You Will See Yourself - Trinity Sunday

 

Trinity Sunday – You Will See Yourself

One of the challenges to proclamation on Trinity Sunday is that there are no Biblical passages that discuss the peculiar Christian understanding of God as three persons. The word in the Creed is personas, like the mask Greek actors wear to play different characters. It is always the same person behind the three personas! Other monotheists are utterly baffled by bold assertions in Creeds and in doctrinal theses of just how the One God of the Abrahamic religions can appear to be three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and still be only one God. Such assertions about the Trinity emerge from our reflection upon scripture, but are not found scripture per se.

 

Our readings for this day, for instance, from Psalm 29 and Isaiah [6:1-8] illustrate the compelling power of God’s voice, able both to create and destroy creation all at once, and is able to convince the most unsuspecting of us to assent, indeed, proclaim with vigor, “Here I am, send me!” to return to the myriad problems of terra firma and risk being a prophet, pointing out all the ways in which we, as God’s people, just have lost our way and our need to at least reform our behavior, or full-out repent and begin again. People, understandably, do not like to hear the prophetic voice, which explains why Jonah tried to get as far away from Nineveh as possible.

 

Paul in Romans [8:12-17] leads us into more mystical territory with his assertion that like Jesus, we can now call God by the more familiar name, Abba, Father, suggesting that although we suffer with Christ we also will share in his glory; while Nicodemus tries mightily to ask straightforward questions of Jesus, only to get an enigmatic response about wind and being born from above, which he mistakes for being born again. Nick leaves shaking his head and muttering, “How can these things be?”  [John 3:1-17].

 

Instead of trying to squeeze something useful about the Trinity out of scripture, which quite honestly doesn’t have much if anything to say about it, it may be better to turn to those Christians throughout the ages we call Saints and Mystics who, more often than not, yield more insight about God than the average lectionary reading. Take, for instance, Julian of Norwich, a woman in the late Fourteenth and early Fifteenth centuries who lived in a hut, or cell, attached to the outer wall of St. Julian’s Church in Norwich. During her lifetime the city suffered the effects of the Black Plague, the Peasant’s Revolt, and the suppression of the Lollards. Julian, while sure she was dying, received a series of visions or “showings” and wrote them down in the first book ever written in English by a woman: Revelations of Divine Love.

 

A popular summary of her showings has been reduced to the popular saying: All shall be well, all shall be well, all manner of thing shall be well. Yet, a look into the Thirty-First Chapter of the Long Text of her Showings may provide us with a bit more insight into the nature of the Holy Trinity and Divine Love which she spent the rest of her lifetime sharing with those who came to the window of her cell seeking spiritual guidance. The text begins:

            “And our good Lord answered to all the questions and doubts which I could raise, saying most comfortingly: I may make all things well, and I can make all things well, and I shall make all things well, and I will make all things well; and you will see yourself that every kind of thing will be well. When he says, ‘I may’, I understand this to apply to the Father; and when he says ‘I can’, I understand it for the Son; and when he says, ‘I will’, I understand it for the Holy spirit; and when he says, ‘I shall”, I understand it for the unity of the blessed Trinity, three persons and one truth; and when he says, ‘You will see yourself’, I understand it for the union of all men who will be saved in the blessed Trinity. And in these five words God wishes us to be enclosed in rest and peace.” - Julian of Norwich: Showings (Translated by Edmund College, James Walsh, Paulist Press, New York: 1978) p.229

 

She refers to “these five words” which are: I may, I can, I will, I shall, You will. With these five words we learn that God’s wish for us is to be “enclosed” in rest and peace! God wants to surround us with Divine Love, and each persona of the Holy Trinity is forever and constantly involved in this enclosing or surrounding us with Love, which in most of the Bible is described by the Hebrew word, hesed. Hesed is perhaps best understood as an “act of good faith” rather than a feeling. It is a quality that humans are to share with God: that generous ability to put the interests of another, weaker, party before one’s own, most especially the needs of the poor, widows, orphans and strangers from other countries who are sojourning in the land. That is, God’s Divine Love, as revealed to Julian, is acting with love on behalf of others just as God acts with love on our behalf.

