Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Youth Sunday Sermon


May 20, 2012
Youth Sunday Sermon
by Brodie Chittum

This sermon is based on John 17:6-19

Good Morning!

And thanks to everyone for this opportunity to speak to you.

As I read through today’s lessons when planning this sermon, the Gospel spoke to me in a clear way.  In it, Jesus says to his Father:
“...for the words that you gave to me I have given to them,
and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you;
and they have believed that you sent me.”

In this reading, Jesus speaks to God about why his disciples deserve eternal life. The disciples, who lived in a society with much pressure to conform to social norms, decided to follow a man who proposed new ideas. By opening their minds to a new belief, they simultaneously opened themselves to God.

In my opinion, people spend too much time in their comfort zone. We all need to learn to embrace every unique experience, even if at first it might appear to be worthless, or even negative.  I have been in plenty of situations where I benefited without ever expecting that I would.

One example that seems appropriate is a humbling experience that I had in Honduras when I was on the youth mission trip last summer.

I stood inside a cramped room as my friend Henry withdrew money from an ATM. The machine handed him 400 lempiras (approximately 20 US dollars) and as he placed the colorful Honduran money in his pocket, he motioned with his hand that he was ready to go.

 It was just past five o’clock, and, as if on cue, rain came pouring out of the sky, as it did every day at this time. I nodded to the police officer who stood guard outside the ATM, and as always I felt a degree of discomfort when I noticed the loaded shotgun which he held in his hand.

We set off down the raised sidewalk, failing to remain dry as some of the roofs, which lacked gutters, stopped halfway across, forcing us to dash through miniature waterfalls of rain. Our main objective was to meet up with some other members of our mission trip group for dinner, but in the meantime, I insisted that we shop for a souvenir for my girlfriend. Fortunately, we were staying in a tourist town (at least in terms of Honduras), so were able to eat, sleep, and shop in relative comfort.

Henry and I reached the end of the block and spotted the shop that we intended to reach across the street and a few hundred feet to the left. We took a running start and began moving across the empty cobblestone street, hopping from stone to stone in a desperate attempt to keep our feet dry. We stumbled into the store out of breath and soaking wet, cursing our bad luck of arriving on the first day of the rainy season.       Needless to say we made quite a ruckus, and several of the locals shot us judgmental stares.

The woman at the counter started speaking to us in Spanish, but she was talking at an incomprehensibly fast pace, so we stood motionless, trying to dissect the meaning of what she was saying.

By the time we figured out that she was simply asking if she could help us find anything, several people in the store were laughing at us. Already unhappy about being soaked, the final blow to my self esteem came when a man patted me on the back and called me a gringo, which translates approximately as “white person who doesn’t know what he is doing”.

Although at the time I thought no more of this experience than the fact that I was wet and surrounded by laughing Hondurans, I realized later that this, like every other story I have from the trip, was a memory to understand and to cherish. It was a special experience, and one that I will never forget.

 After all, we were in Honduras to serve God - and if at times we were made to feel ridiculous, then that in itself was a worthwhile lesson. We were in a strange land among strangers, but I came to believe strongly that, like our mission volunteers, everyone should attempt to explore the unknown - because that is just where you might find God’s word.

 Jesus was on the very first mission trip to spread the word of God – a soaking rain would not have deterred him.

 Many of my greatest friends now are people who, until this past fall, I hardly even knew. Last year as a junior in a new high school, most of my acquaintances were very familiar people in the grade above me, and, needless to say, this year they were all gone to college.

At the beginning of this school year it seemed that I would be facing a long, socially boring term - but it turned out instead to be a great opportunity.

I got to know many classmates that I never expected to spend time with outside the classroom - and in this way I made friends with some wonderful individuals. They are different than last year’s friends, but gifted and interesting in many other ways.

 I knew that I would meet new people when I went to college, but it somehow seemed less obvious to me that great potential friends had been sitting next to me in class for over a year. I took a chance with a new situation, and it proved to be very rewarding.

I encourage everyone here today – especially the youth, to try to be as outgoing and adventurous as possible - seek out new experiences – otherwise you will never know what person or thing you might have missed.

In today’s Gospel from John, Jesus prays and describes his time on earth:
“As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.”
Jesus was the great risk-taker. We need to follow his example.            Amen.

