ben | 
05 31st, 2009| 
A sermon by Benjamin J. Newland on the Feast of Pentecost
Acts 2:1-21
Psalm 104:25-35, 37
Romans 8:22-27
John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15
Today is Pentecost, and to some extend there is only one scripture for today. The story told in the second chapter of the book of Acts is the story of Pentecost. The disciples, along with Jews from all over the middle east, are gathered in Jerusalem for a festival. There is a rush of wind. There are the tongues of flame. The disciples begin to speak of all that they have seen and learned at the feet of Jesus of Nazareth, and in doing so use the languages of all those various Jews present. The miracle is met with skepticism from some, and Peter stands forth to interpret this New Testament event in Old Testament scripture. Now are the days Joel was describing, says Peter, days of vision and dreams and prophecies. Now is the Day of the Lord.
To a certain extent, this story from the Book of Acts is the only story today. You might say that the Epistle reading and the Gospel text are simply there to prop up the theme of the day. Just because they aren’t expecting us to, let’s concentrate on those other readings. The epistle from Paul to the Romans and the Gospel of John have something significant in common today. Where the reading from Acts is about the visceral presence of God in the Holy Spirit, Romans and John are about the felt absence of God and the yearning for the Holy Spirit.
In his letter to the Romans Paul talks about creation groaning in labor pains. I visited my friends Brian and Jenny in the Tri-Cities last weekend, where labor pains are immanent. Jenny is just a couple weeks shy of nine whole months pregnant. The extra bedroom where I used to sleep when visiting them is now a nursery: bright yellow walls, fresh carpet and curtains, lots of little baby clothes all perfectly hung in the closet. There are enough babies around this church lately—enough new parents and grandparents in the congregation—that this metaphor ought to ring true for all of us. “…the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves,” says Paul.
So why is Paul, who never stopped preaching and writing that Jesus Christ had accomplished salvation, writing to the Romans about labor pains? What is it Paul believes we are waiting for? What birth is creation laboring to bring about? He writes, “…we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.” Adoption and redemption; for these we wait, until they are fulfilled. While we wait for adoption, we are also adopted now, made members of the Body of Christ by Jesus himself, adopted members of the family of God through our baptisms. Yet we wait for the fullness of that adoption, for the promise of a complete family that we can only imagine here and now. And while we wait for redemption, we are also redeemed now, having died with Christ in baptism and having risen to new life with him in that sacrament of water and spirit. Yet we wait for the fullness of that redemption, the redemption of our bodies as Paul calls it, in a fullness that we cannot understand in this life. There is in the best of Paul’s writing a sense both that Jesus has accomplished salvation and that the Holy Spirit has more work to do.
In the portion of the Gospel of John read this morning Jesus is wrapping up the advice he has been giving his disciples over the past eight weeks. “I still have many things to say to you,” Jesus says, “but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth…” Again there is the sense that Jesus has done much, but that there is yet more to be done. One of the things left to be done is the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Advocate for us with God. It is this arrival that we celebrate today in the Feast of Pentecost.
Also present in the Gospel text, and this is the part I find particularly fascinating, is the sense that Jesus must go away. “…it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you…” Here, in the departure of Jesus and the arrival of the Holy Spirit, is a deep echo of creation itself.
How do I get from Pentecost to Creation? By using a sixteenth century Jewish sage. Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534-1572) suggested that creation had only been possible because God withdrew himself from the world. This concept is called tzimtzum, which translates somewhat obviously into “withdrawal”. The logic is simple: where there is God there cannot be any creatures since they must be by definition separate from God. This is a good way of explaining the essential goodness of God while also explaining the gift of real free will that God seems to have given us. It is not the only way of talking about creation, but it is a good way. In the beginning God was all things everywhere. In creation God withdrew himself from the universe so that it might exist. God is not disinterested in us, but maintains a necessary separation so that we can exist, and live, and choose.
I find in this concept of creation an echo of Jesus’ words to the disciples, “…it is to your advantage that I go away…” Jesus has been the incarnate presence of God in the world (a complication of the creation via withdrawal that Jewish sages don’t have to worry about), but now his work is done, and all further progress must be made by us. If Jesus hadn’t left, there would be no Christianity. And yet we are left with a creation as yet unfinished and a God who is not present on any kind of visceral level.
