"The Dance of Love," a sermon from Littlefield Presbyterian Church on Trinity Sunday

"Hospitality of Abraham" ("Holy Trinity"). Hand-painted icon by Andrei Rublev.

"The Dance of Love"

Isaiah 6:1-8; John 3:1-17

Over the years, I’ve had a number of front porch theological conversations with Muslim neighbors, in which they’ve asked about the Trinity.  I’ve been asked, “So, about the Trinity: One God or three? These kinds of questions have led to some interesting theological conversations about the nature of God over the years

            In the Christian calendar, this is Trinity Sunday—the only Sunday in the church year dedicated to a doctrine of the church.  

            For centuries Christians have sung, confessed our faith, prayed, baptized, received new members into our community in the name of a Trinitarian God who is traditionally Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  But for many Christians in our time (and for some in earlier times) the doctrine of the Trinity has been a problem.

            How many of us have heard a conversation in a church school class or study group that goes something like this: “Do we have to believe in the Trinity-- that God is three-in-one and one-in three--to be a Christian?” “What does it mean? How can you put three persons together and get one, or divide one into three and still have one?”

            If you think about it, you can understand why our Muslim and Jewish friends have a problem with the Trinity and wonder if we really do worship one God.

            The defenders of the faith--the traditional faith--might blunder through a fuzzy explanation and then conclude: “There’s a reason we call it a mystery that no one can fully understand.” Maybe they say, “We just have to accept it by faith.”

            I agree that the Trinity is a mystery no one can fully understand.  The doctrine of the Trinity reminds us that there is always more to God than we can conceive… always more of God than we can explain… always more than we can sing or preach or prove.   

            So—what do we do with the Trinity? 

            I think theology is important.  I think bad theology can hurt people…and hurts the church.  The language we use when we speak and sing of God is important.

            Apparently, some ordinary Christians in ancient times knew this.  Theologian Elizabeth Johnson observes how fascinated people of the late fourth century were with speaking rightly about God.

            She quotes a famous remark by Gregory of Nyssa that describes the situation: “Even the baker,” he said, “does not cease from discussing this.  If you ask the price of bread, he will tell you that the Father is greater and the Son is subject to him.”[1]

            It’s difficult for many people today to grasp how bitterly this conflict divided the Christian world for several centuries.  The Nicene Creed was hammered out to defend the faith tradition against the Arian claim that Christ was not eternal, but created. 

            The burning big QUESTION in the ancient church was “Who is Jesus Christ, in relation to God the Father and Creator?”

            The Nicene Creed was the ancient church’s answer to the questions of its time, using the best philosophical constructs and language available to it at that time. 

            As (the late) theology professor Shirley Guthrie wrote, the doctrine of the Trinity is “the church’s admittedly inadequate way of trying to understand the biblical and Christian understanding of who God is, what God is like, how and where God is at work in the world, what God thinks about us human beings, does for us, requires of us, promises us.”[2]

            We need to be clear with ourselves and in talking with others that we don’t “believe in” the Trinity. We believe in and trust in God, and the Trinity is a way Christians think about and speak of God.

            During times of controversy, the church has found it necessary to re-interpret the gospel for new times, in response to new situations and questions.  If you look through our Book of Confessions,[3] you’ll see that the “Scots Confession,” “the Heidelberg Catechism,” the “2^nd Helvetic Confession,” and the “Westminster Confession” were worked out during the Reformation period, in response to concerns particular to that time.

            In 1934, the Confessional Synod of the German Evangelical Church met in Barmen, Germany.  They “sought a common message for the need and temptation of the Church” in their day. The threat was the way the Christian church was cooperating with the Nazi regime.  The resulting confession of faith was what we know as the “Declaration of Barmen.”

            The 1960’s were turbulent times, and the “Confession of 1967” was adopted by the Presbyterian Church “to call the church to that unity in confession and mission which is required of disciples…”[4] The theme of the Confession of 1967 was the church’s ministry of reconciliation, which has been a strong theme in the mission of this congregation for several decades.

