The title of my sermon this morning has a typo in the bulletin. It is “Acts of Love Last” not “Acts of Love Lost.”
Our gospel reading is on page 109. It is part of Jesus' words of farewell to the disciples at the last supper. How are the disciples going to love Jesus when he is gone? Listen for the word of God as it is found in John 14:15-21.
15 "If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.
17 This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees it nor knows it. You know it, because it abides with you, and it will be in you.
18 "I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.
19 In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.
20 On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.
21 They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them."
This ends our reading of God's word. So to love Jesus means to continue his work and keep his commandments. The only thing he has commanded his disciples is: “ Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” 1 Let us listen to the choir interpret this text.
Anthem: Be Thou My Vision
Our reading from Acts is found on page 137. The apostle Paul has traveled from Philippi to Athens. He meets with Jews in the synagogue, and Epicurean and Stoic philosophers in the market. They debate with him in philosophical dialogue. Some accuse him of proclaiming foreign gods. Acts tells us that they brought him to the Areopagus. The Areopagus is the name for the council that heard serious crimes, as well as the name for the open air gathering place where they meet. Areopagus is also called Mars Hill; it is a hill of marble, with steps and seats carved into the sides. We can read the text as saying Paul was brought to the Areopagus to explain his teaching to the elders, or that Paul was hauled there and forced to defend himself against a criminal accusation. Listen for the word of God as it is found in Acts 17:22-32.
22 Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, "Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. 23 For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, 'To an unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.
24 The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. 26 From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, 27 so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him-- though indeed he is not far from each one of us.
28 For 'In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your own poets have said, 'For we too are his offspring.' 29 Since we are God's offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals.
30 While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31 because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead."
32 When they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some scoffed; but others said, “We will hear you again about this." 33 At that point Paul left them. 34 But some of them joined him and became believers, including Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.
This ends our reading from Acts. Paul speaks of the resurrection as a source of hope and a promise of real righteousness. Righteousness is at issue because of the injustices that people encountered in the world. Early Christians had a hard time in the Roman world. They didn't worship Roman Gods, or the emperor. I'm guessing that Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, and Damaris found it hard to leave their lives as good Athenians to become Christians. The Christians didn't join in community customs of worshiping in a Roman temple.
Our epistle reading is on page 232. Peter writes to the churches about how to live their lives in an unfriendly place. Listen for the word of God as it is found in 1 Peter 3:13-22.
13 Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good?
14 But even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated,
15 but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you;
16 yet do it with gentleness and reverence. Keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame.
17 For it is better to suffer for doing good, if the will of God wishes, than to suffer for doing evil.
18 For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit,
19 in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison,
20 who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water.
21 And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you-- not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,
22 who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.
This ends our reading of God's word.
The book I read to the children showed how varied God is, and how no one has a picture of God. It lists some of the things God is like.
Paul speaks of all the statues of gods in Athens, and said that God is not like these. God is not made with human hands. A God that is carved is a God we can handle, one we can understand and accept easily. The Athenians didn't want to risk offending any god, so they made a shrine just in case, dedicated to an unknown God.
Paul quotes a poet who says “In God we live and move and have our being.” Earlier, in our John reading, we heard Jesus say that “I am in my father, and my father is in me, and I am in you.” It is lovely to think of being inside God. Of living in God. But the danger is for us to assume that because we are in God, everything that happens is the way God wants it. Peter even says that our suffering might be God's will. I looked at verse 17 in Greek and it didn't help me much. I translated “For it is better to suffer for doing good, if the will of God wishes, than to suffer for doing evil.”
The best I can do is say that God wills our doing good whether or not suffering results from it.
Jesus realized that if he kept doing what he was doing, he risked execution. But he didn't stop healing. He didn't stop eating with sinners. He didn't stop challenging unjust religious practices. Death wasn't his purpose but knowing death was a probability didn't prevent Jesus from proclaiming God's realm where the hungry are fed, the lame walk, the blind see, and the deaf hear.
The people in power resented their customs and manners being critiqued. Who was Jesus to do these things? The Son of God. Not a comfortable answer for the powers that be. When you serve the poor, your very act of service can actually threaten government leaders. Keeping the poor poor is in the best political interests of some governments as well as their opponents.
This week I read about Mauricio Avilez from Columbia. His story was so amazing, I included it in our church newsletter. He's 25 now, and he has already spent four and a half months in jail, accused of sedition, murder and guerrilla activity.
He's a law student who coordinated student volunteers helping displaced families. The students helped them file applications for aid. They also documented the human rights abuses that forced them off their own land and into shantytowns. Mauricio worked out of the Presbyterian Church in Columbia. The district attorney ordered his release from prison last October when no evidence was produced.
But resuming his professional role is risky. His mother is worried. But he says, “Nobody goes looking for martyrdom, but it's a reality that is always present. It's always been my vocation to work for human rights, as a Christian. Seeing everything that I've seen, and living everything I've lived, that conviction only penetrates me deeper.”
“I have a personal commitment to finish my legal studies and try to do human rights work … so I can keep going on, helping people.” Mauricio says. The long, lonely nights of the past year only intensified what he describes as a spiritual connection to suffering people. In his mind, that's not reckless, it is resurrection-living. “The day I stop dreaming, stop giving myself to others … it is not living any more in a way that's meaningful.”