 

Since scripture says we are made in God’s image, then we are to be those people who exemplify hesed, acts of faith and love toward others in the same way that God’s desire is to enclose us, or surround us, with God’s own Divine Love, rest and peace. This suggests that the five words are, in the end meant for us. We might think of it as the doctrine of the Little Engine That Could. That is, to be made in God’s image is to wake up each morning and say the five words: I may, I can, I will, I shall, you will see yourself. Then we are to go about our days generously putting the interests of others ahead of our own. We will then be enclosed and surrounded by God’s Divine Love in rest and in peace as we share that Divine Love with others.

 

In this receiving and giving of God’s Divine Love, we discover that all shall be well, all shall be well, all manner of thing shall be well; we find our selves enclosed in rest and peace.

 

When we say, ‘I may, I can, I will, I shall, You will see yourself’ once a day, how Divine it will be to know, to really know, that the Divine Love of God in Father, Son and Holy Spirit means to enclose us and surround us every day until that time when we will return to the household of God’s Divine Love from whence we come. That day we will all become one with the One who in whose image we are created. Perhaps this is what “You will see yourself” really means: we will see who we really are and who we are created to be. We will see that we are those people meant to accept and share generously with others the Divine Love that those like Julian, Ignatius, Isaiah, Paul and Jesus have tried so hard to describe and to live-out through acts of faith themselves. Surely such knowledge of ourselves deserves at least one day every year to remember who we are and to see ourselves as God sees us – those people made in the image of God’s own Divine Love who may, who can, who will and who shall share that Love with others. All others. Especially those in need. For it is when we do, that we really do see ourselves as we really are: God’s Beloved. Amen.

Pentecost - Do Something New In My Life!

Pentecost 2021 Do Something New In My Life!

Before returning to his Father’s house of eternal love and peace, Jesus prays for an advocate to be with his community, which at the time numbered some 120 men and women. This Advocate, he said, would be the Spirit of Truth “who comes from the Father, and when he comes, he will testify on my behalf. You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning.”

 

That is, the Spirit will prepare them to become evangelists – those who tell the story of Jesus and proclaim the Good News: God forgives you and loves you, no matter what. You cannot earn this news, there is nothing can do to deserve it, you need only accept it. When you do, your life will take a turn, and you will turn, turn until you come down right!

 

Note that although he is the one about to be executed, Jesus is comforting them and giving them assurance that as he returns to that place from whence we all come, this Advocate, this Spirit of Truth will be with them in such a way that they will know he is still with them. He is not leaving them alone. And they are no longer to be disciples, but rather apostles – those who are sent to the four corners of the world to proclaim God’s truth and his Good News.

 

As assuring as this prayer in his announcement is at the Last Supper in chapters 15 and 16 of the Gospel of John, it is safe to say that these newly minted Apostles had no idea what the day the Spirit of Truth arrives would be like. As Luke tells the story in the Acts of the Apostles chapter 2, it is the day of the Jewish Feast of Pentecost in Jerusalem. This time of year marked the start of the wheat harvest and the end of the barley harvest. Called Shavuot, it also marks the time that the Jews were given the Torah on Mount Sinai. Therefore, Shavuot is sometimes called Pentecost which refers to the count of fifty days after Passover. And for that company of 120 companions of Jesus, it the fiftieth day after the Resurrection.

 

“Suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.” This recalls the mighty ruach, the spirit, breath and wind of the Lord God YHWH that swept across the face of the waters in creation! Also, it reminds us of the bush that burns but is not consumed declaring all the earth is holy ground!

 

Just as suddenly, they did in fact all become Apostles and Evangelists declaring the mighty works of God in Christ Jesus! And because of the harvest festival underway, there were Jews and gentile proselytes from all over the ancient world. In this crowd, we are told, they could all hear and understand in their own languages about God’s deeds of power! And you might think that this festival crowd would be mightily impressed and excited. But instead, they ask, “What does this mean?” While others sneered, “They must be drunk, they surely are filled with new wine!”

 

Above the din, Peter raises his voice and says, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:

 

`In the last days it will be, God declares,

that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,

and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,

and your young men shall see visions,

and your old men shall dream dreams.

Even upon my slaves, both men and women,

in those days I will pour out my Spirit;

and they shall prophesy.

And I will show portents in the heaven above

and signs on the earth below,

blood, and fire, and smoky mist.

The sun shall be turned to darkness

and the moon to blood,

before the coming of the Lord's great and glorious day.

Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.' "

 

Like the crowd, it is reasonable for us to ask the same question, “What does this mean?”

For one thing, it is expected that the Lord will save all who want to be saved. And the Spirit will enable young and old, men and women, slaves and free to experience the Spirit of Truth and live to tell about it to all who will listen.

 

But most of all, despite the suffering and the tragedy of crucifixion  that had come upon this little band of 120 companions of Jesus, they are now witnesses to the very Good News that their God forgives everyone and loves everyone no matter what! That it is God’s will to save us all. One needs to simply sign on, accept the news, welcome the Spirit of Truth, and bear witness in new and wonderful and marvelous and beautiful and heavenly with their lives. Life as they knew it had changed!

 

That is, Pentecost is not meant just for the 120, and not just for the crowd on the streets that morning in Jerusalem, but all people, everywhere, all the time. It is time to do something new with our lives. Which also suggests that as we return from this Pandemic, God will likely be urging us not to return to the way things were, but rather will urge us to find new ways to be apostles, storytellers, proclaimers of the news, stewards of God’s love for all people.

 

Later the Apostle Paul in his letter to the churches in Rome puts it this way: “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. [Romans 8:22-27]

 

We don’t yet know what it will look like as we move out of the Pandemic, but is very likely to be new, and even as exciting as that 50^th Day in Jerusalem. God is already at work preparing us for new things in our lives, if only we will listen to the Spirit of Truth and tell the stories of God’s deeds of power to others. All others. Amen. It is truth. It is so! 

We Are to Be In The World but Not Of It

 

Easter 6 In the World but Not of It

“I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.” John 17:15-19

 

Jesus prays for us. He prays to God the Father to protect us from “the evil one.” How often do we read his prayer? He wants us to be in the world but not of it. How much time do we spend being of this world vs not of it?

 

Half of Americans get their news from social media. The other half watch CNN, FOX, MSNBC, NEWSMAX, or, some other news and opinion outlet. A few of us dinosaurs still read the morning newspaper, or perhaps a weekly news journal. But by far the majority of us sit passively watching a screen, or scrolling until we find something that already affirms our world view, our own opinions.

 

Opinions. Facts seem to be a thing of the distant past. It has been publicly pronounced that there is such a thing as “alternative facts.” And we have publicly announced, by word or action, that those who assert alternative facts and even untruths will be rewarded, while those who speak the truth are dismissed. Is this what Jesus has in mind when he prays, “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.”?

 

So, what does Jesus pray for? Not that we should leave this world, but rather that we are to remain in the world but not of it. Which means, at the very least, to live in the word of truth. Jesus is the “word made flesh.” The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Just before leaving, he prayed for us.

 

Just how does one to be in the world but not of it? We can do this because we have alternative News - what a small band of folks in the first century called Good News - evangellion in the Greek. Literally “good angel”. Angels are messengers who bring God’s word of truth to us so that we might be sanctified in the truth through the Good News of Jesus Christ: which is that God forgives us and God loves us no matter what.

 

Since the Pandemic, people literally from around the world and I have spent about 45 minutes Monday through Friday listening to the Good News at Noonday Prayer. It is not always comforting. It is frequently challenging. Such as the simple idea offered by Richard Rohr, a priest and monk, who suggests that “Your image of God creates you.” How often do we consider our image of God? Throughout what we Christians call the Old Testament, from beginning to end, the image of God is described like this: “…you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.” [Jonah 4:2]

 

And John, who tells us that on the night before he died Jesus prays for us, also tells us that Jesus is the Word, the Logos, that was with God in the beginning, and in fact is God through whom all things are created and have their being. Jesus, it turns out, was not out to start a “new” religion. Nor was he trying to reform an “old” religion. He was simply reminding people of what the image of God in Holy Scripture can tell us about ourselves: God, my Father, forgives you, and loves you no matter what. He is a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.

 

Following the reflections of L. William Countryman in his little book, Good News of Jesus, we learn two fundamental things that God has tried to tell us for well over three millenia: You are Forgiven, and I Love you no matter what. The corollary, repeated over and over, is that you are to love yourself and your neighbors equally. Most challenging of all, we are also to love our enemies and pray for them. This constitutes the world view of what we call The Bible and the Good News of Jesus Christ. This is the truth that sanctifies us. This is not “alternative facts,” nor is it opinion, but rather this is alternative News – Good News, which, if we accept it will transform us into the image of God. Which is, as it turns out, what God intended in creating us – female and male God created us in God’s own image. Our image of God creates us.

