these words are used for a basis of self-assurance and pride then such an interpretation is a lie foreign to the Spirit of Truth. The Spirit, the advocate, the one who is given so that we may remain in relationship with Jesus Christ, who is one with God the Father, is the Truth as Jesus is the Truth, because all are one and God in relationship in truth and love. Remember the commands Jesus gives are summarized in the command to love one another, spoken at the beginning of this speech of Christ’s that he gives just before he is arrested, which we heard weeks ago on Maundy Thursday. The assurance of these words is that in all that is going to happen in all the confusion that the followers of Jesus are not being left without relationship to Jesus and to God, who is trinity. The Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, are all the truth, we are to relate in love to the truth and obey the truth out of love. This truth should bring us to love one another and neighbor, because truth is a person, and the truth is to be in relationship with the God of Jesus Christ.
All our passages are about truth because God is the truth, the god revealed to us in Jesus Christ who is raised from the dead. There is no other God, but this God, no other full revelation of this God than in the incarnation of the Son as Jesus of Nazareth. This truth as such can only be received in relationship. This isn’t about my experience or my truth this is about the Spirit of Truth who is given to those who enter into relationship with God through the one who is the incarnation of God and thus died and rose from the dead. This is not faith in me as a preacher, or us as Christians or the Church as separate from Jesus Christ, but faith in the Raised one Jesus Christ. Through faith we enter this relationship. By God’s saving acts in Jesus Christ we are made holy and made to be priests. We are to handle ourselves our words about the truth, which is God, and those who demand an answer to why we have hope and faith with reverence and gentleness. We are to be gentle, to act out of love, to hold all things reverently. In so doing we both acknowledges that in various cultures and religions there is some truth and that there is only one complete revelation of God. There is only one who has the whole truth and that is Jesus Christ, because Jesus is God. All other knowledge experience and understanding of God, is partial and thus also an ignorance. But we are to show forth the love, to show that truth is a person, with whom through the incarnation we can have a relationship. We then as Christians as members of the Church, the body of Christ, are possessed by the truth we do not posses it. We only can proclaim what we have received, we are made holy not by our having something but by the act of God in Jesus Christ through Baptism. Salvation is about being in relationship with God. From this relationship come the proclamation and the truth claims of the Church. Everything is bound up with Christ, the one risen from the dead, as the full revelation of God. God came in our midst to reveal God’s self to us and save us through that revelation because without it we only had our ignorance, our meager groping after the truth and God. In the end all other truth claims even ones that get it partially right are ignorance in comparison to knowing and having a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, who is the truth, and who give us the Spirit of truth, which is expressed and given in gentleness love and compassion.
Sunday, April 20
Fifth Sunday of Easter- The Way The Truth and The Life
Sermon preached by Jorge Sanchez
New Testament: Acts 7:55-60
Psalm: Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16
Epistle: 1 Peter 2:2-10
Gospel: John 14:1-14
"I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me": one of the most memorable, most poetic, and most often quoted verses in the Gospels, maybe in all the Christian Scriptures. And I find it terrifying.
When I first got the invitation to preach, I was told that I could choose from among a few Sundays, but that this Sunday, today, the Fifth Sunday of Easter, was the Pastoral Team's first choice of when I was to preach.
I looked up the lectionary readings, saw this Gospel, and immediately thought, "Well, that Sunday's out."
Yet as I read the other lessons for other Sundays, this Sunday and particularly this Gospel kept harassing me. After some thought, I decided to accept the challenge and the call God was issuing me through the Pastoral Team's preference.
The Pastoral Team's preference was just that —a preference— but I think God took it over to make it a call to wrestle with the Scriptures.
As I am sure is the case with many, if not most of you, I find this verse greatly troubling. It is a seemingly exclusivist statement; therein lies the great stumbling block for me. No Jesus equals no God equals no heaven, as the rest of the chapter explains or at least implies with its mentions of the many dwelling places in the Father's house.
Exclusivity, in general, does not sit well with me. So much so that for a few years in college and a few after I was a practicing Baha'i, and shortly after Hank was born, when I was beginning to sense a call to ministry and a deeper connection with God, I though of answering that sense of call within the Unitarian Universalist tradition. While I feel certain of what the Truth is, I am not comfortable with that Truth becoming a barrier; indeed, I do not think the Truth is a barrier, the way so many mis-use this verse to make it a litmus test as to who is and who is not, who may and who may not call themselves children of God.
So there I was, thinking about preaching for the first time, and I could choose to look at this verse —this scary verse that made me very suspicious and defensive— or I could choose another. So, as I
am a fool, I chose to preach tonight.
And before I begin reflecting on tonight's lessons, I hope that, if nothing else, you realize the necessity of grappling with passages of Scripture that are troubling, confusing, seemingly uncharitable and exclusive. While in our own personal study we may be able to say, as Marilynne Robinson says, "One wishes it were not so," we cannot in our witness to the church and the world. Too often those who identify as progressive/liberal/pick-your-label Christians simply pass over these passages about sex, or vengeance, or patriarchy, or exclusivity with a dismissive "Oh, the Spirit says something different now," or "Well, it's clear that's just wrong." That's not enough.
So, once I tried to figure out what this Gospel meant I looked at this passage in context, both of John's Gospel and the lectionary.
Something I had never noticed is that Jesus says this after the washing of feet. Jesus says this right before he dies. Judas has ducked out of the party early, and the Apostles know something is up. Thomas asks, "Where are you going?" Phillip pleads, "Show us the Father." They all look at him and, with their eyes, they say, "Throw us a freakin' bone here, Jesus. Things are getting weird. Things are getting scary."
And Jesus gives this perplexing, baffling, challenging, non-answer: "I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
Jesus is saying here the Incarnation is sufficient for knowing God: "Very truly I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do." If you want to know God, Philip, do the works that I do, because I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me." To know God do the works I do.
And here is a new challenge this presents: the one who does the works of God knows God, whether we agree with that one or not. That includes Christians we disagree with as well as non-Christians who are doing the work of God. With a seemingly exclusive statement, Jesus includes all those who do the work of God and thereby know God. Jesus healed and consoled and guided, but he also prayed quietly in the Temple and included and, yes, rebuked people, pushing them closer to the truth of their lives to hopefully push them closer to the Truth of the Gospels.
We the many members of the Body may not always understand each other, may not always agree with each other, but the multi-faceted even idiosyncratic witness we give is the very Incarnation itself: it is the Way, the Truth, the Life. No one comes to the Father except by finding and accepting one's unique vocation, right here, right now, both short-term and long-term: it might be changing baby diapers or adult diapers or dealing with the crap we get from a person who's hurting or scared or lost or drunk with power or willfully oblivious to the needs of others.
Take Stephen. Poor Stephen! A man full of faith and the Holy Spirit, a deacon, chosen and set aside to serve —to do the works of discipleship, to take care of the most marginalized of the marginal, the widows and the poor— he walks the Way, the Truth, the Life, and less than sixty verses later it gets him stoned! That stinks! Discipleship sucks! The Way is hard! Thank God for those dwelling places, otherwise Stephen is S.O.L. So associated has Stephen been with his martyrdom that he is often depicted in artwork with those fateful stones floating around him or even resting on his tonsured head.
