First Reading:
23Jesus answered him, Those who love me will
keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them
and make our home with them. 24Whoever does not love me
does not keep my words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is
from the Father who sent me.
25I have said these things to you while I am still with
you. 26But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father
will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all
that I have said to you. 27Peace I leave with you; my
peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not
let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.
28You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I am
coming to you.’ If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am
going to the Father, because the Father is greater than
I. 29And now I have told you this before it occurs, so that
when it does occur, you may believe.
Second Reading:
9During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of
Macedonia pleading with him and saying, Come over to Macedonia and
help us.
10When he had seen the vision, we immediately
tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called
us to proclaim the good news to them. 11We set sail from
Troas and took a straight course to Samothrace, the following day to
Neapolis, 12and from there to Philippi, which is a leading
city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. We remained in
this city for some days. 13On the sabbath day we went
outside the gate by the river, where we supposed there was a place of
prayer; and we sat down and spoke to the women who had gathered there.
14A certain woman named Lydia, a worshiper of God, was
listening to us; she was from the city of Thyatira and a dealer in
purple cloth. The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was
said by Paul. 15When she and her household were baptized,
she urged us, saying, If you have judged me to be faithful to the
Lord, come and stay at my home.
And she prevailed upon us.
Just about every time I go somewhere for the first time, no matter how
prepared I am, I almost always find myself wishing that the route was
a little bit better marked, or I find myself wishing that I knew the
signs to look for and I knew where to find them. It's hard to go new
places… I don't like feeling like I don't know where I'm going,
and I hate asking directions… because at least half the time,
it seems to just make things worse… it seems like most of the
time the people I end up asking don't know any better how to get where
I'm going than I do… they say things like: Go to the third
stop-light. Hold on it may be the fourth… yeah, it's either
the third or fourth stoplight and then take a left and you go up a big
hill but it's not really that big but it's the biggest one on the
street… unless you go too far, and then you go up a really big
hill. And if you get to the stop sign you've definitely gone too far.
But before you get to the really big hill that's where you want to
turn and the road goes both directions and I don't know if the place
you're looking for is on the left or on the right but it's one of
those two.
And I say thank you and wondered why I bothered. So
most of the time I stick to signs, but there are even sometimes when
the signs are confusing too. I'm still relatively new to driving
through DC, and I'm not terribly directionally challenged, but it sure
seems like things could be better marked. Even when I print out the
directions from Google or Mapquest, it's sometimes still hard to find
the way. I guess that makes sense in a big city… there's a lot
going on and it's impossible to mark out everything… but the
first time I ever came here for my very first interview almost two
years ago. We got directions from Diane and just to be sure, we got
directions from Google too… and then as we were leaving we
borrowed my parent's little plug-in GPS… everything said to
take highway 3… and there's this one sign as you're coming down
97 that says highway 3 on it… it was a little closer to the
airport than I thought it was supposed to be and our GPS didn't tell
us to turn but I was in a new place and had been traveling all day
long and I knew I was supposed to take highway 3… so it took
about 10 minutes of exploring beautiful Glen Burnie before Rebecca and
I decided that we must have followed the wrong sign. I have to admit,
later when I met people from the church and I told the story of our
journey it was encouraging that some of their reactions said I wasn't
the only one who's ever gone on business route 3. But in reality, I
guess the signs that got us to the point that we were driving down the
wrong highway 3 were really the more important ones to follow…
And as much as I wish there were clear signs on the freeways and in
the cities, how much more do I wish the signs were easy to follow when
it comes to our lives and the decisions we make.
I think I'm jealous of Paul, and some others in the New Testament… not everything. There's lots of stuff that I wouldn't want any part of, but when it comes to seeing the signs that God has laid out for them it seems like the people in the bible stories had it easy. In the verses right before our passage from Acts, Paul says that he planned to go to Asia, (not what we think of as Asia now but the Roman province was equivalent to something like modern day Turkey) but the spirit prevented him from going. He doesn't say how the spirit prevented him; but he was clear that it did. And then over night he had a vision and it's immediately clear to him to drop his previous plans and turn instead toward Europe and Macedonia. To have that kind of clarity about any major life decision would be nice, wouldn't it? The way it's portrayed in the scriptures, all the sign posts pointed in the same direction and so it seemed easy for the people involved to know what God wanted them to do, and also it seemed easy for them to do it. We saw it with Peter, we saw it with Paul, and if we were to look, we'd see it over and over again in our scripture. God makes directions clear and then people follow those directions.
Even Jesus, in our gospel lesson for the day says, I tell you these things before they occur so that when they do happen you will believe. This is part of Jesus' farewell dialog and he's trying to convey to the disciples two things… first, even though Jesus won't be physically present, God will still lead them. And second: people will believe in Christ because of the disciples' witness and the fact that they keep his words. Jesus comforts them, he offers them peace, and he lays out signposts along the way so the disciples might be able to comprehend both what's going on in the moment and also what's going to be required of them as they take on the task of continuing to proclaim the good news even when Jesus isn't physically in their presence anymore.
