This summer we will continue studying Christian words that have lost their meaning and power and how they can be restored. The classes will be in the Chapel and will begin at 9:45am. The first class will be at June 30.

 Topics and Teachers

June 30: Sin, Edgar Palacios

July 7: Mercy, Edgar Palacios

July 14: Believing and Faith, Susan Sevier

July 21: Forgiveness and Repentance , Rachel Johnson

July 28: John 3:16, Eugenia Reyes

August 4: Born Again , Amy Butler

August 11: Heaven, Raimundo Barreto

August 18: The Lord’s Supper, Jason Smith

For more information please contact with Myra Houser, myra.ann.houser@gmail.com and Daniel Alcazar, Daniel.alcazar@gmail.com All will be welcome!

Acts 2:1-20

Sermon Audio

Happy Pentecost Sunday to you!

We’ve come a long way together since Easter, haven’t we? During our series called Eyes Wide Open we paid attention, looked around for resurrection. We know that we have Easter Sunday, but there are so many Easter moments, moments of resurrection that happen all around us. We just need to pay attention to see them. So, the season of Easter, we were tasked with the challenge of keeping our eyes open and watching for Jesus and one another.

And we heard stories of resurrection each week in worship from all of you in a weekly series called “The Gospel According to…” You all stood before us and shared personal stories about God showing up in the midst of illness, pain, broken relationships and everyday life. They weren’t all pretty stories, but they all pointed us toward the light, toward the truth that God’s story resonates within each of us when we are paying attention and looking around.

And today is Pentecost Sunday. Besides the fact that you all look very lovely in red, it happens to be one of my favorite holidays in the church year. For many years, it was a holiday that Baptists mostly overlooked and didn’t really celebrate, but as we know we are a different kind of Baptist, so I’m glad to see us here today, ready and listening for Holy Spirit.

Pentecost is the Sunday when we remember and celebrate Holy Spirit and when it swept into the lives of the disciples and created utter chaos. Doesn’t that sound fun? Isn’t that exactly what you want to hear- we are celebrating chaos and confusion. Sounds like a normal Sunday to me, actually.

It’s the Sunday when we remember 50 days Jesus’ resurrection and all of those antics and his ascension into heaven when the disciples were waiting to be clothed with power from on high. According to Jesus, that was going to happen and the disciples were ready and waiting for it. It’s often called the birthday of the church and we have created so many ways to celebrate and remember the Sunday that often involves, languages, fire, birthday cakes and the color red

Churches have great stories about how they celebrate Pentecost- like when the sound system went out before the cacophony of voices could start, or when the birthday cake purchased for the children’s sermon to celebrate the Birthday of the Church was smashed into the carpet right before they started to sing Happy Birthday, but one of my favorite stories comes from MaryAnn McKibben Dana, a Presbyterian Pastor just down the road in Vienna. She writes on her blog:

“Pentecost in this particular congregation is always beautiful. The church has a huge round communion table that the flower guild fills with red, orange and yellow candles—twenty-five or thirty of them, at various heights, on a lovely red tablecloth. The effect is quite dramatic. They also turn all the chairs to face the exterior windows, to represent our call as the church, to be focused outward.

I had set up a way to dramatize the reading of Acts 2. During the verse when the tongues of fire rest on the disciples, the reader paused and several people (mainly children and youth) lightly tossed about half a dozen streamers of red, orange and yellow crepe paper across the heads of the congregation, while the bells did some free-ringing. People figured out quickly that they were supposed to receive the streamers and toss them in a different direction, forming a web of sorts. Happy chaos ensued. Lots of smiles.

Then at the end of the service, my colleague was praying after the offering right before the closing hymn when a woman close to the front of the meeting house yelled “Fire! Fire!”

I thought, “Oh my goodness, is this is a skit? Or is she testifying?”

I opened my eyes and saw. The communion table was on fire.

One of the tapers had burned down and, aided by an unfortunately-aimed air conditioning vent, had ignited the red tablecloth—a sheer billowy thing that, in retrospect, was basically festive kindling.

Several of us sprang up and stood stupidly around the table for several seconds. I think we were all trying to figure out how to smother the fire, but the only thing available was the Amazing Flammable Cloth of Doom.

Finally my colleague yelled, “The baptismal font!” Which someone promptly brought forward. So in an absurd clash of symbols, the waters of baptism actually extinguished the fires of the Spirit.”[1]

And that is Pentecost. Although, I know that she did not set out to create a scene of utter and complete chaos, it pretty much accurately describes the scene that we encounter in the church and as the historic account we read in Acts. It was crazy.

