Of One Heart and Soul

St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, 15 April 2012

“Oh, how good and pleasant it is,” the psalmist says (Psalm 133:1, NRSV), “when brethren live together in unity!”

Today we are not so likely to follow that proclamation with a metaphor of oil on our heads and running down onto the collars of our robes! I’m not sure what our equivalent image of well-being and contentment might be. Perhaps merely an easily tapped supply of clean water for our morning shower—a blessing much of the world does not, in fact, enjoy.

Moving from the Psalm to this morning’s scene from the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 4:32-35, NRSV), we find another image of peace and harmony. The Lukan playwright describes the community of early Christians as being “of one heart and soul.”

What is interesting to me about this story is what the author focuses on as evidence and illustration of the early church’s unity. Notice that it has little to do with doctrine or beliefs—other than that the apostles were testifying to the resurrection.

We know, historically speaking, that many great controversies about doctrine were yet to come. We know that the councils of the church that resolved those controversies did not happen until many years after this scene from Acts.

Rather, the evidence and illustration of unity among early believers laid out in this story is that they had eliminated economic inequality—at least within the Christian community—by sharing everything they had.

This is surely a more startling image for us today than oil running down our chin onto our shirt collar!

The online publication “Business Insider” recently published charts illustrating what they label “15 mind-blowing facts” about economic inequality in the U.S. But the data that stuck with me comes from a couple of economists, one at Harvard Business School and the other at Duke University, who studied what people think the wealth gap in the U.S. is, what they think it should be, and what it actually is.

I was not surprised to learn that we think the gap should be smaller than it actually is. What was rather surprising is that people in general apparently are pretty ignorant of how big the wealth gap in the U.S. is.

In other words, a large random sample of people from a wide spectrum of demographic groups estimated the wealth gap in the U.S. to be 25% narrower than it actually is. That’s a hugely significant error in perception according to all statistical measures of significance.

And the gap between what people hold as ideal versus what actually is? A little over 50%. In other words, to achieve the wealth distribution we say we hold ideal according to this study, a bit more than half of the wealth of our society needs to shift from the top 20% of people to the bottom 60% of people.

Stunning indeed. But I don’t think this story from the Acts of the Apostles is meant to endorse any one economic system over another. I don’t think Holy Scripture in general should be taken as endorsing particular political or economic systems.

Rather, I believe the stories of Jesus and his early followers teach us what to value. They teach us how we ought to relate to God and each other. They teach us what our priorities ought to be. And they leave the details of how up to us.

Maybe that’s where the expression, “the devil is in the details” comes from, because we humans sure know how to fight and fuss over the details of how to get something done!

But you know what? I’m okay with that. I’m okay that we humans must debate and disagree and question politicians and question each other and accept some plans and reject others and change our minds… and all of that.  I’m okay with it because it is how we learn and grow and overcome our own inherent self-centeredness.

Show me a person who cannot change his mind, a person who cannot modify her position in light of new data, a person who cannot even hear and consider an alternative point of view, and I’ll show you a small, anxious mind trapped in its own fears and limitations.

I have a friend who decided a few years ago that her inherited religion was not serving her contemporary needs. And so she did what so many do today, she went “church shopping.”

One of the first churches she visited piqued her interest and so she joined the adult Christian education class. The third or fourth Sunday she attended the class she was becoming comfortable enough to ask a question. The topic was something that she had often wondered about and so she posed her question. Without missing a beat, the Sunday School teacher turned to her and said, “We’re not here to argue.”

My friend shut her mouth, sat respectfully through the remainder of the class, then got up and walked out, never to return. Today she’s an Episcopalian!

Today’s Gospel lesson is offered to us as evidence of the resurrection of Jesus the Christ. The author himself is explicit about his purpose: “These [things] are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah” (John 20:19-31, NRSV).

We could talk about many aspects of this passage. Indeed, we could debate a number of things, like what kind of body Jesus had post resurrection, such that it still bore the wounds of crucifixion yet he could pass through locked doors.

Instead, let us simply observe that Thomas the questioner, Thomas who rejects the perception of the other disciples, is present the second time Jesus appears. That means he was not thrown out of the group for questioning and challenging and rejecting what had quickly become the dominant view among the disciples. 

Moreover, Jesus himself does not rebuke Thomas, but patiently invites him to check out the evidence. And not just to check it out visually.., but to touch it!

The Increduility of St. Thomas, by Caravaggio

What a totally loving and accepting invitation! We humans tend to protect our wounds, to “nurse our wounds” we say, even to hide them from each other. Yet here is Jesus saying to Thomas the doubter, “Put your finger here.. Reach out your hand and put it in my side.”

How will we define Christian unity today? Is the resurrection of Jesus the Christ still powerful enough to overcome disagreements about doctrine, and to enable us to lovingly engage each other’s questions and challenges? Will future generations see evidence of our testimony to the resurrection in our ministry to a broken society and world?

