Languages of Fire...

I relied heavily on the work of Scott Hoezee, Bruce Epperly, D. Mark Davis and Brian Peterson for this week's sermon. What follows is by no means the only way to look at the events of the Day of Pentecost or the work of the Holy Spirit in the world.

That's kinda the point... there are an inexhaustible number of ways that God moves in the world, and that we can and do experience the Holy Spirit.

Acts 2:1-21

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes Cretans and Arabs — in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”

But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’”

This is the Word of the Lord.

In the New Testament, it is only the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts which divide Jesus’ resurrection, his ascension to Heaven, and the giving of the Holy Spirit into three distinct events. For example, the Gospel of John puts Jesus’ resurrection and the giving of the Holy Spirit on the same day, and without the rushing wind and tongues of flame.

For the writer of the Gospel of John, the Holy Spirit is the Advocate, the continuing and comforting presence of Jesus with the church, and the source of peace. The Apostle Paul also writes quite extensively about the Holy Spirit throughout his Epistles, and for him the Holy Spirit is that which unites us to Christ, makes us into his body, and gives particular gifts to each person for the sake of the community.

For the writer of the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts, the Spirit is the power of God, the mighty burning wind that blows the church into new and unexpected places of ministry.

It is through these disparate views of the Person of the Holy Spirit that we gain important insight into the breadth and depth and reach of the love of God. The Holy Spirit isn’t one-dimensional. God has not left us with powerless comfort, or comfortless advocacy, or a community without purpose and direction. The Holy Spirit is our Advocate, the presence of Jesus with the church, the source of peace, our unity in the Body of Christ, the author and power behind the gifts of that body, the fuel that fires the church into ministry in new and unexpected places and ways.

In the Gospel of John, the Holy Spirit is given in a gentle manner; Jesus breathes on his disciples. In Acts, that breath is violent, a tornado, a wind carrying cloven tongues of fire. All this violence, the roar of the wind, but what the people outside that room hear isn’t that cacophony… No one says, “hey, what is that windy sound?” No, the response is, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language… we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power…What does this mean?”

That’s right. The power of God reveals itself to them in words. Languages.

I am simply offering a thought here, but you know how we generally interpret the phrase “tongues of fire” to be a descriptive term, painting for us a picture of how the Holy Spirit looked as it was given to the one hundred and twenty people in that place? Well, is it not true that the word “tongues,” in both the original Greek and in our own English, means “languages?”

Think for a moment of what this means: gathered in Jerusalem, for the feast of Pentecost, are people from all across the known world: Parthians, Medes, Elamites, folks from Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, visitors from Rome, Cretans and Arabs…

Some of these folks had been born Jewish, some had converted to Judaism, and it is entirely possible that these visitors from Rome, among others, weren’t Jewish at all. Even for those who shared a common belief in the one true and living God, there were different experiences, background, cultures, beliefs… fertile ground for misinterpretation and offense and exclusion, divisions and differences...

And the voice of God spoke to them all.

The mighty breath of God, the wind of the Holy Spirit drove the message out from that world and into the streets!

And it was, of all people, Peter – the very one who denied Christ three times – who finally stood before that astonished, amazed, perplexed crowd (which was not free of detractors, by the way, people who passed off what was happening as the ramblings of drunkards) and answered their questions – who spoke the word of God from the prophet Joel.

And what a word, for them and for us!

“In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

On the day that Jesus died on the cross, the veil of the Temple was torn from top to bottom, and the most secretive portion of the Temple, the Most Holy Place, was laid bare, open to any and all who wished to look, wished to enter therein. The sacrifice that Jesus made on our behalf opened the way for each of us, for anyone, to, in the words of the Apostle Paul, “boldly approach the throne of grace.”

And while it is a fact that Jesus is the way, the truth, the life, and that no one comes to God except through Christ, what Peter makes clear to us all in his invocation of the prophet Joel is that Jesus is no more one-dimensional than any other Person of the Trinity. There are a multitude of expressions of the Way, the Truth and the Life.

Everyone can experience God! All are invited to healing and salvation.  The paths to experiencing God are myriad: some dream, others see visions, still others ecstatically share God’s wisdom.  No age, sexual, racial, cultural or economic community is left out of in this lively democracy of the spirit.  The Holy Spirit invites all to say “yes” in the dynamic call and response of God and humankind.

