Peace in the midst. May 26, 2019 The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

John 14:23-29

Have you ever seen the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes? Calvin is a boy with a big imagination. And Hobbes is his beloved stuffed tiger who takes on a life of his own in the mind of Calvin. As a pair they find adventure in almost any situation. Like the time we see Calvin and Hobbes march into the family living room. It’s early morning. Calvin’s mother is seated in her favorite chair sipping coffee. She looks up at young Calvin amused and amazed at how he is dressed. Space helmet on his head, a long cape tied around his neck, one hand he holding a flashlight, the other a baseball bat. “What’s up today?” asks his mom. “Nothing so far,” replies Calvin. “So far?” she questions. “Well. You never know. Something could happen today,” he explains and then adds as he marches off, “And if anything does happen, by golly, I’m going to be ready for it!” Thinking out loud Calvin’s mom reflects, “I need a suit like that.”

Don’t we all? Wouldn’t it be great to be able to put something on every morning and know that whatever the day brought, even the unexpected or the unwanted, that no matter what, by golly, we’d be ready for it? Well I don’t have any suits to give out this morning, but in our gospel reading today you may have heard that Jesus is giving us something else, even better than a suit, that is, his peace.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Whenever I hear Scripture like that I always want to pause, take a deep breath, and hear those words again. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Jesus gives us his peace. I have no doubt of that. Yet I still have questions. Like why is it then that I don’t feel so peaceful all the time? And why do I see others tied up in worry or anxiety as well?

Perhaps it’s because we get confused about what God’s peace looks like in our lives. It seems that’s what Jesus thinks. Notice that when he gives us his peace he specifically says that we are not to confuse it with the world’s peace. I do not give to you as the world gives, he explains. That’s because the peace the world gives is a peace that comes when things on the outside of us are going well. When all the stars are aligned - relationships are smooth, the tasks at hand are successful, and beauty abounds. When it feels as if everything is going our way it’s a wonderful and peaceful thing indeed. But the old adage is true, whatever it is that any of us are experiencing right now, whether this is a time of bliss or bane, guaranteed, this too shall pass. Relationships will change, successes come and go. We are vulnerable to so much and in a moment’s notice – poof! – the world’s peace can evaporate and replaced by angst and turmoil in its wake.

That’s not the peace that Jesus gives. For Jesus’ peace is not tied to circumstances. It doesn’t come and go with the joys and sorrows of life. The peace that Jesus gives always is, always exists, is always accessible to us no matter what is going on in the world. Now, I’m not saying that what goes on in our lives isn’t irrelevant or doesn’t impact us. That’s just not true. They do. But what I am saying is that the core of who we are and how we exist in this world is greater and more solid than the circumstances of our lives. Jesus demonstrates this very fact as he gives us his peace in the midst of the most stressful time of his life. Up until this point, while things have been relatively smooth with Jesus healing the sick, raising the dead, feeding the 5,000  - he’s rocking the world - and there’s been no has been no mention of peace. It’s only now, on this most distressing of nights where one of his disciples is selling him out for a pocket full of change, another will soon swear up and down that he doesn’t know Jesus at all, and the rest, except for one, abandons him in the hour of his greatest need. It is on this night, the eve of his suffering and crucifixion that Jesus not only speaks of peace, but gives his peace to his disciples and to us.

So, another question, how then do we receive this gift of peace? Well as far as I know there are no three easy steps. But it’s probably no coincidence that immediately before Jesus gives us his peace he talks about two things. The first is the keeping of his word. Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. When we seek to keep Jesus’ word, the word of love, the command to love God and love our neighbor what often happens is that we have a shift of focus. Our problems, our fears, our anxieties don’t disappear, but when we pay attention to keeping Jesus’ word the hold they have on us can loosen making more room for God to be at work in us, to make a home in us, as Jesus says,  and to dwell more fully in our deepest being.

The second thing Jesus speaks of is the coming of the Holy Spirit. Among other things, the Holy Spirit’s role is to remind us of all that Jesus said, of all that is true. And we need such reminders especially when we find ourselves in stressful situations. Consider the disciples. Jesus gives them his peace before his death yet when he appears to them after his resurrection he reminds them and offers it again and again. We who live in a post-resurrection and post-ascension world also need that kind of support. And so the Holy Spirit reminds us in many and various ways that what was true then is just as true now. Jesus gives us his peace. A peace that is not like the world’s. A peace that has nothing to do with circumstances, that’s not tied to the ups and downs of life. Rather a peace, as the book of Philippians puts it, that passes all understanding. Our call, our invitation, our joy is to live more fully into the truth of what already has been given. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Receive the gift of peace. 

