"Chosen by Love"

Joshua J Sander
5/13/12
Sixth Sunday of Easter
Mother’s Day
“Chosen by Love”

Psalm 98
John 15:9-17

God is bigger than you. I hope you don’t find it shocking or insulting for me to say it, but it’s true. God is bigger than all of you and me put together. When it comes to figuring out who God is, we’re like blind people arguing over what an elephant is like. One of us has the trunk and exclaims that an elephant is like a snake. Another of us wraps their arms around a leg and says, “You’re wrong! An elephant is very much like a tree!” Yet a third lays their hands on the tail and says “You’re both wrong, and elephant is clearly like a broom!” Each is accurately describing their experience of an elephant, but none of them has the whole picture. And that’s what it is always going to be like when we try to talk about God.

Have you ever noticed that we tend to use the same words when we talk about God every week? Father, Lord, King, He, He, He… I mean, there are reasons for all of those words for God. Those words accurately describe many people’s experience of God. But it’s just one experience of something so much bigger than those words. And let’s face it, some of us have had difficult relationships with men. Some of us have had worse relationships with their fathers. I imagine that for those people, the idea of a Father God isn’t the best idea, you know?

Now, I’m not talking about Jesus at the moment—he really did have a Y-chromosome. But the God of Jesus’ ancestors? The God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob? The God who made the heavens and the earth and brought the Israelites out of Egypt? The God that referred to God’s self simply as “I Am?” That God is so much bigger than any “he.”

On the other hand, we speak English. And in English there’s no neutral pronoun that we use to refer to people. We have he, she, and it. And “it” just doesn’t quite do it, does it now? So what will I do? Well. It seems to me that we ought to use as many different words for God as we can as we go along together. Yes, I will sometimes use the “traditional” male words—Father, or as Jesus said, “Daddy.” Sometimes Lord and King is the appropriate thing to say. Frequently I will simply use the word “God.” Sometimes I’m more specific, like when I referred to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob or when I referred to the Creator God.

But… today is Mother’s Day. And while it’s not something you hear every day, I think that Mother is just as good a term for God as Father is. I’m sure that it works better for those of us who have had those difficult relationships with men, or with their fathers… So yeah… God the Mother. She’s bigger than you. She’s bigger than all of you and me put together. And trying to describe her is like a bunch of blind people trying to describe an elephant.

So, speaking of Mother’s Day, I’ve been doing a little historical digging. As near as I can tell, the first person to coin the term “Mother’s Day” was Julia Ward Howe. How many of you have heard of Julia Ward Howe? Well, Julia Ward was born in New York City in 1819 and married Samuel Gridley How—a physician and the founder of the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston, Massachusetts—in 1843.

Now on April 12th, 1861, Confederate forces attacked a U.S. military outpost at Fort Sumter in South Carolina, kicking off the American Civil War. Julia Ward Howe and her husband visited Washington, D. C. and met Abraham Lincoln at the White House in November 1861. It was after this meeting that she was inspired to write "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." If you turn in your hymnal to #416 you can find her name under the Words credit at the very bottom of the page. Those words were first published in the Atlantic Monthly in February 1862 and it quickly became one of the most popular songs of the Union during the war.

Well, that was before Gettysburg and Shiloh and Vicksburg in 1863; before the battles of attrition between Grant and Lee as the Union fought its way to Richmond. Before Sherman captured Atlanta and made his famous way to the sea. That was, in other words, before untold hundreds of thousands of people died—more than in any other American war in history—more people dead than both World Wars put together… Well, I guess you could say that Julia Ward Howe changed her tune. In

1870 she wrote The Mother’s Day Proclamation. It was a call to all mothers—especially those who’d lost children in the war—to rise up against violence and war. I think that the strongest line from that proclamation is this: “Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.”

Charity. Mercy. Patience. Jesus said, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last… I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.”
Julia Ward Howe loved her children, so she had a basis for understanding how all the hundreds of thousands of grieving mothers of the dead from the war must feel. In solidarity and love for those mothers she invited them to stand up so that other mothers might not have to go through the same thing. You don’t have to be a pacifist to see her living out Jesus’ commandment as we celebrate Mother’s Day today.

By the way, Mother’s Day didn’t become a national holiday until Woodrow Wilson signed it into existence in 1914. The woman who campaigned for the second Sunday in May to be Mother’s Day was Anna Jarvis. Anna wanted to honor her own mother, Ann Maria Reeves Jarvis, who worked throughout what is now West Virginia to promote worker health and safety. During the American Civil War Ann organized women to tend to the needs of the wounded of both the Confederate and the Union soldiers. Charity. Mercy. Patience. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last…

You know, I think that today’s gospel lesson is both fantastic and difficult. It’s fantastic because in it you really can find the core of what it means to be a Christian community—God loves you, be good to each other—but it’s also difficult because it’s so, so easy to get completely derailed by all this “love” talk. It’s kind of like how if you say the same word over and over again it starts to sound really funny. And when that word is “love” it starts to sound like the almost marriage scene from The Princess Bride, “Love… Love is what brings us together today. And love… True love…”

But this scripture is not about the simplistic, rhyming, Hallmark Card version of love. This scripture is not about the happily ever after Hollywood version of love. And this scripture is not about the fleeting, romantic pop music version of love. No, this scripture is about the shepherd laying their life down for the sheep version of love. This scripture is about the love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you version of love. This scripture is about the transforming a world that hates you when all you want to do is hide version of love.

