Sermon of May 25, 2003
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Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Thanks be to you, O God, for the new life that we have in your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Most of us have selective or oriented memories. We tend to think in a particular direction, especially when our memories are involved. Some of us almost always turn to personal experiences when we are remembering things out of the past. Others turn to national or international events, and their memories focus around those. Some people remember only bad things. Other people remember only good things from the past. It’s human on this day to remember. We remember those whose living has given us the fullness of life. There are a plethora of those people in all of our lives. On this day particularly we remember those who have served this country, and most particularly we remember those who have died for the sake of liberty. Our memory is focused or oriented on this day. It is interesting that the lectionary, the selection of verses to be read on any given Sunday, is both ecumenical, extending across many different kinds of churches, and it is international, in that churches around the world use the lectionary. Isn’t it interesting on this day, which is Memorial Sunday in America, the lesson happens to be about Cornelius, a Roman soldier, a centurion, a great leader for his people, who is stationed in the Holy Land. He is clearly a Gentile, or according to the Jews, a non-believer, and yet he is a very unique Gentile, because we are told he is devout and believes in God. He also gives liberally to the poor in his alms, prays constantly to God, and is one who is spoken well of by the whole Jewish nation. This Roman soldier, Cornelius, becomes an instrument of God. God takes the initiative with Cornelius by sending an angel to him, and inviting him through that angel to invite Peter to come to his home. When Peter arrives there are a group of Gentiles there. Peter begins to preach to them, and the Holy Spirit falls upon the group. There are manifestations of the Spirit’s presence. There are others who are Jews who have been gathered also, probably not in the house. They may have been standing outside at some distance. When they hear about this, we are told they are astonished. How can these who are nonbelievers be given the Holy Spirit? It is at that point that Peter says, “We need to baptize them. If God has not withheld the Holy Spirit, how can we withhold baptism?” This is a story of faithful memory. It’s a story that is a part of our background. It’s a story that we shouldn’t be too proud of, because the Church doesn’t look very good here. The Church is running to catch up with the movement of God. But it is told for a very particular reason. It is told so we will be honest about our backgrounds, about who we are. It is told so that we will remember that God always takes the initiative. God is the one who moves first, and you and I move in response to God’s activity. Yesterday was Aldersgate Day, the day we celebrate the anniversary of John Wesley’s (the founder of Methodism) Aldersgate experience. Aldersgate is the name of a little street in London. Wesley went there late one Sunday night to meet with a group of Christians. He heard read Luther’s preface to the Book of Romans. I don’t know how many of you read the preface to a book. I usually skip over that. But this person was reading in public gathering Luther’s preface to the Book of Romans. That’s what moved Wesley. Wesley said, “My heart was strangely warmed. I knew that my sins, yes even mine, were forgiven.” If you read through Wesley’s journals, you will see turning points in his life long before Aldersgate and long after Aldersgate. He did not have a one-day or a one-night conversion experience. He has many experiences of turning to God, but there is a constant through them all. Wesley is very clear that it is always God who has taken the initiative. God acted first, and Wesley responds to God. That is faithful memory. In the passage from the Gospel of John for today, Jesus says, “The Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love, and love one another as I have loved you.” Jesus is reminding us of the very same thing. It is God who takes the initiative. It is the Father who has loved Christ first. “Father” is not just a masculine term. In the Old Testament, “Father” is used of God to mean “liberator.” It is a liberating love that God pours out into Christ in all of God’s fullness. Christ is present in the world with the fullness of God’s liberating love. Christ then takes that love and gives it to the disciples, and then calls the disciples to share it with others. That’s our calling. To take the liberating love that originated with God, that comes to us at God’s initiative, and to share it with those around us. We are invited not only to receive liberty and freedom, but also to give it, to be a part of manifesting liberty and freedom in the world. There is a point in this passage from John where you might say that John has “faulty” faithful memory. Let me tell you what I mean by that. John quotes Jesus as saying, “Love one another as I have loved you.” You and I all know what that means. It means that Jesus laid down his life for us. But Jesus hasn’t laid down his life for us at this point. So John’s memory is a little bit out of sequence here. He doesn’t have his chronology lined up quite right, but he is faithful. He might have a few of the little details out of line, but the big picture, the witness to the movement of God’s Spirit, is faithful. Sometimes we talk about reconstructing history. When we reconstruct history we usually take a minor figure and give them a little more importance than usual. We do this when we tell stories about ourselves. You understand that. We look back, and we have a little bigger role than what somebody else would recognize. But that’s okay, since you are telling the story, you can get away with that. So often our human nature is to center on the little things and make them big. John centers on the big things and maybe gets a little mixed up about some of the little things. The human experience is, if you put it in military terms, we win the battle, but we forget why we are fighting the war. John knows exactly why he is waging the Gospel. It is so all will be freed, all will know liberty. It is a gift that originates from God and is given to all of us. Chris Schaefer is a teacher in our community. He is the track and cross-country assistant coach at Mission Bay High School. In 1981, Chris Schaefer was in a diving accident off the coast of Florida. From the accident he is paralyzed from his upper chest down. Just this last month he won the wheel chair race in the Dr. Seuss Race for Literacy. This next month he will enter his 32nd marathon as a handicapped person. He says his philosophy of life is this: positive attitude and persistence. That is what Jesus is talking about as well. The positive attitude is about liberty for everyone. You can’t get much more positive than that. It’s not just being positive about ourselves, it’s being positive about God’s gift to all of us. Persistence means we love without limits. We offer it to everyone. No holes barred. No holding back. I remember the one and only time I saw the movie Forrest Gump. I remember because of the movie itself, which is a delight. But I also remember it for some of the people in the theater with me. It was a rare experience. It was one of those few times when it seemed the whole audience moved with the pathos of the movie. When there was joy on the screen we were all laughing, and when there was sadness on the screen we were all having tears stream down our faces. Forrest Gump is an example of one who loved without limits. He loved his mother. He loved Jenny. He loved Lieutenant Dan. He loved Bubba. And at the end of the movie, of course, he loves his little boy. Forrest was never one to offer his love only in part to see if it was returned, or to see how somebody else would respond. He just loved completely. That’s the call upon us. God has loved us completely with the gift of liberty, with freedom from all that binds us in this life. We are called to share freedom with others. About a year ago, Beth Drennan wrote a piece in our local paper. It was about her father. He had served in World War II as a gunner on a B-17 bomber. He was shot down over the border between Belgium and the Netherlands. He was rescued by the Dutch Resistance, taken to a small community in the Netherlands, and hidden away in the attic of a cigar factory. The son of the owner of that cigar factory was the one put in charge of caring for not only Beth Drennan’s father, but also another airman who had been shot down, and a Jewish woman and her small child. For six weeks a nineteen-year-old Dutch boy cared for the two American airmen and this Jewish family. The airmen were later taken through secret means to England, and eventually back home to the United States. The Jewish family stayed on in the attic for two more years. That nineteen year old cared for them all that time. He said to Beth Drennan, “I never saw myself as a hero. I was just doing what came naturally. I was doing what was human, decent, and right. I do realize that if I had been caught, I would have been executed.” You and I are called to do what is human, decent, and right, and that is to use our gifts and our position in life, whatever it is, so that others might be free. Beth Drennan has faithful memories. She remembers her father who was a soldier, and she remembers that he offered himself for other people’s liberty. She also remembers this young Dutch boy, a man of peace, who offered himself for other’s liberty as well. Whatever our place in life, whatever our gifts, the calling is the same. Jesus said, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Love one another as I have loved you.” Let us have faithful memory, and let us by our living create faithful memory. Thanks be to God. |
