God Makes A Home With Us 5/26/19 Easter 6C

5/26/19    Easter 6C

God Makes a Home With Us

Rev Dr Rebecca L. Kiser

My children and foster son Billy all graduated from Maury High School in Norfolk, a common alma mater.  They all had the shared trauma of learning this ting called THE MAURY PARAGRAPH that the Maury English teachers taught, …and me, too, as I had to endure 4 children learning it. The Maury Paragraph started with a succinct opening sentence, included at least three points, and then concluded with an effective segue sentence to the next Maury Paragraph. They had to outline it, show their 3 points, and then write it.  This was supposed to help them on their college essays. 

We ALL hated The Maury Paragraph.  Sometimes I still remember it when I hit the return key on my computer for a new paragraph, although its not required in my sermons nowadays.  I think what it taught the kids was to organize their thinking, and stay on one subject at a time while they say what they have to say.  So that’s not a bad thing…

This text from John would flunk The Maury Paragraph rules.  It sounds like it joins together a group of Jesus’ sayings that may have a word or two in common, but really its rather disjointed, with multiple emphases. They’re kinda loosely joined together, but its not a linear thought process.  That’s okay - John wanted to get all Jesus’ important sayings into his gospel, I get that.  He and the other gospel writers tried to group things in ways to hang together, and sometimes they were more effective than others.

Seminary didn’t care so much about paragraphs, but they did care about your sermon hanging together and not going off in all directions.  A professor told us that the point of a sermon should be able to be summed up in one sentence.  Trying to cover too many points in one sermon was the mark of a novice.  This passage from John has way too many ways a sermon could go, so I decided to go with what captured my meditations and ponderings, which was what Jesus means when he says, “we will make our home with them.” The point of this sermon is to explore what that means.   I noticed that there is Trinitarian thing going on about who will make a home with those of us who love Jesus - there’s Jesus, and who he calls my Father, then there’s the Advocate who will be sent to us in Jesus’ name. This unity, this oneness, which grows to include us believers, is a hallmark in the gospel of John.  This rather mystical concept of a oneness and an indwelling of all that is God, and within us, is important to the way he sees us believers as Christ’s body.  John says it in other places, too – Himself in God, us in him, God in him, God in us…All connected, united, joined.

So what does it mean to us? That’s another concept our profs at seminary pounded into us - the question, “So what?”  Sermons are not to teach a set of facts, so much as to apply the Word of God to our living.  So what does this oneness, this unity, mean in our living in the kindom of Christ, this earthly place where God’s will needs to be done on earth as in heaven?  What does it mean that God makes a home with us? 

We can ponder now that if God is with us, within us, and made a home with us, that therefore God goes with us wherever we go.   Our bodies have become God’s temple as the scripture says elsewhere; God has taken up a dwelling in us.  So we carry God to the Food Lion, and our interactions there; we carry God when we drive to Florence to Costco, or the mall, or the movies.  God is with us when we eat out or eat home.  God is with us when we’re at work, in whatever we do there, the clients we see, the deals we make, the way we talk with our co-workers.  God goes with us to dance recitals and competitions.  God goes with us to the doctor’s, or to the hospital, or when we drive our spouse, children or parents there.  God drives with us when we’re going to Atlanta for a conference or a mission trip to Greece.  God is with us when we prune flowers or rake leaves.  God goes to school with us, and out to recess with us.  God is with us when we sit at Session meetings and interact with each other and think of the church’s work.  God is with us when we read posts on Facebook or send tweets.  God is with us when we’re getting married or freezing strawberries.  We are now joined with God, and God with us - the overwhelming Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer of all that is - and us, the creation, the work of God’s hands. We are now connected. Not that this makes us God - yet God lives in us and with us - guiding us, available to us, wanting to be more manifest in us, wanting to transform us so that Christ will show in us.  Encouraging us in our struggles, caring for us when we hurt, opening our eyes and ears to how God sees and loves the world. 

A modern word would be “interconnection,” or perhaps “interdependent.” We study that in school, too, when we study habitats and how everything in that habitat balances together, interconnected in minute ways so that it all works and prospers. We might study it in regards to our planet, where oxygen and carbon dioxide are balanced in a way that supports life; where water currents affect temperatures; where deforestation and emissions on a land mass can affect temperatures, which affects currents, which affects the polar ice caps, which affects how high the tides rise.  Our planet is a habitat, and balanced for life to prosper.  Our ozone layer protects us from the sun’s rays which can damage us, and our unconcern for how we change the atmosphere has affected the ozone.  God has so ordered the life on this planet so that life as we know it thrives and prospers - our scientists are discovering just how this all works together, and how much  humanity need to live and act in this knowledge, and live in this awareness.

Ah, ‘awareness’ is a good word – “awareness” is a word perhaps more familiar to Eastern religious traditions than to ours, although its a good word to describe what Jesus is getting at in his words about our unity and oneness with God, Jesus and the Advocate.  Its not just a nice concept to read about at church and forget for the rest of the week - this is what God tells us about our spiritual reality - in our following of Christ, in our living in Christ’ kindom, this awareness of how we are united to God is vital to our attitudes, our actions, our living.  This awareness of our interconnection to God - and to each other, by the way, and to the planet of which soil we are made, - this is the awareness of who we are and what life means that informs the rest of our living.  It runs counter to the culture that tells us we are independent, we pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps and our hard work, we are individuals, the planet here for our use, people here to be winners over and be used.  We see where that kind of worldview is getting us - pollution, suffering, ghettos, divisions - this is not God’s design; this does not help life thrive. 

