Yes, the Peter we read about today in our passage from Acts, is the same impetuous disciple who denied Jesus three times after his death.  In The Acts of the Apostles, we get to see Peter—and the other Apostles—grow up.  Peter begins functioning as the head of the church.

At this time, the church consisted primarily of disciples who found Jesus through the Jewish tradition. In fact, later in the 11^th chapter of Acts, the author states the group was not referred to as Christians until a year after the events we read about today.

So, part of being an early follower of Jesus, was living a holy Jewish life.  That meant living faithfully to the Jewish law, including its dietary restrictions and becoming circumcised in order to become part of the community.

Peter has a vision that flies in the face of Peter’s understanding of holiness.  The vision is so shocking that we hear it twice in Acts—the first time when Peter is actually experiencing the vision and then this time when he is recounting his vision to the crowd in Judea.

To us, the vision is not that shocking.  Four footed animals, beast of prey, reptiles, birds—what’s so horrible about a day at the zoo?  But the animals Peter saw were all animals Jewish people were forbidden to eat.  We don’t have those kind of cultural restrictions on food or much else, really, so it can be hard to relate to Peter’s deep feelings of disgust.  But God is telling him in this vision to take up all these horrible, forbidden foods and eat them.  When Peter protests and says “By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean.”  God says to him, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”

Peter is receiving a life changing, world changing message, but he does not understand its full meaning quite yet.

When Peter wakes up from his vision, he gets a visitor, a Gentile named Cornelius.  Cornelius was an Italian Centurion who was a very godly person.  He gave money to charity regularly, he prayed every day, but he was still a Gentile.  Cornelius was instructed in a dream to go meet Peter.  When Cornelius showed up at his door, Peter suddenly fully understood his dream.

While God might be changing some dietary rules, what God really intends to communicate to Peter is that he is changing the rules about who is welcomed into God’s family.  No longer does someone have to be Jewish or become Jewish.  God’s chosen people are no longer members of one particular family, but the whole of humanity.

This is wonderful news, of course, but not to everyone.  The text helpfully points out that the circumcised believers in Judea criticized Jesus and questioned him about why he was spending time with uncircumcised people.  Their complaints echo the Pharisees complaints about Jesus, don’t they?  (If I were a man and had to get circumcised to join a religious tradition, I might be a little irritated with God’s new policy, too!)  When Peter explains God’s new vision for humanity, the circumcised Judeans are stunned into silence.  Even they cannot deny the weight of this good news.

God has been true to his vision—and God’s people now span over every continent, every race, and thousands of different languages.

And in the United States, which has embraced this same kind of pluralism, opening the doors to the stranger has been part of our religious tradition.  We have not always done this well.  Many a church still has the balcony where slaves sat when they were not allowed to sit next to their white masters.  Some churches still resist outsiders, especially if they are of other ethnicities.  But over all, Christians in this country, whether liberal or conservative, tend to believe that Jesus came for all people and that anyone who loves Jesus can become part of the family.

And this core belief is now putting religious leaders in Arizona in a moral bind.  In the immigration law recently passed in Arizona, there are two clauses that have the potential to affect churches.  The first is making it illegal to knowingly transport an illegal immigrant in a car.  The second is making it illegal to knowingly harbor an illegal immigrant.  Neither of these laws is directed at churches, specifically, but religious leaders are wondering if Christians could be prosecuted for driving a youth group that contained an illegal immigrant or whether feeding an illegal immigrant in a soup kitchen violates the law.

In the Unites States we are not often asked to choose between our faith and our country, because we are blessed to live in a country where laws generally support the principles of our faith.

However, when it comes to illegal immigration, Christians are forced to make a choice.  The United States has the right to make and enforce laws about who can and cannot come into this country.  Christians, however, come from a long tradition in which we are obligated to welcome and love the stranger, even if this comes in conflict with the law.

Catholic and Episcopal bishops in Arizona have made it clear that they will continue with soup kitchens and homeless shelters and youth group trips, without checking anyone’s papers.  They are making a choice to follow the Gospel, even if their government is not or cannot.

And we may think we are safely removed from the situation in Arizona, but did you know there are holding pens for detained immigrants right here in New Jersey?  My sister lives in New York and she is part of a ministry based out of Riverside Church that travels to Elizabeth, New Jersey on Saturday mornings to visit with non-criminal immigrants who have come to the United States seeking asylum from various countries.  Individuals are held in warehouses converted into detention centers with no access to the outdoors for months and occasionally years at a time until their cases are heard and decided.  And the warehouse in Elizabeth is only one of many throughout the United States.

Occasionally, my sister receives a jubilant phone call from someone who has been given permission to live in the United States, but more often people disappear and she does not know whether they have been deported or transferred to another facility.

These immigrants are not the ones that make the news.  These are immigrants from Somalia, Tibet, Columbia, Guinea, Senegal, India, Uzbekistan, Guatemala, Sri Lanka.  They are fleeing danger and oppression and seeking freedom in our country.  Instead they are caged.  The people of the Riverside Church have made a commitment to live out the full meaning of Peter’s vision—of seeking out the other, of offering love and humanity to people who have been denied both.

We may think of illegal immigrants as the lowest of the low in this country, but in God’s eyes they are his beloved children.  And if they are his children, that makes them our brothers and sisters.  And I know that to the good people of Trinity Church, I am preaching to the choir.  One of your greatest strengths as a church is the way you welcome the other.  But any of us, especially me, can be lulled into thinking that these kinds of laws and practices don’t have anything to do with our lives.

But God offers us the same challenge he offered Peter and asks us whether we can call profane a people he has made clean.  He asks us if we can accept a reality in which the church includes even those our culture sees as unclean.  He asks us to love our neighbor.

Amen.

Frankly, the best thing about being an adult is that you can use the restroom whenever you feel like it.

But, I digress.

Rules can feel arbitrary and annoying, even if you know they are for a greater good.  When we hear any word that sounds like rules-laws, restrictions, regulations-we know that we are about to have our behavior corralled, directed, and controlled.

In today’s Gospel reading from John, when Jesus uses the word commandment to describe how he would like us to behave, we might have that same reaction.  We might start to feel tense, wondering how he is going to restrict our behavior.  After all, we already know about the Ten Commandments, which are pretty restrictive.  We also know about the more than 600 laws in the book of Leviticus.  What new boundary is Jesus going to place on us?

But Jesus’ tone does not feel domineering.  Jesus says he is going to give us this commandment so that we can abide in his love and so our joy may be complete.  Clearly, Jesus has a different understanding of commandment than we do.  For Jesus, the word commandment is a gift, a rule that helps us gain intimacy with God.

And the specific commandment that he reveals in today’s lesson is this:  “to love one another as I have loved you.”

