Sermon, Feast of Pentecost, Year A, Acts 2:1-21; John 20:19-23, 4 June 2017

It’s always puzzled me why we pray, “Come, Holy Spirit.” Because no matter how we try to cover it up, most of us aren’t sure we really want what the Holy Spirit offers. Now seriously, think about what the Holy Spirit does. Life gets turned upside down and inside out when the Holy Spirit comes. People speak with tongues as of fire. Faith gets lit with fire and once lit is impossible to put out. Life gets risky; just look at the disciples and what happened to most of them. So do we really want to pray for the Holy Spirit to come?

         Maybe…just maybe… we pray for the Holy Spirit to come because we’re think we should? So we think if the Holy Spirit would come, just once, and maybe just for a little while, say for a couple of minutes when we’re not too busy, then life would be different. Is that really what we want?

         Life would be different. No two ways about it: the Holy Spirit means blessing. Blessing can be exciting, but most of us, if we’ll admit it, would rather not get too excited. It takes too much energy and besides, it’s too unpredictable. When most of us pray, “Come, Holy Spirit,” what we really mean is this. Please don’t throw your Hymnals at me, but what we really mean is “Come, Holy Spirit and let us stay exactly the way we are but feel better about it.”

         I know it may not seem like good news, but both the Lesson from Acts and the Gospel today point to the presence of the Holy Spirit being disorderly, disruptive, and difficult. That is indeed good news because the Gospel tells us that although the Spirit does not rescue us, the Spirit comes with us and alongside us and accompanies us as we are sent out. That disorderly, disruptive, and difficult Spirit of God gives us the strength to be sent out by our Lord, just as the disciples were sent out. And being sent out to do God’s work in the world can be scary and thrilling. No wonder if we were being truthful with ourselves our prayer would most likely be some version of, “Come, Holy Spirit and let us stay exactly the way we are but feel better about it.”

         The blessing of the Spirit is hard. It makes most of us nervous. It means we have to give up our easy complacent ways. We can no longer say, “I’ve never done that before,” or “I don’t know that person,” or, “We’ve never done that before.” There are ways to make it easier, but at some point we have to say, “Come, Holy Spirit,” and mean it. We have to say it and mean it if we want to see it, hear it, and experience it.

         And yes, there really is good news. The Holy Spirit we celebrate on the Feast of Pentecost, the same Holy Spirit who came to the disciples gathered on the first Christian Pentecost, can be disorderly, disruptive, and difficult. But this is the same Holy Spirit who gives us companionship, courage, confidence, and comfort. This is the same Holy Spirit who guides and guards, who shines light in dark places and breathes new life into dead bones. This is the same Holy Spirit who prays for us when we are too tired, too sad, and too bewildered to pray ourselves. This is the same Holy Spirit who will encourage us to be disorderly, difficult, and disruptive in the name of Christ. And, it is the same Holy Spirit who will shake us up from time to time if we get complacent.

         The same Holy Spirit who comes to us and stirs us up by being disorderly, disruptive, and difficult holds out to us the promise of companionship, of courage, of confidence, and comfort. So what do we really want to pray? Let’s be honest. Do we really want to pray, “Come, Holy Spirit and let us stay exactly the way we are but feel better about it.” Or are we brave enough to pray, “Come, Holy Spirit, Come,” and mean it? AMEN.

The Rev Nicolette Papanek

 ©2017

Sermon, Easter VII, Year A, John 17:1-11, 28 May 2017

Yesterday I worked in my garden. Let me explain this does not involve anything terribly strenuous. I have a large back yard and a fairly substantial front yard, but I have a wonderful person who takes care of the heavy work. I do my gardening in pots. Large pots, but they are pots all the same. Less weeding but more watering is the trade-off, but gardening this way seems a wise thing to do since I don’t stay in one place long.

In my backyard I have nine or so pots. I grow mostly herbs, and also a few flowers and sometimes a tomato plant. I haven’t succumbed to a tomato plant yet because I don’t think my back area gets enough sun. So what I did yesterday – if you can call it gardening – was to get ready for today when I plant things in pots.

I’ve learned over the years, that I have to do things to plants that appear cruel, things that might seem almost punishing, to get the plants to build deep healthy root systems. This is particularly important with tomatoes. What I do would be painful to a non-gardener, and even I don’t care for it much. I clip off the lower leaves of the tomato plants and bury them deeper in the soil than they were originally planted. What this does, ideally, is to make the plants form new roots where the leaves were removed. The plants end up rooting more solidly in their pots. I learned this in Kansas, by the way, a state known for its winds. In any windy state, a solidly rooted plant is a good thing to have.

