Sermon preached by Bill Countryman at Good Shepherd Berkeley

FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER, May 19, 2019

Year C: Acts 11:1-18; Psalm 148; Revelation 21:1-6; John 13:31-35

We’ve heard four wonderful readings from scripture this morning. And I want to begin with our Psalm, a great celebration the wonders of this world. We often think of the Bible as focusing only on humanity. But actually it begins with the creation of the whole great world around us. We human beings only come tagging along on Day 6. As science, too, would agree, the world did just fine without us for a very long time. 

The Psalm is a great, all-embracing hymn: it calls on every part of the world to sing God’s praises, starting with angels, sun, moon, stars. Then it moves down to the earth: sea monsters in the deeps of the sea, lightning, hail, snow, fog, mountains, forests, animals of every kind—and, bringing up the rear, us. We’re part of something much greater—the whole universe, praising God by its very existence. And we, too, are invited to add our voices, puny though they me be when compared to all the rest.

It’s all about the beauty and wonder of this world we live in. But we know that this beauty and wonder are admixed with other things as well. For one thing, the beauty of the creation stands alongside its vulnerability to destruction by human carelessness and greed. And in other ways, too, this is a world of sorrows as well as joys. We live in an age when, for some of us, human life has become more secure against things like famine and plague; but others are suffering severely. And none of us is spared the reality of deep disappointments, tears, pain, our own failings, and, ultimately, death. 

And we seem to be entering on an era in which the forces of destruction are renewing their influence. The demonic powers of hate and greed seem to be gaining renewed power. I don’t mean to take anything away from the praise and delight of our Psalm: I suspect everyone here has felt the joy and gratitude this Psalm gives voice to. But we have to admit that it stands alongside the other aspect of this world: the sorrows of our life. Neither reality erases the other. Both are part of our experience, and our Psalm voices the one side superbly well.

Then, in our reading from Revelation, we heard these words: “the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.'” But this doesn’t mean a rejection of the wonders of the first creation. Like Eden and like the world around us now, the New Jerusalem needs and rejoices in its trees and its river. But there’s one great change from old creation to new—the absence of anguish:

Death will be no more; 

mourning and crying and pain will be no more,

. . . . . . 

God will wipe away every tear from <your> eyes.

The Age to Come, as seen by John, is the same world that the Psalmist rejoiced in—with the exception that it is a world at last fully capable of unalloyed joy. Joy—that most elusive and unpredictable of human goods; not simple happiness, but elation, the state of being raised above ourselves in delight. 

And this comes about, we are told, because God has decided to make God’s home among mortals. God will be unfailingly present. God will wipe the tears from every eye. To the thirsty God “will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.”

Beautiful images. Powerful images. And, of course, images are the only language we have for talking about this New Creation, this Age to Come. We don’t live in it yet. Our human languages don’t have words for it. But when we reach deep inside ourselves, we know what we’re seeking: a life where suffering and grief no longer haunt us, where we can drink the pure water of life from the spring, where we know unalloyed joy. 

We don’t live in that Age, but can experience something of it even in this age—moments of the Age to Come breaking into our lives here and now. And we may sense that these are the moments when we are most truly ourselves. It’s not surprising that people have, for millennia, worked to live their lives in ways that point forward to this truly human existence. For it is not a question of simply waiting on the Age to Come to be revealed in full. The Age to Come is something we want to experience, in whatever degree possible, here and now as well. We want to live under that banner, in communities that acknowledge its values. But it can be hard for us to discern the path.

Peter offers us the perfect example: he had a very uncomfortable time discerning his path. The Holy Spirit had to twist his arm with that vision. And then twist it again. And then, just to make sure, twist it a third time. She told him that he would have to give up his revulsion for Gentiles, his revulsion at the idea of eating with unclean people—maybe eating unclean food. She prepared him to understand Cornelius’s totally unexpected message and risk the newness and strangeness of the Age to Come.

Cornelius was a “God-fearer,” a Gentile who found himself attracted to the faith of Israel. But he was also a Roman officer, who could not undertake to become Jewish. He was suspended between two communities that tended to despise each other. Romans looked down on Jews as a subject people. Jews, for their part, would not so much as eat in a gentile house because the food offered would not be pure. Cornelius had friendly relationships with the Jewish community. But we know from our own times that such friendly relationships are often fragile and dependent on the public mood. Just a few decades after this story, Jews and Romans would once again be at war with each other. 

And here’s Peter, under divine duress, going off to Caesarea with no idea what this is all about. He enters Cornelius’s house, stays there, eats there. And, finally, swept away by God’s generosity in pouring the Spirit out on this foreign household, he sees that, in God’s eyes, he and they belong to the same human family. And he acknowledges that by sharing with them the gift of baptism. It was one of those moments of surprise and elation that we call “joy.” It was the Life of the Age to Come breaking in on Peter’s own time and place and creating something new, a community where the barriers between people could and did fall. 

And, yes, there were other people in the Christian community for whom it was simply too shocking. They coiuldn’t accept it till Peter managed to convey to them something of the wonder and joy of that event. Luke tells us that their objections were overcome “and they praised God, saying, ‘Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.'” They, too, came to see that the Age to Come is at work here and now, working to reshape us and the world we live in.

Jesus summed it up just a few words. He acknowledged that there is no simple way to step directly from This Age into the Age to Come. “Where I am going,” he says to his disciples, “you cannot come.” They will have to go on living in This Age, even while longing for the Age to Come. But he also gives them a clear direction about how to find and travel the road thither: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” 

And, as Peter later learned to his astonishment, Jesus meant more than just “Love your fellow disciples, love your co-religionists, love the people in your little world.” Peter learned that he might have to find ways to love even people he had dreaded and avoided and thought ill of. We step from this Age to the Age to Come when we begin to figure out how to live in a loving way here and now. 

Daunting prospect—right?—trying to live with love in the difficult world we find ourselves in just now. And we fall down a lot. But sometimes, by the grace of God—perhaps even a little arm-twisting from God—we take a step forward; we learn what it is like to be citizens of the Age to Come in our own times. We enter the joy of this world: the wonders of the skies and the earth, of sea monsters and land animals and people of all sorts, even those very different from ourselves. We work for a world more truly humane, more deeply in accord with God’s love. And we practice loving one another, knowing that God loves us all and is waiting to wipe away the tears from all eyes and to offer us a glass of clear, cold water from the spring of life. 

That’s the vision toward which we hope to move. 

God foster us on the journey!