 

Reminding ourselves of this day after day, Monday through Friday, for well over a year now, sharing it and wrestling with it with others has been transformative. And when I say transformative, it is like raising a child. I remember keeping notes on a legal pad, hour by hour, minute by minute, day after day for each of our children from the moment they come home from the hospital until … well until I would come to the realization that whenever they would hit a developmental marker, just as I thought this was how things would be, Boom! They would change, and just as suddenly it was a whole new ball game! Wrestling with God, as Jacob had tried one night down by the River Jabbok, is like that. God does not stand still. God is not static, any more than we are. Yet, we tend to allow our world view and opinions to calcify making it next to impossible to respond to the next great adventure and developmental change on planet earth and among its wonderfully diverse population of earthlings, creatures and all other living things like oceans, plants, rivers, bushes, trees and flowers. Flowers. Flowers produce minute quantities of pollen which bees can carry from plant to plant to make more flowers, and carry back in the hive, our name for a bee’s community, to transform it into food for the Queen and the entire community to live on and share with one another. It is mysterious really. The more we think we know about things like bees and plants and pollen, the more there is to discover.

 

Like an alcoholic or a drug addicted person who may need to attend a Twelve Step Meeting once a day, I find I need time each day to remember how to be in the world but not of it. After all, that is what Jesus prays for all of us. He knows that we need to step out and beyond this world to be able to better navigate our lives in this world. So that we might be sanctified by the truth that God forgives us and loves us no matter what. That we are created to be God’s image, God’ icons, in this world. Being created in God’s image means that we need to allow ourselves to become gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.

 

It is really quite simple. We can remain addicted to being of the world and look at it through a single source of opinions and “alternative facts.” Or, we can choose not to be “of this world,” and allow ourselves to be challenged by the alternative News, the Good News, which like my high school motto is “Ever changing, yet the same!” Our image of God creates us. Really it does.

Amen. It is truth. It is so.

Imagine

 

Easter 6B -  Imagine

Imagine. Much of the Bible was written in response to a crisis: slavery in Egypt, Exile in Babylon, the destruction of the First and Second Jerusalem Temples. In between there were political and economic scandals, corruption, and occupation by foreign empires. Holy Scripture often attempts to provide a sense of hope and assurance of God’s presence no matter what. The Bible is meant to inspire the imagination not so much to believe in God, but to imagine that there will be a way out of the present difficult circumstances. There is vision. There is reason to hope. There will be joy.

There can be no doubt that Jesus’s familiarity with Isaiah, Amos, Hosea and others of the Hebrew prophets inspired him to teach Peace, Shalom and Love: “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete…I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.” [John 15:9-17] He imagined that we could do this. He imagined that we can in fact abide in his love and love one another.

Just as Isaiah had imagined there would be a way out of Exile to a new life of freedom and shared resources. “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.  Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.” [Isaiah 55:1-2] Isaiah sure had a vivid imagination! Jesus learned from the best. He understood that the holy scriptures inspire us to imagine just what this world can be like so that everyone’s “joy” may be complete, full, full to overflowing! If only we will abide in his love and love one another.

When I got home from church last Sunday when we started this 15^th chapter of John, I listened to the 2021 International Jazz Festival with music from all around the world. The final number was an awe-inspiring performance of about 30 or so musicians and vocalists singing John Lennon’s Imagine. We used to sing this in chapel at St. Timothy’s School for Girls when I was chaplain there. The girls, faculty and staff would sing out loud, with passion, as they sang what a young man from Liverpool imagined the world could be like – all of us living as one, sharing all the world, living life in peace. Why indeed, he seemed to ask, do we spend time and money for that which is not bread and that which cannot possibly satisfy let alone complete and fulfill our joy!

 Once after chapel, a young math teacher asked me why, if I loved Jesus, would I teach the girls a song that imagines a world with “no religion too”? I’m not sure what I said to her then. Maybe I said that Jesus had no intention to start a religion. Paul had no intention to start a new religion. just like the Buddha some six hundred years before Jesus had not wanted to start a religion. They all were opening hearts to a way of life that would end suffering and violence with compassion and love and joy. A world in which one loves one’s self and one’s neighbors equally. Try to imagine this, they all would say, because if we can imagine it, we can be it, we can live it, we can share all the world as one. They lived the very vision they could imagine.

