The Seventh Sunday of Easter, May 16th, 2010

Acts 16:16-34
Psalm 97
Revelation 22:12-14,16-17, 20-21
John 17:20-21

This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. AMEN.

This is the most isolated Sunday of the year. It follows Jesus' Ascension and precedes the gift of the Holy Spirit, so on this Sunday, we're on our own. Jesus has left publicly and has gone, as he said, to be with the Father. Next Sunday is Pentecost, and the Spirit is announced to be with us as comforter, advocate, and connector between the Creator and the ascended Jesus, the Redeemer. This week we're on our own, so the collect asks the King of Glory, "Do not leave us comfortless, but send us the Holy Spirit to strengthen us and exalt us to that place where Jesus has gone before. Then there are today's lessons...

The Acts reading is a wonderful narrative of Paul on his travels. He hears a woman shrieking however correctly, that he and his companions are servants of the Most High God. Her handlers are making money off her by exhibiting her in public. Paul rescues the young woman by driving out the spirit tormenting her into bad behavior, if right speech. She is calmed and cured, but no longer marketable, so her handlers are furious at their lost revenues.

Paul was caring for the individual, and did so again in the second little episode. Although he was traveling with Luke, Timothy, and Silas, only he and Silas were arrested at the insistence of the outraged handler of the woman. Luke was apparently a Gentile and Timothy half Greek and half Jewish, so they were not arrested. The night of this activity, there was an earthquake and the walls of the prison were shaken enough for the gate to be sprung loose. Paul and Silas just stayed where they were. The jailor would have been held accountable for their flight and damages, and he saw the strength of their belief in their salvation, their safety in whatever circumstances, by their staying put. The jailer insisted that then and there that he and his whole family and household be baptized.

Paul and his companions were demonstrating that their faith in Jesus was absolute: his rising from the dead, and his continued availability to those who believed in him and those he knew and cared for. Paul knew that healing a wild young woman and staying in prison when wondrous forces seemed to free him from his chains were right actions to demonstrate trust in God's care for them. He showed that in doing what was right he could also care for others, namely the young woman, his companions, and the jailor and his household. The Revelation reading buoys us reading this account by its having Jesus say several times, "See I am coming soon. I am coming soon to repay according to everyone's work. Surely I am coming soon." Paul felt that immanence and acted as though he was in sight of Jesus coming soon.

We, though, are a long time and place away from that assurance that Jesus is coming back soon. We also wonder about his promise to repay us according to out work, whether that might not well be a double-edged sword, or simply a terrifying prospect. On this Sunday we look around for our comfort. (I recognize clearly being somewhat literal about the church year shows a kind of naïveté. Part of the whole intention-and usefulness- of the cycle of readings in the church year is to go through the experiences and feelings of each event both as though for the first time ever, and yet also to review the occasions in context of a Christian life lived. I really do know that next Sunday is Pentecost, and even if it weren't, that the Pentecost of record came definitively millennia ago.)

The Gospel offered us for this Sunday of some tentativeness in our relationship with the ascended Jesus is theological ping-pong, as I  read it. It always sounds to me like verbal patty-cake.

"As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me...The world does not know you, but I know you, and these know that you have sent me. 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." It won't do as narrative, but it would make a fine exercise in pronoun cases and use.

Instead it reaches out to the idea that we are all both one in Christ and one in the Creator, and that Jesus lived his life in the context of living in the One. Jesus wanted to make his own life, living, dying, and ascending to be known to all and to be understood as on-going life though the Creator's generative love and life. The patter of the language obscures his declaration of Christian unity, of believers sharing in the life given to all in love by the Creator, lived out in Jesus, and promised to all through his own experiences and his work with the Creator.

In some ways, it is the life we, as Christians, are living out now. We are surrounded by a chaos of Christians, Christian beliefs, Christian churches, Christian values, and Christian identities. As individuals we are not committed to corporate Christianity particularly. Showing up regularly is less a value than "being a spiritual person on my own." Even if we did show up regularly, where would we show up? Would we show up with those people whose style we're comfortable with? Would we gather with those people whose values all line up with ours? Would we gather with those who understand the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the way we do? Would we plump for the Holy Spirit coming to us and spending our leisurely Sundays with the Times and NPR, without church, Bible reading and analysis or eating together? Would it be enough at judgment to be within The Creator, within Jesus, without much effort or participation on our part? I have no idea. Judgment is clearly not within my job description.

