Abiding in the Love and Joy of Jesus

A sermon preached at Nashotah House Theological Seminary on May 7, 2015

John 15:9-17

Joy Davidman, whose husband was C. S. Lewis, wrote a book, Smoke on the Mountain, An Interpretation of the Ten Commandments. Toward the beginning of the book she shares this story. Though the language is a bit dated and Euro-centric, the main point remains pertinent::

There is a tale told of a missionary in a dark corner of Africa where the men had a habit of filing their teeth to sharp points. He was hard at work trying to convert a native chief. Now the chief was very old, and the missionary was very Old Testament – his version of Christianity leaned heavily on thou-shalt-nots. The chief listened patiently.

“I do not understand,” he said at last. “You tell me that I must not take my neighbor’s wife.”

“That’s right,” said the missionary.

“Or his ivory or his oxen.”

“Quite right.”

“And I must not dance the war dance and then ambush him on the trail and kill him.”

“Absolutely right!”

“But I cannot do any of these things!” said the chief respectfully. “I am too old. To be old and to be Christian, they are the same thing!”

Davidman continues:

Not a very funny story, perhaps; there is too bitter a point in the laugh. For, if all the truth were told, how many of us in our hearts, share the chief’s confusion?

How many thousands picture Christianity as something old, sapless, joyless, mumbling in the chimney corner and casting sour looks at the young people’s fun? How many think of religion as the enemy of life and the flesh and the pleasures of the flesh; a foe to all love and all delight? How many unconsciously conceive of God as rather like that famous lady who said, “Find out what the baby’s doing and make him stop”?

That is, how many of us both inside the Church and out have reduced the good news out of Nazareth to a list of thou-shalt-nots?

[...]      

We are in danger of forgetting that God is not only a comfort but a joy. He is the source of all pleasure; he is fun and laughter, and we are meant to enjoy him. Otherwise our Christianity is no better than [the chief’s impression of it].

God is "the source of all pleasure; he is fun and laughter,

and we are meant to enjoy him."

Christians believe that at the heart of all

there is the Joy that is the Trinity.

We believe the world – and each of us – was created for joy.

We believe that the story of creation ends in resurrection joy.

As that contemporary theologian, Bono of U2, writes,

                                    “Laughter is eternity if joy is real.”

To be a Christian is to believe that joy is real.

But, too often we come across as insecure,

cramped moralists, and political scolds.

There are "conservative" and "liberal" versions

of this rather joyless presentation.

But, the Good News we have received is

"of a great joy which will come to all people."

And our Lord came into our midst that

"my joy may be in you,

and that your joy may be complete".

We are meant to be agents of that joy in the world around us.

The mission of the Church is to live in expectation and anticipation

of the joy of God's kingdom.

Our mission is to smuggle some of that joy into a world

that is often all too joyless.

But, too often Christians appear to be just as joyless,

just as anxious,

just as angry

as anyone else –

sometimes even more so.

That is a scandal and a betrayal of the Gospel

If we abide in the love of Jesus

our joy should be evident and infectious.

If we abide in the love of Jesus,

we will know ourselves and the world around us

to be the delight of God.

If we abide in the love of Jesus,

we will know God’s mercy washing over us

and soaking us through and through.

If we abide in the love of Jesus

            we will know that nothing – nothing –

can separate us from the love of God.

If we abide in the love of Jesus

there is nothing to fear or be anxious about.

If we abide in the love of Jesus

            We can resist the fear-mongering of cable news,

social media

and advertising.

If I abide in the love of Jesus

there is nothing I need to prove.

            I do not need to prove my worthiness to God

                        or anyone else.

I can ignore all the naysaying voices in the back of my head:

Who do you think you are?

Today is the day they will discover what a poser you are.

Today your incompetence will be revealed.

Today is the day they will find out that you aren’t really that smart.

Today they will discover some of the internal ugliness

you try so hard to cover up.

Am I the only one here who has those voices in the back of his head?

            I didn’t think so.

I’ve got some bad news for you.

Getting a seminary degree won’t quiet those voices.

Being ordained a priest in God’s church won’t quiet those voices.

Becoming a seminary professor won’t quiet those voices.

I can tell you that being made a bishop doesn’t quiet those voices.

The good news is that

abiding in the love of Jesus

does silence those worries

or at least it reduces them to whispers

that are more easily ignored.

An abiding in Jesus frees us from imposing such anxieties

onto others.

                        It frees us from worrying about whether or not

others get it the way we think they should get it.

I encourage you to abide in the love of Jesus and his joy –

            especially once you are ordained

                        and serving and representing the Church.

Make time for prayer and devotional reading every day.

