Don't Poo-Poo the Woo-Woo

The Holy Gospel According to St. John, the 17^th Chapter

Jesus prayed, ”I ask not only on behalf of these (disciples), but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. “Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

“As you Father are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us.”  What the heck does THAT mean?  What is this St. John mystical woo-woo stuff?  Is there any way to make sense of this stuff without the use of mind altering substances?  The mystics love this stuff… They say that it shows that we are all somehow cosmically connected to God.  They say that the truth of our reality is that as much as we all feel like individuals, THAT is an illusion.  We are, NOT in fact individuals but parts of a universal whole. 

Our egos, our brokenness, our sin, our fear, our humanity or whatever else out there makes each of determined to struggle to be individuals… to separate ourselves from each other and God, thinking that if we can be truly independent, truly free from needing anything from anyone else we will finally be happy.  Some folks chase that illusion their whole lives but eventually… hopefully… each of us finally figures out that we will only really find peace when we allow ourselves to fall back deeply into that universal wholeness of God like you fall into a deep, squishy feather bed after a long day of hard work.  And you know, as mystically woo-woo as all that sounds, I have to admit that there is something in all of that mystical woo-woo that I find to be the truth.  Like a fish swims in water, God is the One in whom we live, move and have our being.  To be independent from God and one another leaves me feeling like a fish out of water, gasping and sucking and fighting for breath!  It’s only in that divine ocean that we have life.  It is only in that divine ocean that we swim with one another as we were made to swim. 

The trouble with John’s Gospel and things like this being so mystically woo-woo is that we often tend to leave them ONLY in that mystical woo-woo sort of space.  We can admit that there is some great truth in all the woo-woo, but we hold it captive and keep those ideas prisoner only in those dark, candle filled spaces filled with smoke and spiritual practices. 

I don’t mean to poo-poo the woo-woo... the dark, candle filled places or spiritual practices.  They are powerful ways to help connect us with God, but this prayer of Jesus is not JUST about some mystical woo-woo… it is not JUST meant to be something that connects us spiritually and individually with the God in whom we live and move and have our being.  This prayer isn’t JUST a prayer that we all connect spiritually, but that we might ALSO realize that we are all very much physically connected with one another in the very practical, very physical, very day in and day out ways that we all live in this life as well. 

Jesus is praying here that we disciples come to realize that as we physically care for, support and give life to our neighbors, that too is part of being One with God and Christ.  Jesus is praying that we come to realize that your neighbor’s day to day needs… the needs for something to eat, a place to sleep, the need for human companionship and support are needs that God is calling ME to meet for you!  You are MY responsibility!  And MY needs… the spiritual for sure, but also the routine day to day, physical, keep the heat on and commute to work things are things that God is calling YOU to meet for me. 

Jesus is praying that we come to realize that without each of us active and involved and giving in one another’s lives, we will not be whole… we will not have life… we will live like fish out of water!  Jesus is praying that we all come to understand that I am, only because WE are. 

As Americans the idea that “I am, only because WE are” is not something we easily embrace.  We are supposed to be rugged individuals after all!  We’re supposed to all be like John Wayne!  Rough and ready people who always have and always will make it on our own, owing nothing to anyone else, ever! 

When I lived in Colorado, out on the plains, the ranchers would say they needed nothing from anyone.  Except when they helped each other at harvest.  Except when their hay caught fire and needed the fire department.  Except when they needed a tractor… except when they needed a road to get their stock to market, except when they needed a market for their stock, except, except, except. 

The truth is we DO need each other. We can’t live without each other.  That is the way God created us to be and Jesus prayed that we would come to understand that so that we might have life and have it abundantly.  Here in this church, we are interconnected and dependent on one another.  We are connected spiritually with each other and dependent on one another for our spiritual life and growth for sure, BUT we are also connected to each other in very physical, practical, day to day ways as well.  We are asked to give our time and our money and our talents and our energy not just as a spiritual response to gift of being One with God, but also because that person sitting next to you, or behind you, or across the room from you needs a place to physically gather here with you, and you with them!  They need to talk with you, share with you, hold you, pray with you, serve with you, be alive with you or else neither you nor they will be whole! 

There is much talk these days out there in the world about “makers” and “takers,” about people called “us” and other people called “them,” about those who belong and those who do not.  Jesus’s prayer is that we come to realize that all those words that divide and degrade and demean are not things that lead to life.  Hate and racism and fear and exclusion are not God’s way and do not lead to abundant life. 