Pentecost is an eschatological event, a God-given turning point for the world. The promised new time has begun, and this new age is one not only of God’s power but also of God’s grace, and that it is intended for the whole world.

In the book of Genesis, the story is told of how humanity tried to build a tower that would reach to God. Humanity tried to mount up to God and fell into confusion as a result. But that was not because God did not want fellowship with humans. God did not confuse the languages of humans, did not frustrate the people at Babel because God just can't stand human company. God's ultimate goal, as a matter of fact, is to have fellowship with us. To get that goal, God eventually became human himself! The problem at Babel was that this storming of heaven was being done in an arrogant way and on human terms alone.

The gospel shows us what can happen when God, on God's own terms of humility and grace, brings heaven down to us. God himself snuck down the back staircase of history to deposit a baby into a manger one starry night long ago. In humility, not pride, the Son of God built his own reverse tower from heaven to earth not so that we could claw and climb and sweat and toil our way up but so that God could come down. What happened on Pentecost was another example of this same movement: since we cannot get to heaven, heaven comes to us. And in those tongues, those languages, of fire which blew down from Heaven, Babel is reversed! Instead of being scattered, people from all across the known world were brought together, are brought together! Instead of confusion, a gospel clarity comes. Instead of being a maddening barrier, the multiplicity of languages is transcended so that the same message gets through to everyone.

The Holy Spirit of Pentecost was poured out for so many reasons. The Spirit now gives us gifts and talents, provides us with our life's callings in whatever vocation and work we pursue. The Spirit animates our every worship service. The Spirit is behind every note played on the guitar, behind every lyric we sing out of the hymnal, behind every word you've ever heard me speak from this pulpit.

The Spirit keeps faith alive even when our bodies are dying, allowing even the gravely ill to testify to the hope that is within them. The Spirit touches us at the graveside of a loved one, allowing us somehow and against all odds to say the Apostles' Creed and to believe it when we say, despite the casket in front of us, that we really do believe in "the resurrection of the body." The Spirit pours itself out at the baptismal font and stays with our baptized children even in those far countries where the prodigal sons and daughters sometimes travel. And when one of those wandering sheep returns to the fold, there is never any doubting that the Holy Spirit led this one back home.

The Holy Spirit of Pentecost does all of that and more. But let us not forget the very first effect this Spirit had: the Spirit of God brought people together, allowed a common understanding of the same gospel among people who were very different from one another.

We live in a fiercely partisan and divisive age.   It seems that finding “wedge issues” that divide people has become something of a cottage industry in the United States. Too often we Christian people are part and parcel of all that, absorbing the divisive rhetoric of talking heads and consuming as a kind of latter day “bread and circuses” the shouting matches that pass for intelligent conversation on talk radio and cable news stations. We seem to enjoy such things these days. We seem to revel in divisiveness. We try and try and try to draw the circle tighter, to exclude and limit and categorize and ignore.

May I suggest that maybe Pentecost tells us that the Holy Spirit that dwells within us is opposed to the forces of division and animosity. The Holy Spirit unmade the chaos of Babel and calls us to be unified, not divided. This Holy Spirit is the very Spirit through which Jesus Christ brings true peace in chaotic times and true calm to hearts that have every right to be troubled. That Holy Spirit gives to all who believe a Life, a Liveliness, and unity and a calm that really does pass all understanding.

More than that this Spirit who arrived on a screaming, uncontrollable torrent of wind is alive and moving even today, in amazing and unpredictable ways still insisting on drawing the circle wide, on including and accepting and welcoming and loving, on bringing the Good News of new life in Christ, of relationship with the God of grace and love, the compassionate Creator, to everyone.

And that is more than sufficient reason, on Pentecost Sunday but also at all times and even forevermore, to say “Thanks be to God.”

God Loves Anyway!

The man at the pool of Bethesda wasn't all that interested in what Jesus had to offer.

But it wasn't about him, was it?

It was about Jesus. God's love is contingent not on the worthiness of the object, after all, It is the character and intentionality of the One who loves...

John 5:1-9
After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. In these lay many invalids-blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, "Do you want to be made well?" The sick man answered him, "Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me."Jesus said to him, "Stand up, take your mat and walk." At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.
Now that day was a sabbath.

