What About Philip?

“Philip said to Jesus, ‘Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.’”

Seeing is believing. Philip had spent all of that time with Jesus, even bringing his reluctant friend Nathanael along, and he still didn’t get it. He couldn’t understand that in seeing Jesus he was seeing God. Jesus had to make it really, really plain to him. Then two chapters later, when the disciples said that they finally got it, Jesus immediately told them that they would be scattered in spite of their belief. Indeed they were, as soon as he was arrested.

Philip went and hid like the rest of them. Through the trial and passion of Jesus only Peter hung around, apparently so he could deny knowing Jesus three times. Even so, the group stayed in touch after Jesus died. They were all together behind closed doors three days later when the risen Christ suddenly appeared in the room. Philip’s eyes probably popped. This wasn’t the Father he had asked for; this was something totally unexpected.

Fifty days later they were still together on Pentecost, the traditional Jewish celebration of the wheat harvest. Suddenly there was a sound “like the rush of a violent wind…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.”

What would it have been like to be in that group, to have a tongue of fire sitting on top of you and suddenly be filled with words that were a mystery to you? What would it be like to be totally consumed by the Holy Spirit? They must have seemed out of their minds, those disciples, for the people around them thought they were drunk. Peter managed to find words that everyone could understand so he could preach, and assure the crowd that they hadn’t hit the bars that early in the day.

What about Philip? He ended up getting a lot more than he bargained for. He wanted to see and be satisfied. Instead he saw little but was filled to overflowing. The ironic thing is that we often ask for little when God wants to give extravagantly. We think we know what we want, but God gives something else that is so much greater. We want to see the Father – and discover that we have been made joint heirs with Christ, as the Apostle Paul puts it. Ask for a little, get a lot.

And what about those who don’t get what they ask? What about the apparently unanswered prayers for health and safety in the midst of death and destruction? Is the love of God limited to a few chosen people, the inner circle? That’s a gospel that is sometimes preached, but not by me. I have no doubt that human sin can thwart the effect of God’s grace, and that a fallen world waiting for its final redemption can bring pain and suffering. But I cast my lot with Philip. I’ll keep asking, and try my best to hold on when the wind and fire arrive.


Pentecost: Acts 2:1-21; Psalm 104:25-35, 37; Romans 8:14-17; John 14:8-17, 25-27.

Given and Sent

The Apostle Paul had an attitude. No doubt about that. He wanted everyone to listen to him, because he had some important things to say about Jesus Christ. So when a slave girl followed him, day after day, yelling at people to pay attention because he was a slave of the Most High God and knew a way of salvation, Paul finally blew up. He ordered the spirit of prophecy to come right out of her, and it did. After that she wasn’t of much use to her owners, so they angrily dragged Paul and his friend Silas off to jail. We aren’t told what happened to the slave girl.

It was a bad night for Paul and Silas, hurting from a beating and their feet spread apart in stocks. They kept their spirits up by singing hymns, maybe even including this week’s psalm. They must have had powerful singing voices, for the earth shook and the shackles fell and the jail doors opened. Wakened by the commotion, the jailer was sure everyone had fled and that he’d have to pay for it in the morning, so he decided to save the executioner some work. Paul stopped him just in time from doing himself in. Still shaking, he asked Paul what he needed to do to be saved. Like any good street evangelist, Paul gave him a simple answer: “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.” And so everybody in his house was baptized without delay.

The jailer’s conversion was dramatic. Conversions often are in the Bible; that’s what made them memorable. Yet quiet conversions are just as important, because everyone is called. Everyone is invited. “Let everyone who is thirsty come,” we hear at the end of the book of Revelation. “Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.” Take the water of life as a gift that God gives freely, abundantly, extravagantly.

“Give” appears nearly twenty times in the seventeenth chapter of John’s Gospel. Often it is in the perfect tense, “has given,” implying that what was given in the past continues to affect the present – the “gift that keeps on giving,” as the old Victrola ads used to say. That gift is love, given to us by God through Jesus Christ, love that is the very Being of God. God’s love is beyond comprehension, more beautiful and wonderful than we dare imagine, and it is given freely. “The love with which you loved me,” Jesus prays to God, “may be in them, and I in them.”

Dwelling in that love, Jesus also prays that all may be one. That may be hardest for us to accept or imagine. But if God is willing to take in apostles with an attitude and fearful jailers, then God will certainly take in you and me and everyone who thirsts. Yet the gift comes with a catch. Having received it, we are then sent to take it to others. It is not for us to hoard; we must also freely give it. Who do you know who is thirsty? Who needs the love of God found in Jesus Christ? Who desires to be within the unity of God?