What does this mean for us? The stewardship we expect to be our vocation might not be what we are remembered for; our witness might be associated with some rather unpleasant rocks. I say this because our vocation goes beyond social justice. It is easy to think of serving those who are economically or politically disenfranchised, but this is a diverse neighborhood in many ways. Part of this church's ministry might be to minister to the spiritually lost and poor, a ministry I find somewhat distasteful. I grew up Roman Catholic, so the focus on solidarity and service to the poor runs deep, but I wonder if sometimes we are also called to minister to those who are poor in hidden ways.
But take note, even in that hard, hard moment of martyrdom, putting his money where his mouth was, taking his last stumbling Steps, Stephen prays for those who stone him. Not condescendingly, not self-righteously, not smugly, but in love, in the love of the Way, and the Truth, and the Life.
And yet First Peter consoles us, as if the two poles of the Way are martyrdom and consolation: long for the spiritual milk of fellowship, of love, of the good in the world. "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people." We are to live as a body of priests to serve God and God through God's people. You —like Peter, Thomas, Philip, Mary Magdalene, Thecla, Junia— are not perfect, often fearful, sometimes sinful, but good enough because we are children of God through the Incarnation.
"I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life." The Way is hard but it is do-able, scary, but be not afraid because we are up to the task.
Andrew Marr of Saint Gregory's Abbey quotes another monk, Sebastian Moore of Downside Abbey, as saying "Fear keeps the show going the way we know it and prefer it."
Marr explains that the "show" referred to is "the tendency to keep our society going by making a point of excluding some people s o that we can define ourselves by what we are not rather than we are. In the risen life, [in the life of an Easter people] we define ourselves by who we are —children of God.
Christ is risen. Let us walk the Way, proclaim the Truth, and embrace the Life as children of God, gathering around the Table and inviting everyone —everyone— in.
New Testament: Acts 7:55-60
Psalm: Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16
Epistle: 1 Peter 2:2-10
Gospel: John 14:1-14
"I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me": one of the most memorable, most poetic, and most often quoted verses in the Gospels, maybe in all the Christian Scriptures. And I find it terrifying.
When I first got the invitation to preach, I was told that I could choose from among a few Sundays, but that this Sunday, today, the Fifth Sunday of Easter, was the Pastoral Team's first choice of when I was to preach.
I looked up the lectionary readings, saw this Gospel, and immediately thought, "Well, that Sunday's out."
Yet as I read the other lessons for other Sundays, this Sunday and particularly this Gospel kept harassing me. After some thought, I decided to accept the challenge and the call God was issuing me through the Pastoral Team's preference.
The Pastoral Team's preference was just that —a preference— but I think God took it over to make it a call to wrestle with the Scriptures.
As I am sure is the case with many, if not most of you, I find this verse greatly troubling. It is a seemingly exclusivist statement; therein lies the great stumbling block for me. No Jesus equals no God equals no heaven, as the rest of the chapter explains or at least implies with its mentions of the many dwelling places in the Father's house.
Exclusivity, in general, does not sit well with me. So much so that for a few years in college and a few after I was a practicing Baha'i, and shortly after Hank was born, when I was beginning to sense a call to ministry and a deeper connection with God, I though of answering that sense of call within the Unitarian Universalist tradition. While I feel certain of what the Truth is, I am not comfortable with that Truth becoming a barrier; indeed, I do not think the Truth is a barrier, the way so many mis-use this verse to make it a litmus test as to who is and who is not, who may and who may not call themselves children of God.
So there I was, thinking about preaching for the first time, and I could choose to look at this verse —this scary verse that made me very suspicious and defensive— or I could choose another. So, as I
am a fool, I chose to preach tonight.
And before I begin reflecting on tonight's lessons, I hope that, if nothing else, you realize the necessity of grappling with passages of Scripture that are troubling, confusing, seemingly uncharitable and exclusive. While in our own personal study we may be able to say, as Marilynne Robinson says, "One wishes it were not so," we cannot in our witness to the church and the world. Too often those who identify as progressive/liberal/pick-your-label Christians simply pass over these passages about sex, or vengeance, or patriarchy, or exclusivity with a dismissive "Oh, the Spirit says something different now," or "Well, it's clear that's just wrong." That's not enough.
So, once I tried to figure out what this Gospel meant I looked at this passage in context, both of John's Gospel and the lectionary.
Something I had never noticed is that Jesus says this after the washing of feet. Jesus says this right before he dies. Judas has ducked out of the party early, and the Apostles know something is up. Thomas asks, "Where are you going?" Phillip pleads, "Show us the Father." They all look at him and, with their eyes, they say, "Throw us a freakin' bone here, Jesus. Things are getting weird. Things are getting scary."
And Jesus gives this perplexing, baffling, challenging, non-answer: "I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
Jesus is saying here the Incarnation is sufficient for knowing God: "Very truly I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do." If you want to know God, Philip, do the works that I do, because I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me." To know God do the works I do.
And here is a new challenge this presents: the one who does the works of God knows God, whether we agree with that one or not. That includes Christians we disagree with as well as non-Christians who are doing the work of God. With a seemingly exclusive statement, Jesus includes all those who do the work of God and thereby know God. Jesus healed and consoled and guided, but he also prayed quietly in the Temple and included and, yes, rebuked people, pushing them closer to the truth of their lives to hopefully push them closer to the Truth of the Gospels.
We the many members of the Body may not always understand each other, may not always agree with each other, but the multi-faceted even idiosyncratic witness we give is the very Incarnation itself: it is the Way, the Truth, the Life. No one comes to the Father except by finding and accepting one's unique vocation, right here, right now, both short-term and long-term: it might be changing baby diapers or adult diapers or dealing with the crap we get from a person who's hurting or scared or lost or drunk with power or willfully oblivious to the needs of others.
Take Stephen. Poor Stephen! A man full of faith and the Holy Spirit, a deacon, chosen and set aside to serve —to do the works of discipleship, to take care of the most marginalized of the marginal, the widows and the poor— he walks the Way, the Truth, the Life, and less than sixty verses later it gets him stoned! That stinks! Discipleship sucks! The Way is hard! Thank God for those dwelling places, otherwise Stephen is S.O.L. So associated has Stephen been with his martyrdom that he is often depicted in artwork with those fateful stones floating around him or even resting on his tonsured head.
What does this mean for us? The stewardship we expect to be our vocation might not be what we are remembered for; our witness might be associated with some rather unpleasant rocks. I say this because our vocation goes beyond social justice. It is easy to think of serving those who are economically or politically disenfranchised, but this is a diverse neighborhood in many ways. Part of this church's ministry might be to minister to the spiritually lost and poor, a ministry I find somewhat distasteful. I grew up Roman Catholic, so the focus on solidarity and service to the poor runs deep, but I wonder if sometimes we are also called to minister to those who are poor in hidden ways.
But take note, even in that hard, hard moment of martyrdom, putting his money where his mouth was, taking his last stumbling Steps, Stephen prays for those who stone him. Not condescendingly, not self-righteously, not smugly, but in love, in the love of the Way, and the Truth, and the Life.
And yet First Peter consoles us, as if the two poles of the Way are martyrdom and consolation: long for the spiritual milk of fellowship, of love, of the good in the world. "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people." We are to live as a body of priests to serve God and God through God's people. You —like Peter, Thomas, Philip, Mary Magdalene, Thecla, Junia— are not perfect, often fearful, sometimes sinful, but good enough because we are children of God through the Incarnation.
