Homily
By The Rev. Marcia McRae
St.
Francis Episcopal Church, Goldsboro, NC, 6th
Sunday of Easter, 21 May 2017
Year
A RCL
Acts
17:22-31; Psalm 66:7-18; 1 Peter 3:13-22; John 14:15-21
Thank God we are created in
love! Thank God for God's love which enfolds us & the Holy Spirit
which helps us live what we proclaim at Baptism: We put our
whole trust in Jesus' grace & love.
Jesus says in our Gospel: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” What are these commandments?
- John 13:34, Jesus says: “Love one another”. He repeats this in John 15:17.
- John 15:12, he says: “Love each other as I have loved you.”
- Matthew 5:44, Jesus really puts it to us:
“Love
your enemies & do good to
those who persecute
you.”
Love
may be easy
or hard.
Remember: we are not alone in this work. We have each other & the
Holy Spirit.
Notice
what our lesson from 1st
Peter says about Noah & the ark: the water
foreshadows Baptism. Baptism washes away our sins & gives us new
life. Through
Baptism we are clean & don't need to be baptized again.
Reality
check: We do sin after Baptism.
Like
needing a bath after you bathe & get dirty again, we have ways to
“come clean” with God. Our general confession we say most Sundays
& private confession to a priest offer us a different way of
cleaning. . . . Think of it as "dry cleaning"!
Notice: We don't baptize ourselves. We do
this in community. We have each other for all kinds of support. Look
at Noah; he's not alone in the ark, as our lesson from 1st
Peter reminds us.
What
kinds of practical, hands-on work come to mind when you think of Noah
& the ark & the family with him?
[Answers
included cooking & cleaning.]
This
apron suggests a reality we may overlook. Yes, the people were saved
in the ark, yet they had practical tasks to do.
We have day-to-day
tasks to do before &
after
baptism, including our work of love Jesus commands us to do.
How
in the world can we
do the work of love?
do the work of love?
Jesus
assures us he will
send
us an Advocate, Comforter, Helper – the Holy Spirit...1
so we can
obey Jesus' commandments to love.
Love is about relationships.
Relationships are what we have with God the Father, with Jesus, with
the Holy Spirit, with each other & in the Body of Christ. As
Christians, we rely on the Holy Spirit as we reach out in love to
those who do not know Jesus.
In
our Baptismal Covenant [which
we have the joy of sharing as we baptize an adult this morning]
we promise to do specific acts, including proclaiming by word &
deed the Good News of God in Christ, to seek & serve Christ in
all persons, to strive for justice & peace & respect the
dignity of every human –
every
human.
As we start to build relationships, we can reach out as Paul does as we read in Acts: wisely, gently, meeting people where they are.
Notice how g
e
n
t l
y
Paul talks with people in Athens about the “unknown god”. He
quotes their writers: 6th
century BCE philosopher Epimenides & 3rd
century BCE poet Arastus.2
Wisely,
Paul doesn't say: “You are
wrong
about your gods.”
People
in Athens may
think he is an atheist: Jews
& Christians of his day were often called atheists
because
they never took their gods with them when they traveled! People
traveled with their “gods” / their man-made idols out of fear.
Jesus
meets people where they are. How do
we meet people where they are?
As
we say in Cursillo:
"Make
a friend. Be a friend.
Bring a friend to Christ."
Bring a friend to Christ."
This
way we can spread God's love & help individuals move from a life
of fear to a life of love. God is love, so we must live the life of
love. Fear is the alternative.
Fear
is why the people Paul talks to make idols. God tells us in the Ten
Commandments don't make idols.
To make something, we have to imagine
it in our minds & hold the image inside us.
Some folk get stuck in their mind an image of God waiting to catch
them doing wrong – like a cosmic cop
as we spoke of in our Forgiveness Forum.
Cosmic
Cop rides around & people don't think of this god until blue
lights flash in the rear-view mirror. That's a sure sign to
“Stop
in the name of the law!”
That's
not the God we know through Jesus, who willing dies for us on the
cross. That's not the God who claims each of us as a beloved child.
The
God we know through Jesus & through the guidance of the Holy
Spirit may tell us to stop:
"Stop
in the name of Love!"
Cosmic
Cop imprisons people in fear. God's
love casts out fear. Fear is the biggest false god &
can be very subtle. Fear keeps us from moving forward, from reaching
out in love. Fear of pain is a subtle aspect of this false god. Pain
is the challenge we face with love.
As
one Bible commentator says:
“The
moment love enters into life, pain enters...(I)n Jesus we see God
caring intensely, yearning over (us), feeling poignantly for (us) &
with (us), loving (us) until he (bears) the wounds of love upon his
heart.”3
Jesus assures us in our
Gospel he does not leave us orphaned. He sends us the Holy Spirit so
we can keep loving through the pain, through life's challenges,
through whatever we face.
We know the early Christians have different
challenges Peter addresses in our 2nd lesson today. Peter also speaks of gentleness.
Gentleness is one of Love's
characteristics.
The
beauty of love we have in our relationships is worth this pain. We
are not alone in our pain. We are not alone in our love. We love
in community. We love in God's family. We read in Acts: we are God's
offspring, God's beloved children.
Our Psalm says God has not
rejected our prayers, nor withheld God's love from us.
We
are right when we fear God – fear as in to stand in awe of such
great love.
We have abundant love to
share with our sisters & brothers who do not know God's love,
beloved brothers & sisters in the human family who think they are
not worthy of God's love, brothers & sisters imprisoned in fear. We
must
proclaim
this Good News:
The
task of life is not to get God to love you or to try to please God.
The
task of life is to wake up to the fact
God
already loves you.
God
already loves you.
Some
people don't know this!
We
must go out these doors into this hurting world & make as much
noise as we can to tell our fearful sisters & brothers:
Stop!
In the Name of Love!
Stop
breaking YOUR heart!
to
paraphrase Diana Ross & the Supremes.4
We
must go into this hurting world &
tell
our fearful sisters & brothers:
as
Steve Bhaerman says,
“...stop
trying to earn God's love...
Start
spending it!”5
Barclay,
William. The
Gospel of John. Vol 2.
Revised Ed. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1975.
Book
of Common Prayer. New
York: The Church Hymnal Corp., and The Seabury Press. 1979.
Harper’s
Bible Commentary.
General Ed.: James. L. Mays. San Francisco: Harper & Row
Publishers. 1988.
Holy
Bible. New Revised
Standard Version. New York: Oxford University Press. 1989.
“Stop
in the Name of Love.” Diana Ross & The Supremes. Songwriters:
Holland,
Edward, Jr. James/Dozier, Lamont Herbert/Holland, Brian. Published
by: Lyrics
© EMI Music Publishing, Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.
http://www.metrolyrics.com/stop-in-the-name-of-love-lyrics-the-supremes.html.
Accessed: 20 May 2017.
Voyles,
Robert J. Restoring
Hope: Appreciative Strategies to Resolve Grief and Resentment.
Hillsboro, OR: The Appreciative Way. 2010. www.appreciativeway.com.
Wright,
N.T. For
All The Saints? Remembering the Christian Departed.
Harrisburg: Morehouse Publishing. 2003.
3
Ibid. Barclay. P. 161
ttp://www.metrolyrics.com/stop-in-the-name-of-love-lyrics-the-supremes.html
5
Quoted
P. 25 of “Teaching Forgiveness” based on Voyles, Robert J.
Restoring
Hope: Appreciative Strategies to Resolve Grief and Resentment.
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