Do We Want to Be Made Well?

Sermon for May 26, 2019

Revelation 21:10,22–22:5; John 5:1-9

Here we are at Memorial Day weekend.  As Abraham Lincoln said at the cemetery at Gettysburg, we remember and give thanks for those who’ve given “the last full measure of devotion” in service to our country.  Memorial Day isn’t a feast on the church calendar, but it still seems an appropriate time to pray for those who have died in our armed forces and to pray for the nation they gave their lives to serve.

I have to say that I’m concerned about this nation they gave their lives to serve.  That’s not because of a single person, or a single issue, or even several issues, but because of the way we’ve come to deal with issues these days – running to our respective corners of disagreement and approaching public policy as a zero-sum game.  By definition, that polarization separates us from one another precisely at the time when what we need most is to find common ground.

Among the issues where we see this polarization play out is one that’s been in the news a lot over the past few months, so much that people have asked me why I haven’t said anything about it.  That issue is abortion, a political potato so hot that “smart” preachers never talk about it.  Honestly, I don’t want to talk about it, because no matter what I say, I’m guaranteed to make some of you angry.  More than that, as I’ve said before, you don’t need or want your clergy pretending to be experts in public policy just because we have collars around our necks.  If you want to know what I, personally, think about abortion, I’m happy to get together with you; but I don’t think a sermon is the place for that.  Still, I do think abortion is worth a sermon, not because I have “the answer” but because people turn to the Church to hear its voice on things like this.  And that voice must be a voice of Good News.  That voice must be a voice of hope.  So, is there Good News for the Church to proclaim about this seemingly unsolvable issue?

You probably know the legislative highlights of the past five months or so.  At one end of the spectrum, New York has removed criminal penalties for injury to a fetus when a pregnant woman is assaulted, which abortion opponents see as a step toward taking away the personhood of a fetus completely, regardless of the length of gestation.¹  Virginia legislators considered a measure that would have repealed some restrictions on abortion, lowering the bar related to how much harm the birth would cause the mother and allowing abortion even at the end of term.²  At the other end of the spectrum, Missouri has just made abortion illegal past eight weeks’ gestation – the point when fetal heart tones begin and a point before many women know they’re pregnant.  With this action, Missouri joins several other states in passing “heartbeat” laws about abortion, seeking presenting cases they hope will overturn Roe v. Wade.³

For me, and for at least half of you, this controversy plays out not in lived experience but in conversation.  As I said, over the past few months, people on both sides have shared their passionate beliefs with me, implicitly or explicitly asking me to speak or write on their behalf.  In fact, I’ve had two conversations just recently, one over breakfast and one over a beer.  One person saw the issue completely in terms of a woman’s autonomy over her own body and health; the other saw the issue primarily in terms of a fetus’ complete vulnerability and society’s duty to protect it.  In other words, people on opposite sides of this moral issue were both looking to the Church to affirm their convictions.

And both of my conversation partners could root that expectation in the same place.  In the Episcopal Church, our job description as followers of Jesus Christ can be found in black and white in the Book of Common Prayer – the Baptismal Covenant (304-305).  From the three strands of authority we recognize – from Scripture, tradition, and reason – we’ve come to identify these baptismal promises as fundamental to faithful discipleship.  And I think the last of those promises is where both my conversation partners would point to support their divergent positions:  It’s the promise that we will “strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being” (BCP 305). 

You can make a good case that both women and fetuses fall into a class of people who have been or might be threatened in terms of their human dignity.  Over pancakes, one conversation partner was highlighting the historical disempowerment of women, socially and legally, particularly their lack of autonomy over their own bodies.  Over a beer, the other conversation partner was highlighting the disempowerment of those who will be, or are, human beings but who can’t speak for themselves from the womb.  Both could have turned to the Bible to bolster their case.  You can point to scripture like Psalm 139 to affirm God’s love for us as unique individuals, even in the womb; and you can point to Jesus’ advocacy for marginalized women when he affirmed their full human autonomy in the face of social oppression.  Both my conversation partners saw a need to protect the dignity of people whose full humanity has been threatened or denied. 

What happens when there are competing claims on that Gospel value of human dignity?  And what do we do when those competing claims drive us apart and deafen us to one another’s authentic cry for justice?

Perhaps through our readings this morning – on this weekend when we honor a nation worth dying for – perhaps God might speak a word of Good News, even a word of hope.  And I believe that word of hope is this: “healing.”