"I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life." The Way is hard but it is do-able, scary, but be not afraid because we are up to the task.
Andrew Marr of Saint Gregory's Abbey quotes another monk, Sebastian Moore of Downside Abbey, as saying "Fear keeps the show going the way we know it and prefer it."
Marr explains that the "show" referred to is "the tendency to keep our society going by making a point of excluding some people s o that we can define ourselves by what we are not rather than we are. In the risen life, [in the life of an Easter people] we define ourselves by who we are —children of God.
Christ is risen. Let us walk the Way, proclaim the Truth, and embrace the Life as children of God, gathering around the Table and inviting everyone —everyone— in.
Friday, April 11
Reconciler Update
We are now three weeks into the Season of Easter. For some this may be a difficult juxtaposition. We as the church are celebrating the Resurrection of Christ. We are singing joyous songs and talk about the joy and triumph of the Resurrection. Yet it maybe that some of us are still stuck in circumstances of life more in keeping with Holy Week or Good Friday. We are often still struggling with what we were struggling before Easter. Life and the church year don't always agree. We may not feel like rejoicing. This uncomfortable juxtaposition though is itself part of the journey of faith, it is part and parcel of the experience of the church. We rejoice at the Resurrection but are left with seeing Christ and having him disappear from view. We have the signs of God's presence but God as often as not seems distant or absent. The Resurrection has occurred but we wait the final consummation of the work begun in Jesus Christ. We celebrate the victory of Christ over Sin Death and the Devil, and yet we see the continued signs of those three things at work in the world. Our joy, our Easter joy then does not come from the circumstances of the world and our life. This is the difference between joy and happiness. We can easily confuse the two especially in a country that has lifted up the pursuit of happiness as a great good that should be unimpeded. But our happiness depends on circumstances. Joy is not dependent on circumstances.
As we hear the stories of the Resurection and the beginning of the church the circumstances remain largely unchanged for the Apostles and Jesus' followers: the leaders of the Jewish people did not come around and admit Jesus to be the Messiah, the persecution that the disciples feared did come. The Resurrection did not convince the powers to step aside and accept Jesus Christ, and embrace the Kingdom of God as the way things are. No, the logic of violence and death, remained entrenched. So then what good is Jesus' resurrection? What comfort is there in Easter and the proclamation of Christ risen? Our comfort is that violence, death, the powers of the world, the politicians (religious and secular) do not have the last word. And our hope is not in politics, wars, and the ways of the World. The Resurection of Christ is the sign that all these things have been judged as wanting, and that there is another word, God's Word. Suffering now has meaning if it is joined with and identified with Christ's sufferings, if it is seen as part of the redemption of the entire cosmos. If things seem unchanged it is because God desires to draw all things into this other Word, this other way. By death Christ beat down death, that is God overcomes the world not by conquering it but by passing through its evil and overturning the world's verdict about what is real and true.
So yes, God is slow, and at times the Resurrection seems to have no effect on us or the world. And yet, we are signs of its effect. Through faith in Christ our suffering can become our joy, as we see God transforming us and the world in the midst of its and our own failings. Through faith in Christ our struggles and sufferings can add to and fulfill Christ's own sufferings, as we join ourselves to the redemptive work of God in Jesus Christ. So we may not always be happy or free of pain, but we can know that God is with us in and through our suffering and hardship. We can know that God is one who is acquainted with grief because of the incarnation, and God in Jesus Christ has overcome the world and all its suffering and hardship. Our suffering is not and will not be the last word, but the Resurrected Christ is the last word, because Jesus is God's Word. Easter Celebration and joy are to communicate to us that we are to rest in this last word and hope in the Resurrection as the sign that God is truly making all things new.
Announcements-
The blog has been quiet for the past few months as Laura and Larry have acclimated to Tripp's absence. However, Laura has posted here last several sermons and Larry had a manuscript written for his last sermon this past Sunday. So, come visit the blog if you haven't in awhile or missed a recent Sunday service.
Laura and Larry are presenting a seminar with the Pastor Gabi Aelabouni of St Elias Christian Church and Pastor Monte Johnson of Immanuel Lutheran Church at the National Workshop on Christian Unity this Tuesday, April 15th. We are presenting on the joint work our three congregations are doing and what we hope for the ecumenical and multicultural relationships between the three congregations.
Our Monthly congregational council meeting is this Thursday, April 17th 7:30 PM at the 'Nidge. All are welcome to attend.
The next Social Action Committee meeting will be Monday April 21st. For details talk with Chrissy Swanson or Jeremy John.
Our summer outreach will again to be present at the Clark Street Festival and the Glenwood Arts festival. Look for more details in the coming month. If you are an artist (visual, music, fabric, etc.) talk with Larry about being part of our booth and the Glenwood Arts Festival(We plan to reserve a larger one than we had last year.)
Our Search Committee for our next Baptist pastor had its first meeting this past Wednesday its next meeting is schedules for Thursday April 24th.
As we hear the stories of the Resurection and the beginning of the church the circumstances remain largely unchanged for the Apostles and Jesus' followers: the leaders of the Jewish people did not come around and admit Jesus to be the Messiah, the persecution that the disciples feared did come. The Resurrection did not convince the powers to step aside and accept Jesus Christ, and embrace the Kingdom of God as the way things are. No, the logic of violence and death, remained entrenched. So then what good is Jesus' resurrection? What comfort is there in Easter and the proclamation of Christ risen? Our comfort is that violence, death, the powers of the world, the politicians (religious and secular) do not have the last word. And our hope is not in politics, wars, and the ways of the World. The Resurection of Christ is the sign that all these things have been judged as wanting, and that there is another word, God's Word. Suffering now has meaning if it is joined with and identified with Christ's sufferings, if it is seen as part of the redemption of the entire cosmos. If things seem unchanged it is because God desires to draw all things into this other Word, this other way. By death Christ beat down death, that is God overcomes the world not by conquering it but by passing through its evil and overturning the world's verdict about what is real and true.
So yes, God is slow, and at times the Resurrection seems to have no effect on us or the world. And yet, we are signs of its effect. Through faith in Christ our suffering can become our joy, as we see God transforming us and the world in the midst of its and our own failings. Through faith in Christ our struggles and sufferings can add to and fulfill Christ's own sufferings, as we join ourselves to the redemptive work of God in Jesus Christ. So we may not always be happy or free of pain, but we can know that God is with us in and through our suffering and hardship. We can know that God is one who is acquainted with grief because of the incarnation, and God in Jesus Christ has overcome the world and all its suffering and hardship. Our suffering is not and will not be the last word, but the Resurrected Christ is the last word, because Jesus is God's Word. Easter Celebration and joy are to communicate to us that we are to rest in this last word and hope in the Resurrection as the sign that God is truly making all things new.
Announcements-
The blog has been quiet for the past few months as Laura and Larry have acclimated to Tripp's absence. However, Laura has posted here last several sermons and Larry had a manuscript written for his last sermon this past Sunday. So, come visit the blog if you haven't in awhile or missed a recent Sunday service.
Laura and Larry are presenting a seminar with the Pastor Gabi Aelabouni of St Elias Christian Church and Pastor Monte Johnson of Immanuel Lutheran Church at the National Workshop on Christian Unity this Tuesday, April 15th. We are presenting on the joint work our three congregations are doing and what we hope for the ecumenical and multicultural relationships between the three congregations.
