7 Easter B: The Sunday after the Ascension

In the unfolding of the church year this Sunday represents the time between the Ascension and Pentecost when the disciples did not know how Christ would be made known in the world. In Jesus' prayer during the last supper in John's Gospel he that his disciples would be one as he and the Father are one. This suggests that the love of Christ is shown through the love among God's people.

7 Easter

Transcribed from a sermon given on 

May 20, 2012

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church Arroyo Grande

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

Every year the Church go through the whole history of Christianity. We recently celebrated Easter and the resurrection followed by the time when Christ was with his disciples and appearing to them after his resurrection. Last Thursday was Ascension Day, which in spite of the fact that it is not celebrated very often is actually one of the main liturgical holidays of the Christian calendar. It could be considered number four after Easter, Pentecost and Christmas.  

We are right now, today, in an interesting spot of the church year. Jesus’ physical presence as the resurrected Christ is not longer with the disciples, he has been taken up into heaven, and yet the Holy Spirit on Pentecost has not yet come upon the disciples. Now represents that odd time of waiting, watching and wondering what’s next. How do we see him? He was alive, he died, then he was resurrected and now he’s gone. How is Christ known in the world now? 

The gospel reading today is a continuation of the prayer of Jesus during the last supper when he is prayed for his disciples. Remember that when he is praying for his disciples it is not just those that are physically present that his is praying for, it is for all of us who throughout time will be his disciples. That prayer is for us.

Once Jesus was no longer physically present, Christ’s presence, God’s presence, is made known in the world through us, through the disciples, through the people of God. 

What Jesus prays is about relationship. He prays that the disciples may be one as he and the Father are one. This means that he prays that we would be one as Jesus and God are one. It is interesting, this emphasis on relationship. It is part of why that wonderful confusing mystery called the Trinity is so important. It is all about relationship. God’s very essence is a relationship among a unity that also has some separateness to it. A unity of three persons. There is only one God but it is in three persons, which is totally confusing, but it speaks to the understanding that God IS relationship. God is often referred to as love and love is about relationship.

In this Gospel reading, Jesus is praying that that relationship manifested between Jesus and the Father would be alive in the community of his followers. That sense of a unity, of oneness, and yet separateness. We are all separate human beings and yet we form one body. We are Christ in the world - in unity. It is a little like a dance of relationship, a dance of love and caring for one another. It is how we manifest Christ in the world. 

Christ is seen by how we relate to each other, which is sometimes good news and sometimes is not such good news. Think about when people come to the church for the first time, when they finally get the courage to open up those doors and walk in. Sometimes they are coming because they hear that we have great music, sometimes they may be coming because they hope that they will get an inspiring sermon. Usually they are not quite sure why they are coming. But the way in which Christ’s love is made known to them is by the community of who we are and how we live as Christ’s disciples. It is our love for one another, it is our relationships with one another and our openness to inviting others into that relationship, that is the way we manifest God in the world. 

We are Christ’s eyes and ears and hands and feet. We are the body of Christ. Some research has shown that after a person comes to a church for the first time, if they don’t within two months have a first name relationship with at least eight people they probably won’t come back. It’s about relationship. We have a couple of months to establish a relationship. That is how God is known. That is how God’s love is expressed.

When we were getting the Sunday School going we agreed that the main priority for Sunday School is that each and every one of those children feel safe and loved and cared about. If they happen to learn some scripture, great, but what’s really important is that they feel cared about and loved because we preach with our relationships. Remember, Christ prayed for us that we would be in unity as he and the Father are a unity. 

He also prayed about the idea that we were in world, but we are not really of the world. As I have been thinking about this sermon I went to a conference at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. At the cathedral they have a labyrinth, which is a circle on the floor that has a path that winds back and forth and back and forth and eventually gets to the middle. The idea is that you walk that path until you get to the middle, you stop and pray there, and then you walk back out. It is a powerful walking meditation that I like. 

I hadn’t been to Grace Cathedral in a long time, so after the conference I decided to go and walk the labyrinth. One of the things about the labyrinth is that it winds. You’re on the outside for a while and then you go toward the middle and then you are back out on the outside again and then you finally find yourself in the middle. So while you are walking it can be a little disorienting. You just have to focus on the path in front of you. 

