This was an active week as we welcomed our first Organist finalist for in person interviews. I spent Monday and Tuesday focused on that, and it was worth it. It’s exciting to be welcoming three finalists here this month; we hope to have our next Organist and Choirmaster in place by the Fourth of July. The downside, this week, is that I didn’t have a lot of time to spend on a Rambling!  So, given that a number of folks asked for a copy of Sunday’s sermon, and I had to go back and make it match what I actually said, I will share it here for anyone who wants it. The sentiment is worth our time. This is one of those sermons where I’m preaching to myself, and I’m just glad to know that I’m not the only one who benefits from the encouragement of God as we move boldly into the Future. Do not be daunted!

Tom+

A Homily for Easter 5, Year C, 2022

Acts 11:1-8; Revelation 21:1-6

Peter had a life changing – what would be a Church-altering - experience. God shows Peter that the rules are changing using food as a stand-in: Peter is to accept Gentiles. Those who weren’t faithful Jews, those who weren’t circumcised, and those who didn’t follow Jewish purity laws, were now able to receive God’s grace. And it almost didn’t go over well. 

At the start of the passage in Acts, we learn that the people back home knew what Peter had been doing before he returned. The rumor mill is fast. They were grumbling and openly criticized him upon his return. They knew he had been hanging out in the homes of Gentiles, and worse-yet, eating with them. That was not cool if you were a faithful Jew. Before we get high and mighty or entertain condescending thoughts, it’s understandable; those laws, those purity codes, those were all faithful ways of honoring your covenant relationship with God, reminding yourself and the community that you were set apart. By keeping such things, you were maintaining your status as God’s chosen. Stepping away from that was an earth-shattering proposition. One does not just set aside over a thousand years of tradition just because Peter went to a house party.  

So, Peter shares the vision he received from God; he lays out the story, and what happens?  They were silenced. No one had anything to say, at first. I imagine a scene where everyone is angry and grumbling, and Peter tells his story, and when he’s done: nothing but stern faces.  That’s one way it could have gone – I’ve dealt with grumblers. But this was different. The stern silence gave way to, “Praise God – the Gentiles are included in God’s grace!” And there was much celebration. Wait, what? How does that work? We human beings don’t change that easily; we like things the way they are! I know church grumbling; that kind of turnaround just doesn’t happen, God’s vision or not! But maybe it can.

God does give us glimpses from time to time if we’re open to it. It’s not always as clear as Peter’s threefold visual learning experience, nor is it as clear as the series of visions that John received and recorded in Revelation. John got to glimpse the new city – the New Jerusalem, descending out of heaven, not unlike that sheet full of food that Peter saw. It was a city that operated in new ways, unlike the world it descended upon. In God’s city, there is no pain, no grief, no tears. Through that vision, we are reminded that God is making all things new; all the profane things of this world will be transformed into the kingdom God has always intended; the kingdom we pray for day after day, week after week as Jesus taught us: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is heaven.” John is getting a glimpse of God’s kingdom coming. 

It's a future that many long for, but that kingdom is a long way off. Or at least it feels like it; we’ve waited so long. I don’t believe the preachers who say it’s just around the corner. They’ve been saying that for too long. Whenever it comes, it’s important to note that God’s kingdom, the kingdom of heaven, is coming here; it’s not another place that we’ll go to. Some believe that this world is just temporary, and that we’re just marking time until we get to go to the next world. Those are the folks who craft escape theologies, who don’t think we have to do much here because it doesn’t matter - it will all be destroyed. Some even go as far as to say, the sooner the better!

Those billionaires building space programs designed to get us to Mars? Mars is the closest place that’s not here, which we might colonize as a hedge against the ruin of this world. It’s the stuff of sci-fi movies, coming slowly into reality. They aren’t doing it for religious reasons, but there are parallels between the sense that we should leave this dying world, and the sense that God’s kingdom is impossible to imagine here. We construct a theology that lets us mentally or morally escape earth’s brokenness without actually having to address it. That kind of thinking; a sense that God’s vision for the world is so out of this world or so unlikely that we don’t do anything about it, is a dark and pessimistic view, but it’s not a rare one.  