In our Gospel reading, Jesus visits a pool where broken people come to be healed.  The blind, the lame, and the paralyzed come to this pool of Beth-zatha, where apparently healing happens by immersing oneself in the life-giving waters.  There, Jesus sees a man who’s been coming to this pool a long, long time, someone who’s been blind or lame or paralyzed for 38 years.  Thirty-eight years.  By this point, illness and disability have become second nature for this man; he probably can’t imagine what it would feel like to be healthy.  “Broken” has become his way of life. 

So, Jesus looks the man in the eye and asks a question that just seems wrong – wrong in at least a couple of ways.  He asks, “Do you want to be made well?” (John 5:6).  We might hear that as a dumb question:  This is a disabled man at a healing pool; of course he wants to be made well.  Or, we might hear it as a question so direct as to be almost rude:  “What are you doing?  After 38 years, you haven’t found a way to get yourself to the healing water?  Do you want to be made well?”  Myself, I hear it that second way.  Sometimes love is confrontational, and I think this is one of those times.  No more excuses, Jesus says.  “Stand up, take your mat, and walk” (5:8), because God needs you out there, working for the kingdom.

But, you know, God doesn’t just desire our healing as individuals.  God’s purposes include the healing of this nation and of all the nations.  We heard it in the reading this morning from Revelation.  In this vision of the city of God, the vision of eternal life that’s awaiting us all, the nations of the earth come and bring their glory to God’s throne – people once at war with each other, people who’ve cut each other down for generations.  They will come to the throne bringing God “the glory and the honor of the nations” (Revelation 21:26); and there, they will be healed of all that’s left them broken – all the pain that comes from our chronic inability to listen to the heart of the other.  And there, when God brings the heavenly city to our redeemed earth, we will find the “river of the water of life” flowing through the city (Revelation 22:1); and beside that river will be the tree of life itself – the fruit of the tree from the garden of Eden now freely available to us all – “and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations” (22:2).  That’s where God is calling us – toward the healing of the nations.  God’s dream of love includes the coming together of even those who’ve never heard each other’s hearts.

That’s hope.  That’s healing.  And we don’t have to wait until the second coming to find it.  In fact, I believe God asks us to seek it, even – especially – in the bitterness of our deepest divides.

If you were here a few weeks ago, you may remember a sermon about breakfast on the beach.  Jesus met Peter, and grilled fish for him, and worked through Peter’s denial and the rupture of their relationship.  I believe God has a similar call for us now.  And on this Memorial Day weekend, nothing less is at stake than the health of this nation worth dying for. 

That call is something as simple as sharing pancakes, or sharing a beer.  Find someone you disagree with.  Make time for breakfast or a drink together.  And then listen to one another’s heart.  God’s desire for us is healing – healing of our own wounds, and our nation’s wounds, and our world’s wounds.  And I believe the most effective way each of us can be agents of healing is to put human dignity first – beginning with the person sitting across the table from you. 

Even in the abortion debate, there is Good News to be found.  For God is calling us to practice a way of hope.  God is calling us to practice a way of healing.  As Jesus might say, the question is:  Do we want to be made well?

1.       “Reproductive Health Act.”  Wikipedia.  Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproductive_Health_Act.  Accessed May 24, 2019.

2.       “Repeal Act (Virginia).”  Wikipedia.  Available at:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repeal_Act_(Virginia).  Accessed May 24, 2019.

3.       Thomas, Crystal.  “Missouri House approves near-total abortion ban, sends it to governor for signature.”   Kansas City Star, May 17, 2019.  Available at: https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article230523469.html.  Accessed May 24, 2019.

Us and Them

Sermon from Sunday, May 19
Acts 11:1-18; Revelation 21:1-6; John 13:31-35

In today’s Gospel reading, we hear Jesus offering one of the most important lessons of the New Testament.  After washing his friends’ feet and telling them to do the same, he gives them this New Commandment: “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” (John 13:34).  It’s right up there with the Great Commandment, to love God and love neighbor; and because these commands are so central to who we are as Jesus’ followers, they’re the core of our parish’s purpose statement.  It’s right here in the bulletin every week, by the way – that, first and foremost, we are a church family called to love God, love neighbor, and love one another.

So, how do we live out that call to love?  When Jesus tells the lawyer to love God and love neighbor, the lawyer comes back with, “OK, but who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29) – which leads Jesus to tell the parable of the Good Samaritan.  Similarly, as we wonder about who’s included in the command to love “one another,” we get today’s reading from Acts.