Sunday, May 13, 2012

Spirit in Mission

by the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on Acts 10:44-48, with additional reference to Acts 10. An audio version of this sermon is available here.

Our reading from Acts this morning — this scene of the Holy Spirit coming to people as Peter preaches — is actually the conclusion, the climax, the punch line, of a much longer story, a story that takes up all of Chapter 10. And like so many scripture stories, if we want to understand what is going on here —  especially if we want to understand what this story has to say to us — then we have to fill in the story so far to know what’s brought us to this point.

This story begins in the town of Caesarea with a Roman centurion, of all people, named Cornelius. Now, Cornelius is devout and God-fearing man. He believes in the God of the Bible, he does good and righteous deeds, he prays every day — but he is not a Jew, he is not a member of the community of faith, he is not included in the covenant people to whom the apostles have been preaching the good news of Jesus. One day Cornelius is praying, and while he prays the Holy Spirit sends him a vision of an angel, who directs him to send to Joppa for a man named Simon, who is also called Peter, who has something important to tell him. Cornelius has no idea who this Simon Peter is, or what message he might have; but as soon as he comes out of his vision he does as he’s been told: he sends messengers to Joppa to invite Peter to come visit him.

Meanwhile, back in Joppa, just as Cornelius’s messengers are drawing near, but before they’ve arrived, Peter goes up on the roof of the house where he’s staying to pray. As he prays he falls into a trance, and in the trance the Holy Spirit send him a vision: he is hungry, and he sees the heavens opened, and something that looks like the sail from a ship is lowered, and in the sail he sees all kinds of animals, clean and unclean, kosher and non-kosher. A voice from heaven says to Peter “Rise, kill, and eat” — but Peter says “No, Lord, I’ve never eaten anything unclean in my life; how can I eat of these unclean animals now?” — and the voice replies “What God has made clean, you must not call unclean.” And just to make sure Peter gets the point, the vision us repeated twice more — three times Peter hears the message “What God has made clean, you must not call unclean.”

And then, just as Peter is coming out of his trance, the messengers from Cornelius arrive and knock at the door. Peter’s hosts come to tell him there are Gentiles downstairs asking for him, and the Holy Spirit tells Peter to go with them — doesn’t bother with a trance this time, just tells Peter to go with them without hesitation or discrimination. And Peter, although he knows perfectly well that his Jewish-Christian hosts will be scandalized, Peter goes down to them, and invites them in, and shows them hospitality, and the next day he leaves with them to go to Caesarea and speak to Cornelius. A few of the believers decide to make the trip with Peter.  

When Peter arrives at Cornelius’s house, Cornelius comes out to greet him and invites him to come in. This is a big moment for Peter. Peter has never been inside a Gentile’s home before. Just like he’s never eaten anything unclean or non-kosher, Peter has never eaten or drunk or associated or even visited with a Gentile, a goy, someone outside the covenant, someone unclean. Crossing the threshold of Cornelius’s house literally means for Peter going into a socio-religious territory he has never been in before. But he’s learned from the vision the Holy Spirit sent him, and he says “God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean,” and he goes into the house, and he begins to preach, he begins to tell Cornelius and his entire household and all his invited friends the good news of new life in Jesus.

Now, usually in the Book of Acts all of Peter’s sermons follow the same basic pattern, leading up to the moment when Peter calls upon his listeners to repent of their sins and be baptized, so that they can receive the Holy Spirit and have a new life in Jesus. But in this sermon, Peter hesitates a bit. Is it appropriate to offer baptism to these Gentiles? Can they repent? They’re not part of the covenant. God never chose them. God never offered them the path to atonement. Can they even turn to God? Are they capable of receiving God’s blessing? Can they possibly belong to Jesus the way a Jew, one of Jesus’ own people, can belong to Jesus? When it comes right down to it, what good news does Peter really have to offer Cornelius and these Gentiles? It’s time to offer them baptism and the gift of the Holy Spirit — but Peter isn’t really sure he’s ready to do that.