Our Monthly congregational council meeting is this Thursday, April 17th 7:30 PM at the 'Nidge. All are welcome to attend.
The next Social Action Committee meeting will be Monday April 21st. For details talk with Chrissy Swanson or Jeremy John.
Our summer outreach will again to be present at the Clark Street Festival and the Glenwood Arts festival. Look for more details in the coming month. If you are an artist (visual, music, fabric, etc.) talk with Larry about being part of our booth and the Glenwood Arts Festival(We plan to reserve a larger one than we had last year.)
Our Search Committee for our next Baptist pastor had its first meeting this past Wednesday its next meeting is schedules for Thursday April 24th.
Sunday, April 6
Sermon Third Sunday of Easter
Third Easter RCL year A
Sermon text Luke 24:13-35
Rev. Jacki Belile in her sermon last Sunday encouraged us to see that in the Resurrection and the appearances of Jesus Christ there was space for us to have our doubts--Space for our questions. In our Gospel today we find questions and doubts once again on that first Easter: Cleopas and his companion have many questions. They are puzzled. The world and the recent events don’t make sense. They have decided to get away just a few miles but about a day’s walk. We are not told why they left Jerusalem, and the Apostles those gathered around them. But it may have been simply to get away from the bustle and all the confusion. To get away from all the theories and probably a good bit of arguing about what it all meant and what to make of an empty tomb. Jesus raises from the dead and still, everything remains unclear and uncertain.
I suggest that Cleopas and his companion are more analogous to us 2000 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection than the doubt of Thomas the Twin. I say this because Cleopas’ and his companions encounter with Jesus is liturgical. For it is in Scriptures and at Table that Cleopas and his companion find Christ and are transformed by the encounter with the risen Christ.
As these two disciples are on their way in the world, at first all they have is their experiences and their set hopes and expectations. Yet their hopes and experiences alone don’t give them any answers. If they were left with their doubts and their own experiences and their own interpretations, they would never have seen the Risen Christ or understood what had happened. They are not left on their own Jesus comes along side them and begins to ask them what they are discussing. Jesus gets them to tell him their sense of what has happened and their interpretations. They are somewhat flabbergasted that someone could be ignorant of the events that have just transpired. However they answer that the prophet Jesus who had done great deeds and had great renown was given over to the Roman authorities for execution by crucifixion. The source of their grief and confusion isn’t only that he was prophet and friend but they had hoped he would be the one who would redeem Israel. This Jesus was not only a prophet but would be the one to bring the end of Roman rule over the people of God. They were expecting a restoration of the kingdom of Israel as the holy people of God with King and temple. Yet then add, Even more puzzling is that there are reports that the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth is empty and the claim of the women who found it is that the resurrection has happened. All of this and their entire experience of Jesus does not makes sense. Nothing about it computes, not the possible resurrection nor the crucifixion and the betrayal of the Jewish leaders through handing over Jesus to the Romans makes sense with their expectations of who Jesus was to be.
Is it really a wonder then that they do not recognize Jesus Christ when he is raised? They did not quite know Jesus before his death and resurrection. Their experience and expectations failed to provide the interpretive framework to make sense not only of what happened but also of Jesus himself. Their experience told them that Jesus was a prophet whom they hoped would be the messiah. On their own with their own experience and reason they could not see what had always been right before their eyes.
Jesus then shows them how the Scriptures actually are fulfilled by the death and resurrection of the messiah, himself. Cleopas and companion listen, intrigued but they still don’t see that it is Jesus who is interpreting the events for them from the Scriptures. Luke does not tell us explicitly what Jesus said, but then all four Gospels are filled with references to the ways in which the life, ministry death and Resurrection of Jesus fulfill the Scriptures. Even as Jesus finishes up and pretends to go on ahead, they still just think of him as a stranger, and they invite him to stay with them. After a long days walk they sit down for a meal, and Jesus takes the bread, blesses it breaks it and gives it to them. And then it all falls into place, at the table with Jesus they see. At that moment of recognition Jesus disappears from their sight. In the breaking of the bread it all makes sense the interpretation of the scriptures, crucifixion and resurrection their own failure to see what was right before them because they did not have all the elements, because their experience had failed them. They needed more than just their own reasoning their own interpretations of scriptures and events. What they needed was for the Scriptures and an encounter with the risen Christ to interpret their experiences and opinions and openness to being transformed by that encounter. So they were and they recognize that the transformation had begun on the way as Jesus interpreted their experiences of Jesus from the Scriptures. Now having seen they realize that their hearts began to burn, what had been cold and lifeless had begun to come to life.
In response having now seen and understood they return the way they came and find the Apostles and those with them a buzz with the news that Jesus is raised from the dead. That is they return to the church the gathered faithful that group Jesus had formed. There they find that they are not alone, others have encountered the risen Christ with everything reinterpreted from that encounter. They have one thing to add that the breaking of bread of the last supper is the place of continual encounter with the Risen Christ.
You might recognize this phrase breaking of the bread and this story from the Eucharist liturgy especially the opening lines of the Covenant liturgy I use most Sundays when I preside at table. This is an important connection between this story and our liturgy and worship. In this story we are to see not only an event that happened two thousand years ago but what is to happen can happen is happening in our worship from week to week. The continual transformation and turning cold hearts warm again and again.
We come to worship in the midst of our lives at times they can be difficult and confusing. We sing and pray, but we also hear the Scriptures both the Hebrew Scriptures and their interpretation in light of Jesus Christ crucified and raised again found the New Testament Scriptures. These scriptures not only show us what God has done but are to interpret our experiences in light of Jesus Christ. Yet the Scriptures remain powerless without the encounter with Jesus around the table in Bread and wine. It is here for us that we meet and encounter the risen Christ and are able then to see and encounter Jesus and God in a world, which is a confusing and ambiguous and not infrequently an evil place. Our lives don’t make sense of this liturgy and the scriptures and the Eucharist. We come with all our lives the ups and downs: we come with our joys sorrows doubts and hopes. Then gathered around Word and Table in order that our lives are interpreted and given meaning by the liturgy and our worship. Sometimes some of us will be more able to see and so we come together also to encourage each other, but through reminding each other that it is here that we know we have encountered Christ. Gathered together in the midst of our journey we hear the scriptures and their interpretation and meet Jesus in bread and wine so that our lives take on a meaning beyond what we can experience and interpret on our own. So that our hearts may be kindled with warmth and life. On our own we our like Cleopas and his companion earnest, faithful but puzzled and confused, not knowing what to make of the world we find. In the liturgy we discover that it is God who gives meaning to life, and we encounter the Risen Christ, and he is made known to us in the breaking of the bread.
We then are Cleopas’ companions on the road to Emmaus on the way to encountering Christ. We come to our worship with the experiences of the previous week perhaps having lost sight of Christ and God. We hear the Scriptures to allow them to interpret our experiences and ourselves and to hear again what God has done in Jesus Christ. This begins to transform us and then we come to break bread and drink wine where we find Christ and are fed by him. In this we are transformed. In this is the transformation of the world as we who have gathered around Jesus seeking again and again to encounter him as the one through whom God has overturned the ways of the world. The way to Emmaus is the road of transformation; it is the path of Christian worship found in the liturgy it is the meaning of Holy Communion. The way of Emmaus is the place of our encounter of the risen Christ. It is only through this encounter that we are able to see God and Christ in the world; in the poor, the suffering, the oppressed and the stranger. It gives us sight and warms our hearts to new life.