Once again, Christ’s kindom runs counter to what we absorb from the very systems in our culture. A worldview based on this kind of human understanding is not the kindom of heaven!  And the worldview that God teaches is different on a deep level, an understanding that we walk and live and move and have our being embedded in God’s creation and embedded with God as well.  The development of western Christianity missed this, in my opinion - we emphasized tasks and behaviors without teaching the “why” behind them. And we taught obedience to avoid hell, instead of the bliss of being one with God and the love and delight of following God’s ways.  Following Jesus leads us to a new way, a way that sees the interdependence of God’s creation, and sees the real although mystical oneness of believers with God. 

For example, consider the name we use for Jesus at Christmas - Immanuel.  Hear the word “immanent” in that - the immanent God = immanu-el.  Translated as ‘God with us’, the God who is here.  We use it about the infant Jesus, God born in flesh.  But you know, Jesus is showing us the truth about God, that God has been here all the time, and is even now here all the time.  God is the one who is present.  God dwells in and among us and creation; and as believers in God, we know God as the One who is present.  Not that every thought we have is God speaking - we have a very human voice inside us that is swayed by all kinds of human desires for power, lust, hurts, angers, cravings, glittery false desires that pull us away, and so on.  Our spiritual life is a battle of sorts, a battle to listen for God’s Spirit and heed it, follow it; a work of sorting God’s voice from our lesser voices, and following. 

I talked to my son over the weekend, and as we shared about our weeks, I mentioned how, at the Vital Congregations conference, we had communion 2 night in a row, and then when I attended 1st Myrtle Beach’s early Sabbath service (on Thursday night), I got to have communion yet again.  I said, “I like having communion often like that!”  He asked, “Why, mom? What difference does it make?”  So I had to feel around for some words to explain, and I said that communion was more than just juice and pieces of bread, it carried a sacred meaning about how we need God, how God feeds us - and not just in our souls, but also in the world, with real bread and juice.  And how we are part of a larger picture that includes Christians of other stripes, but who are bound together in God’s world.  And as a ritual, it reminds me of these things on a regular basis.  Ah, he said, awareness, living in the awareness of life.  Yes, I said. It brings me back to the awareness of the whole that my faith teaches me is reality.  I can forget that so easily in doing all the stuff I have to do every day.  It’s good to be brought back to that awareness of how God is present.   My son who loves philosophy says, “So any eating could actually do that.”  Well, yeah….but its the ritual, the sacred eating, as a part of worship of God, that first teaches me that awareness of God making a home with me. 

See, he gets it, although he just doesn’t like churches too much.  Church, in his mind, and his generation’s mind, is too preoccupied with details, and who’s right and who’s wrong, what Jesus called ‘straining out the gnats and swallowing the camels.’  The worldview Christ teaches is more than gnats!  Its meaningful, and speaks to people’s great need for belonging, of having a purpose, and is hopeful of abundant life.  If we can get around to saying it in a way that can be heard, and not get lost in the morass of petty fluff, God could open more hearts that long for this forgiveness and restoration. The mess in our own living of Christianity at a lower level can cloud the larger message of God, and distort the worldview of God that supports life and its thriving that was intended. 

Okay, I like to talk big Picture things, like how the truth is that God has made a home with us.  But, see, its important that the big picture be right, the worldview be right, so that the small and daily actions be also right.  If we start with a view of our human aloneness, our independence and individualism as our foundation, we are set up to fighting for our own good and seeing others as threats.  We have to win, so they have to lose. Since the purpose is for ME to survive and thrive, to ‘win,’ so to speak, then I can ride roughshod over other peoples, those losers who are poor and powerless.  Its okay that to get all I can for ME, so I can rip other people off, trick people, use my power to defeat people, and even despoil the world I live in.  As long as I throw God a bone now and then, quote a Bible verse or so go to church to stay on God’s good side, I can do what I want to win.  That’s tricking God, too.  Or thinking that I can manipulate God….  It sets us up to have fights and wars and excuse ourselves for our meanness. 

When we start with the foundation of God’s big picture and learn to walk in that awareness, we will have a different value system - we will seek the good of all persons like we seek our own.  Our awareness of the truth of God with us, God making a home with us, the way we are joined in faith with God and with others, can lead us to better communities, better actions and behaviors with others, not needing to rule over them or use our power to get our way.  We appreciate and understand the ways all creation is connected, and seek to live in ways that will help all prosper, and guard this planet where God has placed us.  We can think beyond our own good only, when we see that God loves the world.  God’s worldview will have us treating people right even if they are cashiers at Food Lion, even if they are a different color, even if they are  different gender, even if they belong to a different political party, even if they worship differently - we don’t have to beat them, and we don’t have to rule over them, even if our function in our job is to lead or direct or be the boss.  We value our customers and our employees and care for their good as we care for our own.  We are aware that we are all one in Christ, and with Christ in God.  It makes all the difference.