AMEN

The Last Speech: A Sermon for 27 November 2011

Christ Episcopal Church, St. Joseph, LA

                                                                
Every fall semester, I teach an advanced writing class at ULM. The first day of class I require students to complete a diagnostic writing exercise. I give them several topics to choose from and a time and word limit, and set them to work. One of the topics is “The Last Speech.”

For “The Last Speech,” they must imagine they have six months to live and write the farewell speech they would give in the waning days of their lives. Young people write some interesting things when presented with that particular challenge. I’ll share a few examples with you in a moment.

But first let’s turn to today’s lessons and the church calendar for how my students and their essays are relevant today.
                          

Detail, the Pontifical Irish College Chapel

                       
I might also have begun this sermon by saying “Happy New Year”! Today is, of course, the first Sunday of Advent, the first day of the church year. Today we begin again the familiar cycle: Advent; Christmas—all 12 days of it; Epiphany, followed by a short bit of “ordinary time”; then Lent—all 40 days of it, with Sundays being in, but not of, Lent.
 
Then comes the peak of the church’s year, the terrifying and glorious events of Holy Week and Easter. Forty days into Eastertide, our Lord ascends into heaven, and just 10 days later comes Pentecost—the birthday of the church, which again introduces the looong season of what we call ordinary time.

So “Happy New Year” it is, but… just what does Advent call our attention to? Christmas, the coming of our Lord in human form, for sure.

But why then the color purple? Wouldn’t the red of Christmas be more appropriate? Why then greenery on the altar, rather than festive poinsettias?

When we Christians here the words of the prophet Isaiah and the psalmist calling for the coming of God Almighty, we know the answer. God came!

But that answer is easy to forget, given the challenges of life. We too have mountains to climb. We cry out with Isaiah (64:1-9, NRSV), O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence…

Indeed, God seems to have forgotten us in the most difficult passages of life. Our strength is drained by the winds of change and the roller-coaster of life. And so we cry out with the psalmist (Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18, NRSV) , …stir up your strength and come to help us.

Advent focuses our attention on God’s answer to the human cry for God’s presence in the world. But at the same time, Advent reminds us that the ultimate answer, the final moment of reconciliation and end to human suffering is yet to come.

As Paul writes to the Corinthians (I Corinthians 1:3-9, NRSV), we wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will strengthen us so that we will make it to that great day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

But leave it to the always cautious if not downright gloomy Mark to remind us of the stresses and uncertainties of being between the babe in the manger and our Lord in triumph (13:24-37, NRSV): [A]bout that day or hour no one knows, writes Mark, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. ...Therefore, keep awake-- for you do not know when the master…will come... And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.

Living in between is the nature of our lives. Living between Incarnation and Resurrection defines our days. And this in-between time is fraught with beginnings and endings and uncertainties about them.

A dear friend of mine buried his 90+-year-old father about a month and a half ago. Then two and a half weeks ago the wife of his best friend, who was also his friend and his own age—that being mid-50s—died a not so timely death after a battle with cancer. Then, most shocking of all, on the eve of Thanksgiving, just four days ago, his 33-year-old son-in-law also lost a valiant battle to that dread disease.

He said to me on the phone yesterday, I hope I am done with death for a while. I hope and pray he is, too. But we never know.

Earlier I promised to return to my students and their assignment. This year three young men took up the challenge of writing their last speech. Their approaches were quite different and each one instructive in its one way.

One imagines himself at the age of 46 with many regrets but determined to not waste his remaining time. No more passing up opportunities, he wrote, I’m embracing everything from here on out. And he imagines a trip to Australia, one that he didn’t take last year, but now he’s pricing some plane tickets for himself and the family.

Another of the three has clearly felt some real pain is his short years. He thanks his parents, reminds them that he had to wear the ill-fitting hand-me-down clothes of his older brother, their “golden child,” but also that they were also always there for him. And I love you, he says. After noting a couple of other great disappointments —one at the hands of his best friend, who stole his girlfriend their freshman year, and another in his country. But he ends with one word: Peace. He has come to terms.

The third young man lives his life in a wheelchair, and his last speech is a statement of courage and defiance. My disability does not define me. I define it, he wrote. That is what I want to talk to you about tonight. Doing the best with what you have and never looking back.

I will close with the words of Mary W. Anderson in an article published by Christian Century.

What if you knew you had only one month left in your life? she asks. Would you finish up important matters at work? Would you travel to a place you always wanted to go? Would you pray more, go to church more, do that generous act you always wanted to do for others? Would you find ways to leave a mark on the world? Would you reconcile a fractured friendship?

By answering yes to one or more of these possibilities, she continues, we indicate that in our last days we would be better stewards of all the things God has given us in this life... In the intensity of last days, we would live better, be better. We would be more generous, more focused on the most important things in life. The question is: Why do we need to be under threat of death to be better stewards?

In this Advent season, as we focus on the gift to come, let us also awaken to our stewardship of all that is in this uncertain in-between time of our life on earth. Come, Lord Jesus.                                                          

AMEN