In our reading from Acts, the disciples and others are gathered together in one place, in Jerusalem. Remember, Jesus has left. He’s resurrected and he’s ascended into heaven and he told them to hold tight until power came upon them to go into the world. So, they’re holding tight in Jerusalem. They are sitting in a room together, probably eating, catching up on life, telling stories, you know the things people do when they get together.

All of a sudden, a violent wind comes rushing through. The windows whip open and the lunch plates fly off the table. They stand up in total confusion as to what is happening. And then, it says the power of God, Holy Spirit came into them and they started to speak in other languages as they each suddenly had the ability to do so.

The text says that there were many devout Jews from every nation, meaning they spoke lots of different languages in Jerusalem. Jerusalem was a hub for trade, commerce—people were always coming and going bringing ideas and languages and cultures with them. As the crowd gathered because the sound and the wind had pushed the disciples out into the street, each person started to hear a disciples speaking in their own language.

The Galilean disciples were speaking in the language of the Medes and Parthians. Maybe Mary Magdalene was speaking in the language of those from Mesopotamia. No doubt, some of the people gathered around could only look in bewilderment and think, “Her?”

The chaotic scene was breaking forth in the middle of a busy Jerusalem street and the languages were flowing, all of them talking about God’s power and the good news of God’s love wondering, “what does all of this mean?”

Right then, one of the more cynical onlookers said, “They are filled with new wine.”

What follows is Peter’s response, which is known as his first sermon. It’s like Peter said, “I don’t understand the question and I’m not going to respond to it.”

Peter’s reply to this one questioning the legitimacy of what was happening is hilarious to me. He said, “these people are not drunk as you think, because it’s only 9am.” I love that the time of day is the reason for thinking that no one is drunk.

But after his less than convincing argument against disciple drunkness, he does give the real reason for the disciples’ seemingly erratic behavior. He quotes the prophet Joel. Joel had told the people that “when the Spirit of God is poured out on the people, that sons and daughters wil prophesy. Young men will see visions and olf men shall dream dreams.”

Joel didn’t know what that day or those days would look like because surely, the Spirit of God had been poured out on the people before, but this time- they were waiting and they were paying attention and when it happened, they were ready to receive the power that came with it.

The disciples started speaking in different languages because they were in a cosmopolitan center. There were people at every turn who spoke a different langauge and desperately needed to hear this good news about God’s love. The gospel had been opened up to everyone.

The good news had always been open to everyone, but we all need a reminder of that now and then don’t we? There was no reason to be locked up in a room anymore, terrified and afraid and worried that the resurrected Jesus was a ghost. They were set loose on the world, going out to make disciples, to remind everyone that God was love and that Jesus had been the one to demonstrate what love looked like with flesh on.

It’s great that the disciples received the power to speak in other languages, but the meaning behind that is much greater. The disciples could now connect with everyone—God’s radical inclusiveness was growing and the love of God was spreading. No longer, were people separated by language, by culture, by nationality. Everyone had the power of God within them to share and express this love of God.

“On Pentecost day, God spoke outside the walls of temple religiosity and outside the halls of political power. God spoke in the streets. The divine voice manifested in all languages and in all peoples, not just in the imperial Latin of the Roman occupiers who conquered the promised land and not just in the language of the religious elite who restricted access to God with oppressive temple taxes. Rather, God spoke in the vernacular of the everyday and the everywhere.”[2]

But when this happens, things get chaotic because differences make us uncomfortable and can throw us into a tailspin. Sounds like that’s exactly what God was up to on that Pentecost. God was up to getting rid of order and the “way we’ve always done things” and instead, throwing open windows and doors to the possibility of what might be.

I started thinking this week about what languages would be radical for us to speak in Washington, DC in 2013. Certainly many people in this city, even many people in this room speak multiple languages. This morning alone, we’ve worshiped in Spanish and in English. But what are the languages that would actually share the love of God in our city and in our world. What languages would reach out to our neighborhood, to people who long for connection with others and with God?

Perhaps the language of empathy. People long to know someone can sit with them in their pain.

We could all do some work on the language of welcome. Instead of saying who we aren’t, we should say who we are because of the power of Holy Spirit sweeping in and turning everything upsidedown.

Maybe you long for the language of kindness. Think about when you see that moment on the metro when someone stands up to let someone else sit down and the way the goodness of kindness rushes over you.

Others might need the language of hope. If you hear someone else speaking hope, usually we are more likely to believe it.

