John 20.1-18
Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC
Fort Collins, CO
The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson
 
Christos Anesti! Alethos Anesti! Christ is risen! Risen indeed! Such a blessing to be with you all this morning. I love the hymn we just sang. As those of us in the preaching business say, “It will preach! That hymn will preach!” So if nothing I say today resonates….go back to that hymn.

On this Easter Sunday, our resurrection story is from John. I love each gospel’s resurrection story. Each one has some significant revealing detail to share with us as we encounter the mystery of the resurrection. However, of all the resurrection stories, I find John’s version the most personal and intimate, the most embodied in its telling. If we listen closely, with the ears of our hearts and imaginations, we may feel the grass of the garden wet on our feet in the dark early morning, the cold shadow of the tomb as we look inside, the warmth of the sun on our shoulders as it rises. We can hear the pounding of footsteps running, the heavy breathing of runners, the weeping of a shocked woman. What smells and even tastes might this story hold if we listen with our bodies, our senses and not just our heads? Garden smells, the taste of tears? What new thing might you see in your mind and heart’s eye as you hear this story that may be very familiar to you? Or perhaps, you are hearing it for the first time? Deep Breath. In and Out. I invite you this morning to be aware of how your body experiences the story of Mary and the disciples discovering the resurrection of Jesus.

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“I have seen the Lord.” What an unbelievable blessing to say this affirmation of resurrection! I long to be Mary in that moment. I long to say that affirmation with my life, “I have seen him, Jesus, the Teacher, the Lord.” Not just to hear the story and know that in the context of our Christian faith it offers hope. I long to live Mary’s resurrection affirmation with my whole being.  “I have seen the Lord.”  What about you?

It is not easy to experience, let alone think about resurrection, as 21st century, rational, scientific, progressive Christian people. We hear the story and so quickly move to hmmmm…..how did that really happen? Did it really happen? Did the writer of gospel talk to Mary and get a first-hand account? Or to Peter or the other disciple whom Jesus loved? So quickly we move from our bodies where our imaginations live and from our hearts where our emotions live to our rational thinking heads. We have been taught in our yearning for truth to discount our bodies, our imaginations, our hearts in favor of our minds, in favor of figuring out what really happened. What if we learn to include it all? Recently I heard psychologist and author, Brené Brown, say, “We are not thinking beings who also have emotions. We are emotion beings who also think.” This helps me encounter scripture and particularly, today, the story of the disciples and Mary’s discovery of resurrection.

I need to encounter this story with my whole being this year. Believe me, I read again the exegetical, theological, and homiletical commentary from scholars that I deeply respect. Surprisingly it was there that I found the prompt to go back and remember that in reading I experience the story with my whole being, body, mind, heart and soul. Here is what I found listening in this way.

The gospel stories that we call accounts of the resurrection are really accounts of the discovery of Jesus’ resurrection. The resurrection has already happened. We just discover it with Mary, with the women of the other gospels, with the disciples. How the resurrection happened? What that was like? Was it bodily or spirit? We don’t know. No one was there but Jesus and God. What I do know, with Mary from this text, is that Jesus died. In the previous chapter of the gospel, John tells us that Mary Magdelene stood at the crucifixion with Mary, Jesus’ mother and Mary the wife of Clopas, Jesus’ aunt. Mary saw the whole agonizing process. She heard Jesus’ last words, “It is finished, completed.” She saw the soldier pierce his side to make sure he had died. She was very likely there when he was taken down from the cross and when Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus took the body, prepared it for burial and placed it in the garden tomb. Mary knew with her whole body that Jesus was dead. I’m guessing that most of you know that bodily feeling that comes with the extreme shock of grief of any kind, the rock in the pit of your stomach, your heart that seems to literally ache, the shaking feeling in your muscles.