In the chapter just before what we heard this morning, Peter has a transforming experience; and he gives a recap of it in today’s reading.  Peter had a vision of all kinds of animals that were ritually unclean for Jewish people to eat, but he heard God issuing a new dietary commandment – that what was once considered unclean is now literally on the table.  That vision set the stage for an even bigger course correction God was giving Peter – overturning the ancient laws prohibiting Jews from eating and drinking with non-Jews, also known as Gentiles.  A Roman army officer, Cornelius – the epitome of an enemy for a follower of Jesus – Cornelius came to Peter looking for a word from the Lord.  And Peter saw that God was opening the doors of the kingdom of heaven to non-Jews, too, especially once the Holy Spirit came to Cornelius and his friends.  

All that probably sounds great to us, given that we, too, are Gentiles.  But for the rest of the disciples, Peter had gone rogue.  They demand to know, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” (Acts 11:3).  God set those boundaries for a reason, Peter.  What the heck were you thinking?  So, Peter tells them the story of his vision, and Cornelius, and the Holy Spirit coming to these outsiders just as it had come to the apostles in the upper room (John 20:22; Acts 2:1-4).  And Peter concludes his story this way:  “If God … gave them the same gift [God] gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” (11:17).

Now, in fairness, Jewish people had always welcomed non-Jews to come to worship and to pattern their lives on Jewish teachings.  Gentiles like these were called “God-fearers,” and Cornelius was one of them, as it turned out.  They followed the ways of the God of Israel without making the full commitment of conversion and, for the guys, circumcision.  So, it was just fine when Gentiles would come to Jewish synagogues to worship.  But things got messy when Peter stepped across a holy boundary and went to the outsiders instead.

It’s always easier for a community to let people in, on its terms, than for a community to change and adapt to folks from the outside.  Churches struggle with this all the time.  In fact, it’s really hard for most of us to see the life of our church from the perspective of someone who isn’t part of it.  A couple of Sundays ago, we hosted a Lutheran pastor, who offered a workshop on hospitality, how we can be more intentional about embracing people who come our way.  Forty-two St. Andrew’s folks came out for tacos and training in being hospitable, which is amazing.  Honestly, I think we’ve made huge strides in being more welcoming, and I give thanks for every person here who makes it a practice – a spiritual practice – to look for people they don’t recognize.

Over the past year, we’ve also been experimenting with new ways to gather, praising God, hearing God’s Word, celebrating special times, and welcoming people who maybe don’t come to any church on a Sunday morning.  Typically, these events are part of our third-Sunday-of-the-month Sunset Series, and they’re usually over at HJ’s.  In August, we had a back-to-school celebration and blessed kids’ backpacks.  In September, it was a jazz concert.  Then we celebrated Oktoberfest.  In November, we had two celebrations – debuting a new choral presentation of The Prince of Egypt and, later, honoring our veterans.  In December, we had a St. Nicholas party, sang carols, and made gingerbread houses.  Since the first of the year, we’ve celebrated St. Patrick with a Pub Night featuring an Irish band, and we had an amazing opportunity last Sunday night to sing spirituals along with one of the finest pianists and conductors in the Midwest. 

Now, this afternoon, at 5 p.m. over at HJ’s, we’ll have our end-of-school bash, with hotdogs and hamburgers, an ice-cream truck, inflatables for the kids, music, and something new for the summer: the blessing of the feet.  Kids of all ages can bring their flip-flops, or tennis shoes, or hiking boots, or just their bare feet and have them blessed to be sent out into the joy of summertime.

What are those events all about?  What happens when we do them?  Well, we gather in the Lord’s name, praising God for what we’ve been given and asking God to bless our lives.  We hear some Scripture.  We sing spiritual songs.  We feast and have a great time.  I don’t know about you, but to me, that sounds like a worshipful celebration, even though you don’t find any of those gatherings in the Book of Common Prayer.  So, do they “count”?  In the language of the people I interviewed in England during my sabbatical, are these events “proper church?”  In my book, absolutely.  And at each one, we welcome in people we’ve never met before. 

So, in last week’s Messenger and bulletin, you saw an article about a next step we’re going to try out beginning Father’s Day, June 16.  We’re calling it “Java and Jesus.”  Here’s the idea:  As much as many of us love this traditional worship space, with its pews and stone walls and stained-glass windows, a lot of people would find this setting stuffy or even intimidating.  People ask me, “Do I have to wear a suit or a dress to come to St. Andrew’s?” and I always say, “No, of course not.”  But the fact they feel the need to ask says something – that our worship environment may be setting boundaries we don’t intend to set.  So, we’re going to try something, not a change but an addition to what happens here on Sunday morning. 