 My first year in Seminary we took field trips. One was to the oldest synagogue in Manhattan. As the rabbi was wrapping things up a classmate said, “We know what priests do (which it turns out we did not!), but what do rabbis do?” Without hesitation the rabbi replied, “A rabbi teaches God’s people with the hope and the goal that one day all the people would become rabbis and there would be no need for there to be rabbis anymore – because everyone would know how to love one another. My role in the community is to put myself out of work!” And that’s what John Lennon imagined as well – a world without countries, a world without possessions, nothing to kill and die for, and no religion too. Imagine living like this!

I remember not so many years ago that Jesus’s imagining that we really could abide in his love and love one another was turned into a counter vision called Left Behind. One could not walk into Barnes and Noble or even Walmart without running into a cardboard kiosk of books about “real Christians” being “raptured” up to heaven and all the rest of us being Left Behind. How on earth does one construe such a perverted view from the life, death and resurrection of a young man who could imagine us all getting along and abiding in his love as he abides in his father’s love? Surely, I would tell myself, Jesus could never imagine God’s love leaving anyone behind. Not the one who spent his life bringing all kinds of people together, sinners, tax collectors, prostitutes, rich people, poor people, healthy people, sick, lame and blind people. He was like the US Military who leave “no fallen comrade behind!” If he only had a few loaves of bread, he would give it all away to feed thousands of people at a time! Without money, without price!

Jesus could live the vision because he had read the Hebrew prophets –  like God talking through Isaiah declaring, I don’t care about your liturgies, your sacrifices, your festivals. I care how you treat one another. I want you to care for the widow, the orphan, the resident alien, the stranger, the poor. Let there be justice rolling down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream, cried Amos! You may say that I’m a dreamer, Jesus would say. But I’m not the only one. Listen to Isaiah and Amos and the Buddha and Confucius. Maybe someday you will join us, and the world will live as one. No one will be left behind. Not ever again. If only we allow ourselves to imagine, it will come to pass. Really it will. Just let yourself imagine and there will be no need for religion because we will have become the image of the love of the living God in all that we say, all that we sing, and all that we do. And our lives will overflow with joy!

 I may have said some of all that to that sincere young woman at St. Tim’s. Or, maybe we just sang the song again the next week in chapel. And the next. And the next until all of us can imagine. Until we all can sing it like I heard Al Jerreau and Esperanza Spalding and Annie Lennox and Kurt Elling and Dee Dee Bridgewater and Dianne Reeves and Sting sing it last Sunday afternoon and heard John Lennon’s words as if for the very first time until my joy was so full, so complete, so overflowing, that tears were streaming down my face. Tears of joy, tears of hope and tears of truth. Imagine that. The power of song. The power of inspired imagination.

And we will sing, sing a new song. Until our imaginations inspire us to live into the visions of Isaiah, Amos, Jesus, Mohammed, Gandhi, King, and yes, John Lennon. And all the world will be as One, sharing all the world. Amen.

 Imagine Jazz Day 2021

Easter 5 B At The Right Moment, I Must Prune

 Easter 5 B   At The Right Moment, I Must Prune

The Catalan artist Joan Miro once said, “I work like a gardener…leaves must be cut so the fruit can grow. At the right moment, I must prune.” Which very well describes the mysterious ways in which God grows the people of God. The Bible describes an ebb and flow of growth and pruning that leads to new and more inclusive growth, beginning with a couple from Ur of the Chaldees, Abram and Sarai, who, as the book of Hebrews puts it, “and they as good as dead!” The goal of creating “a people” at all was to be a “blessing to all the peoples of the earth.” [Genesis 22:18]

 

Some of the pruning, however, was not always the work of the Almighty: the enslavement in Egypt, the destruction of the First Temple, Exile to Babylon, and in the days of Jesus and the early Jesus Movement, the brutal occupation by Rome that led to burning the Second Temple to the ground: all forced pruning. This is the background for Jesus’s final “I am” speech in John 15: I am the Vine, my Father the vine grower, you are the branches. He removes every branch that does not bear fruit, and every branch that bears fruit he prunes to bear more fruit. Abide in me.