Our bodies imagine the shock, the sharp inhalation of breath, when Mary sees the stone rolled away from the entrance of the tomb. The worst has happened, but now what? Another body blow of tragedy? Someone has taken the body of our beloved. What else can happen? Our bodies can feel the fear of the disciples as they hear the news and run to the tomb. Our bodies can feel the giant, “WHAT?” when the tomb is found empty and not just empty, but the grave clothes, the winding sheets are empty, the head covering is separate from the clothes, and set aside, folded neatly. Perhaps, we are shaking a bit from the early morning chill as well as the shock. Then we “believe?” How does that feel? A realization, chills down our arms, a calm, a bemused state of wonder as we head home? What next?

Mary is too overcome with grief to even think, “What next?” She simply weeps. She sobs even as she encounters the empty tomb and two angels, even as she sees Jesus himself but does not recognize him. She weeps because she knows Jesus is dead. She saw that. She experienced that in the marrow of her bones. Now she cannot even weep over his body and say goodbye. His body is gone. How can he be gone? We can feel this in the depths of our solar plexus. This utter, utter grief. This pain. Then, she hears her name…”Mary.” And hearing her name, she recognizes Jesus. “Teacher!?!” He is not gone? He is not gone! He is here. How is he here? He is here.

Imagine for a moment, Jesus calling your name in the moments of your deep grief …. Really. Take a moment, close your eyes, and imagine Jesus calling your name.

This is Mary’s resurrection when she stands in the presence of the resurrected Jesus – not merely resuscitated but resurrected into a new creation by the power of God’s love to conquer death. I like to imagine that she flings her arms around him….the tightest hug imaginable. I can feel that hug in my body. Can you? And I imagine that Jesus laughs….maybe they both laugh….till they cry. Then Jesus says, "Don't hold on to me. I have work to do with God. Go tell my brothers and sisters that I have work to do with my Father, my God and your God.”

How hard it must be to let go of the one you love when you feel that you just got them back!? I feel that tingling in every cell of my body.  Yet, Mary trusts that this is not the end, but the beginning of something new that has never been experienced before. She trusts. She goes and becomes the first resurrection preacher, proclaimer. “I have seen the Lord.” 

My friends, we, too, through Mary’s story, are invited to proclaim. “I have seen the Lord.”  I know that we often do not feel up to the task. The burdens of our times, of our personal lives, weigh us down. How can resurrection even exist? We are immersed in so much bad news it is hard to hear good news. Anxiety and fear are real in our crazy times. AND I say to you as one who has stood at the foot of the cross with tremendous grief believing that the whole of life, the whole world was lost, almost annihilated by the obscenity of death, I say to you, “Listen for your name. The resurrected Christ is calling you.” It is God’s purpose of love, not ours purposes, as well-intentioned as ours might be, that ultimately prevails. And God’s is Love. Love is the Victor. “Death is not the end. The end is life. God’s life and our lives through God, in God.”[1]

Trust the story today as you have experienced it. Keep bringing your whole selves, your whole being, to the presence of God. Trust your body and your heart as well as your mind, to know God’s presence here in worship. Trust that God will meet you as Jesus met Mary in the garden out there in the world.

Christos Anesti! Alethos Anesti! Christ is risen! Risen indeed! We have seen the Lord.

May it be so. Amen.

©The Reverend Jane Anne Ferguson, 2022 and beyond. May be reprinted only with permission.
 
[1] from Frederick Buechner’s 1966 sermon collection, The Magnificent Defeat; shared in an email  

John 20.1-18
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning,
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado
 
If you’re at all like me one of the questions you probably ask yourself each Easter is, “Well, did the resurrection really happen the way the Bible said it did?” Ask yourself, then, “What does the Bible say about the resurrection?” You just heard Jane Anne tell the beautiful story from John’s gospel about Mary Magdalene seeing Jesus outside the tomb and not recognizing him at first. In fact, John gives us two detailed chapters of stories about the resurrected Jesus. There are more than a few resurrection stories in the New Testament, and John’s is the very last to be written.

Mark, the earliest gospel writer, says that there are three women followers of Jesus who show up at the tomb expecting to find Jesus’ body so that they could anoint it with aromatic spices. But they find a tomb that is empty except for a young man in a white robe who says, “He has been raised; he is not here.” That’s the end of Mark’s story. Nobody sees the risen Christ…just his empty tomb. Poof! Done! Short and sweet.

