Sermon, 5/10/2020: Living with Ambiguities!

Easter 5, 10 May 2020 A

Ps. 31:1- 5, 15 – 16; Acts 7:55 – 60; 1 Peter 2:2 – 10; John 14:1 -14

“And when he had said this, he (Stephen) fell asleep [died].  And Saul was consenting to his death.”  Acts 7:60 – 8:1

In his 1790 Reflections on the Revolution in France Edmund Burke (1729-1797) wrote: “Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.”  These words were repeated, with variation, by the Harvard philosopher George Santayana (1905)–“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it…”–and by Winston Churchill (1948) before the House of Commons–“Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.”  In its various iterations, Burke’s observation has so embedded itself in our culture that it has earned the right to be designated as aphorism,  proverb, maxim, and that is so because it appears to state a general doctrine or truth.

As we sit now alone or in our new bubble of “family and close friends only” and find ourselves being bombarded with round-the-clock, often simply repeated “latest news” of (political, scientific, economic, social) developments in the pandemic, which has caused us in the first place to shelter-in-place, we have time on our hands to contemplate our history, time to make our own assessments of who we are as a nation among the family of nations.  As people of faith, we find ourselves wondering what we could have done differently, earlier or, looking to the future, to ensure that we are better prepared for the next pandemic.  We ask also what form our faith community shall take as we emerge from this current challenge.  We sit in bewilderment, anger, frustration, resignation.  As people of faith we live in ambiguities: in the practicality of life and in our faith in a God that “makest all things new.”

In our bewilderment, we see the manifestation of innumerable good things.  Bewildering to me, as I sit with relative safety in my personal and private bubble, is with what sacrifice those on the frontline of aiding those afflicted in this pandemic do not withhold their care.  What is bewildering to me is with what diligence and selflessness newly-minted medical doctors, most assuredly not knowing at the beginning of their studies that they would be faced with this particular challenge, have stepped forward to attend those in distress.  What is bewildering to me is with what concern neighbors, normally focused on their own activities, reach now out to neighbors to inquire about their well-being.

What is bewildering to me is with what patience I have seen a [masked] father stroll down the sidewalk alongside his child, still a baby who clearly is just weeks into learning to walk, or a mother convince her young child that the toy automobile [that] he is pushing with an extended handle is to remain on the sidewalk and not exit my driveway onto the street.  What is bewildering to me is with what positive attitudes those whom I know have approached our new normal.  I do not sense defeat, rather a determination to look ahead.  What is bewildering, but at the same comforting, is the realization that throughout our lives, we are capable of living with and, indeed, thriving in contradictions and ambiguities.

As I, with ample time on my hands, considered the account of the stoning of Stephen, it became clear to me that the new apostle Stephen had attempted to teach those in his own era the very precept [that] Edmund Burke, millennia later, articulated.  Stephen was faced with a pandemic of religious intolerance or of a refusal on the part of those in authority to understand that a new and simpler way to God was available to all. His was a call for a return to the God of Creation, the God of love and grace.  For his teachings and actions, Stephen stood accused before the council.  The brief synopsis of Stephen’s end in today’s first lesson does not do justice to the generosity of spirit with which Stephen stood before his accusers who, in the end, [still called] for and carried out his death.  Stephen makes a case for our belief in a God of love by providing his accusers (and us, by extension) a brief lesson in the history of God’s intention (Acts chapters 6 and 7) for Israel, whom God had chosen to be an example for God’s love of community.  Our encounter with Stephen occurs at the conclusion of that review in Hebrew history.

What we learn in Stephen’s defense treatise is that those who do not know, or who know but choose to ignore their history, are destined to repeat the mistakes of their forebears.  From the time of God’s choosing Abraham to father a nation, to Joseph in Egypt, to Moses’ exodus from Egypt, to David and the building of a temple in Jerusalem, to the crucifixion of God’s Messiah, to the resurrected and ascended Jesus “standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:55b), God has given and continues to give those who would love God an opportunity to get history right.  And for that reason, Stephen asked his accuser to review Israel’s history.  Stephen spoke a truth, which his accusers chose to ignore.

Yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made with hands; as the prophet says, ‘Heaven is my throne, and earth my footstool.  What house will you build for me, says the Lord, or what is the place of my rest?  Did not my hand make all these things?’  (Acts 7:48 – 50)

Stephen cites this historical prophet, in order to make the obvious point that, if we were to house God in our temples, we would seek to control God, as we could then control who enters.  There is perhaps another way to God, when the temple is not accessible.  In defense of his preaching of God’s love, Stephen reminds the council of another historical mandate.  Before Jesus encountered the Pharisee who would justify himself under the law, there existed in early Judaic communal law the seeds for the Summary of the Law which Jesus proclaims.  From Deuteronomy (6:5) comes the mandate to “love God.”  From Leviticus (19:18) comes the mandate to “love neighbor.”  Jesus’ response to the question, ‘which is the Great Commandment,’ was to indicate that the two commandments are linked inseparably, like the two circles of the number eight.  And although it can be argued that love cannot be mandated but must be given freely, it is likewise clear that no force is being imposed or applied.

It is through human relationships that we come first to an understanding of the love of God.  Listening. Caring.  Teaching.  Playing together.  All acts of compassion and aid in time of need express human love.  It is a recognition of these actions [that] guides us gradually to understand what has been always there, namely the love of God.  This love of God is not confined in a building but spreads as an antidote out into the wider world, replacing the limited scope of our familiar existence.  This love of God is not an abstraction, as perhaps it might seem to a small child, or as it might appear to some in our recitation of the Nicene Creed at Mass.  We do not come to know and understand this love through rote memory, just as the memorization of the Pledge of Allegiance or our National Anthem does not produce a respect for democratic governance.  Rather, this love of God is discovered in the receiving from, and the giving of, nurture to others.  Our Summary of the Law or the Ten Commandments provide a framework for experiencing, but is not the temple of God’s love.  This love is not mandated, even as we apply descriptive terms such as ‘commandments’ or ‘law.’  This, so I believe, is assuredly what Christ attempted to pass on to Thomas and Philip when, prior to his crucifixion, he said:  “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.” (John 14:6)  Or, when he, the living manifestation of the love of God, describes himself as “the door of the sheep,” as we heard, refreshed, last Sunday.

If [we were] requested to list the top ten ways of how we might live our lives as people of faith, I suspect that living with ambiguities or facing a martyrdom such as Stephen encountered would not enter onto our list.  Yet we can prepare ourselves to move forward if we remember what Stephen sought to remind his accusers—namely, God’s love is not finite but has been given to humankind since creation.  Indeed, upon Stephen’s demise, Saul took that as his mandate to persecute others for their belief in God as a God of love.  However, on the road to Damascus, in order to continue his assaults against the love taught by Jesus, Saul became Paul.  God aborted the man-crafted direction of history because God had not given up on the original plan at creation.  Out of adversity, out of dark days of bewilderment, anxiety, and fear, came (and still come to those among us who are driven by the love of God) those who refuse to be defeated by naysayers and power-grabbers, those who, enabled by the light and reassurance of God’s undiminished love, continue their march, through use of science and personal intervention, to show us that love of God.  Our benumbing seclusion is but temporary.  What emerges from our experience will almost certainly be different from what we had experienced as we entered these days.  What is true and sustaining, however, is that which has sustained the people of God throughout all ages: the love of God for the creation.

If on this fifth Sunday of Easter we were able to assemble in our sacred space, a space made holy and sacred because the Eucharist, which we would celebrate and in which we would partake, is a reminder of God’s love for the created order, one of the hymns [that] we would have sung is one of praise and thanksgiving to God whose loves sustains us as we negotiate the vagaries of life:

O praise ye the Lord! Praise him in the height;
rejoice in his word, ye angels of light;
ye heaven, adore him by whom ye were made,
and worship before him, in brightness arrayed.

O praise ye the Lord! Praise him upon earth,
in tuneful accord, all ye of new birth;
praise him who hath brought you his grace from above,
praise him who hath taught you to sing of his love.

O praise ye the Lord! Thanksgiving and song
to him be outpoured all ages along!
for love in creation, for heaven restored,
for grace of salvation, O praise ye the Lord!

As people of faith, as followers of the Risen Christ, we, like the martyred Stephen, have every right to sing our Alleluias in whatever situation we find ourselves.  And we need look no further for affirmation of our faith than in the words with which Christ greets us today in our gospel reading:

“Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me.” (John 14:1)

AMEN

Image:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stoning_St_Stephen_Saint-Etienne-du-Mont.jpg