Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
In my first parish, Debbie, my wife, got a summer job as the coach for our local Lutheran Church camp. She and the kids spent most of the summer out there, and I’d often join them for dinner. After dinner, we’d sing songs. One favorite was “We are one in the spirit; we are one in the Lord”. It goes like this:
We are one in the Spirit
We are one in the Lord
And we pray that all unity
Will one day be restored.
And they’ll know we are Christians
By our love, by our love.
They will know we are Christians by our love.
Love is the hallmark of the church. Scripture says it so many ways. Jesus tells the disciples. “Love one another; then all will know you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Jesus’ life is a demonstration of what love should be. He is love incarnate. Love made flesh. Love that heals, cleanses, restores, makes whole.
We’ve been at beach camp all week with 8 wiggly, at times silly, occasionally serious, but always delightful teenagers. I am tired, but energized too, because it is such a delight to work with them and see them struggle to build and develop a faith.
We watched several movies, one of which is the all time classic, “Jesus of Nazareth”, by Franco Zefferelli. While it takes a few liberties with the Gospel, it is basically true to scripture and tells the whole story from beginning to end. One of the basic themes of the move is God’s astonishing love for each one of us. St. Paul says it so beautifully in our lesson from Galations. “You are no longer Greek nor Jew, slave nor free, male nor female, but all one in Christ Jesus.”
The movie depicted clearly how easily we human beings succumb to the temptation to think of ourselves as special, favored, chosen, righteous, better, superior to others who are unlike us. The Jewish people of Jesus’ time were obedient to God and prided themselves in obeying God and God’s law – the commandments and traditions which came from them. Jesus comes into their picture, their story, with a new interpretation of what it means to be a follower of God. He teaches them radical love and urges them to see everyone as God sees them – as beloved children. Everyone loved, worthy of respect and dignity, radically equal in God’s eyes. Jesus is constantly upsetting people’s concepts, precepts, and expectations with this new interpretation. For example, Jesus preaches a radical forgiveness. One of his disciples is Peter, a fisherman. We see Peter as a typical tradesman as this film begins. He is honest, fair and loyal, and he hates the Roman overlords, and especially despises tax collectors. They collaborate with Rome, are traitors to their own people as such and are given the right to tax their own countrymen to enrich themselves.
Jesus invites himself to dinner t Matthew’s house. Matthew is a tax collector. How can I explain this? We all remember Key Lay of the Enron scandal. He was the CEO of a corrupt corporation that stole and embezzled by fraud and dishonest business practices, millions of dollars from stockholders and Enron’s employees. When the “house of cards” that Ken Lay built finally collapsed, thousands of Enron employees saw their retirement accounts become worthless and faced retirement with no income. He is the personification of the greedy, bloodsucking, dishonest corporate thief.
Yet Kay Lay would be one of the first ones Jesus called upon if he had come to earth in our times. In the movie, Jesus says, “I came not to heal the whole, but the sick”. Who is sicker than a man like Ken Lay, so greedy and self-obsessed that he would knowingly steal millions from the very people who worked for him. Ken is in dire need of healing because he doesn’t know God’s love. He is estranged from himself and everyone.
In the movie, we also see Jesus forgiving a prostitute and restoring her to wholeness and health. Her story appeared as the Gospel lesson last Sunday. When questioned about his action, Jesus tells the parable about two people who both owe a money lender, one 5 dollars, the other 5,000. He forgives both. Who will be more grateful, He asks. The answer is obvious.
As part of our retreat we went to Diakonia, a homeless shelter in Ocean City. The lady who talked to us said that 90% of the people who came to the shelter are drug or alcohol addicted. She confessed that she herself came into the shelter that way. She was so open about her past and spoke of it without shame. She had a beautiful faith and was full of praise, gratitude, and love for God and the church who had helped her come back from death to life, from slavery to freedom and joy.
Society would have condemned her just as society condemned the fallen woman of Jesus’ day and age. But Jesus, and his church, us, the body of Christ, see things differently. We are bound together by love, God’s radical, healing, cleansing love. When one hurts, all hurt, because all are one in Christ Jesus.
We also saw a movie while at the beach about the work of the world hunger campaign. It was set in Nicaragua, a poor Central American country, where the Lutheran Church is brand new. The video took us into the home of Anna, a 7th grader, much like our confirmands. Anna’s house had a mud floor, the walls were wooden but had huge holes in that let in rain and cold wind. Her family lived on 2 or 3 dollars a day. The comparison to our kids was obvious. We spend more on a Rita’s gelati than Anna lives on. You couldn’t help but be moved by her story. The video made her real. We are one in the Spirit. We are one in the Lord. God’s love is for us all, and we are bound together in love.
Our world hunger appeal has joined the One campaign that the rock star Bono has created. The One campaign goals are simple, to eliminate poverty, illiteracy, and disease in the 3rd world. I was talking with Bob Lowden at our Synod Assembly. Many of you remember him; he was interim pastor here. Like me, he was a Peace Corp Volunteer in West Africa. Synod focused on the progress we have made in the last 35 years. When I was a volunteer, one out of every 5 children in Africa died before reaching the age of 5. Now, it is only one in 10, still far too many; but significant progress has been made. We are one in the Spirit, one in the Lord. Jesus died for all – to bring us together.
In Jesus’ Name, Amen
Who We Are