There were a few other people who were also walking the labyrinth and they were going at different speeds. Some were coming out and some where going in. Sometimes we were far apart and sometimes we were close together. It is kind of how the church community works. We are all walking the path, we are all walking on that faith journey. Sometimes we come real close together and sometimes we look like we are further apart. Sometimes somebody is coming out while you are going in and you almost bump into each other if you are not careful. You’ve got to make room for each other. There is a sense of almost being in a dance. If you are watching some people walking the labyrinth they seem almost like they are dancing when they come close together and then they go far apart. 

That for me is a wonderful description of what the community of faith is like. We are each walking the path to Christ. It is our own path yet we are in relationship as we do that. 

On a beautiful Saturday in San Francisco there are tourists, lots of tourists. Grace Cathedral is one of the places that tourists come. When you come into the cathedral there is the baptismal font and then the labyrinth is right there. You have to walk across the labyrinth to go down the main aisle of the cathedral. When tourists are looking at the stained glass windows, or are looking at the architecture, or are taking pictures, or chatting with each they may walk right across the labyrinth without knowing it. 

Those of us walking the labyrinth probably look really strange to the tourists. We are walking and then turning and then walking and turning. They probably can’t figure out what we are doing because they don’t even notice the labyrinth on the floor. 

It is a very interesting experience to be focused on following this path and then all of a sudden encounter a family that is walking across in front of you or somebody standing and taking a picture. There was a sense that those of us walking the labyrinth were walking our spiritual path, and the world was going on around us. We weren’t separate from the world, we were perfectly aware of the tourists and the cathedral and everything that was going on, but our focus was on following that spiritual path, while these others didn’t even see the path that we were on and probably couldn’t understand why we were walking the way we were. 

I think that is a great description of what our life in the world is like. If we are following whatever path Christ is calling us to walk, and if each step along the way we are trying to follow where Christ is calling us, we may look a little odd at times to the world. Our responsibility is to keep focusing on our own path. We are still in the world and the world is still going on around us. 

Another thing about the labyrinth is that as you walk in you walk toward the center which represents reaching Christ. When you arrive you just stand and experience and let in that presence of Christ, but you don’t get to stay there. There is no bed there to stay in. You can’t set up your tent. You have to walk back out and go back out into the world. That is the part of the spiritual journey where we come together as a community, we support one another and we nourish one another but we don’t do it for our own sake. We don’t nourish each other as a community just because it feels good, we do it to empower us to go out into the world and to share God’s love in the world. To minister to others and to share that love beyond ourselves. 

We are the body of Christ. We are in Christ’s prayer that we might be in unity as God and the Father are one and that we might be in the world, and yet not totally of the world.

Amen

7 Easter A

Christ prayed "That they may be one as you and I are one" and as he prepared to ascend to the Father he told his disciples "You will be my witnesses." One of the most important ways that we witness to the world is through our love for one another."

7 Easter A

Transcribed from a sermon given on

June 5, 2011

By The Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

I’d like you to imagine that the patriarch of a family is dying. He’s in the hospital and he knows his death is near, so he gathers the whole family together - the sons and daughters, their spouses, the grandchildren. They are all gathered together and he looks at them and says, “I have loved you and cared for you and had concern for you, but I am soon going to be gone. My prayer to God at this moment is that you will stay together as a family, that you will love and support one another.”

You can imagine that happening. And that is basically what we have here today in the Gospel. It is the night before Jesus is arrested. He is talking with his disciples. He is giving them the last of his teachings. He is trying to prepare them for what is ahead. Then here he prays for them. He prays of all of those who have been given to him, which means us too. We too are his disciples. We too are those whom God has given to Christ. And his final prayer, his last request, is, “That they may be one as you and I are one.” Christ’s last passionate prayer is that his people will be together and united in the way that he is united with the father. That we, as he gives his command earlier, would love one another as he has loved us. That is his final request. And any of you who know anything about church history know that the Christian church has not been really good at doing that. But that doesn’t mean we don’t keep trying.