Matthew adds another layer…when the two Marys show up on Sunday morning there is an earthquake, and an angel appears to roll away the stone from the tomb. Then, as they run to tell the disciples, the risen Christ meets them, tells them not to be afraid, and to let his brothers know that he’ll meet them up in Galilee, and then he meets the disciples there.

Luke adds some elements to Mark’s empty tomb story, but the women encounter two men in dazzling clothes, who ask them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” and tell them, “He is not here, but is risen.” Then, Luke tells us the wonderful story of the two disciples who walk along the road to Emmaus with a mysterious stranger and how he (the risen Christ) is made known to them in the breaking of bread.

The earliest biblical accounts of resurrection are actually not in the gospel accounts that we read every Easter, but rather from Paul, who wrote even earlier than Mark. Paul has a different story of what resurrection is all about because not only did he miss the Sunday of Jesus’ resurrection, he never even met the man who was a walking, talking, teaching, breathing, preaching, table-turning prophet. The only encounter he had was with the risen Christ, years after the crucifixion. He wrote to the church in Rome about 25 years after Jesus’ crucifixion and says, “Just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in the newness of life.”[1] And to the church in Corinth he writes, “So it is with resurrection…it is sown in a physical body, it is raised in a spiritual body.”[2] That’s an interesting and an early twist, isn’t it? What is a spiritual body? Is that part of the reason that in John’s gospel, Mary Magdalene doesn’t recognize Jesus at first and that Jesus tells her not to touch him?

I want to propose an idea to you about the nature of resurrection. If there is a lifeless corpse before us, and it comes back to life, isn’t that really freaky and gross? Basically, we’re talking about a zombie. What I don’t hear in any of the gospel stories is the zombification of Jesus. What I hear in John’s gospel is that when he is raised, he is raised with a spiritual body…whatever that means. John’s Jesus walks through walls and closed doors…clearly without the same physical body. And yet after coming through closed doors with Thomas, he allows the disciple to probe the holes in his hands. Still…not a zombie.

What if resurrection is less about revivifying or resuscitating a corpse and more about what Paul says: “Just as Christ was raised from the dead … so we too might walk in the newness of life.” What if resurrection and resuscitation are two entirely different things, and if resurrection looks nothing like a scene from Shaun of the Dead? For me, resurrection is a mystery with a capital M, and I suspect none of us will ever figure it out, at least in this life.

What if resurrection is about new life, new beginnings, do-overs, fresh starts, the life-giving spring following the dormancy of winter? What is it in your life that could use a fresh start or a new beginning? God invites you into that! God lures us from our stuck places into “the newness of life.” It takes courage to step out into something new, and that is what Jesus offers us through his example…that even crucifixion and the bonds of death don’t hold him.

I’ve also been thinking about what resurrection might mean for us at Plymouth in a post-pandemic frame…as we return to in-person worship and having the ability to interact with one another and be the church in the same physical space.

It’s been a long time since we were together. A lot has changed. You’ve changed. I’ve changed. The world has changed. Are you expecting to walk back into Plymouth some Sunday and have worship be exactly like it was? Is your expectation that it will be basically a resuscitation of the church just as it was on March 10, 2020? I hope not! There are going to be some limitations as we start because the pandemic is still in play, and there are likely to be things you miss (like singing and hugging and coffee hour and handshakes). More affirmatively, I hope that you and I have learned some things about ourselves, our community, and our faith in the process of living through a pandemic in the past year…lessons that we won’t simply chuck out the window.

What have you learned about what is really important during the pandemic, both personally and for the whole church community? I’ve learned not to take hugs, face-to-face conversations, shared meals, singing hymns together, and communion for granted. I’ve learned that church buildings are important, but they aren’t everything. I’ve learned that the church is about relationship: with God, with each other, with our neighbors…and we can do that without face-to-face presence if we try hard. I’ve learned that people love and feel deeply connected to God and to their church, and that people show up and make a difference, even when it’s inconvenient, and that gives me a sense of warmth and hope. I’ve learned that you can do a strategic plan during a pandemic, and that an amazing team of people are willing to overcome obstacles to help learn about where God is calling you and all of us together. And I’ve learned that you don’t need to live in Fort Collins or neighboring communities to be part of Plymouth.

