Acts 2:1-21
Romans 8:14-17
John 14:8-17,25-27
 
      V.         Alleluia!  Christ is risen.
      R.         The Lord is risen indeed.  Alleluia!
 
     Six young rock ‘n rollers from North Carolina came to town recently.  They had just formed a band and came up for their first gig at Tree House Lounge, a small bar on Florida Avenue in Northeast.  They kicked off their act and started rocking, and that’s when they discovered that almost everyone in the student crowd was from Gallaudet University; nearly everyone was deaf.
 
      So while the band was bouncing around, trying to build intensity, cranking up the decibels, all but three people in the crowd were engrossed in their conversations, signing with each other, completely ignoring the band.  When they finished a song, the three people who could hear clapped and cheered – made physical as well as vocal demonstrations of appreciation, and some of the deaf people briefly turned away from their conversations and looked at them like, “Are you ok?”
 
      If I had been in the band, I might not have interpreted that as an auspicious beginning.  I might have seen it as utter failure.  The band spent the night at the home of one of my friends.  The next morning, he asked them about their show, found out what happened, and suggested that it was a tremendous learning experience.  The band found out that they could play a set in very difficult circumstances.  It had tested and seasoned them.  The band members themselves thought it funny, just one of those things that happens.  They assigned a positive meaning to it.
 
      We choose how to understand the events of life.  Last week, someone used the back alley as a latrine, not an uncommon event, but it annoyed me.  I interpreted it as a mark of disrespect and vandalism.  I expressed some anger and disgust to John Reynolds, our sexton, and he responded evenly by considering how hard it is for some people, how they don’t have anywhere else to go.  I took it personally, made it about me.  John made it about the other person, a more gospel oriented interpretation that led to empathy and compassion.  How we assign meaning to an event shapes our attitudes and our behavior.
 
      When I’m at home now, I rarely pick up the telephone when it rings.  We’re supposedly on the “national do not call registry,” but we still get solicitations and pollsters.  I get annoyed being interrupted, having to turn my attention to the phone to have some cold caller try to sell me magazines or take up my time asking questions about healthcare.
 
      I automatically assume, “They’re being rude, disrespectful.”  I could choose to be less moralistic, less focused on myself, and say: “They’re just trying to keep a roof over their heads and food on their family table.  They might even offer a fair deal.”  The story, the interpretation I tell myself, deeply influences my behavior, my attitude.  We all make those decisions, usually unconscious decisions, all of the time.  If we work on telling ourselves more positive stories, our behavior changes in positive ways.
 
      Incidentally, if you know someone who has made a living by doing cold calls for a decade or more, make friends with him.[i]  Hang out with him, a lot.  Studies show that long-time cold callers tend to be sunny, hopeful people, and being around sunny, hopeful people helps us be sunny, hopeful people.
 
      Long-time cold callers have learned how to endure lots of disappointment and failure and stay positive.  They’ve made thousands of calls, and people tell them off, hang up, and mostly say, “No thanks.”  Experiencing so much rejection, they might tell themselves, “I’m a failure.”  “No one will buy from me.”  If so, they become defeatist and don’t expect to sell, and prospects will hear the defeat, the negative expectations.  Pessimistic cold callers don’t last.
 
      The hopeful and optimistic cold caller talks to himself in more constructive ways, explaining rejection as “he was too busy now,” or “she’s in a bad mood,” or “they don’t need it.”  He figures that he is going to get twenty rejections for every positive response, and so after being rejected, he might tell himself, “I’m a step closer - only nineteen more rejections to go.”
 
      The pessimistic and the optimistic cold callers start with the identical fact: rejection, but each tells themselves much different stories about it; they frame it, give meaning to it, differently.  The optimist tries to find the positive in each call: “At least I kept her on the phone for a long time.”  He doesn’t say, “She dissed me.”  “She wasn’t fair to me.”
 
      Frustration, defeat, rejection, failure are daily, ordinary experiences, and the meaning we assign to them matters enormously.  We automatically, mostly unconsciously, connect them to larger narratives, to make sense of them.
 
      The gospel of Jesus gives us a story to frame and understand all our experiences, but none of us chooses it all of the time.[ii]  If we don’t choose the gospel, we associate our experiences with other stories, other themes.  Some popular narratives in our culture: gotta look out for number one; or, get them before they get you; or, lots of money solves all my problems (the lottery fantasy); of, if things don’t go my way, I’m a failure.  In our society, we try to find meaning in what we buy, in knowing the right people, in wealth and power and prestige.  We can see life as a moralistic struggle between good and evil, or victim and oppressor.  We can understand events as being part of a story where ultimately sin is always punished, and virtue is always rewarded.  These are common narratives, and we use them to make meaning of events in our lives.  None of those is the gospel story.  Not one.
 
