Pentecost - What's really happening??

This Sunday – Pentecost – arises from two shared experiences.  First a group of Jesus' followers gathered in a house experienced the power of the Holy Spirit. Then a group of devout Jews from many nations, gathered because of the commotion caused by the Spirit, listened to Peter explain what was happening. In the verses that follow the ones we heard this morning from Acts Peter looks back at the prophecy of Joel who preached about God's wrath-filled judgment on “the day of the Lord.” Peter takes this ancient prophecy and re-interprets its to describes what God is up to now—in this new age.  Jesus has returned to the God-head; what has come next calls for new understanding of God and God's deeds.

Even the calmer and gentler coming of the Spirit that we find in John's gospel, Chapter 20, is shared by the group: “Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.  Jesus said to them, 'Peace be with you.  As the Father has sent me, so I send you.' When he has said this, he breathed on them and said to them, 'Receive the Holy Spirit.' ”

The new understanding in both instances refers to the how widely God's spirit is being given and how broadly it will be carried forth.  God's covenant relationship with the people of Israel is being extended from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth and to people never before included in the covenant.  This should be a time of great joy, but the tension created by this explosive sense of inclusiveness must be acknowledged.  Am I going to be comfortable with those Parthians, Medes and Elamites being included with me by God through the power of the Spirit?  Isn't it bit ironic that three of the places or people in the list from Acts—“Egypt,” “Libya” and “Arabs”—carry some tension for 21^st century Americans?  As followers of Christ, given the passage from the 2^nd chapter of Acts, are we supposed to feel some sort of inclusive relationship with these folks through the power of the Spirit?

That's more of rhetorical question than a real one, for there is a real question to be answered on this Pentecost Sunday—which this year is the Sunday before we Americans celebrate Memorial Day.  The real question is this: where will our decision to live as Christians, as followers of our risen Lord who empowers us through the Holy Spirit, lead us?  To whom will we find ourselves led?  How will our shared relationship look?  What will we try to accomplish through this relationship?

To bring this into a Memorial Day context, I'd like to tell you about a conversation I had this week with someone in a nursing home.  I had never met her before I took communion to her at the request of a relative (whom I did not know either).  Her speech and demeanor were well-educated, upper middle class, but I quickly realized she could not think as clearly as she once did.  In trying to make a connection, I asked her to describe the Episcopal church in Connecticut she told me she had attended for many years and truly loved its beauty.  As she talked about the church, she asked me a most unusual question.  Her church has a memorial plaque with the names of those soldiers who died in the First World War.  From what she said, this plaque meant a great deal to her.  Her question about it, spoken with true anxiety, was this: “Now that there has been a second war, will they take that plaque down and put another one up for those soldiers?”

I have no idea why she asked me the question, but it points to the issue of how broadly, how inclusively, we will view who and what is important to us.  Memorial Day, begun as Decoration Day after the Civil War to honor the fallen Union soldiers, now includes all armed services members who were killed serving our country in every war—even wars that we might have personally opposed.  There is a broad and inclusive relationship between those who benefited from their service to our country and those who served and gave their lives.  That's what Memorial Day should be about.

The day of Pentecost should be a time of celebration for all who have come to know God's deeds of power and to appreciate the sacrifice Jesus made in love to reconcile all people to God and to each other.  This celebration should be broad and inclusive:  all the styles of Christian practice—Pentecostals and Presbyterians, Methodists and Baptists, Evangelicals and Episcopalians—all discovering and loving God—each in their own style as the Spirit has given them.

And then should we look beyond Christianity?  A bit further in Acts—chapter 2, verse 21—the Jewish prophet Joel is quoted by Peter, “And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”  Historically, Joel could not have known about Jesus.  In addition, we know Jesus reached across the boundaries of Jewish religion and culture to minister to a Roman centurion and to a Samaritan woman. On this Day of Pentecost and all the days that follow, I believed we are called to cross respectfully whatever cultural or political dimension of difference confronts us, as we seek to live in a spirit of reconciliation and to minister as the Spirit has empowered us.  We must forgive as we have been forgiven, recognizing that the common good that Paul spoke to the Corinthians about must now include the whole world—everyone—no exceptions!

The 7th Sunday of Easter - From Ascension to Pentecost: A Liminal Time

The Gospel of John contains Jesus' “high priestly prayer” spoken before he was arrested and crucified.  A portion of this prayer by Jesus to God for his disciples was read this morning. It contains these words addressed to God: “But now I am coming to you . . .”