And how does Jesus love us?  He loves all of us, completely, to the point of death, whether we deserve his love or not.  Jesus loves us whether we are mature or irresponsible. Jesus loves us whether we are spiritual or secular.  Jesus loves us whether we are “cool” or “nerds”.  Jesus loves us no matter what our skin color.  Jesus loves us whether we are men or women.  Jesus loves us whether we are gay or straight. Jesus loves us whether we are old or young.

This commandment to love is not just an arbitrary rule.  This commandment is our marching orders.  This commandment is our mission.  This commandment is our deepest calling.

We are called to love everybody.  Period.

And how well are we doing at this job?

I watched a documentary a couple of weeks ago called American Teen that was a look at the lives of five high school students in a high school in Indiana.  One of the students, Meghan, was a typical mean-girl bully.  What was so fascinating about her story is how vulnerable she actually was and how she dealt with anger over a sister’s death and general insecurity about being a teenager by lashing out and making other people miserable.

I wonder what would have happened if she had, at her core, a deep understanding of Jesus’ love for her and the knowledge that her whole mission in life was to love others as she was loved.

Bullying is not just a painful, inevitable part of school.  Occasionally, intense bullying meets a particularly vulnerable child and devastating consequences ensue.  Just last month, eleven year old Jaheem Herrera hung himself after being repeatedly teased and bullied for no reason other than being from the Virgin Islands and being a new student who was an easy target.  Every day at school kids taunted him and called him names.  He sought help from his parents and they sought help from the school, but no one was able to stop the teasing.

I wonder what might have happened, if just a few kids at that school had understood Jesus’ command to we love everyone.  I wonder what would have happened if just a few kids stuck up for Jaheem, surrounded him with support and friendship.  I wonder what would have happened if just a few bystanders had the courage to step up to the bullies.

Loving our neighbors is not just about feeling warm and fuzzy.  Love requires concrete action, such as treating each person you meet with respect.  Love means being patient and kind and helpful.  Love means seeing the good in each person we encounter through the day and treating them like the valuable, created human being they are.

The command to love our neighbors takes great courage. Loving means standing up for those people who cannot stand up for themselves. Loving means risking our own reputations.  Loving means putting ourselves out for another person.  Loving our neighbors means teaching those who are bullied that they are wonderful, strong, beloved children of God who are worth Jesus’ very life.  Loving our neighbors means teaching our bullies that all people are children of God who deserve to be treated with respect.

I have been called by God to love my neighbor.  You, whether you are 8 or 80, have also been called to love your neighbor.  Those of you who are still in school may not be allowed to eat in class or go to the bathroom without getting permission from an adult-but no one can stop you from obeying God’s commandment to love your fellow students.  You have a chance to be heroes by being kind and respectful to everyone in your class and in your school.  You have the chance to be heroes by standing up for kids who are being teased.  If you are a bully, you have a chance to be a hero by apologizing for your behavior and starting over by being kind to your classmates. . . or family. . .or employees.

And when we do live a life of loving our neighbors, we will draw closer and closer to God.  Loving other people helps us to understand how much God loves us.  By loving other people, we will abide in God’s love and experience the deep joy of Christ.  What other rule can do that?

Amen.

Any life changing news, whether good or bad, takes a while to filter through the human brain.

We celebrate Easter for a full 50 days, representing the time that lapsed between Jesus’ resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. God gave the disciples a nice, long time to absorb the news of the resurrection before throwing the curveball of the Holy Spirit at them.

Our Gospel lesson today is from the Gospel of Luke.  You’ll remember from our time together at Easter that the Gospel of Mark does not contain any post-resurrection appearances, so the creators of the lectionary are borrowing from the Gospel of John and the Gospel of Luke this year.  In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus makes two post-resurrection appearances.

First, Jesus appears to two disciples walking along a road to Emmaus.  They don’t recognize him at first, but he says a few elusive things and then breaks bread with them.  In the act of breaking bread, they suddenly realize who he is.

The second appearance-the one we read today-happens when all the disciples are gathered together, discussing the first appearance.

Jesus materializes suddenly, out of nowhere, and the disciples are-here’s that word again-terrified.

Jesus understands their fear, Jesus understands that it takes our small brains time to absorb new information.

Jesus’ response to their fear tells us so much about God and the kind of love and patience that God has for us.  Rather than getting down to the business at hand right away, Jesus gives them time to absorb the experience of being with the risen Jesus.  He invites the disciples to touch him.  He invites the disciples to view his wounds.  He invites the disciples into this intimate moment of connection to reaffirm their bonds and reassure them of his identity.

Throughout all the resurrection appearances, eating is a theme.  The resurrected Jesus almost always eats something within the stories where he appears to the Disciples.  This story is no different.  After giving the disciples a chance to touch his resurrected body, Jesus then eats a piece of fish in front of them.  Eating the fish not only proves that Jesus is no ghost, but must have evoked many memories for the disciples.  So many important moments in Jesus’ ministry happened around food.  When the disciples saw Jesus eat the fish, they must have remembered the final Passover meal together, and the time Jesus fed 5000 people with just fish and bread, and the meal during which Mary poured oil over Jesus head and feet.  The extraordinary resurrected Jesus chooses to do something extremely ordinary to help root his disciples in the reality of the present in a gentle, calming way.

Jesus does not delve into bible study or instruction until all those introductions are out of the way.  Only when the disciples have come to understand that he is, indeed, resurrected from the dead, does Jesus begin to teach them about the implications of his resurrection.  He helps them to understand that their mission is to go out and teach others about repentance and God’s forgiveness of sin.

The church year also gives us time to gently absorb the news of Jesus’ resurrection.  We have all of Lent to focus on repenting and then 50 days of Easter to focus on the fact that our sins are forgiven.

And even with these 50 days of Easter, I don’t know that the good news really ever fully sinks into our hearts and minds.

I wonder what would happen if each of us took the next few weeks of Easter to really think and pray about how the forgiveness of sins affects each of us.  The phrase “forgiveness of sins” has sort of a stern Catholic-school connotation.  We don’t easily jump up and down in joy over the image of a stern God solemnly wiping our slate clean while giving us a one eye-brow raised nod.

But the forgiveness of sins is not about a schoolteacher God judging us and reluctantly changing our grade from an F to an A.  The forgiveness of God is about the gift of an abundant, loving relationship with our Creator. Through Jesus’ death and resurrection, God forgives us of our sins. Because Jesus mediates between us and the Father, we can be in a close relationship with God. Jesus modeled this kind of intimate relationship that is now available to us through his relationship with his disciples.