The bridge of this gap—the connection between a God who withholds himself and a creation yearning for God—is the Holy Spirit. The first awareness of the presence of that spirit is remembered today in the Feast of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit, the Advocate, the Presence of God despite the absence of God. We groan with creation in labor as we await the fullness of our adoption, the completion of our redemption. As we wait, and yearn, and groan, “the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know…” We do not always know how to pray. We do not always know how to love. We do not always know how to fix the broken things of the world. “…but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.” And so, with the help of the Holy Spirit, creation labors on, until one day our adoption will be complete, our redemption will be total, and our separation from God will be no more. AMEN.
The Friday Letters
29 May 2009
My Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
I’ll be out of the office next Tuesday, as I’ve been asked to spend the day in Seattle taping two church services at a television station. I’ve done church-for-TV once before. Half a dozen years ago the ABC Christmas Eve Service was recorded at Grace & Holy Trinity Cathedral in Kansas City. I was just a lowly priestling back then, so while I got to dress up and sit behind the altar I pretty much just sat there while the Bishop and Dean and other VIPs did their thing for the cameras. It was an odd experience, mostly because we were pretending it was Christmas Eve when in fact it was still the first week of December. Here we were, a couple hundred people sitting in church on a weekday night, pretending it was Christmas Eve for the giant TV cameras looming over us on long booms. Definitely odd.
Next week’s experience promises to be both more and less odd. Less odd because we’re taping church for Trinity Sunday and the Second Sunday after Pentecost. Doing so about a week in advance is not quite as jarring as pretending it’s Christmas while you’ve just begun Advent. It’ll be even more odd though, because this time we don’t even get a pretend congregation. It will just be me, Ron Kempe from Peace Lutheran, a reader for the scripture, and maybe an acolyte if I can find one. That’s it. Three or four people in a tiny TV set chapel with a couple remote control TV cameras. Weird.
When I tell a joke in the sermon no one will laugh. OK, that’s actually pretty normal, but still. Weird.
In other news, the CECoP Parish Bike Ride has its own email list now. Each Saturday’s ride will be different. Some weeks we’ll start early, ride out for coffee, and be back before lunch. Other weeks we’ll ride in the afternoon and have a picnic somewhere along the trail. Or we might decide to drive to Orting and start there, heading further up the trail than we went last year. How will you know where and when we’re riding this weekend? The CECoP Parish Bike Ride email, of course! I sent the first edition of this email out yesterday. If you rode with us last year (and I remembered that fact) I put you on the list. If you didn’t get the email this week but want to get it in future, reply to this letter and I’ll sign you up.
Hope you’re enjoying the beautiful sunny weather. In fact, now that it looks like we’ll be having our third sunny Sunday in a row, I hope you’re starting to get used to it and will decide to come to church anyways! See you there. ☺
Peace,
Ben.
A sermon by Benjamin J. Newland on the seventh Sunday of Easter
Acts 1:15-17, 21-26
Psalm 1
1 John 5:9-13
John 17:6-19
There is nothing subtle about choosing sides in a game of dodgeball. You probably remember this from grade school yourself: there are two team captains and they take turns picking. The captains might be the best dodgeball players and the most athletic, or they might be the worst dodgeball players and barely able to throw the ball, depending on the attitude of the P.E. teacher. Either way, the captains proceed in exactly the same way. No matter their own skill level, no matter how painful it has been for them to be picked last before, regardless of any other considerations, the captains choose the best players first, then the next best, leaving the worst players to be picked last, down and down to that final painful decision where there are just two pathetic children remaining. One will be chosen, and one will not. One will have the measly consolation of at least not being picked last; the other will have nothing, having not really been picked at all: a surplus body to balance out the teams; just another human target for high velocity rubber balls.
Perhaps you can tell from my overly graphic memory of this process which end of the dodgeball skill continuum I occupied in elementary school. I have recently been reminded of this process because the Tae Kwon Do school I have attended for the past year and a half will occasionally play dodgeball on Friday evenings as a reward for hard work during the week. The experience of choosing teams is somewhat different now, if only because I am an adult now and immune to being picked last, and also because it is a Tae Kwon Do school so everyone wants to play and nobody is dreading it. Throwing rubber balls at each other as hard as possible is actually less violent than other things that we also do for fun, so it’s a bit different. The basic mechanics are unchanged though: still there are the two captains choosing their teams. The best players are chosen first, the medium players or plucky underdogs in the middle, and the weakest players or smallest children last. We try to be nice about it, but the underlying primal cause of the dodgeball selection method is unrelentingly Machiavellian.
