YOU are a Child of God

Easter 7, Year C

On a warm, clear, picture-perfect Monday afternoon just two weeks ago, the Most Rev. Michael Curry, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, took to this pulpit to walk with us, teach us, about the Jesus Movement. He’s been on this theme of Jesus Movement for a while, so he’s had plenty of time to hone the message and adapt it to whatever audience might be listening. His sermon was probably the most energetic and lively and dynamic that this pulpit as seen in a long, long, time (if ever). George Wakefield, the well-known preacher from the Great Awakening, preached here at Christ Church in 1765 and might have brought as much thunder as Bishop Curry. Maybe. Wakefield had the reputation, but of course we don’t have a recording. (Click here for a recording of Bishop Curry's sermon.)

The Most Rev. Michael Curry

A fair number of you came up to me (and later I found out to Bishop Skirving, our bishop) and said to one or both of us: “Wow! Wasn’t that amazing! Wasn’t that just the best sermon you’ve ever heard!” (Preachers love to hear their parishioners rave about other preachers, by the way… J). It turns out that Bishop Skirving & I had a similar response: “Yes! It was a great sermon. Now what are we going to about it? Where are you going to go with it?” And not unlike the rich young man who asked Jesus what he needed to do to inherit eternal live, that answer did not sit well with all who asked. There is an energy and a spirit that God has blessed Michael Curry with, an energy that is infection and invigorating. It is not for our entertainment or a flash in the pan. Woe be unto us if we were to hear Bishop Curry’s message of the Jesus Movement, of evangelism through reconciliation, of living a life that reminds the world of God’s love for all of humanity (black, white, straight, gay, natural-born, immigrant, Democrat or Republican). Woe be unto us if we hear that message and do nothing about it!

Our culture and our society have dissolved to a point where too many people are hesitant to lend aid or even an ear to someone else if they have differing view or perspectives on that thing that could be so incredibly minuscule. Too often, we are more concerned with every other label someone might have and if we like those labels then we might give more credence to what we hare or see. If we don’t like those labels, then, well, might we even give them the time of day?  All of this division and partitioning and fracturing has caused us to put these different labels over the single most important identifier we have. We are all a CHILD OF GOD.

If there is a message the world needs to hear from Christians of all branches of the Jesus Movement, that’s it à That no matter what other label we put on ourselves or others or what label others try to put on us, the one that says CHILD OF GOD is the one that must show first.

During this Easter season, we heard highlights from the Book of Acts about how the Jesus Movement was spreading throughout all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the Earth. In that process, in that movement, the disciples of Jesus who have been left to carry on his message without him have found that God, as they came to know God in the person of Jesus, could have an impact on people they never thought possible. God does this sort of thing throughout all Scriptures, using imperfect and unexpected people to accomplish the divine plan. We hear stories in the Epiphany season where Jesus reveals who he is to some unexpected people who may or may not have even been looking for the Messiah.

Beginning with the 3^rd Sunday of Easter this year, where we heard the story of Saul’s Damascus Road conversion in Acts 9, we begin to see how the disciples are carrying the Jesus Movement beyond the Jewish Community to some who were known as God-fearers, like the story of Lydia we heard last week, and others who were outside that tradition, most likely like the jailer and his family in today’s reading from Acts 16. These conversions were not without controversy. Devout Jesus followers were more than a little nervous about Saul (now Paul) because he had been persecuting Christians mercilessly. Faithful Jews were more than a little concerned about Gentiles becoming followers of The Way because they understood this as a Jewish thing and questioned whether or not God could speak to or work through those born outside of the Covenant. That gets (mostly) resolved in Acts 15, if you want o tread a little more about it.

Living into the Jesus Movement, both then and now, is not without it’s costs. Followers of Jesus were beaten and jailed and disowned by their families. It cost them prestige and prominence in their communities because they took a rise to share and to be the love of Christ in a broken world. They took a risk to share Jesus’ message, not to bring more into the fold as a Child of God, but because they already were a child of God and they needed to hear it!

