Easter 7-A       (5/4/08)                                    Acts 1:6-14; 1 Peter 4:12-14; John 17:1-11
Trinity Church, Niles
Fr. Joseph Neiman

                       
Homily:

“How do I know Jesus is truly risen? Where do I encounter the risen Lord in my life today?”

The answer to this question very simply is this: When I encounter disciples of Jesus who are sincerely and seriously working for the unity of all Christians in Jesus Christ, I am encountering the risen Lord.

We just heard Jesus say in the Gospel, as John records it: “And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.” (Jn 17:11).

Let’s probe this a bit deeper to see the full impact of what it means.

In the first lesson from the Acts of the Apostles, Luke tells us “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.’ When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight” (Acts 1:9).

In the Nicene Creed, which we will pray in a moment, we summarize this narrative: “He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end” (BCP p. 359).

Right before this ascension verse, Luke tells us the risen Lord told the disciples: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Those are our marching orders: to be witnesses to the risen Lord in all the world from our own home to places around the globe.

What we are called to witness is the impact of the presence and power of the risen Lord in our lives as His disciples. We will be hearing much more about that through the summer months when the Gospel narratives stress how to live in ordinary time as faithful disciples. Jesus has ascended to the Father, sends His Holy Spirit upon us, and prays for us as we carry out his mission and ministry.

The one dimension of the mission and ministry of the risen Lord which I want to highlight for you this morning is teaching that the Holy Spirit will guide us that we “may be one” as Jesus and the Father are one. In church talk we call this dimension ecumenism.

In the passage from the Gospel of John we heard this morning, Jesus is celebrating a meal with His disciples just before Passover, what we call the Last Supper. After teaching them many things, Jesus prays for them and for all who will believe in Him from generation to generation because of what they have heard and seen. John tells us Jesus prayed: “Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one as we are one” (Jn 17:11). Jesus also prays that the Spirit which He will send will lead us into all truth, and as we proclaim what Jesus said and did, His joy will be complete in us. John quotes Jesus: “I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them” (Jn 17:26).

Let’s break this down a bit to understand it better, perhaps. All people of faith throughout the world seek a knowledge of God and God’s relationship to all creation, including themselves. Who is God and what does God want of us, of me? Paul told the Corinthians and us that we will know “the revelation of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor 4:5-6). Other people of faith may know God in another way, but for us we can know God in and through Jesus, which is why we close most of our prayers with a phrase like “through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

We pray in our Nicene Creed that “we believe in the one, holy catholic and apostolic Church.” This is what all Christians believe. It is what makes Christianity, Christianity – the belief in Jesus Christ and the Church which  He creates with His disciples in their assembling. You and I belong to the Anglican branch of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church throughout the world.

I believe there are four filters or lens through which we look to see the face of Jesus, to see the meaning of His words and deeds for us. These four filters (like filters on a camera lens) also differentiate one branch of the Church from another, and even groups within one denomination from others.

The first is Scripture. All Christians believe in Scripture, but how they see the Bible and the way it teaches us about God in Christ and our relationship to God varies among Christians. While most believe Scripture to be the Word of God, what that means varies. Some believe every word of Scripture to have been revealed – dictated almost – by God. This is the literal approach. Others believe in a more metaphorical approach, that there is revealed truth within the recorded deeds and words of Scripture even if the literal sense of the passage seems improbable.

We just celebrated the feast of the Ascension in the Church’s calendar, last Thursday, Ascension Thursday. Did Jesus in bodily form truly rise up from the earth into a place beyond our universe that we call heaven? If one simply looks at the facts of how large our universe really is, it seems extremely improbable that we are talking about a literal ascension of the bodily Jesus. Rather are we not speaking of the glorification of Jesus in when he was no longer bodily present with us, what we affirm in the Nicene Creed when we say: “he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.”