Perhaps you have figured out where I’m going with this? The story we have from The Acts of the Apostles today is one of the first stories in that book. It is the story of how the now eleven Apostles replaced Judas Iscariot with another. Basically, they looked around at the wider group of Jesus’ disciples and determined that there were just two potential candidates for the position. Then they cast lots to see which one it should be. ‘Cast lots’ sounds pretty Biblical, so let me contemporize the phrase for you: they rolled dice to pick the new twelfth Apostle. The original twelve, of which eleven remain, were chosen by Jesus personally. This newest member was elected by a coin toss. It’s not quite as ego-deflating as being picked last for dodgeball, but it shares a certain capricious painfulness for the looser I would think.
Can you imagine searching for a new Rector for this parish, and once you’ve gotten it narrowed down to three or four candidates that would probably work out, you just have them all show up one Sunday morning and draw straws? And whoever draws the short straw gets to stay and be Rector? That’s crazy, right? Well, it’s perfectly Biblical, and some who have participated in our current system for calling clergy might say that it makes just as much sense as the convoluted and drawn out process we now use.
I wonder if this isn’t the point. With Jesus present, the Apostles are chosen personally. Once Jesus ascended into heaven and could no longer choose personally, the Apostles resort to chance, as if to say that making choices for God is hubris, so why not just leave it up to randomness? We invest huge amounts of money, time, and effort in various methods of choosing. In the church, searching for priests and bishops is an investment of thousands of dollars and at least eighteen months of time. Nationally, we invest astronomically more money and seemingly impossible amounts of time electing political leaders. These are imperfect systems, we all know that, but they seem to be the best we can do. In the end, how much does all our effort at choosing matter?
For the Apostles, their personal investment in choosing was minimal. They left it, as they saw it, in the hands of God. If God wants Matthias, God can make the quarter lands heads up. If God wants the guy with three names, God can make the quarter land tails.
The funny thing is, it really didn’t seem to matter. Both Matthias and the other guy are named in this story for the first time and never again. Never again will either of them, the winner or the looser, appear in the Christian story. For all we know, Matthias wondered off the next day and spent the rest of his life writing an unpublished memoir (I once read a novel to this effect and while clearly fictional it was compelling). For all we know, the guy with three names went on to found an orphanage and teach an entire generation of unwanted children that God loved them and had a son himself that loved them too. We don’t know. We don’t know the results of this decision even after it is made.
It’s not a bad thing to want to make the best possible decisions we can. Time spent in prayerful consideration is not time wasted. Nevertheless, the Apostles seem to be telling us this morning that making choices isn’t as complicated as we might think, and that the important bit is what you do with having been chosen. If you do nothing, it doesn’t matter if you were chosen or not. Yet aren’t we all chosen, in the end? Even if you are, like I was, the last pathetic child left at the end of the dodgeball team selection process, do you not still have to play?
Here’s to our God who leaves no player unchosen, and blesses those who play with heart, if not always with skill. AMEN.
The Friday Letters
22 May 2009
My Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
A sunny Friday morning before a sunny holiday weekend. I can’t imagine the circumstances in which an e-mail might improve upon your prospects here, but I’m writing one anyways, just in case. Maybe you’ll get to it next Wednesday, when all is gray and rainy and back-to-work.
I’m expecting a pretty quiet weekend at church both because of the holiday and the weather. That’s OK though, as we should maybe conserve our energies for next week’s Pentecost festivities. I had high hopes for this week, hopes that would have translated directly into Friday Letter materials. Such hopes were dashed by the tandem efforts of a full day of Diocesan Mandated Training (Tuesday) and a virus that I’m blaming on said training (Tuesday night through Thursday). I’m looking at it positively: now I have lots of stuff to do next week!