That’s the essence of the Jesus Movement à Not that there’s a whole world waiting to become Children of God, but there’s a whole world full of God’s Children who need to hear it, experience it, believe it. And it’s not Michael Curry’s job to tell them. At least, it’s not his alone. It’s yours. And it’s mine. And it’s ours together. And it starts with the simplest of steps. It starts with you yourself knowing that you. Are. A. Child. Of. God..

It is my inmost prayer each week that you leave this place empowered to be the hands, feet and voice of Jesus in the world. Today, as you go back to your seat from receiving Communion (or a blessing if you choose not to receive), you will be handed two stickers that say “I am a Child of God.” One is for you. 

Wear it as a reminder of who you are and whose you are. Put it someplace where you will see and remember that YOU are a child of God. The other one? Guess what. You get to give it away. I challenge you to give it to someone who needs to hear it, maybe for the first time. Maybe for the 300^th time. Maybe your mind is already churning with who to give it to. Maybe you’re going to wait until a time that God might put someone in your path who needs that reminder.

The Jesus Movement started with small steps, too, many, many years ago, and look where we are today. Only God knows where the small steps of today’s Christians will lead.

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How to be Here

How to Be Here: A Guide to Creating a Life Worth Living by Rob Bell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Good stuff to ponder on paying attention to where you are, who you are with, and what it is that feeds your soul. He lets his faith show through his work without letting the words overpower what God has given him to share. He puts in just enough quotes and Scripture references to remind you that what happened then matters now, but enough other stories, too, to remind us that God still speaks through everyday people.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go clean up my office! Thanks, Rob!