This is the Word of the Lord.

You know, just when you think you’ve got this whole thing figured out – I mean this Gospel message thing, maybe not explaining miracles but certainly categorizing them, putting them in neat little packages that can be used to highlight another aspect of the divinity of Jesus, or the love of God, or the efficacy of prayer – then along comes a passage of Scripture that turns it all on its head.

Our Gospel reading today has been called “the strangest miracle,” and there is good reason for that.

There’s some festival going on in Jerusalem; we don’t know which one, and while it has been argued over for millennia, when it comes right down to it, it doesn’t matter. There’s really no good reason for Jesus to be down by that pool of Bethesda, or “Beth-zatha,” as our translation puts it… unless he is looking for something, or someone. You see, there are apparently lots of sick people around. After all, every now and again the waters in that pool would bubble up. The belief was that an angel stirred it up, and when that happened, the first person to get in the pool got healed of whatever ailment they had!

Jesus and his disciples walked around that pool, but no one there seems to have noticed. No one called out for healing. No one really cared at all that Jesus was there. They were too busy watching the water intently, as if it were the fourth quarter of the Iron Bowl, waiting for the bubbling, waiting for their chance to be the first to touch the healing waters.

And Jesus stops, finally, and speaks to a guy who has shot at, and missed, the mark for nearly forty years.

One of the things I am terrible at is fishing. My problem isn’t that I’m afraid of fish, or can’t put a worm on a hook, my problem is that bobber thing. I’ll put the line in, and that red-and-white bobber will be floating on the surface, and I get tensed up waiting on it to move… was that a nibble? Ooh, quick, hook it! Oh, that was nothing, oh, well… wait, did it… by the time something actually takes the bait, I’ve zoned out completely staring at that bobber and I nearly always miss it!

But even as bad as I am, I occasionally catch a fish. Not this guy. Every time the water stirred, someone beat him to it. You’d think there was some kind of seniority, that over the years he would have at least gotten his mat put down closer to the water. That way, if nothing else, he could roll in when the time came, but no. He just lay there, day after day and year after year. Maybe there was still hope in his heart. Maybe he felt, each time, he was so close that surely next time he’d be first! Or maybe at some point he gave up. Oh, he still went through the motions; after all, what else could he do? He might have been homeless, and stayed there all night and day. Maybe someone brought him there every morning, and took him home every night, but couldn’t stay with him. Whatever the case nothing changed for him, day in and day out, and he had several very good reasons why not, excuses all rehearsed and ready when and if he was asked why he had been there so long.

So often in the Gospels, we read where people come to Jesus looking for a miracle: the leper who confronts Jesus in the village, blind Bartimaeus crying out for Jesus as he passes by on the road, the man who interrupts Jesus’ dinner to come and raise his child from the dead, the woman with the issue of blood who pushes through the crowd and strains just to get her fingertips to brush the fringe of Jesus’ robe, and on and on…

This guy doesn’t ask Jesus for a thing. In fact, when Jesus asks him, directly, “Do you want to be made well?” he may not even have looked up from the water. And he really doesn’t answer the question, does he? He doesn’t say he wants to be well, he simply rehearses his list of reasons why it’s everyone else’s fault he isn’t well.

Maybe the man hopes this guy will hang around for awhile, and if the water stirs he’ll help him get there first. But Jesus doesn’t offer to wait with him, he cuts to the chase and does what he needs. Jesus simply says to him, "Stand up, take your mat and walk." And before the man even comprehends what is said, before he can react in any way, he is whole. Just like that.

Does the crowd around the pool react in shocked awe, praising God for the healing?  Nope. No one even looked up from the water.

And does the man fall at Jesus’ feet, thanking him? Does he immediately take up his mat and follow Jesus?

Oh, he took up his mat all right. Sure, he began to walk. But he walked away.

The guy didn’t ask for the miracle, and didn’t appreciate it very much when it happened, it seems. Not even a “gee, thanks” from the guy.

And it gets worse. We have to read further in the Gospel account to see it, but the way our Lectionary passage ends, with the words, “Now that day was a Sabbath,” is very important.

We are familiar with the idea of the Sabbath being a day of rest, a day when the law Moses brought down from Mount Sinai demanded no work be done. Over the years, questions had been raised: if we cannot work, what exactly is “work?” How far can we go without breaking God’s law?