Jesus’ relationship with his disciples was marked by breaking bread together, walking together, and teaching.  While Jesus occasionally rebuked or got frustrated with his disciples, his relationship to his disciples could not be characterized as stern or cold.  Jesus loved his disciples and his disciples loved him.  Jesus reaffirms this warm relationship with disciples by continuing to break bread with them after his resurrection.

Experiencing a relationship with God can sometimes feel abstract and frustrating.  God does not literally walk with us or break bread with us.  But, our relationship with God is just that-a relationship.  The relationship is dynamic and intimate, just like Jesus’ relationship to the disciples was dynamic and intimate.  We may not experience God in a palpable manner, as the disciples were able to do, but if we lead lives of prayer we do occasionally get a strong spiritual sense of God’s presence and a very powerful sense of God’s love for us.

Maybe this Eastertide, as we slowly absorb the reality of God’s powerful love for us, we’ll have a moment of insight about just how incredible this intimate relationship with the divine really is and we’ll start  jumping up and down and screaming like one of those Publisher’s Clearinghouse winners!

Even for us staid Episcopalians, that would be an appropriate response to the Good News of God’s love for us!

Amen.

So, why then won’t Salome and the two Marys get on board with the program!?

In every other Gospel account of Jesus’ resurrection, the women who find the empty tomb are terrified, but they dutifully trot off to tell the male disciples the news.  In the original ending to Mark’s Gospel however, the women are so freaked out by everything that has happened that they run away and tell no one.

This ending of Mark is completely unsatisfying!  This ending is abrupt and unresolved.  We are left not with an image of a victorious, risen Lord, but with three shaken women, who cannot integrate this good news into their lives.

This ending reminds me of the ending of Jean Cocteau’s 1946 film version of Beauty and the Beast.  At the very end, when the Beast morphs back into the prince he had been before his curse, instead of looking thrilled, Beauty looks disappointed.  Cocteau refuses to deliver us the neatly wrapped up ending we want.  David Chase did the same thing when he ended The Sopranos so abruptly, in the middle of a scene.

While neither the ending of Beauty and the Beast nor The Sopranos was completely satisfying, in retrospect, both are considered pretty brilliant, poetic endings.

Real life does not deliver neat endings, wrapped up with a satisfying bow.  Real life is complicated and messy.  Real life does not have endings the way a piece of literature does.

So, I would argue that this ending of The Gospel of Mark is a brilliant piece of writing that acknowledges the messiness of real life and intentionally leaves us in tension.

By leaving us in tension, Mark drives two points home.  First, Easter Sunday cannot be celebrated independently from Good Friday.  Second, God does not need humans to get their ducks in a row before he acts.  The resurrection happened whether the women at the tomb were ready or not.

Easter Sunday is a wonderful, celebratory day, but it cannot happen without Judas’ treachery, the insecurity of Pilate, and the murderous crowds.  The resurrection cannot happen without Jesus’ painful death, and Jesus’ abandonment by all of his closest male friends.  The Good News does not come without the terrible news of the death of God and the abandonment of hope.  The resurrection is redemptive, yes, but not even the resurrection cannot erase the horror that came before.

And this is like life, too, isn’t it?

People have rich second marriages after the death of a loved spouse or a difficult divorce.  Some go on to have children after miscarriages or still births.  There are those who start a new, exciting job after being suddenly laid off from a previous one.

Our lives go on after painful events, but we don’t ever forget those tragedies.  We don’t forget the way grief shaped us.  We don’t forget the people who are no longer with us or who might have been.  We don’t forget feelings of rejection and shame.

Instead of ignoring the past, we integrate the past into who we are.  We are not thankful for bad experiences, but we do acknowledge how they shaped us and made us more complicated, sometimes better, people.

Those painful experiences help us treasure the good in life even more-help us to feel in our guts how lucky we are to be loved, to be safe, to be employed, to have friends.

In the same way Mark’s Gospel, by not prettying up the resurrection, helps us to feel the power of the resurrection in our guts.  Jesus was dead.  Dead, dead.  He was not sleeping.  He was not impatiently waiting in the tomb to jump out and surprise everyone.  Jesus had died.  And so, when Salome and the Marys find the empty tomb, of course they are terrified.  Dead people are supposed to stay dead.  As much as I miss my mother, who died nine years ago, if I suddenly visited her grave and found it was empty, I would be completely unsettled and afraid.  The women who come to minister to Jesus’ body will one day see Jesus’ resurrected body and be comforted and amazed and astonished, but for now they are just scared.  So they run.

And this leads me to my second point-Jesus does not need the women to have an enthused reaction.  He does not need Peter to stay loyal to him.  Jesus does not need to have all of his disciples sitting vigil for him.  God does all the work of the resurrection.  The resurrection is for the redemption of humanity, but God does not need humanity to make the resurrection happen.

Jesus’ resurrection happens despite the fear of the people who had been close to him. In the same way, God takes initiative with us.  God pursues us, loves us, forgives us even when we are afraid, freaked out, and incompetent.

There are those who truly believe that in order to be a Christian you have to meet a long list of requirements-including holding very specific theological and political beliefs.  But, I guarantee you that Mary, Mary and Salome had no deep theological understanding of the empty tomb. I also guarantee you that Jesus did not hold their reaction against them!

Jesus’ resurrection is good news for all of us.  Jesus’ resurrection is for us when we are filled with faith and when we are filled with doubt.  Jesus’ resurrection is for us when we are able to live how we want to live and when we disappoint others and ourselves.  Jesus’ resurrection is for when we are feeling blessed and when we are feeling forsaken.

Jesus’ resurrection and the new life it offers us is all about God’s overwhelming, powerful, all encompassing love for us, not about how good or deserving we are.  Jesus tells us that the entire motivation behind God becoming incarnate in Jesus is that love.  God wanted to find a way to be in full relationship with us. Since we are unable to live a perfect life, he chose to do all the work for us, to become like one of us, die like one of us, but then break the power of death over us, so that we might be in relationship with God forever.

And whether this news makes us shout for joy or makes us want to run away in fear, God still loves us and invites us to relationship with him.  And that is Good News.

Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.

Leaving loved ones is hard.  While it is stressful to leave a dog behind, it can be heartbreaking to leave people behind, especially if you know you will not see them again.  Letting go is hard.

This is exactly where we find Jesus in our Gospel reading today.

Our Gospel reading takes place during the last supper.  Jesus has just made a long speech to his disciples and now he is offering a prayer on their behalf.  He knows he only has days to live and that during his death, and before his resurrection, he will not be able to contact his disciples in any way.  He will not be able to reassure them, to explain what is happening.  He will not be able to inspire them with his words or calm them with his presence.  And so, Jesus does the only thing he can do.  He prays to his Father.