Jesus’s prayer is that we come to realize that as we embrace the mystical Oneness of God we might also embrace the earthly Oneness we have with one another and Jesus is asking us, as his disciples, to model that Oneness here in this place and then show that different reality, that Truth to the world.  May Jesus’s prayer be fulfilled in us.  May we embrace the spiritual Oneness we share with God and Christ.  May we fall deeply into the Divine where we are Spiritually ONE and may we ALSO live deeply, physically, inclusively, lovingly, passionately, generously and overtly as ONE in our physical lives as well so that the world may know the REAL life they have been given in God and that they too might begin to live that life abundantly.  Amen. 

Put Out the Mat. Don't BE the Mat!

A Reading from the Book of Acts, the 11^th Chapter

Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, saying, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step, saying, “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners; and it came close to me. As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. I also heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’ But I replied, ‘By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ But a second time the voice answered from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’ This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven. 

At that very moment three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were. The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house. He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, ‘Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.’ And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.”

Here’s the whole take home message for today’s sermon.  Are you ready?  Here it comes… God is calling us to roll out the red carpet, not to BECOME the carpet.  God is calling us to put out the welcome mat, not BE a door mat.  

This is really, really important to understand.   On the night in which Jesus was betrayed… the night of the Last Supper… Jesus gave all his disciples a mandate.  (That’s what "Maundy" means in Maundy Thursday… it means mandate.) That mandate was to love one another, as Jesus first loved us, we also should love one another.  

A little later, after the resurrection, Peter had this vision of a giant sheet filled with pulled pork barbeque, lobster and shrimp cocktail dropping out of the sky.  With that vision, and God’s insistence… not once, not twice, but three times to get it through Peter’s thick skull, Peter finally understood that God’s love, God’s grace, God’s radical gift of an abundant life that is meant to begin now and never end...  That Gift of God’s love that Jesus first shared with the disciples wasn’t just meant to be shared with only the other JEWISH people but with ALL people and ALL of creation.  

Now stop for a second.  Take a deep breath before you move forward from here, because much, much, much too often when we hear that we should love one another and hear that it should reach all people, we forget an equally important part of Jesus’s mandate.  He said, “AS I HAVE LOVED YOU, so also you should love one another.”  This love we are called to is a particular kind of love.  It’s the particular kind of love Jesus first had for us!  Much, much, MUCH too often we hear that we are to love one another and somehow that gets twisted in our minds to believe that we are to sacrifice all of who we are… to give the OTHER whatever they want.  Too often we say, “Well, Jesus sacrificed completely on the cross, so we need to sacrifice ourselves completely.”  But take a good look at that crucifixion scene.  Remember, Jesus was crucified between two others.  They both had something to say to Jesus, if you’ll remember.  The one said, “GET ME DOWN!”  The other said, “Jesus, remember me.”  Notice this!  Jesus didn’t give one of those two what he demanded.  Does that mean Jesus didn’t love him?  No!  Does that mean that Jesus didn’t treat him with Christian love?  Of course not!  The difference is that one accepted Jesus's invitation to share in that particular, mutual kind of loving relationship, while the other simply wanted to use Jesus to get what he wanted… to get down from that cross!  

The love that we are mandated to pass on to the world is a particular kind of love… it’s Christ’s love, and Christ’s love has absolutely nothing to do with manipulation, guilt or allowing yourself to be abused, taken advantage of or used.  God is calling us to roll out the red carpet, not to BECOME the carpet.  God is calling us to put out the welcome mat, not BE a door mat.  Christ’s love certainly transforms us, changes us… but it doesn’t demean us.  Christ’s love does not blackmail, give ultimatums, use tears or guilt to get what it wants.  Christ’s love doesn’t twist words or facts or play the victim.  Christ’s love… the love we are mandated to pass on, calls us to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with God.  It calls us to DO what is in the other’s best interest, even when that means telling someone NO, they can’t have what they want.  

Look, if a meth addict came into the church and wanted to start cooking meth in the kitchen, would saying NO to them be an un-Christian thing to do?  After all, it’s what they REALLY want to do!  We’ve said we are welcoming and inclusive of all people.  Aren’t we supposed to sacrifice to give others what they say they need, and Meth addicts really, really, REALLY NEED meth, right?  So, it’s not just a “want” it’s a NEED!  