Let everyone who is thirsty, come. Let anyone who wishes, take the water of life as a gift.

Easter 7: Acts 16:16-34; Psalm 97; Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21; John 17:20-26.

Peace Where There is No Peace

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives.

I have lived long enough to have witnessed how elusive peace on earth really is. For my father’s generation, there were the very real dangers of German expansionism that resulted in two world wars. For my generation, there was the more elusive threat of Communism and the country-dividing conflict in Viet Nam that it spawned. Now, even as weapons have become more precise and more destructive, the combat zone has become murkier and the weapons more useless against a shadowy enemy. No longer are imperialist countries the issue; instead, there are “cells” that create fear simply by planting crude bombs made from readily available goods.

The Christian Church has been for many people a refuge from the world of fear, a place that is reliably the same, week after week. For them, change in the Church is threatening. For others, lack of change is stifling. For yet others who have suffered mental or physical abuse by Christians, the Church is itself a source of fear. And increasingly “Christian” is an adjective attached to newsworthy examples of prejudice or narrow-mindedness.

Why is the peace of Jesus so elusive? Perhaps it is because the name of Jesus has been used so many times as a battle cry. Ever since coming of draft age during the Viet Nam era, I have been fascinated by the historic peace churches, the Friends (Quakers) and the Mennonites, in particular. They believe that the teachings of Jesus are essentially pacifist, and refuse to engage in combat under any circumstances. I know the world would be very different had that view prevailed in our history, yet I will say that most Christians have accepted precious little of the gift of peace which Jesus has tried to give us. Instead, we have sought the world’s peace, a tense absence of conflict held in place by power.

Paul’s vision of the man who said, “Come over to Macedonia and help us,” was used by missionary-minded Western Christians who “viewed peoples of other races and religions as living in darkness and deep despair and as imploring Westerners to come to their aid.”* We still suffer from the consequences of that missionary imperative, for it created lasting instability in many parts of the Global South, and for some, rejection of Christianity as a Western religion.

We cannot undo the past. But we can do a better job of seeking the peace of God rather than the peace of the world. If the Church as a whole were to do that, perhaps “Christian” in the news would no longer be pejorative.

May God be merciful to us and bless us; show us the light of his countenance and be gracious unto us.

Easter 6: Acts 16:9-15; Psalm 67; Revelation 21:1-10, 22-22:5; John 14:23-29. *David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission, p. 340. It’s a tome, but well worth the read. For those who have trouble getting through it, there’s also a reader’s guide to Bosch's book.

Who Likes Being Left Out?

When I was growing up, I always dreaded the pick-up ball games where the “captains” of each team alternately picked players from the group of boys hanging around. I was always one of the last to be picked. Maybe it was being ungainly from various parts of my body growing at different rates, or maybe I already had a reputation for being more brains than brawn. Whatever the reason, I was left shuffling my feet until all the better players had been chosen. At least there were a couple of pudgy kids who were always dead last.

Sometimes it seems like we spend most of our lives trying to figure out where we are in the pecking order, glad that we’re not as bad as those guys but envious of those who are better. At our worst, we humans enshrine in law who’s in and who’s out. (The state of Arizona is only the latest example of that, not to minimize in any way the iniquities that will likely result if their new immigration law takes effect.)

It’s nice to know, I guess, that spending a lot of time around the Son of God didn’t predispose Jesus’ disciples to naturally take to those who were different. As one commentator put it, their faith and knowledge are both inadequate; they are still of this world. So Jesus has to be very explicit. “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Oddly enough, that heart-to-heart talk took. Christians were recognized by their non-Christian neighbors as different. They actually got along and didn’t try to kill or cheat one another. (That would come much later.) Not only did they take care of their own, they also helped the poor and needy around them.

Some of those early Christians had trouble disentangling their Jewish roots, however. They weren’t interested in picking any Gentiles for their team. Paul had to be blinded for three days to get there. Peter had to dream of forbidden food while he was famished, and then argue with God about what he should eat. After hearing the same thing three times (a common event with Peter – he must have been a slow learner), he finally figured out that maybe God was right. Then when his preaching caused Gentiles to start speaking in tongues, even he was impressed. Apparently his Jewish friends were, too. (As an aside, I’m not quite sure what I’d do if my preaching caused an outbreak of tongues, but it’s not something on my worry list.)

If it hadn’t been for Peter’s dream, there wouldn’t be pork chops for dinner, and most of us wouldn’t be Christians. We’d still be kicking up dust at the edge of the ball field. Yet once we were picked for the team, it was easy to forget those left behind. But those are people God still loves just as much as us. And that’s a lesson we never seem to learn.


