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Good News, Bad News, Good News

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Sermon for the 4th Sunday of Easter; Episcopal Church of the Ascension, Lafayette, Louisiana

Imagine with me for a moment what we might experience in the eschaton. 

It’s a big word, a theology-nerd kind of word, but brothers and sisters, it is also the orientation of our whole lives as Christians, and so eschaton is a word we ought to know and even a word we would do well to dwell on. Eschaton is a greek word that means “end.” It speaks of the last things, the ultimate things of God, the life together forever beyond here and now. That time when all things will be set right and every tear will be dried and peace will reign everywhere. 

That’s the eschaton. That’s heaven. What do you imagine it will be like? Who will you see there? What do you desire to do first? Try on the new crown made for your eternity? Bow down and kiss Jesus’ feet? Lay eyes again on your loved ones? Hug the necks of the people you admired in life but perhaps never even got to meet? There’s a story of a girl who asked a famous theologian if her dog would be present in heaven. He answered that if she needed that dog there in order for it to be heaven, then the dog would be just where she needed it. 

So, friends, I have good news, and bad news, and then some more good news. Are you ready? 

The good news is that for God, time isn’t linear, that even though for us, we experience one moment and then the next, and then the one after that, just one at time marching on till we die, God’s experience of time is bigger, more layered, to us – all mixed up. So even here and now, we humans, because of God dwelling in us, get moments and tastes of the eschaton, of eternity, of heaven. Perhaps you’ve had one or two. I remember the Sunday after my grandpa died; I had been there at his bedside and given him last rites an hour before he passed. He was surrounded by his four kids and his wife when he died on a snowy Monday morning in Minnesota. And six days later I was standing at the marble altar and as I led the congregation in the Lord’s Prayer right before communion, I heard my grandpa’s voice. I heard his familiar tones along with all the other voices, praying those sacred words. For a second it felt like I was among all the saints, standing in front of the throne of God, all of us worshiping and praying together. It was a time-outside-of-time moment. So the good news, brothers and sisters, is that though we find time to be a plodding march of present moments, sometimes eternity breaks in for a glorious span and reminds us that we made for more than common chronology. Heaven breaks in here and now, too. We are so privileged as humans, as temples of the living God, to experience such moments. 

So here’s the bad news. 

Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel lesson that he is shepherd of other sheep too. Sheep that “do not belong to this fold.” Jesus tells us that all the sheep of all his folds will be brought together at the eschaton, “I must bring them also,” he says. Everybody will be together for eternity in the great sheepfold in the sky. 

But I wonder if we’ll like those people. I sort of worry about the kind of people Jesus will let in to heaven. Will they, like sheep, be stinky? Will they, like sheep, be noisy? Will they, like real sheep, be a little thick in the head and exasperating? 

I can feel my body tensing up just saying these words! What will it mean, brothers and sisters, if Jesus is the shepherd of people who I think are not behaving well, or who have the wrong idea about what it means to follow the Good Shepherd, or who just don’t respect him the way he ought to be revered? 

The bad news is that we don’t get to choose. We don’t get to say who gets into heaven and who Jesus the Good Shepherd welcomes. We don’t even get to say here and now who God wants to be near to his presence. I suspect that there are people in this room today who don’t behave to believe the way we think they should, and even more there are people who God loves who aren’t here, but will be in the eschaton. But that all leads me to more good news. And that’s where we want to end up today. 

The good news is that we can start living with and loving those other sheep even now. We can get a leg up on heaven and have even more of those delicious moments I described at the beginning of the sermon when we seek out sheep of other folds, especially those that rub us the wrong way. 

The year between undergrad and divinity school, when I was confirmed in the Episcopal Church, I led morning prayer once a week at a tiny little parish in Durham, North Carolina. Part of the requirement for the confirmation class was to serve the poor every week, too, and you know how I love efficiency, so I’d lead prayer on Wednesday mornings, and then stay after for the homeless breakfast they served every day of the week. The uncomfortable thing about the breakfast was that we were all expected to cook together, and then to sit down and eat together too. We had to sit next to the stinky, often mentally-ill, most likely male, people-whose-skin-tone-didn’t-match-mine. It was a different fold all together than my Duke University office with a window overlooking the iconic chapel. 

But let me tell you what happened to my heart that year. There was a man named Keith who I first met as a freshman in college. He begged at the highway exit to campus, and I always dutifully locked my doors as I came to the stoplight. I avoided eye contact. His sign said, “Hi, I’m Keith. I’m homeless. Please help.” 

Four years later, I sat across from Keith while we both ate plates of grits and hard-boiled eggs. I looked him in the eye. I passed the salt. We ate together and prayed together. I met Jesus again through Keith and through Slim and through Ethan, with whom I did the dishes. Jesus promises to be found among those who are hungry and thirsty and in prison. He has other sheep not of this fold. 

I’m sure Honey would be thrilled for an uptick in hands for outreach ministry, and perhaps that’s the call that Jesus has laid on your heart this morning. But I have another challenge, too. What about the person who dares to show up even here, under this roof with you, but that you complain about? What about the people in your life who are exasperating, who don’t behave the way you think they ought to, who might even be noisy when you think they ought to be silent? I wonder if God in Jesus Christ draws near to those people, and whether he might be calling you to graciously, lovingly, bearing-with-one-another-ly draw near to them, love them for who they are right now, too. Amen. 

God’s Voice

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Scripture Readings (1 Samuel 3, John 1:43-51) Epiphany 2, Year A

“You will see greater things than these.” Jesus tells his new disciples Nathanael in our Gospel reading this morning. Nathanael, truth be told, wasn’t expecting to see anything great at all, not least something great from somebody with as dubious an origin as Nazareth. His expectations are low. He doesn’t think he can be surprised by the quality of offering from this Jesus character. It sounds as if Nathanael was not expecting to hear from God. 