There ended up being dozens of stipulations on how far one could travel, how much one could carry, how many actual things one could do on the Sabbath. Among them was the rule that, of you were carrying a couch (or a mat) with someone on it, it was OK, but if you were carrying it just to take it somewhere? That was work, and it broke the rules.

So of course, almost immediately, some prim and proper Jewish folks, most likely the Pharisees, stopped the guy. “Hey, hey! You can’t do that! It’s the sabbath; it’s against the law for you to carry your mat.”

This guy responds, “Hey, it isn’t my fault, the guy who healed me told me to!”

“Oh yeah? And who, exactly would that be?”

“Him,” he says, and turns around to point, but Jesus is gone. “Oh. Uh… just some guy…”

Amazing, isn’t it? Not only does this guy immediately shift the blame to the person who made him well, he doesn’t even know who it is who healed him! And later, when Jesus finds the guy in the Temple, does he take the opportunity to thank Jesus and glorify God for this miracle, this healing, this restoration of wholeness and health? No, not even close! He immediately runs off to rat out Jesus to the Temple authorities!

If there were ever anyone on earth more undeserving of help, undeserving of healing, undeserving of anything, it’s this guy! Jesus gives him his life back, after nearly forty years, and in return all Jesus gets is persecution!

Can I tell you this morning that this is, for us, good news? Because what we learn from this, among other things, is that in Jesus Christ, God reaches out to us and loves us and heals us and restores us based not upon how deserving or desiring or devoted or prepared or even how cognizant or thankful we are for that healing and love and restoration, not based at all upon who we are… but upon who God is.

It could be argued that Jesus didn’t just go to the pool of Bethesda simply for the sickest man there. He went looking for the most undeserving person he could find – someone so disengaged from life that he couldn’t even be bothered to mumble “thank you” when he was given his life back. Someone who couldn’t muster the backbone to resist selling Jesus out to the authorities. Someone who couldn’t see love and joy and freedom and forgiveness, not the first time it hit him at the pool, or even after it found him again in the temple.

Jesus found the worst just so God could restore him – heal him – and love him anyway!

One of my favorite passages of Scripture is found in Romans 5, verse 8: “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

The Gospel – the Good News – has never been about who deserves God’s love, it’s never been about us, and it’s never been about “them,” whoever “them” may be. It has always been, and always will be, about who God is.

I said this last week: God’s love is never about the worthiness of the object of that love, but about the character and intentionality of the one who loves. God loves and heals and restores – even when it isn’t the proper time, even when the one to be loved and healed and restored isn’t worthy or appreciative. The man from the pool at Bethesda didn’t ask for or show thankfulness for his healing, but he didn’t lose it, did he?

We did not choose to be saved. When we were furthest from God, before we had an inkling of our need for the love and healing and restoration that is found in the cross of Jesus Christ, Jesus took up that cross, and suffered and died and rose on our behalf.

And that love continues today. God loves – even those we deem unworthy of love. Even when we don’t love God back. God heals – even when we have given up hope. God restores – even when there seems to be nothing left to restore.

The height and depth and breadth of God’s love reaches beyond our expectations, our desires, our demands, beyond propriety or convention. God loves us, all of us, even when we don’t want it or ask for it, even when we are looking somewhere else for the pool to bubble, expecting our own efforts to be enough to bring us to the healing waters.

God heals and forgives and restores anyway. God loves anyway.

Alleluia, amen.

"...Just As I Have Loved You..."

My deepest thanks to the Reverend Dr. Delmer L. Chilton for his insights, which helped greatly in preparing the sermon.

John 13:31-35

When he had gone out, Jesus said, "Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, 'Where I am going, you cannot come.' I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

This is the Word of the Lord.

Taken at face value, the words in today’s Gospel reading are nice enough. Jesus is preparing his beloved disciples for the Cross he is to endure, and assuring them that in it both the Father and the Son will be glorified. Then he tells them to love one another, and that their love for each other will be the indicator to the world around them that they are Christians. He even calls that whole loving each other thing a “new commandment.”

It’s a wonderful passage, and a well-known one. It is hard to find someone, inside or outside of Christianity, who hasn’t heard the “new commandment, to love one another as I have loved you.” After all, we’ve had two thousand years to translate, commentate, pontificate, evaluate, argue over, and put these words on plaques and sell them in Christian bookstores.