In our liturgical year we celebrate 40 days of Lent (not counting Sundays, but including Holy Week) and 40 days between Easter and Ascension (counting Sundays) and 10 more days until Pentecost.  Much of this liturgical time could be looked at as “liminal.”  Do you have favorite words—words you just look for opportunities to use?  “Liminal” is such a word for me.

“Liminal” refers to a transitional state, for example, walking through a doorway to another room.  In fact, its Latin root “limen” means “threshold.”  As it has been drawn into English, it has come to describe being in-between two different states of being.  For example, adolescence is a liminal state between childhood and adulthood. It may also refer to in-between situations and conditions that are characterized by the dislocation of established structures or the reversal of hierarchies. For Jesus and for the disciples, Jesus' resurrection and his ascension could be described as liminal situations or conditions.

At the cathedral on Saturday a former Presiding Bishop, Frank Griswold, preached at the service to celebrate all the years of ministry of our cathedral congregation in that stately neo-gothic building, soon to be closed.  The texts for the day were texts describing Jesus' departure from his disciples and from our world—the texts for Ascension Day, this past Thursday.

He described what I would call a liminal moment when the Christ—God-made-flesh: crucified, died and risen—had appeared to them in his resurrected form.  Christ comforted them—“fear not, I will send you the spirit of truth” and challenged them—“go into all the world and preach the gospel.”  Then on the 40^th day, he withdrew from them and, as our theology explains it, returned to the God-head from whom he had come.

Bishop Griswold described a medieval carving he had seen with the disciples reaching out toward a very large pair of feet—all you could see beneath the clouds.  This carving was theology made physical—a fairly risky thing to do—and rather humorous in this case.  Imagine what might have happened had the disciples actually gotten hold of Jesus' feet!

The truth is, of course, that liminal states are usually risky and uncertain. Despite Jesus' having prayed for Godly protection for them, the disciples must have been at a loss. Did they feel abandoned by their teacher and friend—the Messiah for whom all Israel had hoped—whom they had known and followed and loved?  When he told them to wait for the coming of the Spirit, how firmly did they trust Jesus?  How long must they wait? And how would they know when they received what he promised them?  By allowing Christ to ascend away from them, while keeping the faith that even in his absence Christ was not abandoning them, the disciples entered a liminal place.  Bishop Griswold called this their narrow gate to the future.

Jesus taught that the path to God is through a narrow gate, and narrow gates are difficult to negotiate.  Without Jesus' returning to the God-head—going first so to speak—humanity's estrangement from God may never have been healed.  Because he now understood the realities of human life, Jesus' ascension to God brought together the human and the divine in an entirely new way.

Another retired Bishop, Martin Shaw of Argyle and the Isles in Scotland, wrote a short poem that uses the slip-stream (that pattern of air around an airplane wing that allows it to fly) as a metaphor for Christ's ascension and humanity's changed state.  Here is what he wrote in a poem he called, “Be Lifted.”

The rising of The Man creates
The Slip-stream of Love
Into which we are gently
Summoned; fearful though we are
And yet obedient to that drawing
Into the Oneness that has always
Been promised in
The Silence of God.

One of our Ascension hymns, written by Charles Wesley, describes this same theology, albeit with more traditional images . The final verse of “Hail the day that sees him rise” also describes humanity's liminal state transformed into God's presence:  “Lord beyond our mortal sight/raise our heart to reach thy height,/there thy face unclouded see,/find our heaven of heavens in thee.”

Our Christian hope can be traced to how Jesus' followers handled the narrow gate of his absence.  The 10 days between Ascension and Pentecost—of which seven are left—can be used to meditate on how the disciples came to understand that the physical absence of Jesus led to the great gift God's presence through the Holy Spirit.  With their understanding came their empowerment.  Now without fear and with joy, they could share the hope they had gained.

Let us pray: O God, may we, in the midst of this liturgically liminal time, gain insight into how You work in all the thresholds of change—all the narrow gates—of our lives.  What will You send us at these times?  And when will You send it?  Strengthen us to keep watch, for Pentecost is coming! Amen.

The 6th Sunday of Easter - God's Attachment to Us and Ours to God

In Time magazine this week, one of the long articles discussed a currently popular theory of parenting called “attachment parenting.” A physician and his wife, Dr. Bill and Martha Sears have raised eight children, including one with Down syndrome and one adopted child.  They have written a book about “attachment parenting” that promotes raising children in a way to maximize a parent's (usually a mother's) time and physical contact with a child and to meet an infant's needs in such a way as to minimize his or her crying.

