The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for January 11, 2009

Texts: Mark 1:4-11/Acts 18:24-19:7

Title: “Grace Made Visible”

              The decision of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans to evict two separate groups from two of its churches ordered closed by that body received much press coverage this week. The confrontation was a very emotional one, pitting parishioners who refused to vacate their churches against an archdiocese who for economic reasons felt compelled to terminate those and other ministries across the city.

                Many of us who worship in this church can empathize with our Catholic friends across the city in the wake of these church closings.  The churches in which we worship after all are storehouses of the accumulated memories of generations of worshipers.    Beyond merely a gathering place for Sunday worship, the church is a presence in many other significant watershed events of life. Over the course of our lives we have found ourselves in churches where we have honored those who were being married.  We have grieved those who have died.  We have been present to witness the baptism and confirmation of our children. We have assembled for countless covered dish suppers, concerts, plays, Christmas pageants, and the list goes on and on. For many of us the church has been our primary social outlet, a place where have established and maintain some of our most important relationships.

              While we might not choose the methods our recently evicted friends at St. Henry’s and Our Lady of Good Counsel used to express their displeasure with the archdiocese and the bishop, many of us who worship here can empathize. The language we use in talking about the place where we worship is revealing.  In conversation many of us will refer to our church “home,” and our church “family.”  The emotional bond we forge over the years with that church home and family ranks for many of us only slightly beneath the bond we enjoy with our biological families.  In many cases, in fact, the relationships we have built with our church and our church family are even stronger than those we have with our kin by blood.

              The folks who worshiped at St. Henry’s and Our Lady of Good Counsel were emotional stakeholders in those ministries, much as many of us are stakeholders here. There are memories we preserve here, traditions we maintain here, relationships we have built here that we go to great lengths to maintain.

              Our church is a very special community held together by the history we have created together, but also by our vision for the future, we aspire to fulfill. We share a common life as a congregation, the traditions we have established and the relationships we have built have become very important to us, but even more basic to our identity and vitality as a congregation are the beliefs and values to which we subscribe. The church is a place of nurture and support for those seeking to live as servants of God.

              The church is a very special community, there is none quite like it among all the communities in which we might participate. Volumes have been written about the church, theologians, sociologists, historians and other specialists each examining it through their particular lens. John Calvin, as close to a patron saint as we Presbyterians can claim, offered a definition that perhaps comes closest to identifying the distinct marks of the church.  Calvin wrote that a church can be said to exist “where the Word of God is purely preached and heard, and the sacraments [baptism and Holy Communion] administered according to Christ’s institution.”

              People establish and maintain strong relationships with a particular church for many reasons.  The emotional attachments built can be very strong as the recent events surrounding the closing of St. Henry’s and Our Lady of Good Counsel so vividly demonstrate. But beyond the emotional attachments established, the traditions honored, and the particular doctrines to which a church may subscribe, the church’s identity is truly revealed where God’s word preached and heard and the sacraments properly administered.

              Church folk have had centuries to think and write about the church, scores of those contributors, in fact, have chosen to make thinking and writing about the church their life’s vocation. We who are the beneficiaries of all that accumulated wisdom have built a pretty sophisticated vocabulary in talking about the church, Jesus Christ the head of the church, and the ways in which God is active in the life of the church.

              Wisdom has accrued over generations, each generation making its contributions. There was a time, however, when that wisdom simply did not exist, a time when the church itself did not exist as we know it today.

              The church’s story and Jesus’ story are, of course, completely interwoven. Before there was a church there were a group of people, the Jews, who were awaiting a Messiah, a Savior, who would establish a new epoch in their history. It was believed that God, acting through the Messiah, would establish his everlasting reign on the earth.

