Fifth
Sunday of Easter
April
20, 2008
Sermon
by Pastor Joy Bussert
The
Holy Gospel according to
[Jesus said to the disciples:] “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling
places. If it were not so, would I have
told you that I go to prepare a place for you?
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take
you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am
going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do
not know where you are going. How can we
know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am
the way, and the truth, and the life. No
one comes to the Father except through me.
If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen
him.”
Phillip said to him, “Lord, show us
the Father, and we will be satisfied.”
Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Phillip, and you
still do not know me? Whoever has seen
me has seen the Father. How can you say,
‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe
that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on
my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the
Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works
themselves. Very truly, I tell you, the
one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do
greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. I will do whatever you ask in my name, so the
Father may be glorified in the Son. If
in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.”
The
Gospel of the Lord.
It
did not take me very long to notice that our golden retriever puppy—no longer a
puppy, but this would have been some years ago—Marcella Rose, it didn’t take me
long to figure out what luggage and bags in the middle of the dining room meant
to her. Each time I would pile up our
bags the night before taking even a short trip to Grand Marais, I would wake up
the next morning, ready to go, with the pieces unharmed but scattered all over
the dining-room floor. Finally, after a
few trips, it occurred to me that this was a form of protest at our
leaving. And so I got the idea that the
day before we were to leave I would pile up the luggage and bags in the middle
of the dining-room floor and invite Stephanie, our wonderful veterinarian’s
assistant who would be watching and walking and feeding Marcella while we were
gone, to come over, and Stephanie and I would sit next to the luggage, and we
would explain to Marcella exactly what was going to happen: that we would be
leaving the next morning for Grand Marais; that we would be gone for a few
days; that Stephanie would be coming to take care of her and feed her and give
her her daily walk; and then Kate and I would come back. Since that time, the luggage has remained
intact, just as I left it or leave it in the middle of the dining-room floor,
for us to find in the morning to put in the car and take on our trip.
In
Chapters 14 through 17 of John’s Gospel, we have what are known as the
“Farewell Discourses” in the Gospel of John; three chapters of marvelous
conversations that Jesus had with the disciples before he was to leave them,
giving reassurance, blessings, encouragement, and, most importantly, the
promise that the Comforter, or Holy Spirit, would come to be an abiding
presence with them when he was gone. “Let
not your hearts be troubled,” so begins the discourse in our Gospel for
today. “Let not your hearts be troubled.
Trust in God, believe also in me.”
The setting would have been The Last Supper, just before the events
leading up to Jesus’ arrest. And Jesus’
primary concern at that moment in these farewell conversations is not with the
events about to happen to him, but with concern for what will happen to the
disciples after he is gone. In the
Easter season, we recall these passages, just as the disciples would remember
back to these conversations after Jesus is gone.
They
were promises given to the earliest, earliest disciples. But they are promises just as relevant for
the well‑being and encouragement of the faithful today. And as we read these discourses and hear them
as words of promise and blessing for us today, Jesus, interestingly, does not
promise the disciples, or us, an easy, ten‑step model for success. He does not give them a formula for
success. He does not prescribe a growth
model for expansion. He does not suggest
ten quick and easy steps toward a successful Christian church. There is no formula here for what we today
would call the mega-church model of expansion.
There is not even a suggestion that to be the church is to be purpose
driven. What he gives them is the
commandment to love one another and
the promise of the Spirit—sometimes translated Counselor or Advocate,
even Comforter—to be with them as an abiding presence in the struggle,
for what he knows will be the long, hard road ahead, especially after he is
gone. And the struggle is not to be successful,
but peaceful, in the way of love, in the way of peace, and in the way of
mercy, justice, and inclusiveness, especially for those regarded as the most
outcast by the world in which the church might find itself then, as now.
In
our day everywhere, the official Christian church is asking serious questions
about its viability and its future.
Built on a model of expansion since the rise of Constantine in the 4th
Century, the church is now struggling to redefine itself, now that that period
of official expansion—known as the era of Christendom in Western culture—has
come to an end. We are no longer
expanding, according to the numbers model, for success. Instead, the church is becoming increasingly
marginalized in modern cultures, compared to its participation, even collusion,
with the growth and expansion of Western cultures in centuries past.
The
experience of the European and America Christian Church today, according to
theologian Douglas John Hall of Montreal, is more akin to the early Christian
movement, as we have it in the Gospel of John, prior to the time of
Constantine, then ever forth. And rather
than seeing this as a catastrophe, Douglas John Hall sees this as an
opportunity for the church to reclaim its authentic identity as a prophetic
movement and a prophetic voice to a world, and for the sake of a world, that
God so loved.
In
the introduction to his little book, entitled simply The End of Christendom
and the Future of Christianity, Douglas John Hall says this about the
Christian church today:
“The title of this little book is intended to suggest
the overhaul hypothesis that I want to develop in it. Briefly put, it is the belief that the
Christian movement can have a very significant future, a responsible future
that will be both faithful to the original vision of this movement and of
immense service to our beleaguered world.
