Sixth Sunday of Easter

Psalm 67

Before he left for a camping trip this weekend, Jamie showed me the new t-shirt design for this year’s High Country Bus Festival. That’s the Volkswagen campout he organizes every year that happens on the last weekend of July on the New River. 2016 was its 20th year, and I think Jamie’s been involved for the last twelve.

We started bus camping when Emma was not quite six months old, packing up the sleeping bags, coffee pot and cookware and joining VW friends in their buses at VW campouts that happen all up and down the East Coast and in Canada. Jamie always goes to a few more campouts than I do, but High Country is the one that both girls and I will make sure we make. This year, when we get there, we’ll reunite with friends, and say a final goodbye to our chocolate lab Heidi who loved nothing more than chasing a stick or a ball into the river.

One of my favorite times at these campouts happens after the sun sets and people set up their camping chairs around the fire pit, and the ones who are musical bring their instruments, and someone brings a bag of marshmallows and chocolate bars and graham crackers and we sit, circled around the firepit remembering the day’s adventures and telling stories. I think I could sit there all night with the lulling hum of conversations all around me.

If you see photographs from High Country, you see people on bicycles, in golf carts, on river rafts and in kayaks; teenagers and twenty-something’s, young families with newborns and toddlers, and grandparents and grandchildren; American flags mixed in with Grateful Dead stickers and tie dye. We bring different backgrounds, educations, work lives and experiences with us and we have different ways of looking at the world, but under a wide blue sky on the riverbank, we are a gathered community. And if someone is in need, the whole community steps up and responds.

In those moments, it’s a whole lot like church, a gathered community united by a common faith.

Our shared lives are the marks of a community, and in Psalm 67, the Psalmist is reminding us that we are drawn together as a community because we share in God’s blessing.

The Psalms are songs that are written down as in a prayer book, and this one, which is only seven verses, begins and ends with words of blessing that we hear in our own worship:

In verse 1,

1 May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us…

And in verse 7,
7 May God continue to bless us; let all the ends of the earth revere him.

In Scripture, God’s face is a metaphor for the presence of God. The Psalmist witnesses to us that God is not abstract and distant, but present with us. “God is blessing us with God’s own self.”[i]

In today’s gospel, Jesus delivers this same message to his disciples when he tells them about the resurrection. We are not abandoned or alone; God is with us and the Holy Spirit is speaking into our lives, leading and directing us.

But if we only hear the praise and confidence in God’s blessing, and bask in the radiance of God’s face shining on us, we aren’t paying attention.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in his book Life Together:[ii]

It is by the grace of God that a congregation is permitted to gather visibly in this world to share God's Word and sacrament.

Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor and theologian who helped found the Confessing Church, a resistance movement that defied Hitler during World War II. He was executed in April 1945 as the Nazi regime was collapsing. Bonhoeffer was insistent that our faith calls us to engage in the world and act in it.

As a community of God’s people, we are not simply given God’s blessing for our own benefit. God’s blessing to us and our community is inseparable from God’s blessing for the world.

Receiving God’s blessing and promises,
as the gathered community of God’s people,
we are given a responsibility to live among all the nations and all peoples as representatives of God’s kingdom,
as reconcilers in the world.

When conflict and disagreement happens, we are called to make God’s ways “known upon the earth”.

As one preacher wrote, as Christians we are, “people who can hold on to hope in the midst of despair and trust through times of loss and desolation.”[iii] 

Telling the story of Jesus who himself was unjustly executed and made a scapegoat, we offer God’s healing to a neighborhood torn apart by hate or violence.

Meeting basic human needs for shelter, food and hygiene, we offer God’s healing to people who have only known neglect and scarcity.

Remembering how Jesus wept at the death of Lazarus, we offer God’s healing to those who are grieving, confident that God is with us even when the world feels broken.

Each of us who has experienced God’s increase in our lives is called to share that blessing with others. Sharing our blessing also means sharing our lives because it is through God’s people that the world comes to know God.

