If you do what you always did.... Easter 5, Year C, 2025

This is another sermon preached at St. Raphael's Church, Crossville, Tennessee.

In today’s lessons, I was struck, and you will understand why in a bit, by the collect,”Grant us so perfectly to know your son, Jesus Christ, be the way, the truth of the life, that we may steadfastly follow his steps in the way that leads to eternal life.”

Which is a great lead in to the trouble of the 11 (because Judas has left) -  the trouble of the 11, and the women who are in charge - look, it's a dinner party; the women are in charge - when Jesus says, “I'm about to leave and you can't follow me,” Now, they don't really have a clue what that means just yet. This happens as a part of the farewell discourses in John. That is, after they finish dinner, before they go to the Garden, and the Passion narrative starts. They will know soon. Right? They will know when they get to the Garden. They will know as they watch the Passion. They will know as they wait after the Crucifixion, and they will still know some in that period of time that we talk about between Easter and Pentecost; and the Church will come to wonder, “What do we do now? 

“We know what it looked like to follow Jesus when we were all wandering around the Holy Land together. And this was a model that we all knew.” This was a very common model. You would have your teacher and your teacher would have the disciples. They would live together, they would talk together, not so different from the Athenian Academy. or the same kinds of educational efforts, if you will, in Alexandria. They knew what that was like. 

“But now he's not here. And how do we go on?” And we get hints that they fall into a very human kind of response to that. Peter said, "Well, I'm going back to go fishing." We heard that a few weeks ago. 

Funny thing. Peter is the one who shows up again today. because Peter has been confronted with something entirely new. And what we have in chapter 11 of Acts is not the event itself. It's Peter telling the Jerusalem Church about the event, in the face of their question, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” 

See, institutionally, that's pretty much the same thought process as, “I don't know what else to do, I'm going to go back to fishing.” Stop and think about that. We have institutional ways of talking about that. We have a church way of talking about that. Everybody should know this. “What are the seven last words of the church? We've never done it that way before.” Or in, you know, corporate speak, “fI you do the what you always did, you’re going to get what you always got.” 

And honestly, for a lot of people, and a lot of times, that's comforting. Years ago, I was listening to a segment of “Morning Edition” on NPR. In those times these were short segments, and they were called “The Hidden Brain.” It has now become a whole hour long podcast, and what they do is they look into neuroscience research. And they see studies about how human beings respond to various kinds of circumstances and how we live with one another. And it seems that we are hardwired to be more anxious about what we might lose, than to be excited about what we might gain. 

And sure, that makes sense. That's evolutionary. That's what got us into trying to conserve things for hard times. And as a response, we don't stop to think that we get bogged down because getting what you always got actually feels safe and secure. You know, it would have been a bad hypothetical, and happily, it never happened, for Peter and Andrew to put their heads together and one say, “Okay, I'm the leader now.” And they continue wandering around as a group of now 11 or 10 or losing people, talking about Jesus, but as the same institution, just under new leadership. 

And that's where the question from the Jerusalem community comes from. “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them? Because we've known what it's been like to follow Jesus as Jews. as Jews who saw the Messiah in Him rather than somewhere else.”

And we have Peter's response. “Well, it wasn't what I was planning to do. And then. three nights in a row, I had this dream, and in this dream, this vast tarp gets lowered by four angels. And in it, there's every kind of animal imaginable. And I hear a voice says, ‘You hungry? Eat!’”And the vision had four footed animals and but four footed animals would include kosher animals like cattle and non-kosher animals like pigs. And birds of the air would include kosher birds like chicken and un-kosher birds like vultures. I have no idea what they were going to do with the reptiles. But you see my point. And Peter said, “God, I can't be indiscriminate like that. I've never been indiscriminate like that.” And God, as much as says, “If you do what you always did, you're going to get what you always got:” he said, "If I say it's clean, it's clean." 

So as Peter has come back to Jerusalem to tell his story, he says, “So God has given me this perspective, this literal change of vision, or vision of change. Play it either way. And then, these people show up. And they bring me back to meet this centurion. and his household. And the Spirit said, ‘Preach.’ And I preached. So far, so good. And then they had the same experience in that household that we had on Pentecost.” Remember, this encounter is after Pentecost, and Peter has gone out. “They had the same experience of the Spirit that we had on Pentecost. Okay. Sounds pretty Godly to me. What am I gonna do?” Or as he said, "Who was I that I could hinder God?" 

“Peter, if I tell you it's clean, it's clean;” or, “Peter, if I say, he's clean, he's clean. If I tell you, he's mine, and you see the same evidence that he's mine that showed that you're mine, It runs directly in the face of, ”You’ll get what you always got.” 