But to have that future, we Christians must stop trying to have the kind
of future that nearly sixteen centuries of official Christendom in the Western
world have conditioned us to covet. That
coveted future is what I mean when I use the term “Christendom,” which means
literally the dominion or sovereignty of the Christian religion. Today, Christendom, so understood, is in its
death throes. And the question we all
have to ask ourselves is whether or not we can get over regarding that as a
catastrophe and begin to experience it as a doorway, albeit a narrow one, into
a future that is more in keeping with what our Lord first had in mind when he
called disciples to accompany him on his mission to redeem the world through
love and not power.”
Being
a theologian, of course, Douglas John Hall does not address what the church
should do with excess buildings and deteriorating buildings, with declining
numbers and diminished resources. What
he does instead is address the opportunities for ministry and the significance
of the Gospel in such a time as this. He
talks about the possibilities of littleness,
not bigness, and what an authentic
Christian movement might have to offer a world in need of promise, blessing,
comfort, and peace today.
What
are the human hungers in our modern world that can be addressed by a word of
faith and hope? He named four: the quest
for meaningful community; the quest for responsible authenticity; the quest for
the sacred and a sense of mystery; and the quest for meaning, in the confidence
and trust of an abiding God. But in
order to do this, the church will have first, he says, “to disengage from its
obsession with the expectations of expansion so that it might reengage in the
spirit of love and in the name of the one who spoke a word of comfort and
reassurance to the disciples, not that they or we might be successful but
faithful to the Gospel and ministry of mercy, peace, and justice for a world in
need of the Gospel today.”
In
our Women’s History Month class that met every Friday morning through March,
and we went to April a little ways, we not only had good conversations over
coffee and read some good literature from a 19th Century British author, as
well as a 21st Century African American woman theologian, we also viewed a
remarkable documentary entitled “Not for Ourselves Alone,” telling the
story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, coming out of the
abolitionist movement and then the struggle for suffrage at the turn of the
century in American history. The story
lets you in on not only the history of the movement but also the unique
friendship of these two leaders, who were so very different in character, in
their philosophy of reform, and in their ideas of how to get things done. We also see not only the moments of triumph
but also the repeated setbacks and disappointments and discouragement in the
face of opposition and resistance, even ridicule and hostility.
Neither
Elizabeth Cady Stanton nor Susan B. Anthony lived to see the day when their
unending life’s work would come to fruition—that is the day in 1920, when the
Nineteenth Amendment was finally ratified, giving the franchise in this country
to women. However, during their lifetime
they traveled across the country, giving lectures and speeches in as many as
three dozen cities and small towns every six weeks, bringing words of hope and
encouragement to the young women who would carry on the legacy and the
struggle, and finish the work they had only begun, long after they would be
gone.
Elizabeth
Cady Stanton alone crossed the Mississippi several times a season; then it
would be back to Chicago, or St. Louis, or back to New York, to start a tour
again. She usually spoke once a day, and
twice on Sundays. When she had an
afternoon free, she liked to meet with all of the women in the community.
In a
letter to her daughter Margaret in 1872, Stanton describes a visit to a little
town in Minnesota that is not named.
“Imagine me today,” she says, writing to her daughter Margaret, “sitting
in a small, comfortable room in the railroad hotel about a half-mile from this
little Minnesota town, where I do not know a soul. But as everybody is polite and attentive, I
suppose they all know me. I spoke last
evening in Iowa, and in order to reach here I was obliged to leave at
midnight. So after my lecture, I had an
oyster supper, packed up my things, and all ready to start, took a short nap on
the sofa. I was called at two, but as
the horses were sick and I was the only guest going westward, I was toted, I
and my baggage, in a little cart drawn by a mule, through a fearful snow storm,
the winds cutting like particles of glass.
You ask if it is not lonely traveling as I do. It is, indeed. But you see, dearest, I must practice economy
in some directions. And above all
considerations of loneliness and fatigue, I feel that I am doing an immense
amount of good in rousing young women to thought and inspiring them with new
hope and self- respect, that I am making the path smoother for you and Hattie
and all the other dear girls.”
When
Jesus says in the Gospel of John: “Let
not your hearts be troubled. Trust in
God; believe also in me,” he is offering a radical measure of comfort,
reassurance, and hope to those who would carry on in his name long after he was
gone. And the abiding presence of the
Spirit that was with them while he was alive will be with them in the presence
of the Comforter to the end of the age.
To be the church then, as the church today, is to receive these words in
confidence and trust, knowing that we do not go alone into the future. The Comforter, the Spirit of God, is with us
yet today.
“Let
not your hearts be troubled” are the words of comfort that would go on
living in the minds and hearts of the disciples, and are the words that have
come down to us yet today. The promise is there; we need only trust and
believe.
Amen.