THE GOD-GIVEN POWER TO CHANGE THE WORLD

Jesus’ last words to the apostles were:

            “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you

            and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea,

            in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

This is Jesus’ last will and testament, his legacy to us.

His parting words threaten to change our lives.

Jesus hands over his mission to us.

To carry out his mission, we need his power.

That makes us distinctly uncomfortable.

No one admits to wanting power.

So what are we doing in a religion that promises power?

Talking about power conjures up images of tyrants, dictators,

            political wheeler dealers, and financial robber barons.

Put it together with religion and you get one those double chinned bishops

            who’s always eating turkey drumsticks in Renaissance movies.

Nice people don’t talk about power, especially in church.

What has power to do with Christianity?

As Christians we are supposed to be simpering, pusillanimous, dispensers

                        of charity and pious platitudes, are we not?

But is that kind of Christianity honest?

Does it have any place in the real world?

Sociologist of religion, James Davison Hunter says,

            “Human relations are inherently power relations.

            Power saturates all of social reality . . . .

            How people engage the world is at least implicitly

                        a question of how they relate to power.”

To truly have nothing to do with power

            is to disengage from the world.

To pretend we have nothing to do with power is

            to deal with the world, and with our selves, deceitfully.

So we might start by talking about power honestly.

Jesus said, “You will receive power.”

2^nd Timothy says, “God did not give us a spirit of fear,        

            but of power . . . .”

Ephesians says, “Glory to God whose power working in us

            can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.”

Paul said, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection.”

Jesus wants to give us power for his mission.

If we don’t claim that power, we remain spiritual parasites,

            not partners with Christ in mission.

So what is this spiritual power Christ offers?

Is it something we might dare claim for ourselves

            and put to use in his mission?

First, forget what you know about worldly power.

This is another thing altogether.

Spiritual power is not dominating power.

Jesus always resisted dominating power.

Spiritual power is relational.

It is the ability to influence others

            out of something deep and authentic.

If you are a stranger to me, then you cannot influence me.

If you are a fool, you cannot influence me

            unless I’m a bigger fool than you are.

But suppose we get to know each other.

Suppose I come to trust that you mean me well.

And suppose I believe you know something worth knowing.

Suppose I experience you as sane, wise, honest, and decent.

Then I will believe in you and what you say.

Then you can influence me for good.

Worldly power, dominating power is one person

            diminishing the power of another person

             – trying to make himself more by making someone else less.

 Spiritual power is energy.

It flows between people to make them both stronger.

Relational power, spiritual power, can heal, encourage, inspire.

Look at any interpersonal transaction, be it in Scripture, current events,

            or your personal life, and check the  power dynamics.

Does one person exert power to diminish someone else?

Or does one person share power, empower the other person?

That’s how we distinguish the world’s power from the Jesus power.

 We cannot empower others

            unless we claim and cultivate our own spiritual power first.

There are three ways to receive the spiritual power Christ offers.

First, it takes prayer.

After Jesus told the apostles they were to receive power for the mission,

            the Bible says, they constantly devoted themselves to prayer.

Prayer connects the circuit for Christ’s power to flow through us.

Second it takes study.

Remember that you gain the power to influence me

            only if two thing come together.

One, I can tell you mean me well.

Two, I can tell you know something.

2^nd Peter says, “His divine power has given us

            everything we need for life and godliness.

            This power was given to us through knowledge. . . .”

Proverbs 24 verse 5:

            “A person of knowledge increases power.”

We do not grow in spiritual power unless we value our faith

            seriously enough to study it.

Finally, spiritual power is relational.

Its roots are in Christ-centered relationships with each other.

Spiritual power grows through the intentional discipline

            of paying attention to each other, caring for each other,

            and finding things to appreciate in each other.

We grow in spiritual power when we do three things:

            Pray, study, and befriend each other in Christ.

When we do that, we cease to be spiritual parasites

            and become partners -- powerful agents for the kingdom.

But do we dare to claim the power Christ wants to give us?

I see several signs that make me wonder if we are that bold.

Some are a bit delicate.

The least sensitive examples are in our music.

The basic hymn for ordinations in the Episcopal Church

            is the old Celtic song, St. Patrick’s Breastplate.

It’s so normative for ordinations and common for confirmations

            that most bishops have heard enough of it for a lifetime.

It’s the basic strap on your gun belt song from every Western movie.