We are called to share our lives
with the person who is suffering,
who is out of sync with the world around them,
who is disconnected by shame, anxiety or sorrow;
with the person who cannot hear or see the face of God shining on them, or recognize the promise of hope that we all have through Christ;
with the person experiencing “the dark night of the soul”,
who cannot imagine the unconditional love of God;

For the sake of these people – our family and neighbors and strangers – we are called to bring healing to our community.

We offer refuge and safe spaces where people can be restored, regain hope.
We offer forgiveness and mercy, remembering the mercy we are shown every day.
We offer the comfort of an embrace, knowing God’s love is boundless.
Sharing our lives, we can awaken a joy for living that soothes aching hearts and shadowed souls.

Wherever we share our lives - whether it’s around a campfire, or a dinner table; in the dining room or the library, or in a phone call or a handwritten card, when we share our lives, we share God’s blessing in our lives.

Living out of gratitude for the abundance in our lives,
and remembering the great stretch of God’s saving love,
we can help others meet Jesus and fulfill “the deepest longing of the human heart, to know with assurance the loving, living abiding presence of God.”[iv]

Let us pray…
Lord God,
We give you thanks for Your Son who shows us Your love and teaches us to love others;
Forgive us when we are self-centered or turn inward on ourselves,
forgetting that your blessing is meant to be shared;
Confident in your promises and Your presence with us,
make us bold witnesses to Your abundant and merciful love.
We pray in the name of Jesus, our Lord and Savior. Amen.

[i] Bartlett, David L.. Feasting on the Word: Year C, Volume 2: Lent through Eastertide . Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition. Location 17094.
[ii] Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Life Together.
[iii] Bartlett, Location 17088.
[iv] Bartlett. Location 17102.

Fifth Sunday of Easter

John 13:31-35

Today’s gospel passage takes place before the crucifixion; in fact it is the same text we heard on Maundy Thursday when Jesus gave his disciples a new commandment.

Reading the text again, I noticed how Jesus calls his disciples, “Little children.” In our text a couple of weeks ago, after the resurrection, Jesus appeared to his disciples on the seashore and there he called them, “Children” too. Hearing him, I wondered why Jesus addresses them that way. His followers aren’t “children” by any traditional definition. They are fully grown adults with families and responsibilities, homes and jobs when they are called as his disciples. And yet, he calls them, “Children.”

Some people think it is diminutive, that Jesus calls them children because their faith is not yet “mature.” But isn’t our faith always forming and re-forming as we learn more about who God is and who we are as God’s children? Faith grows and expands as we experience God in our lives.

Besides, I don’t think the Jesus we meet in Scripture belittles or talks down to the people around him, even when they make mistakes and he corrects them.

Others suggest Jesus called the disciples “Children” to express his affection for them, the same way my granddaddy called me “Honeychild.”

For me, Jesus’ use of the word “children” brings to mind the time that Jesus told the disciples, “Let the little children come to me.”[i] At that time, the disciples had rebuked the crowds for bringing the children to Jesus but Jesus welcomed them saying the Kingdom of God belonged to them. Perhaps the disciples finally had understood his teaching and were following Jesus with childlike faith, open to what God was doing in their midst.

But, perhaps the simplest explanation is that Jesus calls the disciples “children” because Jesus is God and they are “God’s children.”

In baptism, we are named God’s own sons and daughters. We experience a “sweet swap” when we receive faith in Jesus Christ —we are made co-heirs to the Kingdom and we receive all that belongs to the Son of God, and Christ takes on all that is ours. With this address, Jesus reminding the disciples of their identity.

In Jesus’ words I also hear an echo of the prayer and instruction in Deuteronomy 6 that the Jewish disciples would have known; it says:

4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone.  5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.  6 Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart.  7 Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. [ii]

From the time of our ancestors in faith to this present time, our identity as God’s children calls us to obedience to God’s Word and commandments.

When Jesus continues speaking to the disciples, he gives them the new commandment to love one another, just as they have been loved by God. [iii] And then he says, “By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

We don’t follow God’s commands to earn our salvation, and we aren’t obedient so that we can be better people. We can’t. We can only live as God’s children through the grace that God first gives us.  Jesus’ words remind us that our lives and actions bear witness to who Jesus is. When we speak with bitterness and anger and refuse forgiveness or reconciliation, we reflect a God of judgment and wrath. When we love one another, we reflect a God whose grace and love changes lives.