Today is the seventh Sunday of Easter. It used to be called the Sunday after Ascension. On Thursday we celebrated the Ascension which happened forty days after Easter. Jesus spent 40 days in his resurrected body interacting with the disciples. Then he took the disciples up on the hillside and as he stood there and told them, “You will now be my witnesses. I’m leaving. You will be my witnesses.” Then a cloud came and he disappeared from their sight. Now throughout scripture whenever there is a cloud that appears it represents the presence of God. It was as if a door opened between earth and heaven and Christ walked through it. He was gone.

In the reading today from Acts that describes this, what stood out for me was what happens immediately after the Ascension. The disciples had all been looking a Jesus and they continued to look at where he had been. Now he is gone and two men dressed in white, who obviously must be angels because they are messengers from God, appear. They say, “Why are you looking there were he left? Why are you staring at empty space?” So the disciples stopped and they looked at each other. The next thing we hear is that the community is gathered together in the upper room for prayers, for food and for sharing. The whole family, the disciples, some of the women including mother Mary and Jesus’ brothers, the whole family is there gathered together. It is the family loving one another.

Architecture has a strong effect on what we can do in a church or in a house. Think about an airplane. Now the goal in an airplane is to get lots of people close together for a long time without causing too much of a fuss. You don’t really want them interacting with each other. You don’t want them getting up and moving around, so you have all the seats lined up facing forward, That the only thing you can see is the back of people’s heads. And maybe the person sitting next to you, but you don’t look too much at the person sitting next to you because that is not really socially acceptable. You look straight ahead.

Now if you have people over for dinner you are going to sit around a table, or gather around in the living room. Where you can see one another, and you can talk to one another, and you can interact with one another.

Think about how we set up a church. We have all these pews and you are all sitting here and looking up at the cross. Except for the choir. The choir gets to look at the people. We have the cross up there so we are all looking at the cross. And that is a fine thing to do. But the angels said to the disciples, don’t look at where Jesus was - and they looked at one another. So I would like to invite you to be very counter cultural and turn around and look at one another. If you are sitting up in the front you might have to stand up. Look behind you. Stand up and look behind you. Look at these wonderful people. Look at this variety of human beings.

Every Sunday I get to look at all you and see the smiling faces and the sleepy faces, and the young ones and the old ones, the familiar and the unfamiliar as you look around at the people. Now there are some people here that maybe you have never seen before. Who are they? I wonder if they are new. Well maybe not.

Or maybe there is someone you see and you think I recognize that face. I wonder how long they have been coming to church? You might see other people whom you know their names because the name tags they wear but that is all you know about them. And there may be others here that you are really close to and you have come to really value and share deeply with. This is our family. This is the family that Jesus prayed that we would be one as Jesus and the Father are one. This is it.

Now to be one with one another as Jesus and the Father are one with one another we kind of need to get to know each other. When you love someone you want what is best for them. You do what you can to help them. But how can we help someone if we don’t know what their situation is. If we don’t know who they are. When we love someone we value them for who they are, we listen, we appreciate, we celebrate with them, we grieve with them, we support them.

In order to do that we have to know one another. A little bit more than just hello. A little bit more than just shaking hands on Sunday morning. So I would like to invite you to be brave and trust the Holy sprit. You will find on most of the pews, or at least every other pew, a basket that has some little pieces of paper and there should be a writing implement it it.

What I am inviting you to do is to write your name and a way to contact you. It might be a phone number or if you prefer to be contacted by email you can put your email address. Then what I am going to do is to collect all these and mix them all up. Then everybody that has put one in, takes one out. We are going to trust the Holy Spirit that whatever name it is you pick out is someone you need to get to know. I’m going to put my name in here too.

So what you will do is you will pull out a piece of paper and you will contact the person that you get. And you’ll say let’s get together. Maybe you will go have a cup of coffee together, maybe you’ll take a walk together. Maybe if it is someone who has physical limitations you may need to go to their house. Whatever. You may even go to the beach together. Whatever it is it is a chance to listen and get to know someone on a little bit deeper level.

I trust the Holy Spirit and that the Holy Spirit works very efficiently. Trust that that person whose name you get has something you need. Maybe a story of their life. Maybe some encouragement. Maybe a new idea. And trust that you have something for that person. Maybe they need a ride, or a listening ear, or a good friend. Who knows what the Holy Spirit will do with this. I had one person at the 8:00 services that said, “I got just the person that I need to talk to.” I didn’t ask any further about why the need to talk.

