How things change

·  Acts 5:27-32

·  Revelation 1:4-8

·  John 20:19-31

·  Psalm 118:14-29

On Monday I mowed my front yard, and then yesterday I spent several hours in back.  It was almost the first yard work I’d done since the rains began to fall, because for a long time it was too wet, and then I was too busy.  It felt good to be out there again, to see what was going on beneath the winter’s growth of weeds, and I began to get excited for what this year’s gardening will bring.  But at the same time I had the feeling of crossing a threshold from which there would be no turning back, because once I start to mowing and weeding, it’s only one step from there to digging, and from digging to planting, and then I’m committed to another seven or eight months of watering and weeding and pruning and harvesting, until the winter comes and I get to rest until it’s time to do it all again.  

There’s a popular saying 12-Step circles that defines “insanity” as “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” Which is kind of how I think of the High Priest Annas in the book of Acts.  In our first reading this morning, the High Priest has brought Peter and the apostles before his council.  But Peter and John have been here before, in the preceding chapter, after they publicly healed a man who had not walked since birth, and then went around telling everyone they had done this in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah.  On that occasion they were dragged before the council and warned to stop talking that way, and yet here they are again today.  Because they have not stopped preaching and healing the sick, and more and more of the people of Jerusalem are coming to believe what they say about Jesus. 

And for the High Priest it's suspiciously like trying to stir the people up to hold him responsible for Jesus’ death.   It's all part of what is feeling more and more like a recurring nightmare.  After all, Peter and his friends are in the same place where not so long ago Jesus himself stood, and Annas charged him with blasphemy.  From there they took Jesus and accused him of sedition before the Roman governor, who had him crucified, and, by all rights, that should have been the end of him.  But like a weed that keeps sprouting back no matter how many times you pull it, Jesus of Nazareth won’t go away.  And still the High Priest keeps repeating the same tactics of coercion and intimidation and the thinly-veiled threat of violence.

Of course, Peter has his own bad memories of the High Priest, and of the night that Jesus was arrested.  While all the others ran away, Peter had the courage to follow the crowd to Annas’ house and even to enter the courtyard and find a place around the fire.  But there his courage failed, and he denied that he knew Jesus three times before the cock crowed.  And yet now he is back again, and this time he denies nothing, and makes no attempt to conceal who he is.  So while the High Priest and his council keep doing the same thing over and over again, Peter’s behavior has changed completely.  So why is that?  What has happened to Peter and his friends that they are able to stand up boldly and speak forthrightly, where before they were dissembling and slinking around in the shadows? 

Well, Peter answers that question himself.  What happened is something that the High Priest himself helped set in motion, though he did not know it—a awareness that grew in the disciples of Jesus as they watched him falsely accused, and unjustly condemned, and cruelly put to death.   They saw how deep the world’s sickness runs—how mindlessly it goes through its habitually violent motions, how impervious it is to the imagination of something new.  They saw with disgust how their own dreams of quickly and painlessly setting things right were tainted with envy and lust for power.  But God did not abandon them there, in their guilt and horror and self-loathing.  “The God of our ancestors,” says Peter, “raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.”  Now Peter and his friends cannot help but tell others about the resurrection of Jesus, because  they finally understand what will really change the world. 

And we are not the only ones who know this, Peter says, but God’s Holy Spirit does, too.  In other words, the apostles are not simply going around bragging about a visionary experience they alone were privileged to have. Because the Holy Spirit is the one who speaks through the prophets, revealing and empowering God’s will for the whole nation, and indeed, all creation.  So what Peter is saying is that in the crucified and risen Christ God has revealed, to anyone who’s open to understand, God purpose for everyone, to restore us to sanity, and freedom, and peace.

This revelation is what the Church since ancient times has called “the Paschal mystery.”  “Mystery”, in this context, doesn’t mean the same thing that it does to us today.  It is not a riddle to which we have no answer, or a crime that remained unsolved, but more like the opposite of that.  In the ancient world a “mystery” was a kind of ritual drama through which the participants were able to know what is secret, and see what is hidden—the purposes of God.  And for the apostles the death and resurrection of Jesus was this kind of mystery.  Except it was not confined to the inner precincts of a temple, and it was not for the benefit of a few chosen initiates.  It played in public, in the real world, on the stage of history where everyone could see it.  In spite of that, none of the participants in this ritual drama had any idea they were acting out a mystery, except Jesus himself.  But now Peter and his friends know it too, thanks to the witness of the Holy Spirit.  

