Sunday, April 12, 2015

Living together in unity



A Sermon preached on April 12th, Easter II, at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden


Acts 4:32-35, 1 John 1:1-2:2, John 20:19-31

Today is one of those days when we have the same Gospel reading every year. But so far at least, I have managed to find something new and different to talk about each time, and if you don't believe me, all my sermons are online so you can check! The aspect I want to talk about this morning is one that I think runs through all three readings and the Psalm: fellowship and community, particularly Christian fellowship and Christian community, though seen from very different angles and in very different circumstances. 

Let's start with what appears to be the biblical version of the Communist Manifesto and of the Socialist maxim: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” Or in the words of Acts: “Everything they owned was held in common … and it was distributed to each as any had need.” (Acts 4:32, 35) I wonder how often this passage gets read at meetings of the Tea Party movement?

Of course we have to put this into perspective and context. Firstly it is a rose-tinted spectacle view back to the Golden Age of the Apostolic Church – back to that post Pentecost time when everyone flocked to hear the Apostles and the Church gained thousands of new members every time one of the 12 stood up and preached – I wish I could do that! Secondly we must also assume that many of the Christ’s followers were expecting his almost immediate return, so why bother keeping wealth and property anyway. And yet they are living out part of Jesus’ teaching. In Luke’s Gospel (14:33) – written by the same author as Acts – Jesus says for example: “None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.” I would also claim that one source for the great power with which they are able to give their testimony and for the “great grace” that was upon them all is their unity – they were of one heart and soul, which is expressed so strongly in their sharing with and caring for one another.

The situation of the community that the author of the 1st Letter of John is writing to is very different. They are not of one heart and soul, in fact there had been a split and many have left his community in strife. The author criticizes those who have left for believing that all they have to do to be Christians is to claim to believe, without this impacting their lives and behavior, or even that just this expression of belief will stop them doing wrong or sinning. No, we cannot be in fellowship with God, he says, while walking in darkness; that is while not living a Godly life of light, faith and righteousness. And “if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.” (1 Jn 1:8) Thankfully, as Christians, we have “an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 Jn 2:2) if and when we do sin and stray. To be a Christian means trying to walk in the light, acknowledging and confessing our own sins, not just identifying those of others, and living in fellowship with one another. Christianity is a communal faith.

And finally to the Gospel of John and to Jesus’s first two post-resurrection appearances to the male disciples – the women have already seen him. What unites them and makes them into a renewed or recreated community are: Jesus’ gift of God’s Peace, Jesus’ gift of the Holy Spirit through his own breath, spirit and breath are the same word in Hebrew, and the disciples’ common mission. They are both empowered and instructed to continue Christ’s mission of forgiveness and reconciliation, they are to represent him in the world.
But one disciple was missing on that first Sunday, Thomas, and so there was a danger that he would be excluded, and perhaps seen as second-class disciple, one to whom the Lord had not appeared in person and not only that, one who even dared doubt the word of the other 10 – carefully ignoring how they seem to have ignored the word of Mary Magdalene! But Jesus appears again in Thomas’ presence, and uses his request for physical proof not so much to rebuke or chastise him, but as a way of teaching all the disciples and all who hear and read his words, that is us, that it is never too late to encounter Jesus and that the faith of those who follow – all the future believers – is equal to the faith of the first disciples: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” (John 20:29) All are equal members of the fellowship of Christ, our membership is based solely on our confession, in Thomas’ words, that Jesus Christ isMy Lord and my God.” (20:28)

Our own fellowship and community were one of the topics of our recent Vestry retreat as they were also topics at the small group meetings of last autumn of fall. Some of the questions we asked ourselves were: How can we balance old and new, how do we respect our differences, what does it mean to model Christian unity, what can we do to prevent us hurting one another, as we have done, how can we make sure we are open and welcoming and are not perceived as a closed group, and how can we make sure that we are aware of and dealing with people’s needs, both within and without these walls? I won’t claim we have all the answers – that is still work in progress – though one answer is that the Vestry itself must continue to try and be a model for Christian fellowship. This is conveyed in the Vestry Compact – our mutual expectations for communication and cooperation that we originally developed a year ago and reaffirmed this week. There’s a copy on the notice board at the back of the church or on the website.