Just think about it—Jesus is saying to his disciples, look: you’re my friends. I trust you. And if you trust me, too, then do this one thing for me. Love one another. Love others the way God loves me and the way I’ve loved you. And Jesus is saying this to the disciples knowing full well that the people he’s asking them to love will turn him over to be tortured to death. In fact, the very next verses are, “If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you. If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world—therefore the world hates you.”

The world hates you. But this is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. And then, only a couple of generations after, the Christian community that the gospel writer, John, belonged to was facing all sorts of persecution and ostracism because of their faith. It must have been so tempting to interpret that commandment in ways that allowed them to turn inward—to judge the world as it moved on without them as beyond redemption—to simply hide on a mountaintop somewhere and pretend the rest of the world didn’t exist. But they didn’t. They saw that Jesus’ commandment was about loving and transforming the world.

It’s hard, I know, to go out and love the world. Kathryn Matthews Huey puts it this way:

...in our culture, with mobility, career pressure, distractions, and overloaded calendars, it's difficult even to make room for friendship. We don't stay long enough to get to know one another, let alone to care about one another. And yet this Gospel keeps talking about staying, about abiding, about making our home in God, in the Body of Christ.

You don’t have to be a parent, although it might give you some insight into what I’ve been talking about. You don’t have to be a pacifist, although I’m pretty convinced that what violence does best is create more violence. You don’t have to organize folk to take care of the needs of the wounded, although that is a good and true calling.

But I do want to leave us with a challenge and an example. The challenge is simple. When you go out from here into your day to day lives, always ask yourself if what you’re currently doing is done out of love and what kind of fruit it will bear. And when people thank you for what you’re doing, don’t be afraid tell them where you learned to love.  So in closing, here’s a good example:



I don't think I could say it any better than that.

Amen.

"Fruit of the Vine"

Joshua J Sander
5/6/12
Fifth Sunday of Easter
“Fruit of the Vine”

Acts 8:26-40
John 15:1-8

Last week the Gospel of John provided us with a really good metaphor for our relationship with Jesus and with each other as Christians. We talked about how Jesus is the Good Shepherd and we are his sheep. And we were challenged by the scripture to accept the others that Jesus brings into the fold as well as to follow in his example and become good shepherds ourselves.

This week we have another great metaphor for our relationship to Jesus and to one another. Jesus said, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower… I am the vine, you are the branches.” I love this metaphor because it’s so… organic. Grape vines grow and climb and spread and send out these little branches that twist and entwine. It’s one of those mysterious things that happens so slowly that you can’t tell it’s happening when you’re watching, but when you turn your back for a while, suddenly it’s just everywhere.

Well in the grand scheme of things, that’s what healthy Christian communities are like. Everyone is all entwined together in communities that grow and spread and branch out into the world…

Jesus is the vine and we are the branches. This goes way beyond the idea of Jesus protecting his sheep, who hear his voice and follow him. If Jesus is the vine and we are the branches, then we are deeply, profoundly—I mean we are completely dependent on Jesus for life. I suppose it’s possible to have a branch all entwined with the other braches without it being attached to the vine any more, but that branch wouldn’t be getting any nutrients, right? It would die.

Now, of course I’m not saying that people who don’t believe in Jesus are zombies or something. But I do believe that Christian communities—and I mean churches, when I say that. I do believe that churches sometimes cut themselves off from the vine and wither and eventually die. And I believe that sometimes people withdraw from their churches in hurt or anger and they let that hurt and anger eat them up inside rather than working the problem out or finding a new church—and so they die inside a little.

Jesus said, “Abide in me as I abide in you.” I think it’s important to remember that if we really abide—I mean if we really eat, drink, breathe and live in Jesus—then we get all entwined with each other. We get all wrapped up in each other. We get so close to each other that it’s hard to tell where one branch ends and the other begins. I’m telling you that if you get close enough to Jesus, all the places where your brothers and sisters in Christ seem different simply don’t matter anymore.

One of my favorite examples of what I’m trying to tell you here is found in the Book of Acts. It’s the story we heard earlier this morning, where an angel went to Philip and said, "Get up and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza." So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court treasurer of the queen of the Ethiopians.

Now, I have to ask, how many of you know what a eunuch is? Ok, how many of you know the difference between a stallion and a gelding? Ok, what you’re thinking right now? That’s right. If you’re lost, come ask me later.

