Sermons

Sermon, The Rev. Brian C. Taylor, April 18

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April 18, 2010
The 3rd Sunday of Easter
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

On Easter Sunday I talked to you about how the Christ can be eastered in us, how in this life we can move into that alternative reality of love and wonder that Jesus talked about so much, and which he called the kingdom of God.

This doesn’t happen automatically because we are baptized or because we attend church or because we have the right beliefs or even just because we want it to. We come into God’s alternate reality, because we actually embark on and keep moving along a spiritual journey.

Today’s stories from Acts and the gospel tell us about the experience of the early church as they encountered the risen Christ. But they are also written in a symbolic way that transcends their own time and place, making them into timeless truths about the spiritual journey.

Now I don’t often go for alliteration in sermons, but this time I couldn’t help it, because there they were in both stories, 3 things that help guide us into God’s realm:
crisis, community, and commitment.

Both stories recognize that the faith journey is often spurred along by crisis. The beginning point, the crisis for Paul in his journey comes in the middle of his quest to hunt down Christians and deliver them to Jerusalem, to face jail or execution. He was struck blind by a great light and knocked to the ground.

Like all our crises, this probably didn’t come out of the blue; I imagine that it was building for a long time. Who knows what led up to it for Paul. Perhaps his conscience got the better of him. Maybe one of those he captured told him about Jesus and really affected him. Whatever happened, Paul was thrown into crisis, blind, alone, lost in a strange city for a few days.

The apostles were also in crisis. Their friend and Lord had been killed, and they were devastated. They were in that dark place of having to go on in life, feeling numb and aimless, returning to their life as fishermen as if Jesus had never been. Which, of course, was impossible. He had been, and he had profoundly affected them.

When I was in my mid-twenties, I had my first real crisis that led to faith. By a strange set of circumstances, I was separated from everything and everyone that was familiar to me. It was as if I had become a nobody, with no direction, no identity. For 6 months I was in suspended animation. My heart was consciously opened to God for the first time in my life. Ever since, I have thanked God for that crisis.

This wasn’t the only time that crisis spurred me along the spiritual journey. Only a year ago, after a pilgrimage to India, it was as if God held me by my ankles and shook out everything that was loose, everything that needed attention. For awhile, I was pretty disoriented, and therefore open to grace and to change. Now, I thank God for that disorientation.

What sort of crises have spurred you along in the spiritual journey? Chances are you didn’t appreciate them when they were happening, but did they have the effect of opening your eyes, drawing you more deeply into God’s life? Are you perhaps in one of those times now? And while you may not be appreciating it, can you at least trust that it may spur you along God’s pathway?

The two stories also show us how community is a critical part of the spiritual journey. After Paul was blinded, lost, and alone, he was brought together with Ananias, a member of the small Christian community in Damascus. Ananias introduced him to the other followers of Jesus there. They took Paul in, feeding, healing, and guiding him. Through his new friends, through this little community, the scales fell from his eyes: he saw Christ for who he is; he finally understood the Christians that he had been persecuting; he saw himself completely anew.

Likewise, the apostles were transformed in relationship, in community. After his resurrection, Jesus always appeared to his disciples when they were in groups. They puzzled together over what they were experiencing. Together they came to understand his new mode of presence among them, in the breaking of the bread and in their prayers.

Community is something that has sneaked up on me from behind, in my life. I grew up in a family that wasn’t really that close. I felt like we were cohabitating as separate individuals. But over the years, I have found community in my own family, among my closest friends, and with you. And I know that I have only found my way along the journey of faith because of these relationships. The challenges, surprises, support, and diverse perspectives within the human community I live in have been my saving grace, my source of whatever depth and self-awareness I have.

In the past few years, our parish has matured greatly in its sense of community. You know this as well as I. We have grown in the number of events and programs we offer, and in our participation in them. But we also have matured in community because we look to one another as friends in God. We know that the Spirit moves among us, and that we need one another as companions and mutual guides along the way. None of us can get very far in God’s realm alone. We need companions; we need strangers; we even need enemies.

Finally, both of our stories from scripture today highlight the importance of commitment. If we want to live in God’s realm, if we want to be eastered into new life, this is essential.

Paul was, at first, disoriented and dependent. But something happened in the course of those days with the Christian community. He ended up choosing to be baptized. And his commitment to Christ became legendary. In fact, what happened is that the strength of commitment that he had always shown – as a zealous Pharisee, as a persecutor of Christians – was now transferred to Christ. He remained the same passionate, committed man that he had always been. It’s just that after Damascus, he applied it for good.

In the exchange between Jesus and Peter on the lakeside, we see a different kind of commitment emerging. Jesus asks him 3 times, tenderly, perhaps hesitantly, “Peter, do you love me?” When Peter says “yes,” Jesus tells him to show that love through committing to ministry, to feeding and nurturing the fragile new Christian community. And then Jesus takes his appeal for commitment to another level. He tells Peter that if he really goes forward with this, he will, like Jesus, be bound and led towards martyrdom, the ultimate commitment.

You and I may not be zealots like Paul or martyrs like Peter, but we will never move very far along the spiritual journey without commitment. It takes commitment to get up out of bed and come here on a Sunday morning. It takes commitment to pray regularly. It takes commitment to help out in a ministry or to pledge money to support your faith community. It takes commitment to attend a new member class and take vows before the bishop. And all of these forms of commitment have the effect of helping us grow in faith.

But more significantly, it is commitment when we use every circumstance in life as an opportunity for grace. When we are suffering, when things are not going well for us, when we are bored and aimless, when other people are driving us crazy, do we try to wish it away, distract ourselves, or complain about the unfairness of it all?

Or do we commit to ourselves to what is happening? Do we recommit, then and there, to our spiritual life, to God, and look for the lesson that is being offered to us? Do we say “yes” to what is happening, trusting that it will take us further into God’s realm? This kind of commitment is what may matter most of all, the commitment to life as it unfolds in its own unpredictable way.

And when we commit to what is, it transforms before our very eyes, into the kingdom of God. Suffering is redeemed. Boredom becomes spaciousness. We see those who irritate us as God’s children, doing the best they can.

None of us invites crisis into our life; we don’t have to. But when it comes, we can learn to appreciate it as the thing that always spurs us along in our spiritual journey.

Community may seem, on the surface, as a nice, friendly way to spend our time. But as we give ourselves to it, we come to see that we are nothing without it.

And while commitment may seem like a dutiful thing, it is where we actually dig in to life and begin to discover what it holds in its depths.

These are the kinds of things that help us move along our journey. And they are what God uses to easter new life in us.