There was a book I read some years ago called, All Children are Our Children.  It didn’t come at it from a religious point of view per se - It pointed out that our living will be impacted at some point by the way any children of the world are treated.  If they are uneducated, or starved, or their families broken up by us - it will all eventually affect the way the world goes.  Humanity will reap what we sow, in effect. The book urged people to work for the good and well-being of all children, as a way to also work for the good of our own children in the future.  So it was based more on a long-term view for our good than on religious beliefs per se,….  although faith could have taught us the same lesson of valuing all life as the way God has designed things to function for thriving.  God made us all and seeks us all again, willing to forgive and transform as God makes a home with us.

We are seeking a renewed view of what church is and can be, and a revived sense of call here at Indiantown, and in our presbytery, and in our own spiritual lives.  So we go back to the basics, go behind the assumptions, peer into the things we’ve always done just because the last generation did them that way and it feels so familiar and comfortable.  We let these foundational faith concepts color our seeing as we look at our community, as we look at our lives, and as we look at our church.  We let God open our eyes yet again, and yet more, and ask to be led into what God says is good.  Its not necessarily easy, yet it is right and good.

My prayer for us is that we can cultivate this awareness of God making a home with us so that it becomes a daily and a constant awareness.  That we can grow in carrying this awareness of God into the moments of each day, wherever we are - home or school or work or even at church!.  A different generation called it practicing the presence of God, a good spiritual practice that will transform us from within.  This is how faith grows and comes out in our living.  May God work in us as we seek this awareness.  AMEN.

They're Not Like Us! 5/19/19 Easter 5C

5/19/19   Easter 5C

They’re Not Like Us!

Rev Dr Rebecca L. Kiser

Before reading text:

This past week’s conference for the Vital Congregations Initiative was a wonderful and moving experience of vision and hope for the larger church’s mission and ministry into the future.  We worshipped, we praised, we wept, we ate together, we fellowshipped with people both like us and different from us.  Like us, because they praised God and prayed like Joyce and I, and were Presbyterians like Joyce and I; different, because to the outward eye and ear we differed in ways that often divide people in our country and world.  Like I experienced at the NEXT Church conference as well, people of all colors and differing first languages gave visual evidence to the unity of the Spirit, and displayed hope of how Presbyterian worship has a promising future.  In fact, the very diversity of people encourages and invigorates our witness and our worship.  I came back tired in a good way - we were enlivened, excited and full of hope that this process, planned in a large part by the next generation of church leadership, can lead all of us in a deeper relationship with God’s Spirit and listening for the next new thing that God is doing in the church. 

And that goes real well with the 2000-year old text of the burgeoning new church growing and spreading the gospel in early Jerusalem and that region, which is also about how God, through Jesus Christ and the Spirit, is both attending to God’s faithful worshippers as well as doing an unexpected and new thing.  Its worship of God, which is the same; yet full of surprises and changes that are different, and that challenge old assumptions, old boundaries.  It was already different that God was incarnate, ie “en-fleshed” and walked among us in Christ Jesus, and then it was surprising that Jesus was raised from the dead.  Now it is almost shocking to these believers who had early on followed God and believed in Jesus, that God was again confounding expectations and reaching to the population of the whole world instead of just the chosen, the Jewish nation. 

Listen for the word of God as we read together Acts 11: 1-18.  And I mean together - get out those pew Bibles so we’re all in the same translation, and find the Acts of the Apostles just after Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.    The events we will read about actually take place in the prior ch 10 - then after the surprising events and the apostle Peter’s responses, he gets called on the carpet and tells the whole thing again in ch 11. Let’s read:

Acts 11:1-18

11Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God. ²So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, ³saying, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” ⁴Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step, saying, ⁵“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. ⁶As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. ⁷I also heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’ ⁸But I replied, ‘By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ ⁹But a second time the voice answered from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’ ¹⁰This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven. ¹¹At that very moment three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were. ¹²The 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. ¹³He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, ‘Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; ¹⁴he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.’ ¹⁵And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. ¹⁶And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ ¹⁷If 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?” ¹⁸When 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.”

Up until this point, Jesus’ followers were all faithful Jews.  Well, there were those who converted, and those who recognized the depth of the Jewish faith and honored it.  But by and large, Jesus, who was a good Jew and never changed, was acclaimed by his followers to be the Messiah that they expected and longed for.  This new sect was from within Judaism. The apostles were all good members of their own faith tradition, with the addition that they saw Jesus as the fulfillment of their people’s long hope, which was surprising enough.  Not everybody in the faith tradition could go there.  And the claim of Jesus’ resurrection was astounding and weird enough that others obviously had some difficulty with it, too. 

Now, however, something happens that makes for a major change within the standards of the Jewish faith.  All though their history, Jews have had nothing to do with Gentiles, ie everybody else who’s not Jewish.  Part of keeping their faith tradition from being diluted was to keep their ethnicity pure as well.  Of course there were certain exceptions along the way, but racial purity and ethnic purity was a big value within the tradition.  Gentiles had different ways, Gentiles worshipped false gods, not the God of Abraham.  They were unclean, and basically anathema.