I wonder too about the language of justice. Around here, we’ve been talking a lot about immigration reform. No one in this country should ever be called “an illegal.” The language of Justice calls us to recognize that language matters and the dignity of life is at stake.

I think most people in this city need the language of community. The way we speak this to one another is allowing life on life to happen. We eat together, we celebrate together, we cry together. We even share our doubts together. We are a better Jesus-following crew when we do it together.

And there’s always the language of love. Maybe that’s the one we all need a little more work on because the others seems to flow naturally from it.

There are consequences to speaking in these languages though—the doors of the church get thrown open. People different from us start showing up with different ideas and thoughts about how to do things. Certainly, the disciples dealt with this on that birth day of the church.

The power came sweeping in, welcoming everyone, but then that meant…they had to welcome everyone. Our stories of encounters with God are radical and life-altering. They point us toward the light, toward God and toward one another. But so do our languages.

Our resurrection stories find completion in the day of Pentecost. The power has come rushing in, setting us free and flinging wide the doors of love and welcome to the church. It’s our job to keep listening for those languages, practicing them and figuring out what new languages we need to learn to speak to make sure the doors of the church are flung open every day, not just on pentecost. It’s hard work and I know that together, we can do it, bringing more love, more peace and more justice to this world.

The disciples and those gathered that day sat around a table and probably broke bread together. It sounds familiar to the story I shared about the church in Vienna. Fire came in and caused utter and complete chaos and disorder.

We’re going to make a little chaos of our own this morning and remember that feeling of power being created when people came together to create something bigger than themselves. I assure you that fire is not involved though. I’m sure you’ve been wondering what these t-shaped bars are up here. Each of you has a strip of fabric, if you need one, raise your hand and an usher will bring you one.

Together, we will create a visual representation of what all of us coming together on Pentecost looks like in art. In a few moments, you’ll be invited forward to loop your ribbon around the bars. We’ll end up with a beautiful display of flowing fabric, catching the wind of God’s spirit as we carry it out into the world this week.

As you come forward and loop on your fabric, consider what language you represent and which language of God you need to work on. We bring ourselves and our stories to this place to share the power of God’s love.

Okay, it’s really a synagogue, not a bar.  But there will be two rabbis and me next Monday night at Sixth & I Synagogue, along with journalists from The Washington Post and The Atlantic, all together to have a conversation about female clergy.  I hope you’ll consider coming out and joining us; the panelists are wonderful and Sixth & I is a great place.  Read more about the event here.

During June, we will participate in a worship series on the Gospel texts meeting people who experienced Jesus from the margins.  What does it mean to be on the margins?  How do we see Jesus when we’re on the margins? All are welcome and invited to join us in this special worship series.

May 26, Trinity Sunday

June 2, From the Margins: A Soldier Calvary’s 151st Anniversary Sunday          

June 9, From the Margins: A Sad Mother

June 16, From the Margins: A Sinner

June 23, From the Margins: A Sufferer

John 17:20-26

Sermon Audio

Although I was required to take both Old Testament and New Testament Survey courses in college, I can tell you without a doubt that most everything I know about the stories of the Bible came from Arch books.

And it’s a good thing for those Arch books, for they inspired more than one very holy Halloween costume, among other things!  (That’s a long story for another time…).

They also taught me stories we don’t hear too much in worship.  As you know, around here we follow the Revised Common Lectionary, a three year cycle of scripture passages used to guide worship by much of the Christian world.  And not every single thing in the Bible is included in the RCL.  For example, in the RCL over a three year period, there are 84 different passages from the Gospel of Luke and only 2 passages from the book of Daniel, a small book in the Minor Prophets that tells the famous story of Shadrach, Mesach, and Abendnego in the fiery furnace.  Remember that?

Daniel in the lions’ den?  No?

Would you like to borrow my Arch books?

The book of Daniel is a story about exile, when Jerusalem was sacked and the Israelites were carted off to Babylon where they struggled to maintain their identity and culture as a people, and their understanding of Yahweh as their God.  There’s a lot of drama in the book of Daniel, including but not limited to lions and fiery furnaces.  But I wanted to read you part of the story, from Daniel chapter 3 (since this part NEVER appears in the lectionary readings):

King Nebuchadnezzar made a golden statue whose height was sixty cubits and whose width was six cubits; he set it up on the plain of Dura in the province of Babylon. Then King Nebuchadnezzar sent for the satraps, the prefects, and the governors, the counselors, the treasurers, the justices, the magistrates, and all the officials of the provinces, to assemble and come to the dedication of the statue that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up…. When they were standing before the statue that Nebuchadnezzar had set up, the herald proclaimed aloud, ‘You are commanded, O peoples, nations, and languages, that when you hear the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, drum, and entire musical ensemble, you are to fall down and worship the golden statue that King Nebuchadnezzar has set up. Whoever does not fall down and worship shall immediately be thrown into a furnace of blazing fire.’ Therefore, as soon as all the peoples heard the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, drum, and entire musical ensemble, all the peoples, nations, and languages fell down and worshipped the golden statue that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up.