Beginning June 16, we’ll be livestreaming the 10:15 service over at HJ’s.  The café will be open, and people can come in wearing their shorts and t-shirts for complimentary coffee and pastries, just like the other six mornings of the week.  But along with the coffee will be worship, including consecrated bread and wine, Jesus’ Body and Blood for Holy Communion.  We’ll set out a mat with toys where kids can play.  As far as I’m concerned, dogs can come in, too (though they don’t get Communion).  People can sit wherever they like; and honestly, if they find the sermon boring, they can get up and get a muffin while I drone on.  It’s definitely church – the same Word and Sacrament that happens here on this side of the street.  But, you know, if you can come in your shorts, and have a bite to eat, and talk with your neighbor without feeling self-conscious about it, that brings down the boundaries between “us” and “them.”

So, if St. Peter were here with us today – and as we join with the angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, I like to think that St. Peter is here with us today – what might he have to say about “Java and Jesus”?  Now, without his vision of God telling him to eat “unclean” foods, and without his conversation with the Roman army officer Cornelius, and without seeing the Holy Spirit come down on those non-Jewish people and welcome them into God’s family – without all that, Peter might have had some issues with us offering Eucharist over coffee and pastries at HJ’s.  But after his experience with Cornelius, I think Peter would say, sign me up.

Here’s the thing:  Our God is always doing something new.  In the beginning, it was creating the heavens and the earth out of nothing.  Then it was setting a particular people aside to shine God’s light for everybody else.  Then it was coming into our lives to take our nature and make common humanity divine.  Then it was dying to defeat death and let us live forever.  Then it was beating the boundaries of who’s in and who’s out, opening the promise of healing and eternal life to everybody who trusts in Christ.  And even at the end of the story, when God reunites heaven and earth as we heard in the reading from Revelation, and restores things to be the way God intended in the beginning, God will still be proclaiming, “See, I am making all things new” (21:5). 

So, as we try to beat a boundary ourselves the first Sunday of June, and invite neighbors to find God in coffee and pastry as well as in Word and Sacrament, I hope you’ll pray for this next step to make our little part of creation new.  If you’d like to come over and try it yourself, please do.  And when you do – just as you do on this side of the street on a Sunday morning – look first for the people you don’t know.  Look first for the Gentiles.  Look first for whoever might strike you as “them.”  And then, make “them” part of “us.”  As Jesus said to his friends 2,000 years ago, so he tells us as he sends us out:  “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.  By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples” – each time a “them” becomes an “us.”

Breakfast Partners

Sermon from Sunday, May 5, 2019
John 21:1-19

OK.  This might hurt just a little, but let me invite you to bring to mind something hard:  What’s something for which you have real trouble forgiving yourself?  As Paul observed, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23); we miss that mark all the time.  But sometimes the pain of missing the mark doesn’t go away so easily.  And sometimes that’s because you haven’t really resolved the issue with the person you ended up hurting.  And when that person remains part of your life, it’s all the harder to know how to move past the injury. 

That’s where the disciple Peter finds himself in today’s Gospel story.  Now, this is the third time that Jesus has appeared to his friends after the resurrection – twice in the upper room in Jerusalem, and now by the Sea of Galilee.  The disciples have marveled and celebrated that Jesus is alive, and Thomas has had his own famous moment of coming to trust that resurrection is real.  But since Easter morning, we haven’t heard a thing from Peter. 

That’s because Peter is carrying some heavy baggage.  At the Last Supper, after Jesus says someone will betray him, Peter says, No way; not me:  “I will lay down my life for you” (John 13:37).  But by sunrise the next morning, Peter has denied Jesus three times, saving himself when the going got tough.  And he’s been carrying that guilt like the rock from which he took his name. 

Peter has no idea what to do with that guilt, now that Jesus is back from the dead.  What do you say to your leader and friend after you’ve pulled the rug out from under him?  So, Peter tries to get on with his life, heading out to do what he knows best – fishing.  But nothing’s right.  Not even the fish will cooperate.

And then suddenly, things get really awkward.  From the boat, the disciples see someone on the beach; and one of them realizes it’s Jesus.  Peter reacts without a lot of thought.  He puts a rope cincture around the work smock he’s wearing, which I guess seemed better than trying to swim in a loose blanket; and he comes ashore.  He wants so badly to be with his friend and his Lord … but he’s got no idea what he’ll say once he gets there.

Meanwhile, Jesus is cooking breakfast for his friends.  It’s loaves and fishes once again, and once again way more than the group could possibly eat.  But no one’s talking.  Maybe the guys are waiting for Peter to break the ice, but Peter’s still got no idea what to say.  So, Jesus takes Peter off to the side for a private conversation. 