That’s the point of the dream Peter has - as a Jewish man, observant of the Law, he can’t eat those unclean animals.  But in the dream, God says three times that, “If I say they’re clean now, don’t disagree with me, and don’t call them profane.”  We can only imagine how shocking this dream must have been to Peter.  What?????  Peter has been praying, and this happens in his prayer!!!!   Then these Gentile guys are knocking at the door and asking him to come with them to a Gentile house and preach to them.  Ah ha - Peter makes the connection - God’s Spirit wants him to go with these Gentiles.  He doesn’t know why, but it seems God prepared him for this, and he decides to follow it.  He takes some Jewish brothers with him.  They all see God’s Spirit fall on the Gentiles, and these Gentiles show the same signs as Jewish believers.  So Peter does the next thing, which is to offer them baptism, and eats with them, accepting them as members of Jesus’ church.  Its radical!

Peter and his friends break a lot of traditional rules here - rules they’ve considered God’s will for centuries.  Peter isn’t just some rogue, non-observant and rule-breaking wild kid freaking out the grown-ups.  Peter walked with Jesus for the three years, and learned from Jesus.  Peter has been in prison for his faith, and he preached the powerful sermon at Pentecost from which many Jews from around the Mediterranean came to believe. And this same Peter ate with Gentiles and baptized them!

Word gets out, and Peter gets called on the carpet to explain himself.  Its of God, he says. God is the one who declared the boundaries broken, I just followed in faith.  God’s vision of what God is doing far exceeds Peter’s vision, or anyone else’s.  Who am I to hinder God?

Well, our early Christian ancestors in faith wrestled with this for more years, trying to figure out whether Gentile converts should follow Judaism, and to what extent.  There was a lot of confusion about how this new step worked.  Were Gentile converts, like, 2nd class believers?  Just how far are these traditional divisions broken?  What does it mean that we who follow Jesus have become a new family, across racial, ethnic boundaries?  Or across any boundaries? 

They’re not like us! But they worship God through Jesus.  They don’t know our history! And they have a different history! But they worship God through Jesus. They eat different foods and have a different culture!!!! But they worship God through Jesus. They’re not white! They’re not Americans!!! They’re not conservatives! They’re not in our political party! They don’t dress like us!  They don’t sing like us! But they worship God through Jesus.  But this is the way WE do things, and we’re right!! But they worship God through Jesus, too.

See, following Jesus is the game changer here - other distinctions don’t matter - following Jesus becomes the mark of this new family, this church.  The rest is fluff - although sometimes its hard to see that or admit that.  They aren’t capitalists!  They don’t know the cues of Southern charm!  They not fluent in Western history!  They don’t know our hymns!  Friends, that is all non-essential - that is all fluff.  Seeking to follow Jesus and live in Jesus’ realm - that makes them our kin, our family, and not 2nd class, either.

 

Friends, change happens. God had a bigger picture in mind.  And still has a bigger picture in mind, even now - we never see the whole of it, never get all the nuances and how it works out.  I guess we just can’t see it all at once, which is why we say “reformed and always being reformed” as our Presby motto. This Jesus thing is more than a personal salvation so we get to heaven when we die - that’s too small a goal for what God is doing.  Jesus died for the world and was raised for the world; Jesus lived as a human and cared for the well-being of humans, and directed a way of living that can actually save our world - our volatile, threatened world, our divided and polemical world - our world where angers erupt over who’s in power and who rules - and that values basically the total opposite of what God’s realm values. 

We, my friends, are called to witness, by our love for one another in Christ, that there is another way to live - a way of respect, a way of caring, a way that doesn’t pit one kind of person against another, a way where the least are cared for and provided for, where even the seemingly more powerful can do the just thing for the good of all, where humility and care for the whole wins over just taking care of #1.  We Christ-followers, united in Christ’s family, are called to show God’s love for the world by our love and our getting along; by sharing in the world’s abundance in care for one another so that all have enough.  We are not just our race or skin color - we ARE the church of Jesus Christ and therefore kin to one another -  and through this faith, and through living into the kindom of God, there IS hope and salvation for the world.  We are to be such witnesses. 

Its a high calling of the church. Unfortunately, it seems to me that we Christ-followers have wimped out on the hard stuff, and let ourselves and our church instead share the same divisions that the rest of the world has.  We don’t live up to the deep wisdom of Jesus’ teachings, where the God of the universe tells us about how things were designed to be.  We haven’t valued that wisdom, and instead find ourselves quibbling over the fluff, spending our energy on disagreements - and not keeping God’s big vision in front of our eyes. I don’t know what to do about this, because it seems that each of us have to learn it ourselves, individually, and over and over again in each generation.  And each of us seeks to live for Christ in the midst of surviving, suffering from our own wounds and problems, being influenced by the hate and competition around us, and led by our noses by things that glitter but are not gold.  Although God has extended grace to us and forgiven us, it takes most of a lifetime to learn to live into who we are in Christ.

The church as a whole is gradually seeing more of God’s vision, as God expands our circles of caring, and our comprehension of the enormity of God’s grace, only it seems to take generations for each step, and we can grow weary.