Jesus prays that he would be glorified.  We think of glory in terms of praise and adulation, but that is not what Jesus means.  When Jesus asks to be glorified, he asks to be restored to the state he was before he was human.  After all, in the beginning of the Gospel of John, John reminds us that Jesus was the Word who was with God before the creation of the world.  Jesus’ prayer jolts us into remembering that Jesus was not just a really, really nice person, he was GOD incarnate.

Jesus does not want to be glorified back to his old self for his own benefit.  He wants to be glorified so his followers can experience eternal life.  And again, Jesus describes eternal life as something different from what we might expect.  We think of eternal life as something linear.  We think eternal life means having an infinite number of days before us, stretched out into the future.  However, Jesus does not describe eternal life in that way.  Jesus describes eternal life as knowing God.  What Jesus wants for his followers in his absence is for them to have a deep, knowing, loving relationship with his Father.

In the second part of the prayer, Jesus describes this beautiful and reciprocal relationship he has with the Father.  Among other things, he says, “the word that you gave to me, I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you.”  Jesus sees himself here as an intermediary between his Father and the people that his father loves.  This prayer reveals an intimacy about the way Jesus and the Father communicate, and what is even more astonishing-that they want to invite us, their followers, into their intimacy.

Saying goodbye to those you love is never easy.  Jesus was not worried about his followers chewing on old Kleenexes or wrecking a house because of their anxiety.  He was probably worried about Peter’s faith-and whether he would be up to the task of leading the Church.  Jesus was probably troubled because he knew that Judas’s act of betrayal would destroy Judas as much as it would destroy Jesus.  Jesus probably grieved the thought of his beloved community being splintered into pieces after they had all gotten to know each other so well.  Maybe he was afraid some of his followers would lose their faith in him and be deeply disappointed.

What Jesus wanted for his followers after his death was for them to be enveloped in the love of his Father.  He wanted his death and resurrection to unite his followers and for them to experience God’s love in a new way.  But even Jesus could not control what happened to his friends.  Even Jesus had to let go and turn to God and offer his loved ones to God.

So, who do we think we are to hold onto people, to control people, to protect people when even Jesus knew it was not his role!  We all have someone in our lives who we just wished made better decisions.  We all have a child who is too distant from us, or a friend who keeps dating horrible people, or a boss we can see making stupid decisions for our company, or a spouse who can’t seem to learn to pick up his socks, or a loved one that struggles with addiction.  Of course we are called to care for them, but we must not forget that ultimately we have no power over them.  Ultimately, the welfare of another person is not in our control and the best thing we can do, is to follow Jesus’ example and turn our loved ones over to God.

Remember, God wants to invite each of us into a loving, reciprocal relationship with the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.  God longs to know and be known to each of us and everyone we love.  It is in that loving relationship where we experience forgiveness, healing and all the things that make us better people.  When we pray for our loved ones who are struggling, we hand them over to the One who made them and loves them even more than we do.  When we pray we are reminded that we are not alone, but we are in relationship with a God who has been in our position, who has loved a group of people and been afraid of what would happen if he were not there to lead them.

This very Jesus, after being incarnate, after being enfleshed, died, became glorified and resumed his pre-embodied state of being all so we could know God better, so that we could freely pray and beseech God and feel God’s presence without the help of any intermediaries.  This is a God we can trust with our loved ones, even my dog Henry.  This is a God who will help us let go.

How great would it be to have a chirpy, efficient, tall Swede guide me through my day? Sven would make sure I ate a nutritious breakfast, remembered to do the laundry, wore the appropriate clothes for every occasion.  When I got distracted on Facebook, he would gently but firmly remind me the importance of finishing my sermon in a timely manner.  He would make sure I worked on my quilt instead of watching another episode of Jeopardy.  If I had a Sven in my life I would be more productive, more efficient, more in shape.  (Sigh.)  I want a Sven!

But, I don’t have a Sven.  My phone is not even smart-the only thing it can do is. . .make phone calls. It’s amazing that I remember to show up for church, really.

Sometimes, when I think of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, I’d like him to be a little more like Sven.

I’d like the Good Shepherd to guide this little sheep around and make her more efficient, more effective, more focused.

But it turns out, the Good Shepherd is not a self-help guru.  The Good Shepherd is not Tony Robbins, Dr. Phil, or Stephen Covey.  If we follow the Good Shepherd, we won’t learn a new system for organizing our desks, or an exercise plan that will help us have rock hard abs, or a method to raise our children as productive members of society.

After all, sheep don’t have existential crises or schedules that need to be organized.

Sheep just are.  They eat, they sleep, they follow.

I don’t know about you, but that sounds heavenly to me!

I, like many of you, I’m sure, have a serious case of wanna-be-shepherd-itis.  Wanna-be-shepherd-itis is a terrible condition in which you forget you are a sheep and try to be a shepherd instead.  Instead of peacefully following the shepherd, the sheep tries to take over.

Let me describe to you how this goes terribly, terribly wrong:

My preparations for Chuck’s sabbatical have not been the most calm, centered and spiritual exercises.  Instead of quietly saying my prayers and waiting to see what God would have me to each day, I propelled myself into quite a tizzy.  I cleaned off my desk and filed a year’s worth of paperwork.  I made a giant list of all the tasks I need to accomplish, For some reason, I even insisted on frantically deep cleaning my refrigerator at home and organizing the spice rack, as if having expired tins of cloves and moldy leftovers hanging around might seriously affect the quality of my work this summer.

As I wound myself more and more tightly, the circumference of my anxiety widened and soon had nothing to do with the sabbatical!

Luckily, Matt pulled me from the brink and reminded me gently that I was worrying about things over which I had no control.  Matt reminded me that I am not the shepherd of my future.

What a relief!  In that moment I was able to take a deep breath and take my rightful place as a sheep.  When Jesus reminds us that we are sheep, he tells us that our job is to be responsible for the present.  We don’t need to worry about what has happened in the past, we don’t need to worry about what will happen in the future.  Our job as sheep is to learn our Shepherd’s voice and then be quiet enough to identify that voice among the throngs of voices we hear every day.

And we are inundated with voices, aren’t we?  One of the byproducts of our marvelous technology is that it multiplies exponentially the voices we hear.  Two hundred years ago, you heard the voices of your family, friends, colleagues, newspapers and books.  Then the radio was added, next television, then cable television, and finally the internet.  Now we can have access to almost any voice we want.  Even the soothing voice of Sven the Swedish home organizer.

Jesus refers to thieves and bandits presenting themselves as false shepherds.  At the time, he was probably speaking about the Pharisees or false messianic leaders who came before him.  I think, though, if we look hard enough we can find plenty of thieves and bandits in our own day.  Whether religious, political, or media leaders, there are plenty of people who would happily lead us by the nose, pumping us full of false information. Thankfully, none of these voices are our true Shepherd.  Thankfully, our Shepherd is a Good Shepherd who is full of truth, and honor, and love.

