May 17, 2020 - Sixth Sunday of Easter

Sixth Sunday of Easter
May 17, 2020

Acts 17:22-31; Psalm 66:8-20; 1 Peter 3:13-22; John 14:15-21

Adapted for print from transcription.

Well, hello Shepherd Family. Many of you know that I am a church history nerd and really enjoy remembering all of those Holy people, those men and women who have gone before us and have witnessed throughout space and time what it means to be authentically Christian; to authentically embody the gospel, or life, in our world and continue to go before us to model a life of wholeness, a life of love. And what many of you may or may not know is that I've been working on somewhat of a Daily Almanac. So there'll be a daily Christian Almanac, which will be hopefully in book form one day, or maybe even as an app on your phone.

Each day within our Christian tradition, we tend to celebrate or remember those who have gone before us on the day they died, and so each day in our year is associated with a specific holy person. So my hope is that one day this will be published and it'll give us an opportunity to kind of journey throughout our year as we remember all of those great witnesses and saints who have gone before us.

But as I read this week's text on this Sixth Sunday of our Easter Season, I am mindful of one special witness who we remember this week on May 9th. A lot of the Christian world remembered someone named Pachomius, an Egyptian monk. So hopefully I'm not going to bore you.

On a regular basis, I have people tell me that they love it when I share history. And I hope that's true because I do really love church history. And I think that there are nuggets there that really witness to us today in our Christian lives. So Pachomius was an Egyptian monk who lived in the third and fourth centuries.

Someone else that many of us may have heard of was Saint Anthony. Saint Anthony the Great lived before him in the second and the third centuries, also in Egypt, and they both came from what we would call today as “reformed” or “reforming” movements in the church. And this reforming movement in the church was a witness of monasticism.

The word “Monk” comes from monos, meaning one. And so Anthony goes out into the desert and becomes the first Christian monk, if you will, living out in the Egyptian desert. And then in the third and fourth centuries, we get this guy named Pachomius, who we remember this past week on May 9th. Now Pachomius wrote a rule for his monks to kind of pay attention to or follow and has said, “You know, if you're going to live this way of life, this is what you need to be doing.”

So this is really important for our Christian life because he was a reformer in a sense of encouraging people for the first time, encouraging monks for the first time. And monk can be male or female, by the way. Again, it just means one. He did something interesting with this tradition. He transitioned this reforming movement away from being of one into being among many. So this connects back to my sermon a few weeks ago that talks about we, not me. So he saw in this early movement within our Christian tradition that really it wasn't about I, it was about we, so he's doing something new within the Christian tradition by gathering monks.

Within our Christian tradition, there's not often anything new. Often, we're simply looking back into our Christian tradition, into our Christian history, and we're reforming, we're refreshing the churches, always renewing and reforming for each age and each generation. So you've heard me talk about the emerging church before, which is a movement in this past century.

Phyllis Tickle is someone that you may have heard me talk about. Phyllis Tickle talks about the church today, going into our attics and pulling out some of these ancient, or maybe not so ancient traditions that may have been placed in our attics and forgotten about, and she specifically talks about spiritual practices.

So when we gathered together on Thursday for our Zoom Lectio Divina, Lectio Divina would be an example of one of those spiritual practices that we're pulling out of our Christian tradition and renewing and that continue to offer and breathe life for us today. So back to Saint Pachomius, I learned about him because I've always been interested in another monk who lived in the sixth century, and his name was Benedict.

Many of us have heard about Benedict, who was very famous for beginning several monasteries, but he started one large monastery, Monte Cassino in Italy. And that from that monastery, new monasteries were started throughout the world. And the Benedictine tradition within the church inspired generations of not only monastic communities, but of churches throughout the world.

Now you might wonder why I'm interested in all of this. When I was a young person, now this is a very strange story, but as soon as I tell it, you'll say, well, that's definitely a Pastor Rock story. So, when I was young, I wanted to know, were there monks or were there nuns here locally in Phoenix?

And what I learned was that the Episcopal church here in Arizona had a little priory, or monastery, with two monks, and they were called the servants of Christ. And they were a Benedictine community. And they lived off of Central and Camelback in a neighborhood. They had a home there and behind their home they had a beautiful chapel and they prayed the hours or the office.

And again, this is going back to that emerging church. This is a spiritual practice that we're renewing in the church today that young people find great witness in and interest in, and this is what we're doing daily with our friends of the Open and Affirming Coalition and praying morning prayer that's part of the daily office or the Liturgy of the Hours.

The Liturgy of the Hours is this idea of praying morning, noon, evening and night prayer. So this is a tradition that we're pulling from the attic and taking new insight from and seeing afresh. Firing us as church into new ways and new possibilities today, all of these spiritual practices.

So join us for Lectio Divina on Thursdays at 10:00 AM on Zoom. Or if you can't do that, know that we have Morning Prayer that we're doing with our Open and Affirming Coalition friends Monday through Saturday at 9:00 AM. So the order of Saint Benedict, these monks inspired me to seek out more within our Christian tradition.

