Monday, May 27, 2019

Sermon: How the Spirit opens (and closes) way (May 26, 2019)

Easter 6C
May 26, 2019
Acts 16:9-15, John 14:23-29

INTRODUCTION
         We’re a couple weeks away yet from the Day of Pentecost, when we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit to form the Church. But today in our readings from Acts and John, we get a little sneak peek at the work of the Holy Spirit. In John, we are once again just before Jesus’ death, hearing a part of what’s called the priestly prayer, in which he promises that in his absence, he will send “the Advocate,” the Holy Spirit, a new way for God to be present among them. In Acts, we see that Spirit in action, see the ways it drives the formation of the early church.
I’ll be preaching mostly on Acts this morning, so let me give you a little set-up for this story. It can be a bit difficult to follow with all the unfamiliar names of cities, so hopefully this will help. Paul, Silas, and Timothy are going about the region planting churches, and, with God’s help, converting people. They are trying to decide where to go next, and the Spirit keeps giving them messages about where not to go. They are forbidden to go to Asia, and then also not allowed to go to Bithynia. So they hang out in Troas for a while, where Paul receives the vision we will hear about in our reading, which will then direct them through a number of locations, to exactly the right place to be.
There is a lot of uncertainty in these texts, about what God has in mind and where God is leading people. So as you listen, remember a time when you felt uncertain about where God was leading you, when you were listening for the Spirit to give you some clear instructions, and how you may have received that message. Let’s listen.