My hope is that we, as a church, will not experience mere resuscitation…but resurrection. That together we won’t look like a revived corpse when we return, but rather a spiritual body infused with the newness of life. Think about it…if the church is the body of Christ in the world today, do we want to be a worldwide zombified corpse or a renewed spiritual body?

Friends, we have lived together through more than a year of pandemic, and at times it has felt like endless months of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday with no Easter Sunday in sight. It has been a year of death and disease and fear…a year of political animosity and violence…a year of reawakening to the realities of racism in our nation…a year of the worst forest fire in Colorado history just over those hills…a year when the building was shut down. But we have made it through the hardest part. With more of us getting vaccinated every day, the end of this phase is in sight. The glimmers of Easter sunrise are here, bringing new beginnings and new life with them. Let’s grasp this moment with courage and be ready for resurrection.

Christ is risen! We arise! Hallelujah! Amen.
 
 
© 2021 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal at plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.
 
[1] Romans 6.4
[2] First Corinthians 15.42-44

Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson
John 20:19-29
Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC
Fort Collins, CO

19 When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21 Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." 22 When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."

24 But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord." But he said to them, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe."

26 A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." 27 Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe." 28 Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!" 29 Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."

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“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe." “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe," to trust in resurrection.

“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe." That would be us, folks! We are included in the generation that John was writing to and the 2000 years of generations since .... folks who had heard the story and yet not seen with their own eyes and are called to believe. Those who trust the story with their whole hearts and base their lives upon God’s resurrection power. In the New Testament belief is synonymous with trust.

As 21st century folks we resonate with poor old Thomas, don’t we?  Thomas had a hard time trusting. Doubting Thomas who has gotten a bad rap for doing something that those of us in the 21st century find natural. – wanting to see for himself, get the facts, the first hand experience. He is just trying to sort out false news from truth. And his brain was reacting like our brains still react under crisis and stress or shock and grief in the 21st century. We jump to the most manageable story. The most concrete....at least at the moment .... so we know whether we need to go into fight or flight...What is real? How can that be real? Won’t believe it till I see it!

Have you ever prayed, “God, just give me a sign SO obvious that I can’t miss it! Let me know what is real so I know what to do?” If so, you understand Thomas.

We resonate with Thomas and his desire to know for himself.

And, like Thomas, we forget what Jesus has just given the disciples in his appearance on that first Easter evening as he appeared to them even through doors locked in fear. He gave them the power to trust through the Holy Spirit and through community. He breathed on them the Holy Spirit just as the Creator God breathed on the unformed waters of creation in the Genesis creation story. This holy, transformational breath creates form out of void. Community out of randomness.

“Receive the Holy Spirit,” says Jesus. And then that odd statement. “if you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” Which has often in the history of Christendom has been interpreted to give authority to hierarchy to include or exclude. But I think the implications are much deeper for Christian community....I think Jesus’s statements reveal the true power of community. What I hear is that in community we as disciples have the power to be create a place of  compassion where forgiveness is freely given or a place of rigidity where hurts are retained and continue to damage the fabric of life together. Good community is a place where there are boundaries and consequences for hurtful actions....but these are based in compassion and forgiveness and transforming love rather than punitive retribution.

Forgiveness creates community among difference. We may be very different from one another and misunderstand one another and take offense even. But with forgiveness we stay in community....with the holy spirit of forgiveness we must listen across the differences and divides. We stay with the process of growth. When we reject forgiveness...when we retain the sins and withhold forgiveness, community is damaged if not destroyed. Could Jesus’ statement about retaining sins be a warning....this will not serve you as community? You have great power in community. Forgive or hold on, retain?

I find it insightful that the next scene after Jesus words is Thomas rejecting the testimony of the community. And what is their response to him? The implication is that he stays within the community despite his rejection of their testimony of good news. Which could have stirred up on conflict and ill feelings. Yet Thomas is still part of them....was there forgiveness of harsh words, understanding despite difference?