And that’s when it happens: While Peter is still speaking, the Holy Spirit takes the initiative, the Holy Spirit falls upon Cornelius and the others, they begin praising God and speaking in tongues — and Peter, by the Spirit, recognizes right away what is happening. This is the same thing, he realizes, that happened to the apostles, that happened to him, at Pentecost; this is the same gift of the Spirit that transformed his life; this is the Spirit making these Gentiles full members of the Body of Christ. And if the Spirit has accepted them, Peter says, then how can the Church refuse them? He orders that they be baptized — which I’m sure raised the eyebrows of his Jewish-Christian companions — and he stayed with them, living under their roof, eating their food, having communion with them, for several days.

What this story shows us is the Holy Spirit in mission. We often speak of the Church’s mission; but what this story shows us is that the mission really belongs to God, the spread of the Church is the Holy Spirit’s work. At each point in this story it’s the Holy Spirit that is making things happen: the Spirit moves Cornelius, and the Spirit moves Peter, and the Spirit gives the household ecstatic praise, and the Spirit gives Peter understanding of what that praise means. At each point, it is the Holy Spirit that is active in bringing people together in Christ. Peter and Cornelius and the others have their activities too, to be sure — they are not just passive pawns in the Spirit’s work — but the work they do they can only do because it is the Spirit that is working in and through and around them. And the Spirit’s mission, we should note, is not limited by Peter’s limitations, or the limitations of Peter’s idea of the Church. Peter isn’t too sure about accepting these Gentiles. But the Spirit has no such hesitation, God’s mission isn’t limited by this cultural boundary, God’s mission opens up Cornelius and the others to the spirit of new life — and it’s Peter’s job to expand his idea of the Church, to grow the embrace of his faith, so that he and his Church can welcome in the believers the Spirit has created.

And that, I believe, is the meaning of this story for us. For us, too, in our time, the message is that the Holy Spirit is at work, the Holy Spirit is on a mission, the Holy Spirit is creating moments of praise and connection and liberation and communion in the world all the time — and our job in the Church is to discern the mission the Spirit is doing, and then to go join in doing it too. We don’t engage in mission because we’ve done a demographic analysis and determined who our target market is and who we can best attract to our brand; we engage in mission because the Spirit calls us, because the Spirit is at work and inspires us to join in the work as well.

And like Peter in the story, sometimes joining the Spirit in mission means that we have to expand our idea of the Church beyond our comfort zone. It’s easy for us in the Church to get all caught up in our ideas of what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s acceptable and what’s unacceptable, what’s clean and what’s unclean, what belongs in church and what doesn’t belong in church. It’s easy for us to make our own judgments about who’s in and who’s out, who can be blessed and who can’t be blessed, who belongs and who’s beyond the pale. But this story reminds us that the Holy Spirit is not limited by our limitations, the Holy Spirit is not bound by our boundaries in the Church — and if we want to fulfill our purpose to join the Spirit in mission, we have to look beyond our walls and our ways and our well-established customs, to see what the Spirit is doing at large, to recognize the moments of praise and connection and liberation and communion the Spirit is creating among all sorts and conditions of people, even people we would not expect, and we have to expand our idea of Church to embrace and welcome and join these whom God has chosen, too.

Our reading from Acts this morning tells how the Spirit’s mission expands the embrace of the Church to people Peter never expected. May we, in Trinity Church, expand our embrace to join those to whom the Spirit sends us, too. Amen.

Sunday, May 6, 2012

Fruitful in Love


May 6, 2012
The Rev. Shelby Ochs Owen
John 15:1-8
An audio version of this sermon is available here.
                                                                                                                      
“I am the vine, you are the branches.”

The writers of the Old Testament often refer to Israel as the vine but usually this is not a good thing!  As Jews, Jesus’ disciples would have likely been familiar with the words of scripture where God speaks of Israel as the wild and degenerate vine, the vine which bore no fruit because of its disobedience.  They would likely have known that the lack of fruit was due to Israel’s faithlessness.  Here in John’s gospel Jesus speaks of himself as the true vine. So when the disciples heard Jesus’ words, “I am the true vine” they may have wondered where he was going with this.  