The second lens through which we look to see the face of Christ, and therefore the revelation of God, is reason. What does human reason tell us about God, about Jesus, about human history with all the ups and downs. There is a great interest these days in what can be known about “the historical Jesus,” that is, what can our historical research, which has become much more sophisticated in recent generations, teach us about Jesus of Nazareth? There are a whole lot of books written and selling well on this topic.

We see the impact of reason in what are termed “the teachings of the Church” or doctrine, theology, and creeds. I call this reflected revelation. As one preacher noted about our heritage: “Anglicans found themselves posed in the middle of a triangle of extreme views. In particular we found a middle path between the Roman tendency to require belief in things you couldn’t find in Scripture, and the Puritan tendency to forbid anything that couldn’t be proved by Scripture” (Rev. Tobias S Haller).

Jesus had nothing to say in the New Testament about abortion, homosexuality, war, stem cell research, euthanasia, and a host of other things that have moral implications and about which Christians debate. We can derive implications from the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament with our reason and apply these to such issues.  

The third lens has to do with tradition, what we value about what has been handed down to us from earlier generations. This includes our buildings, our roles of ministry in the Christian community, our way of decision making and many such things. I am wearing vestments, and my Baptist pastor friend may appear in the pulpit in a suit and tie or even casual clothes. Our respective assemblies have expectations about what is appropriate based upon tradition.

We are particularly prone to this lens, this area which shapes how we understanding the revelation of God in the face of Jesus Christ. It is joked that for Anglicans the fundamental motto is: As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever more shall be.

Winston Churchill once said: “We shape our buildings and then they shape us.” This is an historic church, and the very structure, the design incorporated into it, is shaping your faith, for better for worse. Judi and I just finished with the people of St. Mark’s building a whole new church building designed for worship into the 21^st century. When you enter it, you are tempted to say, “this doesn’t feel like church,” because you have been shaped by your experience and have a mental picture of what a church should look like despite the fact that your mind would tell you it is the people assembled around the pulpit, baptistery, and altar that makes us the church, not the building.

The last lens is experience. This applies to many things, especially the life style expected of the members of the particular branch of the one, hole, catholic and apostolic church. Can one drink alcoholic beverages? Can one dance? Does one have to speak in tongues or is forbidden to do so? Is there a dress code for Sunday worship, explicit or implicit. These are the experience things that separate denominations.

Jesus prayed that we all may be one. We tend to label that ecumenism and relegate it to an extra that we should get to if we have time. But the truth is, as John tells us, Jesus said we should be one “so that the world may believe” that God has sent Him into the world. In other words, the unity of the Church is a critical part of our work in order that the mission and ministry of Christ in the world can be powerful.

We are experiencing struggles within our Church as are the Lutherans, the Methodists, the Presbyterians, and so forth. The particular content of the struggles may differ a bit from one to another. It is part of the human condition that we each “see through the glass darkly” as Paul said in the old translation of the First Letter to the Corinthians. We all see only in part what is true. Partial vision and prejudice are part of our human condition.

We need to learn that a heretic is a believer with a different interpretation. In other words, the good Lord loves each and everyone of us even when we want to disagree about what is the revelation of God in the face of Jesus Christ.  

Your homework this week is to reflect on your role as an ecumenist, as one largely responsible for bringing about the unity of the Church.

In this country we market our differences as Christians. Clergy are particularly prone to this. I can tell you all kinds of reasons why being an Episcopalian is the only way to be a Christian. So can my Methodist or Christian Reformed or Baptist or Roman Catholic colleague concerning their branch of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. The unity within our Church and between our denomination and others will come about because of you, not because of clergy. You are disciples who know and relate to disciples of other branches of the Church, perhaps even married to one. You know your family and friends and their Christian practices.

Let us listen to one another, to our different ways of expressing who is Jesus, what is the Church, and what this Church should be and do, and listen aware that each of us sees only part of the whole. If we all focus on the main thing, that is, center on the risen Lord, I believe profoundly that the good Lord who wants us to be one with all disciples can become a reality. Let’s get about making it happen.

God bless you and keep you this day and always, and remember that the good Lord loves you more than you can ask for or even imagine.