Sermons

May 6 - Deacon Janice S. Bales - 5th Sunday of Easter

Listen to audio version of this sermon.

Fifth Sunday of Easter 2007
Acts 11:1-18; Psalm 148; Revelation 21:1-6; John 13:31-35

Among the obvious themes in today’s readings is “inclusiveness for all.” That’s just great, I thought. Preaching a non-discrimination sermon here at St. Michael’s is truly an example of preaching to the choir. Another thought was: this is “deja vu all over again.” I last preached here on Maundy Thursday. The verses telling us of the foot washing by Jesus at the last supper immediately precede today’s Gospel. As I was wishing I had a rich parable to dissect, it occurred to me, that perhaps I was avoiding my own Easter Story. After all, today’s readings are truly good news. It is still Easter. Where am I on my journey since Maundy Thursday? Where are you on your Easter journey?

Let’s look at what has happened in the scripture readings. In the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, we’ve learned that the frightened band of Jesus’ disciples found their strength and their stride after the resurrection and have been preaching and teaching the good news that Jesus is the Christ. Communities of followers have formed. Peter is a powerful healer and preacher. Saul of Tarsus, dramatically converted, is now the apostle Paul and fast becoming leader of the new movement called “The Way.” The Book of Acts is heady reading and, if made into a movie, would make many adventure films seem pale. It is not a book for wimps. Up to today’s reading, the apostles have been dragged before various authorities numerous times. They have been beaten, persecuted, jailed, and sometimes miraculously saved. Some have not been saved. Stephen, the first deacon, is stoned to death with Saul, now Paul, looking on. Persecutions persist and the apostles scatter throughout Judea and Samaria, perhaps thinking that if they spread out they will be harder to catch. Men and women are jailed. It’s one darned thing after another. Then in Chapter 10, Peter has a dream, which we hear him repeat in today’s reading. In this dream a voice from heaven proclaims three times: “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” Rough translation: If God made everything, forget your rules about what’s clean and what’s not, who’s in and who’s out. God made all creation and it was good. And you can bet Peter is going to pay attention to the number three. Three times he denied Jesus. Three times our resurrected Lord told him to feed God’s sheep. And now three times God tells him very clearly: “what God has made clean, you must not call profane.” As a result Peter visited and baptized the household of Cornelius, the gentile, in the town of Caesarea. And today, we find Peter has been called on the carpet by the home office in Jerusalem. It is hard for us today to imagine the anxiety of the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem over Peter’s acceptance of and baptizing of Gentiles. Peter was a Jew and one who kept Jewish law faithfully. His dream from God and subsequent understanding that the good news of Jesus the Christ is for Gentiles as well as Jews was an eye opener and pretty threatening. For the Jews believed they were God’s chosen people and the rest of the world was not worth considering, speaking to, touching, or partying with. Jesus had made it clear by the time he was finished with his earthly journey that an exclusive, closed club of believers had a few problems. He made this clearer as his ministry developed. Jesus broke Jewish rules. He was forever hanging out with women, forever partying with sinners and tax collectors, and working on the Sabbath by healing. On top of that he was forever telling stories about forgiveness and love and inclusion that went against the grain of the entrenched hierarchical system of society and religion.

So much of what he is teaching is brought home dramatically on that night, the night of the last supper. Jesus is trying desperately to get his disciples to understand what is happening. So, he gets down and washes their feet in an action that absolutely shocks them. It shocked them because foot washing was a job for slaves, a job for someone way beneath you. It was such a nasty job, that, under Jewish Law, not even your wife could be ordered to wash your feet. We have always had hierarchical cultures, it seems. It is only in God’s vision as demonstrated through Jesus that hierarchies are broken down. But how quickly we forget.

Ah, yes, what I forgot to mention: Before today’s reading, we learn several chapters earlier that the apostles are so busy with the important job of preaching that they no longer have time for more menial tasks such as distributing food to the widows. This task along with others, we assume, was assigned to the seven newly appointed deacons. Here we are, only a short time out from the Last Supper and Jesus’ teaching through his example of washing feet is challenged by the apostles themselves who believed that their time and preaching was too important to be interrupted by the mundane tasks of life in the community such as the distribution of food. “Anyone sorting through the wreckage of the modern church need look only this far to find the incriminating evidence of the ‘black box’ that records life in the cockpit leading to the crack-up” (p. 170 – Portaro,Dayspring) Official Christian hierarchy is born. Some are going to be too important for certain tasks. Foot washing? I don’t think so. And within a few generations, the leadership roles that women enjoyed in the early church disappear. It will be a “men only” club for centuries to come.