Toward each other. May 19, 2019 The Rev. Ann Willms

Acts 11: 1-18

Years ago, my mother and I traveled to Washington to attend her uncle’s funeral. After we checked into our hotel in Crystal City, Mom called down to the desk for some extra towels. We left the room to go eat and as we walked down the hallway, another hotel guest who happened to be African-American came toward us.  My mother asked her, “Are you going to room 313?” (our room).  The woman looked confused.  In horror I realized what was going on.  Mom made the assumption that because the woman was black, she was a housekeeper. 

I kind of pushed my mother along and said, “She’s staying here” and we kept going.  That night, I found a note under the door.  Several pages of a hotel notepad were filled with a handwritten message calling out my mother for her racist assumptions.  The woman described at length her own postgraduate degrees, her professional status, etc, along with a few choice words for my mom.  But through this woman’s anger came a lifetime of deep, deep hurt.  A hurt that a white woman like me will never know because no-one has ever assumed I am the maid based on the color of my skin.   

We humans have an innate tendency to categorize.  In prehistoric times the ability to distinguish between friend and foe was a matter of life and death. By definition, categorizing things implies separation –“which of these things is not like the other?” But what about categorizing people? We do this in order to make sense (we think) of our world. We use binary boxes like male or female, gay or straight, black or white, Democrat or Republican, documented or undocumented.  We think we know what they mean. But boxes are often full of assumptions that can be misguided, ignorant, hurtful, or even dangerous.

I myself recall meeting a person going through transition from male to female gender identity who had suffered judgment and rejection at another church and was literally cast out. We sat in my office and at first I could feel my categorizing mind asking unbidden silent questions “Are you male? Are you female? What are you?”  I had to consciously focus on what she was saying in order to hear her very real pain and suffering – to get past What are you to Who are you?

In our reading from Acts 11 today, Peter has been recalled to Jerusalem where they ask “Why Peter? Why did you go to the home of uncircumcised men – and eat with them?” You can practically feel their squeamishness. The box labeled “Uncircumcised, Unclean” applied to Gentiles. The Jewish followers of Jesus could not share table fellowship with Gentiles because they ate foods that were forbidden in the law of Moses.  Just to enter a Gentile home would make a Jew ritually unclean.

So what happened here is monumental. You can tell by the way Peter tells the story that even he is still processing it. Listen to how the Holy Spirit used FOOD -the very thing Peter is so religious about!- to get through to him : “I was praying. I was hungry and saw a sheetful of “unclean” four footed animals, reptiles, birds of prey, lowered down in front of me. A voice said “Arise, Peter, kill and eat.” “Oh no Lord, nothing profane or unclean has ever touched my lips.” And then the voice spoke again: “What God has made clean you must not call profane. (stop calling common).”

Just then, three men sent to me from Caesarea arrived. The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us.”- So he goes and what happens? “The Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us.”

Notice what is happening here – the people Peter thought he could never associate with have received the very same Holy Spirit – God decides what is clean and unclean, God decides who is in and who is out, and God decides we are all in!

The Spirit more than anything is the sign Peter gives his interrogators – “The Spirit told me not to make a distinction between them and us...The Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us...If God gave them the same Spirit he gave us, who was I to hinder God?”

Even though we sometimes call this the conversion of Cornelius, it was just as much a conversion of Peter in my mind. They needed each other and were brought together by the Holy Spirit to be transformed, to be changed from “Other” to “brother.”

One way theologians define sin is anything that separates us from God, from each other, from ourselves, and from creation. The boxes we put each other in do separate us from one another.  Like Peter and Cornelius, like my mom and the other hotel guest; like me and the transgender woman in my office. Boxes separate us from true communion.

But Jesus came to bring us out of our boxes of fear and death and into the light of His life! He came to restore dignity and right relationship. Remember his inaugural speech in Luke 4:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Each of us is in some way poor, captive, blind and oppressed by our own and others’ boxes.  Jesus gave his life, his whole life of teaching and preaching and healing – he gave his death on the cross, and he gave his rising and ascending and the gift of the Spirit so that we might be released from all that binds us and blinds us.

So instead of asking “What are you?” out of fear, we can ask “Who are you?” out of love.  What are you is dehumanizing. Who are you opens up the vista of a person’s infinite value and undefinable essence before God. We are made in the image of God and even God called Herself simply: I AM.

Because of Jesus-in Galatians 3.28: There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

In Ephesians 2:14-15 For Jesus is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups (Jews and Gentiles) into one and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility between us.

In Colossians 3: Your new self is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator – In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all.

  

SO….

What is the Holy Spirit up to here at COOS just now?

Where are the growing edges of your love as followers of Jesus?

Who is the person that puts you out of your comfort zone- like Peter and Cornelius?

What might the Spirit be trying to teach you about them? About you?

Practice noticing when your mind goes to “What are you?” and instead ask, “Who are you?”