But we wouldn’t let that happen, would we?  We’d say NO, right?  So if saying NO to something like that, which is destructive to that person AND to our community is alright, then why is saying no to other destructive behaviors un-Christian?  The bottom line is it isn’t un-Christian.  Just as Jesus himself said “no” to the thief on the cross that wanted to manipulate Jesus into magic-ing him down, we too are allowed to say “no” when people try to manipulate us as well, because Christ’s love does not manipulate.  God is calling us to roll out the red carpet, not to BECOME the carpet.  God is calling us to put out the welcome mat, not BE a door mat.  

Christ’s love has healthy boundaries.  Christ’s love WOULD sacrifice time and money and mercy to help that Meth addict find treatment and Christ’s love WOULD stay with them through their ups and downs, but if that person was not ready to be healthy, if they insisted on cooking meth in our kitchen, Christ’s love would say, NO!  

Christ’s love also calls us to love kindness.  Just like we are called to do what is in the other’s best interest, we are also called to gracefully accept the kindness of others.  In the book of Acts, the Holy Spirit wasn’t creating a Faith Filling Station where some only gave and others only received.  The Spirit was creating and is still creating communities of God’s children who give and receive from one another as they have need.  Sometimes we give and sometimes we receive.  Christ’s love isn’t one sided.   

I know we don’t like it.  We don’t want to admit we need help and we’re often stubborn about receiving it, but Christ’s love is mutual.  We take our turns giving and receiving… giving kindness, help and love at one moment and then genuinely appreciating and humbly accepting all of it back in the next.  The Holy Spirit is creating a community of mutuality where we all give of ourselves and we all receive the gifts of others.  We can’t have one without the other.  God is calling us to roll out the red carpet, not to BECOME the carpet.  God is calling us to put out the welcome mat, not BE a door mat.

Finally, Christ’s love calls us to walk humbly.  To be so damn sure of ourselves that it would take God’s booming voice reverberating in your ears from heaven THREE whole times to get us to open our hearts and mind to God doing a new thing is not somewhere we are called to be.  

We are indeed called to love one another and “one another” is clearly all of creation, but that love that God first gave did not ask Jesus to blink out of existence for the benefit of the world.  God’s love… Christ’s love… the love we are called to pass on… is a love that invites all people and all of creation into a deeper, mutual, respectful, relationship built on the genuine give and take of a Spirit created community.  That love doesn’t replace the Body of Christ, it gathers all of creation INTO the Body of Christ!  

Christ’s love is an invitation to be in community with one another and with God.  We celebrate and participate in that each and every week around that rail!  So remember, as you drink and eat, God is filling you again with that very particular kind of love and is calling us to pass it on by rolling out the red carpet, not BECOMING the carpet… and by putting out the welcome mat, not becoming that mat. Amen. 

No Snatching

The Holy Gospel According to St. John, the 10^th Chapter

At that time the festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon. So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” Jesus answered, “I have told you, and you do not believe. 

The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me; but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep. My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.”

On Monday I got an email that Dave’s health had taken a turn for the worse.  I knew Dave from my church in Albuquerque and a year ago he was diagnosed with lung cancer.  He was never a smoker, so that wasn’t how he got cancer.  What he was, was a nuclear engineer, both for the Air Force and for Sandia National Labs and although nobody really knows what he did, it’s likely that a nuclear scientist working in the desert Southwest in the 60’s, might have picked something up along the way.    

I always joked when I was a pastor there that between the Sandia National Labs folks and the folks that had retired to Albuquerque from Los Alamos, it would probably be easier for me to pull together a chuch committee that could build a nuclear missle that it would be to pull together a stewardship committee!  But when I think about it, Dave was one of the few who would have been comfortable and good at both. 

On Monday night I got another message that if I wanted to come and say goodbye, I should come right away.   I tell you about Dave, because even though Dave understood to the molecular level the most powerful weapons on the planet, I think Dave, unlike the religious leaders who cornered Jesus in the Portico of Solomon, understood THAT kind of power had limits.  Those leaders wanted to know if Jesus was the Messiah, and clearly they didn’t think that healing the sick, giving sight to the blind or feeding the hungry were things that showed a Messiah sort of power.  I’m sure they were looking for the sort of Messiah power that would raise an army, train the troops, give patriotic speeches, drive the Romans out of the country and make Israel great again!  