He is still with them and so has the opportunity to experience the transforming grace of Jesus’ presence. And to be transformed himself.

Perhaps Thomas’s mistake is not doubting the extraordinary and shocking news of the resurrection. But instead the misstep came in not trusting the witness of the Spirit-filled community that loved him. Doubting and questioning is not bad...in fact they can lead us to new understanding. And the community of the Body of Christ holds this transforming power. We need a community in which to ask the questions, to kick against the incomprehensible. A community steeped in the breath of God, filled with the Holy Spirit. A community of compassion and courage, of forgiveness and unconditional love, of strength and boldness and tenderness.

In such a community we can be in crisis and grief and express our doubts, our despair. And we can lean on the faith of the community when we feel we have no faith of our own. Not the doctrine, but the living faith of the community. We can trust the prayers, the songs, the sacraments, the words of testimony, both contemporary and in ancient scripture, when we can no longer trust our own reactions. And eventually we will find we are led to the presence of God that astounds and heals us. I believe this is what happens in the story of poor old, unjustly maligned Thomas...who was doing his best to be faithful. In God’s holy community, Jesus gave us all the grace of transformation  as we each  struggle with seeing for ourselves even as we learn to trust the power of the community who has not seen and yet has come to believe.

So I finish with questions for us in this Body of Christ. Are we, as the community of Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC, fully receiving the Holy Spirit into our midst and embracing God’s compassion, forgiveness, courage and love for us all? Are we fully receiving the Spirit into each of our individual lives so that we may offer these gifts of the Spirit to one another and to all who come through our doors and to all whom we meet? Will we hold the space of Spirit for each other and for the world in times of belief and dis-belief. Will we hold a space where utter despair can held along with utter joy as we trust the presence of the Risen Christ in God’s Holy community of faith?

Think on these things as you worship today and walk with the Risen Christ in the coming week.

Amen. And Amen.

John 17.6–19
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning, Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado
May 13, 2018
 
On Wednesday, members of one of our small groups and one of our Sunday school classes had a conversation with John Dominic Crossan from his home in Florida. (Zoom teleconferencing is so cool!) The Seekers group had read the book he wrote with Marcus Borg, The Last Week, and an adult class is reading Dom’s latest, Resurrecting Easter. And it was a treat to be able to ask questions of one of the world’s pre-eminent New Testament scholars.

Today’s scripture reading comes at the end of what we would call Maundy Thursday and before Good Friday. It happens just before Judas’s betrayal and Jesus’ arrest. Dom said that the thing that makes John’s gospel different is that the character of Jesus calls all the shots and controls everything that is going on. None of the events happen to him…they happen because he wills them.

In the gospels according to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus says that he is “deeply grieved” and offers the tortured prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane when he asks God to “remove the cup from me” and avoid crucifixion, which Jesus says is what he wants.[1] It’s pretty clear in the synoptic gospels that Jesus does not want to go to the cross. But in John’s gospel, there is no heart-rending prayer in Gethsemane; Jesus is in control of his fate.

I have to tell you that my first reaction when I read today’s scripture was that John’s Jesus is incredibly verbose! Today’s scripture is part of a prayer, but not the kind of prayer we hear from the synoptic Jesus…these are not the words of a “needy petitioner, but the divine revealer and there the prayer moves over into being an address, admonition, consolation, and prophecy.”[2]

John’s Jesus frequently mentions “the world,” and he has a love-hate relationship. The Greek word in the New Testament is cosmos, and it means God’s world as well as the created universe…but it means something else, too. (Stay tuned for that!) On the one hand, John writes that “God so loved the world…that he gave his only-begotten Son.” And he also says in today’s scripture that “they do not belong to the world” and two chapters earlier, John’s Jesus says, “I have chosen you out of the world–therefore the world hates you,” but at the same time he says of his disciples, “I have sent them into the world.”