The apostles were more concerned with sharing the divine mystery of the resurrection of the crucified than with establishing precisely the facts of what happened.  We know this because the gospels have no problem telling different versions of their most important story, whose details don’t always agree.  And the same is true of the gift of the Holy Spirit.  The Acts of the Apostles separates it from the resurrection by a span of fifty days, to reveal the mystery as a progression of distinct events unfolding through time.  But the Gospel of John connects the gift of the Holy Spirit directly with the appearance of the risen Christ, in a unitive revelation.

Jesus breathed on his disciples, says John, and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit.”  And this breathing is more than a pun on the word for Spirit, which in Hebrew and Greek is the same as the word for breath.  It is a reference, I think, to the Second Chapter of Genesis, where God breathes life into the man he has formed from the soil.  Jesus goes on to say, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”  And in these few words the hidden purpose of God comes to light, because in that same chapter of Genesis we read there was a tree in Garden of Eden, whose fruit gave the knowledge of good and evil, which was forbidden to eat.  And we all know what happened next, how Adam and Eve ate that fruit and brought death into the world.  

But Christ’s resurrection begins the new creation of humankind, in which death is robbed of its power.  And with the gift of the Holy Spirit, the knowledge of good and evil is no longer a fatal trap.  We still have the choice to retain other’s sins, to repeat the old pattern of holding grudges and making scapegoats and condemning them to punishment—otherwise we would not be free.  But we also have the power to do something new, a power that comes from the breath of the risen Christ, from the body that bears the wounds of the cross in his feet and hands and side.  He died that death and yet God gave him back alive as the bringer of peace.  With the gift of the Spirit to help us to choose wisely, he sends us as he was sent.  We who, though guilty, are released from the threat of punishment and the fear of death, are sent to create a new world from the forgiveness of the crucified. 

Sharing the Wealth

Job 23:1-9, 16-17
Psalm 22:1-15
Hebrews 4:12-16
Mark 10:17-31

A few months ago my wife was balancing the checkbook and asked me if I’d remembered to deliver a payment on our pledge to the church, because it hadn’t been cashed yet.  And I had to confess to her that it had gotten lost in my wallet for a couple of weeks, but only a day or two before I’d spotted it there among the receipts and scraps of notepaper, and had turned it in to the Treasurer.  My daughter happened to overhear our conversation and she piped up at that point with a question: “Why do you give money to the church,” she asked—“Aren’t they just going to give it back to you?”  I wish I could tell you that we sat down then and there and had a long conversation about it, because it was a golden opportunity to explore with her what money is about, and what we are doing when we give it away.  But there was something going on that morning that we had to get on to, so I tossed off a quick answer, and to tell you the truth I can’t even remember what I said.

That’s the way it often is with the conversations we have in the church about money.   We know we have to do it, so we set aside a brief period, usually in the fall, to talk about our money and how we use what God has entrusted to us.  But it is not like we take the time to sit down and have a deep conversation about it.  It’s a topic that makes us uncomfortable.  So when we do bring it up, we find it safer not to talk about ourselves.  We don’t really want to talk about our own relationship with money, and how it impacts our other relationships, especially our relationship with God.

So instead, we often talk about the institutional needs of the church instead.  We can talk about the budget, and personnel expenses, about upkeep for the physical plant and the cost of administrative operations.   And what we often end up with is something like a fundraising campaign, not unlike what your favorite public radio station does.  We interrupt our regular religious programming with messages about how important this church is, and all the benefits that come along with membership, and how we can’t keep doing what we’re doing without your financial support.   And all of that is true, as far as it goes, but it can leave out the most important thing, which is to talk not about what the church needs, but about what we need.   If we did that, we’d be continuing a conversation that Jesus started. 