[READ]
Alleluia! Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia! Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
         I am a planner. I’m that traveler who makes a list of everything we need to bring and in which bag it will be packed, the one who likes to be sure we have a hotel reservation well in advance, a rental car to suit our needs, and an itinerary for each day so that I can be sure I bring the right clothes. I am a planner.
         My husband… is not. He is a fly-by-the-seat of his pants type, who feels stressed and stifled by too many plans or lists. He simply trusts everything will work out. We love to travel together, but have had to meet in the middle on this: we set the bones of a trip in place, and schedule certain days to be “unscheduled,” so that I know when to mentally prepare myself to be flexible. It is not ideal for either of us, but we make it work.
         How many of you would identify as a planner, like me? … How many are more like my husband, preferring to wait and see what happens and not make too many plans up front? … So those of you who are planners can imagine, when I read this story from Acts, I feel a bit of stress. The few verses before our reading describe all the ways Paul and Silas’s plans, thoughtful and faithful as they may have been, have been blocked, and then even when Paul does get a great big vision that makes clear where they are to go next, it doesn’t even turn out like they expect. The vision was of a single man, begging them to come to Macedonia, but what they find there is instead a group of women, and in particular, Lydia, who would become the first European convert to Christianity, and helped to establish the first church in Europe. Pretty important!
It’s really a beautiful story about listening to the movement of the Spirit, of trusting the direction the wind is blowing, trusting enough to “go with the blow,” as it were. But I hear this story, and I think of all the times I have been pretty sure about where I should go next in life, about how my life plan would roll out, and the ways that plan got upset, “recalculated,” and redirected. I do not experience feelings of faith and gratitude when I hear this story, remembering all the ways God led me right where I needed to be. No, I hear this story, and I feel anxious.
I wish I didn’t. I wish that the possibility of trust-falling into the blowing wind of the Spirit gave me a thrill and filled me with hope and a sense of possibility. But the truth is, I would rather be the one making the plans, not letting the sometimes elusive, often frustrating, always surprising Holy Spirit call the shots! I do not like letting go of my sense of control. I would rather do what I think I should do. (Can anyone relate??)
Maybe it would be easier to trust if I just got a strong vision like Paul did. I don’t typically feel the Spirit tapping me on the shoulder saying, “No not that, Johanna. This instead” – at least, not in a way that I notice it! I remember when I was discerning whether to leave a call I loved and take this call to serve as your pastor, I talked to a trusted colleague about it. I asked her, “How do you know when it is time to leave one call and go to another?” She said, “Every time I’ve done that, it was made crystal clear to me, so that even if I didn’t really want to leave, I knew it was the right decision.” *sigh* I suppose it was helpful, but I found myself lamenting, “Ah! Why don’t I ever get clear messages like that??”
Parker Palmer is a Quaker and a spiritual writer. In his book, Let YourLife Speak, he reflects on a time in his mid-30s when he was searching to find his vocation, his particular calling and place in life. He was seeking to live by the Quaker teaching to, “Have faith, and way will open.” His response to that was, “I have faith. What I don’t have is time to wait for ‘way’ to open… The only way that has opened so far is the wrong way!” Oh boy, have I been there! Faithful discernment takes too long, I think. It’s too much work. I’ve tried before and it yielded nothing. All I’ve seen is a whole lot of the wrong direction.
Palmer sought help from a Quaker elder. He writes, “After a few months of deepening frustration, I took my troubles to an older Quaker woman well-known for her thoughtfulness and candor. ‘Ruth,’ I said, ‘people keep telling me that ‘way will open.’ Well, I sit in silence, I pray, I listen for my calling, but way is not opening. I’ve been trying to find my vocation for a long time, and I still don’t have the foggiest idea what I’m meant to do. Way may open for other people, but it’s sure not opening for me.’” Ruth thought a moment, then replied, “In 60+ years of living, way has never opened in front of me.” She paused, then spoke again, this time with a grin: “But a lot of way has closed behind me, and that’s had the same guiding effect.” Palmer later reflected, “There is as much guidance in what does not and cannot happen in my life as there is in what can and does—maybe more.”
Indeed, sometimes way needs to close to show us where the Spirit is truly leading us – just like it did for Paul and Silas, whose plans kept getting blocked by the Holy Spirit. But it can be so frustrating and discouraging, can’t it, to have hopeful way after carefully planned way closed in front of you, especially when the way you would have chosen seems like such a good and faithful one, like Paul’s. How easy it is, when confronted with a door in your face, to turn around, give up, and wallow in your lack of possibility and dashed hopes. Or perhaps we resort to pounding on those closed doors, throwing our troubled hearts into each frustrated swing, wishing we could have back a thing we have lost. Though we may be able to see in hindsight what the Spirit was doing by closing that way to us, in the moment, it is indeed troubling.
Jesus knows that. He, too, has felt troubled. Just a couple chapters before today’s Gospel reading, he says to the disciples, “Now my soul is deeply troubled.” That’s one of the cool things about our faith, that we trust that our God totally gets what it’s like to be human because God was a human himself. God knows our troubles. And so when Jesus offers his troubled disciples, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you… Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid,” we know that this comes from a place of compassion and empathy. Even as he utters those reassuring words, he knows that the Spirit is leading him, imminently, to a place where he does not wish to go, but knows he must.
But when Jesus gets to that place, to the ultimate closed door – the door of the tomb, shutting him into death, he goes on to show us that a closed way is never the end of the story, no matter how much it may feel like it. No, when Jesus encountered that ultimate closed way, he showed us that with every ending is a beginning. With every “no” in your face comes a “yes” somewhere down the road. Every time something important feels like it has died – a hope, a dream, an expectation, a cherished perspective – we discover that this is only one guiding step along the way toward inevitable life.
Because that, ultimately is the promise of Easter, the promise we live into during this season and during every season of faith and life: that God understands our troubled hearts and cares deeply about them, so deeply that God would come to be one of us to understand our plight, and assure us of the peace, comfort, and guidance of the Advocate, the Holy Spirit; the promise that this same Spirit will “open way” to us by many and various ways, whether a series of “yeses” or a series of “nos,” and that this way that opens will be a way toward life, a life we may never have otherwise imagined. With trust in that promise, we can take to heart Jesus’ words to his disciples on the night of his own betrayal: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you… Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”
Let us pray… Guiding Spirit, help us to trust that sometimes what feels like a closed door or an ending, is just a means to guide us down the path you intend for us, and for your will to come about. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sunday, May 19, 2019

Sermon: Loving one another around Big Issues (May 19, 2019)


Easter 5C
May 18, 2019
John 13:31-35

INTRODUCTION
         Today, in the midst of the Easter season, we are transported back to the night of Jesus’ betrayal, when he is in that upper room with the disciples. He has just washed their feet, and then, immediately before today’s Gospel reading, Judas leaves the room to go and sell Jesus out. And then Jesus will turn to his disciples and offer to them a “new” commandment: to love one another as he has loved them.
         Before we get to the Gospel, though, we will hear a couple other readings, one from Acts and one from Revelation. It is useful to look at these through the lens of that new commandment Jesus gives, because they can each show us a bit about what it looks like to be a community that is marked by the command to love one another. Peter’s vision helps him and us break out of the box of loving only those who are like us, and seeking even to love and include the outsider, the one who believes differently from us. John’s vision described in Revelation shows us what it could look like if we were to live into Jesus’ commandment. So today as you listen, consider what these readings might have to show us about what it means, looks like, feels like to love one another as Jesus has loved us. Let’s listen.
[READ]