            The Presbyterian Church had split at the time of the Civil War, over the issue of slavery, and it took over a hundred years for the northern and southern Presbyterian churches to be reunited.  At the time of the reunion, the General Assembly voted to re-state the faith as a way of affirming what we believe together.  The result was “A Brief Statement of Faith of 1991,”[5]  which we often say together in worship.  The “Brief Statement of Faith” is a Trinitarian statement, which begins by stating that we trust in the one triune God, whom alone we worship and serve.

            The 2016 General Assembly made history by voting to add the “Belhar Confession” to our Book of Confessions.[6]  Belhar is a moving call for reconciliation and a condemnation of racial injustice written in South Africa during the struggle against Apartheid, to be a resource to the church during a time when racial tension, injustice and violence in the United States make headlines nearly every day.

            We are part of a living, growing tradition, and we continue to address new situations and questions by re-stating our faith.  One of the great themes of our Reformed Tradition affirms the church reformed, always being reformed, according the Word of God, as led by the Holy Spirit. 

            I believe that the controversies of our time over sexuality issues are finally being worked out after decades of conflict.  I hope this frees us to work through other important questions for living faithfully in our time. For instance, how do we confess and live our faith in Jesus Christ in a pluralistic world?  How do we speak of God in conversations with our neighbors who are Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, atheist, or “spiritual but not religious” or the “none’s” or “done's”?  If we trust in a God who creates every person in the image of God, a God who calls us to love our neighbor and to live together in Beloved Community, what does our faith require of us in our relationships with those who are different and those who are marginalized? 

            When we struggle over theology, important things often get worked out.  We often learn something—sometimes in spite of ourselves.  Even though we might want to dig in and defend what we have always believed to be true, we have the Holy Spirit nudging us, reminding us of what Jesus did and what he taught.  We learn and grow, as the Holy Spirit leads us further into the truth—just as Jesus promised

            Jesus told his disciples that he still had many things to say to them, but that they weren’t ready to hear them yet.  He promised that the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, would guide his followers into all the truth.[7]

            But from the earliest centuries of the church, discerning theologians have stressed that all our language about God, including the Trinitarian symbols, are inadequate and relative. The Bible uses many images or metaphors for God, and other theologians have offered a number of possibilities for speaking of God.[8]

            I believe God continues to speak a new word to us in new times--things we weren’t ready to hear before.  We still have many things to learn, so we need to be learners--theologians. We need to listen for what God’s teaching Spirit has to say to us.

            In my study this week, I was reminded that the Western Church’s model of the Trinity has typically looked like a triangle, while the typical model in Eastern Orthodoxy is a circle.

            John of Damascus, a Greek theologian who lived in the seventh century, developed the understanding of the Trinity with a concept called perichoresis.  I don’t bring a lot of Greek words into sermons, but this one gives us such a beautiful picture of God. “Peri”-- as in perimeter--means “around.”  “Choresis literally means “dancing” -- as in choreography.

            This isn’t an approach to the Trinity that most of us in the Western part of the church are as familiar with, but some contemporary theologians, like Jürgen Moltmann and Mirosalav Volf, have written about it.

            Father Richard Rohr has written a very accessible book: “The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation,” that invites us to take a closer look at the mystery of the Trinity.  He says we need a larger God than the understanding that seems to dominate our culture.  God is not what most people think.  God is not an angry, distant moral scorekeeper or a supernatural Santa Claus handing out cosmic lottery tickets to those who attend the right church or say the right prayer.  God isn’t a stern old man with a white-beard, ready and eager to assign condemnation and punishment.[9]

            I find the metaphor of a dancing God beautiful and life-giving, and I think it is more faithful to the story of God’s self-giving love we hear in the scriptures. Imagine it: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit-- or Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer-- the three persons of the Trinity are like three dancers holding hands, dancing around together in harmonious, joyful freedom.

