Acts 2:14a, 36-41, Luke 24:13-35, 1 Peter 1:17-23
Spring has sprung and there is a lot going on! Whether you are out enjoying God’s good creation or getting involved in some important social cause or just trying to keep the grass mowed without getting taken down by your allergies, it is a busy time of year. In fact, yesterday there were at least three places in town where you could celebrate Earth Day while supporting causes that you love, and I know some of our folks were pretty busy at two of them.Clancy hosted a table at the Earth Day celebration in Vermilionville and several others were volunteering and attending the Southern Garden Festival at Sarah Schoeffler’s house. I was able to get to both of those and each offered something amazing — conversation. Each of our texts today has some element of conversation, and they remind us that God is active and present — even when we are too busy to notice it — particularly in the space of our conversations.
I want to say a bit more about that, but before I get too far afield from Earth Day, I want to acknowledge how it matters to our conversations about faith and about the presence of God. Earth Day is, of course, a secular holiday (if you want to call it that). I have a certain kinship with this day because it began in 1970 — the same year I did. That means that many of you in this room grew up without it. Of course, that doesn’t mean that you did not care for the earth.
In fact, there is much that I learned about creation care from my grandparents. Their generation, along with my parents, were the ones that came up with the idea of Earth Day in the first place, and it is important that we teach our children and their children to honor the earth as a gift from God, and that we have been created to tend the earth as stewards of God’s good creation. That is why our Session pursued, and through your regular practices has attained, the status of a PC(USA) Earth care Congregation!
This may or may not be news to you, but it connects to our practices of recycling, recovery from climate disasters, the Pollinator garden partnership with the Native bee lab, presence at community Earth Day events, and other work that we do to intentionally learn about the connection between creation and our connection to the Creator (like meet and greet and Camp Agape).
All of this is just one aspect of the “stuff of life” that we are walking in and through as we approach these texts today. In Acts, Peter is addressing the crowd that has gathered for the Festival of Weeks just after the disciples have received the Holy Spirit. In 1 Peter, followers of the way of Jesus are being addressed while they navigate life and faith in the face of persecution by Rome. In Luke, two random disciples (one named Cleopas which is Greek for “vision of glory”) are walking to Emmaus.
Each of these is a story about conviction, and each of these has an element of conversation to be considered. Peter is certainly addressing a crowd in Acts 2, but there is a dialogical context to his speech. He tells the crowd that Jesus, whom they crucified, is the Messiah. The crowd responds with regret and remorse, and they become baptized and begin to share things in common and care for one another as members of the household of God.
We have no record of how long that lasted, but we look to it still as a kind of ideal for what it means to follow in the way of Jesus. As this newfound faith begins to move out from Jerusalem we find that some communities do this better than others, and as the Roman Empire takes more interest in these communities of believers Peter is said to have written letters to encourage these fledgling communities.
I say it that way because scholars disagree over the authorship of the letters from Peter, but they agree that they were written in his name to encourage followers of the way of Jesus. What we find in the portion that we have shared today is an expectation of action along with belief. Essentially, he tells them not to expect that just because God raised Jesus that you can bank on the power of God without the expectation of love. The power of God certainly “purifies our souls,” and it does that so that we can love one another mutually.
God’s love is not a “get out of conflict-free” card so much as it is an invitation to a party. God’s love offers an experience of the everlasting, and it is an ongoing invitation to experience it in and through our love for one another.
While that may sound like a bit of a platitude, or just unattainable idealism, I want to remind you of what I said earlier. These passages are about conviction and conversation. They are intended to challenge us toward recognition and interaction.
That’s what happened to the disciples on the road to Emmaus. We don’t really know why they were going there, though we can guess. One thing to note here is that the author of Luke’s Gospel is presumed to be the author of the Acts of the Apostles, so this story comes well before the reading in Acts. At this point in the story, the women have returned from the tomb. Peter ran and found only strips of cloth, and these two guys bolted out of town.