That’s right.  The king built a shiny statue and decided it would make him feel a little better about all the different people he’d captured and was trying to integrate into society there in Babylon if everybody, uniformly, practiced and believed the same exact thing.  So he made a rule that everybody had to bow down to his statue as soon as they heard the trumpet blast.

And I suppose that it calmed King Nebuchadnezzar’s fears about different opinions among the people and any potential dissention in the ranks when he gave the command for the trumpets to blow and then looked with satisfaction out of his palace windows and saw all the people—everybody—bowing down in unison before the statue he’d put up.

Now, really, even if you hadn’t heard this little piece of the story of Daniel before today, this narrative from ancient Babylon shouldn’t sound to unfamiliar to you and me.  In every human society ever there have been movements (some more successful than others) to insure conformity.  We human beings seem to feel more comfortable when we all know the score, when everybody is on the same page, when we don’t ever need to worry about any kind of challenge to the status quo.

But just read the book of Daniel…or, head down to the National Holocaust Museum…and you’ll quickly remember that imposed conformity like this has horrific and disastrous results…

…which might lead you and me to scratch our heads when we read the Gospel lesson for today, which is a continuation of Jesus’ Farewell Discourse, part of the Gospel of John that we’ve been reading over the past few weeks in worship.  The little portion we heard today is from John chapter 17, which is known by biblical scholars as the High Priestly Prayer.  It’s a prayer of Jesus that occurs in the book of John immediately before Jesus and his disciples head out to the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus is betrayed and the events of Holy Week begin to unfold (also deftly covered in an Arch book, FYI).

This is a beautiful prayer in which Jesus, who knows what’s ahead for his disciples, prays for them…and even prays for those who would come after them (us!).  He prays for protection and comfort…and he prays for unity.  Listen again: “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one….  The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one….”

Now, there’s no coincidence that these words of Jesus’ prayer were included in the Gospel of John.  Remember that the Gospel accounts were written long after the events John’s writer was recounting, and well into the establishment of the first church.  And, as you’re aware from reading any of the Epistles of the New Testament, there was anything BUT “one-ness” in the first church.  Squabbles over how to do just about everything were dominating the time of the church’s leaders, and they were desperately trying to figure out how to create communities that reflected the unity Jesus was talking about, instead of a group that looked like a bunch of children misbehaving.  They were communicating to the world around them that they were, if not completely crazy, then at least not very much fun to be around.

In other words, the church’s internal conflicts were not doing much to advance the message of Jesus.

Hmmm, 2000 years go by and nothing much changes, does it?  We Christians don’t get along much better today than they did in the early church, often because some among us would read the words of Jesus here and cry foul!  See what Jesus says right here?!?  We HAVE to believe the same things.  We HAVE to practice our faith in the same way.  We HAVE to understand God through a uniform rubric.  We HAVE to value conformity in order to live the message of Jesus.  He says it right here!!

Right?

Well, I’m not so sure.  I do feel sure that when Jesus prayed that they and we might be one, he was praying for unity…but unity is far different from conformity.

Think for a minute about the group for whom Jesus was praying that night…!  Some were rough-hewn fishers who’d spent their lives in manual labor.  Some were educated tax collectors and government leaders.  Some were women, oppressed by a society that would never accept them as equals.  Some had only the desire for power and prestige; some had a desperate longing for affirmation and relationship.  Like any collected group of human beings on the planet, the disciples came to the task of following Jesus from different life experiences, diverse perspectives, even radically varying convictions about their faith.  There was no conformity there, and Jesus was not about the business of imposing a value of conformity on the first disciples.

Notice he didn’t pray, “Father, silence the questions among them, and grant that they may always agree…”.

No, he prayed for them…and he prayed for us…that we would do the hard, hard work of relationship, of messy engagement with each other, so that the world would know that DESPITE our differences, we come together in unity to proclaim a Gospel of love and reconciliation to the world around us.  It’s not conformity…it’s a unity with integrity.