I do know a little about my own practices and myself. I show up to demonstrate that I am participating in the work of salvation. I'm not just waiting at home for it to happen. While I'm clear that through baptism and grace, the Spirit is in me. I'm also clear that the Holy One may do ultimately whatever the Holy One chooses to do. I'm just as clear that if I want to be a writer, it'll go a whole lot better and more effectively if I write, and write regularly. Filling out a form and saying I'm a Christian or a writer may name me as such, but I'm not sure that's enough. If I'm going to be a part of the reward for Jesus to allow him to repay me according to my work, I'm not sure staying at home and thinking thoughts of any kind will show my commitment to loving God or neighbor as myself. I'm not all that sure it'll suggest any sort of love, as I would suspect that most sorts of love involve doing something.  John writes, "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." I think that's more than being spiritual, me, myself, and my cup of organic tea. The baptismal covenant is so clear. "Will we seek and serve Christ in all others and respect the dignity of every person?" There is no passive life that can ever begin to fulfill that pledge. Even, for example, contemplative nuns must keep up with the world in order to pray for it and its denizens. People flood such contemplatives with prayer requests. I have a short list of unbelievers who regularly call me with people's names and situations to pray for and add to our list. It seems somewhat uncalled for on my part to say to them, "If you really don't believe anything or you are not willing to trust in something enough to participate and try the religion thing... why do you call me? Why do you want your person prayed for?" There's no reason to ask such, because we all know the answer. Whether they do or don't believe, they want something better for the person in need than they alone can provide. They reach out to something, to hope, to something rather than nothing.

Jesus says that as he and the Father are one, so he gives that glory to us, so that we may be one, he in us and the Father in him, so that we may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent him, and have loved us even as you have loved him. I see that unity as an equilateral triangle with the Creator on one point, Jesus on one point, and us, all of us, on the other point with a dynamic, active love force swirling between the points making them life forces but inexorably joined with both the Creator and Jesus. Being who I am, I see that dynamism as full of color, sound, energy, light, love and the power that keeps the world and all people going round. Perhaps that's an image of the Spirit, but traditional Spirit images are so clouded for me with pigeons and fire that I rarely understand the Spirit as binding or creating or making grow what it fills up. John talks about a reciprocity of energies going between Jesus, the Creator, and all people, all those for whom Jesus died, all those Jesus loved and loves. John Donne expressed this definitively from the other side of the coin:  "Send not to ask for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee. I am involved with all mankind and any mans death diminishes me."
 John and Jesus said it differently, but the truth is the same. All people are inextricably, intentionally, and lovingly bound together with each other, and so more than any mans death diminishing each of us, any mans life must engage and enlarge us, help fulfill our possibilities. God wants us each to be, like Marines, all that we can be, and that means to be involved with each other.  Silence at home, quiescence on the job, absence from engaging won't do. Even at a time when we feel comfortless, we are for each other part of the reality of comfort designed to hold us until we are safely in the hands of the Lord, in the arms of Jesus.

Paul showed this commitment to individuals in his defense of them, at his own risk.  He was involved with them as he was involved in the life of Jesus as Jesus with his Creator. Paul's two rescues were a way he could show that he was genuinely involved in loving Christ in God. Doing showed what he believed, and the strength of his belief impelled him into doing. That is a way Christian unity shows up in an individual's actions, rather than just in treaties over texts and the common use of this revised lectionary. This Sunday while we're on our own is the time to show our personal commitment to being involved in church and people, God and Jesus, praying and acting. Our own involvement in unity is the way we live out the baptismal covenant. That Jesus accepts us and lives in us, and leads us to be with him forever is the promise and guarantee of the unity John describes, and it is surely Good News.

© Katharine C. Black 16 May 2010