Seventh Sunday after Easter - Year C

Seventh Sunday after Easter – Year C (RCL) 2010
Acts 16: 16 – 34; Psalm 97’ Revelation 22: 12 – 14, 16 – 17, 20 – 21; John 17: 20 – 26
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Parish, Portland, OR
Sunday, May 16, 2010

BIG CHANGES COMING

Let us pray: Our hearts are strangely stirred within us as we greet your resurrected presence among us. We are coming to the end of our season of Easter and the joy and reality of that holy time will give way to the gifts of your Holy Spirit made manifest in the fiery tongues of Pentecost. Help us to stay always present to the reality of the Easter moment and our call to be the people of new life and Resurrection. Grant us the gift of unity in you as you are united with Creator and the Spirit, so that where you go to prepare a place for us; we might be with you in glorious eternity. So also, loving savior prepare a place for us where you enter human suffering and pain – where you are the victim of this world’s cruel injustices, when you stand beside us in our hours of deepest need; that where you are we might be also showing your face of Easter hope. Stir our hearts and hopes to be always where you are. Amen.

(SUNG) AND WE PRAY THAT ALL UNITY MAY ONE DAY BE RESTORED,
AND THEY’LL KNOW WE ARE CHRISTIANS BY OUR LOVE, BY
OUR LOVE – YES THEY’LL KNOW WE ARE CHRISTIANS BY OUR
LOVE..

I wanted to take some time this morning to share with you some of my experience from the time spent in the Diocese of Newark. As most of you are aware, I was attending a meeting in that Diocese of the Jubilee Ministry of the Episcopal Church. There were about 150 of us who represented the ministries of Jubilee, the Episcopal Community Services in America and the National Episcopal Health Ministries. The Conference was entitled “Called to Serve: The Episcopal Church Responds to Domestic Poverty”. Led by the keynote address of the Rt. Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, the participants who hailed from across the United States, prayed, studied and conversed with one another about the ways in which our church might begin to explore the issues and effects of domestic poverty in this nation. A model of Community Based Organizing and resource sharing among the participating groups led us to heartfelt and difficult discussions around who are the domestically poor and how are we called as a church to serve them. One of the major discoveries for me was that I am among the domestically poor. Now I don’t mean to imply that my economic situation places me in that percentile of the population that falls at or well below the “poverty level” as defined by the government (though I’m not far above it); what we were encouraged to reflect on is that all of us find ourselves numbered among the poor; some of us economically, some of us due to the conditions of our physical and/or mental health and still others of us who find ourselves morally or spiritually poor. That reality ought to make us truly humbled and genuinely involved when we address issues of domestic poverty. Somehow the “them” becomes the “us”. Demographics and statistics provided by Federal, State and Local governmental organizations can help us to identify ways in which we might be called to serve the economically disadvantaged among us – and we also need in our Church and in our communities to address those areas and issues of domestic poverty that we individually might find ourselves identifying as areas in which we number among the poor. I believe that Jesus had something to say about those of us who might blessed to be among the poor in spirit. Gathered as the Church – specifically as The Episcopal Church – the participants in this conference are among those for whom Jesus prays in our text this morning taken from the account as told by the author of John’s Gospel. This reading is part of what scriptural scholars refer to as the High Priestly Prayer, which the author places into the midst of the farewell discourse just prior to Jesus’ crucifixion. The author of this fourth Gospel account shares a unique literary and theological message with the faith community of the early first Century, and carefully crafts the Gospel telling of the uniqueness of Jesus’ relationship to the Father and the Spirit. The Church looks to summarize this relationship at the end of our recognition of the Easter season while hanging at the precipice of the coming of the Holy Spirit, which we will celebrate next Sunday. Big things are afoot for the newly forming Church and its ministers in Jerusalem, exciting times and possibilities lay at their feet; and Jesus looks to fill them and bless them with his priestly prayer which will guide their priesthoods in the service of the Risen one.

