May 18, 2025 Sermon

Anna was full of questions this week. First of all, she was trying to wrap her mind around how it is that we could have bright, sunlight, sunshiny days here, and it could be nighttime and dark where mommy was in France. How could those two things be true at the very same time? So I spent quite a bit of time trying to explain the rotation of the earth and how light works and everything else. And then the very next day, after we'd had this elongated conversation about light, we had this beautiful sunset with the clouds, this pristine pink hue. Why are the clouds pink?

So then we started talking about particles and light reflection and why is the air filled with particles? on and on and on. It was joyful, but frankly, admittedly, a little bit exhausting too. But I loved her curiosity, her sense of wonder at all of this, her questioning of why it is the way it is, and an openness to learning more about the world around her. And I was put in mind of that as I continued to chew on and reflect on the readings from this week. Because we have this beautiful testimony of Peter in our Acts readings, of encountering something new and not running away from it, but questioning, reflecting, being open to a new possibility, a new teaching. A new truth. So often, I think especially we as adults, can have our blinders on. We can get set in our ways, convinced of our specific ideas of how the world works, and find it difficult to change. Find it difficult to embrace that childhood curiosity and wonder.

St. Peter coming to the church in Jerusalem is significant. As I've mentioned before, one of my favorite theologians is a man called Raymond Brown, one of the preeminent New Testament theologians of the 20th century, and he unpacked it in this way. Each of our gospel traditions reflect a certain community of Christians that existed in the years after Christ's ascension. And this tradition that was centered in Jerusalem, the ones to whom Peter is going in our narrative from Acts today, were the ones who were most significantly rooted in the Jewish practices that had come before. They still, by all accounts, were centered on temple worship in Jerusalem. And while they were Messianic, while they embraced Christ's Messiahship, they still lived in the very prescribed and kind of ritualized ways that they had been taught as Jews in Jerusalem, centered as they were on the temple. especially provocative that Peter is coming to them with this new testimony of this embrace of Gentiles. This new way of being the church with a community, with a people for whom they would have had nothing to do. That they would have had their blinders on, their resistances to, their animosities towards. But this is not just an element in our reading from Acts today. There's a way in which there's kind of this permeation of openness in all of our readings. If we look at our epistle reading from Revelation, we have this profound statement of God's Godship. As he pronounces from the throne, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. There's a timelessness to God and God's self. God existed from the beginning, will exist until the end. A permanence, an eternal permanence to God's reality and God's presence. That all came from God and that fundamentally all will return to God. But then also, we have this truth from our gospel lesson, from John's gospel. And it seems a little strange and odd that we're going back to that upper room, that Maundy Thursday experience before the crucifixion, and this just a few short weeks after we celebrated Holy Week and the empty tomb. But there's an important lesson here, too. Especially if we... take seriously what God says of God's self in Revelation. Because if this is true, then Jesus had some foreknowledge of his timelessness. That this instruction and commandment that we receive at this moment in the upper room is not just for this moment of time for the disciples. but it is something that works backwards from the beginning of creation and moves forward in time to the end of all things. That there is a timelessness to this gathering in community to break bread, to share meal. And there is a timelessness to this command that we love one another as you, as I have loved you.

And so what does this mean for us? I think there is a way in which we are called this day, and always, but especially this week, to be mindful of the ways in which God is doing a new and creative thing in the world around us. Who are the Peters in our community or in our life who are offering to us new testimonies about new ways that God is working in this world? What are our blinders? What are our lanes that we want to stay in that might fundamentally rub up against those testimonies? How might we have a creative curiosity about what Christ is doing anew in the world around us? And ultimately, if we pay close attention, this community, this community that should be, would be, probably was the most resistant to this inclusion of Gentiles, nevertheless praised God for this new work, this new revelation, this new way of being together and being in community.

And it's all ultimately, fundamentally rooted in love. I'll admit to you one of my One of my biases, one of my lanes that I like to stay in. I don't like watching movies about Christianity. I find myself critiquing the accuracy, nitpicking at all the little trivial things that are just slightly off. And so it took some amount of time and effort. before I finally sat myself down and did what so many of you have asked me to do, and that is watch Conclave. And I was profoundly struck in that movie by how significant a role grace and respect and love play, even in this very tense and layered situation. where there are a multitude of power plays at work, where there's all of this scheming and trying to figure things out, manipulate the system and the vote counts. There are these moments throughout the entire movie in which folks from very different positions come together in moments of grace and love. And compassion and charity. But there's a creativeness that goes beyond that too. Not just in that movie, but in the world around us. A way in which that extended compassion and hospitality and charity functions in ways that might surprise us. Deacon Janice was telling me after the 8 a.m. service that the great 20th century Roman Catholic Jesuit scientist, theologian, Teilhard de Chardin, is buried in Hyde Park, New York. And he's buried at what was historically St. Andrew's -on -the -Hudson, the Jesuit, the provincial house for the Jesuits in the United States, but is now, since the 1970s, the headquarters of the Culinary Institute of America. And it struck me that even though it is not in a sort of technical sense a sacred space anymore, there's a way in which there's a continuity, a sacred, blessed continuity, because there is a fundamental... Blessing in cooking food, in sharing a meal, in being community in the context of food. There's a way in which the CIA, the Culinary Institute of America, is still a sacred space. A sacred space forming people to share the gift of sustenance.

And how, going forward, this day, the weeks ahead, the months ahead, the years ahead, might we more fully, more creatively, more openly be community in the world around us? How might we build community in ways that embrace new ways of being the church? Open ourselves to the new testimonies and new witnesses that we encounter as we connect with the world around us. Today, we're saying goodbye to two of our beloved members, Catherine and Mike, and I cannot imagine the years of change that you have seen here, but the openness and generosity with which St. Anne's has embraced each and every new season of life. May we continue that legacy forward, that creative spirit of openness, as we seek and discern the new places and spaces that God is calling us into, and the new witnesses and testimonies and green shoots of new life that God brings into our fold, teaching us in each and every moment how better to be that reflector, that transmitter, that communicator of love, compassion, and grace in this place, in this region, and in the world around us. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.