Initially, I stated that today’s lessons were about inclusion. Inclusion means no discrimination. Hierarchy breeds discrimination. In hierarchical systems, someone is always better than someone else for whatever reason. When was the first time you were discriminated against? When was the first time that you understood down deep in your soul that somehow because you were a certain color or a certain sex or a certain gender or of a certain ethnic group or of a certain age or of a certain economic status that somehow you were inferior or not welcome or not quite right or that something was wrong that was not even your fault. Someone was holding you accountable for something that was beyond your control because it was the way you were born or where you were born. Not living in the right side of town, not going to the right school, and so on and on with the endless hurtful accusations that were discriminating in their very thought or utterance. All these ways we treat each other are a far cry from the Gospel that is clothed in and proclaims equality.

But perhaps more importantly, we need to look at the discriminations in our own hearts. Being a member of St. Michael’s, it is easy to point the finger outward forgetting that perhaps we might have a bit more than a splinter in our own eyes. Think a minute, when was the first time you discriminated against someone? For many of us, it might have been a totally unconscious act. Sometimes if you are born into a certain group, or belong to a certain group, another group is just not on your radar screen. The result is blind neglect. It is an insidious type of discrimination because it totally ignores the humanness, the dignity, the very likeness of God in the people we see every day of our lives in the most ordinary of places. It’s like leaving here today and driving down 4th street and not seeing the homeless people making their way along the sidewalks or waiting at bus stops. Or perhaps, you made a very deliberate and conscious act of discrimination, one that you are not very proud of yet you still have not asked for forgiveness or sought amends. Take a moment. Reflect on discrimination. That is a big word for a child. I don’t think I heard it when I was growing up. In the small town of my birth, there was one Jewish family and one black family. The Jewish family I knew because Mickie Octstein was in my class. On Saturdays they made a long trip to attend synagogue in another town. I didn’t know the black family. We did not have anyone who spoke Spanish. We did not have a Chinese restaurant. There was a more or less open rift between the Roman Catholics and the Protestants. We certainly were not allowed to date one another.

I thank God for maternal grandparents and a mother who had a real feel for the underdog in spite of our homogeneous white community. One day I came home from elementary school and asked my mother about the “n” word…. that derogatory noun used for black folks. I asked, “Mom, what does n------ mean?” What I remember is that my mother did not answer me but took me to the bathroom and washed my mouth out with soap, so, she said, I would never ever think again of letting that word out of my mouth. And while she was at it, my momma told me there were other words I wasn’t ever to say, ever. They were words like wop and Jap and kike. That incident taught me about words that I shouldn’t say. But it didn’t teach me about discrimination. I learned about discrimination a few months later. I was in the third grade. There were families in our town that lived on the wrong side of the tracks...in this case, down by the creek in an area that often flooded in the spring. They had moved up north from the dales and hollows of Appalachia to work in the many small and large factories that had sprung up during the war. (WWII) Although I never heard the description at home, I came to understand they were considered “white trash.”
One day when I came into the room, one of my classmates, one from the wrong part of town, was seated in front on a tall stool normally used in the corner for bad boys and girls. The teacher was methodically pulling out bunches of the girl’s long black hair and combing them through with kerosene. The stench filled the room. The teacher was explaining that we wouldn’t have lice if we washed our hair and took care of ourselves. On the face of that little girl, tears quietly streamed down her face. At that moment I understood discrimination although I didn’t know the word. I understood that some things would happen to you if you were poor that wouldn’t happen to you otherwise. I knew it was wrong.

Today’s lessons beg us to ask the questions: How have we discriminated? How have we not been inclusive? How have we not seen what was often right before our eyes? “If you have eyes, then see,” says Jesus. On the very night before he is to be handed over to suffering and death, the disciples are arguing among themselves on who is to be greater, who is going to get to sit on the left and right side of Jesus. They still don’t comprehend any of it. And in all fairness, why should they? They have only known a hierarchical world and they have always been on the bottom. If Jesus is King, this may be their chance to be on top for a change. In quiet desperation, Jesus strips down, falls to his knees and washes their feet. “Do you understand what I have done?” he asks. “Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.” More words. Judas makes his departure. Jesus speaks, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this, all will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

How are we doing on our Easter journey? Are we becoming resurrected? Are we coming out of the tomb into the light? Are we willing to check out the hierarchies we have allowed to grow around us, perhaps hedge us and others in? Are we ready to become Easter to the world? Amen.