 |
 |
Sermon Notes for May 1 & 2, 2010
The Fifth Sunday of Easter
"Joy Coming 'Round"
Acts 11:1-18, Rev. 21:1-7, John 16:12-22
+Risen Christ, for whom no door is closed, no heart is locked, pull us beyond our doubts and away from our faults so that we see and touch your wounds in others, and together know your healing grace and joy—Amen.
*Our lives are filled with thinking of and looking at ourselves and others through categories: young or old, in or out, smart or dumb, athlete or nerd, mean or nice, good or bad, gay or straight, black or white, superior or inferior, success or failure, friend or enemy, rich or poor, liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat, churched or unchurched, and on and on and on. The problem with thinking of and looking at people as categories is that everything isn’t that neat and tidy, and also this: that not a one of us sees clearly and fairly all the time, so sometimes we’re the wrong we’re trying to defend as right. Luther reminded us not to look at ourselves solely as saint or sinner, but saint and sinner—people who have been redeemed and made new by Christ our Lord who still are burdened with sin, people who still struggle to live in the ways of the Spirit.
*Each one of us is different from the other, yet there’s a lot we have in common. When we push others away as other, or hold them at arm’s length in disgust, we fight against Jesus’ arms stretched out on the cross so that all might come to know his love and saving embrace. We must learn to look at one another through the cross and rising of Jesus, we must learn to see one another as living souls who have a lot going on below the surface, as people Christ came to save. The Swiss psychologist Carl Jung wrote these words that are extremely helpful to remember: “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding about ourselves.” I’ll say that again ….
*So what does this have to do with Easter, today’s focus, and our lives as believers in and followers of Jesus? Everything! You see, the two categories that run through Scripture are these: Jew or non-Jew (Gentile). Think back to the reading we heard from The Acts of the Apostles a little bit ago. Those close first-followers of Jesus were all Jews, but non-Jews (Gentiles) began receiving the word of God made flesh in Jesus Christ as well. Some of those early followers argued strongly that all non-Jews who had come to faith in Jesus should go through all the required rituals of Judaism, and they criticized Peter for keeping company and even sitting down to eat with those who didn’t … horror of horrors! So Peter told them of the vision he had of the sheet with the unclean animals that were forbidden for Jews to eat, and of the point God repeated to him three times: ‘Stop thinking and acting according to those categories … don’t dismiss what I make and call good.’ At that very moment, three Gentiles (non-Jews) showed up. Did you catch what the Spirit told Peter?: ‘Go with them; don’t make any distinction against them.’ Surrounded by that company in the house where he was led, he told them the saving works of Jesus, and the Holy Spirit worked faith in their lives. Hear again Peter’s powerful words: If God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who am I to stand in God’s way? Hear again too what those non-Jews shouted on hearing Peter: God has given repentance that leads to life to Gentiles as well!
*Who do you see as Gentile or other in your life? Give it some serious thought today and this week. Who are you standing in God’s way trying to keep out and away from his repentance that leads to life? Or maybe it’s someone who’s viewing you as the Gentile or other … maybe you’re the one knowing the pain of exclusion. How can we who’ve died with Christ in the waters of baptism and been clothed by the Spirit with newness of life follow the Spirit’s leading and get past the boundaries that keep us apart? If we persist in those rutted ways of separation, we’re staying in the land of hurt and fear and tear instead of living in the land of joy filled with the freeing and healing change of Jesus’ resurrection. If we persist in those ways, we’re going against what Jesus said in today’s Gospel: knowing sorrow turning to joy that cannot be taken from us. We’re called to get out of God’s way so that his joy can come around for all, so that his joy can abound for all.
*Paul wrote, In Christ, God was bringing the world to peace with himself, not holding our wrongs against us, and giving us the message to make peace (2 Cor. 5:18-19). And this: For those baptized into Christ, there is no Jew or non-Jew, slave or free, male or female—you are all one in Christ Jesus. Jesus, eternal God, made himself other—a human being—in order to open up to us all the way of life and show us how to live.
*What does that look like? In Germany of 1933, when the Nazis were beginning their assault on the Jews as the problem, the answer for everything that was wrong in their country, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s 91 year-old grandmother refused to abide by a boycott of Jewish businesses. She walked right through the line of brownshirt soldiers, insistent on buying her strawberries from a Jewish merchant. In Atlanta in the early 1960s, the KKK marched through a black neighborhood sending grandmothers on rocking chairs, children and parents alike inside their houses out of fear, until some of those grandmothers decided to face their fear. The next time the KKK marched through, residents of that neighborhood lined the streets and laughed at those hooded men with the defiant Easter joy of Christ’s defeat of fear and death in the world … that simple yet defiant laughter put an end to those marches for good. Each and everyone of us here can tell a story of getting out of God’s way, of putting aside our barriers from others, and if you can’t, it’s about time to live one out. Confirmands’ parade of pots and pans….
*We come together here as one bread, one body, one cup in Jesus Christ to the Lord’s Table. Let us there be forgiven and renewed, strengthened and enabled to live as his Christ’s people in this world. Let us get out of God’s and each other’s ways and commit ourselves anew to journeying through life together so that his joy can come around for us all. So we pray again: Risen Christ, for whom no door is closed, no heart is locked, pull us beyond our doubts and away from our faults so that we see and touch your wounds in others and together know your healing grace and joy—Amen.