Let me share with you a transforming moment I had some years back that might speak some to our current situation in 2019.  I was newly divorced, and working for the Presbytery of Eastern VA in hunger advocacy, and preaching some Sundays when asked.  One of our downtown churches was closing its doors, selling its building and its artifacts, and I decided to attend their last service and offer my support to that brave pastor and congregation who saw the writing on the wall and made a hard decision.  The presbytery would have a final celebration there the next Sunday afternoon, when other clergy and friends could attend - this was the last time they worshipped as a church.  I walked down the halls, looking into rooms that spoke of an earlier architecture, halls that had once welcomed many post-WW2 families and children of the baby boom, and it hit me that it wasn’t only this particular church that was dying.  No, it was a whole era that was passing, the era of traditional families, the era where just about everyone went to church, and that the larger church had influence speaking to our nation.  The whole era when we white folks didn’t think too much about other races because we were dominant, although we didn’t  acknowledge it; the era when we spoke of America as a Christian nation and shared many values with other nice people. - or thought we did.  An era when people expected a better standard of living than their parents in each generation, and hard work paid off - or at least we thought so. 

I sat in that sanctuary and felt the world that I grew up in slipping away like water, and wondered what in the world would come next.  I was already in mid-life, and the world had irrevocably changed.  I was not prepared, and had no vision of what was ahead.  So I prayed like crazy.  I trusted that God was still in charge, and would continue to be; I trusted that God’s Word would endure in some form, because the faith we have is true, and God’s Spirit always does surprising and wonderful new things.  I wondered if people of my generation would be able to make the necessary changes in time.  It would probably be the next generation after mine, I thought, not raised and embedded so much in the traditional form of church like I had been.  I prayed for them.  And I prayed that I would not be an impediment to what God was doing, or be too stuck in my ways to see what was coming, and could help be a bridge to it. 

That has been my prayer since my mid-life, as I watched the world get weirder and weirder, and further away from the world I thought I was getting.  Maybe every generation feels this way, I don’t know.  I have tried to be faithful to what I believed God was saying in my heart, have continued to work in a faith that is shrinking and floundering across the country, and have tried to teach and preach what God was showing me.

I saw the first glimmerings of possibility that have moved me just this year, both at the NEXT church conference and even more at this Vital Congregations Initiative. This generation of church leaders and clergy aren’t afraid to call it like they see it, and name what has been happening, and call for better.  They are calling for our local churches to re-enter the scriptures, and re-open our hearts to God speaking.  They are asking our congregations to re-engage in our own spiritual practices and seek the Spirit’s wisdom.  They are asking us to look at our environments and our communities, and ask God to show us where our resources can match to human need.  And do it.  We Presbyterians may not be as numerous as in past years, and our finances may not be as robust - but those things have never stopped the historical  church before.  Those Presbyterians in the pews may be older - but we are still alive and we are still God’s own.  Our call is still to follow Christ and witness to God’s love. 

Change happens.  Yet, we worship a God who is new every morning, who is surprising and creative, a God of life.  And God is still speaking, still acting and still calling.  I hope we at Indiantown Pres will give it our best prayers and efforts, listening for God and expecting God to be working.  Pray for your leadership here as we set a course for this process and call us all to engage in following a new vision.  AMEN.

Growing Human Like Jesus 5/12/2019 Easter 4C, Baccalaureate

Rev Dr Rebecca L. Kiser 

Growing Human Like Jesus

5/12/19    Easter 4C - and Baccalaureate

A friend in Va Beach taught art history at Virginia Wesleyan College, and was asked by the school chaplain to take part in what was called the Last Lecture Series. The invitation was to imagine that this is your last lecture, your last opportunity to tell students and other professors the major things you’d wish them to hear - what would you say?  My friend chose to share the art that she loved the most from the artists who she most admired.  I enjoyed her lecture and slides.

Well, although I hope this isn’t my last sermon ever, today feels like an opportunity to share some of my thoughts and experiences, and my love for education.  I chose this verse from Luke, the apostle who seems to present the most human Jesus, where he describes how the young Jesus continued to grow as a well-rounded person - he grew physically, he grew in learning and understanding, he grew in social skills, and he grew in his spirituality, his  relationship to God.  Each of those ways mentioned in this verse are important for our own development as whole persons. 

PHYSICAL    Our physical self continues to grow and mature, going through the changes of our physicality.  It is important to care for this body that carries us and in some way, IS us.  Our physical abilities vary, yet the caring for our health, our eating, our skills, are important to who we are and who we are becoming.   

We all know about physical development, that children can handle more complex things as the brain develops in its ordered way.  We know about stages of physical growth, and the bodily changes that happen in our bodies.  Things change.  We also know about stages of emotional development, levels of thinking that are possible.  Actually, some people develop further than others in conceptual and interpersonal and emotional intelligences.  We know about the multiple intelligence theory - that some people learn better using their hands and bodies, that some are musical, that others are more linear and fact based, that others are better at social cues, and even others on reading the natural environment.  Some people are more introverted, and others more extroverted - its a matter of whether crowds energize you, or if you have to go home and recharge after being in crowds. 