Attachment theory has a much longer history than this book, of course.  In the latter half of the 20^th century psychologists conducted carefully designed studies and found what they described as different patterns of attachments in toddlers. These patterns included “secure” attachment  and various forms of “anxious” attachment between the primary caregiver and the child.  According to specialists in human development, parents should care about the quality of their attachment to their children, because it may strongly affect the child's sense of self and how the child carries out relationships with others.

Having become Jacob's grandmother about 10 months ago, I have been both participant and observer in activities designed to promote attachment.  As all of you know who have been caretakers of children, even for brief periods, attachment behavior comes not only from the caregiver to the child, but also from the child toward the caregiver.  Ethologists claim that animals, including humans, are biologically programmed to seek proximity with caregivers.  This past week I heard a wonderful story about a daughter of the rector of St. James, Millcreek, in the early part of the 20^th century.  On the way to church, she rescued a baby hawk that had fallen from the nest and placed it under her hat.  She thought no one had seen her, so she simply kept her hat on all day.  Finally, later in the day, her mother demanded she take off the hat and let the bird out.  The hawk, despite being released, appeared to have become “attached” to her. The hawk behaved as a “pet” by continuing to interact with her out-of-doors.

When we hear readings from scripture talking about “abiding in love” and “loving one another” within the community of Jesus' and his disciples, we can learn something about the ideal of divine-human attachment and the human to human attachment that flows from it.  Attachment means nothing unless is becomes operational.  Attachment gains its power from the interactions that occur in the relationship between the person who seeks attachment and the person who is sought.

Our scripture tells us God's love for us becomes operational in God's choosing us, in God's taking on our flesh in Jesus, and God's offering God's self in Jesus to defeat the power of evil and death. God's love does not arise from a feeling, but from the will to act in a way that puts our well-being first.  Our love for each other should contain the same character of selflessness as God's love for us does.

Jesus told his disciples, “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. . . .You did not choose me, I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last. . .”  The Greek verb for “last” as in “fruit that will last” is the same as the Greek verb for “abide.” The attachment that Jesus describes—abiding in him—can only be made real if it is through love—with love as its fruit.

Julian of Norwich [a town in England] was a nun who lived in the latter half of the 14^th century in a cell attached to the church there. When she was thirty, she became gravely ill, nearly dying.  During a period of several days, she had a number of visions of Jesus—both visual and aural.  She spent the rest of her life pondering the meaning of the visions and wrote a book about what she had come to understand. It has been entitled, “Revelations of Divine Love.” 

Julian believed God wants to be attached to us just as good parents and loving family members may be attached to us.  In Chapter 58 she wrote: “In our making, God, Almighty, is our Nature’s Father; and God, All-Wisdom, is our Nature’s Mother; with the Love and the Goodness of the Holy Ghost: which is all one God, one Lord. And in the knitting and the oneing He is our Very, True Spouse, and we His loved Wife, His Fair Maiden: with which Wife He is never displeased. For He saith: I love thee and thou lovest me, and our love shall never be disparted in two.”

She concludes her book with these reflections: “From that time that it was shewed I desired oftentimes to learn what was our Lord’s meaning. And fifteen years after, and more, I was answered in ghostly [spiritual] understanding, saying thus: Wouldst thou learn thy Lord’s meaning in this thing? Learn it well: Love was His meaning. Who shewed it thee?Love. What shewed He thee? Love. Wherefore shewed it He? For Love. Hold thee therein and thou shalt learn and know more in the same. But thou shalt never know nor learn therein other thing without end. Thus was I learned that Love was our Lord’s meaning.”

On this Mother's Day Sunday we would do well to look to Julian's broad understanding of God as being both Mother and Father—and loving Spouse!  What should our response to this idealization of human attachments as a way of understanding God? None of us—not even Dr. Bill and Martha Sears—can approach the deep and authentic attachment in divine love that God offers us.  We are bid to abide in God's love and—this is the really difficult part—to show that same sort of love in our relationships with others: to care deeply about their well-being, to act toward everyone we encounter in our lives as people worthy of our respect.

Does this remind us of the final questions of our Baptismal Covenant: “Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?   Will you strive for justice and peace and respect the dignity of every human being?”  Together, quietly, but strongly, let us accept God's invitation to abide in the divine love and show this sort of love in all our relationships. Our answer to these questions is, of course, “ I will, with God's help.”

The 4th Sunday of Easter - Who is the Good Shepherd?