Another answer is in this week’s readings, in the Bible’s teaching on fellowship and community. The Bible is always a good place to look for answers! The passage from Acts tells us that only a united Christian community is a strong community and one able to witness to Christ with great power. A visible sign of this unity is how we all share and help one another. The First Letter of John reminds us not to assume that the fault is always just the other’s, that we must acknowledge and confess and seek forgiveness for our own sins: both from God and from the person we have sinned against. The Gospel reading’s message is that our unity and community are neither self-serving, nor self-contained. Their purpose is to enable us to carry out and carry on Christ’s mission of healing and reconciliation in and to the world. Last and not least, membership in Christian communities is based solely on our common faith. All members are equal, there are no privileges for “first movers.” The minute someone walks through our door to join us, they are as much a member of this community as the person who's been here for 20 or 30 years, and his or her opinion counts as much as the opinions of those who have been here for 20 or 30 years. No idea is bad just because it is new, nor however is any concern bad, just because it is an old one or has been voiced before.

The psalm appointed for today, Psalm 133, is the psalm Dietrich Bonhoeffer cites at the beginning of his book on Christian community, Life Together”: “Oh, how good and pleasant it is, when brethren live together in unity!” (Ps. 133.1) Coincidentally, or not perhaps, our church remembered Bonhoeffer as a “saint.” just this week, on Thursday. Bonhoeffer’s guidelines and principles for life together as Christians are praying, worshipping, working, and eating together, confessing to and forgiving one another, and never forgetting, that “we have one another only through Christ, but through Christ we do have one another, wholly, and for all eternity.”[1] I said earlier that Christianity is a communal faith and the physical expression of our communal faith is Holy Communion, the meal we will share in amoment both with one another and with all Christians throughout time and space. As Bonhoeffer puts it: “The life of Christians together under the Word has reached its perfection in the sacrament.”[2]  
Amen.


[1] Bonhoeffer, Life Together, (SCM Press, 1954), 14
[2] Ibid, 96

Sunday, April 5, 2015

Don't be afraid



A Sermon preached on April 5th, Easter Day, at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden
Isaiah 25:6-9, Acts 10:34-43, Mark 16:1-8

This year in our Lenten course, we studied the Gospel of Mark. One of the things we noticed and talked about, was how in the first half of the Gospel almost every time Jesus performs a miracle, he tells the person healed or those watching him heal, not to tell anyone else what they have seen or experienced: “See that you say nothing to anyone” he tells the former leper, who however has nothing better to do than to go “out and to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word.”  (Mark 1:44-45) So isn’t it a bit ironic that when at the end of the Gospel the women are told to go and tell the disciples that Jesus is risen, “they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” (Mark 16:8) People doing the opposite of what Jesus says …. Is there perhaps a pattern there, one that continues to the present day? Killing in Jesus’ name, discriminating against others in Jesus’ name, amassing great wealth in Jesus’ name? I wonder ….. 

But coming back to the end of Mark’s Gospel. Is this really the end? There are two theories about the ending in 16:8: “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” One group thinks that the real ending is missing: “Mark couldn’t have meant to stop there,” the theologian Tom Wright writes. He is sure that the book “concluded with Jesus not only confirming … that he was indeed alive …. But also commissioning them for the work that now awaited them.”[1] The last page is missing, lost and never found. Or perhaps Mark was interrupted while writing it? A heavy hand descended on his shoulder and a deep centurion’s voice said “I’m afraid that I’ll have to ask you to come along with me to the Praetorium” or police station. [2]

Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, doesn’t think so. He believes that the Gospel is supposed to end this way: “A surprising ending is perhaps in tune with a text that has all the way through been preparing us to be surprised”[3]
 
