April 27, 2008
(Sixth Sunday of Easter)
At the Areopagus
by The Rev. Canon Susan Sommer
Acts 17:22-31 • Psalm 66:7-18
• 1 Peter 3:13-22 • John 14:15-21
(From
The Lectionary Page)
For my money, six of the most emotionally charged words in our lexicon are: “If you love me, you will…” We’re talking a relationship nightmare here, aren’t we? If you’ve ever lived with or loved someone who routinely uses this language, you know that sense of feeling emotionally manipulated. Very few things can put us on the defensive faster than those dangerously loaded words because the person who says them to a loved one seeks consciously or unconsciously to define the relationship unilaterally. It is usually, though not always, more about power than it is about love. Little relationship benefit has ever derived from these words.
And yet, they are the opening words in today’s gospel passage, spoken by none other than Jesus to his disciples in the context of his after dinner speech at the Last Supper. As John the Evangelist, alone of the 4 gospel writers envisions the scene, Jesus is like Greek philosopher facing imminent death, using precious last minutes of life to summarize his teaching for his students. He has washed their feet and given them a new Commandment, that they are to love one another as he has loved them. He has reminded them of how counter-cultural this commandment is, and of how the world will reject it. And yet that Truth – love of the Other -- ultimately will prevail because it, unlike all political and social systems in the world, is inherently life-giving to all creation.
And then he says the seemingly loaded words, “If you love me, then you will keep my commandments.” Yikes. Taken at face value, that sentence doesn’t sound much like the Jesus revealed in the rest of the gospels, does it? In John’s gospel, especially, Jesus is the perfect revelation of God himself. Why on earth (literally!) would God Incarnate engage in emotional manipulation of his closest disciples?
Well, the short answer is, God doesn’t. The Greek is actually more nuanced than the English translation allows. A dynamic translation might have Jesus saying, “In loving me, you will be fulfilling the commandment.” In other words, the radical command to love others as we are loved by God is never a matter of human will, much less a matter of guilt or emotional manipulation. Jesus does not engage in power over others – a fact which would become stunningly clear in his crucifixion and death. Nor are we Christians expected by God simply to grit our teeth and love the unlovable on demand. Doesn’t work. Never has. Never will. Rather, loving one another comes about as the fruits of loving God in Christ fully and completely, even as we are fully and completely loved by God.
And nowhere do we see this put to effect better than in Luke’s account of Paul’s speech at the Areopagus, which we heard in our first reading this morning. Our lectionary trimmed off the beginning and the ending of this account, unfortunately, so we easily miss the fact that Paul is mightily distressed by the Athenians with their ubiquitous shrines and statues and a cadre of philosophers only too ready to jump on and dissect the latest in religious practices. (Here is a slightly extended version of the reading.) Paul, of course, belonged to the Pharisaic party of Judaism, meaning that he was steeped in the Torah. His deepest, most foundational religious truth was that God was One, and that there were to be no other gods before him. And yet he was also a Jew of the Diaspora – a Roman citizen, well-versed in the Greek language and in the customs of the Greco-Roman world. He had more than a passing familiarity with the two groups who wanted to hear from him. He was well aware that scorn by his fellow Jews for the Greeks, as well as scorn by Greeks for Jews like him was deep seated. And just to ratchet up the tension, he was there to preach what he knew would be heard as folly by the Greeks: Christ Jesus, and him crucified and resurrected.
And what does he do? Well, as Luke tells the story, he chooses not to react to the centuries of mutual suspicion. Centered in Christ as he was, he models Christ-like love. He finds common ground in the searching for the divine. As one writer puts it, Paul does not find it necessary to condemn “the poets among you” in order to assert the truth of the gospel. He sees the inchoate longings of this “extremely religious” people and directs them to their proper object [Luke Timothy Johnson, The Acts of the Apostles, Sacra Pagina, 1992: p. 319] apparently without getting emotionally reactive to them in the process. Centered in love for Jesus Christ who lovingly turned him from a life of persecution to a life of apostleship, Paul is made radically free to love others. It certainly wasn’t that the Epicureans and Stoics who came to hear him were particularly lovable. It was rather that Paul knew who he was, and whose he was, and let that love guide his actions.
There are important implications for the Church in 2008 and beyond in all of this. It is no secret that the fastest growing religious segment in America right now is “None of the Above.” It is also no secret that society is becoming increasingly polarized, increasingly suspicious of and ready to demonize “the other,” on the basis of political, social, or economic opinions held. And, it is no secret that the Church itself reflects that increasingly polarized, suspicious worldview. Right now, the various branches of Christianity, including alas the Episcopal Church, seem to be doing everything in our power to ensure that those who claim “None of the Above,” will continue to do so, in part because they are (rightly) scandalized by the ways we cut off and demonize our Christian brothers and sisters whose viewpoints differ from our own.