              Reports that Messiah had arrived circulated from time to time in the history of the Jews, but those reports truly gained force when Jesus turned up.  While some were convinced that Jesus was in fact the long awaited one, influential people in the synagogue said not so fast.  Many of Jesus’ activities, his preaching and teaching and some of the deeds ascribed to him, were deemed offensive by the Jewish religious leaders

              We know well how things turned out.  Jesus was arrested on trumped up charges, he was sentenced to death, the sentence carried out in the most brutal and demeaning way.

              Had he remained dead that would have been the end of the story, and I wouldn’t be standing here this morning to tell the story. Fact of that matter, however, almost immediately following his execution reports began to circulate that he was not dead, but that he was alive.

             The reports became so persistent, and were deemed credible by enough people that some of those people began to compile a narrative record of what he said and did while he was alive.  As they studied and reflected upon that narrative they began to think of Jesus in a new way. Speculation that he might have been the Messiah, the Savior sent by God to establish his reign on earth, had to account for the fact that he had been put to death, had to account for the fact that he had been raised from the dead.

                Those years following Jesus’ death and resurrection saw a great number of people committing a great deal of time and energy to understanding where Jesus fit in the history of the Jews, with some of them beginning to think more broadly about Jesus’ significance for the non-Jew as well. 

                While the men Jesus initially chose to participate in his ministry, and the larger circle who became his followers were reliable witnesses to what he did and said, others, most notably the Apostle Paul, got their information second hand, or as was the case with Paul, experienced a life changing special revelation.   

                Before there was a church as we know it today, groups of people gathered together quite spontaneously to worship.  These meeting were often held in secret to avoid persecution. Those gathered shared with each other what they knew of Jesus, the Jews in the bunch helping the others understand how Jesus was the fulfillment of ancient prophesy, the very son of God.

                In those years after Jesus death and resurrection, his followers were searching for the best and most accurate ways to tell his story. There was no single clearing house through which the story passed, no one office assigned the responsibility of weighing the accuracy of the claims being made about him or of explaining the relevance of what his life, death, and resurrection meant for people living thirty, fifty, seventy-five years after his death.            

                There was no church in those first decades after Jesus’ death, not, at least, as we understand church today. These instead were people, who having come to faith themselves, were attempting to tell the story of Jesus as accurately as possible. In the mix were people who were high on enthusiasm but low on facts.

                  I met up with one of those high on enthusiasm but low on facts persons a few months ago in one of the “big box” electronics stores.  I was in the market for a high tech gadget I thought I would enjoy.  When I was finally able to attract the attention of the sales person I was discouraged to learn that he knew all most nothing about this product he was employed to sell. He was enthusiastic and very personable but he didn’t know the product.  While I waited for assistance from another clerk, I decided I really didn’t need the product after all.

                There was a disciple of Jesus, Apollos, who we are told “spoke with burning enthusiasm and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, though [as our lesson from Acts reports] he knew only the baptism of John.” Fortunately there were other believers available to coach him to a better understanding.

                Before there were churches like this one there were people who met informally to share what they knew about the Lord, to tell his story, to pray, to sing hymns together, and share a meal together.  Something there even arose a need to correct those who were in error.

                 Paul in the city of Ephesus encountered some disciples of the Lord.  Paul, a master teacher, took it upon himself to educate people in the ways of the Lord everywhere he went. In this instance he inquired if those disciples in Ephesus had been baptized, baptism in the Holy Spirit was the act through which one gained entrance into the newly forming Christian communities.

                   No, they had not even heard of the Holy Spirit. Paul set out immediately to correct the omission.  The disciples were immediately baptized, the Holy Spirit descending upon them in that very moment to confirm their identities as brothers of Christ.

                These early assemblies of followers of Jesus, later churches, struggled over the course of centuries to establish their identities.  The doctrines and beliefs upon which the church’s identity was built evolved over time as believers gathered together, compared notes and debated. Some doctrines and beliefs were outright rejected as time marched on, while others were refined and molded into a new form.

                 We Protestants like to say that the church is always reforming itself as new circumstances arise and new challenges present themselves.  As the church reforms itself that even means that once vital churches like St. Henry’s and Our Lady of Good Counsel, repositories of sacred memories for their parishioners, will no longer exist.

