April 20, 2008 Fifth Sunday of Easter, Earth Day Sunday
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Psalm 104; John 14:1-17
“Do not let your hearts be troubled.” This is one of those commandments
from Jesus that tempt us to say, “You must be kidding.” How can we look at
what is happening upon the earth today without our hearts being troubled? All
we need is to hear mention of the innocent dead or the devastating costs of the
war in Iraq or Afghanistan; all we need to hear is the word genocide or Darfur; all
we need is to read of one more species threatened with extinction or the two
words “climate change,” and our hearts can be troubled. Then if we think of our
own complicity in these acts as tax-payers or users of gasoline and oil, how can
our hearts not feel troubled?
And really, how can Jesus mean for us not to feel upset when he himself
wept at the tomb of Lazarus, and scolded his disciples for turning away children,
and overturned tables staging a temple demonstration against systemic injustice?
This is another example of needing to define the verb “to be”—what “is”
is. Clearly Jesus cannot be commanding our hearts never to be troubled, first
because he was often troubled himself, and second because we cannot help it.
Our brains are constantly throwing off thoughts like sparks from a fire, and some
of those sparks burn us. We cannot help feeling the pain or agitation caused by
some thoughts. The verb “to be” in “do not let your hearts be troubled” must
mean something other than never feeling it.
It must mean do not let your hearts stay troubled. We cannot control the
instantaneous response to an agitating thought, but we can control our reaction to
that response.
Jesus is not telling us to remain eternally cheerful or apathetic in the face
of upsetting situations. That would be to live a lie. It would be to cut off our
sensitivity to something that needs to be changed. If we do not feel some pain
when a spark lands on us, we will get badly burned. We need that initial pain. It
is important information. But that is not where we need to stay. Jesus is trying to
show us the way from pain through transformation to a better place—from the
troubling pain of this world, along the sacred way to the healing and peace and
rightness of new life in God’s realm on earth and beyond.
The urgency that we be transformed and not stay troubled is not for our
salvation alone. We have work to do. We have works just like those Jesus did.
In today’s passage Jesus says that it is God who dwells in him who does the
works. He says that if we believe in him we will do the same works and even
greater ones. He says that he will ask God to give us the Spirit of truth to abide in
us. Once we are transformed from our troubled hearts, Jesus calls us to turn
around and help transform the world by letting God’s Spirit work through us as it
worked through him.
So what is this way of transformation that he gives us? “Believe in God,
believe also in me.” It is the way of belief. Belief means accepting something as
true without proof and then trusting in it. This has been the core of my message
to you in this Eastertide: to believe that the Easter resurrection power is real, and
to trust in it enough to try using it in your daily work. Watching the power of
light bring the world to life after a long, hard winter should be enough to
convince anyone to trust that it is real, but we have also heard stories from
people in our congregation who have witnessed a power that transcends death—a
realm of light beyond this life, or a help that comes to us from beyond. We have
heard stories of people receiving gifts of power or wisdom or comfort when they
needed them most. Many of us have experienced that, whether we recognized it
as the Holy Spirit or not.
Belief and trust in God open us to receive the power that restores serenity
to our troubled hearts. If something troubling is happening, if a person we love is
under attack or if the earth we love is suffering, our hearts will rightly be
troubled. But the next move we make is crucial. Will we let our anger, fear or
hate deepen and move us to a violent reaction to our agitation, or to feeling
overwhelmed and helpless, or feeling numb? Or will we turn in that moment to
God and Christ and the Spirit’s help? Will we open our clenched fists to let God
comfort us and put in our hands whatever power or wisdom God would have us
use in this situation?
If our child or our neighbor or our planet needs saving from some threat,
can we trust that by letting go of our troubled heart and turning to God, we will be
the most powerful, effective help we can possibly be?
The fate of the world rests on that tiny inward move within each of our
hearts. Everything depends on whether we are able to believe and trust the truth
of the power that we see in Christ and hear in stories from our neighbors and see
in the unfolding of spring or the unfolding of a child’s life or the unfolding of our
own moments of grace.
Sometimes the problem is that we just do not recognize what we are
seeing. Once upon a time there was a wise and holy man who lived high up on a
mountain in a mansion of many rooms. At the foot of the mountain was a village
that was filled with suspicion and jealousy as everyone tried to have more wealth
and more power than everyone else. Out of their ambition and greed they were
cutting down all the forest and overgrazing their fields. The mayor of the village
was ambitious, too, and he wanted to solve the village’s troubles so he could
continue to climb the political ladder, so he climbed the high mountain to seek
the help of the wise, holy man.
He was met at the mansion’s door by a servant who bowed to him and
invited him in. They walked from room to room. The mayor was too distracted
and too full of self-importance to pay much attention to what the servant was
saying. Finally they came to another door. The servant opened it and said good-
by and thanked him for coming. The mayor said, “But I was hoping to spend
even just a few minutes with the holy man!” The servant said, “You just did,” as
he closed the door. (This is a variation on a story from Alan Cohen reprinted in
The Sun.)
The power and wisdom we need to transform the earth and ourselves are
within us and around us, but we miss them or mistake them as common things.
The power of Jesus is real, but it is nonviolent, it is servanthood, it is humble, it is
not like our impressive earthly powers, so we do not believe, we do not trust, we
do not open our hearts and hands to receive the peace and the force of it.
Maybe we do not trust enough because we do not love enough. If you
love me, Jesus says, you will obey my commandments and then you will find
within you the Holy Spirit—the source of God’s power, wisdom and comfort.
Aldous Huxley said, “The course of every intellectual, if he pursues his
journey long and unflinchingly enough, ends in the obvious, from which the non-
intellectuals have never stirred.” The greatest of theologians come back down to
the obvious truth of the pop song that the Beatles sang: “All you need is love.”
All we need is to love Jesus, to love the way and truth and life of Jesus, to love
the God whom we see working through Jesus, and that love will lead us to
transformation. This is why the great intellectual theologian, Augustine, said,
“Love God and do what you will.” If you love, truly love God, you will naturally
follow God’s ways. You will obey Christ’s commandments not out of a
fundamentalist fanaticism, but because you love them.
If you love God, you will love all that God does, all that God makes, so
you will love every person and love the earth, and loving them, you will want to
do what is best for them. If you love them, you will want to serve them, and you
will be able to put aside the fear you feel for your own security or the desire for
your own ambitions. You will be free to make the selfless choice, the choice of
the same works of self-giving that we see in Jesus, the same gesture that we see
God continuously making in the renewal of creation.
At our discussion about our new church plan a few weeks ago, someone
suggested that we explore how we can live our daily life differently to help heal
the earth and promote justice and peace. Before we can hope to transform our
lives, we have this other work to do. We need to choose not to let our hearts stay
troubled, but to turn to the path of trust in God that leads to peace. We need to
practice looking for and recognizing God in Christ and in one another and in our
enemies and in all the earth. We need to choose to love the God that we see. We
need to love the goodness of God and God’s creation so much that we are willing
to give ourselves entirely to their service—even lay down our life for them out of
love.
If we do that, if we love the sacred way, then we can be assured that we
will walk in the sacred way. We can be assured that the Holy Spirit will guide
and empower us to change our lives and change the world.
Let us pray in silence…
Sermon 04/20/2008