Reading: John 14:8-20,
22-23, 27
How often after the death, resurrection and
ascension of Jesus the disciples and the early church must have said, “If only
Jesus were here.” They must have missed
him greatly, and must have wished that the world could have seen and known Jesus
the way they did.
But it didn’t take long for them to see Jesus was
not really gone. They came to see that they
now lived in the same communion with God as Jesus had, and that what they had
seen and loved in Jesus, the world now saw and loved in them.
As the Gospels were written – especially the Gospel
of John, the community remembered different things Jesus had said about that, and
the reading today is part of his final conversation with his disciples before
he is arrested, tried and put to death. The
disciples are afraid of having to continue without him, and he talks with them
about the mystical indwelling and communion of God, Jesus and the community of
faith.
Aaron was 3 – probably 3 ½ years old the year
MacNeill Baptist, the church we were attending at the time, arranged a Journey
to Bethlehem one Sunday morning in Advent. It was planned and talked
about for weeks. Everyone was excited and ready to be part of this
special departure from the usual Sunday fare.
That Sunday morning we began in the sanctuary
with a few readings, and some carols and prayers focused on the call to come
see the Messiah of God promised to be born among us. After a few minutes
of this as a group we got up and out from our pews and began a pilgrimage
through the church, stopping at different places in hallways, meeting rooms,
and even outside on the public sidewalk beside the church. At each stage
we read one of the promises of his coming, sang a carol of hope, and shared in
a prayer for God to come to us and Jesus to be born among us.
Finally we entered the large fellowship hall at
the back of the church. Off in one corner surrounded by bales and loose
scatterings of hay there stood a makeshift structure, inside of which was a
manger. Beside the manger and looking lovingly into it, a man stood and a
woman sat, both dressed in ancient Middle Eastern garb. From a distance,
inside the manger we could kind of see a carefully swaddled little
bundle.
We were invited to come to the manger as we
wished. To see, to give thanks, to pray. To know the coming of the
Christ among us. Aaron went to the manger with me, and for a few seconds
– maybe half a minute, we looked in.
As we all finished the morning with some more
carols, Christmas refreshments, and closing prayers, I realized Aaron was no
longer with me. He was sitting alone on the stairs that led up out of the
hall to the rest of the church building. His body was slumped. His
head was in his hands. Something had happened.
I sat beside him, put my hand on his shoulder and
asked him what was wrong. He looked at me for a second, looked down
again, and said sadly, “It was just a doll.”
He thought he was going to see the baby
Jesus. Thought Jesus was going to be born in our church.
I don’t know what I said. What I could have
said at that moment that would have made any sense, or made any difference.
I
don’t know if it would have been helpful to quote Mother Teresea at that point:
“Do not look for Jesus away from
yourselves. He is not out there; he is
in you. Keep your lamp burning, and you
will recognize him.”
But as I think about it now – about the promise
of Jesus, the Christ, being born among us, there are so many things about that
church that come to mind. So many ways in which Jesus was born and alive
within them, and in which their heart, their hands, their arms, their voice,
their spirit, their life really were and still are the hands, the arms, the
voice, the spirit and the life of Jesus, the living Christ.
I think of how that church welcomed me when I
first came to Hamilton and so easily and warmly opened offered the gift of
spiritual home and family. And not just me, but all kinds of folks
looking for a spiritual home they didn’t always find in other churches, to the
point where a few years ago that church became “a biblically-based welcoming
and affirming community, supportive of the LGBTQ community,” much to the
consternation of other churches and leaders in their denomination.
Like Jesus at the gatherings he convened all over the place and called his
community of faith and the kingdom of God on Earth, there is a freedom and a
radical kind of hospitality and welcome at work in that church.