Seriously though, keep your eyes open for news of things to come. We’re already making some plans for the fall that will occupy the summer months with planning and preparing. Children’s Education and Youth Café are scheduled for reinvigoration, and a couple new groups will be forming. The financial news seems to be all bad these days, but that is not true at CECoP, and you’ll hear more about that soon as well. As we wind up the school year keep your church in mind: plenty of soul nourishing activities here all summer long.
I hope your weekend is warm and wonderful, and if you’re in town, I’ll hope to see you Sunday!
Peace,
Ben.
A sermon by Benjamin J. Newland on the sixth Sunday of Easter season.
Acts 10:44-48
Psalm 98
1 John 5:1-6
John 15:9-17
Having ignored the Book of Acts last week, it is time to make amends. It is going to take some work though, for while last week Acts told us a complete story about the Apostle Philip and a Eunuch from Ethiopia, this week we have just one scene in a story that began before we started listening. Have you ever gone to see a movie at the multiplex and arrived too early? And while you were waiting for your theatre to empty of the previous crowd you went into another theatre to see what was playing in there? Maybe it wasn’t a movie you wanted to see, but you were curious enough to take a look. And since movies in multiplexes generally start and end in batches, you would have seen the end of whatever movie it is that you’re sneaking into, just for a minute or two? Anybody ever done that? No? Maybe it’s just me.
At any rate, this is what has happened to us this morning. We’ve arrived early for the main feature of Acts, which is the story of Pentecost, which starts two weeks from this morning. So we sneak into another theatre and catch the end of this story about Peter and Cornelius. It didn’t seem very interesting in the trailers, but now we are intrigued. Peter stands forth dramatically and delivers what is clearly the movie’s climax line: “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” It sounds like that other movie we skipped, the one about the Eunuch and Philip, where the Eunuch (who is from Ethiopia, which makes that movie about ethnicity and genital mutilation, so no wonder it didn’t get an Oscar) says, “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?”
The answer to this question, “what prevents me”, is, in short, everything. Everything prevents you, Ethiopian Eunuch. In the time in which this movie is set, sexual deviants from foreign countries who are poorly educated servants of pagan rulers are not baptized. Likewise, Gentiles (and it would be hard to be more gentile than Cornelius, who is a Centurion in the Roman Legions) are not baptized. What then could have happened in this movie to which we have seen the final scene? What would cause Peter, who previously had been dead set against baptizing Gentiles, to stand up and ask how they could withhold water when the Spirit was so clearly bestowed already? Well, since you’ve already seen how the movie ends, I won’t be spoiling the plot by telling you what happened before.
The main characters are these: Peter and Cornelius. Peter you know well, as he has started in many of these scriptural movies before. He is the first of the Apostles, the Rock upon which the church is built, the Bishop of Rome, the First amongst equals. He also does a bit of slapstick from time to time, particularly when costarring with Jesus. Cornelius is less well known, but I bet you’ve heard his name before. He is a centurion, a leader of one hundred men, an officer and a gentleman. He serves in the Italian Cohort, a very prestigious legion amongst the Roman legions. He is a God-Fearer, a gentile who is enamored with the God of Israel. He cannot (or will not) become Jewish himself, but he is a great supporter of the Jewish faith and people, giving generously and praying constantly.
As the movie opens (this is the beginning of chapter ten of The Acts of the Apostles) Cornelius has a vision. In that vision he meets an angel of God, who tells him that God has noticed his giving and his prayers, and that he should send a servant to Joppa to fetch Simon who is called Peter. Cornelius does so.
The next scene is of said Simon who is called Peter. Peter climbs onto the roof of the seaside home he’s staying in in order to squeeze in the evening prayers before dinner. He’s hungry, which probably helps to shape the vision he has. In Peter’s vision a picnic blanket is lowered through the clouds of heaven. It is laden with many kinds of meat, none of which are kosher, and therefore all of which are forbidden. Then a voice speaks to Peter (and we know the voice is God’s) and tells him to eat. Peter refuses, because he is a Jew and he has always kept the dietary laws, and he isn’t going to break them now, in a vision, just because he’s hungry. The voice of the Lord, heard from on high, asks Peter if what God has made can be unclean? This happens three times, though there is no indication that Peter understands the message.