 

LEARNING   As far as growing in learning, I enjoy being a lifetime learner - there’s always more interesting stuff out there, and it intrigues me, it draws me.  Learning how to learn is a skill that stays with you, and can be used in any type of field.  Besides our major, there are so many other areas to know - I keep on running into them. I was a music major, so I did a lot of learning in that field - yet I’ve grown an interest in biblical knowledge, languages, psychology, philosophy, pastoting, hospital chaplaincy, human development, gardening and plants, birds’ names, women’s history, writing - you get the gist.  And I haven’t even touched higher sciences, much technology, electrical things, and more.  College is just a start.  But….you gotta start somewhere, and getting good general education helps in any field we might choose for a profession. 

New discoveries and insights are happening in almost every field of study.  After all, all those people seeking higher degrees have to writes their dissertations on something - or, less cynically, we want to know more, push the envelope, go where no one has gone before, find cures, make a better mousetrap, figure out how God’s universe works. 

 

            SOCIAL / EMOTIONAL    Social development grows wildly at college as we are exposed to different people from different backgrounds who have different ways of doing things.  A major shift is that we start taking more responsibility for our own choices as far as the friends we hang with and things we do together.  Physically, our brains are developing the skills we need for this in our typical college ages.  We’re dealing with profs on our own, people of other genders, and probably new situations than we’ve run into at home. 

SPIRITUALLY     Most colleges will not have courses about growing our spirituality, although I’ve explored some college websites that do talk about general spirituality and wellness as goals for their students.  They won’t necessarily be teaching from a religious point of view - more from the concept of wholeness and overall health. College can be a large stressor, and the schools want to try and avoid burnout or other crises in their students. Spiritually, there will also be a plethora of choices at most colleges, many opportunities for moral or ethical decisions.  What we have known at home may feel challenged and questioned.  That’s not bad!  Our choices will become more our own, as we consider alternatives and their value. 

People used to say that when their kids went off to college or university, that they lost their faith and questioned everything they’d been taught - it ruined them.  I think it actually makes us larger persons, and can be the making of us. 

            I guess I can kind of see what the old folks meant - going off to university puts us in a larger circle of people - different kinds of people, with different ways of thinking and different ways of doing things.  Professors or teaching assistants love to mess with what we think we know, by exposing us to fields we never knew existed, and details about them that we never imagined.  It can be a bit overwhelming - and it can also be exciting.  There is a lot of world out there.  In respect of our faith, we may meet people from all kinds of other religious backgrounds, people who call themselves atheists (no god) and agnostics (I don’t know about god) and pagans.  It can be challenging to what we thought was the authority of our hometown church and preacher.  If there are so many other ways of looking at the world, how do I know my way is right? 

            For many, it becomes a time to question everything.  Parents’ choices might seem staid and old-fashioned, the hometown might seem quaint, the home church might seem short-sighted. 

            Its totally natural and normal that as we emerge as persons, we have our own ideas and think our own thoughts.  We are differentiating ourselves from our parents - even while its also a human skill to learn to live in community and relationships.  There’s a balance in there somewhere between being who we are and existing as a social person.  Different cultures have evolved where the balance is different.  We have to figure out our own relationship to God, to morals, to what makes us authentic persons or good persons  - what our ethics are.  We are raised a certain way - that is our parents’ responsibility;  as we mature, however, our choices become our own responsibility.  We decide whether we will drink or not or how much; if we will hook up with various partners easily or build relationships; we decide whether we will cut class or binge-watch TV or attend class and do your work. We decide what kind of person we will be, and how we will live - and we take responsibility for our choices.

Parents - This is normal.   Students - this is normal. And its good - we are being challenged to think, to question, to figure things out, to try and integrate all this new stuff into the way we see the world and the way we understand. 

            I encourage you to ask the big questions, to question what you’ve been told, to not be afraid to even rethinking about God - God is big enough to take it.  Questioning and asking makes our minds grow, and, believe it or not, it makes our faith grow.   We can wrestle with new ideas and come to grips with them, and find how faith still speaks and undergirds all that is. 

           

            So its an exciting time in your lives.  Maybe a bit scary, too.  Some people have a more difficult time being on their own than others - even within the same family!  Some people are more overwhelmed at all the choices than others.  For some, the  transition to being their own person is rockier than for others, like they throw common sense out the window.  Its your journey, and particular to you. 

I will tell you personally that I have found God to be up to any challenge of life so far - God has been up to my angry prayers, my questioning prayers, my grieving prayers, my loss of boyfriends, my learning about the complexity of the Bible, ...anything.  God has been up to all the times I’ve felt disillusioned about things I assumed were true - and by saying I was disillusioned, shows that my assumptions were illusions. Some of those have been hard to let go.

The one thing that has been the most difficult test of my faith has been how Christians can be so unthinkingly mean to each other.  I first saw it in my home church when I was a junior or senior in high school, and I lost a lot of respect for the adults at my church over their anger and bitterness, harsh words and bad behaviors. Eventually, like years later, I realized that they have not learned, as humans, to handle their own huge reactions - they can’t  deal with it.  I’ve seen it again in congregations I’ve pastored, and been deeply wounded by certain individuals’ meanness.  Its taken me a long time to recover from some of those hurts.  Not everyone does the hard work on their inner self, which I think is vital to a Christian testimony - the transforming of our minds, as Paul puts it, putting on Christ. 