Easter 5: Acts 11:1-18; Psalm 148; Revelation 21:1-6; John 13:31-35. The commentator mentioned above is C.K. Barrett, whose The Gospel According to John is still the only Greek commentary I know. Besides, I’m using my father’s copy, a first edition. The passage quoted is from page 337.

Dorcas

When I was a child, I went with my mother to every church event next door. I had to. My parents couldn’t afford a babysitter, and my sisters were in college by the time I was seven. So I learned a lot about ladies’ clubs and Jell-O salad and other things that have turned out to be useful to a parish priest.

One church group that always mystified me was the Dorcas Society. Their function was clear enough – sewing items of clothing that would be given away. My mother and the other women would haul their sewing machines to the church once a month and sit for several hours turning big pieces of cloth into real clothes. I was fascinated by the magic of it all. Years afterward I was happy to get my mother’s old sewing machine and make everything from curtains to jumpers to kites.

But who or what was Dorcas? That was the mystery. Only much later did I realize that the group was named after someone in the Bible, the subject of this week’s resurrection story. (Or perhaps resuscitation; the text only says that Peter brought her back to life.) Dorcas must have either been pretty or fleet of foot to get her name (which means gazelle, as does Tabitha in Aramaic). Dorcas was also an excellent seamstress, even without a brand new Singer. When she died, her sewing club showed Peter the extensive wardrobe she had made by hand.

The story really is touching. Dorcas had died and was prepared for burial. The word had gotten out that Peter the Wonderworker was in a nearby town, so he was sent for. When he arrived, he was shown to the upper room where the weeping widows were keeping watch over the body. Peter needed some quiet, so he had them leave and then prayed. When he said “Tabitha, get up,” she opened her eyes and saw him. Then he put his rough fisherman’s hand in her soft seamstress’s hand and she got up, just like that.

Jesus had used similar words when he held the hand of a twelve-year-old child: Talitha cum – “Child, arise.” In that case, too, someone who was dead returned to life. One can speculate on natural reasons how it happened; certainly before embalming people were buried alive. But that’s not the point. The point is that one who seemed dead was now alive.

We aren’t told if Dorcas went back to sewing, but I’m sure she did. Like her namesakes centuries later, she probably got together again with her friends and turned shapeless fabric into useful clothing, amid talk of the latest doings and a table of Jell-O salads waiting by the side. That’s really what the church is at its best: people enjoying one another’s company while doing something that takes them beyond themselves. That, and making sure there’s enough food to eat when the work’s finished.

4 Easter: Acts 9:36-43; Psalm 23; Revelation 7:9-17; John 10:22-30.

An Instrument Whom I Have Chosen

We’re studying Paul’s missionary journeys on Wednesday evenings during the Easter season, at the suggestion of our deacon. At the first session last week, someone loaned me a book on Paul that “was too boring to read.” I made my way through the first chapter long enough to get the main thesis: Christianity would not exist as a world religion without Paul. Jesus himself was just another no-name revolutionary put to death by the Romans; it was Paul who turned him into the Son of God. And Nero’s blaming of the Christians for burning Rome put them on the map. If Nero hadn’t created martyrs, Christianity would have died out.

The underlying assumption of the author, which is never voiced, is that of course Jesus could not really have been divine. Such things don’t happen in our rational world. Somebody had to put that idea in everyone’s head. And who else but Paul? It’s an old, well-trod path, separating the Jesus of history from the Christ of faith, as though we can better know what happened in the first century than the people who were closest to it. We’ll use what they wrote, but then tell you what they really meant and what really happened.

What really happened is something strange on the road to Damascus. Paul never describes the event in his letters, but Luke gives three accounts in the Acts of the Apostles, one within the narrative and two as parts of Paul’s defense before his accusers. All of the accounts are a little bit different, which shouldn’t be surprising. All include a blinding light, a voice, and a commission. Paul’s commission comes through Ananias, a disciple who is sent into the lion’s den, as it were, to minister to this person who had been hauling Christians off to jail. (“Saul, still breathing threats and murder” is how the story starts.) When Ananias protests, God says, “Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen…”

Paul always said that he was an apostle, sent by Christ, who appeared to him “last of all, as to one untimely born.” He counted himself the equal of (and sometimes better than) Simon Peter. But Paul didn’t go through the grilling Peter did. Peter had denied he knew Jesus three times in order to save his own skin, so when Jesus treated everyone to a post-resurrection breakfast, Peter had to say three times that he loved Jesus. Each time Jesus gave him a commission to “feed my sheep,” ending with the same words he had used when he first called Peter: “Follow me.” Peter, too, was an instrument whom God had chosen.