Sermon text Luke 24:13-35
The Resurrection and the Worship of the Church:
On our way to Emmaus
Are you on your way to Emmaus? Are we all companions of Cleopas on our way? Are we trying to make sense of the world and our place in it yet struggling to figure out how it all fits together? What is this journey to Emmaus in which Christ interprets our experiences through the Scriptures. What is this encounter of Jesus that is both hidden and revealing? What keeps us from seeing Jesus, and what allows us to see him in the world and in our presence here?On our way to Emmaus
Rev. Jacki Belile in her sermon last Sunday encouraged us to see that in the Resurrection and the appearances of Jesus Christ there was space for us to have our doubts--Space for our questions. In our Gospel today we find questions and doubts once again on that first Easter: Cleopas and his companion have many questions. They are puzzled. The world and the recent events don’t make sense. They have decided to get away just a few miles but about a day’s walk. We are not told why they left Jerusalem, and the Apostles those gathered around them. But it may have been simply to get away from the bustle and all the confusion. To get away from all the theories and probably a good bit of arguing about what it all meant and what to make of an empty tomb. Jesus raises from the dead and still, everything remains unclear and uncertain.
I suggest that Cleopas and his companion are more analogous to us 2000 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection than the doubt of Thomas the Twin. I say this because Cleopas’ and his companions encounter with Jesus is liturgical. For it is in Scriptures and at Table that Cleopas and his companion find Christ and are transformed by the encounter with the risen Christ.
As these two disciples are on their way in the world, at first all they have is their experiences and their set hopes and expectations. Yet their hopes and experiences alone don’t give them any answers. If they were left with their doubts and their own experiences and their own interpretations, they would never have seen the Risen Christ or understood what had happened. They are not left on their own Jesus comes along side them and begins to ask them what they are discussing. Jesus gets them to tell him their sense of what has happened and their interpretations. They are somewhat flabbergasted that someone could be ignorant of the events that have just transpired. However they answer that the prophet Jesus who had done great deeds and had great renown was given over to the Roman authorities for execution by crucifixion. The source of their grief and confusion isn’t only that he was prophet and friend but they had hoped he would be the one who would redeem Israel. This Jesus was not only a prophet but would be the one to bring the end of Roman rule over the people of God. They were expecting a restoration of the kingdom of Israel as the holy people of God with King and temple. Yet then add, Even more puzzling is that there are reports that the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth is empty and the claim of the women who found it is that the resurrection has happened. All of this and their entire experience of Jesus does not makes sense. Nothing about it computes, not the possible resurrection nor the crucifixion and the betrayal of the Jewish leaders through handing over Jesus to the Romans makes sense with their expectations of who Jesus was to be.
Is it really a wonder then that they do not recognize Jesus Christ when he is raised? They did not quite know Jesus before his death and resurrection. Their experience and expectations failed to provide the interpretive framework to make sense not only of what happened but also of Jesus himself. Their experience told them that Jesus was a prophet whom they hoped would be the messiah. On their own with their own experience and reason they could not see what had always been right before their eyes.
Jesus then shows them how the Scriptures actually are fulfilled by the death and resurrection of the messiah, himself. Cleopas and companion listen, intrigued but they still don’t see that it is Jesus who is interpreting the events for them from the Scriptures. Luke does not tell us explicitly what Jesus said, but then all four Gospels are filled with references to the ways in which the life, ministry death and Resurrection of Jesus fulfill the Scriptures. Even as Jesus finishes up and pretends to go on ahead, they still just think of him as a stranger, and they invite him to stay with them. After a long days walk they sit down for a meal, and Jesus takes the bread, blesses it breaks it and gives it to them. And then it all falls into place, at the table with Jesus they see. At that moment of recognition Jesus disappears from their sight. In the breaking of the bread it all makes sense the interpretation of the scriptures, crucifixion and resurrection their own failure to see what was right before them because they did not have all the elements, because their experience had failed them. They needed more than just their own reasoning their own interpretations of scriptures and events. What they needed was for the Scriptures and an encounter with the risen Christ to interpret their experiences and opinions and openness to being transformed by that encounter. So they were and they recognize that the transformation had begun on the way as Jesus interpreted their experiences of Jesus from the Scriptures. Now having seen they realize that their hearts began to burn, what had been cold and lifeless had begun to come to life.
In response having now seen and understood they return the way they came and find the Apostles and those with them a buzz with the news that Jesus is raised from the dead. That is they return to the church the gathered faithful that group Jesus had formed. There they find that they are not alone, others have encountered the risen Christ with everything reinterpreted from that encounter. They have one thing to add that the breaking of bread of the last supper is the place of continual encounter with the Risen Christ.
You might recognize this phrase breaking of the bread and this story from the Eucharist liturgy especially the opening lines of the Covenant liturgy I use most Sundays when I preside at table. This is an important connection between this story and our liturgy and worship. In this story we are to see not only an event that happened two thousand years ago but what is to happen can happen is happening in our worship from week to week. The continual transformation and turning cold hearts warm again and again.
We come to worship in the midst of our lives at times they can be difficult and confusing. We sing and pray, but we also hear the Scriptures both the Hebrew Scriptures and their interpretation in light of Jesus Christ crucified and raised again found the New Testament Scriptures. These scriptures not only show us what God has done but are to interpret our experiences in light of Jesus Christ. Yet the Scriptures remain powerless without the encounter with Jesus around the table in Bread and wine. It is here for us that we meet and encounter the risen Christ and are able then to see and encounter Jesus and God in a world, which is a confusing and ambiguous and not infrequently an evil place. Our lives don’t make sense of this liturgy and the scriptures and the Eucharist. We come with all our lives the ups and downs: we come with our joys sorrows doubts and hopes. Then gathered around Word and Table in order that our lives are interpreted and given meaning by the liturgy and our worship. Sometimes some of us will be more able to see and so we come together also to encourage each other, but through reminding each other that it is here that we know we have encountered Christ. Gathered together in the midst of our journey we hear the scriptures and their interpretation and meet Jesus in bread and wine so that our lives take on a meaning beyond what we can experience and interpret on our own. So that our hearts may be kindled with warmth and life. On our own we our like Cleopas and his companion earnest, faithful but puzzled and confused, not knowing what to make of the world we find. In the liturgy we discover that it is God who gives meaning to life, and we encounter the Risen Christ, and he is made known to us in the breaking of the bread.
We then are Cleopas’ companions on the road to Emmaus on the way to encountering Christ. We come to our worship with the experiences of the previous week perhaps having lost sight of Christ and God. We hear the Scriptures to allow them to interpret our experiences and ourselves and to hear again what God has done in Jesus Christ. This begins to transform us and then we come to break bread and drink wine where we find Christ and are fed by him. In this we are transformed. In this is the transformation of the world as we who have gathered around Jesus seeking again and again to encounter him as the one through whom God has overturned the ways of the world. The way to Emmaus is the road of transformation; it is the path of Christian worship found in the liturgy it is the meaning of Holy Communion. The way of Emmaus is the place of our encounter of the risen Christ. It is only through this encounter that we are able to see God and Christ in the world; in the poor, the suffering, the oppressed and the stranger. It gives us sight and warms our hearts to new life.