Part of what I think of as spiritual development is learning self-awareness - reading the scriptures about how our words can hurt - well, they talk about in terms of the tongue, but they mean our speech - and letting the Spirit of God help me learn to watch my own words. Reading what the scriptures say about our bodies, and examining the ways I do or don’t care for this temple that is my person.  Recognizing that other people have feelings, and being able to put myself in their shoes - that is a great self-learning.  The more I’ve prayed about my own reactions and responses to things that happen to me, the more I’ve learned about other humans besides myself.  I’ve made my decisions, with God’s help,  about filtering what pops in my brain before it gets out of my mouth; I’ve made my own decisions, with God’s help, about working on my own human development, my own character development.  While we all will have our unique blind spots, I think the most valuable learning of all is learning about our own hearts and souls.   The more we can learn of ourselves in front of God and in prayer, the better for the whole body of humanity. 

Okay, I’m about at the end of things here. 

I hope college is exciting, rich and fun, despite exam weeks.  For those of you graduating from degree programs and going into work, I hope it is personally fulfilling, exciting, challenging, and good for humanity and the planet.  They are wonderful stages of life.

Parents, support your young adult children in a time we also know can be precarious, and pray for them as they find their way. 

Church, I know we won’t forget these that are coming from our community and our larger family and into the larger world.  Bless them and love them.  AMEN.

Answering Jesus' Question 5/5/19 Easter 3C

Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser

ANSWERING JESUS’ QUESTION TO US

5/5/19  Easter 3C

Love Me Tender; Bye Bye Love; Sea of Love; She Loves you Yeah, Yeah Yeah; Love is a Many Splendored Thing; Love letters In the Sand; All You need is Love; Crazy Little Thing called Love; Can’t Help falling in Love; I Just Called to Say I love you;  I Wanna Know What Love Is; All Out of Love; Loves Me Like A Rock; Love train; Only Love can Break Your Heart…..

Really, these are just SOME of the rock songs with Love in the title - if we included love as the topic of the song, it would be about 99%.  Rock songs, Country songs, folk songs, classical songs. Madrigals - is there any kind of popular songs of any era that don’t lean on the trials and the bliss of love as a main topic?  People often think on love, dream about love, wish for love, are upset about love...Articles and books and novels and movies all have themes of what love is, what love isn’t, betrayed love, whatever…..I mean, there are other things in the world besides love, although you wouldn’t easily know it. 

Mostly we ponder and sing about romantic love and our passions, for which the Greek used the word Eros.  Eros isn’t a bad word - its actually about our deep desires and things that make us passionate.  Not just physical acts.  We can feel passion about all kinds of things - this past week many of us went to Art Fields, and if you listened to any of the artists talking about their work, you heard their passion about it.  Writers are passionate about their craft, as are musicians, and spiritual seekers, ecstatic worshippers perhaps, too. 

Another Greek word for love is phileo - like in our city Philadelphia, city of “Brotherly love” as we used to call it.  Deep friendships, strong connections, even a level of intimacy that isn’t physical intimacy.  Positive family ties, ties of kinship - these are phileo. 

A third Greek word also translated “Love” is agape - “a universal, unconditional love that transcends and persists regardless of circumstance. It goes beyond just the emotions to the extent of seeking the best for others.  Within Christianity, agape is considered to be the love originating from God for humankind…..the covenant love of God for humans, as well as the human reciprocal love for God; the term necessarily extends to the love of others.”  (Wikipedia)  Loving kindness, charity, self-sacrificing love. 

An interesting point in the Q & A between the risen Jesus and Peter is that Jesus asks, Do you agape love me? This is the word Jesus uses the first 2 times he asks.  Peter responds saying Yes, I phileo love you.  The 3rd time Jesus says Do you phileo love me, and this is the time when Peter is hurt.  I don’t know if the Aramaic they probably spoke in had these distinctions, but the Greek certainly does.  Agape is the word for love Jesus uses when he says God loves us, and when he commands us to love God and love our neighbor.  Some commentators consider it the highest form of love; in which case its notable that Peter uses a different word - still a strong word and a strong connection, just not agape. 

But Love, for us English speakers, is a tricky thing to speak of,... we are nervous perhaps, in using it about people in a serious sense. It marks a change in a relationship when one partner says I love you, for example - it implies a deeper commitment.  We can talk easily about loving God in a non-specific way, too, which becomes more complicated when we are confronted with ACTUAL PEOPLE and what it means to love them.   

There’s a kind of nervous or tentative undertone, to me, in the dialogue between Jesus and Peter, when Jesus asks, “Do you love me?” How do you feel about me? What is your connection to me? Can I count on you? 

It reminds me of those movie scenes when one partner says “I love you” and the other partner hems and haws a bit, saying you’re a great person and I admire you and so on and so on, but can’t bring themselves to say “I love you” back again.  Whadda ya mean, Jesus? How can you ask me that? Of course I love you!!

Of course, that’s just my projection on the scene... let’s imagine Jesus asking this of us – we are looking at Jesus, a middle-eastern looking guy who we’ve followed around for several years, seen him killed, and now see him raised.  Whew!  We know he’s a powerful figure, maybe even God.  Imagine Jesus asking us that question, “Do you love me?” I’d probably answer, “Sure, yes, I love you, Jesus.” That’s the right Christian answer - you’ve done so much for me, you’ve sought me and found me, you poured out your love and life for me, even to the death.  You bring me into your kingdom.  Of course I love you! 