Peter was there in that room and heard Jesus speaking that night. And later after the resurrection and the ascension, when the disciples were traveling and witnessing to the Good News, Peter stayed at the house of Simon the Tanner, whose work would have made him unclean by ritual law. Peter ate at the same table as people who were outsiders and not Jewish. And the religious authorities called him on it. They questioned him, asking why he was disregarding the ritual laws and traditions of Judaism. And he recounted for them the vision he had seen where he had been told, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”[iv]

Peter made a lot of mistakes as a disciple, as we all do, but clearly Peter had learned what it meant to love one another. As he told the people questioning him:

 17 If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?[v]

Like Peter, each of us has been raised with biases against others – whether it’s a person’s appearance, education level, accent or nationality, religion or sexual orientation. We have been taught that some people are “other” or “less than.” We have been taught that some people “belong” and others “don’t.” And we have been taught wrongly.

Believing we are all God’s children, we must love one another. God created each one of us precious in God’s sight and loves each one of us.

Loving one another we are called to live in ways that people can see how our lives are changed by God’s presence and activity. And, by this, everyone will know that we are following Jesus.

Let us pray…
Loving God,
We give you thanks for Your Son Jesus who teaches us to love each other as we are first loved by You.
Help us live as disciples, with confidence in our identity as Your children and with obedience to Your Word.
Send us out as witnesses to Your transforming grace and mercy.
We pray in the name of Jesus.
Amen.

[i] Mt. 19:14, Mk. 10:14, Lk. 18:16
[ii] Deuteronomy 6:4-7
[iii] John 13:34
[iv] Acts 11:9
[v] Acts 11:16-17

Fourth Sunday of Easter

Acts 9:36-43

When a woman named Ann Reeves Jarvis died in 1905, her daughter Anna, who wanted to honor her work caring for soldiers on both sides of the Civil War and addressing public health concerns, began a campaign to establish a national “Mother’s Day.”  Six years later, then-president Wilson officially recognized the holiday that has been celebrated here in the States on the second Sunday in May for more than a century now. [i]

One of my preaching professors encouraged us to name the secular, or non-religious, events in our lives in our preaching because, regardless of your piety, if there is something significant happening in culture and society, it is going to shape how you hear the Good News. For some, you will celebrate today with gifts or flowers or special time shared together. But I think it’s important also to name that for some of you, today is painful because of infertility, miscarriage or the estrangement or death of a child. Others still will find joy elusive because your own relationship with your mother is difficult, or because your mother has died. Through our prayers and recognition, we hope to name the different ways that mothering happens in our lives.

On this Mother’s Day, especially, I am thinking about two very young children and their father whose mother and wife died last Saturday, May 4th after a four-week illness. Rachel Held Evans was a 37-year-old woman from Tennessee who was a popular Christian blogger and writer. She had grown up in a conservative evangelical Christian church. Her father was a religion professor who always encouraged her questions about theology, religion and faith. As an adult, her questions led her into other Christian communities and her faith expanded to make room for her doubts and her questions. Throughout this week on social media, people have quoted her writing and shared memories of encountering her and how her encouragement and affirmation made a difference in their lives. It has been said that her children, who are 3 and not yet 1, will get to know her through these stories and memories.

In the Acts of the Apostles Luke tells us about another woman, who is remembered for “her good works and acts of charity.” (v.36) According to Luke, Tabitha, whose Greek name was Dorcas, was a garment-maker, who created clothing for the widows, the ones who lived on the margins of society. [ii] Those same widow women are the ones preparing her body for burial when Peter is called to the house. From that, we can guess that she was unmarried. However, her importance to the community is signaled by Peter’s quick response and arrival in Joppa. When he arrives, the women show him all the tunics and other clothing that Tabitha had made “while she was with them.” (v. 39)

What happens next leaves us with questions of our own. It’s very likely that Luke wants us to remember the story of the little girl, the ones whose name we don’t know, who is raised by Jesus in chapter 8. She was the daughter of an important man and her house was surrounded by professional mourners when Jesus arrived, told them to leave and called out to her. Tabitha, who is named, twice, is surrounded by friends when Peter arrived, told them to leave and then told Tabitha to “get up.” (v 40) Luke-Acts doesn’t include the story of Lazarus being raised, but like Lazarus, Tabitha is never made immortal; she will die again.

