{"id":125,"date":"2010-05-10T07:45:35","date_gmt":"2010-05-10T12:45:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/?p=125"},"modified":"2010-05-10T07:45:35","modified_gmt":"2010-05-10T12:45:35","slug":"6th-sunday-in-easter-may-9-2010-moving-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/2010\/05\/10\/6th-sunday-in-easter-may-9-2010-moving-on\/","title":{"rendered":"6th Sunday in Easter, May 9, 2010: “Moving On”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Texts<\/strong><\/span><\/span>:\u00a0 Rev. 21:10, 22-22:5; \u00a0Acts 16:6-15; \u00a0John 14:23-29<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Prayer:\u00a0 O God, speak in this place, in the calming of our minds and the longing of our hearts, by the words of my mouth and in the meditations of our hearts.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n

Three seemingly disparate readings from our Scriptures address the concerns of the young church:\u00a0\u00a0 John reports that Jesus tried to comfort those who already felt as if they were falling into some crazy abyss of abandonment, as Jesus prepared his followers for his death.\u00a0\u00a0 The seer who wrote the book of Revelation gives us a glorious vision of the world\u2014this world, not heaven– as God desires it and as God promises us, so that we would not lose sight of the hope.\u00a0 And Luke describes the way the young church keeps moving on\u2014in directions they never would have anticipated, expected, or perhaps even desired.<\/p>\n

As the director of the state council of churches, I spent a great deal of time thinking about the church as institution:\u00a0 its nature and purpose; its current institutional health; its needs; its future.\u00a0\u00a0 One of the more depressing things I had to do is attend denominational conferences and annual meetings.\u00a0 Denomination to denomination, I heard and still hear the same stories:\u00a0 internal divisions over how scripture will be interpreted\u2014not about the big things such as all the hungry children in the world, or\u00a0 violence and war\u2014but over the matters of our private lives; and I see the statistics of churches withdrawing from fellowship of the denomination, of declining membership, and fading, if not totally absent, understandings of mission.\u00a0 Churches talk about their mission programs and outreach programs, missing the point that the church is mission, is God\u2019s outreach to the world\u2014not something set along side all the other things we do for our own personal comfort.<\/p>\n

One of our \u00a0chronic church illnesses is the belief that somehow we can be independent, autonomous entities.\u00a0\u00a0 This false belief mirrors, of course, our secular misconception that we, as individuals, have individual rights which no community rights may supercede, or that we can and may live autonomous lives quite without regard for our neighbor, or for nature and the very life of the planet.<\/p>\n

This drive for autonomy comes, I think, from fear:\u00a0 fear that we might be rejected; fear that there is no community to take us in;\u00a0 fear that we are alone, orphaned if you will, in the universe.\u00a0 So we stake out our claims; get a grip on our things; our places; our ways of doing things.\u00a0 We throw up our walls, and frame our creeds, and define our values, and Christ who is our peace is left outside.<\/p>\n

Writer Anne Lamott says somewhere that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty.\u00a0 We more evangelical Christians sing \u201cHow firm a foundation\u201d quite often, but what we have done is made God\u2019s word rigid, and a stick with which to beat one another; or so stony hard that we use it to build walls to keep others out.<\/p>\n

Clearly Jesus anticipated our very human reaction to loss and change.\u00a0 Just a few verses prior to the passage we heard this morning, Jesus promises the disciples:\u00a0 \u201cI will not leave you orphaned.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 And in the Gospel reading for this morning, we are told that if we love him, and keep his word\u2014abiding in him, he calls it elsewhere in this Gospel\u2014that Christ and his God will come and make their home with us.\u00a0\u00a0 Again, as with last week, this is not about what happens to us after we die.\u00a0 It is about the here and now, this life.\u00a0\u00a0 Isn\u2019t it true that when you have a home where love for you and hospitality is experienced, you don\u2019t have to hold on as tight to the things of this world?\u00a0 Isn\u2019t the most liberating thing in the world the assurance that you have a sanctuary of love and hope?<\/p>\n

Just as the Gospel promises us the liberating freedom of that safe abiding place where God and Christ dwell with us, it also promises us the Holy Spirit who will teach us, educate us.\u00a0 The Latin word for education, \u201ceducare\u201d means to call us or to lead us out.\u00a0 The Spirit leads us onward and outward.\u00a0 No wonder our denominations are shriveling and dying.\u00a0 A true home is never confining; it is the place where we find the love to leave the nest and join the larger family of the world.\u00a0\u00a0 So Jesus tells us:\u00a0 love one another.\u00a0 Do not be afraid.\u00a0 Move on out.<\/p>\n