I’d like to leave you with the image of the resurrection icon from the Eastern Orthodox tradition. In this we see Jesus at the center, clothed in white and shining glorylight – arms stretching wide, as he reaches down to grasp the wrist of a man and a woman, each emerging from stone boxes – tombs. Below his feet the gates of hell are shattered and in the darkness are broken locks and keys and a skeletal figure bound in chains -he has put Death to death once for all!  The man and woman represent Adam and Eve, the ancestors of all humanity, signifying the cosmic and eternal nature of his redeeming work. What I love is that he is pulling them from the boxes that separate them, and he is pulling them toward himself, and thus he is pulling them toward each other. This is the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit  - to bring us out of our tombs of separation into his glorious light where we can recognize each other as the brothers and sisters that we are.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

The real subject of the story. May 12, 2019 The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

Acts 9:36-43, John 10:22-30

Disciple. It’s a word we often bat around in church. The standard definition of “disciple” is someone who adheres to the teachings of another. It’s a follower. And when applied to Jesus, a disciple is someone who follows him in order to live like him. Probably most often when we are talking about disciples we are referring to the twelve men closest to Jesus and use the term like a title, The Disciples, with a capital T and a capital D. But along with those twelve there were others named in the Bible as disciples of Jesus. And of those others, how many do you think were women? The answer, one. Which doesn’t mean that there was only one female disciple of Christ. Just that only one was noted in Scripture, which to my mind means we should pay particular attention to her story as recorded in the book of Acts.

Tabitha is her name or in Greek, Dorcas. She lived in a town called Joppa and she followed Jesus by devoting herself “to good works and acts of charity.” It seems that she was involved in some kind of compassionate assistance program among the poor. But after some time, Tabitha became gravely ill and died. Those among her grieved mightily as they washed her body and laid it out for burial.

But even in their grief there is hope. The believers send for Peter and he comes. They bring him to Tabitha’s body telling him all about her acts of service as they weep. Then Peter, after sending the mourners out of the room, kneels down and prays. Then he speaks, “Tabitha, get up.”  And miraculously she does. She comes back to life. And as news spreads many believe in the Lord.

Both Tabitha and Peter model for us what being a disciple can look like in this world. By generously giving of her time, skill, and resources, Tabitha allowed God’s love and care to flow through her to those most vulnerable and in need. She lived like Jesus. And though we never hear of her again, my guess is that in her second chapter of life on this earth Tabitha continued to let the richness of God’s grace flow even more fully through her to all the world.

And then there’s Peter, at this point in his story he’s filled with the Holy Spirit, boldly preaching the gospel, and praying for the sick. But praying for the dead? That was something he had never done before. Surely there was a moment when he paused and wondered what to do in the face of something so difficult and overwhelming? Perhaps you’ve wondered that as well when faced with something that feels completely out of your control? I invite you to take a moment and think about the biggest problem you have, the most stressful situation in your life right now. What do you do in the face of something that seems so difficult? Are you like Peter lifting that biggest challenge to God in prayer? Now I realize that it can be especially hard for us because many of us have been praying a long time for people or situations that have not been resolved in any positive way. That perhaps, as of yet, we have not seen our loved one rise up healed and restored. Even so, disciples of Jesus, like Peter, are called to face any situation, especially the ones that seem too big for us, with prayer. I find it particularly interesting that we are told that Peter didn’t just pray for Tabitha, but that he “knelt down and prayed.” That his body took on the physical form of humility, of surrender, of acknowledgement that this situation was too big for Peter to handle as so many things in our lives are too big for us to handle as well. But in that act of kneeling and praying Peter draws close to God, to the One for whom nothing is too big or too hard. By drawing close, Peter gains strength, comfort, peace, and courage from our God who deeply loves and cares about each one of us and all that is going on in our lives. Which means that even if our prayers are not immediately answered in ways that we can see, as disciples we are still called to kneel down and pray, to draw close to God, over and over and over again trusting, believing that God is somehow at work. Because this story is not just about two faithful disciples. Like every story in the Bible, the real subject of the story is God. God, who is present and at work in the world about us. There may be weeping and loss, but that is not the last word. Sadness and desperation may be real, but that does not hold the day. Despite the harsh realities of life, the crazy circumstances of the world, the unknown anxieties that haunt us, God is present. God is at work. And God brings life.

“I give them eternal life, and they will never perish,” promises Jesus in our reading from John’s gospel today. He is speaking to the religious authorities who have approached him demanding that he settle the mystery once and for all. “If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” To which Jesus responds, “I have.”  But the plain answer he gives to the religious authorities, and to us, is not packaged in some persuasive oral argument, but rather it is embodied in a genuine relationship. Because faith is not about an intellectual assent nor is it about getting all of our questions answered. At its heart, faith is about knowing Jesus, experiencing his love, trusting his presence in our lives. It is then within the context of that relationship that the answer, although beyond words, does indeed become plain.

