Fifth Sunday of Easter

Returning to the portion of the letter to the early church that we heard this morning, the author is addressing the persecuted Christian community, encouraging them that God is the cornerstone upon whom the community rests. Our footing is sure, and our basic foundation is solid because it is found in God.

But then, he writes, “like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house….”

I don’t know about you, but when I hear the word “house,” I picture bricks and mortar, like this sanctuary. It’s true that we are cemented together by our common faith; but bricks disintegrate and mortar erodes, so I’m confident there’s more to this metaphor.

The Greek word at the root of both “build” and “house” here is οἶκος. And in addition to referring to construction projects with joists and beams, lintels and doorposts, this language is used to encourage Christians to edify and strengthen each other, and make each other more able to live as a community in Christ.

A spiritual house is not made of bricks and mortar;
instead it is a holy house where God dwells with the people of God,
a living church, filled with living disciples.

Bringing us all together probably gets even messier than a cement mixer at a construction site, but Christianity is a social faith; you can’t freelance it or go solo. Benedictine nun Joan Chittister writes:[i]

In community, we work out our connectedness to God, to one another, and to ourselves. It is in community where we find out who we really are.

It is life with another that shows my impatience and life with another that demonstrates my possessiveness and life with another that gives notice to my nagging devotion to the self. Life with someone else, in other words, doesn’t show me nearly as much about his or her shortcomings, as it does about my own…

In human relationships I learn that theory is not substitute for love. It is easy to talk about the love of God, it is another thing to practice it.

From Genesis on, we see God creating us for relationship.

First, we are created to live in relationship with God, and God loves us so much that God waits on us. Every time God’s people turn away or flee God’s presence, God is patient and waits for us to return.

And, in the meantime, God entrusts us with care for each other, too. Relationships don’t exist in a vacuum; they intertwine, overlap and weave together into a rich tapestry. Some may be more threadbare or worn, and others may be rough and even abrasive, but they are all of one piece, one people.

And because we are real people who live in the real world, we know heartbreak and elation. But together, we form 

a community that sustains us in the midst of suffering, of illness and disease, and in the face of tragic loss and death;

a community that gently corrects us, encourages us and affirms our gifts and talents;
a community that celebrates our achievements and thrills to watch us soar.

And because we are a community of the living and risen Christ,
and not some lifeless edifice, we are created to be life-giving,
not only to the people who gather here regularly, but to our neighbors. For our neighbors who are hurting, hungry or alone, God’s people are called to provide balm for their wounds, food for their bellies and love and mercy for their hearts.

Maybe you remember in the fifth Harry Potter movie when “Dumbledore’s Army” discovered the “room of requirement.”

It was a giant room where the students could practice defensive spells that would be used to fight the enemy, the death eaters. “The room of requirement” was a magical space that was only revealed to a person

“when they have real need of it. Sometimes it is there, and sometimes it is not, but when it appears, it is always equipped for the seeker’s needs.”[ii]

It could shift and adapt, and become what the world needed in a specific time and place.

Maybe that’s what it means to be living stones:
to be present for people who have a real need for God and to adapt and become what the world needs, here and now.

Let us pray…
Living God,
Thank you for being steadfast in your love for us
and for forming us into a holy people.
Give us your grace to become living stones, strengthening each other as we live as a community in Christ.
Show us how to be life-giving in a cynical world, that our words and actions would reflect your love and mercy, and not our own selfishness and possessiveness.
We pray in the name of your Son Jesus Christ,
Amen.

[i] Joan Chittister, OSB. Wisdom Distilled from the Daily.
[ii] “Order of the Phoenix.”

Third Sunday of Easter

For several months now, when the congregation council meets, we begin with a time of prayer and conversation around questions focused on “living every day as disciples” [of Jesus] in and through our ministry here at Ascension.

Most recently, we were talking about the joy of new life and what that looks like in our congregation. Next Sunday, we will celebrate a baptism of one of our children and in June, the baby for whom we’ve been praying is due. Certainly young children and baptisms are welcome signs of new life, but they are not the only place where we see new life taking root:

• We are building a little free pantry that will provide our neighbors the personal care items that SNAP and EBT don’t cover; 
• We are establishing a public prayer garden between the church and the columbarium to provide a quiet place for reflection and meditation; 
• We are confirming four of our middle school students on Pentecost in June, honoring the promises we made at their baptisms to support them and pray for them; 
• and we are paying attention to what it means to live wholly and well in all the different areas of our lives, whether it’s financial, physical, emotional, intellectual or spiritual matters.

God is birthing new things in our midst and in our lives.

In the epistle today the author speaks of what is being born anew in us when we receive the inheritance of faith and God’s love – that inheritance that we heard described last week as “imperishable, undefiled and unfading.”

Today, we hear again the word “imperishable” only this time it is describing not God’s love for us, but the nature of what is planted in us by God.

Do you remember the parable of the sower that shows up in both Luke 8 and Mark 4?