            In today’s Gospel lesson, we heard, “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” God is not vengeful, not demanding of judgment or appeasement, not angry--but loving. The cross is a sign of just how far God will go to show us that God already loves us.  

            How do we proclaim the good news of God’s love in our time? To those who have been baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, we need to proclaim the new, open, love-filled space of our Triune God, the space where we are to love God with all we’ve got and to love our neighbors--all our neighbors-- like ourselves.  

            Our God is a relational God, and the Trinity is all about relationship. I think the Trinity matters, because--without the Trinity, some people can make claims that justify the hatred of entire groups of people and call them animals. Without the Trinity, some churches will claim to be church but carry on with self-centered, individualistic, fear full messages, rather than a gospel of love and community.

            On this Trinity Sunday, what really matters is being led further into God’s truth and God’s way of love.

            Maybe, as Father Richard Rohr suggests, we need to push back the furniture a bit and make room to dance with the divine. Maybe that’s a better way to teach us all about God’s self-giving love and how we can be part of the dance-- God’s dance of love and life.

            The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you!

            Amen.

Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor

Littlefield Presbyterian Church

Dearborn, Michigan

May 27, 2018

           

           

---

[1] Elizabeth A. Johnson, She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse. 

[2] Shirley C. Guthrie, Christian Doctrine, Revised Edition (Westminster John Knox Press, 1994), p. 71.

[3] https://www.pcusa.org/site_media/media/uploads/oga/pdf/boc2014.pdf

[4] The Confession of 1967, article 9.05 in Book of Confessions of the Presbyterian Church (USA).

[5] https://www.presbyterianmission.org/what-we-believe/brief-statement-of-faith/

[6] https://www.pcusa.org/site_media/media/uploads/theologyandworship/pdfs/belhar.pdf

[7]John 16:12

[8] See William C. Placher, Narratives of a Vulnerable God: Christ, Theology, and Scripture (Westminster John Knox Press, 1994).

[9] Richard Rohr, The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation.  (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge / Whitaker House), 2016.

"The Divine Dance," A Sermon from Littlefield Presbyterian Church on Trinity Sunday.

"The Divine Dance"

2 Corinthians 13:11-13; Matthew 28:16-20

Trinity Sunday 2017

 

Sometimes after choir rehearsal on Sundays I pick up lunch at the Subway on Wyoming on my way home. I’ve been there often enough that they know I’m a local pastor. They’re usually pretty busy, but one time I was the only customer.  The server asked, “So, about the Trinity: one God or three?”  As he made my turkey sub, this young Muslim man and I had a theological conversation about the nature of God.

            Over the years, I’ve had a number of front porch theological conversations with Muslim neighbors, in which they’ve asked about the Trinity. I remember one woman was really concerned for my soul, because she was afraid I worshiped more than one God. I did my best to reassure her and to clear up the confusion.

            In the Christian calendar, this is Trinity Sunday—the only Sunday in the church year dedicated to a doctrine of the church.  

            For centuries, Christians have sung, confessed our faith, prayed, baptized, and received new members into our community in the name of a Trinitarian God who is traditionally Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  But for many Christians in our time (and for some in earlier times) the doctrine of the Trinity has been a problem.

            How many of us have heard a conversation in a church school class or study group that goes something like this: “Do we really have to believe in the Trinity-- that God is three-in-one and one-in three--to be a Christian?” “What does it mean? How can you put three persons together and get one, or divide one into three and still have one?”

            If you think about it, you can understand why our Muslim and Jewish friends have a problem with the Trinity and wonder if we really do worship one God.

            The defenders of the faith--the traditional faith--might blunder through a fuzzy explanation and then conclude: “There’s a reason we call it a mystery that no one can fully understand.” Maybe they say, “We just have to accept it by faith.”