Alleluia, Christ is Risen! Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia! Grace to you and peace from God our Father and Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
         It has been a tough week at the Rehbaum house. Last weekend, my husband got the sad news that one of his dearest friends died suddenly at age 59. So we’ve spent some energy this week trying to process that loss. Whenever something like this happens, and I’m sure you all have some experience with this, we spend a lot of time thinking about last words, last exchanges. “What was the last conversation we had?” we wonder. If those last words are really good, or really bad, or even if they are neutral, we may spend days or even decades dwelling on them and dissecting them and trying to fit them into our understanding of our relationship with that person and how we left it, or how it left us.
This is perhaps especially the case when the last exchange includes a specific request: like if your father takes your hand and says, “You have to forgive your brother,” or your grandmother says, “Please take good care of your mother.” These deathbed requests – we take them seriously, right? Perhaps it is a way for us to honor our dearly departed, or maybe there is just something about impending death that makes everything feel more important.
Well, here in this exchange we overhear from John’s Gospel, we get a chance to hear in essence Jesus’ deathbed request of his disciples, the last command he gives them. And Jesus’ command for them is not, “Pray daily,” or “read your Bible,” or, “maintain doctrinal purity” or, “worship the right way.” No, his last command to his disciples, the most important thing, is, “love one another as I have loved you.”  
Love one another as I have loved you. Seems pretty straightforward, right? Pretty foundational. I mean, I think we can all agree that this is a pretty central tenet of our faith, right? And yet somehow… it isn’t. Not that we don’t mean for it to be, but rather, because sometimes loving each other – especially loving each other in the same radical and self-giving way that Jesus has loved us – is really, really hard. As New Testament scholar D.A. Carson says, “This new command is simple enough for a toddler to memorize and appreciate, and yet it is profound enough that the mature believers are repeatedly embarrassed at how poorly they comprehend it and put it into practice.”
What is so hard about it? I can think of a few things. Like, love takes a lot of work and physical and emotional energy. It’s way easier just to be apathetic, or to not take the time or effort to really hear someone’s pain, or to bite back when someone says or does something hurtful. Another reason that loving someone is difficult is that it is very vulnerable – love opens our hearts to be wounded by loss, or being hurt, or being betrayed. If we avoid loving people too much or too deeply, we can save ourselves a lot of heartache. If we keep our circle very small, we can avoid a lot of pain.
And yet, Jesus’ commandment is not, “Love a select few,” or, “Love when it isn’t too much work.” The commandment, Jesus’ dying request, is, “Love one another as I have loved you” – that is, genuinely, deeply, and self-sacrificially. So I think we ought to take it seriously, right? We ought to take it so seriously that it guides not only what we do at church, but also what we do the rest of the week: in our relationships with family, friends and co-workers, in the ways we choose to spend our money, in the ways we decide to vote, and how we form opinions about the biggest ethical issues of our day. Because if our faith provides our foundation for how we live, and this commandment is a foundational aspect of that faith, it should be the lens through which we view everything we do, right?
To that end, I want to apply Jesus’ commandment to one of the biggest hot button issues of our day, because it has been in the news quite a bit this week: abortion. (Yes, I’m going here!) You may have seen in the news this week that Alabama just passed the most restrictive abortion law of any state, which prohibits abortions after 6 weeks gestation, with no exceptions in the case of rape or incest, and makes performing one a felony, punished by up to 99 years in prison. On the other hand, NY State not too long ago passed an abortion law that is extreme in the opposite direction, allowing late term abortions! This is a hot issue with impassioned opinions on both sides – maybe you are already feeling your blood start to boil! If so, then good! Let’s see what Jesus’ command to love one another has to say to this.
Let me begin by saying: I think people on both sides of this issue would say their view is consistent with Jesus’ command to love one another. Those wanting to restrict abortions would claim this as love for the most vulnerable humans, those who literally have no voice and no opportunity to have one. Jesus loves the little children, we know, and so just as Jesus loves the little children, so should we love the very littlest children by giving them a chance at life. If we believe that Jesus calls us to love and serve the most vulnerable among us, “the least of these,” as Matthew 25 says, then who is more vulnerable than an unborn child? Love one another, as Jesus has loved us.
