Fourth Sunday of Easter

On the Sundays during the great 50 days of Easter, a lesson from Acts of the Apostles takes the place of our usual Old Testament lesson. I’ve mentioned the great 50 days several times since Easter and some of you have asked me about it. In the Episcopal Church we follow the ancient tradition of observing Easter from the Sunday of the Resurrection through the Feast of Pentecost – thus 50 days of Easter. That’s why we are still wearing white and will continue to wear it until we switch to red on Pentecost. When the stores put the candy eggs and marshmallow peeps on the discount shelf on Easter Monday, we really are just getting started. Today is day 22. It’s like the 12 days of Christmas, only four times as much fun.
Acts of the Apostles is almost certainly a second book created by the author of the Gospel According to Luke. That could have come about in a number of ways. Some New Testament scholars think the two books are about the same age – written in the year 85. That’s about 50 years after Jesus’ death and a generation or two after Paul’s earliest letters. If that is true, the answer to the question why two books could be as simple as the author coming to the end of one reasonably sized papyrus scroll and continuing his story on a second one. If that’s how it happened, then Luke-Acts is unique among New Testament books. It is something more than simply a gospel – a book about the life and ministry of Jesus. It could also be true that the author set out deliberately to create two different works: one a gospel, the other a narrative about the early church with the apostle Paul as its main character. And some scholars argue that this second book is not as old as the gospel – that it was written in the early first century, around the year 110.
If Acts was intended as a single work, why are the two books separated in the New Testament canon? One explanation for that is similar to the positioning of Matthew first in the order of the gospels, even though Mark was the earliest. The content of Matthew’s gospel is a bridge between Israel and Jesus. Acts is the bridge between Jesus and the apostle Paul; thus its placement between the fourth gospel and Paul’s letters in the New Testament.
Paul’s genius is shown first in transforming the paradox of a crucified Messiah into the triumph of the cross – a sacrifice that ultimately became a victory over death. But he took that a step further and made Jesus, with his firm roots in Jewish tradition, intelligible to the gentile community. Paul did that so well, that the church, which began as a subgroup of the synagogue community ultimately became a gentile institution. It makes sense that Luke identifies with Paul and idealizes him. Luke, whoever he actually was, was undoubtedly a gentile and his gospel is directed toward a gentile audience, as was Paul’s ministry. One way of describing the central idea of Acts of the Apostles is that it makes the claim that the church – the gentile church - is the true heir of Israel.
It appears likely that for a while, Jesus’ followers were able to continue as a sub-group within the synagogue community. But tradition and practice may have evolved until eventually the two groups were doing things so differently as to make that relationship impractical. Circumstances and events outside the realm of religion put additional pressure on the relationship. And, Paul’s ministry to the gentiles also required an answer to the question what must one do to be a member of the church? Did you have to observe Jewish tradition to be a follower of Jesus, or was there another way for a gentile to become a Christian? These issues are part of the narrative of Acts. Paul and his gentile converts win all of the arguments.
Reading Acts as history gives the impression that the church was born in moments and grew to institutional size within a few weeks. In reality it almost certainly took a lot longer. One thing that Acts does is give us a big picture view of the efforts that Paul’s letters describe in more specific detail. Paul preached Jesus’ story to the gentiles. He established the idea of humanity’s salvation by way of Jesus’ self-sacrifice on the cross as the cornerstone of Christian theology. Given who and what he had to work with, it was a remarkable accomplishment. We don’t really see it that way, because what Paul envisioned has come to us as a finished product, heavy with the authority of tradition. The author of Acts has a clearer understanding of what Paul accomplished and makes him the hero of the book. And with the implication that the church is Israel’s heir, he sows the seeds for centuries of claims that the church has superseded God’s covenant with Abraham and that Christians are beloved of God and Jews are not.
We have had the opportunity to observe and reflect upon the centuries of persecution that this claim has brought about. We have minute to minute access to information about violence fueled by ongoing claims of religious superiority. How do we fit our responses to that information together with our understanding of the authority of scripture? We have plenty of examples of people who use religious violence as a justification for their claims that religion is dangerous and useless. If you’re here, you probably don’t agree with that position. But if you take seriously what you believe, sooner or later, you have to figure out what that really is.
There are plenty of churches whose mission is little more than to provide a simple answer to that question. Our tradition has had a tendency to leave the complications out in the open and let everyone wind their way through them as they will. We sometimes have to work with people from more straightforward traditions who are attracted to our church by the way we worship, but get surprised when they discover that there are lifelong homework assignments that involve working out the details. Acts of the Apostles is one of those.