      On Pentecost, Peter stood up and challenged the common narratives of his day.  As we heard in Acts, the Holy Spirit filled the disciples, and they spoke in many languages.  Many people were there, and they were perplexed, amazed, and wondered, “What does this mean?”  Peter, full of the Spirit, raised his voice and gave his first sermon, re-framing events: “This is the truth; this is how to see things.”
 
      First, most simply, the crowd sneered and accused the disciples of being drunk.  Peter replied, “No! God has poured out the Spirit on us.”  The disciples had experienced a vision of fire and wind, and they spoke in other languages in the ecstatic speech.  They weren’t drunk, but feeling inspired, empowered, liberated, transformed; they felt united and exhilarated.  Peter said, “We’re not drunk.  This is God at work.  That’s what’s really happening.”
 
      Peter quoted scripture from the prophet Joel.  People understood Joel as a prophecy about the deliverance of Israel, a great nationalistic triumph.  That’s how they understood the feast of Pentecost, a nationalistic, patriotic festival about God blessing Israel.  They felt themselves victims of Rome and interpreted Joel to be comforting them.  They understood Joel to promise restoration of their national fortune.
 
      Peter re-interpreted Joel and Pentecost, gave it new meaning.  God will pour out his Spirit upon all people, not just Israel.  God is doing a new thing and will restore all of humanity, not just Israel.  Peter widened the scope of God’s work.  It was blasphemy, heresy, dangerously radical.  Peter explained Pentecost as being about inclusion, uniting people of many nations, many languages.
 
      Peter challenged Israel’s sense of being a victim.  It was easy for them to see themselves as wronged, as oppressed by the Romans.  Often we like to see ourselves as victims; it often gives us a sense of being morally superior, better than whoever is not being fair to us.  Peter gave new meaning to Joel and Pentecost: “God is pouring out power on you.  Claim it.  You are not helpless.  Assume responsibility for yourself.”
 
      In his Pentecost sermon, most importantly, Peter re-interpreted the story of Jesus.  Israel had got the story of Jesus wrong.  Jesus was not a blasphemer, not a common criminal, but the Messiah, the Lord.  He had been crucified, but he was no longer dead.  He was alive, resurrected; he had been raised up.  Peter even had the courage to interpret this as not conflicting with Jewish tradition, but being predicted by King David.  Jesus was Israel’s real, true expectation, instead of a narrow, nationalist glory.
 
      Peter called upon them to repent.  He called them to do what he had done.  Peter had been weak; he had failed Jesus, denied him.  But he didn’t let his failure define him; he repented and started again.  He chose to see himself as God does, to see himself as part of the gospel story.  He chose to understand himself not as a failure, but as loved and accepted by God, as being part of God’s plan and purpose, as a recipient of God’s grace and forgiveness.  Peter defined himself by his relationship to God.  He chose to see things the way God sees things, not the way other people see things.  He chose the way of hope, not pessimism; the way of love, not malice; the way of trust, not fear.
 
      On that day of Pentecost, Acts says that about 3000 people received Peter’s words and were baptized.  Acts says, “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” (Acts 2:42)  They chose to see themselves differently, and that changed their lives.
 
      Baptism says, “My relationship to God matters most.  I choose to see myself the way God sees me, as part of his story, as part of his family, as his beloved child, precious to him, a delight to him.”  As we go through life, we choose how to see ourselves, and we can let the values and anxieties of the world define us, or we can look to our relationship with God and find ourselves in the story of Jesus.  That gives life.
 
      V.         Alleluia!  Christ is risen.    
      R.         The Lord is risen indeed.  Alleluia!
 
 
Lane Davenport
www.asa-dc.org
(202) 347-8161

[i] Martin E. P. Seligman, Learned Optimism, Vintage (2006), pp. 98-99, on cold callers.
[ii] Anthony B. Robinson, Called To Be Church, Eerdmans (2006), pp. 64-69, on re-framing and Peter’s sermon.