Now, in our translation, this dialogue between Jesus and Peter doesn’t make much sense.  “Do you love me?”  “Yes.”  “Do you love me?”  “Yes.”  “Do you love me?”  “Yes, you know that I love you.”  As we hear it in English, the dialogue affirms Peter’s repentant heart three times, symbolically cancelling out Peter’s three denials of Jesus.  But I think there’s more to it than that, if you look at the original language.

As you know, there are three Greek words for “love” in the New Testament.  There’s eros, which is romantic love.  There’s philos, which is deep friendship, the love of a brother or sister.  And there’s agape, which is loving like God loves – love that gives itself away for the other, Jesus’ sacrificial love for us.  Agape is the highest form of love, the kind Jesus calls us all to learn as we follow him.

So, here’s a loose translation of this dialogue between Jesus and Peter (John 21:15-17).

Jesus asks, “Simon son of John, do you love me sacrificially (agape), more than the rest of these guys do?”  Peter says, “Yes, Lord.  You know that I love you … like a brother (philos).”  Now, that’s not what Jesus was asking for.  But even so, Jesus says to him, “Feed my lambs.”  Lead these sheep I’ve given you.

Then a second time, Jesus asks, “Simon son of John, don’t you love me sacrificially (agape)?”  And Peter says again, “Yes, Lord.  You know that I love you … like a brother (philos).”  Frankly, it’s the best Peter can do; at least he’s being honest about it.  And Jesus says to him again, “Well, tend my sheep.”

Then Jesus asks Peter about love once more.  But this time Jesus changes the word he uses:  “Simon son of John, do you love me … like a brother (philos)?”  That’s it?  That’s the best you can do?

And by this point, I imagine Peter is breaking down.  He says, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you … like a brother (philos).”  You know I can’t give you the ultimate love you’re asking for, Peter exclaims.  You know I’ve failed you.  Why are you making me say it out loud?!

Of course, Jesus knows Peter’s answer before he asks the question.  Hearing the answer is for Peter’s benefit, because you can’t heal a relationship without taking accountability for the harm that broke it.  Reconciliation requires truth first. 

But that hard truth also paves the road ahead.  Peter has admitted his heart’s failure, love that only rises to the level of friendship or brotherhood.  And Jesus comes back to him as Jesus always comes back to us, with something more – with agape, the love that forgives failure, and heals relationship, and moves forward into a new reality.  “I love you anyway,” Jesus tells Peter.  “Brotherly love will do for now, so get to work.  Feed my sheep.”  But Jesus also warns Peter there’s sacrificial love to come at the end of his road – and that true love, agape love, comes with a cost.  Jesus can say that with authority because he knows all about the costly path of love.  I know it hurts, Jesus says.  But even so, follow me anyway.

So, what does all this have to do with us?  I think it’s stunning that God chooses the least likely candidate – in fact, the disqualified candidate – for the most important job.  Peter, the one you can’t depend on, will lead the newly forming Church and help it navigate the waters of inclusion, exclusion, and persecution.  He’ll grieve as his friend James is killed by King Herod, and Peter will be thrown in prison himself to await the same outcome.  And he’ll receive a vision that changes everything about who’s in and who’s out in this movement, and he’ll help change the rules to open up the boundaries of God’s love to everyone.  Eventually, the authorities will kill him just as they killed his Lord.  But he follows Jesus anyway.  He couldn’t do anything to deserve Jesus’ forgiveness.  He had no business even staying in the movement, much less helping to lead it.  But God’s forgiveness changed the relationship, replacing his heart of stone with a heart of love made new. 

So, I began by asking you to imagine walking in Peter’s sandals, needing to have a hard but loving conversation with someone you’ve hurt.  Now, imagine yourself in Jesus’ sandals instead, walking on feet that have taken the nails of broken relationship.  Think about someone who’s failed you, someone whose sins of omission or commission have taken a toll on your life.  With whom do you need to have breakfast on the beach?

In last week’s Gospel story, when Jesus appeared to his friends, he breathed the Holy Spirit on them and said, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (John 20:23).  We often hear that as empowering the Church, through its priests, to speak God’s absolution to people confessing their sins; and that’s true.  But of course, the Church isn’t an institution first; it’s the assembly of those who follow Jesus Christ.  In that sense, we are all called to be people of forgiveness – those who receive it and those who give it.  It’s important enough to make it into the Lord’s Prayer:  “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”  As Jesus reconciled us with God, so Jesus asks us to reconcile with one another – that we might be one, as he and the Father are one, so that the world might see what God’s way of love looks like (John 17:22-23). 

That sounds like an overwhelming project, and maybe it is.  So, it might be worthwhile to start off simply.  Think again of that person you need to forgive.  Maybe it’s time just to invite him or her to breakfast – and see what our loving and liberating and life-giving Lord will do with it.