When I clip and plant, I continue to reflect on the idea that to a non-gardener, what I do appears to have the death of the plant in mind. After all, I remove what looks like healthy lower leaves and bury the plants until only the top two leaves or so shows. Yet in actual fact, the process makes the plants healthier in the long run. Spindly, long-stemmed plants whip about in the wind. They sometimes topple over before they can put down good roots, and they don’t grow or yield as much.

Much of what we see in nature is about change: painful change. Yet change ultimately brings health to the interdependent eco-system in which we live. Prairie fires cleanse the landscape, bringing dormant seeds to the surface to sprout new growth. Forest fires burn out old growth too choked to sustain life. Floods will at times sweep clean an area that has become barren and wash in healthy soil.

Human beings need change also. Systems and people become stagnant, choked by old growth, and unable to move forward. Change for an individual or a system can appear painful, but it can also mean vitality and thriving. In today’s world, staying the same means going backward. If we want to stay the same today, we have to decide what we are willing to give up, because we can no longer hold onto what we have and stay the same. Prices go up, people age, and customs change. To an eighteen year-old today, the world was never without cell phones, social networking, and text messages.

Today’s gospel is about change. That stomach tightening change most of us dislike. The gospel is about what happens between Jesus and the disciples before things change and Jesus goes away.

Jesus, in his prayer, acknowledges one of the best things we can do when change is coming or has already happened. Jesus says about the disciples, “They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.”[1] Painful as the future may be without him, Jesus reminds the disciples of what they need to stay rooted and grounded in God.

This is the core of healthy change: the knowledge that we have done something before and done it well. This is what Jesus does in his prayer, he points to what the disciples were able to do in the past. They were able to keep God’s word. “They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.”[2] In his prayer, said in their hearing, Jesus is recognizing the obedience and strength of the disciples. The disciples belong to Jesus because God gave them to him, and the disciples were able to keep God’s word with Jesus.

Now change is occurring. Jesus’ presence on earth, as the disciples have known him, is going away. They will be left without the physical presence of the Jesus they have known. This is something new. Yet Jesus offers comfort. He will no longer be with them, but they know how to be obedient and how to keep his word. And now, though Jesus himself is going away, the Holy Spirit will come to guide the disciples and be their companion in keeping Jesus’ word.

What Jesus offers is the knowledge that we have been able to do what we are being asked to do. Perhaps in a slightly different way, but we can imagine a future strengthened by what we have been able to do. Then we can look forward to change as cleansing, healing, and enlightening us so we are blessed by the change.

None of us really want to be changed – what we do want is to be blessed. And this is what Jesus offers us in this morning’s gospel. Jesus offers us a pattern for change that creates blessing for us and blessing for the world around us.

Jesus offers us a way to be sure. He offers us a way to know that we are capable of change because we have survived it before. And most of all, we are capable of change because of one constant: we belong to God and are one with God as God and Jesus are one. This is how we stay rooted and grounded in the midst of change, even if it is painful.

The past is a place to build from, a place to mine for strength and wisdom and change. The past can show us what we are capable of doing. It is in listening to the Holy Spirit that we gain the strength and wisdom for change to bless us.

What is there today that you and I are capable of doing because we can build on our experience? What is there today that you and I are willing to do that is new because we remember our strengths from the past and are rooted and grounded in Christ Jesus? What is there that you and I can do today because we belong to God and keep Jesus’ word? AMEN.     

The Rev Nicolette Papanek

©2017

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[1] John 17:6b (NRSV)

[2] Ibid

Sermon, Easter VI, Year A, John 14:15-21, 21 May 2017

Memory and belonging: Jesus reminds the disciples that the Spirit will continue to give them what he gave them when he was with them: memory and belonging. He stresses the disciples will continue to remember him and belong to him if they live out his commandments, the things he did and said while he was with them.

This part of John’s Gospel takes place at the Last Supper, the night before Jesus died. Jesus tells the disciples he is leaving them but that they will have something else in their defense. The word Jesus uses for both himself and for the Spirit is “advocate.” In this case, it is a legal term, a term that means someone who argues on behalf of his or her client. An advocate defends his or her client. An advocate supports his or her client. Jesus reminds the disciples and reminds us, that he is with us as our advocate though the agency, the working, of the Holy Spirit.