Honestly, we know it could be a great challenge to us. to look forward in hope. Because there's always loss in looking forward. Always. I mean, I have things I hope for. And over the years, I've had many things I hoped for, and every time I took the step forward, there was also something I left behind. I had to be intentional about it. but…. 

So as I reflected on the collect; and as I reflected on Peter being called to do something that he'd never imagined; and Jerusalem recognizing and accepting something they had never imagined, I thought about another collect. And you've heard it before, most of you. You may have heard me preach on it before. It's a favorite of mine. “O God of unchangeable power and eternal light. Look favorably on your whole church, that wonderful and sacred mystery. By the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquility the plan of salvation. Let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up. And things which had growed old are being made new. And that all things are being brought to their perfection by Him through whom all things were made. 

That's the answer to the issue in today’s collect. To follow in the footsteps of Jesus is to look forward and hope for what is new, to be available to recognize that God may well do something that never occurred to us. That God may well call someone that we never thought to recognize. That God may put us in a position to love someone that we weren't sure about, and to recognize that is our vocation. By the way, if you don't know that collect, we use that in three circumstances and all of them look forward. One is as the last prayer in the Solemn Collects on Good Friday. One is the prayer after the ninth lesson on the Great Vigil of Easter before Lent is actually closed, looking toward Easter. And one is that every ordination in the church. Every person called a ministry has that prayer said over them.

These two  collects together call us forward. Every one of us has been called to look for those places where we're called to see something new. It is not easy. We are more hardwired to worry more about what we might lose than to look for the promise of what we might gain. It is so much easier to do what we've always done and accept what we've always got. and not see where God might be calling us to something unexpected. It is easier. But it's not what it really means to follow Jesus.

"Though I walk through the valley of the shadow" Easter 4, Year C 2025

Once again, I'm a little behind posting sermons. This is one of several preached during Eastertide at St. Raphael's Church, Crossville, Tennessee. 

“Though I walked through the valley of the shadow of Death, I shall fear no evil.” 

It was after midnight, and they paged me. And they paged me to a floor and to a room. And so when I got to the floor, I stopped at the nurses station, and the nurse said, "I need you to talk to Mrs. So-and-so in room such-and-such. She can't sleep. And she wants to talk to the chaplain.” 

Okay. So I walked in, and I sat down beside Mrs. So-and-so. and I said, “I'm the chaplain. How can I help you?” She said, "Chaplain, I'm terrified.” 

I said, “What are you terrified about?” 

'When I was coming out of surgery, I heard voices talking about me. and I heard the devil and Jesus talking about me. I heard the devil saying that I was his, and he was going to claim me. And I'm terrified.”

“Though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death.”

Now, I'm going to tell you two things. One is, I grew up in East Tennessee. I have roots deep in coal country. I do not automatically dismiss that there is a spiritual world that we don't know about. I had a test when I was in seminary. They required of all of us the General Ordination exams, and they gave us pretests to prepare us for the big exams. And one of the questions was about a woman that wanted to come for counseling in the office because she was hearing voices. One of my classmates wrote, "Okay, I have a referral to make for you to a local psychologist." My response was, "Okay, what are the voices saying?”

The other side of this is that it's really not uncommon to have some kind of delusional or hallucinatory event after anesthesia. All kinds of things are experienced by people after anesthesia. And sometimes the people that hear about it dismiss it, and sometimes the people that hear about it get excited. Most of the time, and this includes the near death experiences and all of that, the professionals that hear about it say, “Well, that's interesting. Tell me all about it.” And they file it among those things that are interesting and real, and that we don't understand.

So this woman very likely could have had a post anesthesia hallucination, hearing this conversation. And I said to her, “Well, tell me this. Are you a Christian?” 

“Oh, yes!”

I said, "Have you been baptized?" 

“Oh, yes!!

We began to talk about baptism. And then we begin to talk about scripture. 

Never hurts to be able to talk about scripture. (Well, mostly it doesn't hurt.) We continue to use and to find the 23rd Psalm terribly comforting. And we find it comforting more than anything else because of that one verse. “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of Death, I will fear no evil, because you are with me. And your rod and staff, they take care of me.” And obviously, that concept, if not always that explicit image, goes all the way back to whenever the Psalms were established. I'm not the biblical scholar to remember those exact dates; and because I love listening to those scholars, I know that there are arguments about those exact dates. But we hold on to that image.