Jesus wasn’t the kind of Messiah that got his way through force or fights.  Jesus embraced a different kind of power.  Jesus knew… and I think Dave knew too… that while military, strong-arm kind of might can be very powerful… God’s love, grace, and compassion is an unlimited kind of power that has the power change the world more completely than megatons of anything ever could.  

Dave believed that.  The thing is, I know Dave believed that not because he told me he believed it or wrote a paper on it or signed a statement of faith about it.  I know Dave believed it because Dave filled his life by doing Jesus things, walking a Jesus walk and following a Jesus sort of path through life.  In last week’s Gospel we were reminded again… and this week we’re reminded again-again… that believing isn’t what happens between our ears, it’s something that happens at the end of our hands and at the end of our legs and that pours out of our hearts.  You can quote scripture all day long with chapter and verse, but I’ll really KNOW you believe when you do something like spend hours making sure that Habitat House isn’t just good enough, but is it’s very best.  You can argue doctrine and quote St. Augustine in Latin if you want, but I’ll really know you believe when you sit with a kid who’s away from home at camp for the first time and make them understand that they are the one child there who makes that mountain so very, very special.  

Faith isn’t about what we think so much as it is the path we walk in this life.  And as we walk that Jesus kind of path of love, grace, generosity and compassion we do more than just fall in step behind the Messiah.  As we walk in our lives with that Jesus kind of walk and fall in step on a Jesus kind of path, what we’re doing in the process is continually unwrapping the gift of eternal life we have been given.  Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice.  I know them.  They follow me.  I give them eternal life.”  The gift of eternal life isn’t just living forever.  After all, living a terrible life for all of eternity wouldn’t be that wonderful of a gift, would it?  No, eternal life is an abundant, joy filled, life filled with meaning, purpose, self worth and grace that is meant for us to live RIGHT NOW and then continue to the end of our lives and beyond.

When we walk that Jesus walk and put one foot in front of the other on that Jesus path, we unwrap a tiny bit more of that gift with every step we take.  That gift of eternal life… the gift of God’s presence... was given to us all in our Baptisms; walking like Jesus helps us with each step to become more and more aware of the gift we’ve already been given! 

I got to Albuquerque late Tuesday night and in the morning Dave’s daughter Kris picked me up and we went to the hospital.  Dave was very weak.  I managed to provoke a smile when I told him we now had the same hair style!  That’s all the energy he had.  At noon, his granddaughter Carly was married in his room.  He was going to walk her down the aisle this summer, but things got moved up and the location changed and after we all went home to let Dave rest, his breathing changed and later that afternoon, Dave died.  

Dave’s daughter Kris and I talked that evening.  She said he was what they used to call “A Churchman,” those sorts of men who were the cornerstones of their church and Dave was that for sure.  But as I flew home Thursday night I began to think, “Churchman” just wasn’t the right word, because for him, church was not a destination.  For Dave, faith was no destination.  Faith was a path and he was a walker of The Way.  He heard the Good Shepherd’s voice and hit the road, following Jesus out into the world, not stuck just contemplating the Gospel, but out DOING the Gospel… passing on the power of God’s love, to his family, to his friends, around the Lazy Susan at camp and through a chopsaw at a Habitat build, all in each of those steps he changed the world with God's love.  

Dave was a remarkable man, but he had nothing more remarkable than you or me.  He was named and claimed by God and given eternal life in the Waters of Baptism just like you and me.  He was fed at God’s Table and sent into the world, just like you and me.  But what he did with those gifts was something those religious leaders in the Portico of Solomon just couldn’t seem to manage.  With those gifts in hand, he walked the path Jesus called him to travel, and with every step, he found that he could unwrap more and more of the splendor of the gift of eternal life he had been given.

Listen to the Shepherd’s voice.  Hear again that you ARE God’s beloved child, named and claimed and given eternal life in the Waters of Baptism and fed with the abundance of God’s Table.  And then when you get up from the Table, start walking.  Put one foot in front of the other and share God’s love with whomever you meet along the way.  With each step you will find that the power of God’s love flows without end through everything and everyone you touch and that love is something that can never, never be snatched away, not even by death.  Amen.