One thing we must not do, is to blame the women for being afraid. On the contrary – they were far braver than the male disciples. The passage we heard from Acts (10:39-41) is a wonderful example of early spin doctoring. Peter says: “They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses.” Really, Peter? Were you there when they crucified him, buried him, and when he first appeared? Not according to my Bible. It sounds like as if the first witnesses were women, as if women remained faithful to the end,  and as if women, those who “used to follow him and provided for him …. And had come up with him to Jerusalem” (Mark 15:41) were in all the dangerous places. So if you ever wanted arguments why women should be ordained, and perhaps not men, it's all here!

Anyway, even if the women initially were too afraid to tell the disciples what they had been told at the tomb, they obviously did do so in the end. Or we would not be here. And they sent the disciples back to Galilee, to where it had all begun with Jesus’ Baptism and the words from God that “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased” (Mark 1:11) and Jesus’s first words: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” (Mark 1:15) Both of these statements remain equally true after the resurrection – only it is now the disciples’ and our role to proclaim these messages - that Jesus is God’s Son and Beloved and that the Kingdom of God is here for us.  

Why were the women afraid at first, what were they afraid of? Of the mysterious messenger, the young man dressed in a white robe? Of the message as such, that Jesus has been raised? That was certainly a reason for amazement, but surely mostly of joy as the one they had followed for so long, and for so far, was alive again! Were they perhaps afraid of what the Roman might do to them? Hardly, not after all the risks they had already taken. Or were they afraid of the ridicule and disbelief they would encounter when going to the disciples, to those men who were so sure of themselves that they had fled and hidden themselves when the going got tough? And of the ridicule and disbelief they would encounter when telling their story even beyond the close circle of Jesus’ original followers, to the Jews for whom it would be a stumbling block and to the Gentiles for whom it would be foolishness, as Paul later says. (1 Cor. 1:23) I think it was the latter, even if they overcame it. That’s what they were afraid of.

But assuming that this is the real ending to the Gospel of Mark, then one reason why the story ends here – with the women’s seeming silence - is because the reader or listener is the one called to break the silence. As Rowan Williams puts it: “It throws the ball firmly into our court” and “the work of Jesus in the reader is the ‘end’ of the Gospel.”[4] Are we willing to spread the word of the resurrection and to send people to Jesus as the women were asked to do? Or are afraid to do so, and if so afraid of what? 

Are we afraid of the message that might shake up and change our lives if we take it seriously and make following Jesus and building the kingdom a part of our lives? Perhaps, sometimes. Are we afraid of persecution for being Christians and spreading the Good News? Though there are many – too many – places in the world where that is a real and present danger, it is not a danger or risk for us. Or are we afraid, like the women, of the ridicule and disbelief we will encounter if we tell others outside of these walls what we say we believe when we are in church? Is our amazement about the resurrection stronger than our joy at it having happened? 

Well, I hope not, Because whether the Gospel was supposed to end this way, or whether a page is missing and we just have to make a “theological virtue out of a necessity,” there is “ a blank at the end of the story, and we are invited to fill it.”[5] We must go out into the world and tell people about the new life that Jesus brings, about the promise of love, forgiveness, and reconciliation, and about the promise of a better human existence, if we model ourselves on the one who was perfectly human. So as a not so young man, but as one dressed in a white robe, I tell you: He has been raised; he is not in the tomb. Go, tell everyone about him and about the Good News of Jesus’ life, death, resurrection and of the new life in him that anyone who listens and wants to, can enjoy as we do!
Amen.


[1] N.T. Wright, Mark for Everyone, 221 and 224
[2] Austin Farrer, found in Rowan Williams, Meeting God in Mark, 68
[3] Rowan Williams, Meeting God in Mark, 68
[4] Rowan Williams, Meeting God in Mark, 65, 72
[5] N.T. Wright, Mark for Everyone, 224