So, this is important because in the ancient Jewish law—check out Deuteronomy 23:1 if you want to see for yourself—but in Jewish law eunuchs were not allowed to be admitted into the assembly of the LORD. Keep that in the back of your mind for a minute, I’ll come right back to it.

Now this eunuch had come to Jerusalem to worship and was riding home in his chariot. And as he was riding, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. Then the Spirit said to Philip, "Go over to this chariot and join it." So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading and asked, "Do you understand what you are reading?" The eunuch replied, "How can I, unless someone guides me?" So he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him.

Now the passage he was reading says, "Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth."

And the eunuch asked Philip, "Is Isaiah talking about himself, or someone else?" So Philip started with this scripture and proclaimed to the eunuch the good news about Jesus. Then they came to some water; and the eunuch said, "Look! What is to prevent me from being baptized?"

Well, Philip could have said to the eunuch, “Look, you seem like a nice enough guy, but you’re a eunuch, and there’s this one verse in Deuteronomy that says that eunuchs don’t get to be full members of the church. Sorry. You’re just too different.”

But then again, he’d just been teaching from Isaiah, which says, “thus says the Lord: To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.”

In other words, Isaiah is saying that there are more important ways to please God than simply making babies, and if eunuchs do those things, they’ll be rewarded in other ways. Philip, of course, not only knew what Isaiah had to say about eunuchs, but also would have remembered the very core teachings of Jesus—that the greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind. And that there is a second commandment which is similar—love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus said that everything the Jewish law and all the prophets have to teach us is based on those two commandments.

Philip recognized that the eunuch was doing the things that please God. He recognized that the eunuch was his neighbor. And so when they come to the water and the eunuch asks if there’s anything to keep him from being baptized, Philip knows—he knows—that there’s absolutely nothing keeping that eunuch from being a good Christian. So they stop the chariot, and both of them go down into the water, and Philip baptizes the eunuch.

Jesus is the vine. Philip abides in Jesus. And now the eunuch abides in Jesus. They are both branches, even though they are very different in some very obvious ways. Jesus is the vine. We are the branches. Jesus said, “Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit…”

Much fruit! Isn’t that exciting? I think that we all crave few things as much as we crave being fruitful. As uncomfortable as it is to preach about a eunuch, I have to admit that I want the kind of fruit Philip bore—one more member of the church gathered in, one more branch entwined with the vine—that’s good stuff right there.

I believe that we are blessed to be members of the United Church of Christ, because we can claim a great history of bearing some wonderful fruit. For example, did you know that Zion UCC of Allentown once saved the Liberty Bell? It’s true! During the American Revolution the British occupied Philadelphia and planned to melt the bell down to make cannon. But by the time they got to it the bell had been removed and hidden—under the floorboards of Zion Reformed Church in Allentown, which is now Zion UCC.

Or did you know that a Congregational minister named Joshua Leavitt was ordained at 1st Congregational Church of Stratford, Connecticut then went on to work for the freedom of the escaped slaves from the Amistad and edited the famous abolitionist newspaper The Emancipator?

Or did you know that the serenity prayer, “"God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other," came from a sermon given by Evangelical and Reformed theologian Reinhold Niebuhr?

Or did you know that the United Church of Christ once involved in Federal court case instigated by the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr.? It’s true! Southern television stations imposed a news blackout on the civil rights movement, and Martin Luther King Jr. asked us to intervene. Everett Parker of the UCC’s Office of Communication organized churches and won a court ruling that the airwaves are public, not private property. That decision lead to a proliferation of people of color in television studios and newsrooms.

Now, I’m not telling you all these things because I’m a cheerleader for the United Church of Christ—although I suppose that’s true, too. I’m telling you these things because they seem like exciting good fruit to me.

Or let me put it the way Kathryn Matthews Huey, who is on the Congregational Vitality and Discipleship Ministry Team on the national level of the UCC, when she writes:

“The question for the church today is whether we find ourselves speaking and acting a word contrary to the "comfortable" within us and around us, where we face together, not alone, the forces arrayed against justice and mercy. What would happen if our congregations spent less time talking and worrying and working on our survival and more time on putting ourselves in the line of fire…”

Jesus is the vine. We are the branches. And when we abide in Jesus and Jesus abides in us we get in the line of fire to bear good fruit. Why? Because the best fruit is the fruit closest to the vine, where the nutrients are more concentrated. I’m trying to tell you that the closer we get to Jesus, the closer we get to God, as we live in Jesus and Jesus lives in us, then we end up wanting what God wants.

The truth is that on my own, I couldn’t accomplish much of anything. But Jesus is the vine. We are the branches. “This is really good news for us, no matter how much it flies in the face of everything we're told about success and measuring up. It's not up to us to dig deep down inside and make happen what needs to happen.” Together we can accomplish great things.

All we have to do is get closer to the vine.

Amen.