            I agree that the Trinity is a mystery no one can fully understand.  The doctrine of the Trinity reminds us that there is always more to God than we can conceive… always more of God than we can explain… always more than we can sing or preach or prove.   

            So—what do we do with the Trinity? 

            I think theology is important.  I think bad theology can hurt people…and hurts the church.  The language we use when we speak and sing of God is important.

            Apparently, some ordinary Christians in ancient times knew this.  Theologian Elizabeth Johnson observes how fascinated people of the late fourth century were with speaking rightly about God.

            She quotes a famous remark by Gregory of Nyssa that describes the situation: “Even the baker,” he said, “does not cease from discussing this.  If you ask the price of bread, he will tell you that the Father is greater and the Son is subject to him.”[1]

            It’s difficult for many people today to grasp how bitterly this conflict divided the Christian world for several centuries.  The Nicene Creed was hammered out to defend the faith tradition against the Arian claim that Christ was not eternal, but created. 

            The burning, big question in the ancient church was “Who is Jesus Christ, in relation to God the Father and Creator?” The Nicene Creed was the ancient church’s answer to the questions of its time, using the best philosophical constructs and language available to it at that time. 

            As Dr. Shirley Guthrie wrote, the doctrine of the Trinity is “the church’s admittedly inadequate way of trying to understand the biblical and Christian understanding of who God is, what God is like, how and where God is at work in the world, what God thinks about us human beings, does for us, requires of us, promises us.”[2]

            We need to be clear with ourselves and in talking with others that we don’t “believe in” the Trinity. We believe in and trust in God, and the Trinity is a way Christians think about and speak of God.

            During times of crisis or controversy, the church has found it necessary to re-interpret the gospel for new times, in response to new situations and questions.  If you look through our Book of Confessions,[3] you’ll see that the Scots Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, the 2^nd Helvetic Confession, and the Westminster Confession were worked out during the Reformation period, in response to concerns particular to that time.

            In 1934, the Confessional Synod of the German Evangelical Church met in Barmen, Germany.  They “sought a common message for the need and temptation of the Church” in their day. The threat was the way the Christian church was cooperating with the Nazi regime.  The resulting confession of faith was what we know as the Declaration of Barmen.

            The 1960’s were turbulent times, and the Confession of 1967 was adopted by the Presbyterian Church “to call the church to that unity in confession and mission which is required of disciples…”[4]     The theme of the Confession of 1967 was the church’s ministry of reconciliation, which has been a strong theme in the mission of this congregation for decades.

           

            The Presbyterian Church split at the time of the Civil War, over the issue of slavery, and it took over a hundred years for the northern and southern Presbyterian churches to be reunited.  At the time of the reunion, the General Assembly voted to re-state the faith as a way of affirming what we believe together.  The result was “A Brief Statement of Faith of 1991,”[5]  which we often say together in worship.  The “Brief Statement of Faith” is a Trinitarian statement, which begins by stating that we trust in the one triune God, whom alone we worship and serve.

            The 2016 General Assembly made history by voting to add the “Belhar Confession” to our Book of Confessions.[6]  Belhar is a moving call for reconciliation and a condemnation of racial injustice written in South Africa during the struggle against Apartheid. We adopted Belhar to be a resource to the church during a time when racial tension, injustice and violence in the United States make headlines nearly every day.

            We are part of a living, growing tradition, and we continue to address new situations and questions by re-stating our faith.  One of the great themes of our Reformed Tradition affirms “the church reformed, always being reformed, according the Word of God, as led by the Holy Spirit.” 

            I believe that the controversies of our time over sexuality are being worked out, and I hope this frees us to work through other important questions for living faithfully in our time. For instance, how do we confess and live our faith in Jesus Christ in a pluralistic world?  How do we speak of God in conversations with our neighbors who are Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, atheist, or “spiritual but not religious”? What does our faith require of us in the face of injustice?