In the next scene the servants of Cornelius arrive, and invite Peter to return with them to the house of Cornelius. Peter agrees, again being prompted by the voice of the Spirit. After sharing hospitality with them, Peter sets out the next morning with the messengers and some of his friends who are Jews and comes to Cornelius’s house. It is only then, upon meeting Cornelius, that Peter begins to understand the message of his vision. Here is a Gentile, as gentile as a gentile can be, yet clearly also a man who respects God and seeks to follow the commandments of God as best he can given his circumstances. ‘Aha’, thinks Peter, ‘what God has made, though it is outside the boundaries I know and have lived within all my life, cannot be rejected out of hand.’ Or, in the original words, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality.”
Then follows a very long scene of exposition, wherein Peter preaches to Cornelius and all those he has gathered. This is why, incidentally, the scriptural movie business never really took off: movies about sermons just aren’t that entertaining and almost no one will pay $10 admission or $8 for popcorn to see one. Peter’s sermon is pretty standard by this point. The only difference here is that he’s delivering it not to Jews in a synagogue, but to Gentiles in a gentile household. Those who have accompanied Peter, circumcised and kosher every one of them, are clearly uncomfortable with what Peter is doing.
And the gentiles are overcome. They hear Peter’s message and believe it in dramatic fashion. They begin to speak in tongues, and praise God, and do all the other things that indicate the gift of the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts. Again, this has happened before, but never to Gentiles.
And this is where we came into the theatre. We already saw this final scene, where Peter turns to those who are with him, those who refuse to accept gentiles into this new Christian-Jewish club they are busy forming, and presents them with a fait acompli. Everyone there knows that Baptism requires two things: the outward and physical sign of water, and the inward and spiritual grace of the Spirit. ‘Here,’ says Peter, ‘are people who have obviously received the inward and spiritual grace of the Holy Spirit. What good would it do us prevent them from getting wet?’
And here is the point of this movie, and the reason it is worth the cost of admission—worth watching from beginning to end several times. It is in our nature as human beings to observe borders, to mark boundaries, to build fences, and to draw lines. We have the power to withhold the outward and visible signs of God’s presence. The Ethiopian Eunuch, with his unacceptable foreignness and his mutilation, was on the wrong side of the fence. Cornelius, with his irredeemably Gentile occupation and upbringing, was on the wrong side of the fence. And this is no white picket fence. Oh no, this is a ten foot tall chain-link fence with a coil of razor wire at the top and security cameras every twenty yards with their little, blinking, red lights that say stay out.
Yet the Holy Spirit is no respecter of fences. We have not yet built a fence the Holy Spirit could not penetrate. We keep trying, but so far we have failed. And then someone like Peter comes along and points out to us the futility—the stupidity—of our fence. ‘People,’ Peter says, ‘God is already on the other side of this fence. Who do you think you are keeping out?’ AMEN.
The Friday Letters
15 May 2009
My Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
The weather seems to be understanding of our need for sunny Saturdays these last couple weekends. Last Saturday we used the fair weather to do a bit of farming at Mother Earth Farm. You can see some photos and video here.
There will be another official CECoP volunteer Saturday on August 1st, so put that on your calendar now. Also, if you’re interested before then the farm accepts walk-in volunteers any weekday. Talk to Robin Partington to learn all the details. And thanks to Robin for organizing this and our other food ministry outreach.
This Saturday we’re restarting our weekly summer bike ride. We’ve decided to try an evening ride this year, at least for a few weeks to see how people like it. If you’d like to join us you have two choices. The first choice is to meet at the Cornerstone Garage, the one car garage behind the Cornerstone Office building. Last summer we turned this space into a small bike shop, so if your bike needs air in its tires or oil on its chain or even just a good dusting, come on down any time after 3pm. Those at the Cornerstone will start riding at about 4:30pm. If you’d rather meet us on the trail, we should get to the East Puyallup (Meeker) Trailhead of the Foothills Trail at about 5pm. We’ll ride to Orting and back, stopping at Starbucks while we’re there for a bit of refreshment. The ride takes about an hour and a half and we generally proceed at a leisurely pace. Come on out and join us!
It’s a great time of year for our part of the world. Let us rejoice and be glad in it!
See you Sunday,
Peace,
Ben.
On Saturday, May 9th, a dozen intrepid volunteers from CECoP ventured forth to Mother Earth Farm. Manure was shoveled and weeds were hoed. Watch the video of our exploits!