What does this mean?  What does this mean for a community like ours?  Well, it means that we welcome and nurture diversity among us…we don’t have to be alarmed if we hold differing opinions, if we don’t understand each other, even if we offend one other.

It means when we encounter conflict or discord, we listen to one another and we prioritize the health of our relationships and our community over our own preferences and even our own comfort.

It means the transference of the Gospel message of love and peace, of justice and reconciliation is always our first priority, its communication an endeavor we undertake with our whole lives joined together in all our diversity for a larger purpose.

You recall in the sequence of events that night of Jesus’ Farewell Discourse, the disciples had celebrated the Passover together.  They’d gathered around a table.  Some in the group sat at opposite ends of the table, just to keep the peace.  Nobody really wanted to talk to Judas, who’d begun to act a little suspicious by then.  Peter was (predictably) the loudmouth at the table, telling stories everybody had heard about a million times.  And John, such a teacher’s pet, of course grabbed the seat right next to Jesus and watched everything he did with rapt attention, trying (as ever) to get on his good side.

And as the evening with all the predictable joys and tensions that come whenever you get a group of people together, came to a close, Jesus picked up a loaf of bread and a cup of wine and invited them to remember why they were there.  They didn’t know exactly what he meant when he said the words, “This is my body broken for you…this cup is the new covenant in my blood…” but you know that they felt something strong and true as they offered the bread and wine to each another.

In that moment, in spite of all their differences, together they ate and remembered the unity of conviction that drew them together and held them connected.

And for that moment, anyway, they changed from a rag tag group of individuals staring confused at the task ahead of them…to a band of disciples, focused with purpose and unified in conviction.

John wanted the first church to remember and relive the first disciples’ experience.  And perhaps in the memory of that meal even we can truly know what Jesus meant when he prayed for our unity.  For Christian faith, the life of a Christ-follower in the community, is certainly not about conformity.  But it is a unity, a beautiful unity that seeks to be part of God’s biggest hopes and dreams for our world.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Lutheran theologian who lived and worked in Germany during World War II and who was executed by the Nazis for his resistance to their regime, said it very well.  He wrote: “Christian unity is not an ideal which we must realize or actualize.  It is rather a reality created by God in Christ, in which we may participate.”

And we, you and me, together in this place, are not tasked with creating a standard to which we must each conform.  Rather, we’re invited to gather around the table, to take the bread and the wine together, to join our voices in worship, to put our hands to the task of healing our world…all of this, even in our diversity…especially in our diversity…participating in God’s work of healing our world.

Together.

United.

Amen.

Eyes Wide Open: From Staring Confused to Focused With Purpose

John 17:20-26

Although I was required to take both Old Testament and New Testament Survey courses in college, I can tell you without a doubt that most everything I know about the stories of the Bible came from Arch books.

And it’s a good thing for those Arch books, for they inspired more than one very holy Halloween costume, among other things!  (That’s a long story for another time…).

They also taught me stories we don’t hear too much in worship.  As you know, around here we follow the Revised Common Lectionary, a three year cycle of scripture passages used to guide worship by much of the Christian world.  And not every single thing in the Bible is included in the RCL.  For example, in the RCL over a three year period, there are 84 different passages from the Gospel of Luke and only 2 passages from the book of Daniel, a small book in the Minor Prophets that tells the famous story of Shadrach, Mesach, and Abendnego in the fiery furnace.  Remember that?

Daniel in the lions’ den?  No?

Would you like to borrow my Arch books?

The book of Daniel is a story about exile, when Jerusalem was sacked and the Israelites were carted off to Babylon where they struggled to maintain their identity and culture as a people, and their understanding of Yahweh as their God.  There’s a lot of drama in the book of Daniel, including but not limited to lions and fiery furnaces.  But I wanted to read you part of the story, from Daniel chapter 3 (since this part NEVER appears in the lectionary readings):

King Nebuchadnezzar made a golden statue whose height was sixty cubits and whose width was six cubits; he set it up on the plain of Dura in the province of Babylon. Then King Nebuchadnezzar sent for the satraps, the prefects, and the governors, the counselors, the treasurers, the justices, the magistrates, and all the officials of the provinces, to assemble and come to the dedication of the statue that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up…. When they were standing before the statue that Nebuchadnezzar had set up, the herald proclaimed aloud, ‘You are commanded, O peoples, nations, and languages, that when you hear the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, drum, and entire musical ensemble, you are to fall down and worship the golden statue that King Nebuchadnezzar has set up. Whoever does not fall down and worship shall immediately be thrown into a furnace of blazing fire.’ Therefore, as soon as all the peoples heard the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, drum, and entire musical ensemble, all the peoples, nations, and languages fell down and worshipped the golden statue that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up.