For the community gathered in the name of the Episcopal Church and charged with the enormous task of responding to domestic poverty – the fact that we all were doing the work of the Gospel, each of us in our own particular circumstances living out the command of Jesus to feed the hungry, or care for the widow and orphan, or visit the imprisoned – was shared work with each other in our particular organization and with each and every one of you as members of the Body of Christ. It was this shared call to serve that gave us the strength in our few numbers to dare and address huge issues that effect the lives of all of us – and filled our hearts with hope that with God’s grace and assistance our work would, in fact, lead us to the unity of God that Jesus prays for in the passage we heard from the Gospel text this morning…”also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one.” When we gathered in fellowship and fun, the laughter was raucous and real. When we gathered in worship and work the connections were genuine and grace filled. In the silence and solitude we lifted each other intensely and intentionally to the God who is the source of all of our ministries and listened for that still small voice to unite us as one. Theological and ideological positions were abandoned for a time to allow the work of the Holy Spirit to renew our hearts and refresh our souls. None of us separated ourselves from each other by identifying the role that we hold in the ministry of the Church. Clerical collars were absent so that we didn’t need to identify who was a bishop, or deacon or lay minister – only that each of us shared in the Priesthood of All Believers and in that role serve each other in God’s name. The earliest biblical description that we have for Christian leadership in the earliest communities was “deacon” which means literally “butler” or “waiter”. Christians did not call their leaders priest, or president; Christians called their leaders servants. I think that each of us was able to reclaim that humility and servant hood that are such essential elements of our lives as Priest’s of the Church. I am deeply grateful to this faith community for the gift of time away – to the diocesan faith community for the chance to serve as Jubilee Officer of this Diocese – and to the national Church community for the support of those who labor in the fields of Christ’s Church with the invitation to gather in Christ’s name and fearfully work out the solutions we seek in order to address the issues of Domestic Poverty that cripples each and every one of us who gathered in the name of the Christ we claim to serve.

The author of Luke/Acts recounts the story we heard today from the sixteenth Chapter of Paul’s stay in Philippi. Several characters are introduced to extend the story line and then discarded when they have fulfilled that purpose. Such is the case of the slave girl who possesses a spirit of divination and who’s “fortune telling” talents brought great profit to those who managed her. As soon as her function as mover of the plot line allows us to have Paul and Silas ensconced behind prison walls, the main story can emerge. The powerful presence of God in the midst of the depravations and shackles of human prisons portrays for the early community the sure and certain power of belief in the risen Christ. Many of the early believers would face just such a fate for their ministry, and this example would serve to strengthen their resolve. The jailer’s question has rung down through the ages – “what must I do to be saved”? For those whose flavor of salvation runs closer toward the evangelical side of the Church Acts 16:31 serves as a lynchpin for their mission, “believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.” However, even for those of us who shy away from that sort of evangelical fervor – the power of the message of salvation is no less diminished. Identification with and living out the ministry of the Good News of God in Christ is central to the lives of all who follow the resurrected carpenter’s son from Galilee. It is the power of that message of hope from the Gospel accounts which calls each of us here on a Sunday morning to witness and worship; to continue in the apostle’s teaching and fellowship and to be nourished in the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup.

It is this work of discipleship in community for which Jesus served as our model and our great high priest. The prayer that we might share in the Glory, which has been given to those who believe so that we might be with Christ to “see” the glory that is, and was, and has been from before the foundation of the world – speaks to the great and unfathomable love between Father, Son and Spirit which the author of John’s Gospel begins to articulate. It is this priestly ministry in which we are all called to share – that the strength and value of community begins to unfold as our gift and our giving. L. William Countryman in his book Living on the Border of the Holy – Renewing the Priesthood of All; writes of several types of priesthood. Countryman identifies them as the priesthood of Humanity, the priesthood of Religion, the priesthood of Christ and the priesthood of the Christian People. I highly recommend this text for anyone who is looking to deepen their understanding of, what for me had been a foreign concept – the priesthood of all believers. I share with you one paragraph from that book in which Dr. Countryman is examining the Priesthood of the Christian People:

“The priesthood of the Christian people is the priesthood of all humanity, interpreted and formed by the priesthood of Jesus. To suppose that Jesus created a new priesthood from the ground up, as if no priesthood had existed before him, would be a radical break with our tradition. The earliest Christians insisted, despite prolonged challenges from Gnosticism, that the GOD of Jesus was also the original CREATOR of humanity. The HOLY does not deny its former work in its later work. The CREATOR doest not push aside the grace of creation in order to make room for the grace of resurrection, for the two are, at their deepest level, fully continuous. But Jesus interpreted the fundamental priesthood through his own service in it, as he taught and celebrated and lived out the good news. The priesthood of the Christian people, then, is the fundamental priesthood of humankind, understood afresh in terms of Jesus’ message and experience.[1]

I discovered during my week in NJ, in community with others who live out the ordained priesthood of the Church – part of the glory of the priesthood of the Christian people. It is this work, this priesthood which each and everyone of us gathered here this morning takes on in our choice to gather around this table and remember as Jesus taught us to take bread and bless it and break it and share it with each other to be spiritual food for our human journey. The gift and blessing of this place in community is learning the role of priest and exploring and sharing that with our families and neighbors and becoming the kindom of priests to serve our God and each other. It is in that ministry – in that priesthood that the Christ can offer on our behalf the prayer…”so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them.”
Amen.

[1] L. William Countryman, Living on the Border of the Holy, Renewing the Priesthood of All, Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, PA, 1999, p. 63