                   The churches we attend often win a special place in our hearts.  They are our links to the divine, but they are also places where the quest to know God is carried out.  We stand on the shoulders of those who worked so diligently to sort out and record the lessons Jesus taught, and we share with them the sign of God’s grace in his Son Jesus, our baptisms the decisive act through which Jesus has bound himself to us for all eternity. Baptism is God’s grace made visible.

                    The church, in Christ, is God’s creation, God’s gift to creation through which you and I are kept in continuing remembrance of the mighty work God has done in creating, and then redeeming creation after we had fallen. In our baptisms, God’s grace made visible, we become part of the community of memory, God through Christ, having called and equipped us to worship him and keep his name before the world.  We join the Apostle Paul, and Apollos, and all the other saints who have gone before us, one family, responding to a single call to reveal the love of Jesus to the world. AMEN.

PRAYER

               Lord of this house, in whose name we gather, may your Spirit be our guide as we worship today. May our minds and hearts enjoy a respite from the cares and preoccupations that so engage us in our daily lives, that in this hour, in the quiet of this place, we may commune with thee unimpeded.

             In that freedom you have granted us in Jesus, the Savior of the world, we have come, but not so as to fulfill an obligation.  We have come to satisfy an inner longing, a longing for communion with thee, a longing you have placed within us. Fill us with your Spirit, and where our need is particularly great, dear God, grant us an extra measure of your grace.

             The constancy of your love, O God, has been repeatedly demonstrated through a series of covenants datable to our most ancient forbears, Abraham, Moses and David.  From all the people of the world you elected one people to bring your name to the rest of the world. Not because of their righteous was this people chosen, but solely by grace. Your grace gives us courage to confess the sins that blight our lives.  Your grace gives us courage to believe that peace and justice will ultimately triumph, despite the madness to which we are subjected as wars are waged and suffering mounts. Your grace is a continuing source of hope.

               Have mercy, O God, on all who suffer this day in Gaza.  Even as the toll of the dead and wounded rises, the world looks on helplessly, passing resolutions and making appeals for peace that go unheeded.  We pray for that which appears unattainable.  We pray for a cease fire, O God, as a first step that will lead to negotiations, and ultimately a resolution that will allow neighbors to live in peace.           

                Abide, O Lord, with the people across our country who are suffering through floods as a result of recent snow and rain. Grant relief to our friends in Washington state, in Colorado, and elsewhere who have experienced the wrath of nature.

                In these dire economic times, O God, many of our citizens, having lost jobs, are struggling to make ends meet.  Sustain them emotionally amid the pressures they are facing.  Abide with all those who see their income decline as a result of reduced hours, or decreased demand for their services. Be vigilant, O Lord, to brace them when they fall.  

                  The economic crisis has forced many, O God, to suspend needed medications or cancel appointments with their doctors.  We pray for new vision in delivering health care to the people of our nation, that those who cannot presently afford care can acquire it, and those with a health plan can get the care they need at an affordable rate.

               Lord, we pray for those who are managing our nation’s response to the economic crisis.  Grant onto them wisdom that they may find solutions that will have a strong and immediate impact. We pray for President elect Obama and the incoming administration that they meet the challenges they face with wisdom and skill.

               Lord, even as you baptized Jesus with the Holy Spirit, so you baptize us.  A visible sign of an invisible grace, our baptism is our incorporation into Christ’s body the church. In baptism, O God, you have washed us clean and given us a new name.  We are the “redeemed.” 

              In baptism our past under the dominion of sin and death was purged, but we fail to embrace the freedom we won in that event. Help us, O God, to remember our baptism daily, to live as people who draw strength and courage from our Savior, Jesus, whose own baptism clothed him in eternal light, a light that remains visible and compelling for those with eyes to see.

               Holy Spirit who continues to guide our lives onto the day when we shall know even as we are known, we lift up those who have special needs this day…