So that's where my interests came from. Moving up to the 16th century, we have John Calvin, who is often known as one of the reformers that really gave witness to our uniting church tradition that we know today as the United church of Christ. Of course, the early Congregationalists were Calvinist, and the folks from the Evangelical and Reformed side of our Uniting Church, they were reformed or Calvinist also. Now, Calvin often gets a bad rap, but I think that it's important for us to remember Calvin today because Calvin is giving us a reforming witness. In terms of what he was trying to do, as with most of the reformers, Luther included, but especially John Calvin, is he knew about these Christian communities, these monastic communities.

You've heard me talk about the domestic church before, which I think is important. During this time of of lockdown, Calvin was inspired and really encouraged the domestic church, but not only the domestic church, the domestic monastery. And so within our reform tradition, you begin to see prayer books that were inspired by a monastic daily prayer.

And the idea was, is that these reformers would translate these prayer services. Put them into prayer books, into the language of the people, and voila, you have a prayer book in your home and you are now empowered as the people of God to pray in your own homes and to create a domestic monastery in your home for spiritual renewal.

So what does any of this have to do with our text this Sunday? First of all, we hear Paul in the book of Acts. We hear in there that one great line; “In him, we live and move and have our being.” Some translations say, “In him, we live and move and find our being.” Paul was really inspired to call people away from dead religion.

And I would say that the reforming traditions of the church, these renewing traditions are always about calling us away from dead religion, calling us to life. And then in our second reading, first Peter, we have this call to always account for the hope that is within us. So early Christians knew about this hope, and this is something that's important for us today as we are in isolation. Where do we find our hope?

Are we ready to account for our hope? I would say that many of these spiritual practices that I've mentioned today call us to be people of hope, to help us practice in our domestic churches, our domestic monasteries along the way, to allow us to see hope.

Now finally, in the 14th chapter of John that we hear from today, we see that Jesus is still in the farewell discourse. As I've said before, Jesus starts talking and he never stops talking. So we have Jesus still talking today, and I'm very aware of this gospel because of my time serving in the United Methodist church.

Just like we in the UCC have our own Book of Worship with rituals and rites and prayer services in it, the United Methodists have this book as well, and just like I would encourage us to have a copy of our New Century Hymnal at home, because those hymns inspire us as people of faith and offer us great hope, not only on Sunday, but throughout the week (mindful of that, you can find morning prayer and evening prayer in the front of your hymnal), they encourage all United Methodists to have a copy of the Book of Worship at home. So, this farewell discourse of Jesus in John's gospel is found in the United Methodist funeral, and almost every United Methodist funeral I did, so often the reading would always come from John's 14th chapter. From Jesus's farewell discourse. So this is him saying goodbye to his disciples. And so what we hear in this gospel is that Jesus, he's saying goodbye. But he's saying that he's going to leave us with an advocate.

Now, this is important because this is kind of pulling us towards Pentecost because we're getting close to Pentecost, but it's also hearkening back to the beginning of our Easter journey. So we're kind of between right now. We're coming up to Pentecost. We're getting a taste of Pentecost. But we're also seeing what has been; the Paschal Mystery. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. So in this farewell discourse that we hear today from John's 14th chapter, we hear that Jesus is going to leave us with an advocate. Now, some translations of the English Bible don't use “advocate.” Some translations use the word, “companion.” Some translations use the word, “guide,” and some translations just say, “spirit.” And so what we're hearing is that things have changed or will change, but they haven't ended. And then we hear these very comforting, assuring words from Jesus, “I will not leave you orphaned.”

“I will not leave you orphaned.” Very comforting words, very assuring words for today's world. All of this is rooted in this reforming movement, this calling us back that we've heard throughout the story of Acts. This model of the Christian life, and what Christian life is supposed to look like. All of this rooted in our Holy Thursday story, our Holy Thursday reading of the gospel.

And a reminder that that Holy Thursday reading, if you didn't have an opportunity to watch Holy Thursday, we did Holy Thursday along with our friends at Prince of Peace Lutheran church, and that's still in our archived videos on our website, or you can always go to Facebook and see it there.

We hear on Holy Thursday, also, from the 13th chapter, at the end of our Holy Thursday reading, “I give you a new commandment that you love one another, just as I have loved you. You also should love one another. By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.”

Friends, I talk about monasticism and the life of a monk today because many of us are living in isolation. Many of us are living in our domestic monasteries in this time of lockdown. And I encourage you to take a look at some of those spiritual practices that we're offering on Zoom. In these weeks, a time to reconnect, a time to find healing, a time to be inspired, to love more deeply, to be more present to one another.

I had a friend this week say that it isn't Zoom that's connecting us. It's the Holy spirit that's connecting us. We are connected. We are family. We are the body of Christ.

Amen.