Jesus liked to talk to about money.  He brought it up all the time, when other people thought they were talking about religion.  In today’s reading from the Gospel of Mark we hear about a man who came to Jesus to ask him a religious question.  He was a devout man, sincere and respectful, and had been meticulous all his life in keeping the commandments of the law, and yet he saw that all this was not enough.  He perceived the limits of his human life, and imagined that beyond those limits there was fullness of life, without which all he had done was empty.  And hoping there might be just one more thing he needs can still to bring that life within his grasp, he comes and kneels before Jesus.

Jesus’ answer to the man is that he doesn’t need one more thing—he needs fewer.  The life that he seeks is not a thing we can take hold of and add to our store of possessions.  It is not the final rung, on a ladder of individual achievements.  Life in the kingdom of God is something one enters by leaving everything else behind.  Jesus doesn’t judge the man because he is unable to find the way in—he loves him.  But he is also sad for him, because he sees that he depends on his wealth in a way that prevents him from depending on God.  His many possession lead him to believe he possesses himself, and so he cannot let go and trust that he belongs to God.  And just in case we might be thinking that he is speaking only to this man, and his particular case, Jesus turns to his disciples and says, “Children, how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!”

This is one of those sayings of Jesus that cuts deep, that seem to sever the path of following him from the normal pursuit of human happiness.   And so this section of the gospel ends with Peter, once again, speaking up and saying what is on everyone’s mind.  “We have left everything and followed you,” he says, and we can complete his sentence for him, “so aren’t we, at least, assured of salvation?”  The words of promise and encouragement that Jesus says next seem to me to be the early churches’ answer to that question.    Here is testimony that the call to give up everything for the sake of the gospel is not just a disruptive demand, to break family ties and renounce worldly gain.  It is also an invitation to join a movement.

The decision to follow Jesus is not a retreat into an otherworldly spiritual path, away from the life of everyday community, where people have to work to get by and get along.  It is a choice to enter new relationships, with Jesus and with the others who have put their trust in him.  And in the experience of the disciple of Peter who wrote the Gospel of Mark, shedding their worldly goods did not leave them as beggars wandering the streets, abandoned and alone.  It led them into a painstakingly difficult, but immeasurably rewarding new life, the life of the church. 

The New Testament ideal of the church is a community that suffers persecution with Christ, and joins in his renunciation of privilege, including the privilege of private wealth.  But that suffering and that renunciation make possible an extraordinary solidarity, an abundance of trust in the providence of God and just and intimate belonging to each other.  In the book of Acts and the letters of Paul we see again and again how fragile that solidarity is, how ready the early Christians were to turn back to the familiar security of their own separate property and their conventional gradations of privilege.  But though they acknowledge the instability of the situation, the apostles’ continually insist on the grace of Jesus Christ, and the power of the Holy Spirit, to keep the church together. 

It is that grace and that power that enables them to keep Jesus’ own radical ethic of sacrificial generosity and mutual forgiveness.  And it is the experience of unity and love that flows from this shared discipleship, more than any public ministry of good works, more than any sacred ritual or confessional statement, which puts the stamp of the Messiah on their community.  In the same way today, our faith in Christ, expressed as belonging to each other, brings us into the church, not as members of an organization, but as priests of a sacrament.  We share our lives with each other, and so we share in the priesthood of Christ, who shared his life with us.  And this makes our community a sacrament of the Kingdom of abundance and peace, and as with all sacraments this one requires a material substance, which is our money and other tangible gifts we agree to share in common.  

Our giving to the church is essential to the priesthood that we share.  As the parish priest, I have a particular role to play in this, as in other areas in which I stand in for the community.  When I anoint the sick, or give alms to the poor, or commit someone’s body to the earth, I do so in the name of the whole church.  I stand in for the church when I pronounce God’s forgiveness at the general confession, and when I stand at the altar, offering the great prayer of thanksgiving, and breaking the bread on behalf of us all. 

And I like to think that it’s the same when I cash my paycheck.  I don’t excuse myself from our shared priesthood of giving money to the church, but I do have a special relationship to it, because my family and I are the only ones here who depend on it for the food on our table and the clothes on our backs.  But perhaps in this, too, I stand in for the rest of you, for the dependence we all share on the generosity of others, for the need we all have to belong to each other, and supply one another’s needs in the name of Christ, for the desire in all of us to give away everything that holds us back from the life without limit that only comes by the grace of God.