Sermon – 5/6/12
Recently, a news
story on the radio featured a report chronicling the purchase a few weeks ago
of a very rare find. At a figure of no less than $14 million, the British
Library in London purchased what’s widely recognized as the western world’s
oldest intact book.
Known as the St.
Cuthbert Gospel, it’s a beautifully preserved, leather-bound, hand-engraved
excerpt from the Gospel of John that dates all the way back, over 1,300 years,
to the year 698 in England. It turns out that in celebration of the witness of
Cuthbert, one of the first Christian missionaries to England, he was buried in
the late 7th century along with a commemorative copy of one of the
texts he’d likely preached on many times and come to embody in his own life—namely,
the portion of the Gospel of John we’ve read together today that features Jesus’
beloved image of the vine and the branches.
Over the course
of the centuries Cuthbert’s coffin, with the book inside it, was moved many
times but not opened until hundreds of years later, thereby preserving the
manuscript intact and allowing it to make its way eventually from a private
collection and now to a place where it can be studied and appreciated by all.
In itself, the
preservation of such a singular manuscript all these many centuries is a
remarkable feat and a great gift to scholars and enthusiasts of history. But
even more than its academic value, the preservation of this unique book over
such a long period of time speaks to the power and significance not just of the
pages and binding themselves, but of the living message they symbolize
and contain.
One indication
of the character of this message emerges on the outside leather binding of the
book, where an elegant image calls the viewer’s attention. It’s a series of
vines and branches, elegantly intertwining and inviting the reader to open the
volume and enter into its message—into the profound truth of how God’s love was
made known in Christ; into the wonder of how God extends that same love and
graciousness in a living, organic way to all through faith; into the living
witness of those who abide in Christ and bear much fruit.
This message of
good news was clearly one that Cuthbert himself witnessed in a unforgettable
way to those who sought to commemorate the fruit of his life and work through
the book they lovingly bound and engraved. And it’s a message that remains
equally compelling in our own time and place. For Christians of every era,
including our own, the dynamic truth of the gospel remains the same. God has
revealed God’s self in Jesus—manifesting divine life, light, and truth through the
life of one who came so that humanity might encounter that same God, come to
live and abide in that same love, and bear much fruit as a result.
“I am the vine,
you are the branches,” Jesus said, and it remains true today. However, just as
in Jesus’ own time, in Cuthbert’s era, and so many others in history, in our
own day there are challenges to hearing this message. It’s not easy to build
and maintain the sort of living connectedness and community that Jesus speaks
of. In our modern 21st-century world we’re often very connected in
multiple and complex ways, whether with numerous virtual friends online or
through instantaneous communication and updates on events and happenings all around
the world. And yet, how well are we really connected? What’s the quality of the
connections and the sense of community we have with one another and with
God?
In my experience
here at St. Mark’s I’m grateful to share that I’ve witnessed many ways in which
God is working among us, drawing us into community and forging bonds of
connection that bear much fruit. And as a way of reflecting on how God is
indeed working in this way, I’d like to invite everyone to participate in a
special activity this morning.
You’ll find
small sticky notes and pens in your pews and I’d invite everyone to pass them
around so that each person has a sticky note and a pen. Next, I would invite
all of us to spend a few minutes reflecting quietly on how we serve as branches
of the vine? What kind of fruit are we bearing as a congregation? What are some
ways that we are bearing God’s love to the world?
Take a few
minutes to think and pray about these questions and then either write down or
draw or sketch some ideas on your note and then come up here in front and
attach it—that is, the “fruit” that we’re bearing as a congregation—to the vine
and branches of the very same cross we used during Holy Week to commemorate
Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection. We’ll take a few minutes to do this
and then continue with our hymn of the day.
Sermon – 5/20/12
Each week here
at St. Mark’s we print a bulletin with announcements about worship times,
upcoming events, and notable happenings in the community. Among the information
that’s included is also a list called “prayers of the parish,” which includes
names and intentions of various people in the community who are in need of
prayer.
Besides the
obvious care and compassion reflected in the prayers, one of the things that
stands out about this list is how it’s at once both very particular in
mentioning specific people by name, and yet also wide-ranging in its
focus not just on the local community but on places as varied and wide-ranging
as Afghanistan, Germany, Rwanda, El Salvador, Zambia, Turkey, Algeria, Greece,
Cyprus, Malta, Bethlehem, and Paraguay. In naming the prayers and intentions of
so many people, far and wide, the list serves as a concrete reminder of the
reach of God’s tender love and compassionate care through the St. Mark’s
community to the world, both near and far.
