SERMON, April 27,2008 Easter 6

Acts 17:22-31; John 14:15-21

The other day I was telling a friend that I would be here in Gualala with you today to preside at the Eucharist and to preach. She is not a church-going person, but she asked, “What is the church like in Gualala?” I’m never sure what that question means, but I told her that Shepherd by the Sea is a Lutheran-Episcopal congregation meeting in a beautiful Roman Catholic church. There was a silence as she took all that in. And, then I said, “The church building sits in the redwoods and looks out over the ocean. Really there is no need to preach. We should all just sit in silence and stare straight ahead.” And, in fact, we’ll do that together in a little while.

But I know you’d be terribly disappointed if I said nothing at all. . . You’ve come to expect words at this point. . . so I’ll offer a few words. . spoken in the context of the silence and the beauty of this place.

I start with Gualala—this place in which most of you live: with the ocean, clouds, sun, cliffs, winds, beaches, the trees, meadows, birds and all the other creatures who live here with you. Such an incredible world—beautiful—filled with diversity and life, and all so intertwined. The oneness of it all—you can’t help but recognize that. How it’s all interrelated—of a piece. The pure gift of God’s creation—its oneness and its diversity. You can’t help but give thanks for it—for being a part of it. People in cities I think have a harder time knowing this—holding on to it. Here you live with more silence, and less pavement.

Our texts this morning focus on the presence and absence of God in our lives. On our deep longing for God and on the incredible intimacy of relationship with God that is offered us. In Acts Paul is questioned by some Athenian philosopher-types. He begins by celebrating what they do know about God, what Christians share with them—their commonalities. He has seen their altar to an unknown god and he tells them what he knows about that unknown god. The one unknown to them created the world and everything in it (including Gualala) and the same God gives life and breath to all. God, Paul reminds us, is NOT captured in a man-made shrine or even a beautiful church. God is beyond all capturing—all domesticating—all images.

We are created to search for God, perhaps grope for God, and to find God. In reality he says, God is not far from each of us. I suspect you know about this searching, groping, this longing for God—perhaps like me you’ve searched in some of the wrong places in your life—tried some paths that led to death rather than life. That we are here this morning and in this place is an expression of our continuing longing. All this searching and groping and finding…finding maybe in glimpses—hints of God. Maybe in the sunrise, or the forest, the beach at sunset, in the love of family or friends: intimations of the divine. The one for whom we long: God, is not far off, says Paul. And, in fact in Luke’s gospel Jesus tells us that God—God’s realm—is to be found inside us—within us. Not far off indeed, but in truth, sometimes that is one place we have failed to visit often or at any depth.

Paul tells us that now is the time to repent—to acknowledge who we really are and turn to God. Stop living as though there were no God or that God were limited to being present in a shrine or church on a Sunday morning. Repent, he says, for you will be judged—judged by love, by love come among us, love that lived and died and rose again. Love that lives even now.

In John’s gospel Jesus continues his last conversation with his friends. He has told them he will die. He has washed their feet. He has told them he loves them and that the incredible intimacy of his relationship with the Father is theirs too—theirs to live into. He tells us that he and the Father are one and that they are in us. …wow. . . . Or, as Paul put it, “In God we live and move and have our being.” We, you and I, are God-inspired. God-energized. God is in our essence.

This is too much to take in really. And for Jesus’ friends this was like that time when the family and the loved ones gather around the bed of the one who is dying. They wait for a word from him, but they are already filled with grief and can perhaps only think of his dying—his death—his absence. Perhaps they have feelings of abandonment are already feeling lonely. He tells them that he will not abandon them. What could that mean? God the Father will send another Paraclete—that’s the word that our translation has put as Advocate. It’s a strange word to our ears—a word with many meanings: comforter, advocate, helper, teacher, counselor, exhorter…. one who will lead them into truth. The Holy Spirit we call this one. This Paraclete like Jesus himself will make God manifest. “I will not leave you orphaned,” in my absence you will know my presence. Oh! Just imagine them trying to get their brains around that. . . . And, Jesus tells them to love—to love each other as he has loved them: his commandment. God will be in plain sight as they love. The Paraclete will lead them.

There is no explaining the paradoxes of our faith. Jesus’ presence in absence. God’s emptying of Godself to come among us. God on the cross. The unknown god who lives within us. No explaining these paradoxes. Only a living into them. or, I should say, a dying into them. A letting go—of fear and clutching. A trusting ourselves to the unknown god—the god beyond our understanding, whose love knows no bounds. No bounds.