Sunday, May 20
Sermon: Ascension Sunday
Sermon: Feast of the Ascension
May 20, 2007
Church of Jesus Christ, Reconciler
Rev. Tripp Hudgins, preacher
Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, "Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
(Luke 24:45-47)
Alleluia! The Lord is risen!
The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia!
I loved Jerry Falwell.
Yes, I admit it. I loved him. I imagine that may come as a surprise to many. He was a divisive, difficult, hyper-political, sometimes racist, vitriolic crazyman from Lynchburg, VA. And yet, I loved him.
For those of you who are unaware, Rev. Jerry Falwell died on May 15 at the age of 73. He has been a fixture on the national religious and political stages for as long as I can remember.
Now, I will also admit that my love of Jerry was not always gentle affection. No. Most of the time Falwell served that J.R. Ewing (Do you remember Dallas?) function in the Baptist peanut gallery that resides in my head. This is true. But he has been present no less, part of the "great cloud of witnesses" leading me toward salvation.
Growing up in Virginia, it was almost impossible to talk about or think about faith without Jerry's voice ringing in your head. And, eventually, it was almost impossible to talk about politic without the same thing happening. Jerry was simply present in the midst of all of it, haranguing us, his audience with word after word. It was almost impossible not to respond somehow.
So, I formed my faith life in the shadow of Jerry Falwell. I chose the reaction formation route. What Jerry did. I would do the opposite. At first it seemed like a really good idea.
But in the process there is this temptation, a strange temptation…
Leave the scriptures behind.
Leave the tradition or the culture of the church behind.
Remain mute on matters of faith.
Reject Christianity all together.
Leave the tradition or the culture of the church behind.
Remain mute on matters of faith.
Reject Christianity all together.
Maybe I am alone in this. Maybe I am the only one who does this when I encounter a personality as unwavering a Falwell's was. But just in case…
Do we accidentally undermine the church in the process of trying not to be like Jerry? Do we actually accomplish the opposite of our goal or presenting an alternative when we try to rescue our faith by succumbing to any one of the above temptations? Do we actually maroon our faith somewhere, or abandon it in some way?
I think so.
Instead of following this path, we need to speak out. As tiresome and implausible as it may seem to many of us, we have to speak out. I know that some of us might be tired of debating Jerry. I do. But it is essential that Christians of all stripes speak truth to the world, and not just the Jerry's. It has been so since the earliest days of the Church. It will continue to be so.
We cannot abandon the story. We cannot stop reading the scriptures and proclaiming our interpretations just because Jerry was never convinced that we were even remotely on to something.
We must seek alternative voices. We must go where people are speaking.
So, who are the alternative voices? Who else is speaking? Who can help us reclaim the church if, as I do, we believe we need to?
Was William Sloan Coffin, the esteemed preacher from Riverside in the 1960's and 1970's, your alternative voice? Is Jim Wallis, from Sojourners and God's Politics fame? Perhaps that Emergent Church guru, Brian McLaren, has something to contribute in his "generous orthodoxy."
Perhaps I am that voice.
Perhaps you are that voice.
Perhaps it is you and I who are called to embrace the scriptures once again, to sit at the feet of Jesus and have our hearts and minds opened to the scriptures.
What would it sound like to embrace scripture? Is it something that people could listen to, something people could hear?
Have our minds been opened to hear the scriptures?
Are we willing to sit with Christ, and listen to what he says about the scriptures? Listen to the words again.
Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, "Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
Now, remember, the scriptures here are the Hebrew Bible, the books of Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms. Jesus was not reading from second Corinthians.
Our interpretive task today, however, is from Luke.
Do you see the parallel that Luke presents to us in this passage? Do you see how suffering goes with repentance? Do you see how resurrection is paralleled with forgiveness? Jesus' life is the ultimate model of compassion. This is what Luke wants us to know.
Repentance leads to forgiveness. Repentance teaches us compassion. Through repentance, we learn that all of us are struggling in this world. We all make mistakes, hurt people, hurt ourselves. And we must be prepared to name this kind of suffering. Then forgiveness is available to us…God's forgiveness and the forgiveness of those whom we have harmed. This is suffering and resurrection at the relational level.
The message that we are to proclaim to all the nations beginning from Jerusalem is this…Jesus is the model of all compassion. God is compassionate. Yes, there is suffering. No, faith is not easy. I do things wrong. I have to repent. But there is forgiveness. And that forgiveness is so great that it even overcomes death in the end.
We are to offer such compassion to all of the world. That is evangelism. That is mission.
In the process, we will encounter diversity. We will encounter hostility. We will encounter opposition. But there are ways to understand this as well.
Listen to these words from Becca Hartman, a senior at Northwestern University and an American Baptist. Her words are about interfaith dialogue, but they apply to our task today.
In interfaith dialogue, we do not suggest that all religions are the same; they are not. We do not ask individuals to give up or dilute their beliefs for the sake of peaceful conversation. In fact, it is in respectful listening and even vulnerable sharing with people of diverse religious traditions that we learn how to articulate and celebrate our own beautiful traditions and beliefs.
You see, what Becca says is true not just in interfaith dialogue, but in intra-faith dialogue as well. What I fear we often do as liberals or progressives, is give up the truth behind these words from Luke's Gospel. We dilute our faith hoping to not offend someone else. We dilute our faith hoping not to be mistaken for someone else.
We are to engage scripture. We are to deepen our roots in scripture and the tradition of the church, not abandon it because one individual voice seems to hold sway.
We are to proclaim and demonstrate the truth behind these words from Luke. Compassionate action and proclamation go hand in hand. We are to seek repentance and the forgiveness of those we harm. We are to interpret this passage on the public stage proclaiming it to all the nations, as well as in our personal lives. This passage is the seed of compassion. This interpretation of scripture is the seed of compassion. The story of the suffering and resurrection of the messiah is the story of compassion.
What is compassion without the self-knowledge that leads to repentance?
It is empty.
A dialogue like the one Becca describes is only possible when we have delved into our own traditions and learned to own them, warts and all, foibles, sins and their richness. We must become apologists for the faith. Jerry Falwell, in leading a conversation on the national stage compelled me to learn how to do this. Perhaps mine was to some degree a reaction formation, but he has shaped a debate for generations of Christians in America. The debate is not over. Jerry did not win it. It continues.
We are called to speak compassion. If people believe that our faith tradition is not about compassion and transformation of the individual and the community, most likely it is because no one is telling them. We are called to speak compassion.
Perhaps this is the interpretation that the world needs to hear…that we need to speak.
I share all this with you because of my own search for God and the incredible impact that Jerry Falwell had on that journey. I need a language. I need a community. And when I began my search, I was handed the rhetoric of the Moral Majority. I found its words and its actions confusing.
But, at the time at least, there were no other voices that I was aware of. No one else seemed to be speaking. So I chose to live without faith. It was much easier than any other course of action that I could devise. Perhaps I was lazy. This is certainly within the realm of possibility.
Eventually, intuitively, I turned to the church. I took classes in college. I lived with Christians. I sang hymns. I participated in the charitable life of the church. I marched on the state capital. I slowly found a voice. I learned compassion. I learned to love Jerry Falwell.
Jerry was right. Faith, though personal, is never private.
Jerry was right. Salvation can be found in the church…in the community of the faithful, the shared life of those who are the Body of Christ.