We don’t know, but I am going to be real curious to find out what happens. I am going to be real curious for people who want to share their story of who they talked to. Now there is a small chance, a small probability that you will get yourself. If you get yourself that means the Holy Spirit is saying you better hang out with yourself a little bit. Take some time, listen to yourself, love yourself. Or you may get your spouse, and once again you better spend some time with your spouse. It might be a message that you need to do that You may get someone you know well. You may get someone you have never met, but it is an opportunity. An opportunity to practice loving one another.

And so I invite you to put in your little slips. I’ll get the choir over here.

Mix the all together and we’ll hand them out. Take one and pass it on. Don’t look. Trust the holy Spirit

Jesus said to his disciples before he went up to heaven, “You will be my witnesses. In Jerusalem, in Judea in Samaria and to the ends of the world.” We will be God’s witnesses. What does that look like? We can witness with our voice. We can tell what we know. But it is a much more powerful witness when we witness with how we live our lives. When we witness Christ’s love by loving one another. Most of you may know the old song “They’ll know we are Christians by our Love” Let us witness Christ in our love for one another.

Sermon 7 Easter - year A

Here's a sermon I gave in 2011 where I invited people to get to know one another better. It explores what Jesus was asking of us in his prayer on the last night of his life.

7 Easter - Year A

Transcribed from a sermon

Given at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

June 5, 2011

By Rev. Valerie Hart

I’d like you to imagine that the patriarch of a family is dying. He’s in the hospital and he knows his death is near. So he gathers the whole family together - the sons and daughters, their spouses, and the grandchildren. Once they are all gathered together he looks at them and he says; “I have loved you and cared for you and had concern for you, but I am soon going to be gone and my prayer to God at this moment is that you will stay together as a family; that you will love and support one another.” You can imagine that happening and that is basically what we have here today in the Gospel.

It is the night before Jesus is arrested. He is talking with his disciples. He’s giving them the last of his teachings. He is trying to prepare them for what is ahead, and he prays for them. He prays for all of those who have been given to him. Which means us too. We too are his disciples. We too are those whom God has given to Christ. He prays, and his final prayer, his last request, is that they may be one as you and I are one. Christ’s last passionate prayer is that his people will be together and united in the way that he is united with the Father. That we, as he has given his command earlier, would love one another as he has loved us. That’s his final request. And any of you that know anything about church history know that the Christian church has not been real good at doing that. But that doesn’t mean we don’t keep trying.

Today is the 7^th Sunday of Easter; it used to be called the Sunday after Ascension. On Thursday we celebrated the Ascension, which happens forty days after Easter. Jesus spent 40 days in his resurrected body interacting with the disciples, then he took the disciples up on the hillside and, as he stood there, he said to them, “you will now be my witnesses.” He said that I am leaving but you will be my witnesses. Then a cloud came and he disappeared from sight. Now throughout scripture whenever a cloud appears it represents the presence of God. It was as if a door opened between earth and heaven and Christ walked through it. Then he was gone.

In the reading today from the Book of Acts it describes this. What stood out for me was that once this happens the disciples are all looking at Jesus, where he was, and now he is gone. Then these two men dressed in white, who obviously must be angels, because they are messengers from God, appear and ask why are you looking there, where he left? Why are you staring at empty space? And so they stopped and they looked at each other. The next thing we read is that the community is gathered together in the upper room for prayers, for food, and for sharing. The whole family is there, the disciples, some of the women, including mother Mary, Jesus’ brothers and others. The whole family gathered together. It is the family loving one another.

One of the things that is interesting, if you think about architecture, is that it has a strong affect on what we can do in a church, or in a house. Think about an airplane. Now the goal in an airplane is to get lots of people in there close together and not have them cause too much of a fuss. Right? You don’t want them really interacting with each other, you don’t want them getting up and moving around, so you have all the seats lined up facing forward so the only thing you can see is the back of people’s heads and maybe the person sitting next to you. Bt you don’t look too much at the person sitting next to you because that’s not really socially acceptable. You look straight ahead or at your book. On the other hand, if you have people over for dinner you’re going to sit around a table, or gather around in the living room where you can see one another, and you can talk to one another, and you can interact with one another.

