A Sermon Preached By

Rev. Peter W. Shidemantle

7th Sunday of Easter, May 28, 2006

PEBBLE HILL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

5299 Jamesville Rd., DeWitt, NY  13214

Phone:  315-446-0960     FAX:  446-0672

phillchu@twcny.rr.com     http://pebblehill.presbychurch.org

          Our scripture readings this morning from the book of Acts and from John’s gospel both have to do with “keeping it going.”  In the reading from John, Jesus, who is about to return to God, will be leaving his disciples.  We are overhearing his prayer for them, which asks that God would protect them and consecrate them in the truth as they continue his work in the world.  In Acts the issue is about continuity of leadership among the earliest apostles.  You might say it was the church’s first ecclesiastical business meeting (maybe they were actually Presbyterians!).  The agenda was to determine who, between two candidates, would be the one to succeed Judas - to keep this fledgling movement going.

          We can tell from these two readings that already in the early days of the church, especially as it moved into the second and third generations, it was very important that there be a sense of tradition and authority over time, and trustworthy witness to what God had done in Christ, who Jesus was, his teachings and his actions, and especially his resurrection.  The one who was to succeed Judas had to be one, Peter said, who “accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us . . . a witness to the resurrection.”  Jesus’ prayer in John’s gospel makes clear that it was important for the church to know that the revelation from God, the truth from Jesus about God has been faithfully transmitted, in this order: from God to Christ, from Christ to the apostles, from the apostles to the church.  John the gospel writer wants us to know that we can trust the tradition we have received.

          It has been interesting and sometimes even entertaining to read and observe and to some degree participate in all the “fuss” around the “Da Vinci Code” – the book and now the movie, that postulates (fictional) that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married, among other things - that these things have been kept secret all these centuries by those who have had a vested interest in doing so.  Not only fiction writers, but also reputable scholars, like Elaine Pagels and others, have shown that the early Christian movement was not one single, unified thing, but quite the contrary; it was a chaotic, competitive jumble of claims about Jesus, supported by various writings, some of which carry the name “gospel” but which never made their way into the holy scriptures as they’ve come down to us, and movements that claimed some special, secret divine knowledge and beliefs which the early church and its councils determined were not within the range of what the Christian revelation was about.

          It is all very interesting and somewhat fascinating.  Much of it isn’t really new, but it has been newly and creatively put together and “spun” in such a way that Time and Newsweek put it on their covers, and “correctives”regarding the “Da Vinci Code” from Christian publishing houses are flying off the shelves.

          People have always been intrigued by conspiracy theories and hidden truths.  We get a kick out of old, supposed truths being debunked and exposed by newly uncovered knowledge.  There is something in all of us, I suppose, that secretly, or maybe not so secretly, likes to see monuments to tradition and old myths toppled – some of them clearly deserve to be toppled, and it is liberating to be rid of them.

          But it strikes me that oftentimes it isn’t so much freedom from oppressive so-called “truths” that is our motivation, but rather our reluctance to be claimed by a truth that makes us uncomfortable, something that challenges our sense of who we are and indeed whose we are.  It is one thing to adopt new categories in which to imagine and express images of God, for example.  Exclusively male categories do not capture the whole of who God is - nor do any categories.  There was a time when such a thought would have been deemed heretical, as it would for women to serve in leadership roles in the church.  We do not need to be limited to only certain musical expressions in worship, or ways to pray or share God’s word.  Our relationship to adherents of other faiths change and grow as our world grows smaller and as populations become more diverse, but it does not mean that all faiths are reduced to a least common denominator.  These practices and ways of understanding and expanded awareness can add to the richness and depth of our faith and be responsive to the sensitivities and tastes of people in different times and different cultures than those where our traditions of faith were born and how they were thought of and understood over time.  But these are really not at the center, not what gives enduring and abiding power to the faith of the church of Jesus Christ.

          It is not the truths which the church claims that constitute the center of our faith, but the truth that claims us, to which the church gives witness – and by that we mean disciples today who are witnesses to the power of Christ’s resurrection in their own lives.  You can’t believe in the resurrection without being transformed by it.  It’s got to touch your heart in the way that it touched those first witnesses.  Admittedly, we are separated by much time.  Our thought categories are different.  We live on the other side of the Enlightenment.  But we know what it is to sin, and we know how helpless we are to reach the perfect love of God on our own.  We know that that emptiness inside of us, as much as we try to fill it up with everything worldly, even everything “good” as far as the world is concerned, it will not touch the center.  Only God can meet our willful sinfulness and turn it to a holy restlessness, and Jesus is his name. 

          We don’t have to give a thought to any of this, and many don’t.  Maybe they decide that being “good” is enough, the kind of good that does not require transformation, and there is much goodness that doesn’t.  It’s just that such people are hardly changed at all.  The image of God in them is sleeping, and it won’t wake up unless they do, unless we do, wake up to the truth that “If we claim to be sinless we are deceiving ourselves and are strangers to the truth.”  Wake up to the truth that “God so loved the world that God gave the only son . . .”  Wake up to the truth that “nothing in all creation, not even death itself, can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord.” 

          This, I think, is what has come down to us in the gospel of Jesus Christ as the church has imperfectly proclaimed and lived it over time.  Can we trust the tradition we have received?  Yes, if the center of the gospel touches the center of our hearts.

          One of the guides we had on our trip in Israel and Palestine was a Palestinian Christian named Naim.  At virtually every one of the holy sites we visited when he was our guide he would say that this is where Jesus turned water into wine, or these are the archaelogical remains of Peter’s mother-in-law’s house - that these are “unchallenged tradition.”  Well. . . I think a lot of them have been “challenged”  – but one of the things he meant by that as he talked about it with us, is that these are places in the Holy Land where for centuries people have come on pilgrimage from all over the world to see and touch and feel the connection with what has already touched their hearts.  Rocks are no more holy in the Kidron Valley in Israel than they are on a hillside in central New York, but when one sees the rocks there one is reminded of Jesus saying that if the people were silenced by powers who would prevent them from giving him praise and shouting Alleluia to God, that these very stones would cry out.

          We Protestants have never been all that big on holy sites, as moving and as wonderful it can be to have the chance to visit them.  And tradition does not carry the same weight for us as does scripture or the present experience of God in life.  But there is something essential about “keeping it going,” about passing on what we have received.  We are not rootless, but we’re among the branches that are attached to the living vine of Jesus Christ.  We have stories of faith that connect us to true and holy things that are as relevant to our lives as today’s news, as critical as any health concerns we might be facing, as timely as life’s most important events.

          Jesus prayed for his disciples before he left them: “Holy Father. . . now they know that everything you have given me is from you; I have given them the words you gave me, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you have sent me . . . keep them in your name which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.”

          Our connection with God through Christ is known and is shown in the unity with which we give witness to the world.  The treasure of faith that we have received can only be lessened in value if we do not pass it on with love.  It is not some objective collection of information, not some hidden so-called “truths.”  It does not need to be defended.  It needs to be lived.  If we Christians truly lived our faith as much as we seem to like to stew over it and fight about it with one another, there’d not be enough room to accommodate all the souls who would want to share the joy of believing. 

          Let us receive the promises again today; let us find the joy that may have escaped us, and keep it going -

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