It doesn’t have to be this way. We have a memory, enshrined in Scripture, of a hot-tempered, stubborn ex-Pharisee turned Apostle who managed to get it right at the Areopagus, by first loving God in Christ fully, completely, and dare I say radically. It is a model to which we are called and toward which each of us can take a baby step or two. The stakes are high, for it is only in centering ourselves fully in love of God that the Church has a prayer of engaging productively and non-reactively with our modern day Epicureans and Stoics.
In other words, we all have work to do. The Areopagus awaits.
If You Love Me
by The Rev. Bryan
England, Deacon
This is Rogation Sunday. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this week, the three days before Ascension Day, are the days the church has traditionally set aside to pray for the harvest, for fruitful seasons, as the Prayer Book phrases it. In communities surrounded by agriculture, everyone knows why this time of year is set aside for that. All the farmers are working well into the evening getting their crops into the ground. It’s a time for planting seeds, a time for making things grow, a time for preparing for a bountiful harvest. But we also use this period to pray for commerce and industry, and also for our stewardship of all of creation. There are three collects in the Prayer Book that correspond to these three days. I would challenge you to dig them out, and to use one each day during your personal devotions to focus your intentions on all those who labor in the fields of earth, and the fields of God. (You can read them here, select "The Collects" on the left and scroll down to them.)
However, the Gospel passage for today has absolutely nothing to do with Rogation Sunday. This is because this year we are using the Revised Common Lectionary instead of the Episcopal lectionary, so instead of Jesus saying that “I am the vine, and you are the branches,” a really fantastic Rogation Day metaphor, Jesus is telling his disciples, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments,” which has nothing to do with harvests and stewardship. Until you look at it a bit closer, however.
This didn’t come to me until yesterday. It was a busy Saturday at the cathedral. We had a Grand Ultreya, a sort of reunion of folks who have attended Cursillo Weekends, in Founders' Hall. At virtually the same time, we were celebrating the life of Jean Oliver, a lovely and gracious woman, who passed away recently, and whose ashes reside here in the church until her husband joins her in God’s kingdom. I dropped by the Oliver’s house in Overland Park after the Burial Office. This brought me to the proximity of the Whole Foods supermarket at 91st and Metcalf, which I had yet to visit. So I dropped in to look around.
If none of you have been there, you should definitely drop in at least once. One is instantly greeted by sights and smells that would make anyone’s mouth water; foods from around the world, displayed next to produce grown within a fifty mile radius. I looked at frozen TV dinners of Indian cuisine and French baguettes; bars of white chocolate next to bars of deep, dark chocolate; and confections that make the eyes water, as well as the mouth. Yet even this pales in comparison to the Whole Foods in Austin, Texas, where the chain began. As Father Joe can probably attest, the store is immense; it seems to cover acres, with what seems like every conceivable type of food one could imagine on display,
Whole Foods is the manifestation of the hope of Rogation Sunday, a bountiful harvest, with plenty for all. Yet while Whole Foods is a reality to most of us, it is a figment of the imagination to much of the world; even to some of our brothers and sisters who are in our midst.
On our cathedral prayer givers prayer list, Paula Miller has requested prayers for all the people of Haiti. It seems that rioting has broken out throughout that impoverished island, which threatens Maison de Naissance, the birthing home we have supported with our prayers and treasure, which Paula visited this last year. The riots have a simple cause. There is no longer enough food in the garbage dumps of Haiti to feed those who are digging for it. There is not enough garbage for the people to eat. The New York Times reported that “the one business booming amid all the gloom is the selling of patties made of mud, oil and sugar, typically consumed only by the most destitute.” One resident, who has taken to eating them more in recent months, said, “It’s salty and it has butter and you don’t know you’re eating dirt. It makes your stomach quiet down.”
Food prices have increased over 45 percent since 2006, causing world-wide food shortages. There is a critical rice shortage in Asia, even in Thailand, which produces 10 million tons of rice more than it consumes, and food riots are breaking out as never before in sub-Saharan Africa. The cost of food is encroaching on gains made by the middle classes around the globe. Most telling, as I pointed out to the congregation at the Thanksgiving Day Eucharist, worldwide 500 children will starve to death during the course of this homily.
Which brings us to the gospel appointed for today. “Jesus said to his disciples, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” But what commandments are Jesus talking about?
A bit earlier in John’s gospel makes it clear. “A new commandment I give you, that you love one another even as I have loved you.” Whom did Jesus love? His disciples, and them alone? For whom did Jesus become flesh, live, and die? Whom did Jesus feed when he fed the 5,000? The answer, of course is all of them, and all of us.
If we love Jesus, we will love all those whom God has created. We will reach out to our starving brothers and sisters and feed them, with the bread of this earth, and with the bread of heaven. The millennial goals of the United Nation, of our Presiding Bishop, and our Church, will become our goals. We will become just stewards of God’s creation, and the abundance with which God has blessed us, we will reach out to those who hunger both in body and in spirit, and we will strive to bring about God’s kingdom on this starving Earth.
