Sermon 5.07.06

Scripture can be a hard thing… A parishioner told me that she’d invited some of her friends to our Easter Vigil this year. You know our jazz Vigil. These were some folks who had left the church years ago but decided to give the jazz Vigil a try—. She told me that they had left the service [even before the homily] because they were so put off by the lessons we read—perhaps I’m thinking, it was the story of Moses leading the people out of slavery through the Red Sea—the one that describes the drowning of the Egyptian army that was pursuing them. The image of God drowning the pursuing army was too much to take. Scripture can be hard. Scripture passages can be too much and that’s a fact—to be really honest—some of the time I haven’t a clue what is meant by certain words [ I try not to preach on those texts]—other times I think I catch a glimpse of meaning, but mostly I’m shrouded in mystery—and sometimes the words of Scripture are downright disturbing. Other times the words themselves when understood in context make sense, but they’ve been taken out of context and used in horrific ways. This morning’s little reading from the Book of Acts is a continuation of the story of the healing that we heard a few weeks back, when John and Peter healed the man who couldn’t walk. The healing has landed them in jail—such an affront is the power of healing to the powers that be. And in the context of poor—uneducated fishermen standing before the rulers elders and scribes—Peter tells them that the healing happened in the name of Jesus “whom you crucified.” And he goes on to say that Jesus is the true cornerstone—the stone that holds the whole structure up—but that they were the ones who rejected him. When you think of these words—perhaps you hear them as judgment—maybe they were spoken in grief—we can’t really tell from the text—but however they were spoken they have been part of scripture used throughout the years to justify anti-Semitism. To justify terrible acts of oppression, degradation and murder. In the text these are words spoken from the powerless to the powerful. They are a statement of fact from the lips of a nobody directed toward the religious and political authorities. The same could be said of the Biblical account of the exodus. It’s the story of the powerless being pursued by the powerful—and it’s a story of their rescue from their perspective. Knowing this doesn’t change the words of the stories themselves—but it should definitely affect our use of those words. And as if this weren’t enough Peter in his little speech before the authorities sums it all up by telling them that there is salvation in no one else but Jesus. No one. “You guys really blew it! You rejected the One who is the source of salvation.” So there! Luke, the author of the Book of Acts, uses that word salvation throughout his writing to talk about human deliverance from all sorts of evil: physical, spiritual, emotional, moral—and its always about restoration to wholeness. The healing of the man who couldn’t walk is a sign of that wonderful “Jesus” power at work in the world. Now like other words from Scripture these words have been used to batter non-Christians—I take them though to be an affirmation by Peter of the source of his own transformation. I can only imagine his real surprise that power that he had known in Jesus, was now present and at work in his own life. This is Peter the betrayer—Peter the Rock yes, but Peter the one who waffled at the moment of truth. And, now, when he might have expected all to be lost—here he is a channel of that healing grace to another. Here he is standing up—grounded in this relationship with Christ—so grounded that he can speak to the authorities and tell them the truth. The standing up truth. It’s a wonderful image of the great paradox of Christly power—that exhibits itself in the ordinary—the powerless—to challenge society’s powerful. Easter is about transformation and hope. Both are grounded in Christ. In that intimate relationship with Jesus that is described in the first letter of John as Christ’s abiding in us. In the Gospel passage that relationship is described with the metaphor of the Good Shepherd who knows his own and whose own know him. I read somewhere that indeed this is how good shepherds work. They do know their own sheep and their own sheep know them. When several shepherds and flocks gather at a watering hole, when it comes time for one to go, the shepherd starts to move away, whistles maybe, trills, maybe and his sheep follow him. The sheep may be all mixed up together at the water, but when they hear that voice they move toward the shepherd. It’s like recognizing your mother’s voice or your spouse’s or your child’s across a crowded room. Our goal in the journey is to come to know Christ’s voice just that well. So that when we hear it, our ears perk up and we are ready to follow. This week I was at a training for EFM Education for Ministry—a four-year Christian education program for adults who want to dive seriously into scripture, church history and theology in order that they can better carry out their own ministries. A large part of the EFM program is based in what they call theological reflection—which is a way of thinking together about scripture, or simple events from our own lives. At one point my small group was using a painting as the spur to this group reflection—it was a painting of Jesus and the rich young man—very similar to our window here behind the organ. If you have never noticed this window, do stop by and take a look at it. Matt and I sit over there and see it every Sunday. The painting was very similar only it had a couple of additional people in it—poor people over to the side where Jesus hands are pointing. We began our reflection on the painting by just describing what we saw—the colors, the light, the expressions, the love that seemed to fill Jesus eyes as he looked at the rich young man, the hands and so forth. Then we were asked to consider the people in the painting, and which one we most identified with. One person identified with Jesus, because he always found himself trying to get his rich friends to give to the poor, another identified with a poor man at the edge of the picture, and finally, one woman confessed to feeling like the rich young man. She talked about how hard it is to let go of her stuff, and how hard it is to know when she’s given away enough, when she hasn’t given enough away, and what is the spiritual importance of giving things away. As we shared our own sense of dis-ease with Jesus’ call to give up all our possessions, our deep struggle to live into our connection with the poor—a man in the group paused the conversation and asked us to listen. He told us about an experience that had happened to him almost thirty years earlier. As a young man just out of college he’d traveled to a foreign country and there he saw poverty as he’d never seen it before. He kept averting his eyes and turning away from it—focusing on other things—the scenery, the night life of the places he visited. But one afternoon as he left a train station a mother holding an infant swaddled in rags came to him with an empty baby bottle in her hand, she held it out to him, and then as he was about to turn away from her, she took hold of her shirt and exposed her breast to him so that he could see she had no milk for her baby… He began to weep, remembering the time… There was complete silence. Sometimes we hear Jesus’ voice so clearly that it cuts through our hearts. . . . At other times it is muffled, or we try to ignore it. Sometimes other voices are calling and we don’t hear Jesus. There are times when I don’t recognize his voice at all. Here in this place—in this community we come together because we long to hear that voice. We come to tune our ears, to be fed and energized for the journey; we come seeking the One who calls us by name. One thing we know: no matter what the voice calls us to, the eyes of the one who calls us are filled with love. Always with love. Amen.