Now each one of the gospels tries to convey to us as readers and
hearers that God is alive and active in our world… our
tradition has made the same claim for thousands of years saying that
God was active at the beginning of time and will be active at the end
of time and everywhere in-between. And if we take that assumption as
our starting point, it opens the possibility that we and the world
around us will be radically changed as we listen to and follow God's
direction. This is the sixth Sunday of the Easter Celebration and for
those of you who have been around pretty consistently throughout those
six weeks you may have heard a theme in what I've been saying in my
sermons every week… I started this Easter Season with a
question that was going to guide my preaching: what are the
consequences of being convinced that Jesus is risen? There may be a
thousand different things that make people believe… and there
may be a million different ways of expressing that belief. But I
think the expressions can all be grouped under one heading, which is
said in our gospel text today as loving Jesus Christ. As Jesus said
in the reading, those who love me will keep my word, and my father
will love them and we will come to them and make our home with
them.
So then the consequence of being convinced is to seek to
keep God's word. And probably, as a Pastor, the question I hear most
from people is some variation of the question, How do I know what
I'm supposed to do?
How do I know what God desires of me?
It's a good question and there aren't necessarily easy answers. That's why I said earlier that I'm jealous of Paul. In the scripture it always seems so clear to him… of course we have to remember that these stories were written down years after they happened by someone who was at best a traveling companion (and even that's debated by scholars). And there's part of me that wonders… where the text says that the spirit of Jesus didn't allow them to go into a particular region of Asia, did that mean that they were running down to the pier where they heard that a ship was leaving and they hoped to be on the ship but they got there ten or 15 minutes late, after it was 200 yards off the dock? We just don't know… but sometimes God works precisely like that. And when a door closes, or an opportunity disappears, if we trust that God is leading us, we don't need to worry too much because another door will open. And likewise, when a door opens or an opportunity arises we may just want to pause for a moment and test it before we rush in. I don't think that there's a way to be 100% sure that something is God's will, at least not before a long time has passed and we can look back on a bigger piece of the whole story. But there are signposts, things in our tradition and built on our own and other people's experiences that help guide us, and I want to offer three to you today.
The first sign post is what's going on inside of you. One of the principles of discernment says we can know if we're following God's desire by our own interior movements… if there's anxiety building, or discouragement, or inner turmoil, it may be good to stop and reexamine… on the other hand, if there's an increase in hope, joy, love, faith, any of the fruit of the spirit, you're on the right track… before I came here, I had taken a couple of years off from ministry… I was still working as a youth director for a church but only on a small part time basis… I was building houses for a living. Rebecca and I had talked about when would be a good time to start to look for a church call and we waited… longer than we had planned, but one day I received an email from someone who had heard of us from a mutual friend at Seminary and they wanted both of us to apply for positions at their church… obviously we didn't end up there, but the excitement and the hope that was generated from the possibility of serving in ministry again was enough to make us pay attention and to say yes, we believe this is God's call for us. And as the process continued that hope, that excitement and the joy that followed stuck with us, it wasn't always easy and there were a few frustrating obstacles but before, during, and after the decision was made, what was going on inside of us said this is right, this is good and so we were confident that we were on the right track.
Second sign post is community, are others willing to join with you and affirm the call? Now in one sense of the word, everything from a neighborhood, to a workplace, to a soccer team could be considered community. In another sense of the word, the sense I'm using it here, community doesn't happen by accident. It's made up of a group of people who are committed to the well being of each other as well as committed to the reason for their existence as a group. It's not necessarily that they're like minded but that they're guided by the same goal of following God's word… For us, the Seattle presbytery, the church, our families and our friends all took part in affirming the call… it wasn't easy to leave what we had, but we were confident that it was time to go… In the passage from Acts, Paul's the one who saw the vision but in the very next verse the pronoun switched to a plural… when he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia being convinced that God called us. Discernment of God's will happens best in the context of community.
And the third sign post: Who is served by the opportunity? It's not
necessarily wrong to do something that is self-serving… but if
it is only self-serving, I have to wonder if it is what God would have
us do. Frederick Buechner who's a pastor and a writer says, The
vocation for you is the one in which your deep gladness meets the
world's deep need.
Even the person in Paul's vision says Come
over to Macedonia and help us.
Authentic call is always
beneficial not only to the people who are in community with you, but
it also stretches to people who are outside of that fellowship as
well… Jesus always looked beyond himself in ministry and God's
desire is always that what we do is bigger than serving ourselves and
our own community needs.
Now, there are other signposts and there are other ways to test whether something is God's desire for us, truth be told, they aren't always easy to follow because they sometimes require a change in plans or invite us on a journey to somewhere outside our comfort zone, but when we pay attention the signs are certainly there as we look for guidance and direction and how we are called into partnership with God in every today and in every new tomorrow. Thanks be to God. Amen
The foregoing sermon was given by Rev. Dan Holland at the United Parish of Bowie on the Fifth Sunday after Easter, May 9, 2010.
© 2010 Daniel Holland