 

The word ‘abide’, meno in Greek, can mean: abide, continue, remain, dwell and much more. It is used 40 time in John’s gospel, of which chapter 15 accounts for eleven uses! It can mean to endure courageously even when the going gets tough, and with the Temple’s demise things got very tough for everyone. A major branch had been removed by Rome. The center of worship life for Jews and Christians was and is no longer. The pruning this time had been most severe. What is everyone to do now?

 

The Book of the Acts of the Apostles seeks to answer this for the nascent Jesus Movement: keep doing the things Jesus did, and greater things than these, as Jesus himself had said we would in John 14! So it is that we find Philip, a disciple from Bethsaida, northeast of the Sea of Galilee, instructed by an Angel of the Lord to head south to the wilderness road from Jerusalem to Gaza whereupon he comes across an Ethiopian Eunuch, an official in charge of the treasury for the Candace, Queen of the Kushites in what is now Sudan or southern Egypt. He was heading home to Africa by way of Gaza, and passing the time in his chariot reading the prophet Isaiah, chapter 53 about the Suffering Servant: “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth.” The Spirit urges Philip to join him and Philip

asks if he understands what he is reading.

 

‘The eunuch replied, “About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus. Then as they come upon “some water,” the Eunuch asks Philip to baptize him, which Philip does. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he was passing through the region, he proclaimed the good news to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.’

 

Putting this all together, we won’t even try to understand how Philip ends up in Azotus. The removal of a branch and the pruning of others Jesus speaks of is for his followers, not foreigners, not the Jews or any other religious group. Philip, from the looks of things, must have been a productive branch of the vine, and judging from his work after baptizing the Ethiopian Eunuch, he continued to spread the word. We know from John’s telling of the story, that beginning with the Last Supper, and following the crucifixion, there were some who had fallen away, who did not abide, who did not courageously remain in the Jesus Movement. Those who did, like Philip, pooled their resources to help any and all who were in need while Rome set about persecuting Christians and Jews.

 

Then there is the Ethiopian Eunuch: from Africa, sexually neutered, and unable to continue a family line, he would have been considered unfit to enter the Temple according to the original covenant’s purity code. Yet, as he was reading Isaiah chapter 53 about the suffering servant, it is possible that Philip, helping him to understand the scripture, also shared chapter 56 which reads: “Do not let the foreigner joined to the Lord say, “The Lord will surely separate me from his people”; and do not let the eunuch say, “I am just a dry tree.” For thus says the Lord: To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.”

 

That is, despite being black, a foreigner and a eunuch, it turns out it is not what you are but what you do that counts for being accepted into the covenant of the God of Israel. As Paul would put it in Galatians, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female; all are One in Christ Jesus!” Jesus practiced a ministry of Reconciliation – bringing people together rather than causing division. It is one of the Sins of his Body, the Church, that long after Resurrection and Pentecost we became a cause for division through so many sad episodes like the Crusades, the treatment of women, anti-Semitism, and the enmity between denominations not allowing those from other traditions to share in Holy Communion – the Sacrament that is meant to unite us.

 

As we will hear next Sunday as a continuation of this week’s reading from John 15, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”

 

At Noonday Prayer, Monday through Friday on Facebook Live, we have been examining the implications of what it means to abide in Jesus’s love. What it means to love neighbor and self equally, just as we love God and God loves us and forgives us. It is not an easy road to walk. It is hard, but it is necessary if we are to abide with Jesus and bear much fruit – the fruit of his peace, his Shalom, his turning the world right-side-up again, a world in which we recognize that we all are One with one another and One with God.

 

Until next week, let us all consider what extraordinary courage it took to abide, to remain in the Jesus Movement, for someone like Philip. And how extraordinary it was for him to reach out to a foreigner, a person of color, a eunuch, one considered unclean and outside the realm of the covenant of God’s people. How it took over 500 years from Isaiah chapter 56 to that moment when Philip made the vision of the prophet-poet alive by taking the Ethiopian down to the waters of baptism and saying, “Yes, you are one of us. You always have been. Join us in spreading the Good News!” Think of the pruning of tradition it has taken from Isaiah to Jesus to Philip to accepting women, foreigners, people of color and LGBTQ people into full membership in the Body of Christ today, so that we can truly be the community of love all three of them imagined we could be. Amen. It is truth. It is so.