            When we struggle over theology, important things often get worked out.  We often learn something—sometimes in spite of ourselves. It’s hard for a lot of people to re-think things they’ve always believed or change their mind. Even though we might want to dig in and defend what we have always believed to be true, we have the Holy Spirit nudging us, reminding us of what Jesus did and what he taught.  We learn and grow, as the Holy Spirit leads us further into the truth—just as Jesus promised

            Jesus told his disciples that he still had many things to say to them, but that they weren’t ready to hear them yet.  He promised that the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, would guide his followers into all the truth.[7]

             

            From the earliest centuries of the church, discerning theologians have stressed that all our language about God, including the Trinitarian symbols, are inadequate and relative. The Bible uses many other images or metaphors for God, and other theologians have offered a number of possibilities for speaking of God.[8]

            I believe God continues to speak a new word to us in new times--things we weren’t ready to hear before.  We still have many things to learn, so we need to be learners--theologians. We need to listen for what God’s teaching Spirit has to say to us.

            In my study this week, I was reminded that the Western Church’s model of the Trinity has typically looked like a triangle, while the typical model in Eastern Orthodoxy is a circle.

            John of Damascus, a Greek theologian who lived in the seventh century, developed the understanding of the Trinity with a concept called perichoresis.  I don’t bring a lot of Greek words into sermons, but this one gives us such a beautiful picture of God. “Peri”-- as in permimeter--means “around.”  “Choresis literally means “dancing”-- as in choreography.

            This isn’t an approach to the Trinity that most of us in the Western part of the church are as familiar with, but some contemporary theologians, like Jurgen Moltmann[9] and Mirosalav Volf[10], have written about it.

            Recently, Father Richard Rohr has written a very accessible book: “The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation,” that invites us to take a closer look at the mystery of the Trinity.  

            Father Rohr says we need a larger God, because God is not what most people think.  God is not an angry, distant moral scorekeeper or a supernatural Santa Claus, keeping track of who’s been naughty or nice or handing out cosmic lottery tickets to those who attend the right church or say the right prayer dominate our culture. God isn’t a stern old man with a long white-beard, ready and eager to assign condemnation and punishment.[11]

            Increasingly, I find the metaphor of a dancing God more compelling and beautiful and life-giving than some of the traditional constructs, and I think it is more faithful to the story of God’s self-giving love we hear in the scriptures.

            Imagine it: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit-- or Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer-- the three persons of the Trinity are like three dancers holding hands, dancing around together in harmonious, joyful freedom.

            The two New Testament texts the lectionary gives us for today are last words of love.  

            In the gospel lesson we heard the command we know as the GREAT COMMISSION.  Jesus tells his disciples, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” It ends with a PROMISE:  “I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

            How do we proclaim the good news of God’s love in our time? To those who have been baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, we need to proclaim the new, open, love-filled space of our Triune God, the space where we are to love God with all we’ve got and our neighbors--all our neighbors-- like ourselves.  

            I’ve been thinking that maybe this isn’t a time for us to hold an adult education class to focus on the classical doctrine of the Trinity or to insist that we have to “believe in” traditional understandings of the Trinity.

            Maybe in this time we need to push back the furniture a bit and make space to dance with the divine. Maybe that’s a better way to teach us all about God’s self-giving love and how we can be part of the dance.

            As we join in the dance, we can practice trusting in Christ’s promise that he is with us, always, to the end of the age.  We can practice trusting that the God of love and peace will be with us.

            And so, my friends, I leave you with these ending words of love: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all!”

            Amen.

Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor

Littlefield Presbyterian Church

Dearborn, Michigan

June 11, 2017

        

---

[1] Elizabeth A. Johnson, She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (Crossroad, 1992), p. 3. 

[2] Shirley C. Guthrie, Christian Doctrine, Revised Edition (Westminster John Knox Press, 1994), p. 71.