They weren’t even going fishing, which is what happens in Matthew’s gospel as the disciples immediately returned to their old lives and professions. These guys just took off to a town that was kind of out of the way. Along the way they are traveling, and they pick up a straggler. It would not have been odd to offer someone the safety of a group, although I imagine they had to have had some way to make sure this guy wasn’t a threat.
Maybe that’s why they were talking about Jesus as a sort of disappointment. They did not want to identify, or out themselves, as actual disciples, but they could say what everyone else was saying. “We thought he was going to be the one to lead the revolt! We thought he was going to restore the nation of Israel!”
Of course, Jesus, the stranger in their midst, was the one to tell them how foolish they were for lacking understanding about the expected death and resurrection of the Messiah of God. While there is some part of me that holds out hope that these two were simply playing dumb about all of this, that’s not what the text indicates.
It really seems like these guys’ hopes have been dashed, but there is something about the genuine faith of this stranger that awakens their compassion. They are compelled by his hope in the Messiah, and they prevail upon him to join him. The text doesn’t say how or why they did not recognize him, though I like to think he had a robe with a hood like a shrouded Jedi entering negotiations. You could certainly say that he was the last person they expected to see, but I tend to think that it is because they did not want to see him.
Jesus had not measured up to their expectations of a Messiah, and so they were not expecting to see him. If anything, they were trying to get away from all that Jesus nonsense, yet this poor sap seemed so sincere that they just had to invite him in. Then he took bread and broke it, and their eyes were open, and they said, “Weren’t our hearts burning within us?”; and they ran back to Jerusalem regardless of the risk!
Now that question comes back to us. Do our hearts burn with conviction when we hear about the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus? Say what you will about mythology and competing stories from other regions and records of history, but is there, not something significant about the sacrificial love of God that makes you realize that you are loved beyond compare?
When I hear that Jesus died for my sins, I admit I have competing emotions and reactions. They range from wondering what I have done that would require someone else’s death in order for God to love me to recognize that (1) I do have some stuff to confess during that time of silence on any given Sunday and (2) I participate in systems that enslave and oppress every day.
If this were all there is to it, I would be left feeling pretty bad. Hearing that God not only offers forgiveness but anticipates my participation in the emancipatory love of others lights a fire in me that moves me from guilt to hopeful expectation of new life found in the conversation!
The beautiful thing is that these conversations are where we stumble upon the presence of God who is already with us in strange places and faces waiting for us to realize how much we matter to God.
I truly think that is the valuable thing about our time together, but it is also what makes our time spent in conversation out in the world so very important. Yesterday, in Vermilionville, Clancy and I were at a table with Jesus. She was a woman with young children making Creation Collages and challenging me on the institutional and pharisaic nature of the church. They were a couple who had lived through storms and wanted to talk about the importance of faith in disaster. He was a traveler from another country who just wanted to rest and interact with another person.
Likewise, I saw Jesus at the Garden Festival. She was a child handing out cookies, an old friend serving tea, and a church member who sat at a table and created community. He was a beekeeper. She was an artist reflecting the beauty of creation. They were adults teaching children to create art using objects they found. Yes, Jesus was in the mix, because at the heart of it, all was a chance to care for families who were seeking permanent housing.
It’s amazing how we can be convicted and involved in so many things, and yet that is the calling of those who follow the way of Jesus. I don’t mean to say that we have to be everything to everyone or try to fix every problem. I mean to say that there is no part of life that God is not a part of. That’s important to remember as we engage in the stuff of life — as we engage in conversations about politics and conflict and real suffering in the world, and our hearts burn with conviction. Let us, in all of these things, be open to the conversation that starts and ends with the grace and mercy of God.
With our souls purified through the truth of our conviction to love mutually, let us continue to honor each other, and all of God’s good creation, as sources of the deeper and deeper revelation of the presence of God. At least I hope it may be so with me, and with you, and to God be the glory — now and always. Amen!
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