Several years ago, about a week prior to Memorial Day, I was in the grocery store. I heard a story that made me think of memory and belonging. The woman in line ahead of me said she was having a big dinner for family and friends. She told the grocery clerk, and others of us waiting in line, that her Memorial Day tradition was about remembrance and belonging. She explained everyone invited brings a dish that reminds him or her of a person they love who has died. As each dish is served the person who brought it tells a story about why the dish reminds them of the person they love. The group who gathers is not all related to one another, and some of them meet for the first time at the dinner. But the gathering is something to which they all belong, even if it just for that day. And the stories they tell remind them of the people whose love they shared.

As we think about this story and these things Jesus spoke to the disciples about, I wonder,

How do we know we belong to Jesus?

What is belonging to Jesus like?

Now that we know how we belong to Jesus and what belonging to Jesus is like:

How will we be advocates to help someone else know they belong to Jesus? AMEN. 

Sermon, Easter V, Year A, John 14:1-14, 14 May 2017

         “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”[1] Today’s gospel is one of those gospel passages we can use as an “all purpose” paint job. You know what I’m talking about, one of those “let’s give the wall a quick coat of paint to make it look better before the relatives arrive.” The plan is always that later, some time in an unspecified future, we will go back and strip off that coat of paint and see what the wall really needs. How often does that happen? Most of the time, we leave that coat of paint up there – because it looks pretty good, after all – and then we don’t worry about it until the next crisis comes along. And we slap on another coat of paint.

         For some people, this gospel passage is an all-purpose “coat of paint.” It’s what helps us deal with periodic crises in our life, especially crises that involve people who do not believe or believe differently from the way we believe.

         Unfortunately, this kind of “coat of paint” gospel does not work well for us over a lifetime. Because what about someone who dies and does not profess the Christian faith? What about those who seem to find their “way, truth and life” in another way, by another truth, and with a different life?

In some circles, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life,”[2] justifies excluding everyone but Christians, or more often a certain brand of Christianity, from experiencing what Jesus offers us. This gospel has been used as the gospel of exclusion, rather than the gospel of inclusion and expansion that we hear from Jesus himself.

         Suppose instead we try to integrate today’s reading with other readings from John’s gospel. “And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.”[3] This is one of our unique claims of the Christian faith. It is a claim of the “way,” that you and I walk together. That ultimately, God offers all of us a place in God’s sheepfold.

Is it possible then, that, “I am the way, the truth and the life,”[4] offers something other than an exclusionary “one way” that denies that God is found anywhere else? That instead what Jesus offers us is the ability to recognize God in words and actions, even in those places where Jesus is not known? That Jesus offers us the comfort of knowing that in some way we don’t quite get, God is at work for everyone’s salvation, rather than just ours?

Could today’s gospel offer more comfort than the “coat of paint” gospel that people interpret as, if you’re a Christian you go to heaven, but if not, you’re on your own? We might instead look at the sum of scripture and find not only comfort but also constant joy in the idea that we are never the ones who make decisions about the flock. We don’t get to decide who’s in and who’s out. Instead, we find our way of looking at God through the person of Jesus Christ, giving us eyes to see God in the world. For us, then, Jesus is indeed, “the way, and the truth, and the life,” and we find our way to God through him.

This does not free us to do as we wish with our lives. The confusion the disciples exhibit to Jesus is the same confusion we continue to have over what “the way, and the truth, and the life” means for us. And one of the primary things it means is to go out and do. Yet, if we take comfort in the idea that salvation is God’s business, then how can it be ours to do something about?

Simply this: disciples, and we are disciples, are equipped by the Holy Spirit to spread the gospel to the world. Our faith calls us to share what we have in whatever ways we can. Just like Jesus’ first disciples we are sent into the world to spread the word of “the way, and the truth, and the life.”

We, too, are disciples. We are living “the way, the truth, and the life”. We are equipped and sent. We are equipped by the knowledge and life in the Spirit that ultimately, there is a place for us in God’s house of many dwelling places. Even if we are unsure of everything else, there is a place for us. And we are sent. We are sent to share this compassionate Good News with the rest of the world. There is one flock, one shepherd. There is a dwelling place. There is a way, a truth, and a life that we are called to share. AMEN.

The Rev Nicolette Papanek

©2017

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[1] John 14:6 (NRSV)

[2] Ibid

[3] John 10:15b-16 (NRSV)

[4] John 14:6 (NRSV)