Last week in John Wilkinson’s sermon we heard about another “I am” statement: “I am the good shepherd” and today we reach the last of the “I am” statements in the gospel of John, “I am the true vine.” Throughout this series of “I am’s” John is making a point about the identity of Jesus, that he is divine, and here as Jesus describes his Father as the vinegrower, we are given an image of Jesus’ relationship with the Father.  And then Jesus says, “I am the vine, you are the branches.”  So he moves from his relationship with the Father to his relationship with the disciples.  The vine image seems to be all about connectedness, Jesus’ connectedness to the Father and his connectedness to his disciples.  And in that connectedness, there is life! And in this connected life, there is the fruit of love.

So, to what and how well are we connected these days? We have more ways to be connected to more people these days than ever before.  Our increasingly complex technology gives us exponential opportunities to reach out and to be reached in an amazing and at times disconcerting number of ways.  The internet is a vehicle for connectedness of many sorts ---when everything is working properly!  My family, friends and co-workers know that technology is not really my thing.  I am so appreciative that it can be a vehicle for communicating and building and maintaining relationships but I see it solely as a means to that end and am not really interested in the technology itself, which leaves me pretty helpless at times. 

The other day I am home trying to check my email and nothing seems to be working.  I cry out to my computer literate daughter, “Emily, can you help me?” So, first she asks me, “Have you checked the modem?” I am embarrassed to say, “Uh, I am not sure which thing is the modem?” After checking that and seeing nothing wrong there, she says, well you know it could be the router. “Uh, really? The router you say? Right, the router and which box is that, for crying out loud?”  I go to work and tell someone here my woes and she mentions, “you know it could be your server.”  I notice with each new “could be” I seize up and feel a bit strangled, a bit choked off  in my lack of knowledge, in my inability to make sense of the whole system, but even more frustrated that I feel cut off from those people I want to stay connected to. The means to my end is sputtering.  My computer world could be seen as on a “need-to-know” basis.  The technical computer world has been an area in which I have not chosen to dwell and as a result when things go wrong with the computer, I feel very isolated, not very connected, and certainly not very fruitful.

Abide in me as I abide in you, Jesus says. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.  Jesus is the source of our life and the source of love.   The fruit we bear is the love we give to others.  This wonderful metaphor of the vine gives us a concrete sign of discipleship, our need to be connected both to the divine as well as other people.  It is because God first loved us that we can possibly love others.  And as we abide or dwell in Jesus we are given the tools, we are equipped to do acts of love for others.  As we abide or dwell in Jesus the source of life and source of love, we find we do indeed bear fruit.

So how do we abide in God, how do we dwell in Jesus?

First, we can begin with belief, begin by actually believing God loves us and being receptive to the goodness of God.  Belief opens us up to the inpouring of the Holy Spirit and helps us welcome the goodness of God, welcome God’s love, welcome the Holy Spirit who is living and active all around us already.

Second, we can continue to abide or dwell in Christ through prayer, certainly including  talking to and listening to God but also in just being present to God, in prayerful reading of scripture, in participating in the sacraments of baptism and Holy Eucharist and in fellowship with others who have faith.

And third, we abide or dwell in Christ when we act, act as living branches of Christ’s love and power.  Our dwelling in Christ does not necessarily have to occur in the order I have just described; for some of us our belief comes after our loving actions and for some it is the reverse. There is no set pattern for the life of faith. 

God is love and wonder of all wonders he has chosen us – you and me- to be his living branches of love in this world.  You and I are loved; God’s love is free flowing toward us and through us not because we are living a perfect life and keeping all the rules just so.  God’s love is free flowing just because that is the very nature of God.  What an amazing privilege to be his living branches in the world, to be connected through the Holy Spirit to this power of love.

So what might be holding up this flow of love with in us?  What is constricting our connection to the vine, our connection to Christ?  What is keeping us from producing the fruit of love?  Might it be pride? Judgmental tendencies? Busyness? A sense that we can live life just fine on our own? There are many things that can keep us from abiding in Jesus.  We all fall short in certain areas of life, we all question at times our purpose, we all wonder sometimes why we are feeling so alone, why we might feel disconnected from God, why we might not be able to connect in love toward our neighbor.  When we sense this isolation can we turn our faces to the source of life, remember that the love of Christ is ALWAYS flowing toward us, and that Jesus has promised that any of us can bear fruit if we abide in him.   “I am the vine. You are the branches.”  Welcome the love of God and love God’s creatures, yourself included!                          Amen.