So what meaning are we supposed to take from her revival?

Sometimes, stories from Scripture that tell about miracles of healing leave us confused and even angry when the people we know and love, ones who have lived with compassion and good works, still die.  There are not ready-made answers to questions about why bad things happen to good people. But watching her community grieve together, telling stories of the person they love and sharing their memories of her with others so that she could be remembered shows us one way of being church together: holding each other in love when we are vulnerable and hurting.

We could focus on what it means that Peter is now performing public acts of healing, and how others were believed when “he showed [Tabitha] to be alive.” (v. 41) But I think jumping to focus on Peter would make us miss the significance of Tabitha herself. She is not a mere prop in someone else’s story.

Tabitha is the only woman in Scripture who is called a disciple, a mathetai. As scholar Mitzi Smith writes, perhaps she was one of the disciples gathered in the upper room in Jerusalem when God’s Spirit rested on them. What we know from reading Luke’s text is that she cared for others selflessly.[iii] One of the ways I talk about discipleship or following Jesus is to say that, as disciples, our lives following Jesus bear witness to the grace we have first received; that we love because we are first loved by God.  Discipleship is loving God, loving God’s people and loving the world.

Each of these women - Ann Jarvis, Rachel Held Evans and Tabitha or Dorcas - lived lives that were testimonies to God’s love active in their lives and God’s Spirit empowering them to share that love with others. As we remember women in our lives today, may we be inspired to live with the Spirit of God that inhabited each of them – an immortal spirit of generosity, love and compassion.

In closing, I invite you to pray the prayer on your bulletin insert. It is adapted from Alcuin of York and was included in Rachel Held Evans’ book Searching for Sunday:[iv]

God, go with us.
Help us to be an honor to the church.
Give us the grace to follow Christ’s word, to be clear in our task and careful in our speech.
Give us open hands and joyful hearts.
Let Christ be on our lips.

May our lives reflect a love of truth and compassion.
Let no one come to us and go away sad.
May we offer hope to the poor, and solace to the disheartened.
Let us so walk before God’s people, that those who follow us might come into God’s kingdom.
Let Christ be on our lips.

Let us sow living seeds, words that are quick with life, that faith may be the harvest in people’s hearts.
In word and in example let Your light shine in the dark like the morning star.
Do not allow the wealth of the world or its enchantment flatter us into silence as to Your truth.
Do not permit the powerful, or judges, or our dearest friends to keep us from professing what is right.
Let Christ be on our lips.
Amen.

[i] Wikipedia contributors, "Mother's Day," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mother%27s_Day&oldid=896143656 (accessed May 10, 2019).[ii] Bartlett, David L.. Feasting on the Word: Year C, Volume 2: Lent through Eastertide. Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.
[iii] Mitzi J. Smith. “Commentary of Acts 9:36-43.” Workingpreacher.org Luther Seminary..
[iv] Evans, Rachel Held. Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church (p. 109). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

Third Sunday of Easter

John 21:1-19

When we hear today’s gospel from the 21st chapter of John, we don’t know how much time has passed since the crucifixion and the discovery of the empty tomb and the times that Jesus appeared to his disciples in the upper room and again to Thomas. The Fourth Gospel doesn’t include the account of how Jesus physically leaves the disciples and ascends to heaven that we will have just before Pentecost, so we lose that marker of time.

Whether it was the next day or later the same week, John tells us that Peter decided to go fishing and the others followed him, and when Jesus again appeared to them, no one recognized him.  It didn’t matter how many stories about Jesus they had heard or how many miracles they had witnessed. They didn’t recognize the teacher and Lord who they had been with for three years, the One who had overcome death on the cross.