May 12, 2013
Feast of the Ascension
Acts 1:1-11
Ephesians 1:15-23
Luke 24:44-53
 
        V.    Alleluia!  Christ is risen.
        R.    The Lord is risen indeed.  Alleluia!
 
        When you walk in here, what’s the first thing you see?  Where does your eye go?  For me, my eyes are lifted up to the mural over the altar.  Jesus is ascending up to heaven, the wings of angels, seraphim, escorting him upwards in glory and majesty, but his arms opened wide as on the cross, reminding us of his crucifixion, his suffering and death.  To me, with saints at Jesus’ feet, his arms reaching out to embrace all of us, it’s a painting of a verse from John’s gospel: Jesus’ saying, “and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” (John 12:32)
 
        When Jesus made that reference to “lifting up,” it was shortly before the crucifixion.  Jesus was anticipating being lifted up on the cross.  Lifting up refers to crucifixion as well as to resurrection and to ascension.  In a church dedicated to Jesus’ Ascension, we naturally first think of his return to his Father in heaven, but the mural shows more.  It binds together moments of great pain and great delight, humiliation and elevation.  Jesus’ exaltation contains within it, holds, this contradiction of negative and positive.
 
        And so does today’s feast.  Typically, we associate joy and celebration with the Ascension, with going up, heaven and love and victory.  It’s our hope and expectation that ultimately we’re all lifted up to be together with God.  But let’s imagine what the experience was like for the disciples, and the Ascension becomes more complex, and more real.
 
        Jesus was leaving his disciples.  If you sometimes struggle feeling that Jesus is too remote, too absent, too hidden, too cut off from you, then you might know a bit of how the disciples felt as Jesus disappeared into the clouds.  Jesus had shocked them rising from the dead, and now he shocked them again going away from them.  It must have felt like he was abandoning them.  There’s sorrow, loss, separation.
 
        The Ascension pulls us in two directions, up and down, exhilarating and distressing.  Fully appreciating this feast demands us to be able to accept both pleasant and the unpleasant feelings, to acknowledge that both are part of life, and part of relationship with God.  It’s not all peaches and cream.
 
        As he was about to depart, the disciples asked Jesus, “Lord, is this the time you are going to restore Israel?”  They were still seeing the promise of God as restoring political power and glory to Israel, restoring a Davidic king that would bring prosperity and independence and prestige, a king that would help them feel superior to other nations and religions.  We, too, have preconceived ideas of God’s promise, what he’ll do for us.
 
        God, indeed, was restoring Israel, the people of God, but in a way the disciples didn’t understand.  He was doing something new with the disciples to restore his people.  It would be a spiritual renewal, a renewal leading to inner growth and strength.
 
        The disciples asked about the timing of the restoration, and Jesus told them that was God’s business.  Then as Jesus departed, the disciples gazed up into the empty sky, and two angels appeared.  Remember on Easter morning, at the empty tomb, the two angels appeared and asked, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?”  Here, again with a bit of satire, they asked, “Why do stand there staring at the empty sky?”  In each case, the disciples were looking in the wrong direction and were being re-directed.  The message: don’t worry about the future; focus on the present, the here and now.
 
        The Ascension was a moment of transition.  Jesus was leaving and passing authority to the disciples, and he promised to send the Holy Spirit to them: authority and the Spirit to help them be witnesses to him.  He gave them new responsibilities.  Don’t stare into the sky.  Get to work.
 
        The most basic fact about God, about Jesus, is his love for us.  Jesus loved his disciples, yet as he’s going away he’s massively disappointing them.  They felt abandoned, and he’s giving them new responsibilities.  They expected Jesus to do the work: “Lord, when are YOU going to restore Israel?”  The answer is that the disciples, along with the Holy Spirit, were going to restore Israel.
 
        For Jesus, leadership is not about doing it all; it’s not about being everything to everyone; it’s not about making everyone happy; it’s not about making the pain go away; it’s not about providing crystal clear instructions about everything.  Rather, he’s making his disciples step up, to accept new responsibilities, to develop a new sense of self, to move beyond being simply a recipient and to become a giver, a participant in God’s work.  
 
        It’s part of the process to transform the disciples.  Next week, Pentecost, the disciples receive the Holy Spirit to help them continue along this path.  Jesus’ love for his disciples is to help them learn and grow and develop.  In this life, we’re never complete.  The Good News: God is always doing something new with us.
 
        The letter to the Ephesians, chapter four – not the bit we heard today, has a marvelous section about the Ascension.  It says that Jesus ascended far above the heavens so that he might fill all things, so that God could come to us through the Spirit.  Christ is no longer limited to a local, specific presence, but now accessible to all, in all places and in all times.  It says that Christ rose up so that he could hand out spiritual gifts to develop his followers; so that we would work together in unity and harmony and become spiritually mature, growing into the full stature of Christ; so that we may no longer be like children, tossed to and fro, easily deceived.  Rather, he wants us to grow up to tell the whole truth and tell it in love.
 