I think, too, of when leukemia struck a little
boy of one of the families of the church, and that church as a whole was
touched and responded in pretty deep ways. During the most intense and
critical times of treatment in the hospital, the church arranged for
casseroles, days of house-cleaning and even 24/7 babysitting for the little
girl in the family – in 4 or 5-hour shifts, so the parents could be at the
hospital as much as they needed. Collections were taken up to help cover
lost wages from time taken off work. And prayer groups began in which
people not used to doing so prayed for the healing of the little boy in their
midst. Like the stories of Jesus, the story of that church is a story of
caring community and of the compassionate healing of a family and of the
community around it.
I think, too, of that church’s openness to the
needs and the healing of the world. In a time when their denomination was
taking a very conservative turn that congregation along with a few others in
the denomination resisted the tide and remained open and active in the work of
social justice and peace-making around the world. A number of the members
belonged to the North American Baptist Peace Fellowship, the church hosted
regional meetings of the Peace Fellowship and supported a number of peace initiatives
around the world, and the congregation as a whole shared in local ecumenical
justice work in Hamilton that many other Baptists just didn’t have time
for. Like Jesus they believed in the coming of God’s kingdom in the
affairs of the world, and opened themselves to be part of it.
I think, too, of when numbers began to shrink –
both members and money, and a full-time minister as well as paid musician and
office staff became difficult for a while. They learned to be church
together in new ways. Members took charge of planning and leading worship
in teams. Teams of lay visitors and callers were set up and trained for
pastoral care. Administration and decision-making was streamlined.
They learned to discern and encourage the use of one another’s gifts.
Like Jesus said and like Jesus did, they showed that faith and gifts the size
of a mustard seed are more than enough, and that every member of his body has a
purpose and a reason for being there.
In the early church, the disciples of Jesus
surely missed him after he was gone and no longer with them as he used to
be. How could they not?
But both they and the world around them learned
soon enough, that he was not really gone from among them and within them.
In fact, as Jesus says would be the case, he was alive among them, in them, and
through them in more ways than were possible when he was just one man walking
with them. In the same way as he was one with the Father and the Father
with him, and he was living God’s good will into the world, so through their
connection with him they were a holy community in communion with God, living
God’s good will into the world around them wherever they were and however they
could. They now were the embodiment, the
incarnation of the Christ – of God’s redeeming, fulfilling Word of life on
Earth and for Earth.
And that’s sometimes a hard thing for us to get
our heads around. A hard thing for us to
understand. A hard thing maybe for us to
be willing to accept and live into.
But that’s the point of Pentecost and the story
of the outpouring of the Spirit upon the disciples gathered in Jerusalem – that
just as the Spirit descends upon Jesus when he is baptized in the Jordan, and
he goes from there empowered to preach, teach and make real the kingdom of God
in his time, so the Spirit is poured upon the body of Christ – upon the whole
community of faith, empowering it – empowering us, to preach and teach and make
real the kingdom of God in our time.
It’s also the point of Jesus’ final conversation
with his disciples and his prayer on his last night with them before he is
arrested, tried and put to death. “Let them be one with you, O God, as I
am one with you, and you with me. Let them be empowered, O God, as I am
empowered in my union with you, to do your good work for and in the
world. As others have seen and believed in you through me, may all the
world see and believe in the coming of your kingdom in and through them – they
who are and will be your incarnate Word, the living Christ in and for the
world.”
That’s the point of what we do here as a
church. The point of our worship, our pastoral care, our mission and
outreach, our Christian education. The point of our budget, of our
building, of our history of being here for almost 225 years.
It’s the point of our coming here, and of others’
coming here over and over again. The point of coming to see the manger
and the baby in it in Advent and at Christmas. The point of looking upon
the cross and the one hanging upon it in Lent and Good Friday, and raised from
it in the season of Easter. The point of gathering as a family to renew
our communion with God at the table of our Lord, taking into ourselves the
signs of his life and his way of being in the world.
The point is that God comes to us, Jesus is born
and is alive in us, and the world is still hoping and needing to see him really
still here.
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