As a weekly
reminder of the wideness and the particularity of God’s love, the prayers of
the parish recall many of the themes we encounter in today’s scripture lessons.
In particular, today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles points to new ways
that God’s Spirit was beginning to move in the early church. Although the
original group of twelve apostles had been compromised by Judas’ betrayal, this
very action led to what occurs today. The apostles are once again gathered and they
choose a successor for Judas, thereby eventually opening the way for the
apostle Paul to join the group.
Gradually, as we
see today, the Spirit was in the process of opening the consciousness of the
original followers of Jesus beyond their narrow early confines—expanding first
to the Jewish diaspora beyond the bounds of Jerusalem and eventually to the
entire world through the proclamation and evangelization that Paul’s ministry
would inspire.
As the circle of
those included in the message of good news expands, the heart of the message,
as 1 John reminds us, remains the same and yet deepens at the same time.
Through this process, the author makes it clear that what matters above all is
love—not the niceties of Hallmark-card love, as Margaret McLean so powerfully
reminded us last week, but concrete, abiding, challenging, transformative love—the
kind of love of true friends and neighbors; the kind of love that both opens
itself to receive the care and compassion of others and gives of
itself in order to share and pass on that love to others.
Today’s hymn of
the day, which we’ll sing together shortly, invites us to recall, “What a Friend
We Have in Jesus”—and in truth it’s a reminder of the kind of love that Jesus
came to show and to live. For Christ came into the world, as John reminds us,
not to condemn the world but that all might have life—not just any life, but in
fact eternal life. And in what does this life consist? 1 John reminds us
repeatedly that authentic life is connected intimately with concrete love
for one another—“If we cannot love a sister or brother, then how can we love
God,” John so poignantly reminds us. In other words, life—both here and
eternally—is tied up with the kind of friend we have in Jesus, and the
kind of friend he calls, emboldens, and empowers us to be.
Today’s passage
from the Gospel of John is in many ways the culmination of this message of
authentic love among friends. Jesus reminds us that we belong to him – that we
are his. Jesus came that we might have life and have it abundantly, and this
promise extends not just to his first disciples but to all who have heard their
message of good news and shared it, passing it down even to us all these many years
later.
And that really
is the heart of the matter. We who seek to follow Jesus know both that we have
an extraordinary friend in Jesus—one who loves us and prays for us always—and
that, because of Jesus, we can be that same kind of friend to others. We
are in need of the intercession and prayer that Christ promises us today, and
we have been gifted with the abilities, talents, awareness, and resources to be
able to serve as instruments of Christ’s care and compassion in our
world.
And so as a
bookend to our couple weeks of reflection on the vine and branches, bearing
fruit, and loving and serving God concretely in our neighbor, I’d like to
invite all of us to participate in a second post-it note activity. As with two
weeks ago, you’ll notice that there are stacks of post-it’s and pens in the
pews. Please take a note and a pen and pass them to the end of the pews…
What I’d like to
invite everyone to do is to take a few minutes to reflect on the kind of prayer
and intercession our readings talk about today. We’re consoled with Jesus’
reassurance that he will pray for us always. And at the same time we’re
challenged to expand our worldview to embrace all in service of God’s people.
Like the “prayers of the parish” section of the bulletin, we’re called to share
our own needs and express our hope to be of service to the needs of others.
And so I would
invite all of us to take about five minutes to sit prayerfully and to invite
God to illumine our hearts with two words or images – one for each side of our
piece of paper. On one side, whenever we’re ready, we can write or draw a need
that we have—something we’d like to ask intercession for from Jesus. On the
other side, we can write or draw something that represents a way we
ourselves might be able to answer the prayers of others, using our talents,
gifts, and abilities. This week, we can keep this little piece of paper with
us, allowing it to serve as a reminder of the kind of friend we have in Jesus—a
friend whose love both embraces our own needs and empowers us to serve the
needs of others.
I will offer a
short prayer to begin our meditation, and then there will be quiet music played
as we each pray and reflect. Afterward we will move directly into the hymn of
the day.
