Seventh Easter - May 28, 2006

     Traffic was bumper-to-bumper on the busy boulevard.  A stressed-out man was tailgating another fellow and the traffic light turned yellow.  People were already stepping from the curb into the crosswalk, so he had done the right thing.  The tailgating man hit the roof and the horn at the same time.  He screamed because he had missed his chance to get through the intersection.

     He was still ranting when he heard a tap on the driver-side window.  He looked up into the face of a very serious police officer.  The officer ordered him out of the car, into the cruiser, and drove to the police station.  He was searched, finger-printed, photographed, and placed in a holding cell.

     In about an hour, however, a policeman approached the cell door and opened it.  He escorted the man back to the booking desk, where the arresting officer was waiting with his personal effects.

     As he handed his possessions to him, he said, “I’m very sorry for this mistake.  You see, I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn, flipping off the guy in front of you, and using such terrible profanity toward the fellow in front who had stopped.  I noticed your “Don’t Drink and Drive” license plate holder, the “What Would Jesus Do” bumper sticker, the “Follow Me to Sunday School” bumper sticker on the other side, and the chrome-plated Christian fish emblem on the trunk.  Naturally, I assumed you were driving a stolen car.”

     That’s kind of like the actual auto insurance claim that said, “No one was to blame for the accident, but it would never have happened if the other driver had been alert!”

     How quickly we betray our message with contrary behavior and even more quickly we divert the blame from self to others.  It may well be a universal tendency, but confusion usually results.  Truth and reliability are crucial in life and getting deeds to match words, spoken or printed, is important.  That applies as equally to the Christian message as to the secular.  We need to be extremely careful when we say that Jesus says certain things to us in scripture.  Translation of the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments that make no effort to be true to the original languages, those that have no scholarship behind them, and those that have been issued to prove a particular denominational or sect point of view, need to be shunned like the plague.  That is the primary reason the Episcopal Church has only six authorized translations for use in our worship.  Those who have attended our Inquirer’s classes know what those are and I would be happy to give them to you.

     The Gospel for this Seventh Sunday of Easter, the Sunday after Ascension Day, is from John.  It is a section of what is called the High Priestly Prayer of Jesus.  The first petition Jesus makes our behalf to the Father is that we may be one as he and the Father are one.  What is it that holds us together as the continuing body of Christ?

     I would make a claim for starting with our beliefs.  I say that knowing that churches are just as apt to be torn apart by what they say they believe as for any other reason.  That is particularly true in this land where religious freedom has given us the affinity to break into rival camps at the slightest provocation.  That we find more things about which we disagree than those that unite us is the result of sin and not faith.  Under the power of the Holy Spirit we may be united by our beliefs.  Most of the time we are like Edward Bear in one of A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh stories.  He wrote, “Here comes Edward Bear now, down the steps on the back of his head, bump, bump, bump.  It is, as far as he knows, the only means for coming downstairs, but sometimes he thinks there must be another way, if he could just stop bumping long enough to think of it.”  I would want to say that one of the bonds that unite us is, “[We believe that] God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

     Within that shared belief can we not find a diversity of expressions but a unity of purpose?  The oneness that Jesus prays we might find comes not from worshipping under the same roof, but from loving each other as he has loved and continues to love each one of us.

     I would also suggest that we can be united by remembering whom we serve.  We serve the cause and the continuing presence of Jesus the Christ in the world.  He is the source of our inspiration and the living presence within us as individuals and as a community of faith.  He is the Lord and master of all we are and all we hope to be.  St. Paul said it best, “It is not ourselves that we proclaim.  We proclaim Christ Jesus as Lord and ourselves as your servants for Christ’s sake.”

     In all that we are and in all that we do we are to seek the mind of Christ.  Christian people, when together as a worshipping family or in the world as witnesses to his resurrected living are to remember and invite the presence of the risen Lord into the totality of the experience.

     In the children’s book, The Little Prince, a conversation takes place between a little boy and a fox.  The fox says, “I have no need of you and you, on your part, have no need of me.  To you I am just like a thousand other foxes.  But if you tame me I will be unique to you in all the world and you will be unique to me in all the world.  People have forgotten this truth, but you must never forget.  You remain responsible forever for what you have tamed.”  The one called Jesus the Christ wants more than anything to tame us so that we may see and know that all we do can be a service to him.  We are not our own; we have been purchased at a great price.  We cheapen and deny that great price if we proclaim ourselves or if we serve anything or anyone other than him.  We are VIP’s!  There is only one reason for that.  We are his and we walk in his footsteps.

     Finally, I would suggest we might be united when we remember whom it is we are trying to save.  The church can never be satisfied with protecting its own existence.  We serve one who poured out his life for the world.  That is our calling, as well.

     The late Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, once said, “You may not consider your gifts as important.  You may think you have nothing to offer.  But consider what a difference it would make if you volunteered to teach a Sunday school class, or work with a youth group, or visit the elderly and shut-in, or take in orphans.  Let the model of Christ be your guide.  For amidst a world full of problems and turmoil and with so many demands upon his time and energy, he took time to be with just one Zaccheus, one Mary, one Martha, one Lazarus, on Peter.  We must remember that the key to the Christian understanding of the many is found in the infinite worth of each one.”

     Who is it that you are offering to shelter?  Who is it that we need to feed?  To whom are you reaching out your arms of love and mercy?  I ask the same questions of myself.  We have no other purpose as the church of Jesus the Christ.  We are not asked to save the world.  Jesus has already done that.  We are asked to share that fact with those whom God places in our path.

     We can be united by what we believe; we believe in Jesus the Christ as a personal Lord and Savior.  We can be united by whom we serve; we seek to serve him in all we think, say, or do.  We can be united by whom we are trying to save; we save ourselves and remind others of this personal invitation.

     We pray that our words and deeds will be a better match each day.  That is the only way the world can ever see that we are united as one.  Amen.