Third Sunday of Easter
John 21.1-19
This week a couple of parishioners have circulated online articles that I was on the list to receive. One of them had to do with what Christianity could mean or could offer with regard to the economy. Another had to do with what Christian identity could mean to a person trying to live life day to day in the world as it is now. Although they were very different articles, they had something in common and the content of both is reflected in today’s gospel lesson.
The story is told as a post-resurrection appearance in John’s gospel, but it has a remarkable similarity to a story in chapter 5 of Luke which takes place during Jesus’ ministry. It is odd in the context of John’s gospel because in Chapter 20 – one chapter before today’s lesson, Jesus has just revealed himself to the skeptical Thomas and the other disciples as the risen Lord. We heard that story last Sunday. In it, Thomas is awe-struck and falls to his knees proclaiming Jesus as his Lord and God. Then in the story we hear this week from Chapter 21, the disciples, including Thomas, once again initially fail to recognize Jesus. As with much of biblical literature, the coherence of the narrative and the inner life of the characters are not the first priority of the author – the story is about something else. At the end of it, Jesus casts Peter in the role of leadership. He is to be the one who feeds and walks alongside them providing sustenance, community and guidance. As with last week’s gospel lesson, this is a story about what and how the church is to be.
We are what the church has become. We look back a century or even a half century ago and see the church functioning as an institution, interacting with other institutions. The church was a presence in civic life. It was a norm in personal and family life. Throughout my school years the number of my peers whose families did not at least claim affiliation with a particular church was very small. The number whose families did not attend regularly was not much greater. Now it’s very much the opposite. And the church is more frequently ignored or actively excluded from civic life out of fear of appearing to favor one variety of religious belief over another or concern that religious partisans will attempt to impose their particular beliefs on others in the form of law. The dark side of the church’s institutional weight has been exposed more recently – the effort to hide the abuse of children in the Roman Catholic Church or the willingness of some in the Anglican Communion to exclude its gay and lesbian members from full participation in the sacraments in order to placate those who would fragment it out of anger over their full inclusion in the community of the baptized.
As the church we do not have the civic and institutional heft we once did. Plenty of people claim to “be spiritual,” but the mention of Christianity frequently produces a roll of the eyes or a response made in a resigned tone of voice, as if we have little or nothing to offer to someone seeking life in the spirit and in community.
But the articles I mentioned earlier both suggest that that assumption is inaccurate. The church does have something very important to contribute to the common life of the community outside these walls. What we have to offer is particularly important in a time in which the expectations of future generations for a standard of living that exceeds that of their parents may never be satisfied. It is particularly important in a world where work is no longer about creating something useful or valuable but has become something more like putting your hand in the next person’s pocket and taking what you find. It is particularly important in a world in which ideas, behavior, politics and economy are increasingly driven by the furtherance of individual interest and satisfaction of individual desire rather than what builds and preserves the rhythm and fabric of a community’s common life and connects humanity with the natural world.
I think you can find all of these ideas in today’s gospel lesson. The disciples encounter Jesus in the early morning on the beach. They’ve worked all night at fishing and have nothing to show for it. He suggests that they try one more time, and their labor is productive. They have a connection with what they do. The interaction of their labor with the natural world is obvious. They sell their fish to the people who will consume it. And they eat what they catch. They’re not selling financial instruments that reward the seller with mind-bending amounts of money in the short term, arouse in the buyer the same hope of mind-bending profits when he flips them and then cause entire national economies to collapse when those two have their money safely deposited offshore. As the church, we live life by what has been characterized as a noble rhythm: the change of seasons and in the church year that is built around the story of Jesus’ life and the traditions that his followers have gathered over time. Those traditions challenge us to find our place in a story that is not entirely of our own making. It links us across space and time to those who have gone before us and those who will come after us. We also fit ourselves into the ethical constraints that story asks of us and apply them to our daily living.
In today’s gospel story Jesus invites the disciples to come together to cook and share a meal. It is one of the most basic forms of human community. We enact it in ritual form every Sunday and in real life after we conclude our worship. Calling coffee hour the 8th sacrament is more than just a joke. It points to our human inclination to eat in the enjoyable and enlightening company of others. But in families and households in our culture, the preparation and sharing of meals has become enough of a rarity that experts like family therapists and nutritionists have to tell us how important it is. As a culture our consumption and acquisition of food and of everything else, for that matter, has lost its rhythm and purpose. Consumption has come to be about satisfying our momentary desires and our demand to have more for the purpose of having more. The ideals and aspirations of our culture have come to be about gathering the resources to support this satisfaction of endless desire. That transforms the meaning of work from effort that produces something useful and valuable into whatever produces the most gain for the worker. By this standard, if you’re not earning a fortune by any means necessary, you have some explaining to do. When the system that had evolved for doing that took a hit in the fall of 2008, and the realization dawned that it was all a game that we had been drawn into, the prevailing emotion was fear – fear of not having enough. What the church can do is help people recalibrate what enough means. Every Sunday we gather together for the Eucharist – the giving of thanks and the sharing of a meal. We express ritually the belief that in Christ there can be enough for all. We offer that expression in a community that acknowledges shared limits on the way we live out our own desires and our responsibility to provide for the needs of others. By changing our own attitudes about what is enough – for others and for ourselves, we offer the world the means to exchange the resentment over a declining standard of living to a thoughtful and appreciative consideration of what we really need to live life well: to care for the earth and its creatures, to do our work with honor, commitment and a sense of productivity, and to create a world in which justice and peace guide our decisions and actions.