That’s right.  The king built a shiny statue and decided it would make him feel a little better about all the different people he’d captured and was trying to integrate into society there in Babylon if everybody, uniformly, practiced and believed the same exact thing.  So he made a rule that everybody had to bow down to his statue as soon as they heard the trumpet blast.

And I suppose that it calmed King Nebuchadnezzar’s fears about different opinions among the people and any potential dissention in the ranks when he gave the command for the trumpets to blow and then looked with satisfaction out of his palace windows and saw all the people—everybody—bowing down in unison before the statue he’d put up.

Now, really, even if you hadn’t heard this little piece of the story of Daniel before today, this narrative from ancient Babylon shouldn’t sound to unfamiliar to you and me.  In every human society ever there have been movements (some more successful than others) to insure conformity.  We human beings seem to feel more comfortable when we all know the score, when everybody is on the same page, when we don’t ever need to worry about any kind of challenge to the status quo.

But just read the book of Daniel…or, head down to the National Holocaust Museum…and you’ll quickly remember that imposed conformity like this has horrific and disastrous results…

…which might lead you and me to scratch our heads when we read the Gospel lesson for today, which is a continuation of Jesus’ Farewell Discourse, part of the Gospel of John that we’ve been reading over the past few weeks in worship.  The little portion we heard today is from John chapter 17, which is known by biblical scholars as the High Priestly Prayer.  It’s a prayer of Jesus that occurs in the book of John immediately before Jesus and his disciples head out to the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus is betrayed and the events of Holy Week begin to unfold (also deftly covered in an Arch book, FYI).

This is a beautiful prayer in which Jesus, who knows what’s ahead for his disciples, prays for them…and even prays for those who would come after them (us!).  He prays for protection and comfort…and he prays for unity.  Listen again: “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one….  The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one….”

Now, there’s no coincidence that these words of Jesus’ prayer were included in the Gospel of John.  Remember that the Gospel accounts were written long after the events John’s writer was recounting, and well into the establishment of the first church.  And, as you’re aware from reading any of the Epistles of the New Testament, there was anything BUT “one-ness” in the first church.  Squabbles over how to do just about everything were dominating the time of the church’s leaders, and they were desperately trying to figure out how to create communities that reflected the unity Jesus was talking about, instead of a group that looked like a bunch of children misbehaving.  They were communicating to the world around them that they were, if not completely crazy, then at least not very much fun to be around.

In other words, the church’s internal conflicts were not doing much to advance the message of Jesus.

Hmmm, 2000 years go by and nothing much changes, does it?  We Christians don’t get along much better today than they did in the early church, often because some among us would read the words of Jesus here and cry foul!  See what Jesus says right here?!?  We HAVE to believe the same things.  We HAVE to practice our faith in the same way.  We HAVE to understand God through a uniform rubric.  We HAVE to value conformity in order to live the message of Jesus.  He says it right here!!

Right?

Well, I’m not so sure.  I do feel sure that when Jesus prayed that they and we might be one, he was praying for unity…but unity is far different from conformity.

Think for a minute about the group for whom Jesus was praying that night…!  Some were rough-hewn fishers who’d spent their lives in manual labor.  Some were educated tax collectors and government leaders.  Some were women, oppressed by a society that would never accept them as equals.  Some had only the desire for power and prestige; some had a desperate longing for affirmation and relationship.  Like any collected group of human beings on the planet, the disciples came to the task of following Jesus from different life experiences, diverse perspectives, even radically varying convictions about their faith.  There was no conformity there, and Jesus was not about the business of imposing a value of conformity on the first disciples.

Notice he didn’t pray, “Father, silence the questions among them, and grant that they may always agree…”.

No, he prayed for them…and he prayed for us…that we would do the hard, hard work of relationship, of messy engagement with each other, so that the world would know that DESPITE our differences, we come together in unity to proclaim a Gospel of love and reconciliation to the world around us.  It’s not conformity…it’s a unity with integrity.

What does this mean?  What does this mean for a community like ours?  Well, it means that we welcome and nurture diversity among us…we don’t have to be alarmed if we hold differing opinions, if we don’t understand each other, even if we offend one other.

It means when we encounter conflict or discord, we listen to one another and we prioritize the health of our relationships and our community over our own preferences and even our own comfort.

It means the transference of the Gospel message of love and peace, of justice and reconciliation is always our first priority, its communication an endeavor we undertake with our whole lives joined together in all our diversity for a larger purpose.

