Sermons

“Talk is cheap!” True, deep, genuine faith is about more than just talk. It is about the values we cherish and the ways in which those values are reflected in the living of our lives.
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It’s all very dramatic. If Pentecost were a movie, the special effects team would have to be called in early. There is wind and fire and sound. The casting supervisor would be responsible for finding lots of “extras” to fill the roles of people from all around the then-known world. The costume designer would be busy dressing those extras in the various clothing traditional to their assorted regions. The dialogue coach would be busy working with everyone so that their accents and dialects were authentic. And then, when the pieces were brought together, it would all be over in a matter of minutes. It is a wonderful, powerful, exciting story, but the outwardly dramatic parts of Pentecost don’t last very long. And that’s OK, because the real heart of things has enough staying power to endure down through the ages.
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In Jesus’ prayer, what we find is a desire for unity among those who are seeking after God. “God, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.” (John 17:11) Protection is needed because we seem to be very good at finding ways to foster separation instead of unity. All too often “us and them” seems to come more naturally than simply “us.” And so Jesus prays that we might all be one -- not sameness, not uniformity, but community, connection, relationship. At the time John’s Gospel was written, late in the first century, there was a sense that this unity was limited to Christians. And maybe at the time that made sense, at least in terms of a starting place, because there was no unity even within the early church. Following Christ did not guarantee getting along with each other. We understand about that. 2,000 years later there are times when it seems as if we have elevated inter-church fighting to an art form. The prayer that we might all be one, even if only limited to Christians, still has not been realized. It’s still not a bad place to begin. At the same time, however, we can no longer even pretend to have the luxury of limiting such a vision simply to other Christians. The need for a unity which includes all of humanity has never been more apparent.
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There is within each of us a deep longing to experience God’s presence in our lives. We hunger for a sense of the Holy through all of our days. The entire history of human beings is filled with efforts to discover paths which will lead us into the presence of the Sacred. Some of those efforts have been remarkably powerful and life-enhancing. Some of them have been remarkably destructive. So how do we know when we are truly on a path which leads to God and when we have taken an unhelpful detour into dangerous territory headed in the wrong direction?
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