Distinguishing the Shepherd’s voice from the cacophony we hear every day is not easy, but it is worth the challenge.  Listening to that voice is not only the right thing to do, it is also in our best interest.  Remember-the Good Shepherd is not a self-help guru.  The Good Shepherd is not going to help us frantically do anything.  Instead, the Good Shepherd will help us to be-to be still-to know ourselves and to know him.

Our Shepherd longs to guide us to lush green fields, abundant with life’s blessings.  Our Shepherd is armed with a rod to protect us from harm and a staff to gather us when we go astray.    Our Shepherd wants only what is good for us, unlike so many of the voices we hear!

No matter what madness is happening around us, the Shepherd will lead us to a quiet place inside ourselves where we can feel safe and secure and loved.

No other voice, no one else, not even Sven, can lead us there.

Phew.  I might not be here today if I hadn’t interpreted that long pause correctly!

I wonder if Thomas was met with the same awkward silence when he just could not believe the other disciples had seen the risen Jesus.

You can just imagine Thomas coming back into the locked room, completely innocent of what had just happened.  Maybe he went out to check on a family member, or to grab some lunch.  Maybe he just needed a break from the doom and gloom and wanted some fresh air.  Regardless of why he left, he was the only disciple not to see Jesus for himself.  He came back to the room and everyone was babbling excitedly about seeing Jesus.

Of COURSE Thomas was incredulous.  There are certain things you don’t expect in life-for, example, snipers shooting at cars right here in Greenwood.  Thankfully the thing Thomas was not expecting was not bad news-he had already heard the bad news of Jesus’ death-but really, truly wonderful news.

Thomas was a skeptic.  Thomas wanted more information.  Thomas wanted to see for himself.  He tells his friends that he wants to “see the mark of the nails in Jesus’ hands, and put his finger in the mark of the nails and his hand in his side”.  Thomas wants evidence and sensory proof that what the disciples saw was actually the resurrected Jesus. Thomas is not comfortable with the certainty that his friends are experiencing.

Thomas could be the patron saint of the Episcopal Church.
 
One of the reasons I joined the Episcopal Church is that it welcomes all of us Thomases and all the questions we have. I used to be part of a church community that would tilt its head and tell you, “We’re praying for you.” if you asked too many questions.  Questions were a sign that your faith was wavering, in danger.  To them, real faith looked like an iron clad suit-inflexible and dogmatic. 

John Polkinghorne, the English priest and physicist reminds us that truth is not the same thing as certainty.

Many people confuse the two, but truth is a much broader idea than certainty.

When Thomas finally sees Jesus, Jesus invites Thomas to put his hands in Jesus’ side.  After all his big talk, Thomas cannot bring himself to touch his Lord. Suddenly, Thomas no longer needs the certainty of concrete evidence.  He has a personal encounter with a loving, resurrected Jesus and no longer needs proof of Jesus’ resurrection.

The truth of Jesus, and our relationship with Jesus is much more complicated, and much more beautiful than simple certainty.

If we become absolutely certain about who Jesus is and what God is like, then we close ourselves off to the power of the Holy Spirit to teach us something new.

Our minds are very small.  Even here, in intellectual Charlottesville, our minds cannot begin to grasp the complexity of the living God.  All of our rumination and theology is nothing more than an educated guess, really. 

We like to be organized, so we come up with books and books of theology and all try to agree on exactly what the Bible means, but even the Bible is a complex and multi-layered text.  The Bible is for exploration, not classification.  The Bible is an adventure, not a set of rules.

Being too certain can lead to a limited experience of God.  Being too certain can cut us off from people different from ourselves.  Being too certain can lead to ugly talk, accusations, and even violence.  Being too certain can even lead to personal collapse.

Once I got past the point of just giggling about the whole Elliot Spitzer debacle, I began to get really fascinated at what motivated him to act out the way he did.  For that matter, what made Ted Haggard behave the way he did?  Or any moral leader who has a moral meltdown?  What men like these have in common is an intense and narrow perspective on the world to which they are professionally obligated to adhere.  They built their reputation on moral certainty that left no room for them to explore their own deep thoughts and feelings in a safe and open manner.  They ended up compartmentalizing themselves into irresolvable pieces and that loose construction eventually collapsed in spectacular and humiliating ways. 

If Spitzer and Haggard had been in tune with the complicated truth of who they were and who God is, rather than being so certain of a set of mores for those under their care, they may have spared themselves the humiliation of sexual and financial indiscretions that later came to light.

Asking questions, even taboo questions, about ourselves and about God is one of the healthiest, most faithful acts we can do as Christians.  Thomas teaches us that we are allowed to ask whether God is real, whether the resurrection is real, whether the virgin birth is real.  We are allowed to doubt.

Faith would not be faith without doubt.  Inherently, faith is about taking a risk, taking a chance.  Over our life, our faith will ebb and flow.  There will be Sundays where we can say the Nicene Creed with confidence and other Sundays where we might need to skip a part or just listen to our brothers and sisters recite it.  In the Episcopal Church, unlike most churches, to join you do not need to sign a statement of belief.  You do not have to sign off on specific theological points or agree to a proscribed set of ideas.  In the Episcopal Church we believe faith is expressed by coming together and worshipping, by the act of loving God, rather than the act of believing facts about God. 

We can no longer put our hands in Jesus’ wounds, but we can encounter him at the Eucharist.  The physical contact and assurance Thomas, and we, long for can still be met as we kneel before him and accept his body and blood in the form of bread and wine.  The intimacy that Thomas shared with Jesus, the gift of being in Jesus’ presence is still offered to us. 

And when we come to share that intimacy in the Eucharist, we don’t need to have all our ducks in a row.  We can come confused about God, confused about ourselves.  We can come with robust faith or whimpering faith and Jesus will still meet us and open his arms to us.

Thanks be to God.

Last week, we read part of Jesus’ farewell discourse to the disciples.  The reading we have today is part of a longer prayer immediately following his discourse.  If the Gospel of John were a novel, this prayer would be the climax.  The prayer sets out Jesus’ vision for the church, and the vision is one of unity.  John writes, “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one.”

When Jesus said this prayer, he had maybe a few hundred serious followers.  The concept of unity was a pretty reasonable expectation.  Now, of course, there are millions of Christians, and thousands of denominations.  The Christian church has split over and over and over again, over issues profound and silly.

And while we may not have been paying much attention over here in our idyllic part of the world, our own Episcopal denomination and Anglican Communion are going through their own conflicts.