But, isn’t it often the same for all of us? After the glorious celebration of the resurrection on Easter morning, how long is it before we no longer recognize when Jesus is with us? We are quick to judge Simon Peter and the others but we should not be too smug, thinking, surely we would know Jesus when we see Him.

But then, whether it was hearing his Word and the way he called them “Children”,
or seeing the miraculous abundance He provided in the nets now full of fish,
the beloved disciple did recognize Jesus.

And the Evangelist says,
“When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked, and jumped into the sea.” (John 21:7 NRS)

This is the same Simon Peter who asked Jesus to wash not only his feet but his head and his hands, also (13:9);
who promised he would lay down his life for Jesus (13:37);
who cut off the ear of the high priest’s slave on the night of Jesus’ arrest (18:10);
who denied Jesus three times in the courtyard of the high priest (18:15-27); and,
who ran to the tomb when Mary reported what she had seen there on Easter morning. (20:3-4)

While Simon Peter can be described as imperfect, reckless and fearful, he is also ardent, eager and faithful. Time and again, he is the first one whose faith moves him to action.

The way Simon Peter is described here evokes the memory of the story of Adam who hid his nakedness from God in Eden in Genesis 3. But Simon Peter doesn’t hide from Jesus; instead, he jumps into the sea so he can go to Him.

I believe the story of Simon Peter “walking wet” to be with Jesus is a story of baptismal faith being lived out.
In baptism, by water and by Word, we are washed clean – by grace, our sins are forgiven – and we are given new life, clothed in Christ and commanded to go and make disciples, to love and follow Jesus.

Simon Peter reminds us that faith is not merely informational; it is transformational.

Faith does something to us; it compels us to action, not for ourselves but that the world might know God’s forgiveness, grace, and love through us.

Simon Peter’s story lets us ask, “What does an active faith look like in the midst of our everyday lives?”

“Martin Luther taught that each morning we are to rise and say, “I am baptized into Christ” and then go about our daily affairs living in the covenant God made with us in our Baptism.”[i] Every day, wherever you are – at the sink brushing your teeth, in the shower or in the kitchen washing up from lunch –  you are invited to touch the water and remember your baptism.

Our baptismal covenant begins with promises to “live among God’s faithful people” and “hear the word of God and share in the Lord’s supper”.[ii] So, whenever we gather for worship and fellowship, read the Bible, and receive Holy Communion together we are living out our baptismal promises.

But the promises don’t stop here, with our activity within these four walls.

Our baptismal covenant also includes promises to “proclaim the good news of God in Christ through word and deed, serve all people following the example of Jesus, and strive for justice and peace in all the earth.”[iii]

It’s not as obvious how we live out these promises. But, let’s take a look around our own community here in Shelby.

Proclaiming the good news, let’s ask:
Who are the people who need to hear “God loves you”?
Who needs to know you remember them in your prayers?

Serving all people, let’s ask:
Who are our congregation’s neighbors, and how can we be praying for them?
Look around and see who’s missing. Not just individual members but whole groups of people? How can we support people who may not worship with us?

And striving for justice and peace, let’s ask:
How do we share the peace of Christ beyond our congregation? What does it mean to be a person of peace in a world filled with noise and violence?
What injustices exist in our own community and who is suffering?

Simon Peter’s witness invites us all to an active, reckless and imperfect faith, where we jump at the chance to follow Jesus in the world. We won’t always know the answers to these questions but we have confidence God is with us as we wrestle with them and alive into our baptismal covenant.

Let us pray….
Holy and life-giving God,
We give thanks for Your Son Jesus who calls us to Him even when we are reckless and imperfect.
Shower us with your Spirit, and renew our lives with your forgiveness, grace, and love.
Help us respond to the world with an active faith that bears witness to your mercy.
We pray in Jesus’ name.
Amen.

[i]“Faith practices have changed!”, Living Lutheran, ELCA. https://www.livinglutheran.org/2014/01/faith-practices-changed/, accessed 5/4/2019.
[ii] Evangelical Lutheran Worship, ELCA. 236.
[iii] ibid