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.

Seventh Sunday of Easter Year C

John's beautiful, poetic and mystical gospel can be difficult to preach about. In this sermon I use the image of a stew in an attempt to illustrate what those illusive words, "...that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us..."

The Sunday after AscensionThe Seventh Sunday of Easter Year C

Transcribed from a sermon given

On May 16, 2010

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

John 17:20-26

I love John's gospel.  There's something about reading John's gospel that I can't just read it straight through.  I'll read it for awhile and then I'll reach something that just moves me and I have to stop and be with it.  It's not like reading a textbook.  It's something else.  It's like poetry.  It's transformative.  I love to read John's gospel. 

Preaching on John's gospel however is a whole other thing because John was a mystic.  In every spiritual tradition there is a mystic tradition.  In the Jewish tradition it's Kabbalah.  In the Islamic tradition it's the Sufis. And there have been Christian mystics since the beginning. Some of them you might know like St. John of the cross or Teresa of Avila.  A mystic is someone who has had an experience of God, a sense of union with God, and then tries to share that experience with others. 

What the mystics always end up doing is writing poetry because you can't describe an experience of God in normal language.  It would be like going to a concert where they perform Beethoven's 9^th Symphony and you are so moved by that final movement that when you come back and you go to tell your neighbor about it.  Now your neighbor has not only never been to a symphony or heard Beethoven's 9^th but they don't even know what classical music is. You are trying to describe to them that experience when the chorus comes in and just blasts everything away. It's just totally transformative. And they are going to go, "Huh?"   

So all you can do is sort of paint pictures, talk in poetic terms. You know what you want to do. You want to go get your stereo or CD player or MP3 player or however it is you listen to music – and give it to them.  Say, "Listen to this.  Experience this."  That's what John is trying to do I believe in his gospel. 

One of the commentators I read talks about John's gospel as not so much attempting to convey information as to elicit an experience.  As poetry elicits an experience from us or a great painting elicits an experience from us.  So you run into things like we have today where it states, "That they may be one as you and I are one, that I may be in them, and you in me and I in you and them in us."  And as you read it, if you try to follow it logically what you end up is one plus one plus one equals one, and then the mind kind of goes, “oh”.  But if you read it as poetry, if you read it as trying to elicit that experience of unity that sense of oneness with God, it can be transformative. 

This particular passage is Jesus praying during the last supper.  It's called the High Priestly Prayer and this is a part of it. He is praying. He is praying for His disciples.  And He is praying for everyone who would believe in Him based on that Word.  That means you and you and you and me.  Here He is, the last night, getting ready to go to His death and He is praying.  Now that last prayer, the last words, the last things we say are sometimes the most important. 

And what does He pray for?  What is it that Jesus wants from God more than anything else?  He wants for His followers to be one.  He wants them to be one as He and the Father are one.  That's what He wants for us. It's like a father about to die. He's in the hospital and his children are all gathered around him and his last request is that they get along with each other.  Treat each other well.  Don't fight.  That's what the heart of a father, or a mother, wants for their children and that was Jesus' final prayer. 

This piece of poetry about union reflects back, reminds us of, the prolog of John's gospel.  Remember John's gospel begins with that enigmatic, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God?”  How can something be with something and also be it?  That what is written at the beginning of John's gospel.  It's a little like a Zen koan.  It's poetry; it’s mystery - that relationship between Christ and the Father where there is oneness and yet separateness.  John is trying to elicit in us as we read this that sense, that intimacy with God. 

So, I'm trying to think about how do I preach on that?  How do I put that into some other words?  Something that might be a little more concrete, a little more grounded, and so I came up with the image of a stew.  Now, if you take vegetables, you have a carrot and you have onions and you have potatoes and you have broccoli and you have whatever else happens to be in your refrigerator or out in the garden at that time. If you put them all in a pot and they sit in the pot not much happens.  They are just being stored in a pot because when a carrot stored next to a broccoli, they don't really interact with each other.  They don't change each other.  They don't learn from each other.  They're just there together. In order for them to come into relationship with each other you have to add the water.  You might think of the water as Christ, and each one of those pieces of vegetable has a relationship with the water.  But of course not a whole lot happens until you turn on the heat and that's the Holy Spirit, right?  And the water starts to heat up and as the water starts to heat up that carrot begins to soften a little bit and some of the flavor of the carrot gets out into the water and spreads and starts to be picked up by the other vegetables.  The onion is also softening up and some of its flavor gets out into the water and gets absorbed by the carrot. Gradually with the water and that heat over time all of the vegetables change and change each other.  If you cook a bunch of carrots together they taste one way, but if you have carrots in with a lot of other vegetables, they pick up the flavor of each other.  And in a good stew that has taken its time, when you have a bite of that carrot you know it's a carrot but it has the flavor of everything else that's in the stew because they've come together.  And so there's a way in which they're all one.  They all form one stew but they each have their own identity, their own essence.  And each one tastes better because of their interaction, because of that chemistry that happens together. 

It's like that for us, for a community. Jesus never talks about Christians as being individuals.  It has been said that you cannot be a Christian in isolation.  The relationship between the individual and Christ is important, but you can't really be a Christian without being in community because you need that stew around you.  A carrot in the water by itself is okay, but it's so much better when it's in the stew. 

So when we come together, as we sit in Christ together, we are enriched by one another.  And you know sometimes hot water feels really good when it's been a long day and you're a little achy and you've got a hot tub and you sit in it and oh, the hot water just feels wonderful.  Other times we can say, "Oh, my gosh – hot water.  I don't want to have anything to do with it."  It's a little uncomfortable because the hot water kind of softens the things, and it can be uncomfortable, and we change.  When we come together as community we are changed individually.  When we really become a community we open ourselves to be changed by the people around us.  And the people around us are changed by the gifts we bring.  And each one of us brings unique gifts. 

One of the great joys that I have is getting to know people.  When new people come to the church and are becoming involved in the church I try to go and visit them.  It is such a delight to discover the backgrounds of people, what their passions are and the work they've done and the unique things that they bring to this community.  Each one has a different flavor, a different taste, different experiences, and each person enriches the whole.  That's how we become one by sitting in the hot water together, by being together, by being there for each other, by showing up and getting to know each other better. 

And this was Jesus' prayer.  Notice His last prayer, His prayer to God when His death was about to arrive was that you and I and each one of us and all Christians everywhere in the world would be one.  He didn't pray that we'd get the theology right.  He didn't pray that we would figure out how we were supposed to live and what the rules are.  He didn't pray for that.  He could have.  He didn't.  He didn't pray that we'd all be nice or we'd all be good.  He didn't pray that the world would all become a Christian nation. 

His prayer was that we would be one as He and the Father are one.  That would be His glory.  His glory is the oneness of His community and his followers.  And that's what we're called to focus on. 

How do we build up the relationship?  How do we enrich ourselves by the people who are here?  We do it by showing up.  We do it by coming to activities.  We do it by picking up the phone and calling somebody you haven't seen for awhile and say, "Hey, I haven't seen you for awhile.  How are you?"  Or going up to a new person or somebody who may not be new but you just don't know very well and saying, "Hey, let's have coffee together.  I want to get to know you better."  Or finding out that someone is hurting and reaching out to help them.  Or celebrating something and sharing that celebration with others. 

It's about relationship.  It's all about relationship, the relationship between God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.  The essence of the universe is relationship and Christ wants for us to be in relationship with one another.  He wants for us to love one another as He has loved us.  Amen.