I’ll be honest.  One reason I haven’t preached much about this, is that I don’t really understand what is going on.  Every once in awhile I’ll see some news item about a church that has left, or a report that’s been published by some committee, but the language is generally pretty dry and confusing, so I end up reading some celebrity gossip instead. 

However, this week, just in time for this passage about unity, a friend passed on a speech given by the Archbishop of South Africa, which contained a Cliff’s Notes history of the Anglican Communion and the current conflict.  I will now attempt to condense his work even further give you a Sarah’s Notes version of his insights. 

The Anglican Communion was actually started the same year Emmanuel began, in 1860.  The Church of England had started churches in all the areas where England had its empire.  After England began losing its power and withdrawing from all these countries, the churches remained.  Unlike the Catholic church, where there was one central authority, these individual Dioceses were politically independent from one another.  What tied them together was each of their relationships to the See of Canterbury, their use of the Anglican prayer book, and the ordination of deacons, priests, and bishops.  They stayed only loosely connected until the late 1840s when two bishops in South Africa began a series of arguments which continued for twenty years and led to accusations of heresy until one bishop excommunicated the other bishop!  Now, the diocese realized they could not handle this problem on their own, and so the first meeting of bishops from Anglican churches throughout the world began in 1867 to help solve this problem. 

While other denominations had official dates of formation or confessional statements everyone needed to sign in order to join, the Anglican Communion developed more organically, and was always a consultative body, rather than a body that formed rules that everyone had to follow. 

Over time several “instruments of unity” were formed, in order to help different provinces of the Anglican Church stay connected to one another.  The instrument that has been around the longest is the Archbishop of Canterbury.  This Archbishop is a leader among equals.  His job is to initiative meetings, and be a central point for the church to gather, and not to “rule” over the church.  Another instrument of unity is the Lambeth Conference-which is the meeting of every bishop in the church, every ten years.  A third point of unity is the Anglican Consultative Council, which is made up of lay people, priests, and bishops.  The fourth is the primates’ meeting.  This is not a meeting of apes, but a meeting of all the Archbishops around the world. These Archbishops meet every couple of years, or as needed.

So, fast forward one hundred years to the late 1960s.  Over time, these different parts of the Anglican communion, including our own Episcopal church, have developed relationships that have largely been about connecting, sharing resources, and learning from one another.  Suddenly, the issue of the ordination of women arises and now these instruments of unity have a slightly different role.  Together they are going to work to find a solution to a complicated question.  In 1968, the Lambeth Conference-the large meeting of all bishops-asks the Anglican Communion to study the question.  So, the Anglican Consultative Council, takes that mandate and spends several years debating the question.  By a narrow margin, they decide that it would be okay for individual dioceses to ordain women if they would like to, but it should not be forced on the entire communion.  In 1978, the Lambeth Conference affirmed that decision. 

Over the following twenty years, the issue of homosexuality and the church came up and began to be a point of discussion.  In his speech the Archbishop reports, In 1978 Lambeth “passed a resolution which affirmed faithfulness and chastity within and outside marriage, and called for a wider theological study of sexuality. Its final clause said, ‘While we affirm heterosexuality as the scriptural norm, we recognise the need for deep and dispassionate study of the question of homosexuality, which would take seriously both the teaching of Scripture and the results of scientific and medical research.’ It also encouraged dialogue with homosexual people, and affirmed their need for pastoral care. ”

What ended up happening was that the primates of many parts of the church latched onto the idea of heterosexuality as the scriptural norm, and neglected to pursue the part of the call to dialogue with homosexual people.

Fast forward to three summers ago.  Despite there being no decision by any one of the four instruments of unity, the diocese of New Hampshire consecrated an openly gay bishop.  And, pardon my French, all hell broke loose.

A few individual churches and dioceses within the Episcopal Church wanted to disassociate from the larger Episcopal Church.  Many African dioceses wanted to break off relationship with the Episcopal Church.  So, over the last three years, some African bishops, in order to support the breakaway Episcopal congregations, have been flying to the United States to ordain priests and consecrate formerly Episcopal priests into African denominations.  Our Diocese, the Diocese of Virginia, has been the center for a lot of this.  You may have seen news reports of The Rev. Martyn Mims, formerly of Truro Chruch, being ordained as a bishop by an African bishop, so he could oversee breakaway churches in the Episcopal Church.

Phew!

So, in response to all of this, something called the Windsor Report was published.  A committee of people with varying perspectives wrote it, and asked the Episcopal church to repent of their actions and asked the African bishops to back off from our church’s business.

The complicating factor is, that while General Convention has complied to some degree with the Windsor Report, individual dioceses continue to ordain homosexual persons and bless same sex unions, which lights a fire under the conservative bishops.

Members of the Anglican Consultative Council, who were again charged with sorting all of this out, spent months carefully working on a draft covenant, but before they could publish it, some of the Primates-those are Archbishops-put out a Communique this spring using very strong language saying that the American Episcopal Church has not done enough to repair broken relationships.   This did not make the group working on the covenant very happy, since it undermined their hard word.

So, here we are.  Some kind of unity, huh?  I have given you only the roughest sketch of what is going on.  If you request this sermon from Janice later on, I will attach links so you can read some of these documents yourself.

But do not despair!  In the midst of all this controversy, I want to tell you about the group of Anglican women that meet annually at the United Nations, during the time when they study the status of women throughout the world.  The meeting this year was in the early spring, right when the latest communiqué from the Primates was published.  These women-from all provinces, all walks of life, all races-released this statement:

We, the women of the Anglican Communion gathered in New York as the Anglican Consultative Council delegation to the 51st Session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, and as members of the International Anglican Women’s Network representing the diversity of women from across the world-wide Anglican Communion, wish to reiterate our previously stated unequivocal commitment to remaining always in “communion” with and for one another.

We remain resolute in our solidarity with one another and in our commitment, above all else, to pursue and fulfill God’s mission in all we say and do.

Given the global tensions so evident in our church today, we do not accept that there is any one issue of difference or contention which can, or indeed would, ever cause us to break the unity as represented by our common baptism. Neither would we ever consider severing the deep and abiding bonds of affection which characterize our relationships as Anglican women.

We have been challenged in our time together by the desperately urgent issues of life and death faced by countless numbers of women and children in our communities. As a diverse delegation, we prayerfully reflected on these needs.

We thus reaffirm the conclusion of the statement presented by our delegation to this year’s Session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women:

This sisterhood of suffering is at the heart of our theology and our commitment to transforming the whole world through peace with justice. Rebuilding and reconciling the world is central to our faith.

I love this statement, because these women are so deeply invested in the unity of the church-the real unity, where we work together with Christ to ease suffering and bring hope where there is no hope-that they are basically thumbing their noses at the leaders of the church and saying, “You can’t make us break communion with one another.  No matter what papers you may publish, or decrees you hand down, we will continue to be in relationship with one another.”