Yet for all of that, I want to submit to you that, all too often, Christians still don’t really understand it.

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Jesus says, “Just as I have loved you,” and he says it in a point in time where he has just sent Judas out into the night to find the Temple leaders, get the guards, and lead them to arrest Jesus. Not too many verses after this, he will look at Peter, the man who first said the words, “you are the Christ,” and tell him that, in a way quite similar to Judas, he too would betray Jesus.

In other words, Jesus sandwiches talk about love between two acts of deadly betrayal. We talk about love. We put it on t-shirts and coffee mugs. And to a good degree, we are OK with the idea of love… especially if it’s loving people who share our beliefs and convictions to one degree or another, and share our DNA and name. People who vote like we do, have the same accent and like the same teams…

But Jesus speaks of love in the context of one disciple, who has been with him for years, who has shared meals and seen the miracles and heard his words, going to the very people who want Jesus dead and saying, “I’m your man.” He speaks of love in the context of another disciple, a member of his inner circle, who saw the glory of the Mount of Transfiguration, who stepped out of the boat and walked on water, trembling in fear before a little servant girl and using the vilest of words to swear that he never knew Jesus.

How can Jesus talk of love at a time like this? And even if Jesus can love Judas… even if Jesus can love Peter… how can he seriously expect us to love like that?

I think that we, too often, confuse the idea of “loving” with “liking a lot.” I was reading something this week by Delmer Chilton. He pointed out that in our culture, love is almost always associated with romantic love, what in Greek is designated by the word eros. So to love is to have intense feelings of affection for another human being.

We also associate love with friendship, the Greek philea, as in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. And again, this is a natural thing, not something that can be commanded, for crying out loud. We like some people and others we don’t. We get along with some people, with others we don’t.

Marriage is usually a combination of eros and philea, as well it should be. Friends we make along life’s way, people we just like being around, this is mostly philea, affinity and affection.

All this is natural and cannot be commanded.

And if we think about love only in terms of how we feel, then the idea of Jesus feeling love toward Judas, of feeling love toward Peter, well… that is incomprehensible. I cannot feel love toward people who betray me, who speak evil and do evil to me and my friends and my family, so even if Jesus could have felt love for Judas and Peter in that moment, for him to expect me to is insanity! How can that be commanded? I mean, we “fall in love,” right? We feel what we feel. Commanding someone to feel a given way is like commanding the wind to blow south instead of east – both impossible, and a little bit silly at best, or downright destructive at worst.

Well, I cannot tell you how Jesus felt. And I don’t think Jesus paid very much attention to how he felt when it came to love. I just know what he did, and that is the point.

Bear with me.

Our Lectionary reading from the Book of Acts centers on the Apostle Peter explaining to some very upset believers in Jerusalem exactly how he had the gall to go and share the Gospel with (of all people) the Gentiles!

Peter was, like all of the Jewish Christians in those early years of what was called “The Way,” very observant. There were foods one simply did not touch, much less eat, and the very idea of eating with people who ate unclean things was abhorrent.

But God saw things differently. Peter, on a roof praying, sees a vision of a sheet lowered from heaven, with, oh I don’t know, bacon and ham and shrimp and lobster on it, maybe, and God says, “hey Pete, pig out.”

(I am paraphrasing a little…)

Peter says, “No way! I don’t eat unclean stuff!”

And God says, “I will decide what is clean and what ain’t clean, son.”

Peter felt disgusted at the thought of eating unclean things, just as he felt revulsion at the idea of fellowshipping with Gentiles.

But God could care less how Peter felt. God cared about what Peter did.

We may think of love in terms of eros or philea, but Jesus calls deeper, calls us to agape, self-sacrificial love. This is the God kind of love, love that has to do with how we act toward one another, not how we feel about each other. 

God’s love, Jesus’ love, is not determined by the worthiness of the object, but by the character and intentionality of the one who loves.

It is God’s nature, it the very core of God’s being, to love. Love is what compelled God to create us in the first place. Love is what makes God sustain us. Love is what brought Jesus to this earth. Love is what Jesus taught and lived every day of his earthly life. Love is what took Jesus to the cross, what caused Jesus to defeat death in the Resurrection, and love is what Jesus left behind to bind us together.