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Easter 4, Year C



 I was leading a mission trip several years ago, and we got to about Thursday of the week, which if you’ve ever traveled with a large group of people, you know that’s about the time when you’ve all had just about enough “togetherness.” So, I gave everyone the 5-minute warning before we left for the day, which was also when I realized that I could not find the keys to the van. I had EVERYONE searching for those keys and could. Not. Find. Them! All of a sudden, one of the participants looked at me and said, “Hey Paul… Those keys you’re missing… Are they the ones hanging from your pinky?” I tell you that story because there’s a parallel to today’s Gospel reading. As he does throughout the Gospels, Jesus is encountering very pointed questions from those who can’t or don’t want to see him for who he is. Jesus, the Way, the Truth, and the Life, is standing right in front of these people, just the same way we heard him standing in front of Pontius Pilate a few weeks ago, and yet they still ask, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you’re the Messiah, tell us plainly?” Another way to translate the Greek is “Why do you keep annoying us with this stuff!?” Before we go any deeper, we should set the scene—John is pretty good at giving us the context of Jesus’ teaching. The Festival of the Dedication is known today as Hanukah, celebrating the rededication of Temple after its desecration by Antiochus Epiphanes. You can read about that in First Maccabees. The portico of Solomon was where, after his Resurrection and Ascension, Jews who followed Jesus and saw him as the Messiah would gather to share his teachings. So it’s no small thing that this is the spot in the Temple where John tells this story. The other important feature of this story is that it one more time in the Gospels where Jesus is seen keeping the important festivals of his faith. Which leads me to another important scene setting question… I wondered all week: What in the world is this story doing as an Easter reading? We should be hearing about the stories of Jesus with his disciples after the resurrection, not something about sheep and wondering whether Jesus is the Messiah. However, in the early days of Christianity, images of Jesus were not of him on the cross or as an infant in the manager or even an empty tomb with a triumphant Christ. They pictured Jesus as a gentle shepherd. What is believed to be the earliest painting features a young Jesus in a white tunic with a lamb over his shoulders. What the religious leaders were expecting was a military/political leader who would talk about ousting Romans. Not someone who talked about being a shepherd. In John’s Gospel, Jesus hasn’t really revealed himself as the Messiah since early on with the Woman at the Well (Chapter 4). So this call to “tell us plainly” strikes a chord because almost everything Jesus has been doing up to this point has led plenty of other people to acknowledge him as the Son of God or the Holy One of God as Peter says at the end of Chapter 6. This little snippet from the 10th chapter today is part of Jesus’ longer teaching on being the Good Shepherd and about sheep and the religious leaders are divided over what is saying. In fact, just one verse after what we heard today, it says, “The Jews took up stones again to stone him.” (They did this in chapter 8, and he slipped past them!) It was prompted by his statement “The Father and I are one.” Swaths of people are following Jesus, many of whom we can assume are watching this exchange happen. And many of those same people either see him as the Messiah or they could really care less if he’s the Messiah because they see the power of his work. Jesus has said in previous passages (and even alludes to it here) that titles don’t really matter. Doing what is best for the Kingdom of God, right then and maybe for the future, is what’s most important. And yet… there is a whole group of people who can’t see Jesus for who he is. The reality for those folks is that whatever the Messiah was supposed to look like, Jesus didn’t fit the bill. He didn’t have the military clout to overthrow Rome. He bucked up against religious leaders, even as he observed the customs and requirements. He didn’t aspire to any sort of political power. And yet… He seemed to be drawing people closer to God, closer to an understanding, some would say a new or a renewed understanding of what it was to be a child of God, what it meant to be in presence of God, for God to come near (Emmanuel = God with us) and for God to live and breathe and speak to them in ways that weren’t legalistic or over-bearing. But in ways that conveyed the very heart of God as it was conveyed all those years ago to Moses, the first Shepherd of God’s flock. When I was in a Bible study group a number of years ago looking at a text similar to this, a friend of mine said, “There’s a cast of hundreds if not thousands hanging on Jesus’ every word, and yet the Gospel writer was more concerned with Jesus’ detractors. What’s up with that!? Why not focus on where Jesus is getting his message across instead of those who don’t get it?” And the answer is two-fold. One – The Gospel writers, especially Matthew & John, are trying to show Jesus as the perfection of the Jewish faith, so it’s those who don’t get it who are wrong and we need to see Jesus teaching them a few things to set the record straight. The Scribes and Pharisees are foils to the plot, if you will. And Two -- we often learn the most from the people whose question our motives and make us say more about what we’re thinking. Before we get too high on ourselves, that we’d most certainly be in the crowd that was amazed at all Jesus said and did, how many times have you missed seeing God and-or Jesus because what you were seeing didn’t match up with what you thought you were looking for? How many times have we as a people of God insisted that Jesus looks, acts, calls, believes (whatever it is!) one way, only to discover it’s 90 or 180-degrees different than what we thought? I don’t know how many people I’ve talked to over the years, both as a lay professional and an ordained one, who have said, “I keep looking for God, but maybe I’m looking in the wrong places.” Or “I don’t think God is anywhere near me. I think it’s supposed to feel/look/sound this way and it just doesn’t.” People of all ages and walks of life. And I totally get it. It can be painful and lonely and deeply unsettling. I’ve been there, and there’s no guarantee that I won’t walk that path again myself. (Clergy aren’t immune!) My typical response is to ask, “What are you looking for? What are you expecting to hear/see/feel?” Just as Jesus was doing amazing things for throngs of people to experience, there were people who set their expectations on one thing, only to miss what was right in front of them. We get so preoccupied on where we think we left our car keys to miss the fact that they are in our hand. When we begin to let go of those preoccupations and see that God/Jesus/Holy Spirit don’t always look/feel/sound like we expect, we can begin to see/hear/know that our Triune God is not only right in front of us and all around us, but in some of the most unexpected places. Remember, people were looking for a military or political leader. But a shepherd? That’s not what anyone expected a Messiah to look like. But this is Jesus we’re talking about.