The words are an incantation St. Patrick prayed on the plain of Tara

            before doing battle with the army of wizards of King Laoghaire.

It goes:

            “I bind unto myself today

            The strong name of the Trinity . . . .

            I bind unto myself the power

            Of the great love of cherubim . . . .

            The power of God to hold and lead,

            His eye to watch, his might to stay . . . .”

It’s what we sing at confirmations before the bishop prays,

            “Strengthen O Lord your servant. . . .”

My question is: why have I never once in our diocese,

            in any church large or small, high or low, traditional or hip,

            not once anywhere in our diocese ever heard that song?[i]

Example 2:

Three of Nevada’s last 4 bishops all attended the same seminary.

That seminary has a theme song, a bit of a fight song actually.

It’s called Chelsea Square named for the seminary’s location

            in New York City.

It’s a vigorous song, a marching into mission song.

The opening lines are:

            “Put forth O God thy Spirit’s might

            And bid thy church increase. . . .”

You can guess my question.

Why have I never heard it in Nevada?

I am not really worried about holes in our musical repertoire per se.

I am wondering what this might say about our gumption

            – our willingness to be strong in faith, powerful in mission.

Eucharistic Prayer C says,

            “Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this table

                        for solace only and not for strength.”

Is  strength part of what we mean by the word Christian?

Are we willing as Christians to claim and exercise spiritual power?

If not, why am I about to pray for the confirmands

            “empower them for your service”?

The Body of Christ needs a backbone.

The Body of Christ needs some fire in its belly.

The Body of Christ needs a steady eye, a firm hand,

            and strong right arm.

 We need Christians who pray until they radiate spirit,

            who study their way into holy wisdom,

            who have the relational power to hold fast to a friend

                        in the strongest storms of life.

When we have that kind of religion, brothers and sisters,

            we’ll have the faith of the apostles.

When we have that kind of religion,

            our faith will not be an aid to ordinary life

                        lived in an ordinary environment.

It will be the driving force of extraordinary life

            that transforms our environment with justice and mercy.

We will be change agents for the kingdom of God.

When we have that kind of religion,

            we will have been baptized with fire as the Bible promises

            and the world will feel our transforming energy.

---

[i] Sicne I delivered this sermon in 2011 (this is a reprint as I did not preach on the Ascension this year), one of our congregations actually played St. Patrick’s Breastplate once. I believe it was St. John’s, Glenbrook.

IT AIN'T ABOUT WHAT WE LIKE

Christianity sprang up in Jerusalem,

            then spread quickly around the Middle East.

Paul started out in Syria and spread the word

            as far as the coast of Asia Minor, modern day Turkey.

But no one had imagined taking the gospel to pagan Europe

            until Paul had a vision.

Our lesson says, “During the night, Paul had a vision.

            there stood a man of Macedonia . . . saying,

            ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’

            When he had seen this vision, we immediately

            tried to cross over to Macedonia,

                        being convinced that God had called us

                        to proclaim the good news to them.”

That’s how Christianity got to Europe.

It happened again 300 years later.

An English boy named Patrick was captured by slavers

            and spent his adolescence as a slave in pagan Ireland,       

            but he eventually escaped and returned home.

There he lived with his family and friends for 6 good years.

Then one night he had a vision he described this way.

            “I saw a man coming, as it were from Ireland.

            His name was Victoricus and he carried many letters

            . . . (H)e gave me one of them. . . .

            I imagined I heard the voice of those very people . . .

            beside the western sea – and they cried out, as with one voice:

            ‘we appeal to you holy servant boy, come and walk among us.’”

So Patrick, who despised Ireland,

            returned to the land of his captivity

                        to share with his former enemies the good news of God.

In 1863, Ozi Whitaker from Massachusetts graduated

            from seminary in Philadelphia,

            and struck out for his first parish, Gold Hill, Nevada.

The Comstock was a tough and lonely land back then.

Ozzie lasted 2 years.

Having seen the error of his ways,

            he hotfooted it back to New Jersey, got married,    

            and become rector of a well-heeled East Coast church.

But God had other plans.

Not long after that, he heard the call and came back west

            to Virginia City and served this diocese for 19 years.

From Virginia City, he spread the gospel throughout Nevada and Arizona.

He celebrated the first Episcopal communion

            in Pioche on September 17, 1870  in a saloon.

Today we will affirm that:

            “We believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.”

“Apostolic” means we are sent to someone else.