When Jesus commands us to love one another in the same way he loves us, he is not demanding that we fall in love, he is calling us to love on purpose, to act with intentional agape toward one another and toward all those around us. Like Peter, we are being called to move beyond our comfort zones in terms of whom we relate to, and how we act toward them.

Love – the action of love, the agape – comes first, and our feelings follow.

Jesus could and did speak of love, right there on that night of the Last Supper and in the midst of every kind of betrayal, because his kind of love is not a feeling, it is an act of holy intention.

OK, fine, we say. So what is this kind of love, anyway? If it isn’t a feeling, what is it? How do we do it?

Hear the Word of God from Saint Paul’s First Epistle to the Church at Corinth, and I am using “The Message” translation:

“Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have. Love doesn’t strut, doesn’t have a swelled head, doesn’t force itself on others, isn’t always “me first,” doesn’t fly off the handle, doesn’t keep score of the sins of others, doesn’t revel when others grovel, takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, puts up with anything, trusts God always, always looks for the best, never looks back, but keeps going to the end. Love never dies.”

And not one of us deserves that love any more than Judas or Peter or any of the others who ran like scared rabbits at the first sign of trouble. But all of us have received that love, and all of us are called to share that love, pass it on, spread it around; we are to love one another, just as Jesus has first loved us.

To love like Jesus loved is to love without reservation. To love like Jesus loved is to love friends and enemies. To love without hesitation and without limitation. It is a radical, unheard-of love. It is love lived, not in thought or emotion or in words, but as a verb – as an act of the will, deliberate, direct, and in spite of the consequences. This kind of love is the product of God’s Holy Spirit within us, loving, actively and deliberately, with extravagant abandon.

Who is the person, who are the people we find least loveable? The ones who disgust us, or frighten us, or who seem not worth the effort?

Who are the ones we find most loveable – the ones who bring us joy and comfort, whose presence or even their voice on the phone – even a text message from them – energizes us? And who are the ones in between those extremes?

All of these are the ones we are called on by Jesus to love, actively and intentionally, loving on purpose despite how we may feel: good bad and ugly, hair warts and all, no matter how we feel. Yes, just as Jesus has first loved us.

Alleluia, amen.

Where is God?

The following is inadequate, as are all words when disaster (natural or the result of human intention) strikes. I think, though, that we need to remind ourselves, and one another, that God is alive and acting and loving at all times.

John 10:22-30

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."

This is the Word of the Lord.

It isn’t hard, after the events of the past week, to identify with the desperation in the voices of the people surrounding Jesus in the portico of Solomon. After all, the Jewish people had been suffering under the boot of Roman oppression for years: if it wasn’t a Roman legion quelling an uprising in a bloody, decisive way, it was the constant taxation, the idolatrous images here and there, and the temptation to give in to Greek habits and customs.

But whether they were Pharisee or Sadducee, Herodian or one of the majority who didn’t identify with one faction or another, the one common thread that held them together, the common hope that gave them all strength to face the day despite living under the yoke of the Roman eagle, was the Scriptural promise of a Messiah, a Christ, as Savior that would redeem Israel, and the world.

They could be forgiven for expecting this Messiah to be an earthly King, one who would merely overthrow the Roman Empire, re-establish the throne of David, and make Israel an eternal Kingdom to which all other nations would bow. They’d been the underdog long enough, and they had, as far as they were concerned, kept their end of the bargain with God: keeping the Law, making the sacrifices, singing the Psalms, and even that snake Herod was building a beautiful Temple befitting the one true and living God.

In the face of all they felt they had done, the oppression continued. So they could be forgiven for asking “where is God?”

And here was this man Jesus, who people were whispering about in the synagogues, talking about in the marketplaces, and rushing to see and hear in every town he and his band of disciples traveled through. He preached, he performed miracles, when he was questioned by the best Jewish minds, he was never at a loss for words. He spoke of the Kingdom of God, He was even said to have healed a man born blind.

Could he be the Promised One? Could the end of years of oppression and servitude at last be over?

Some were certain of it – look at what he can do listen to the powerful words he says! Others outright rejected the idea: Someone from Nazareth, a Messiah? Someone who didn’t adhere to the rigid code of ethics of the Pharisees, a Messiah? Never!