This unfathomable love that rose from the grave is what and who we long for. This love is what and who transfigures us and sets us free. And yet, we so often feel only the absence. At times the absence of god in this world of ours seems more real than the presence. The divisions, judgment, wars, lies, greed, violence, poverty, abuse, and anguish: you name it. I need not go on with words. But these realities can make us wonder just where this Paraclete might lead us—might be in evidence—might make of us a people in whom God’s love is enfleshed? Visible. If we give ourselves over to this love where might it lead us? If we lived into our true identity what would we look like? What would we be doing?

I heard an interview on the radio last week that spoke deeply to me of this movement of God’s Paraclete in everyday life. Here's how I heard the story: The interview was with a man who had returned from soldiering in Iraq. When he’d gone to Iraq he believed he was going there to help the Iraqi people. And at first it seemed as though this was so. But then one day friends of his in his platoon were horribly ambushed. Women and children had been used to decoy them. It was a devastating scene of brutality and violence. After that he had no trust in any Iraqi—he was filled with fear and rage. Their religion, he was taught, had made them into enemy.

I spoke this week with a friend, a man who fought in Vietnam so many years ago. He was telling me how he’d entered the army when he was 18 and that during the war he was taught to live from what he called his “reptilian brain.” The part of the brain that responds without thinking, that lashes out to defend, that kills and rejects. He told me how he’d enjoyed the feeling that came over him when that part of his brain took over. And he wondered how one ever got free from that reptilian brain. His own recovery had taken years and years—and even now he could see that sometimes it still took over. The soldier in the interview was talking about how he was fighting in Iraq from that part of his brain, I think.

In any case, the man came home from Iraq and entered college. Occasionally he would see someone on campus who looked like a Muslim. Each time he reverted back—was filled with fear and rage and wanted to kill the person—choke him to death. Each time he saw someone who looked like a Muslim he found himself shaking and filled with fantasies about killing. One time he caught himself in this midst of such a fantasy, and he said to himself, “I am home now. This isn’t Iraq. I can’t live like this here.”

Then he did an amazing thing. He went to a meeting of the campus Muslim Society. It was a meeting of not that many people. Men on one side of the room, women on the other. He sat with the women because they were near the door. He had to sit near the door. He was shaking and afraid and filled with mixed emotions. And, of course, he pretty much scared everyone in the room too. They couldn’t imagine why he was there and wondered if he were spying on them. He kept going back and asking questions and listening. And, eventually he was shocked to find out that he had made friends with the man who looked like a Muslim that he’d seen that day when in the silence he’d “come to his senses,” or we might say, in religious words, he’d repented and turned.

I have no idea if this man is a Christian or even a person of faith. I can’t even tell you which program I was listening to. But this is a powerful story of how the Paraclete leads into truth—across the boundaries that separate—into the unity that is God. The unknown God is very near to us indeed. Within us. In the silence. As you look out here and know your own interrelatedness with God’s creation and God’s people in that creation… as you sit in the silence of your own heart… you come to that God in whom we live and move and have our being. You can dare to entrust yourself to that boundaryless love that takes us across the divisions even to make friends with our enemies. It is the love that sets us free to love one another as he loves us. Amen.

Now let us sit here in silence together.

SERMON, April 20 Easter 5

John 14.1-14

I live in a co-housing community in Santa Rosa. The community is made up of adults, some young some old, children, some young, some teens, single folks and married folks. We each have our own condominium complete with kitchen, bath, etc etc—but we’re committed building a community of friends and to doing some things together—we have a garden we share, a workshop, a workout room, and we have two or three meals together every week. The condos are unusual looking in Santa Rosa—they seem to have been deposited there from Arizona or New Mexico or some such place—they are colorful and have swooping shapes—they are grouped around a central courtyard. The architect of the project was Michael Black—a man who also designed quite a number of other co-housing projects—some in our area. He lived in our community. He died suddenly last week of a heart attack—in his car in the parking lot of the post office. His death was a shock and we spent a lot of time last week talking about him and doing our best to help his family as they gathered. And we got ready for his memorial service on Sunday where some 300 people showed up to pay their respects.

All of this echoed in my heart this week as I read and re-read Jesus’ farewell conversation with his friends. You see I’ve been scheduled for some months now to lead a workshop at our community on the 5 Wishes* document—which is a way to make your end-of-life wishes legal in California. From the beginning, it was clear to me that some people had very ambivalent feelings about this workshop and I wasn’t sure how many would show up. I’m still not sure—but Michael’s death brought home how important it is to let your loved ones know what you’d like at the end of your life. Life is fragile and precious.

The workshop I lead will focus mostly on some medical and some personal wishes—how you’d like to be cared for, if you’d like music played when you are dying, if you want to die at home, what you want your family to know—that kind of thing. Jesus in John’s gospel is definitely focused on what he wants his friends to know. Mostly what he wants them to know is that he loves them and will be with them even after his death. They are afraid. They can’t imagine how they’ll go on without him. They feel abandoned. They want assurances that they can survive.