There is nothing more deadly to the Church

                        than joyless clergy.

What if Christians acted among themselves

and in the world

such hat those who heard our words

and witnessed our behavior

looked on with surprise

at our freedom from such anxieties

and wonderment at our joy?

That doesn't mean we should live in "blissed out" denial

of the difficult realities of our lives and those of others.

Nor does it mean that we never ask difficult

or awkward questions,

that we do not persist in resisting evil

or renouncing the evil powers of this world

which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God.

Nor does it mean we should not be serious about obeying Jesus

But, even then, if it is not clear that our words and actions

are born of and lead to joy,

we will appear to those around us

like the missionary appears in Joy Davidman's story

and risk reducing the Good News out of Nazareth

to a list of thou-shalts and thou-shalt-nots.

That will not so if we abide in the love of Jesus

and allow his joy to complete ours.

If God is indeed the source of all pleasure;

if God is fun and laughter,

and if we are meant to enjoy him;

            shouldn’t we desire to abide him and his joy?

And shouldn’t the church be known for its joy?

And might we see part of our mission

to be smugglers of that joy

into the world around us?

What is Trump?

A Sermon*

John 15:9-17

[Shuffling a deck of cards]

What is trump?

When I was growing up in Indiana we played a lot euchre. 

Not just any kind of Euchre, double-deck, bid euchre.

When my mom’s family got together,

we played euchre.

When my dad’s family got together,

we played euchre

One rite of passage to adulthood in our family

was the daunting invitation to play euchre at the adult table

In double-deck, bid euchre, as in regular euchre and bridge,

there is what is called “trump”. 

If you’ve played cards you understand trump. 

Whichever suit of the deck is named trump

becomes the most powerful suit.

Once trump is declared, a nine of trump will beat an ace of anything else

because trump always wins. 

Today’s passage from the Gospel of John has me thinking about trump,

What is trump in my life?

What is trump in your life? 

What motivates us,

animates us in our relationships with others? 

What do we use to measure our own worth? 

What do we rely on for security?

What do I think will make my joy complete?

Maybe clubs are trump.  [Hold up the ace of clubs]

Clubs could stand for force, power, or violence. 

When push comes to shove, do I push? 

Do you shove? 

Do you use force to get people to comply with your wishes? 

Do you use power to get your way?  Coercion? 

Or maybe you like the more subtle kinds of power like manipulation,

manipulating people using such tried and true methods

as guilt to get people to conform to your will, to your desires.

If I can just exercise enough power and influence,

Will my joy be complete?

When we resort to violent solutions or glorify the use of violence,

we are playing clubs as trump.

Clubs –it is one of the more common trumps in human society,

in the human game. 

But, if Jesus is Lord,

clubs is not trump. [Flick ace of clubs onto the floor]

Or perhaps diamonds are trump.  [Hold up the ace of diamonds]

Few of us probably would admit that diamonds is our trump. 

None of us wants to admit that money and possessions

are really what drive us,

what really shape our time and our imagination. 

And yet, in American society, diamonds certainly seem to be trump. 

If you watch television,

if you pay attention

(or even if you don’t pay attention,

because ads and advertising are so pervasive)

you would think that trump in American society

is always diamonds. 

The more you have,

the more important you are;

the more you possess the happier you will be. 

Diamonds is trump when we find ourselves believing,

consciously or unconsciously,

that we just need to buy this one more thing to be really happy,

to complete our joy.

Participating uncritically in a system

in which the opportunities of the “have-nots” are squeezed

while the privileges of the “haves” are protected

is another way of playing the trump of diamonds. 

Diamonds – another popular trump in the human game. 

But, if Jesus is Lord,

diamonds is not trump. [Flick ace of diamonds onto the floor]

Perhaps spades are trump.  [Hold up the ace of spades]

Work, achievement, what you do,

 is another form of trump. 

What have I achieved? 

What have I done? 

How good am I? 

All these questions fall under the category of spades. 

When spades is trump life is all about achieving the things you

(or others)

believe you’re supposed to. 

You have to earn the favor of others

by achievement,

by making a name for yourself,

            proving that you are good enough.

Spades say you have to prove your worth,

you have to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.

And those who don’t or can’t are worth less.

Spades says each person has to make it on his or her own.

When spades is trump our worth is measured by our resumes

It is a popular trump in American society.

But, if Jesus is Lord,

spades is not trump. [Flick ace of spades onto the floor]

Jesus comes along and says,

"This is my commandment,

that you love one another as I have loved you.

No one has greater love than this,

to lay down one's life for one's friends.”

Jesus declares that hearts is trump.  [Hold up the ace of hearts]

Love is trump. 