We are known and we are loved by Jesus who is the Messiah. The One who in this passage calls us his sheep. Sheep that know his voice, and by God’s grace, seek to listen and follow him. Listen and follow so that we might live more like him. For in him is life.

Our deepest and truest self. May 5, 2019 The Rev. David M. Stoddart

John 21:1-19

Huston Smith, a scholar of religion, once wrote that in the history of the world there have been two persons whose lives were so extraordinary that people ultimately asked them not just, “Who are you?” but “What are you?” The first was Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, who said, “I am awake.” The second was Jesus of Nazareth, who’s response to that question shook those first disciples and continues to shake people to this very day. And what turned the world upside down was not Jesus claiming to be God. His answer to that question, “What are you?” is more shocking than that. And that answer is right before us in these lessons today.

Paul is on the road to Damascus when he is bowled over by the Risen Christ, who says to him, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. Don’t let that slip by you, because Paul is not actually persecuting Jesus, he is persecuting the followers of Jesus. But Jesus draws no distinction between himself and his followers. He and his followers are one. Move to the Gospel. The Risen Christ is not easily recognized. This happens so often in the resurrection stories that it cannot be an accident. And when Peter finally sees that it is Jesus, they have this powerful exchange. Jesus asks three times if Peter loves him, and when Peter insists he does, Jesus says, Then you must love my sheep. Jesus identifies with his sheep; his sheep are Jesus. The Risen One is his followers; his followers are the Risen One. Jesus not only incarnates the Christ of God; he incarnates the Christ in each of us. He is our deepest and truest self. Christ is us.

And if that doesn’t shake us up, perhaps it should. It literally blinds Paul, who cannot see for three days, But when he does see, dear God, he sees! It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me (Gal. 2:20) . . .  He tells the Colossians that he is called to proclaim the mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages and generations but has now been revealed to his saints . . . which is Christ in you (Eph. 1:26, 27). We are Christ-soaked people, he is in all of us and one with all of us. Paul says that we are the very Body of Christ. We should know this. After all, we are baptized into his death and resurrection, and we eat and drink him every week at the altar. He tells us that he will abide in us, and we will abide in him (John 15:4). He says directly, Just as you did it to one of the least of these . . .  you did it to me (Matt. 25:40). The message is strong and unmistakable.

And because this is so, there is no way to love Christ without loving other people; no way to love other people without loving Christ. And any attempt to do that, any attempt to separate Jesus from other people, will fail because it’s not true. As the First Letter of John so bluntly puts it: Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have see, cannot love love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also (1 John 4:20-21). Not they “should” love their brothers and sisters because God up in heaven is commanding them to, but they “must” love them because God is in those people and one with those people. It’s no wonder that people don’t recognize Jesus after his resurrection: he looks like anyone and everyone, because he is anyone and everyone. Christ is  the reality of God in all of us made flesh and fully realized. It was shocking then; it is shocking now.

During the Maundy Thursday service, we washed each others hands. And when we did so, we said, “The Christ in me serves the Christ in you.” That is not just poetic license: that is the way it is. Each one of us is a dwelling place of the Risen Christ. When we exchange the Peace with each other, we are exchanging the Peace with Jesus. When we love each other, we are loving Jesus.

This may be easier to accept when we think of the people closest to us, the people we have the most in common with, the people we love most easily. But it also applies to annoying people, the really difficult people in our lives, even our worst enemies. The same Christ who reached out to foreigners and outcasts, who told stories about Good Samaritans and justified tax collectors, and who forgave the soldiers who executed him embraces the whole world.

And if we see that, it really does change everything. It certainly means we can never demonize any human being for any reason. I know when people have angered or hurt me the most, what saves me is remembering that Christ is in them, identifying with their pain and their brokenness as surely as he is in me, identifying with my pain and my brokenness. I can’t love Jesus without loving them: I can’t. It’s not possible. I  may try, but it won’t work. And when I let the Christ in me love the Christ in them, there is always room for healing and reconciliation, there is always a reason not to despair, not to give in to hatred or hopelessness.

And please understand: this is not about having warm, fuzzy feelings or thinking that everyone always does wonderful things. This is about seeing Reality clearly, seeing what Paul sees after he is healed of his blindness, seeing what Peter sees in the home of Cornelius the Centurion, seeing that the Risen Christ is everywhere and in everyone. This is not something we can figure out intellectually: we need to experience it and live it. The Franciscan writer Richard Rohr has written, “The proof that you are a Christian is that you can see Christ everywhere else.” We don’t have to make Christ be everywhere else: he already is because he is Risen, and he fills the universe and every creature in it. We just need to open our eyes and see it — see him. He is in us and among us right now.