I can think of no more response in keeping with John’s gospel.  These women challenge us to think about how we can stay in unity with one another-not just within our own happy parish family, where unity is easily achieved-but with our brothers and sisters across the world.  Are we willing to pursue unity with the passion of our Anglican sisters?

Resources

Speech by South African Bishop

Primates’ Communique

Response to Primates’ Communique by Kathy Grieb, member of covenant drafting committee

Statement by Anglican women on unity 

Windsor Report

Someone hands you a package and first you notice its shape and feel how heavy it is. You admire the gift’s packaging and if you’re polite, you read the card, which expresses the giver’s intent and affection.  Finally, after an appropriate period of time has passed, you begin untying bows, and tearing through paper to discover the mysterious object you can now call your own.  When you’re done admiring the gift, you thank the giver, completing the exchange. 

Gifts are a symbol of relationship, affection, love, or obligation.  We give gifts to welcome, to celebrate, to honor and occasionally to assuage guilt.  We also give gifts to mark thresholds in people’s lives.  Matt and I get married in roughly. . .27 days and many people have been honoring this transition through gifts.  This tradition is so formalized now, our society even codifies it through registries where the engaged couple goes to a store and tells the store what they want people to buy for them! 

Thankfully, even though the disciples are entering a new threshold of their lives, they do not get to register for which gift they’d like to receive.  Our Gospel reading today is John’s record of Jesus’ farewell discourse.  Jesus makes a long speech at the last supper, trying to prepare his disciples for his death.  In the section we read today, Jesus is reassuring his followers that they will still be in relationship with him after he leaves.  He says they will receive two gifts:  Jesus will give them his peace, and the Father will send them an Advocate-the Holy Spirit.

We don’t always know what gifts are good for us.  Matt and I recently went through our registries, taking out some of the excessive stuff that we registered for during a greedy binge.  For instance, we realized that just because we thought a Kitchen Aid mixer was cool didn’t mean we would ever use it or even have the space for it in a kitchen.  Sometimes the gifts you think you want, are not the wisest choices.  If the disciples got to choose their gift, they would choose to have Jesus stay with them, in bodily form, forever.  Like most of us, the idea of change makes them a little nervous and the idea of losing a dear friend makes them incredibly sad. 

But Jesus has better things in store.  Jesus knows that his death is not the end of a story, but the beginning of a new relationship between his Father and humanity. Jesus knows that the gifts he and the Father are giving will nourish God’s followers for the next two thousand years.

The first gift Jesus tells his listeners about is the gift of the Holy Spirit, whom he describes as our Advocate.  We’ll celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost at the end of May.  But before the Holy Spirit came rushing down upon those disciples waiting in the upper room, Jesus told his disciples about the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is God, and a gift from the Father.  The Holy Spirit’s role in our lives is twofold:  to teach us and to help us remember what Jesus has already told us. 

The word Advocate can also mean helper.  The Holy Spirit is sent to help us, specifically in terms of our relationship with the Father.  Jesus told us about the Father, and lived a life in complete union with the Father and through his death and resurrection united us with the Father. 

Remembering these things about Jesus is not easy, especially once Jesus ascends and no longer present to remind us.  God knows we humans need daily reminders.  Moses had only ascended to the mountain a few days before the Israelites started worshiping Golden calves!  We do not have a good track record with keeping God in our mind. 

So, to help us remember Jesus and follow Jesus, the Father sends the Holy Spirit to be our helper.  Not our nagger, not our judger, but our helper.  We can pray to the Holy Spirit to help us understand scripture.  We can pray to the Holy Spirit to help us know how to follow Jesus in our lives.  We can pray to the Holy Spirit for guidance when the church tries to sort out what Scripture means in relation to our modern society.  The Holy Spirit is a living, moving part of God that interacts with us directly

Today, [at the 11:00 o'clock service] we, with Greer’s parents and godparents will reaffirm our baptismal vows.  We make vows that are very profound and very difficult.  By saying our baptismal vows together, we remind ourselves that we have promised to turn away from Satan, evil, and our own sin and turn towards Jesus.  These promises are profoundly difficult to keep!  You should see the way Matt and I lick our chops as we check out the status of our registries online.  You can almost see the greed pouring out our ears.  As we turn away from Jesus and towards material things or other temptations, it is the Holy Spirit that can help us get back on the right track. 

Whatever temptations Greer may face, she can know that the Holy Spirit is her Advocate.  The Holy Spirit is for her and with her and will help her to follow Jesus.

The second gift is one Jesus leaves us.  Jesus gives us the gift of  his peace.  Worshiping a God for whom we have very little tangible experience is an anxiety producing experience at times!  Remember the golden calf.  Thankfully, we have access to Jesus’ peace, so we don’t need to create any golden calves.  Remember that Jesus was in complete union with his Father, so his peace is a peace beyond anything we can imagine.  His peace is the peace of God. 

I have a friend of mine who is job hunting at the moment and she tells me she is waiting to feel God’s peace to know she has found the right job.  The peace of God can be an indicator of a right path, but it can also be a spiritual soothing in a time of unrest.  One of the reasons we do healing prayer once a month here is to invite the peace of God to rest on people who are in some way in pain.  The peace of God is mysterious and can be elusive, but Jesus has given this peace to us as gift. 

Just like Matt and I can take back unwanted gifts to the store, we can refuse God’s gifts to us.  We can decide that we have enough of our own resources and we don’t really need the Holy Spirit or Jesus’s peace.  We can decide that we know absolutely what the Bible says and don’t need the Holy Spirit to gude us.  We can decide we need to be anxious and uptight and driven in order to succeed rather than inviting Jesus’ peace to rule our lives.  It is possible to reject the Father and Jesus’ gifts.

But why would we?  Why would we want to reject these wonderful gifts of relationship and connection.  Why would we not want to learn more about God, or feel a touch of the peace God feels when he looks upon us.  In these confusing and anxious times, why would we refuse these gifts?

God’s gifts for us are good gifts.  They may not be gifts we would register for or dream up for ourselves, but ultimately we don’t have really great taste.  The gifts we would register for are misguided.  Like the disciples, we want concrete answers.  We want to pin God down.  We want to pin our own lives down.  We want to know what will happen to us.  We want to know whether we’ll always be healthy or whether our children will do well for themselves.  We would register for the gifts of certainty, of uneventful lives.

But God’s gifts-the Holy Spirit and Jesus’ peace-are exactly the gifts we need to navigate the choppy waters of our lives.  They comfort us in times of trouble and give us deep joy when times are good.  They connect us when we are feeling lonely, and enter our relationships when we are surrounded by loved ones.