[3] https://www.pcusa.org/site_media/media/uploads/oga/pdf/boc2014.pdf

[4] The Confession of 1967, article 9.05 in Book of Confessions of the Presbyterian Church (USA).

[5] https://www.presbyterianmission.org/what-we-believe/brief-statement-of-faith/

[6] https://www.pcusa.org/site_media/media/uploads/theologyandworship/pdfs/belhar.pdf

[7]John 16:12

[8]If you’re interested in exploring this, you might want to see William C. Placher, Narratives of a Vulnerable God: Christ, Theology, and Scripture (Westminster John Knox Press, 1994), pages 53-83 or Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology (Eerdman’s, 1991), pages 56-79..

[9] Jurgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom (Harper & Row, 1981).

[10] Miroslav Volf, Allah: A Christian Response (HarperOne, 2012).    

[11] Richard Rohr, The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation (SPCK Publishing, 2016).

 

"Who Are We to Hinder God?" A Sermon from Littlefield Presbyterian Chuch.

"Who Are We to Hinder God?"

Acts 11:1-18; John 13:31-35

If you haven’t read through the whole book of Acts, I encourage you to do so, to get the overall narrative.  Most of the first half of the book of Acts is concerned with the Jerusalem church.  Then there’s a geographical movement in the story, away from Jerusalem, as the gospel spreads.

            In Acts chapter 8, an angel of the Lord sends Philip to a wilderness road where he ends up interpreting the book of Isaiah to the Eunuch.  When they came to some water, the Eunuch asks, “What is to prevent me from being baptized?” According to the religious rules and customs, there was a lot to prevent him being baptized, but nevertheless Philip baptized him.

            Saul has been zealously persecuting the disciples until his life-changing encounters-- with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus and then with Ananias, who laid his hands on Saul and something like scales fell from his eyes, and he was able to see things differently.

            In Acts chapter ten, Luke tells how the Roman centurion Cornelius, who was seeking God, had a vision in which an angel of God told him to send for Simon Peter…and how Peter received a vision that challenged his ideas about what it meant to be a person of faith.

            The church was growing.  But including the Gentiles brought a crisis in the life of the church.

            It’s hard for us to appreciate the intensity of the controversy that’s summarized in the story we just heard.  After all, what’s the big deal about eating pork or other unclean animals?   But to the early church, it was a big deal.   

            Jesus was a Jew...  and his first followers were Jews.  Although Jesus had challenged some of the religious traditions to the point where some in the religious establishment wanted to have him executed-- the early church really hadn’t questioned the authority of the taboos of the ancient purity and holiness laws.             

            According to Jewish tradition, it was unlawful for Jews to enter a Gentile house...  or receive Gentile guests...  or eat with them.  Peter was an observant Jew, and he’d taken these regulations for granted and observed them all his life.             But then he has an experience that challenges his understanding.   He receives some heavenly visions that forbid him from counting as unclean anything that God has made clean.             Peter’s understanding of what it means to live faithfully has been changing.  In the lesson we heard last week from Acts, we heard that Peter stayed in the house of Simon the tanner, who would have been considered ritually unclean because he worked with the carcasses of dead animals.

            The Spirit leads him to Cornelius, and he discovers that God has been working on Cornelius too.  As he shares the good news of peace in Jesus Christ, he sees the Holy Spirit fall upon all who hear the word.      

            Peter says, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit, just as we have?   So he orders them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ...  and he stays with them for a while.  

            Now, the apostles back in Jerusalem and the believers in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God.  When Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized Peter, saying, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?”  

            It seemed very clear to what God required of them.  For many centuries, their religious tradition had taught them that to be a “holy” people means to be separate...   and to have very clear, distinct boundaries between their community and those outside the community. 