At the omega point of history\u2014described in Revelation as the time when the fusion of the divine and the creation will be complete–, I do not think the God is going to ask:\u00a0 did you believe in the virgin birth?\u00a0 Did you believe marriage was limited to heterosexual couples? Did you believe in the inerrancy and infallibility of the Bible or the Pope?\u00a0 Did you post the 10 Commandments on school walls? \u00a0Did you believe in the Trinity?<\/p>\n

When we have finished our days, as we are gathered into the loving embrace of our Creator, the questions are going to be more like these:\u00a0 What did you live for?\u00a0 Did you love me?\u00a0 Did you keep my word about not judging, about forgiveness, about looking after the little ones?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Did you love your neighbor?\u00a0 Did you care for the sick, feed the hungry, clothe the poor; provide homes and shelter for the homeless?\u00a0 There will be no examination on doctrine.<\/p>\n

Did you notice , in the readings from the book of Acts during this Easter season, that there’s a lot of “coming” and “going” going on?\u00a0 They weren\u2019t staying put.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The young church, remember, was called \u201cthe way.\u201d\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t an institution, it was a movement.<\/p>\n

Sometimes we think we know where the church ought to be going. \u00a0\u00a0To many think it should stay put in the old understandings, the old ways, so that the 7 last words of the church are:\u00a0 \u201cWe never did it that way before.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0But the reading from Acts today\u2014and these past weeks since Easter–suggests something quite different:\u00a0 Paul and Barnabas thought their mission was to go to the communities in Asia Minor, in what is now known as Turkey.\u00a0\u00a0 But somehow, they were inarticulate amongst the \u201cAsians\u201d.\u00a0 Luke tells us that they had been \u201cforbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Then they tried to go along the coast, into a town called Bithynia\u2026which was a Roman settlement.\u00a0 Again, Paul was not permitted to go there, amongst people that he probably thought were like himself.<\/p>\n

But listening to God, Paul hears a man from Macedonia, on the European continent, saying \u201cCome over to Macedonia and help us.\u201d\u00a0 They arrived in Philippi in Macedonia, which was also a Roman colony, but certainly outside the limits that Paul had originally considered for his work.\u00a0 There was, in this city, no Jewish synagogue where he might go and preach, but the missionaries went instead to a place outside the gate by the river. There they met, not with the upstanding men of the community, but with the women who had gathered there probably to do their laundry, to draw water, and to meet together\u00a0 for trade in goods and for mutual support.\u00a0 The leader of the group was Lydia, a worshiper of God\u2014which means that she was a follower of Judaism\u2014a business woman who dealt in purple cloth, which meant that she was probably very wealthy, yet there she was down on the river bank with the washer-women.<\/p>\n

The reading from Acts says several things to me:\u00a0 First the church needs people, members and leaders, \u00a0who are open to thinking beyond the limits of what is customary and usual.\u00a0 Paul and Silas were \u201cboundary leaders\u201d. Boundary leadership ignores lines and moves beyond, across, and among vital emergent zones.\u00a0 Boundary leaders may function in and amid structure and organizations, but they never confuse them as being ultimate or even lasting.\u00a0 Boundary leaders focus on what endures and what matters, relationships and the values and commitments that shape community, so others can move on the Way.\u00a0 A boundary leader hopes for the whole, not just his or her own sphere.<\/p>\n

Second, the church needs people who believe the church\u2019s job is, as it has always been, to teach and to heal:\u00a0 to teach the world, as Anna Jarvis and Julia Ward Howe\u2014the founders of Mother\u2019s Day in America knew so well– that hate and vengeance solve no problems; that material things will never satisfy; that with wealth and talent come responsibilities; and to heal all the many hurts and wounds in our world.\u00a0 And third, it says that we need not worry about what will happen to OUR church, because it is not up to us to do more than to see it as God\u2019s church.<\/p>\n

Nowadays you hear people say things like:\u00a0 \u201cI didn\u2019t leave my church.\u00a0 It left me.\u201d \u00a0I don\u2019t think that is possible.\u00a0 The Gospel of John keeps telling us that Jesus came to save the world, not the church, and that he came so that we might have eternal life which John explains as God abiding with us.\u00a0 Both in our Gospel reading and the lesson from Revelation, we are told that God is moving in with us, so we can neither leave God nor will God leave us. \u00a0\u00a0God is moving in so that we might move on.\u00a0 \u00a0And sometimes it is going far afield from where we thought we were supposed to go, that we begin to recognize the place where we really ought to be.\u00a0 And we find that autonomy is not all it was cracked up to be, as we learn slowly to live in the word of Jesus, to abide in him,\u00a0 and to love one another.<\/p>\n

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Texts:\u00a0 Rev. 21:10, 22-22:5; \u00a0Acts 16:6-15; \u00a0John 14:23-29 Prayer:\u00a0 O God, speak in this place, in the calming of our minds and the longing of our hearts, by the words of my mouth and in the meditations of our hearts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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