Jesus and the Father are handing us to fantastic packages, that contain gifts beyond our wildest imagination.  Are we going to open them?

When the show begins, Sydney believes her mother drowned in a car years ago.  At the end of the first season she discovers that, in fact, her mother used the air from the tires to breathe and survived the drowning!  It also turns out her mother was a KGB spy, but that is an entirely different story.  In fact, this same character, Sydney’s mother, “died” at least two other times during the course of the series.  I think the third time finally stuck, but we’ll never know, since the series ended.

Sydney “died”, as well, or at least everyone thought she had.  In fact, she was kidnapped, became an assassin with an assumed name, and then lost her memory.  When she “came back to life” all her friends were shocked, particularly her boyfriend, who had since remarried.  (The new wife was an evil double agent, of course.)  And of course, that boyfriend “died” for awhile, too.

Sydney’s best friend, Francie, died, too.  But, Francie came back to life as an evil clone.  Her boss’s wife, Emily, died of cancer, but was actually holed up on an island, waiting for her husband.  The list goes on and on.  No one on Alias ever stayed dead!

Alias was not the most realistic television series ever, but somewhere in its soap opera twists and turns, it captured humanity’s deep desire for life, especially the power of life over death.

This power of life over death is a fundamental tenet of the Christian faith. 

God’s power over death was shown in Jesus’ ability to rise Lazarus from the dead, and then, of course, God the Father’s ability to raise Jesus from the dead.  Our reading from Acts today, when the apostle Peter is able to raise Tabitha from the dead is the next link in the biblical chain.  The book of Acts tells the story of the very early church.  Acts is the sequel to the Gospel of Luke, and begins with the disciples gathering in the upper room, waiting for the Holy Spirit, per the risen Jesus’s instructions.  The Holy Spirit does, indeed come, and the fledgling Christian church is born.  Can you imagine being on the first vestry?  These new Christians had to make tons of decisions every day-do we let in Jews and Gentiles?  Do you have to be circumcised to be a Christian?  Who is going to take care of the poor?  Who is going to take care of widows? 

The new believers had to have faith in their new leaders-men like Peter and James who had been with Jesus as his disciples.

Part of the coming of the Holy Spirit was imbuing these leaders with some of the same powers Jesus had-so that their followers would know they had God’s stamp of approval.  So, when Peter is able to raise Tabitha from the dead, God is showing the early believers that Peter is a chosen leader of the church, but also, that the theme of life triumphing over death will be a hallmark of the Christian faith.

We celebrate this triumph every Easter, at every Christian burial, and every time we consume the Eucharist.

But maybe, this is not enough.

Life is precious.  Life is the very breath of God.  From a baby’s first yelp to a dying person’s last jagged breath, the air we breathe reminds us we are also full of God’s breath, God’s spirit.  We are made in God’s image.  But are we behaving as if we believe in the deep value of life?

The church tends to focus on the quality of life issues either at the beginning or the very end of life-with abortion and the death penalty the most public issues.  What would it be like, if we expanded our energies to focus on the years in-between birth and death?

I grow increasingly concerned that we as a culture are losing touch with the preciousness of life.  I perceive it happening in two ways.  First, the obvious-the increase in acceptability of violence as entertainment.  Recently the New Yorker published an article about the television show 24.  (Now, before I continue let me make it clear that until recently I watched and enjoyed 24.  And I didn’t stop because of the violence, I stopped because it got boring.) 24 is the first television program to show Americans government agents using torture that is outside the bounds of American law and being rewarded for it.  In the past, television shows or movies showed the enemy using torture as a way to demonstrate the inhumanity of the enemy. 

This normalization of torture began having an affect on the real world American military. U.S. Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, the dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point, actually traveled to Los Angeles to meet with the producers of 24 because the show has such a problematic impact on U.S. soldiers.  These young soldiers have spent their teenage years watching 24 and coming to believe the kind of torture its hero, Jack Bauer practices is acceptable, even though it is, in fact, illegal.   These young soldiers are having to be reigned in again and again as they cross the boundaries of acceptable treatment of prisoners. 

The culture of violence pervades many of my favorite shows and movies, and certainly some of the video games Matt plays.  But at what point do we cross the line as a culture?  Where is the line between acknowledging violence as an unfortunate, but interesting, part of life and glorifying it as a glamorous way to conduct one’s life?  Once again, I have no answers for you, but I think these are important questions to think and pray about as we go about making our daily choices.

The second way of disrespecting life that I’ve observed lately is the way we treat one another verbally.  For some reason, this seems to be the year where out of control stars seem to think it is okay to insult Jewish people, black people, gay people, heck, even their own children. 

In March of this year, a blogger, Kathy Sierra, who blogs about the one-would-think uncontroversial topic of computing technology began receiving more and more threatening anonymous comments towards her on her and others’ blogs, culminating in a death threat.  This began a conversation in the blogging community about the problem of increasingly sexist, sexual, and violent language being used against women in the commentary section of even mainstream websites like Salon.com and Slate.com.  Measures are being taken to filter out such comments, but even that they were made in the first place is deeply disturbing.

The hip-hop community has responded to Don Imus’s comments about the Rutger’s women’s basketball team by beginning a conversation within the hip-hop communitiy about what words are and are not appropriate to promote in albums and videos.

While they may not kill, words can contain incredible violence.  Words can undermine someone’s entire sense of identity, even humanity.  The language we use to speak to one another reflects how we see the other person.  Do we see them as a threat?  As less than ourselves?

Part of respecting life is respecting those made in God’s image.  Everyone on this planet has been made in God’s image.  Everyone has a soul.  One of the first jobs human beings were given was the job of naming-Adam was asked to name all the animals and then his wife, Eve.  This power of naming is the power of giving life and identity. 

My neighbor just had a baby and already we’re calling her names.  Sometimes they are meaningless names like Pepper Pot or Anna Banana, but just as often we’re calling her precious, lovely, smart, perfect-we are identifying the precious humanity in her and calling it out. 

There is no reason to stop this kind of naming once babies become children or children become adults.  Part of our job as Christians is to remind each other who we are-We are beloved, precious in the sight of God, favored, part of a human family.

Celebrating and respecting life is not just about deciding when human life begins or debating end of life issues, but valuing our own life and the lives of those around us.  When Peter raised Tabitha from the dead, he was not just doing a magic trick, he was affirming the goodness of life, of Tabitha’s life.  The writer of Acts tell us that she was a woman who did many good works.  Tabitha was a whole person with a story and relationships-her resurrection was not just to impress the new Christians, but to bring life where there was death, wholeness where there had been grief.

Her resurrection was a reminder that no matter how much evil or violence or death may lap at our heels, ultimately we belong to a God who pours such abundant life upon us, we cannot help but give that life to others.