Jerry was right. We are to be passionate in the proclamation of the Gospel.
We dare not duplicate his mistakes in our attempts, however. We cannot marry the church to any one political party, to any one platform. And we must be constantly vigilant to follow the way of compassion, the way of repentance that leads to forgiveness. The more public our profession of faith becomes, the more difficult repentance becomes. Our egos get involved. We don't want the humiliation. And yet, if we are to speak and model such compassion as described by Luke's Gospel, then we have little choice.
This is our day to observe the Ascension of Christ, that strange moment in the history of the church where Jesus flies away in to the heavens. This is yet another moment in the story that shifts the definition of how God is present in the world.
At Christmas, God is born…a small child.
During Epiphany and Lent, we find God present in the life and work of Jesus.
Our understanding of incarnation is changed in the resurrection of Jesus proclaimed at Easter.
And again, our understanding is changed today. We are the Body of Christ. The Church is the incarnation of God. We are to go out into the world and be the incarnation of compassion.
It is an active faith.
It is a working faith.
It is a giving faith.
It is a speaking faith.
If we do not speak, proclaim what Jesus asked us to proclaim in Luke's Gospel, then the body is mute. Christ was a speaker. We remember his actions and his words. Many ask, "What would Jesus do?" I want to know, brothers and sisters, "What would Jesus say?"
Alleluia! The Lord is risen!
The Lord is risen, indeed. Alleluia!
Tuesday, May 8
The Fifth Sunday of Easter
Sermon: Fifth Sunday of Easter 2007
May 6, 2007
Rev. Tripp Hudgins
Revelation 21:1-6
John 13:31-35
Citified
Alleluia! The Lord is risen!
The Lord is risen, indeed. Alleluia!
Here are some song lyrics for you…ready? Sing out if you are so inspired.
Somewhere out there on that horizon
Out beyond the neon lights
I know there must be somethin' better
but there's nowhere else in sight.
It's survival in the city
When you live from day to day.
City streets don't have much pity
When you're down, that's where you'll stay.
In the city…
- The Eagles
Hot town summer in the city
Back of my neck getting dirt and gritty
- Joe Cocker
Come along
Into the city
Where the girls are pretty
And you can't go wrong
- The Who
Oh don't lean on me man, cause you cant afford the ticket
I'm back from suffragette city
Oh don't lean on me man
Cause you ain't got time to check it
You know my suffragette city
Is outta sight...she's all right
- David Bowie
We built this city on rock and roll.
- Starship (Formerly Jefferson Airplane, then Jefferson Starship)
What is it that is so fascinating about cities…These song lyrics are easy examples of how we identify ourselves with city life. We can find suffering with the Eagles, romance of a sort with Joe Cocker and The Who. We find Bowie beinge, well, Bowie. We can find a claim to crativeity with Starship. Our cities claim us somehow...and we identify with them. The cities are also difficult for us. There is something morally and ethically challenging about cities.
Think about it, to be "citified" is not a compliment. It is how one describes the loss of rural self-sufficiency. How can we be complete, the ethos suggests, if we are so dependent upon someone else to feed us? And the list of problems implied by being "citified" goes on. It suggests haughtiness, uppitiness, classism reigns. We are aprehensive about our cities.
This apprehension about cities is not new or unique to us in this country.
In Genesis, we encounter the first menitioning of cities in the Bible. The writers of Genesis send Cain off to the city. Where did Cain go after he had been banished by God? He went into the city. Listen to this passage as it speaks about entertainment and industry…and crime. Remember, this is after Cain has killed Abel, and has had his "run in" with God.
16Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord, and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.
17 Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch; and he built a city, and named it Enoch after his son Enoch. 18To Enoch was born Irad; and Irad was the father of Mehujael, and Mehujael the father of Methushael, and Methushael the father of Lamech. 19Lamech took two wives; the name of one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah. 20Adah bore Jabal; he was the ancestor of those who live in tents and have livestock. 21His brother's name was Jubal; he was the ancestor of all those who play the lyre and pipe (The entertainment industry?). 22Zillah bore Tubal-cain, who made all kinds of bronze and iron tools (Industry?). The sister of Tubal-cain was Naamah.
23 Lamech said to his wives:
'Adah and Zillah, hear my voice;
you wives of Lamech, listen to what I say:
I have killed a man for wounding me,
a young man for striking me.
24If Cain is avenged sevenfold,
truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold.'
'Adah and Zillah, hear my voice;
you wives of Lamech, listen to what I say:
I have killed a man for wounding me,
a young man for striking me.
24If Cain is avenged sevenfold,
truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold.'
This last bit of the passage may be the most telling. Remember, this is the Old Testament, and justice is that "eye for an eye" justice. Killing someone for wounding you might very well be construed as lawlessness. The cities are frightening places...lawless places.
The city is a difficult place to live. But we seem drawn there…and repulsed by it at the same time.
Throughout the Bible, the Israelites struggle with settling down. They struggle with what it means to live together in community. Things in the promised land seem to be going well, but eventually the land cannot support them when a great drought comes along. So, thanks to the help of Joseph, the Israelites settle in Egypt. This, as most of us likely know, does not work out so well for the Israelites. They are enslaved. Eventually, Moses will come and with God's help, will rescue the Israelites.
They live as nomads again. But this time it is in the wilderness…it is forty years of trial and struggle and the city seems more and more ideal. They are stuck between a rock and a hard place. The city has always been a danger to them. Yet it is no longer desirable to live as nomads.
So where do they go? In the end, they choose the city…
Jerusalem. The city of Peace. The city of Harmony. The city of Wholeness…
Take me down to the paradise city
Where the grass is green
And the girls are pretty
Take me home (Oh, won't you please take me home)
- Guns n' Roses
The city, brothers and sisters, is a mixed bag for us. We know this. Whenever you bring so many people into one location, you condense both the assets of such a life together and the troubles of such a life together. If you all recall, in Chicago Cabrini Green, the (in)famous public housing project, was right across the street from Lincoln Park. Wealth and poverty are neighbors. One cannot escape the sight of the other.
The University of Chicago sits in the center of Hyde Park and is bordered by some of the most under-served neighborhoods in the Chicago metropolitan area. Though you can cross the street to walk the campus, getting out of Woodlawn or Inglewood and into the hallowed halls of the University of Chicago is a pretty steep climb. Our cities have huge problems. They highlight all of humanity's ills, our beauty and potential.
Our cities have become a strange poetry.
And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away."
When America was young, only five percent of our population resided in urban areas. Scholars suggesti that the population structure has almost completely reversed. Our sprawling metropolises are now home to the vast majority of Americans. Suburbs stretch off into the horizon. Cities collaborate and assume one another, absorb one another, annexing land and businesses. Their infrastructure is so complicated that historians and urban planners alike struggle to understand them, to maintain them.
And yet, America has a love affair with its cities. We write songs about them. Chicago Is My Kind of Town, and New York, New York are now iconic. We can have the Kansas City Blues. We have asked the question, Are You Going to San Francisco? Heck, we have even referred to the entire country as the City on a Hill adopting the vision from Revelation as a national vision, a proclamation of God's providence in giving us the Holy City, the city in Revelation, the city that descends from the clouds ushering in God's permanent residence among us.