We aren’t told why Jesus was in the portico of Solomon that day. Historically, this was the porch where that King of Israel had come to make his judgments and exercise justice for those who were brought before him. We are told that it was winter, and that appears to have been the rainy season, so perhaps it was as simple as Jesus taking shelter from a chilling shower. In any case it is no accident, I am sure, that Jesus, whose life and teachings embodied the true justice of God – forgiveness and reconciliation – would be in this area in the east side of the Temple.

I can imagine a group of people arguing about who Jesus was, there in the Court of the Women when he walked past, but they were so engrossed in their discussion that Jesus had already left the area by the time someone said, “hey, isn’t that him?” In an instant they had rushed to that porch, in a section of the Temple Herod had elected not to restore, and surrounded Jesus. It seems they weren’t going to let him leave until, once and for all, he had answered the question: Are you, Jesus, the Messiah?

This past Monday, two explosions ripped through the crowd of spectators at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people, including an eight-year-old boy, and injuring nearly two hundred. On Wednesday, a fertilizer plant in the tiny community of West, in Texas, caught fire and exploded, killing fifteen, injuring many more, and causing major damage to homes and businesses in the community.

We now know who placed the crude bombs in the crowd in Boston. We don’t know why they did it, and if Dzhokhar Tsarnaev doesn’t survive his wounds, we may never know. Investigators are combing through the rubble of the fertilizer plant this very morning, looking for answers to why the plant caught fire and exploded.

We could be forgiven, in the face of all of this death, uncertainty and destruction, for asking, where is God in all of this?

In today’s reading, when the Judeans ask Jesus to make who he is clear, once and for all, he doesn’t just point to what he has said, he points to the things he has done: the healings, the miracles. “The works that I do in my Father's name testify to me…”

And the reason they don’t see that his words and actions prove he is the Christ? Because they don’t believe. It’s the opposite of what we’ve always heard – you know, “seeing is believing.” Jesus says “believing is seeing.”

Very often, in the face of disaster, whether natural or man-made, words fail us. We struggle to understand, and to articulate to one another, where God is. And too often, when we find words, they are inadequate.

The Jewish rabbi and author Irving Greenberg put it best when he said, “No statement, theological or otherwise, should be made that would not be credible in the presence of burning children.”

So where do we find God in all of this?

I’ve quoted a Jewish theologian, now let me share the words of a Presbyterian minister, the Reverend Fred Rogers… Most of us know him from the children’s television show, “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.”

Following the deaths of Martin Luther King Jr and Robert F Kennedy, Mr. Rogers felt he had to he had to tell parents about the importance of including children in the ways they, as adults, dealt with their own grief. Here’s what he said:

"When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping." To this day, especially in times of "disaster," I remember my mother's words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world."

Where is God in all of this?

There are a lot of videos of that first explosion at the Boston Marathon. People with cell phones recording friends and loved ones crossing the finish line, news crews getting b-roll footage, and of course it is hard to stomach. The bomb goes off, there is smoke, falling people and debris, and of course people run. But do you know what? Some of those people – sure, the police, paramedics, but also some of the runners and civilian bystanders too, run away just a few steps, then they stop, and turn around, and though no one knows what has happened, if there is another bomb, before the smoke even clears, they are running back to where that bomb went off… running to help. I heard someone interviewed on NPR who said that when the second bomb went off at the end of the block, no one even flinched, no one stopped what they were doing – moving debris out of the way, tearing their shirts to make tourniquets and pressure bandages, being helpers.

There is where we see God. That is where we see the hands of Christ working, where we hear the voice of God speaking peace and healing and hope… yes, there is evil in this world, and perhaps it is a good thing that we cannot understand why: why people fly planes into buildings, or make vans into ammonium nitrate bombs, or stuff pressure cookers with gunpowder and nails. There is evil in the world, but there is good.

“My sheep hear my voice,” Jesus says. “I know them, and they follow me.”

Sometimes, the voice of Christ is spoken: a prayer at just the right time, a word of peace and hope.

And sometimes, the voice of Christ we hear is silent, because it is carried in the hands and feet of those who run back into the smoke and debris…

Here is where we find hope. We must believe, and see, and thus help others to see, that God is alive and active in this world, and is especially present in these times, in the actions of the helpers.