Think about how we set up a church. We have all these pews, and you are all sitting here looking up at the cross. Except for the choir, the choir gets to look at the people. But we have the cross up there, and we are all looking at the cross, and that is a fine thing to do to. But the angels said to the disciples, don’t look at where Jesus was, and they looked at one another. So I would like to invite you to be very counter cultural and turn around and look at one another. Really. If you are sitting up at the front you may have to stand up. Look behind you. Stand up and look behind. Look at these wonderful people. Look at this variety of human beings. Every Sunday I get to look at all you folks and see the smiling faces and the sleepy faces and the young ones and the old ones, the familiar and the unfamiliar as you look around at the people. Maybe there are some people here that you have never seen before. Who are they? I wonder if they are new? Or maybe there is someone you see and you think; “I recognize that face. I wonder how long they’ve been coming to church.”

You might see other people that you know their name because of the nametag they wear, but that is all you know about them. And there may be others here that you really are close to and you have come to really value and share deeply with. This is our family. This is the family that Jesus prayed that we would be one as Jesus and the Father are one. This is it. Now to be one with one another as Jesus and the Father are one with one another, we kind of need to get to know each other. When you love someone you want what is best for them. You do what you can to help them. But how can we help someone if we don’t know what their situation is, if we don’t know who they are. If we love someone we value them for who they are. We listen, we appreciate, we celebrate with them, we grieve with them, support them. In order to do that we have to know one another - a little bit more than just “hello,” a little bit more then shaking hands on Sunday morning.

So I would like to invite you to be brave and to trust the Holy Spirit. You will find on most of the pews a basket that has some little pieces of paper. There should be a writing implement in it. Here’s what I’m going to invite you to do. I will tell you the whole thing so I’m not going to ask you to do anything without knowing everything. What we are going to do is to write your name and a way to contact you on a piece of paper. It might be a phone number, or if you prefer to be contacted by email you can put your email address. Then what we are going to do is to collect all these, mix them all up, and then everyone who has put one in takes one out. And we are going to trust the Holy Spirit. We are going to trust the Holy Spirit that whatever name it is that you pick out is someone you need to get to know. I’m going to put my name in here too.

So what you will do is you will pull out a name and you will contact the person you get and you’ll say let’s get together. Maybe you’ll go get a cup of coffee together. Maybe you’ll take a walk together. If it’s someone who has physical limitations you may need to go to their house. Whatever. You can go to the beach together. Whatever it is, it is a chance to listen and get to know someone at a little bit deeper level.

I trust the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit works very efficiently. Trust that the person’s name you get has something you need. Maybe a story from their life, maybe some encouragement, maybe a new idea. And trust that you have something for that person. Maybe they need a ride, or a listening ear, or a good friend. Who knows what the Holy Spirit will do with it. I had one person at the eight o’clock service who told me; “I got just the person that I know I need to talk to.” I didn’t ask any further questions about why the need to talk. I don’t know, but I’m going to be real curious to find out what happens. I’m going to be real curious to hear from people who want to share their story of who they talked to.

Now there is a small chance, a small probability that you will get yourself. And if you get yourself that means the Holy Spirit is saying you better hang out with yourself a little bit. Take some time. Listen to yourself. Love yourself. Or you may get your spouse. And once again, you better spend some time with your spouse. It might be a message that you need to do that.  You may get someone that you know well. You may get someone you have never met. But it is an opportunity to practice loving one another. And so invite you to put in your little slips.

(Time collecting the slips)

I’ll mix them all together. And we’ll pass them around. Take one and pass it on. Don’t look at who it is before you pick it. Trust the Holy Spirit.

(Time passing out slips)

Jesus said to his disciples before he went up to heaven; “You will be my witnesses, in Jerusalem, in Judea, in Samaria, to the ends of the world.” We will be God’s witnesses. What does that look like? We can witness with our voice, we can tell what we know, but it is a much more powerful witness when we witness with how we live our lives. When we witness Christ’s love by loving one another. Most of you may know the old song. “They’ll know we are Christians by our love.” Let us witness Christ in our love for one another.

Amen.