In the end, Jesus says, love trumps all. 

It is not how much you have. 

It is not what you do.

It is not what you can get or make or achieve through power

that matters. 

Love is trump. 

On some level, being good, faithful church folk,

we all know this. 

But, we don’t always play are cards as if it were so.

Each of us is born with a full deck – more or less.

From birth, each of us has in our deck of cards each of these trump.

If we are honest with ourselves we must admit – I must admit –  

that, at various times in our lives,

I have played each of them. 

And probably, if we are honest with ourselves,

on any given day we might be able to point to examples

where we have played the trump of spades when

we were convinced that it is what we do that really matters,

or it is what the other person is not doing that really matters. 

Or, we play the trump of diamonds

and allow the accumulation and protection of money and stuff

to dominate our decisions. 

Or we play the trump of clubs

and find ourselves coercing, forcing, manipulating others

to conform to our will. 

As you read the gospels,

you get the sense that

part of what Jesus is up to is reshuffling the deck again and again. 

He says, “What you thought was trump is not trump in the kingdom of God. 

In the kingdom of God the only trump is hearts;

the only trump is love. 

Not vague and undefined love, but love as I loved.” 

Love as Jesus loved – love that is sacrificial,

love that is open and welcoming,

love that is generous and outpouring of self,

love in which we lay down our lives for others.

Love is trump. It sounds nice.

But of course it turns out to be difficult.

Real love and the sustaining of real relationship is hard.

Real love means loving real people.

Each of us at, one time or another,

finds it hard to love someone –

even when that someone is very dear to us.

And each of us,

at one time or another,

is hard to love.

And even at our best efforts at love we are often pretty clumsy.

My father, who was a master at euchre used to tell us,

when we complained about the hands we were being dealt,

“Learn to play with those and we’ll give you better ones.”

By analogy, the people in your life

are the hand you’ve been dealt.

They are the ones you are supposed to learn to love.

This family. These relatives.

            These neighbors.

                        These opponents. These enemies.

When you join the church – in baptism, confirmation, or by being received –

            You are being dealt into this hand.

These people – you people –

are the hand you’ve been dealt.

The people you know and like,

the people you don’t know so well or like less,

the people with whom you agree,

the people with whom you disagree,

the people push your buttons or rub you wrong –

these people are the hand God has dealt you.

Learn to play with them.

Learn to love one another.

That, as much as anything, is what church is about.

Such a love is only possible

if we are open to receiving the love God pours into us so freely. 

There is our worth measured. 

There is our security.

There is our joy.

As we open ourselves to the Holy Spirit

and allow that Spirit of Christ to be poured into our lives

hearts is trump and love begins to pervade and prevail. 

The really good news is that

Christians don’t just believe that love is trump.

We do not only believe that love is at the heart of it all.

We believe that out of the heart of it all,

the one who is at the heart of it all

has entered into the game to play it for us through us.

Christians believe God has entered into the game in the person of Jesus –

the Jack of Hearts.

And when we were in the hole,

against all odds,

the Jack of Hearts shot the moon.

Now, when we give our hearts to the Jack of Hearts,

we can begin to know the forgiveness and healing of all brokenness.

All broken hearts can be mended.

All relationships can be healed and healing –

relationships with family, friends,

neighbors and strangers.

And even enemies.

Most importantly, our relationship with God – the Love at the heart of it all.

            And that is where our joy is made complete

Brothers and sisters,

What is trump in your life?

*The inspiration for this sermon came from a quote of G. K. Chesterton's I read some years ago.

Bearing with One Another - 1. Broken Love

This is the first of a series of Lenten posts on bearing with one another when we disagree. As a bishop, I am particularly interested in how we bear with one another in the Church, but this has relevance in all of our relationships.

We are made for love, made for relationship, for community. Giving and receiving love in community – the community of marriage and family, of friendships, of the neighborhood, of the nation, etc. – is basic to what it means to be human.

But, if we are honest with ourselves, we are not very good at it. There is a deep brokenness in all of our relationships. Divorce, estrangement from family members and friends, racial and ethnic tensions, divisiveness in politics, and wars between nations are all evidence of this brokenness. Even at our best our love limps and falls short of what we intend. All of our loves, all of our relationships, all of our communities are in need of healing.

The root of our fractured love and broken relationships is described poetically in the first chapters of Genesis in the Bible. Adam and Eve disobeyed God, who is Love, and, doing so, created a schism between themselves and God. This resulted in division between Adam and Eve and then the schism of brother against brother leading to murder.

It was to heal this schism between humanity and God and among humans that Jesus came into our midst – taking on our humanity, teaching, healing, dying on the cross, and rising again. Jesus established the Church as the community of new creation and fills it with his Spirit to bear witness to that healing.