We have a mission outside our own walls.

The church was born with a mission and lives for a mission

            to a world that needs Christ’s love more desperately today than ever.

What is true for the church is true for every individual Christian.

God has to work a sort of spiritual aikido on us.

We come to God because we need something.

We need some healing or peace or joy.

We come to God with a spiritual need,

            but the Catch 22 is: our spiritual needs can never be met

            as long as we are trying to get them met.

God, like an EMT,  patches us up a little,

            then gives us a mission to help someone else.

In the course of serving others,

            we get healed ourselves,

            find peace ourselves,

            discover our own joy.

I don’t know how that works, but it does.

Jesus said, “Whoever tries to save his life will lose it,

            but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

That’s what Paul, Patrick, and Bishop Whitaker did.

They lost the lives they had known.

They left their homes and their comfort zones

            to share Christ’s love with strangers

            and found a life of self-giving, a life for others,

                        that paradoxically gave them joy.

Paul did not want to go to Europe.

They weren’t his kind of people.

But the warmest, fondest, most affectionate letter

            he ever wrote was to the Philippians,

            the people of Macedonia he left his beloved Turkey to serve.

Patrick went to Ireland kicking and screaming

            but near the end of his life he wrote a poem

            praising and thanking God for allowing him to serve

            among these people at the edge of the world.

And some say Ozzie came to like us well enough too.

Joining the apostolic mission is the very means of our salvation.

It’s how we are set free and made whole.

Christ gives us the mission to liberate us from the prison of self

            the way Moses liberated Israel from the prison of Egypt.

Today our confirmands will take on the Jesus mission.

The confirmands will say, “Yes, I will share the love of Jesus

            with the world.”

I will take up my share of the mission given by Christ

            and passed down by Paul, Patrick, Bishop Whitaker

                        and a line of Christians 2,000 years long.”

Each of us has our part in the apostolic mission.

We bear the Christ light to those in darkness.

We are here to give comfort to the afflicted,

            to bring hope to the despairing,

            to feed the hungry, and strengthen the weak.

Congregations do not exist to sustain themselves.

We are here to serve the world in the name of Jesus.

We don’t have to cross oceans like Paul or Patrick

            or continents like Bishop Whitaker.

Human need is never any farther away than next door.

The basic discernment for any congregation is:

             what does our community need?

How can we serve the people in need here and now?

Need is not just hunger and material poverty.

It is loneliness, addiction, spiritual confusion.

Our task is to heal our neighbors’ wounds,

            whatever they may be.

As a member of Nevadans for the Common Good,

            All Saints is taking on the issues of teacher shortages

and inequality in education based on race and class.

            All Saints is challenging a system that puts economic pressure

                        on people to move into nursing homes when their health

                        would be better served in their own homes.

            All Saints is challenging an immigration systems that deports people

                        who are eligible to be here – they just haven’t jumped thorugh

                        the procedural hoops – and separates families driving children

                        into poverty.

I am proud of All Saints’ leadership in this work.

You have committed to deliver twice as many people

            to the Nevadans For the Common Good convention on May 9

                        as the second largest congregation.

And I believe you can do it. You’ve done it before.

Do you see how different this is from one of those churches

            with people sitting around sourly

                        looking for things to grumble about.

“I like this. I don’t like that.”

Christianity is forgetting what we like or don’t like.

It’s getting outside ourselves to seek and serve Christ in all persons.

Our likes and dislikes,

            these are like Turkey to Paul

but God invited Paul outside Turkey to pagan Europe

where he discovered love and joy.

Our comfortable groups of those we already know well,

            are like England to Patrick

but God invited Patrick outside England to pagan Ireland

where he found the meaning of his life.

Our old familiar ways,

            the stories we tell ourselves about how it has always been

            and will always be forever and ever amen

            are like the East Coast to Ozzie Whittaker

-- but God invited Ozzie to leave the old East Coast

and share God’s love in this pagan desert.

A church for others,

shapes the souls of each of our members

            to become men and women for others.

We don’t just share the gospel by word and deed

            when we’re doing church work.

It happens everywhere we go with everyone we meet.

As our confirmands take their vows,

they inspire us to renew our own efforts

            to show our friends, neighbors , and the strangers

what the love of Jesus looks like.

And so now, Brothers and Sisters, it is time for all of us

            to commit ourselves once more

                        to a life for others in the name of Christ Jesus.