He comforts them. This whole passage is about comforting them. We often read a portion of his words at burials—and then we tend interpret them as referring to the next life—preachers say there will be a room in heaven for the one who has died. Really this is NOT about the next life—but this life. In John’s gospel the kingdom is already among us. The “abiding place”—and that’s a better translation than “place or mansion”—the abiding place prepared for you is already here. Now. Jesus comforts his friends.

Thomas and Philip ask the questions that many of us might ask. They blurt out their need for a blueprint. Thomas wants a GPS. He’s afraid he doesn’t know the way at all. He hasn’t a clue and can’t imagine life without Jesus. Jesus reminds him that in fact he does know. He knows Jesus. Jesus, the way, the truth and the life. It’s all about relationship. Loving intimate, messy relationship. It’s not about a GPS. It’s about knowing Jesus—being in relationship with Jesus. Thomas wants to look at a map—Jesus wants him to look up into his eyes. Urges him to realize that the man who washed his feet just a bit ago, is the one whose life of love and truth is the way. The way of intimate relationship with God—the way of letting go, the way of service, the truth of God’s love and forgiveness, the fullness of life lived in freedom. All of this they have lived into with Jesus. They know more than they think they do.

Philip wants to see the Father. None of this “way” stuff. Cut to the chase. “I’ve never seen God. Show me.” Once again Jesus says, “Look at me.” You’ve seen me. You’ve seen who God is. You’ve come to know what concerns God. What God is about and how God acts.

Those words “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except by me” have been used in terribly abusive ways. And still are. They are not words directing us to judge others of different faiths. These are words of comfort and embrace. They are words spoken in a time of great stress to dear friends who are close to panic at the thought of the death of the man they’d pledged their life to. He speaks to them in words of love. Anyone who has ever been in love knows these kinds of words, “You are the only one,” “You are the sweetest girl in the world,” “I’ll never love anyone else but you.” In the context of their intimate relationship and of that incredible oneness between Jesus and God the Father these words urge the disciples to look to Jesus—to their relationship with him—and to keep on trusting their lives to that.

Some years ago I went to Deer Park Monastery outside Escondido, California to hear Thich Nhat Hahn, the Buddhist monk speak to his monks and lay followers. He spoke with grace and truth for a while and then took questions from the people gathered there. It was such an American experience. But, upon reflection I have come to see that Philip and Thomas were also in attendance. Almost of the questions were searching for the steps—the sure-fire methods for achieving peace and wholeness. “Tell me, exactly what should I do to make peace with my sister?” “I’ve meditated for years now, what’s next?” “How do I make it happen, spiritually?” Our fix-it, can-do culture was embedded in all the questions. Just tell me the way. I’ll get there. Thich Nhat Hanh deflected every one of those questions. He kept urging them to follow the practice and to let it change our hearts. He talked about letting go, about patience, about trusting the practice. And, then he talked a bit to his monks and lay leaders about the fact that he was over 80 and would not always be around. They would need to grow up in a sense—to deepen their own practice so they could thrive and grow without him.

In some ways this was similar to Jesus’ conversation with his friends. Thich Nhat Hanh spoke in love with compassion for his followers. He reminded them that they already knew the way—they would need to follow it. To trust it.

Jesus says, “Believe in God.” “Believe in me that I am in the Father and that the Father is in me.” We so often think of belief as some kind of intellectual assent. But Jesus is not talking about our thinking. He is urging his friends to trust God—in spite of all the evidence. Give your hearts to this relationship. Put your trust in God and trust me, he says, trust who I am, who we’ve been together, who we are together. Trust that I and the Father are one—trust my love for you. Whereas Thich Nhat Hanh spoke more about the practices of Buddhism—Jesus speaks of relationship. His with his friends, and his with God, and theirs with God, and God’s with them.

And he speaks of letting go. He tells them that trusting this relationship, abiding in it, you might say, they will do greater works. I’m sure they can’t fathom that this could be so. They can’t imagine that this wrenching letting go—his death—his very absence might bring new life—the Spirit. They can’t imagine abiding in his love when he is gone. The great mystery of our faith, and so much a part of Jesus’ own life—his way. His letting go unto death. And rising to new life. Our continual call to let go that new life might be born in us.

How do we live as an Easter people? How do we let our lives speak the gospel to others? There isn’t a ten-step program, there isn’t a self-help manual or an instruction book. Jesus doesn’t have five wishes, he has one: It’s all about relationship. It’s about our getting to know Jesus more and more deeply and getting to know God in him. It’s about opening ourselves to God, entrusting yourself to the one who has come among us to love us into new life. Do not let your hearts be troubled. “Abide in me.” AMEN

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You can learn more about the Five Wishes document at www.agingwithdignity.org, and about Deerpark Monastery at www.deerparkmonastery.org