In an essay he wrote while in hiding, he says avoidance of suffering isn't the Biblical pattern for salvation, or even for earthly redemption. The Israelites wandered in the desert. Job questioned the divine mind. Isaiah promised rescue from suffering, but it was a long time coming.
Why, Mauricio asks, should contemporary Christians expect to avoid suffering? He says Jesus “gives us a new commandment: ‘That you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.'” 2
And loving people calls us to Christian ministry. In our country, we don't have military guerilla groups displacing people from their homes at gunpoint. Our pastors rarely have to go in hiding. But we have other problems, other sorts of poverty to address.
Kerrie Yarnell is a Young Adult volunteer in Wapato, working with the Presbyterian Church, on the Yakima Indian Reservation in Washington. It's the same place our youth and adults went two summers ago on their mission trip.
She writes:
“ I walk, love, and serve in a community full of hurt, distrust and poverty. The Latino children with whom I spend my time find themselves in rundown and overcrowded living conditions, with never enough food to go around, in a world where they serve as bilingual/bicultural translators for their monolingual/monocultural parents.
With older siblings raising younger ones, the dearth of order and attention in the kids' lives is almost absolute. They have begun the dark passage of insufficiency; they know how to hoard food and to fight for themselves.
Every Monday in our after-school program, we set the table to share pizza and Tang, in a kind of communion that sends the message: Have a seat; there's time; there's enough to go around. We play kickball and collaborate on art projects. We make field trips and play foosball. Along the way we transform a Presbyterian fellowship hall into a haven where the kids have a safe environment for relationship-building, developing life skills, and enjoying the luxury of being kids.
My task, my gift, is to create an atmosphere of safety and security for these kids that I love, to welcome them in. It is in these basic things that I perceive Jesus' call to us to serve and live. I understand from Jesus' words that we will always find him among the poor — in the towns with the failing community centers and the gang tags. He will be in the homes where families of 10 share food enough for two, where there is not enough employment to enable people to have lights and heat in the wintertime. He will be in the prisons, at the shelters.
The most beautiful thing is that this caring and compassion is not a one-way gift. Becoming trusted, being relied upon — being allowed to know and see someone else's most precious dreams — is a gift I have received from the children. I have been watching as they gain confidence, serve one another, ask a blessing, learn to share, even choose a smaller piece to eat so a larger one can go to someone else.
We are all blossoming together in the warmth of this love and trust we have built together. The simplicity of it is easy to miss — especially when mainstream culture and our own fears and insecurities are screaming at us to grab the biggest piece of the pie and hang on for dear life.
I am thankful to God and to this community that in my own spiritual poverty I have not missed out on this gift.
I am realizing that there is joy in being fully in one place, fully attuned to the task at hand: making egg-carton caterpillars with children, or working in the garden. I am learning to listen rather than speak; I am learning to be more attuned to the heart of a situation than with the black and white of it. I find that it is better, though not always easier, to live honestly and with a fuller heart in the face of hardship and the harsh realities that the youth of this community face.
These realities are not going to go away anytime soon. There are lots of wonderful people working hard in this community, trying to find ways to put prejudice away long enough to unite for the good of the children, but the wounds of prejudice and economic depression are deep, and will take generations to heal.
In the meantime, as I walk here and learn how to be a part of this place, I can tell that this community has not been forgotten by God. And I know that these children are the vessels for the redemption.
Over the long, gray winter here, I read Animal Dreams, by Barbara Kingsolver, and discovered a paragraph that has helped me understand what my calling is about: 3
“The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope … live right inside it, under its roof. What I want is so simple I almost can't say it: elementary kindness. Enough to eat, enough to go around. The possibility that kids might one day grow up to be neither the destroyers nor the destroyed. Right now I'm living in that hope, running down its hallway and touching the walls on both sides.”
I have the same hope: that the gospel of compassion will pervade my actions and my thoughts, and that its infectious call will reach the ears of others.
Saying that we are in God, Jesus is in God, and Jesus is in us means we are all inter-connected. Love flows among all of us. God is forever. Acts of love matter forever.
Not all of us can be law students working for displaced families or volunteers for mission. But we are part of a church that supports that supports these things. And we can be loving toward the people we do meet.
I read about a pastor between churches who is attended a church and seeing the “view from the pew” for the first time in more than a decade. What matters to this [pastor] on a Sunday morning? Is it the perfect sermon, the lovely liturgy, the music? No. It is having a simple relationship with other people: a space to belong, to be welcomed, loved, and greeted in the name of God.” 4
Jesus tells the disciples that on the day they see him again, they will know “I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” Those who love God show that love to others. An act of love isn't wasted. It affects the giver as well as the recipient. Real love isn't one-way. Real love is mutual, and it lasts. Amen.
1 John 13:34.
2 Smith, Alexa, “Columbian takes up cross for the poor: student cleared of murder charges vows to continue rights work, ” April 21, 2005, PCUSA News.
3 Yarnell, Kerrie, “Young mission volunteer and poor kids ‘blossom together in warmth of love and trust,'” PC(USA) News, April 21, 2005.
4 Hayes, Patricia, “Clergy Self-Care Strategies for Good Times and Bad,” Alban Institute bulletin, April 25, 2005. |
First Presbyterian Church