            According to the purity codes of their tradition, something was “clean” if it fit wholly and neatly inside particular categories.  For example, in the purity laws in Leviticus 11, the people of Israel are told that they could eat “any animal that has divided hoofs and is cleft-footed and chews the cud.”  Camels and rock badgers and hares and pig didn’t fit into this category, so they were “unclean” and forbidden.^[1]  

            The Levitical laws spelled out in detailed terms that certain things were totally unacceptable in Israelite culture, and therefore an “abomination:” things like eating unclean food...  idolatrous practices...  not keeping the Sabbath…  and magic, to name just a few.          The Holiness Code prohibited a long list of things that included the cross-breeding of animals and the mixing of grain or fibers.  The Code was equally clear that children who curse their parents should be put to death.^[2]

            Those of us who routinely eat ham or multi-grain bread… or wear cotton/polyster fabric blends have a hard time comprehending just how controversial these changes were for the early church. These rules were part of the time-honored religious tradition, and for many faithful people, it was really gut-wrenching to think about breaking them.  Did you hear Peter’s revulsion when he heard God’s command?  “By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.”

            Yet, in the Acts story, we hear how the church learns from the Spirit and changes.  The early church in Judea comes to accept Gentiles into the faith community.  They realize that they’re going to be in relationship with people they’ve always avoided because they believed them to be unclean.  They decide that the church should minister to them, and they send Paul and Barnabas out to work with the emerging congregations.^[3]

            God had a new vision for the church and what it means to be God’s holy people.  The God who created the world is disrupting the boundaries humans constructed.  The Spirit continued to challenge some of the traditional beliefs and taboos...  as “the word of God grew and multiplied”^[4] and reached to the ends of the earth.

            Through Jesus, God gave us a new commandment:  that we are to love one another, just as Jesus loved us.   Through John, God gave us a vision of a new heaven and earth, and said, “I am making all things new.”

            Before Peter baptized them, God poured out the Holy Spirit upon the Gentiles.  God’s spirit is ahead of us, leading us, and working in and through us, despite whatever dividing walls we may have constructed. This is good news, considering how often we get things wrong, and how often we persist in making distinctions between “us” and “them” based on race, language, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, religion, our fears, and other differences, real and constructed.  

            “The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us.”[5]   The Spirit counseled Peter to accept what had already been true about God:  God does not show favoritism.

            God does not show favoritism.  To be honest, we might be resistant to that idea.  Haven’t we at some point longed to be the favorite?  “I was Dad’s favorite.”  “Mom loved me best.”  Has that made us feel special?  But God does not show favoritism.  God loves all of God’s children.

            We are living in a time of great change in our society and in the church—a time that a lot of folk experience as scary or confusing.   And yet, I’m becoming more and more convinced that following Jesus isn’t complicated.  Jesus came to came to live among us, full of grace and truth, to show us the way of self-giving love.   

            As Elizabeth Johnson wrote:  “Jesus could not be clearer:  It is not by our theological correctness, not by our moral purity, not by our impressive knowledge that everyone will know that we are his disciples. It is quite simply by our loving acts -- acts of service and sacrifice, acts that point to the love of God for the world made known in Jesus Christ.”[6]

            I agree with Dr. Johnson.  Jesus was very clear what the greatest commandments are, and they’re about love.  It’s clear that we are called to show that we follow Jesus by how we love people.

            Now, it’s clear that we are called to love one another.  But nobody said it would be easy.   Look around you at the people sitting here in the pews.  Do we see any perfect people—people that are always easy to love?  People who are always perfectly loving?  No.  None of us is perfect.   We all have our little quirks...  and warts.  In this community, we have this treasure in earthen vessels.  But the vessels are imperfect and maybe a little cracked in one way or another.  God isn’t finished working on any of us yet. 

            The good news is that God has created each and every one of us in the image of God...  and gifted each of us for some kind of special ministry.  We’re not here to try and make someone else into our image of what we’d like them to be.  We’re called to love one another into being more and more fully the person God created and gifted us to be.                