All of us are instruments of God. All of us have been chosen by God. Some days we sit like Paul, blinded, waiting for someone to come and show us the way. Or like Peter, having to be reminded multiple times what it is we are called to do. Other days the way is clear and the road straight. None of this has anything to do with Nero and the burning of Rome. Nor was it invented by Paul. Instead, it's what God had in mind all along – that each of us would hear in our own way the voice of the risen Jesus Christ saying, “Follow me.”

3 Easter: Acts 9:1-20; Psalm 30; Revelation 5:11-14; John 21:1-19.

Easter Sunday

[The following is the text of my Easter Sunday sermon, for those who missed it. Next week I hope to return to a weekly blog based on the upcoming Sunday's lectionary.]

Jesus has died. There’s no mistaking that. He had suffered on the cross, watched by a lot of people, including a group of women who had followed him. They saw his body lowered from the cross and put in a tomb. They saw a big stone rolled against that tomb, and went away crying.

Mary Magdalene was one of those who had watched. As soon as the Sabbath day was over, long before dawn the next day, she went to the tomb to cry some more. There was enough light to see that the stone had been rolled back and the tomb was empty. So she ran and told Simon Peter what she had seen.

Peter went barreling out in the darkness to see for himself, with another disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, often identified with John the Evangelist. The scene is almost comical, with the young John outrunning Peter, who eventually arrived, huffing and puffing. John didn’t have the nerve to actually go into the tomb, but Peter didn’t hesitate. They both saw the cloths, but no Jesus. So they went back home, totally baffled.

Mary must have gone with them, because she stuck around to cry some more. So she is the one who has a conversation with the angels. And she is the first one to see Jesus, even though she doesn’t recognize him at first. It’s only when he calls her by name that she suddenly knows that he is the one she’s been looking for, and she holds on to him.

Each of the Gospel writers has a gripping story of the first Easter. Each one is a little different. But there are the same elements in each: the first witness to the resurrection is Mary Magdalene. The male disciples don’t believe her; they have to see for themselves. And no one seems to know what’s really going on. All of this is just what you would expect from people who have actually witnessed an event. If it were all made up, everybody’s story would be the same.

When we think of the resurrection, if we think of it at all, we often jump straight to the picture of paradise that we heard this morning in the passage from Isaiah. It was actually written during the time of Israel’s exile in Babylon, and the prophet was promising a new and much better life back in Israel. But the promise is expressed in cosmic terms: there will be a new heavens and a new earth, and a new Jerusalem. It will be a place where there will be no weeping, where people will live to old age in their own houses and eat the fruit of their own vineyards. They would be blessed by the Lord. The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. It’s a wonderful series of images. But it doesn’t much sound like earth now, does it?

And it doesn’t much sound like the Gospel stories of the resurrection, either. That’s because the resurrection of Jesus Christ was only the beginning. A new world started at Easter, and continues to embrace us through the power of the Holy Spirit, given to us at baptism. In the words of British Bishop N.T. Wright, the project that began at Easter, the defeat of sin and death, has not yet been finished. The full and final redemption of God’s good creation, and ourselves with it, will come when Jesus once again reappears.

So what’s to be done in the meantime? If you look closely at each of the resurrection stories, they don’t talk about personal hope. There’s no mention of life after death or eternal life. They don’t say, “Jesus is risen, therefore you will be too.” Those ideas don’t show up until later, after the Church reflected some more on the resurrection of Christ. No, if you listen carefully to these earliest Easter stories, they all say the same thing: “Jesus is risen, therefore you have work ahead of you.”

Consider the conversation Jesus had with Mary Magdalene in today’s Gospel. Jesus doesn’t say, “Tell everyone that they’ll be resurrected just like me.” Instead, Jesus says, “Go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to my father and your father, to my God and your God.’” And so Mary goes out and becomes the first Apostle to the Apostles. She announces to them, “I have seen the Lord.”

What work does God have in mind for you? Where is God calling you in your life? One way to figure that out is to think about what you are passionate about. The author Fredrick Buechner put it beautifully when he said, “God calls you to that place where your deep joy meets the world’s deep longing.” That is where you are called to be a witness to resurrection life. That is where you will be able to say with Mary, “I have seen the Lord.” Easter is a beginning, not an end. The resurrection of Jesus Christ proclaims a new kind of life, a new heaven and a new earth. Jesus is risen, therefore you have work ahead of you. May you find that deep joy within you and may you be blessed in the work which God has given you to do. Amen.