        Think about children.  Lovable and charming and insightful and virtuous as they often are, they are easily manipulated and often confused; they don’t have a firm grasp about right and wrong; they have few responsibilities; they look to authority for care, protection, direction.  As I read the gospels, I notice that’s the way the disciples often were.  Jesus went away to help them grow – for them to learn to make decisions and work together, to give and receive care, to assume new responsibilities, to disagree and have conflict, but stay in it together.  They would become his presence in the world and so be witnesses to him.
 
        Church, this parish, exists to promote that kind of growth, that developing and maturing relationship with God.  Our growth, spurred as we handle transition and adapt to the ever changing circumstances of life, witnesses to Jesus.
 
        Here’s another way to think about being a witness.  Imagine that you are a courtroom witness, that you are on the stand.[i]  The issue: what do you make of life?  What is true, real?  Is the universe created by a loving, merciful, and just God or is it a random, cold, heartless accident?  Are we created in the image of God and given purpose and meaning, or is life a coincidence, our conscience an illusion, our love merely chemical reactions?  Are we here to give and receive, or to accumulate as much as possible?  Are we here to learn to be close to other people, or to live for ourselves, aloof and unconnected?  Can sacrifice and suffering be noble, or is it the fate of the weak and foolish?  When a loved one dies, does she move closer to God, enter more fully his light and life, or is this limp sentimentality and cowardice?  How we live, what we say, what we value, our attitudes and habits, how we treat each other – this is our testimony.
 
        “You will be my witnesses.”  It’s a task that gives meaning to our lives, a task that transforms us, a task that lifts us up.
 
        V.    Alleluia!  Christ is risen.
        R.    The Lord is risen indeed.  Alleluia!
 
 
Lane Davenport
www.asa-dc.org
(202) 347-8161
 

[i] Thomas G. Long, Testimony: Talking Ourselves into Being Christian, Jossey-Bass (2004), p. 28.

Acts 16:9-15
Revelation 21:10-22:5
John 14:23-29
 
“I am going away, and I am coming to you.”
 
      V.         Alleluia!  Christ is risen.
      R.         The Lord is risen indeed.  Alleluia!
 
      What’s happening in my life shapes significantly shapes the way I understand the Bible.  When I read the gospel passage and start wondering what it means to me, naturally the events of the moment, of the here and now, influence my interpretation.
 
      Now some might say, “The gospel only has one correct, true meaning that never changes.  It only means what Jesus originally intended.”  That’s nuts.  The evangelists themselves didn’t interpret Jesus in that way as we’ll see in today’s gospel.  We take Jesus’ words and stories and find ourselves in them, and we find meaning in them for our day, interpret them for our circumstances.
 
      Last week, we lost a dear man.  For about thirty years, Fr. Owens ministered and worshipped in this parish.  At his funeral yesterday, Fr. Dunnan, the preacher, told us about his heroism in World War II, how he won the Silver Star and the Bronze Star, and about his thirty years as a legendary headmaster of St. James’ School.
 
      Like many of you, I experienced Fr. Owen’s support, kindness, generosity, and care.  He inspired me, a model of grace and graciousness, of steadiness and faithfulness and dignity.  Watching him I learned about friendship and family, how he valued them and worked at developing those relationships.
 
      Most of us have lost someone dear to us.  Part of life and love is the experience of sorrow, grief, emptiness, turmoil.  Those feelings are part of a good life, a full life.  Of course, I believe in a future where we are all together, united in God; a future where there is no mourning or pain, but joy and completion and wholeness.  But separation, loss, hurts – no matter how normal.
 
      John’s gospel was written probably in Ephesus, one of the grand cities of the Greek world, probably in the 80s or 90s, and likely going through several revised editions.  It took final form at least fifty years after Jesus died and roughly ten to fifteen years after the other evangelists.  The authors of the gospels wrote them for specific Christian communities and used them to address opportunities and problems in their communities.
 
      John’s gospel was likely being written about the time Christians were being expelled from the synagogue.  Up to that time, Christians would have been part of the synagogue, associated with the Jewish community.  Some Jews considered John’s group of Christians to be abandoning Judaism and monotheism by making a second God out of Jesus.
 
      As with many break ups, there’s much tension, and a strong hostility develops as they separate into two groups, those in the synagogue and the deviants outside the synagogue.  Unlike the other gospels, John’s gospel repeatedly refers to “the Jews,” the synagogue folks, and has sayings that may make us cringe and cry “anti-Semitism.”
 