I read an article this week about people under thirty-five years old who are making a conscious decision NOT to save their money. They have the means to save for retirement, and yet, they are so pessimistic about the future that they’re choosing to spend their money on other things now. It’s a conscious decision; let tomorrow take care of itself. I get it. They came of age in the era of the 2008 collapse. They’ve seen growing signs of the cost of a changing climate. Most of their adult lives were spent with a nation in two wars. Then there is the political divide. The collapse of institutional trust. There’s COVID. And now it’s the war in Ukraine, which has shaken the foundation of things we didn’t think we needed to worry about anymore. So tomorrow doesn’t seem to have many guarantees; why wait for the world to throw another curveball; just live for today, right?

Let’s sit with that for a second. Does it resonate? What happens when we lose sight of the promise of tomorrow; the vision of God; the Kingdom coming down to us so that God can dwell with us here and now? It takes away our hope and undermines God’s promises. It means that when God lowers the tablecloth and we refuse to eat like Peter initially refused? What happens when we no longer want to invest in the future?

I have my moments of weakness and doubt. We just relaunched the Rooted. Growing. Building. Campaign last month. After a bit of a delay, the pledge cards should have arrived in your mailbox this week. Can I just say how hard it is to be faithful, considering that we launched just as a pandemic descended upon us, and then we relaunched as inflation has spiked and the markets have become unstable again. Great timing, right? It wasn’t a tablecloth dropped down to the Vestry, but for years God’s laid a vision on this parish’s leaders about how we should be investing in the future, yet it seems like it’s such an uphill climb to get there. I keep coming back to trusting that God is with us in this, and as long as we are faithful, we’ll be able to bring that vision to bear, however it is that God works through us. 

That’s just one example. There are other places where I glimpse God’s future plans, but don’t feel like they are realistic. I think I have a vision for what racial harmony could look like in this country, and then I read about a man killing ten people in a grocery store in New York out of hatred. I think I have had glimpses of how to address poverty and educational challenges in this county, but when I consider the work and the resources it will take to get there, I feel like it’s impossible. I think I know what it looks like to be united in the country again, but then I realize how we’re going to get there. Where are the other places that God has given us a glimpse of tomorrow, even one that feels a long way off, or impossible to achieve? God’s doing all kinds of new things, because that’s what God does. Will we be like the believers in Judea, who heard what God was up to and grumbled, especially because of who God chose to work with? Will we then get on board anyway, as they did? Will we be a generation that is so afraid of what tomorrow will bring that we don’t invest in the future? Will we be like those who say, it doesn’t matter what we do about setting the stage for ten or fifty or a hundred years from now because we won’t be here; or at least I won’t be here?  

We need to keep investing in God’s future, seeking God’s kingdom. That means being active today to make a difference so that tomorrow will be better, and we’ll all be closer to the fulfillment of God’s plans. At any point in history, we could look at an era and focus on all the challenges of that day, or we could look at all the things that were already in process, places where God was quietly making things new, that hadn’t yet been revealed. We need to join God with what God is already making new. We can choose what we want to focus on – the promise of tomorrow or the fears generated by today. God’s constantly trying to lay something out for us, a heavenly banquet from which we can eat; showing us what is possible, and reminding us that we can get there. I hear God saying, “Where I show you what is possible, don’t fear that it’s impossible.” In this broken world, so many things feel impossible, and there’s only one way to respond: it’s time to be brave; to trust God; to eat; to build. Now more than ever.  

I leave you with one of my favorite blessings.

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justice now. Love mercy now. Walk humbly now. We are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are we free to abandon it.  

May the Blessing of God Almighty, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit be with us now and always.  Amen.