The sower goes out to sow, intending to plant in a particular place, but the seed falls in other places, too. Often we hear this parable as a charge to the church,
but I tend to think, instead,
that God, who is always the actor, is the sower, and we are more likely the ground. There are parts of us that are all of the things described in the parable — trampled, rocky, thorny and good — but the seed of the Good News is still sown into each one of us.

In the portion of the letter we read today, the comparison is made between the perishable seed and the imperishable seed, and the author affirms that what is planted in us is the latter – the imperishable seed.

Perishable seeds are like the most transient of spring flowers, the brightly colored annuals that fade and die.

But imperishable seed is like the seed from morning glories that falls off and lands on the ground, blooming again even more boldly the next season.

As the recipients of this imperishable seed, the living and transformational Word of God, sometimes we feel well-watered – confident of God’s care – and other times we feel parched and dry – separated somehow from God’s presence.

Remember though that God is the one who’s active here:

Regardless of our condition, God’s Word is at work in us and we are born anew, just as God is at work in our congregation and community, making all things new and stirring up new life in our ministries and lives.

Let us pray…
Holy God,
Help us discern what is perishable in our lives that it will not distract us.
Open our hearts to receive your imperishable love, and life-giving Word.
May your Holy Spirit direct us toward the new life that you are stirring among us.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior we pray.
Amen.

Second Sunday of Easter

This morning the lectionary begins reading First Peter, a letter, just 105 lines long, that was written to Christians whose suffering was known to its author.

Scholars argue about who the author was but generally it’s accepted now that it was not the apostle Simon Peter, but it was written by an anonymous Roman Christian who was familiar both with Peter’s teachings and with the circular letter form that Paul popularized in his communications to congregations. Scholars also agree that it was probably written sometime after Peter and Paul’s deaths in the 60s and after the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 CE.

This letter is addressed to churches in Asia Minor, which is modern-day Turkey, to communities of Christians who were scattered throughout the world and, like the Jews of the Diaspora (di-aspera), were living as “resident aliens”, “strangers”, or “exiles.”[i]

It’s important to note that the exclusion and hostility endured by first century Christians isn’t like anything most of us will experience in a free and democratic society, but, nonetheless,
the letter challenges us to look for the places where life and faith intersect for us, and to remember who we are as people of faith, living in the hope of the resurrection this Eastertide.

Here, in this first section of his letter, the author picks up on the same language of inheritance, that Paul employs in the eighth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans when he writes, “we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ…” [ii]

He declares that, by God’s great mercy, we are given “a new birth into “an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading.”[iii]

I have spoken before about how, when we are named co-heirs with Christ, we benefit from what some call the “sweet swap” in that Christ takes on all that is ours, and we in turn take on all that is his.

But here we are reminded that the cross isn’t simply a mathematical equation where we land in the black, squared up with God, or where we are declared safe by some divine umpire because of what Christ has done.

The cross does something to us, transforms us into something new.

And, in just three words, the author richly describes this new thing that God is doing for us, this precious inheritance we are given in faith in Christ:

• First it is imperishable – it won’t wither or wilt; it won’t rust out or erode; it won’t turn or decay. 
• Second, it is undefiled – pure, spotless, unblemished, pure and unstained; and, 
• Third, it is unfading – enduring, everlasting, permanent.

Often inheritances are described in terms of money and property, but they are not limited to material wealth and sometimes their worth is immeasurable.

When he died in 1974, comedian Jack Benny bequeathed the daily delivery of a single red rose to his wife for the rest of her life.

Theologian Peter Marty tells the story of another dear inheritance, recorded by a concentration camp survivor in Boston’s Holocaust Museum; the woman wrote

A childhood friend of mine once found a raspberry in the camp and carried it in her pocket all day to present that night to me on a leaf. Imagine a world in which your entire possession is one raspberry and you give it to your friend.[iv]

Still, roses and raspberries are temporal, and will not last forever. And because we have not experienced an inheritance like the one described here, too often, we succumb to the lie that God’s love for us is none of these things:

• Believing God’s love is conditional, we treat God as a scorekeeper, as if God could sour on us, if our sins are too great, or our piety too modest; 
• Believing God’s love is flawed, we blame the God who created and loves us for the suffering we inflict on each other, and the multitude of ways that we hurt each other; 
• Believing God’s love is temporary, we call God fickle (and any number of other names) when we cannot hear God speaking to us, or feel God’s presence in our lives.

The Good News this letter delivers to the struggling first-century Christians, and to us, is that even when we forget how God truly loves us, God remembers and continues to love us and remains imperishable, undefiled and unfading in his zeal for us.

Let us pray…
Risen Christ,
Lead us in rejoicing in the living hope that is ours in faith.
Fix our hearts on the inheritance you have given us,
that we would love what you command and desire what you promise,
always remembering the love of our life-giving God.
Amen.

[i] See Acts 7.
[ii] Romans 8:16-17
[iii] 1 Peter 1:4
[iv] Bartlett, David L.; Barbara Brown Bartlett. Feasting on the Word: Year A, Volume 2: Lent through Eastertide (Feasting on the Word: Year A volume) (Kindle Locations 14185-14188). Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.