You recall in the sequence of events that night of Jesus’ Farewell Discourse, the disciples had celebrated the Passover together.  They’d gathered around a table.  Some in the group sat at opposite ends of the table, just to keep the peace.  Nobody really wanted to talk to Judas, who’d begun to act a little suspicious by then.  Peter was (predictably) the loudmouth at the table, telling stories everybody had heard about a million times.  And John, such a teacher’s pet, of course grabbed the seat right next to Jesus and watched everything he did with rapt attention, trying (as ever) to get on his good side.

And as the evening with all the predictable joys and tensions that come whenever you get a group of people together, came to a close, Jesus picked up a loaf of bread and a cup of wine and invited them to remember why they were there.  They didn’t know exactly what he meant when he said the words, “This is my body broken for you…this cup is the new covenant in my blood…” but you know that they felt something strong and true as they offered the bread and wine to each another.

In that moment, in spite of all their differences, together they ate and remembered the unity of conviction that drew them together and held them connected.

And for that moment, anyway, they changed from a rag tag group of individuals staring confused at the task ahead of them…to a band of disciples, focused with purpose and unified in conviction.

John wanted the first church to remember and relive the first disciples’ experience.  And perhaps in the memory of that meal even we can truly know what Jesus meant when he prayed for our unity.  For Christian faith, the life of a Christ-follower in the community, is certainly not about conformity.  But it is a unity, a beautiful unity that seeks to be part of God’s biggest hopes and dreams for our world.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Lutheran theologian who lived and worked in Germany during World War II and who was executed by the Nazis for his resistance to their regime, said it very well.  He wrote: “Christian unity is not an ideal which we must realize or actualize.  It is rather a reality created by God in Christ, in which we may participate.”

And we, you and me, together in this place, are not tasked with creating a standard to which we must each conform.  Rather, we’re invited to gather around the table, to take the bread and the wine together, to join our voices in worship, to put our hands to the task of healing our world…all of this, even in our diversity…especially in our diversity…participating in God’s work of healing our world.

Together.

United.

Amen.

On May 19th we celebrate Pentecost Sunday, the day when we remember the chaos Holy Spirit brought to the early church, continuing to turn everything upside down as they listened for the voice of God. Holy Spirit swept in to the lives of those earliest disciples and we’ll study Acts 2:1-20 together.

It’s become a bit of a tradition at Calvary to wear red in honor of the liturgical color for the day. Sport some red and join us for worship at 11am.

John 14:23-29

Sermon Audio

I’ve been getting a lot of comments these past few weeks about the length of the worship services recently.  Mostly from the nursery workers.  We work very hard to plan worship that lasts about an hour on Sunday mornings, but sometimes, it’s true, we go over a little.  I was thinking our services may have run a bit longer than usual because during the season of Easter we’ve had the opportunity to hear your amazing personal resurrection stories, in addition to some incredible music.  But as I’ve received comments about this the past few weeks I realized–you know, most of the elements of our worship are pretty fixed.  There’s nothing that can really be adjusted except…hey, wait a minute.  Maybe all these thoughtful critiques are mentioned to me, as I have direct control over one element of the service every week…the sermon!

Pastors, especially Baptist pastors in my observation, are perpetually characterized as universally long-winded because of some of our colleagues who do things like use the phrase, “And, in conclusion…” before continuing with the last forty-five minutes of the sermon.  (A microphone is a powerful thing.)  But I guess even the most succinct among us sometime go on longer than we should.

I’ll try not to do that today, but I would like to point out that going on and on for far longer than necessary is exactly what Jesus does in the part of the book of John where today’s Gospel reading is found!

The lesson today is from John chapter 14, and it’s part of Jesus’ Farewell Discourse.  It begins back in chapter 13 when the Apostle Peter begins to suspect that something’s up, and asks Jesus in confusion: “Where are you going?” and concludes with Jesus’ prayer and commissioning of his disciples in chapter 17.  Four chapters!  Throughout all of these chapters Jesus keeps saying, in various ways, “I’m going away, you can’t follow me, don’t be upset.”  He never actually uses the phrase “And, in conclusion,” but Jesus was being a bit like one of those Baptist preachers who go on and on (you know those kind!), because it took an awfully long time for him to finish a sermon with a pretty simple message.

Maybe Jesus kept going because as he spoke, all he could see was the look of terror on the disciples’ faces and he wanted to say something–anything–that would comfort them.