Christians have not always done a good job of leading a life worthy of this calling to which we have been called. Lent is a good time to take a fresh look at that vocation and rededicate ourselves to learning to live it more truly. It is precisely to relearn love that God calls us into the community of the Church. This includes loving one another when we disagree.

Tomorrow we will look at a passage from the Letter to the Ephesians that describes the kind of community of love to which the Church (and, by extension, humanity) is called.

Bearing with One Another

2. A Life Worthy of the Calling

3. Grace First and Last

4. Three Movements of Mercy

5. Gathered Together at the Foot of the Cross

6. Free to be Wrong

7. Free to be Vulnerable in Love

8. Only What is Said Kindly is True

9. On Not Bearing False Witness

10. Interpreting One Another with Charity

11. Working Out Our Salvation

Engaging Enemies (and others) with Severe Humility

On September 10, 1939 at the beginning of World War 2 C. S Lewis wrote this in a letter to his brother, Warnie:

In the Litany this morning we had some extra petitions, one of which was, ‘Prosper, oh Lord, our righteous cause’. Assuming that it was the work of the bishop or someone higher up, when I met Bleiben [the vicar] in the porch, I ventured to protest against the audacity of informing God that our cause was righteous – a point on which he has his own views . . . I hope it is quite like ours, of course, but one never knows with him.

– The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 2

And here is something by Lewis’ friend, Charles Williams, written in the middle of WW 2 (1942) when the outcome was still unclear:

The conversion, where it is demanded, of the wild justice of revenge to the civil justice of the Divine City is the precise operation of the Holy Spirit towards Christ. All we need to do is attend to the goodwill, to the civility; the justice (in the personal relation) can be left to Christ. ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay, sayeth the Lord.’ It is perhaps desirable to notice that the repayment is not limited to our enemy. We shall be unfortunate if we forget the trespasses, the debts, which our enemies desire to repay with their wild justice and are content to leave to his promise. It is important that we should be ready to forgive the Germans; it is not unimportant to recognize that many Germans (including Herr Hitler? Possibly; we do not very well know) may feel that they have much to forgive us. Many reconciliations have unfortunately broken down because both parties have come prepared to forgive but unprepared to be forgiven. Instruction is as badly needed in this as in many other less vital things; that holy light which we call humility has an exact power of illumination all its own.

– The Forgiveness of Sins, p. 113

It is hard to imagine saying such things about our enemies. I don’t want to. But, then, it was hard to say them about Germany or Japan during WW 2. It was hard to say it about the Romans in Jesus' day. Do we dare to contemplate that people in the Middle East just might have much to forgive us in the West? And we Americans in particular? That the actions of, for example, Al Qaeda of Iran, however horrific and inexcusable, might be understood in some sense as acts of “the wild justice of revenge”? That things have been done on our behalf in the Middle East over the last 100 years that have contributed to the chaotic rage that seems epidemic there? Even a little understanding of our history in the region over the last century would indicate that it is so. It might require a sort of severe humility but I believe it is a faithful Christian approach to contemplate such things in our day just as Lewis and Williams did in theirs. We need to disabuse ourselves of the myth of our own innocence. Everyone is complicit in the mess the world is in. Some more. Some less. But all.

A couple of things strike me in the above quotes. Both Lewis and Williams refuse to get caught up in nationalistic rhetoric that assumes that "God is with us" or that their country is particularly blessed by God. Even in the midst of war, they were compelled by their Christian convictions to accept the possibility that their nation was (at least partly) wrong and that their enemies might well have grievances of their own.

I am also struck that this severe humility leads both Lewis and Williams to demonstrate an admirable reticence to claim to know overmuch about God's mind or to assume their side is necessarily God's. Both recognize that all humans are fundamentally bound to one another in a relational web and all humans are caught in the sin that infects that web. We should thus be wary of presuming our own innocence or consigning  total blame to others – both are awe-full things to contemplate if we recognize that we all live under the awesome gaze of God's love and judgment.

I know enough of both Lewis and Williams to know that neither would advocate anything like a posture of moral equivalency. And that is not what I am suggesting. And neither of them was a pacifist. But, what both do seem to advocate is a deep humility and reticence to assume the innocence or righteousness of their side. And I find both refreshing. I am convinced it is a fundamentally Christian posture, however difficult.

"For our enemies and those who wish us harm,

and for all whom we have injured or offended,

we pray to you, O Lord."

(Book of Common Prayer, p. 391)

See also:

God, Be Merciful to Us All

The Humility and Generosity of Lincoln