           

I’ve probably shared this story with you before, but it’s a wise story and bears repeating.[7]

            There was a famous monastery, which had fallen on hard times.  In better times, its many buildings had been filled with young monks...  and its big church resounded with the singing of chant.  But now it was nearly deserted.  People no longer came there to be nourished by prayer.  A handful of old monks shuffled through the cloisters and praised God with heavy hearts, because they could see that their order was dying.

            On the edge of the woods near the monastery, an old rabbi had built a little hut.  He would come there from time to time to fast and pray.  No one ever spoke with him.  But whenever he appeared, the word would be passed from monk to monk:  “The rabbi walks in the woods.”  And for as long as he was there, the monks would feel strengthened by his prayerful presence.

            One day the abbot decided to visit the rabbi, and to open his heart to him. So after the morning Eucharist, he set out through the woods.  As he approached the hut, the abbot saw the rabbi standing in the doorway, his arms outstretched in welcome.  It was as though he had been waiting there for some time.  The two embraced like long-lost brothers.  Then they stepped back and just stood there, smiling at one another with smiles their faces could hardly contain.

            After a while, the rabbi motioned the abbot to enter.  In the middle of the room was a wooden table with the scriptures open on it.  They sat there for a moment in the presence of the book.  Then the rabbi began to cry.  The abbot could not contain himself.  He covered his face with his hands and began to cry, too.  For the first time in his life, he cried his heart out.  The two men sat there like lost children, filling the hut with their sobs and wetting the wood of the table with their tears.

            After the tears had ceased to flow and all was quiet again, the rabbi lifted his head.  “You and your brothers are serving God with heavy hearts,” he said.  “You have come to ask a teaching of me.  I will give you this teaching, but you can only repeat it once.  After that, no one must say it aloud again.”

            The rabbi looked straight at the abbot and said,  “The messiah is among you.”

            For a while, all was silent.  Then the rabbi said,  “Now you must go.”  The abbot left without a word and without ever looking back.

            The next morning, the abbot called the monks together in the chapter room.  He told them he had received a teaching from “the rabbi who walks in the woods” and that this teaching was never again to be spoken aloud.  Then he looked at each of his brothers and said,  “The rabbi said that one of us is the messiah!”

            The monks were startled by this. “What could it mean?” they asked themselves.  “Is brother John the Messiah?  Or Father Matthew?   Brother Thomas?  Am I the messiah?  What could this mean?”

            They were all deeply puzzled by the rabbi’s teaching.  But no one ever mentioned it again.

            As time went by, the monks began to treat one another with a very special reverence.  There was a gentle, whole-hearted, human quality about them now which was hard to describe-- but easy to notice.  They lived with one another as ones who had finally found something.  But they prayed the scriptures together as seekers who were always looking for something.

            Occasional visitors found themselves deeply moved by the life of these monks.  Before long, people were coming from far and wide to be nourished by the prayer life of the monks.  And once again, young men were asking to become part of the community.

           

            In the first few centuries in the life of the Christian church, the faith spread like wildfire, in spite of the fact that professing faith in Jesus Christ could be dangerous.  It was observed that people outside the church would look at the people inside the church and exclaim,  “See how they love one another!”   And they would want to be a part of this community of love. 

            Imagine it!  The people gathered here learning to treat one another with such love that people outside the church notice!  Imagine our reputation spreading:  “Littlefield Presbyterian Church-- that’s that really loving church—the church where everybody loves one another!” 

            Imagine it!

            So be it.

Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor

Littlefield Presbyterian Church

Dearborn, Michigan

April 24, 2016

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^[1]Lev. 13; 14:33-57.

^[2]Lev. 20:9

^[3]Acts 11:21-26

^[4]Acts 12:14; 16:5; 19:20

[5] Acts 11:12

[6] Elizabeth Johnson, “Commentary on John 13:31-35.”  http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2830

[7] I’m not sure of the source for this particular version of this story.  It appears in slightly different versions in various places.  I think the first time I heard it was years ago in an early edition of M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled (1978).