The way that the writer of John tells this part of the Gospel story paints the picture of a group of scared, disorganized disciples who, though they’d followed Jesus around for almost three years by now, had little or no understanding of what was actually happening and about to happen in the life of Jesus.  They seemed confused (as usual) about what Jesus came to teach them, even in these final moments as Jesus struggled to get one last tutorial in before everything unraveled.  They could hear Jesus talking about leaving but they couldn’t seem to get their minds around that reality.  The change ahead of them seemed overwhelming and crippling, even.

And they were worried.  Panicked, even.  You can’t blame them, really.

We are blessed in this congregation with several members who have reached quite notable anniversaries of their own births.  For those of us still in the first half of a century, we can look to some of you who are, say 80!, and learn some lessons about living long and well.  There are, of course, several key factors that indicate long life, including some of our favorite things like diet and exercise.

But studies on aging show that one of the major predictors of life expectancy is a person’s ability to deal in a healthy way with change.  You know, take the curve balls life throws your way with grace and accommodation.  Still, when it comes to change, I’d bet that most of us are not fans.  Change is hard; it pushes us to grow and stretch in ways that are not always comfortable.  Change usually involves loss and certainly some fear.  There’s much about any kind of change that is out of our control and, very often, not to our liking.  Change is hard.

The disciples were feeling it in those moments, and Jesus could see it.  So you can’t really blame him for letting his sermon get out of hand.  He was trying to comfort them!

So after going around and around and around, trying to make his point but not seeming to get it across with any level of clarity, Jesus tried one last time.  “I’m going away, you can’t follow me, don’t be upset.”

(Panic, panic, panic!)

So Jesus explains to them that they won’t be alone; that an advocate is coming; that God will not abandon them.  And then he leaves them with the best blessing he has: peace.

Peace, to cover their confusion.  Peace, to soothe their anxiety.  Peace, to ease their fear.  Peace, to give them courage.

And he’s not just saying it offhand, the way we ask each other how are you? As a greeting but don’t really want to know….  This peace Jesus is giving them in this moment is a real, tangible thing, something divine, a gift from God to hang onto tight when change washed over them like a tidal wave in the days and years ahead and they wondered if they’d ever be able to live faithful lives of discipleship at all, much less keep going for one more day.

When I was 19 years old, I saw something I had never seen before in my entire life.  First the first time ever, I saw a woman preach a sermon.  As you might guess, that experience changed my life and started me out on a journey that has led me to have control of this very microphone today…!  That first woman I ever saw preach became a pastor to me, and when I left that church to go to seminary and begin my own training to someday be a pastor, she called me into her office and said “I want to give you something.”

She handed me a blanket, of all things.  It was a brightly colored, scratchy woven woolen blanket with crazy fringe all around the edges.  She told me that this was her blessing for me as I went into the future ahead of me.  Personally I thought it was kind of a strange “going to seminary” blessing myself, but she explained.  In the days ahead when things are hard, when you forget who you are and what you’re called to do, when you question your purpose and your commitment, when you can’t see where God is…this blanket will remind you.  Wrap it around you, let it keep you warm, put it right where you can see it to remind you that you’re not alone.

In every seminary apartment, study carrel, and office since then, that scratchy woolen blanket has held a prominent place.  Next time you stop by my office, see if you can find it.  It’s there, right where I can see it…where I can walk past it and run my hand over it, or lay it on my lap while I study.  It’s a tangible little piece of promise I can hang onto.  Maybe you have something in your life, given to you by someone you love, that tangibly helps you remember their blessing on your life?

Well, this is exactly what Jesus is doing here in his way-too-long sermon.  Peace, he called it.  Something tangible.  Not like the peace that the world gives, thoughtless and fleeting words spoken off-hand, impermanent and temporary, lacking in substance and heft.  No, this is something real, something to hang onto as tight as you can, when the waves of change rush over you and the winds of life blow this way and that…when people you love die and life is shaken to its very core…when you have a hard time remembering who you are and what you believe…when chaos and uncertainty are the order of the day, and when you can’t see what’s right ahead of you.

Even if it took him an extra long sermon to get there, I’m glad he took the time.  In the days that followed those disciples’ lives would be ripped apart; they needed a peace that was tangible, something they could walk past and touch, or wrap around themselves in dark moments of doubt and pain.  And we do, too.

Peace, Jesus said.  My peace I leave with you.  Not the kind of peace the world talks about…but real, tangible, abiding peace.  Hang onto it; hang on tight.  Don’t let your hearts be troubled, and don’t be afraid.

“I’m going away, you can’t follow me, don’t be upset.”

And, in the meantime…peace.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.