And it’s the same in our Old Testament lesson, “The Word of the Lord was rare in those days. Visions were not widespread.” I wonder, do we live in a time in which the Word of the Lord is rare? Do we expect to hear from God?

I wonder if we get confused or mishear God, too. The great prophet Samuel, who ushered in King David –  a man after God’s own heart! – didn’t recognize God’s voice when he called. Samuel’s mentor, the priest Eli, didn’t recognize God’s voice at first, either. They assumed it was just a bump in the night, less than something to be ignored, they assumed it was totally imagined, nothing at all. 

I wonder if we dismiss God’s voice. I wonder if we attribute the stirring of the Holy Spirit to be less than a bump or a coincidence, I wonder if we dismiss the call of God as indigestion or as totally imagined, nothing at all. 

What are we missing out on if we are dismissing God’s voice?

What are we suffering needlessly, because God has given us a way out but we are too focused on our expectations in order to listen to him? 

What difficulty might we avoid, what joy and peace might we have access to, what confidence and strength might we enjoy, if we were attuned to the voice of God?

In our Gospel reading, Nathanael does not immediately recognize God’s voice, either. When Jesus starts to reveal intimate details, Nathanael relents and realizes there might be more going on with this Jesus, that there might indeed be something good to come out of Nazareth. 

Even later in Samuel’s story, when he goes to anoint the future king David, David’s father Jesse thinks that God’s calling of David is so unlikely he doesn’t present this 8th son to Samuel. Can anything good come out of Bethlehem? Can anything good come out of Nazareth? What could God be about, calling people from these places, calling these types of people? Is that even God’s voice? Is this voice to be trusted? 

How do we know if a voice is God’s? How can we understand the call of God and follow it? How can we trust? 

One of the things that strikes me in the readings today is that all these people who are hearing from God involve other people in the call. Nobody is hearing God’s voice off by themselves and then acting on it alone. Samuel brings in his mentor, his priest, his father-figure Eli, to ask what to do and what’s going on.

 Is there someone in your life who you look up to, who you have experienced as wise? Maybe they’re somebody to sit with in learning and discerning God’s voice in your life. 

Both of these stories, too, show a sort of testing of spirits in different ways; God calls Samuel several times before he responds, and I wonder if you’ve experienced that, too. How God will put the same opportunity in your path a few times until you accept it. In the Gospel lesson, Nathanael hears about Jesus from Philip, he receives Philip’s testimony, but then he doubts, he famously wonders, “can anything good come out of Nazareth?” 

It’s okay to question, to wonder, to doubt. God can handle our uncertainty. God is big enough to receive our questioning, God loves us enough to hold space for our wondering. The important thing in doubt and questioning, though, is sincere inquiry – I sometimes see “doubt” as a shield people use to avoid tough questions or examining their own assumptions. God is big enough to hold our doubts, but it’s disingenuous to just leave him carrying all our baggage. 

God longs for relationship, longs so much to be near to us that he came to be a human in order to be as close to us as possible, to enter our experience, to understand us and love us well, so how might we respond well to that kind of gesture, that sort of call? 

In each of these narratives, we see a sense of community discernment, we see an airing of doubt, and then finally, we see a resolution, a surrender and submission, an openness and an attitude of humble listening on the part of the person called. 

So whether you have a call on your heart today, whether you wonder if you’re hearing strange voices or you believe you have a Word from the Lord, or perhaps you’re straining to hear anything at all, what we can surely all do to prepare us for God’s voice is to adopt open ears and hands and hearts, ready to listen and to humbly receive. 

When I was 16, I went to a summer camp for theology nerds. I’d always been the most zealous for church of my parents’ children, I served on the worship team and in the children’s Sunday School. I loved to read books far beyond my depth when it came to matters of faith and philosophy (I infamously brought Aristotle on a spring break trip to Florida). When I came home from this summer camp, a very small voice suggested I be a pastor. It was a strange voice and a weird thing to say, and those around me dismissed the epiphany, just like Eli when Samuel came to him at first. 

So I wanted to be a religion professor, and that felt much more acceptable to me and to those around me – I wouldn’t actually be traversing that ground of being a woman in a world that had been ruled by men for millenia – though of course academia isn’t that much better! Near the end of my time in college, that voice came again. It reminded me how much joy I’d felt when mentoring young women in my sorority, and how it was the relationships and interactions that fueled me more than reading and regurgitating books. 

I still wasn’t sure about this voice, and thought maybe it meant I should be a college chaplain. That didn’t sound nearly so scary as being some kind of parish priest. But brothers and sisters, I remember the night I laid in my bed, much like Samuel, and the thought was placed in my head, “You will be a priest.” A few weeks after that, a dear mentor of mine wondered aloud to me whether my call was to blow hot air about women in ministry – which was my desired academic focus – or to just go be one. 

God’s call will keep coming, in different times and places and tones and harmonies, until each of us responds. This is true in our individual lives as well as our call as a worshiping community, and as a city, a nation, and a world. 

Openness, brothers and sisters. Being open to God’s voice sounding or looking different than we expected. Allowing our community to help form and inform us about how God is showing up. Allowing ourselves to be challenged and to re-examine our conceptions, which is itself humility. 

So this morning I leave you with the challenge and charge, especially as we celebrate this season of Epiphany, of revelations and of the flooding in of light to our lives: may we be open to the Holy Spirit’s call, may we be open-handed in our response, may God give us courage to humbly submit to his gracious will. 

Amen.