Last Sunday After Epiphany

Exodus 34:29-35
Psalm 99
2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2
Luke 9:28-36, [37-43a]
Luke’s account of the Transfiguration has its roots in Mark’s version of that story. Jesus’ encounter with God in the company of the great Israelite prophets has an even earlier example which is included in the Gospel of Peter. That book is one of the non-canonical gospels, of which there are several. These books represent diverse records of Christian tradition for about the first three centuries after Jesus’ life and ministry, but they were not ultimately selected to be included in the Bible. In that older version, the resurrected Jesus is accompanied by two men who seem to be Moses and Elijah as he exits his opened tomb.
When you try to classify the Transfiguration story, it is difficult to do. It has some things in common with the stories of Jesus’ baptism – like the heavenly voice proclaiming Jesus’ authority. But like that older strand of tradition from the Gospel of Peter, the story of the Transfiguration could also originally have been the story of a post-resurrection appearance that was modified and put in a different place. And, it could have been an authentic religious experience of Jesus which happened to be witnessed by two of his closest followers, who eventually told others about it.
We hear this story on the actual Feast of the Transfiguration – August 6 or the Sunday closest to it. But we also hear it on the last Sunday after Epiphany. You could think of this day as having similarities to the Feast of Christ the King – the last Sunday before Advent begins. Both of them look back toward the season that is ending and forward toward the season that is to come. The Transfiguration is a particularly dramatic story of God’s manifestation in the world in the person of Jesus, which is what Epiphany is about. For the early church with roots in Jewish tradition, it is an ultimate expression of his authority, placing him in the presence of Moses and Elijah as their peer and even their successor. Jesus remains as the two of them depart and the divine voice proclaims his divinity and authority.
But on Wednesday, we enter Lent. Next Sunday’s gospel begins a narrative leading up to Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday in which Jesus is tested and his authority and sense of mission are formed and expressed through trial and crisis. The Transfiguration story is a reminder, before we enter that time of testing and trial, of its ultimate meaning.
We live out our faith through the traditions of the church year in a manner that is is dynamic; it is cyclical and seasonal. That expression and experience of the season is meant to be at the heart of worship. Considering that made me think about my husband who is a southerner by birth. He has a passion for a food called grits. Many of you are familiar with grits and some of you love it as Nelson does. Nelson’s love for grits is sufficiently profound as to motivate oratory. He frequently proclaims that grits are what you bring to them. They are the blank canvas upon which your culinary genius and you gustatory curiosity and courage may be played out.
You could think of the liturgical year in the same way. [hang in here with me for a moment] The year is as it always is – beginning with Advent, progressing to Christmas, and Epiphany, through Lent, Holy Week, Easter, Pentecost and the season after. There are individual celebrations that stand out in the midst of this cyclical calendar – a parish’s patronal feast, All Saints and All Souls Days, and Christ the King are a few of them. But the experience is different every year because the world is different every year and we are different every year as individuals and community. The lens through which you experience Lent is different in a time when you or those around you are experiencing testing and hardship. Easter and All Saints Day take on different meaning if they are the occasion of the baptism of a child or they follow upon the recent death of a loved one.
In the Transfiguration story, the first impulse of Jesus’ disciples who are with him on the mountain is to freeze that moment in space and time. As Moses and Elijah are departing, the disciples suggest building dwellings for the two of them and Jesus so that their time together in that place might never end. Human beings seem to like to do that. We like to encompass the divine with boundaries that are represented as and frequently intended as efforts to show respect and reverence. But such efforts frequently end up being the means by which God is made comfortable and convenient and by which access to the divine is place under human control and offered only to those who are judged to be worthy. In the Transfiguration story God interrupts the disciples efforts to domesticate the proclamation of God’s kingdom.
Our journey through any given church year is an ever changing experience viewed through the lens of our life events. That dynamic, ever changing experience has points of reference in tradition around which it moves. The story of the Transfiguration could be seen as one of those reference points. Just as we prepare to enter Lent – the time of testing, doubt, challenge and crisis, we have a glimpse of what is at the end of that journey – Jesus, showing us who and how God is.