      Today’s gospel reading comes from the part of John’s gospel known as the “Farewell Discourse,” four chapters of Jesus speaking to his disciples at the Last Supper.  This was in the early ‘30s, and Jesus was getting ready to go to the cross, to separate from his disciples.  In chapter 14, three disciples – Thomas, Philip, and Judas (not Iscariot – remember there were two Judases) – each ask Jesus a question.  The three questions express the concerns of John’s community separating from the synagogue.
 
      See what’s happening: it’s over fifty years after Jesus, and John’s community is using the stories and sayings of Jesus to understand what’s happening to them in their day.  The Bible is supposed to be a resource for us as well.  We use it to make sense of what’s happening here and now, to make meaning out of our lives.
 
      In the verse before today’s passage, Judas asked Jesus, “Why have you made your identity plain to us but not to the world?”  It’s a very sensible question: “Why do we get it and others don’t?  Why do we see that Jesus is the Messiah and others don’t?”  John’s community wondered, “Why are we getting kicked out of the synagogue?  Why do we get it and others don’t?”
 
      Judas (not Iscariot), at the Last Supper, was confused.  It seemed to him that Jesus had deliberately chosen to hide himself, his true identity as Son of God, from the world.  Why didn’t Jesus, since he’s God, make his identity clear?
 
      Jesus answered, “Those who love me will keep my word.”  We heard his word in last week’s gospel, also at the Last Supper, Jesus’ words just a few moments before today’s, “Love one another the same way I have loved you.”  Jesus had just washed his disciples feet, including Judas Iscariot’s, and was about to give his life for them.  “Love as I love.”
 
      Jesus’ answer to Judas (not Iscariot) was: “Don’t worry about why some believe and some don’t believe.  Rather, stay focused on my command, on my word, on loving one another.  What matters most is not understanding but doing, not knowledge but action.”  The priority is living the gospel.  “If you want people to believe, to get it, love one another.”  That is evidence of God.
 
      So in this farewell scene, the first thing Jesus did was to give his disciples focus, to remind them what matters most, and then he spoke to how they were feeling, their sense of loss.  Judas felt sadness, fear, anxiety.  He was about to lose Jesus’ physical presence; he was about to lose his sense of security; he was about to lose his purpose and meaning in life; he was about to lose his hopes and dreams.[i]  He had to wonder, “What am I going to do now without Jesus?”  It’s frightening and desolating.  It seemed as if his relationship with Jesus was coming to an end.
 
      We experience that routinely in life: a loved one dies, a relationship breaks up, a job calls us to start a new life, to make a new home far away.  Jesus was about to die, to go away.  C.S. Lewis wrote,
We think of [death] as love cut short, like a dance stopped in mid-career or a flower with its head unluckily snapped off…  If, as I can’t help suspecting, the dead also feel the pains of separation…, then for both lovers, and [and for all who love], bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love.…  It is… one of [love’s] phases; not the interruption of the dance, but the next figure.
After separation, the dance continues – no doubt different, and transformed.  Grieving is a process learning how to love in a new way, to figure out the next steps in the dance with the absent person.
 
      That’s what the disciples gradually figured out in the 30s when Jesus died; that’s what John’s community gradually figured out in the 90s when they got kicked out of the synagogue; that’s what we gradually figure out in our day when we experience separation.
 
      Jesus promised Judas that his departure would allow Judas to experience his presence in a new way, that he would have peace, that the Holy Spirit would help keep them close.  Jesus said, “Don’t let your heart be afraid.”  Judas did not yet understand that the disciples were going to have to relearn their relationship with Jesus.  They were going to have new responsibilities, new roles, new ways of experiencing Jesus and representing Jesus.
 
      They were also going to have a new and deeper intimacy with God, to enter the next phase of love: that God was coming to them, to us, and making his home with them, with us.  That’s a big part of why we come to church.  That’s what communion is: to be close to God, close to each other, close to those who are absent.  The Christian journey calls us to re-learn ourselves, who we are, to awaken that we’re not alone, ever.  God has come and makes his home in us, dwells in us, with us, for us.
 
      “I am going away, and I am coming to you.”
 
      V.         Alleluia!  Christ is risen.
      R.         The Lord is risen indeed.  Alleluia!
 
 
Lane Davenport
www.asa-dc.org
(202) 347-8161
 

[i] Thomas Attig, How We Grieve: Relearning the World, OUP (1996), pp. 170-71.  He also provides the quote from C. S. Lewis’ A Grief Observed.