How will we feel when Jesus asks it a second time?  Are we taken aback? Does he doubt me? SHOULD he doubt me?  Have I pondered just what it means to love Jesus? Which is really asking, do I love God?  I look deeper into my heart, and I look at my life, and I answer, Yes, Jesus, I’ve loved you. I’ve listened for your words in the Scripture, I’ve stayed worshipping and serving in your church despite some times where I was so mistreated by those sheep and lambs you’re telling me to feed and shepherd, that I’d be justified in throwing up my hands and going off.  I’ve worked on myself about lying, stealing, coveting, being faithful to my spouse, stewardship, working hard, and all those commandments.  I’ve prayed and cried over your people, over mission to other lands, over the terrors and evils in our world, for our leaders.  I’ve followed where I heard your spirit leading in regards to opening my heart to various kinds of people, various races, various theologies, various styles of worship… pursuing joy in my spiritual life - trying my best to follow.  Yes, you are important to me, faith is predominant in my life.  Haven’t I shown that I love you? Hey, I’m Presbyterian, more left-brained and analytical perhaps, more quiet in my devotion than demonstrative and loud.  Its not my tradition to shout and call out, or do what my mom called “emote” over things.  Still, my feelings run deep, and my commitment is sure.

Many of us here today can answer the same way - following Jesus has ordered our lives and our priorities; we’ve been faithful to God’s church, and joining in the good works of caring for one another that our church does.  We’ve studied the Scriptures, learned, and taken seriously what we have heard in it.  Perhaps we have regular devotional practices and prayer times in our spiritual lives.  We’ve served as deacon or elder when asked, helped in those tasks that keep the church running.  Perhaps we do some of those things better than we do others….

But then…..Jesus turns to us and asks a third time – Do you love me?  Are we uncomfortable with this? Do you love me? Where does this question go in our psyches? What does our heart hear this time he asks?  Jesus keeps asking us to delve more deeply into our selves, our feelings, our commitments.

For some reason, there were some years when I woke up from sleep or dreams, hearing a knocking sound, and hearing that very question in my mind, Do you love me?  At first I wondered what I’d been dreaming; but as it kept happening, I began to wonder what was going on in my unconscious mind, or if God was asking me to ponder this.  It happened so often and for so long, that I knew it was important, and from the Holy Spirit.  I felt just as awkward as Peter - what was God asking of me? Or preparing me for?  I never really knew the answer - the question still sits in the back of my mind.  I was reminded of this time period when our choir presented their musical program on Palm Sunday, especially the song, If You Love Me, Keep My Commands.  If you love me, if you love me, if you love me – then follow.

Do you know the musical Fiddler on the Roof? There’s this song where Teyve sings to his wife and asks, Do You Love Me?  Their daughters are marrying without the help of the matchmaker, finding that they love men of their own choosing, and saying, “But I LOVE  him!” So he looks at his faithful wife, chosen for him in the traditional way, and asks, do you love me? What is this love thing?

Being asked the third time makes my earlier answers sound defensive, or self-justifying perhaps. It seems to me that God is asking us for more emotional depth than even the commitment to obedience - I might use the word, do you long for me? Do you seek me with your whole heart and soul? Am I your primary allegiance, your central value, in other words, am I your all in all? Because that’s who God wants to be to us. 

It seems to me that Jesus wants more  - God wants a relationship that involves our hearts, our devotion, our longing, and feelings. God wants to be that which moves us, inspires us, calls us forward; God longs for us to return the fervor and the fire that kept Jesus sweating blood as he strove to stay true to the end of his life.  We’ve know that kind of fervor - we’ve felt a shadow of it for another person, felt that kind of longing for connection to another person: a passion to know and be known, an intimacy of love and acceptance, a giving of one’s heart outside of ourselves. Christian mystics have called Jesus “lover” and both Old and New Testament use the metaphor of marriage for the love between God and believers.  We are God’s beloved - God is asking to be our all.  In the Revelation of John, God spits out the church of Laodicea because its neither cold nor hot, but just lukewarm towards God.  Are we just lukewarm, following the traditions and living what the church has said is the right way - Is there any fire?  Do you love me?

Friends, the vibrancy and depth of our own faith, our own relationship with God, is what will make God’s church alive.  Because if we love God, we will follow Christ in service, in laying down our own lives in this godly, self-sacrificing love for the world.  Going through the motions isn’t going to keep the church alive.  Trying to follow what some book tells us has worked somewhere else, isn’t the same thing as loving God with the fervor of our hearts and listening for what God says to us in particular.  Without the wind of the Spirit in our sails, this boat will never go anywhere.  Without the fire of the Spirit in our hearts, those who live in the cold as strangers to God will not find warmth their souls. 

The invitation to us today is to look into our our hearts for that longing for God that first brought us to faith, and stir it up. Have we relaxed into a certain complacency in our prayer or our reading?  Ask the Spirit to show us and lead us, to awaken again that love for God in our hearts, to let us imagine what what God wants from us, to speak to us, bring ideas to us, or people who challenge us, or whatever it takes to cause us to live more deeply into our discipleship.  Do you love me? AMEN.