But this optimism denies a need in our cities. This distracts us from the truth about our cities. Jerusalem has been known as the city of peace. It has also been known, if you recall, as the city that kills the prophets. Now it is a city divided between three faiths, a place known for its violence and cruelty as much as it is known for its sanctity.
Our own cities terrify some of us. "White flight," the movement of affluent white Americans to city suburbs abandoning the inner city to poor minorities, is a great example of how we struggle to make peace with ourselves, how we struggle with our own sins as a nation.
So, where then do we start? How then do we respond to the needs of the city, proclaiming instead the holiness of a city?
Tony Campolo, the popular evangelical theologian and preacher, has an interesting theological notion that may help us...and it is likely even more appropriate to share on Communion Sunday.
A couple of weeks ago, some of us were at the ABC/MC Discipleship Dinner. Tony Campolo was the preacher for the worship service beforehand. In the midst of his sermon he looked out at us and said "The poor are the sacramental presence of Jesus." He reminded us of the passage from scripture where Jesus says "whenever you do this for the least of these..."
"Don't get thrown off by the word 'sacramental.'" he said. "I know that some of you are thinking about the Roman Catholic idea that bread and wine become flesh and blood. Now, I know that as Baptists we cannot go there even though we turn wine into grape juice every Sunday. We need to find a middle way, like the Anglicans and the Lutherans have done. The sacramental is the fulfillment of a promise made by Jesus. Jesus promises to be present in bread and wine. Thus, we trust that he is. His love is manifested in the symbolic. Thus, because he said so, he is present in the least of these."
The poor are the sacramental presence of Jesus. There is wisdom in this that can be seen in our passage from Revelation. If the poor are the sacramental presence of Jesus, what then of our cities? Our communities? Our communities are the sacramental presence of God. Can this be? Is it too far a stretch? Can God's love be known in our communities? Can they be seen as sacrament? Can our communities be the focus of our love and affection as Church?
Father Edward Foley, a liturgy professor at Catholic Theological Union in Hyde Park, says that "God has a love affair with the world." We may be called to be known by our love in John's gospel, but the entire premise of the gospel is that "God so loved the world." The love we learn to share with one another is the love that is to be given to the whole world. The focus of that love is not one another. The focus of that love is upon the world. We love the world because in its completion, God is present in it..."I am the Alpha and the Omega."
In this new way, we are called to be citified.
The focus of God's love is upon our villages, our town, our cities, our communities, urban and rural. If we want to know what it means to be relevant, it is in this truth of the Gospel. The focus of the love of the Church, the Body of Christ, is the world.
Alleluia! The Lord is risen!
The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia!
i http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=ft8779p1zm&chunk.id=d0e136&toc.depth=1&toc.id=d0e82&brand=eschol
Friday, March 30
Reconciler Update
We are about the enter Holy Week. This week we deliberately and liturgicaly walk the way of the cross into the celebration of Easter. On Palm Sunday we Enter Jerusalem with those who shout Hosanna as Jesus Christ rides into the city on a donkey. Then we hear the passion narrative which prepares us for the three days: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday which leads from Jesus last supper with his disciples and Jesus arrest, to crucifixion and then on to the joy of Easter, and the Resurrection.
As we celebrate these holy days my hope is that your faith will be renewed that we will find in this celebration and proclamation the center of our faith and action in the world. It is these events we celebrate in Holy Week and Easter that provide the logic and the ground of our action and compassion in the world. Here we find the Gospel in all its radical world shattering power.
Announcements:
Holy Week and Easter
We are having joint worship services Holy Week and Easter Day with the Immanuel and St Elias Lutheran congregations. On Easter Sunday, we will not have our regular evening service at 6:00 p.m., but will have a joint service with Immanuel at 10:30 a.m.
For Holy week, there will be a Maundy Thursday service at 7:30 p.m., a Good Friday service at 7:30 p.m., and an Easter Vigil service on Holy Saturday at 7:30 p.m. There will also be a festive reception following the Vigil. These are gorgeous services, each with their own unique character and flavor. We hope you will join us for as many of them as you can.
If you are interested in taking part in leadership roles in any of the above services please talk with Laura, Larry or Tripp. Monte Johnson is asking for volunteers from all three congregations to read Scripture, help with artistic displays in the sanctuary and Founder's Hall and help set up Founder's Hall for the Vigil and Easter Sunday breakfast. If you're interested in singing in the Immanuel Choir -- and are willing to attend at least two rehearsals, Wednesdays at 7:30 at Immanuel -- let one of the pastors know. Thanks.
Bible Study
We'll begin a new Bible Study April 18. This will be a four-week series focusing on the travel diaries of Egeria, a fourth-century Spanish nun and pilgrim. Through Egeria's diaries we have compelling information about how early Christians worshipped. Come and see how early Christian worship relates to what we do on Sundays at Reconciler, and bring your questions and thoughts about worship.
Worship Committee
Would like to invite all interested Reconcilers to come to a worship committee meeting -- likely at Kaffein in Evanston on a Wednesday night -- to discuss such hot-button liturgical items as:
Which version of the Lord's prayer we want to use? What kind of processional cross do we want to purchase? And....what about inclusive language?
Suggested dates are Wednesday evening, May 16 or 23. Stay tuned and let us know which date would work better for you.
In Christ,
Larry Kamphausen
As we celebrate these holy days my hope is that your faith will be renewed that we will find in this celebration and proclamation the center of our faith and action in the world. It is these events we celebrate in Holy Week and Easter that provide the logic and the ground of our action and compassion in the world. Here we find the Gospel in all its radical world shattering power.
Announcements:
Holy Week and Easter
We are having joint worship services Holy Week and Easter Day with the Immanuel and St Elias Lutheran congregations. On Easter Sunday, we will not have our regular evening service at 6:00 p.m., but will have a joint service with Immanuel at 10:30 a.m.
For Holy week, there will be a Maundy Thursday service at 7:30 p.m., a Good Friday service at 7:30 p.m., and an Easter Vigil service on Holy Saturday at 7:30 p.m. There will also be a festive reception following the Vigil. These are gorgeous services, each with their own unique character and flavor. We hope you will join us for as many of them as you can.
If you are interested in taking part in leadership roles in any of the above services please talk with Laura, Larry or Tripp. Monte Johnson is asking for volunteers from all three congregations to read Scripture, help with artistic displays in the sanctuary and Founder's Hall and help set up Founder's Hall for the Vigil and Easter Sunday breakfast. If you're interested in singing in the Immanuel Choir -- and are willing to attend at least two rehearsals, Wednesdays at 7:30 at Immanuel -- let one of the pastors know. Thanks.
Bible Study
We'll begin a new Bible Study April 18. This will be a four-week series focusing on the travel diaries of Egeria, a fourth-century Spanish nun and pilgrim. Through Egeria's diaries we have compelling information about how early Christians worshipped. Come and see how early Christian worship relates to what we do on Sundays at Reconciler, and bring your questions and thoughts about worship.
Worship Committee
Would like to invite all interested Reconcilers to come to a worship committee meeting -- likely at Kaffein in Evanston on a Wednesday night -- to discuss such hot-button liturgical items as:
Which version of the Lord's prayer we want to use? What kind of processional cross do we want to purchase? And....what about inclusive language?
Suggested dates are Wednesday evening, May 16 or 23. Stay tuned and let us know which date would work better for you.
In Christ,
Larry Kamphausen
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