On the other hand, those wanting access to abortions would also claim their view as an expression of love for one another. Most opponents of strict abortion laws are supportive of access to family planning resources and education (things that would prevent the need for an abortion in the first place), and affordable healthcare, childcare, and aid programs that would support low-income families who would like to have a baby but know they cannot afford it. Opponents of Alabama’s law would also claim love for the mother, and the particular emotional or physical anguish she may be enduring for any number of reasons, depending upon the circumstances of the pregnancy. They may also cite the high maternal mortality rate in this country, the highest of any developed country by far, as well as the high number of women who die when they undergo illegal and unsafe abortions, which increase dramatically when the procedure is outlawed and pushed underground. Legal abortions, this group would argue, save women’s lives. Love one another, as Jesus has loved us.
So the question becomes: who is more worthy or needful of our love, or Jesus’ love? Can our love be given effectively to both unborn children and pregnant mothers? How? What does Jesus’ love look like in this issue? What law would be the most effective way of “loving one another as Jesus has loved us”?
I outline these differing arguments not to convince anyone as to what Jesus would say about this issue, nor certainly to upset anyone, but rather for two reasons. The first is simply to demonstrate how we can as individuals apply Jesus’ command even to a hot button issue in our current civil discourse, to help us to discern and form a faithful stance on that issue. The second reason, is to help us to see and understand how someone with a different opinion might also be striving to do the same thing – so that even as we may disagree with one another, we can still respect that two parties may be driven by the same core belief, but come to very different conclusions. That can happen with Big Issues like abortion, and with conflict in a congregation, and with family scuffles: it is possible that everyone is coming from what they see as a loving place, and doing the best they can to love and protect someone valuable and important to them, but arriving at different conclusions. Recognizing this probably won’t change your opinion, and it doesn’t need to, but it might just help us to view the opposition with a bit more empathy and compassion and mercy, to see each other’s humanity… and then, and this is really the key and the point of my talking about this in the first place: then, it may also help us to love that person (even the one with whom we totally disagree), just as Jesus has loved us. In fact, I’ll betcha that Jesus totally disagrees with us sometimes, and yet loves us still. So… can we love one another as Jesus has loved us?
We will never love one another as long as we view each other as barbaric murderers, or as heartless, myopic monsters (both insults I have seen this week). So we need to find a different way to engage with those with whom we disagree. You see, you don’t need to agree with someone to love them. Love sometimes looks like accountability, and sometimes like genuinely listening to someone’s story without judgment, and sometimes like praying for them and their well-being. Whatever the case, we’ll have a much better shot at keeping Jesus’ commandment if we can remember that we all fall short of the glory of God, we all fail miserably at Jesus’ new commandment, and we are all utterly dependent upon God’s grace. In short, we’re all humans, just doing the best we can.
And is that not why we come back here, week after week, to hear that once again Jesus has forgiven our shortcomings, and sends us out yet again to go in peace and serve the Lord? Is that not why we come, to gather with a great cloud of witnesses who are also flawed, but also strive daily to love one another as Jesus has loved us, and learn from each other’s successes and failures? Is that not why we reach out our hands each week to receive the very body and blood of Christ, and with it the promise that we are in Christ and he is in us, and because of that we know also that we are not in this thing alone, but are being continually sustained and upheld by a loving God who will set us back along the right path? Is that not why we come here and keep this faith? I know I need it!
I’m not going to tell you what to believe about abortion – you are all smart, capable, faithful people, and I will entrust that decision to your own prayer, study, and discernment with Jesus. What I will tell you, is that in this season in which we celebrate that Christ is risen indeed, we can give thanks that Jesus shows us how we too can be brought out of the tomb of loathing and self-righteousness, the graves we dig for ourselves when we assume the worst in the other, rather than recognize our common humanity and flawed nature. By following Jesus’ new commandment, to love one another, let us, too, rise from these graves and into a new life, a life in which we view one another as worthy of Christ’s love, and so also worthy of ours.
Let us pray… Loving Lord, in your last hours, you commanded us to love one another as you have loved us, yet we so often fall short. Be in our hearts and our minds with every decision we make, whether big or small, and every time we view someone who has a view that is different from ours. And help us, when we fall short, to remember that we always rest in your grace. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.