The next time Bishop Wright comes to visit us and walks down this center aisle carrying that symbol of his office, a crozier or shepherd's crook, you can think—“Ah, it looks as if he does know how to handle that crook.” Yes, he actually herded sheep!  On Tuesday of Holy Week this year Bishop Wright and the clergy gathered for renewal of their vows.  In his sermon he revealed that when he was growing up in Williamsburg, VA, he had a job herding sheep.  He was given this unusual opportunity, because sheep were part of the village life there in colonial times.  He did say that sometimes those sheep were hard to manage!

The passage from John's gospel we heard today comes in the middle of an extended confrontation between Jesus and the religious leaders. On the Sabbath Jesus had healed a man born blind by making a mud paste and anointing the man's eyes.  This action violated the law of doing no work on the Sabbath in order to set the seventh day apart and keep it holy.  The religious leaders questioned Jesus regarding by what authority he had performed this healing, because surely God would not be pleased about—or encourage—such a Sabbath violation.

To answer these leaders Jesus speaks about shepherding in general. Then he lands two verbal blows.  First, he calls himself the gate to the sheepfold.  Then, he says he is the Good Shepherd.  When he uses the phrase “I am,” he automatically signals his identity as God.  This identity comes from how God identifies God's self in the Hebrew scriptures, especially from the passage of Moses and the burning bush.  In the third chapter of Exodus Moses questions God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' what shall I say to them?”  God answers Moses with these words, “I AM WHO I AM.”  God adds that Moses should tell the Israelites, “I AM has sent me to you.”  So when Jesus says, “ I am the gate [of the sheepfold]” or “I am the Good Shepherd,” he joins himself to the name of God.

In using that name, Jesus was accused by the religious leaders of having a demon or of blasphemy.  However, on the other hand, if Jesus spoke truthfully, the religious leaders would have to acknowledge he is the Messiah of God.  This becomes even clearer as this confrontation continues later in the chapter.  The leaders question him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” Jesus replies, “ The works that I do in my Father's name testify to me . . . The father and I are one.”  That seems fairly clear!

So the passage from the Gospel of John we heard shouldn't be interpreted by comparing God's relationship with us to a shepherd herding sheep—and which of us really wants to be compared to sheep.  Earlier in this account the gospel writer calls Jesus' use of the image of a shepherd as “a figure of speech.” So I believe Jesus called himself the Good Shepherd and told us about this shepherd so we could come to understand who God is.  I believe Jesus is revealing three aspects of God.

First, God through Jesus will protect us when we must face the “wolves” of this world.” I see the wolves in Jesus' parable as those who would seek to destroy our faith in God.  Any temptation to turn from God's ways could indeed “snatch and scatter” us away from the support of our community of faith. Evil can seem more powerful than love.  But if you turn to look to Jesus, you can allow him to protect you from succumbing to any force that would cut you off from God's love.  Spiritual predators may appear attractive, but in the end abiding in God's love will keep you safe.

Then, God reaches out to us hoping to form an intimate relationship.  The disciples who followed Jesus' at the beginning—and we who try to be his followers today—can experience the intimacy of knowing and being known by God—as the deepest possible friendship—friendship with God.  We are known by God through our relationship as a follower of Jesus; and we know God, because we know Jesus.  Jesus' ministry of teaching and of healing speak to how God will seek us to draw us into a close relationship—as close as we will allow.

Finally, for God there is always someone else to seek out and draw into relationship.  The phrase “that do not belong to this fold” implies that God will ignore or break through whatever barriers humanity creates so that we all can experience being one in God.  Yes, God loves unity, but God loves diversity within that unity.

So in the end we can see it won't be helpful to draw parallels between job of sheepherding and what Jesus teaches in this parable.  Rather the question of who the good shepherd really is takes center stage.  And through this figure of speech—the good shepherd—we can come to understand more about God:  God seeks to protect us from spiritual harm; God reaches out to us, wanting to know us and be known by us; and, yes, God embraces not only us, but other people who are not “of our fold.”  Indeed, God desires to draw all people into the divine presence—“So there will be one flock, one shepherd.”

The religious leaders who challenged Jesus were none too happy with what Jesus taught about God.  The question, of course, for them—and for us—centers on whether when we look at Jesus and listen to his teaching, do we see and hear God in Jesus?  The question of who God is becomes a question of faith—do we believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Holy One of God, who shows us God—or not?  If we believe in Jesus, we can have only one response to this parable of the Good Shepherd: to open our hearts to God and to allow God to draw us into relationship.   Do we believe??