And so it makes sense that when the the institutional hierarchy of the community in Jerusalem - I always want to remind people that when John talks about the Jews, he's not talking about your neighbors next door, who are in temple, in synagogue on the Sabbath. He's talking about leadership. He's talking about people in power - They're frustrated with Jesus. They’re there at the Temple for Hanukkah, the Feast of the Dedication we know as Hanukkah, the rededication of the Temple because it had been defiled, and in that rededication, the oil lasted days longer than it had any right to do. And that was a sign that God was present. So here they are in the Temple remembering that God is present in an ordeal, - this rededication happened after the Maccabees had just defeated the Greeks, the folks who wanted to make Jews act like Greeks- in battle. They say, "If you're the Messiah, out with it." 

This is an interesting context for that. There were folks that would remember Judas Maccabeus, Judas the Hammer, who led the Jewish forces against the forces of the Greeks. Maybe they thought of him as messianic at times. This was the image of the Messiah, right? We've talked about it many times, that the image of the Messiah was a military leader, a battle leader. And to Jesus, and they say, “So, if you're going to be the one to do this, throw out the Romans now, tell us plainly.” 

And once again, what Jesus takes on is an understanding of what it means to be Messiah and what it means to see God present that was not what they were looking for. God present was supposed to raise an army and cast out the Romans and establish Israel as an independent kingdom. The Messiah that we know, because we know the story, responds, “ I have told you, and you don't believe. The works I do testify to who I am.” And understand what that means, because the works didn't testify to him being a great military leader, but they did testify to God being present in him. “The works I do testify.” This is a common theme in John. The evidence of God being present is in what Jesus is doing. And it's not going to end up raising an army. “You do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep.” That is, you don't believe, because your community is looking for a different image. Your community is not willing to see the Messiah in God's presence as opposed to the historical, now we would say the historical memes, but the historical ideas of what a Messiah was supposed to look like.

“My sheep, hear my voice.” My sheep see the presence of God. And they see the presence of God in healing and feeding and raising the dead. “Though I walked through the valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no evil, because you're with me.” The presence of God, he says, is what Messiahship is about. The presence of God is what the community, the sheep, the faith in God, is about. And, he said, “Because God is doing this in me, I have sheep, they follow me, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. What my father has given me is greater than all else,” - which sort of sounds like bigger than everything- “and no one can snatch it out of the Father's hand, and the Father and I are one in this. No one will snatch them out of my hand.” And ever since, to talk about the presence of God, to talk about being part of the sheep, to talk about not being afraid, is about looking for the presence of God. 

And that, I think, is why Luke, or the author of Acts, is so quick to pick up on the raising of Dorcas, because the raising of Dorcas looks an awful lot like some raisings of Jesus. Would they have been conscious that Tabitha get up sounds like Talitha, Kumi? Probably not. And the reason I say that is because we believe that the Gospels came together in different phases and in different communities. And we're not sure what John's community knew about Matthew and Luke. Although, I have had clergy pick up on that in things I've read in the last week. But what Peter does looks like a theme of the presence of God literally going back to Elijah. Elijah with the widow of Nain’s son. Elisha has a healing that looks like this. Jesus has more than one healing that looks like this, and so it is still evidence of God present, working in and through Peter, that the community sees in Joppa: God present in bringing life, in healing, in feeding, in raising the dead. 

So, in the middle of the night, on this floor, in this room at Saint Luke's Hospital, I said, "Let's talk about John.” And I remembered this passage with this patient. And I remembered in another place in John, where Jesus says, “All that the Father gives to me, come to me, and I will not cast any of them out.” And I said, "Is that how you believe?”

“Oh, yes!”

A different John asks us who are those in white? Those who have come, we hear from a different John, through the great tribulation; and certainly surgery is great tribulation. But it's not the only kind of great tribulation. Indeed, a fair number of people that I've been reading through this week say, “Look, life is tribulation.” And I think we can make an argument that the times we live in are times of great tribulation. 

And sometimes it's hard to keep track of Jesus's voice. Sadly, we seem to see a lot of people around us who have decided they're really less interested in Jesus' voice than in another. But for Jesus’ sheep, no, because we listen for Jesus's voice. And in the valley of the Shadow, we know God is present because we are hearing Jesus' voice. And we can trust that nothing will be snatched out of his hand. This is really quite in keeping with Paul in Romans when he says, "Nothing in all creation. can come between us and the love of God in Christ Jesus. What the Father has given me is bigger than everything, and it will not be snatched out of our hand.”

And so I talked to her about how she could not be snatched out of God's hand. That that battle was won, that it didn't matter how much arguing happened, that dispute was over. That she could not be snatched out of Jesus' hand.

And she slept.