For John the created universe is all good. However, the world of human civilization is pretty warped. John earlier says that “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”[3]

Speaking personally, I love the world. I love creation and the splendor we can see in it. I love the diversity of people and cultures that inhabit it. I love the amazing creatures that inhabit it (except for the Ebola virus, rattle snakes, and great white sharks). I love the bodily experiences we can get by living in the world. But I also know that the world is broken place…not because of nature, but because of us: because of humanity.

Did you all read the news this week? Mr. Trump revoked US participation in the nuclear arms agreement with Iran. Israel launched a massive missile strike in Syria. The Saudi foreign minister said that his nation will build nukes if the Iranians do. John McCain is urging fellow senators not to confirm Gina Haspel as CIA director because of her presumed endorsement of torture. Trump’s lawyer got $1.2 million from Novartis after he promised White House access to the pharmaceutical giant. Donald Trump ended protections for 300,000 Central American and Haitian living in the U.S.  New York’s attorney general resigned after accusations of abuse from four women. The attorney general of the U.S. vowed to split up immigrant families. The NRA selected Ollie North as their new president. North was convicted in 1989 for obstructing justice, mutilating government documents and taking an illegal gratuity in connection with the Iran-Contra Scandal.

That was just last week, folks. If you think “the world” is all peaches and cream, I’d ask you to reassess your appraisal.

Jesus lived in a world that was dominated by empire…for Jesus it was the Roman Empire. It wasn’t that the people who ran the Empire were all awful, greedy, immoral, selfish individuals -– they weren’t. It is simply that the nature of empire is fall back on the human condition for its vision of the world. It is a vision of winners vs. losers, rich vs. poor, oppressor vs. the underling, economic domination vs. economic justice, slave owners vs. enslaved, the self-righteous vs. truly just, the proud vs. the humble, the landed vs. the landless, the dominant sex vs. the “inferior” sex, the privileged vs. the deprived. It is based on scarcity…the mistaken idea that there isn’t enough for everyone, so I’m going to grab what I can.

Where do you see the signs of empire today? I’m quite sure that Vladimir Putin has fantasy-filled dreams of restoring Russia to its former grandeur…he started with Crimea and Ukraine four years ago. I imagine that President Xi Jinping of China, now that he has swept aside the nuisance of term limits, has visions of even greater expansion of China’s reach into Africa and the developing world as a dominant economic player.

And what about us? The Romans in Jesus’ day had military outposts along the Rhine and the Danube, out to the Atlantic coasts of Spain and France, and they had troops stationed in Africa down to the Sahara. And of course, they occupied the Jewish homeland and Egypt. We have bases in Afghanistan, Australia, the Bahamas, Bahrain, Brazil, Cameroon, Cuba, Djibouti, Greece, Israel, Italy, Germany, Greenland, Japan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Niger, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, Syria, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. And we spend a lot to support our military. In fact, we spend more than the next seven countries combined -– that’s more than China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, France, the UK, and Japan combined. I’m not saying this is right or wrong, I’m just saying that it is. What do we say about a nation whose leader who cuts taxes for the rich, increases military spending, and who wants to pay for part of the huge deficit spending it causes by getting rid of health coverage for needy children?

I think the case can be made that we human beings tend to create empires when we want something that someone else has, whether it is land, wealth, natural resources, political or military influence. The Chinese have appeared in Africa with the promise of development aid and economic prosperity, and their influence is massive, but their motives are not egalitarian. And it isn’t too far off from what the U.S. has done in Central and South America since the Monroe Doctrine of the 1820s.

Perhaps this litany has made you wonder why God so loved the world. I know that the world looks good here in Fort Collins. It looks good to those of us who have good jobs, a roof over our heads, time to go on vacation, some money saved for retirement, enough to pay our own student loans and enough to help our kids with college costs. But how ever beautiful our bubble, Fort Collins is not the whole world. Is the world such a benign place? Maybe that litany makes you think that God’s world actually needs saving.

If you see Jesus as an opponent of empire and a proclaimer of an alternative vision of a commonwealth of righteousness, peace, and economic justice, then perhaps the prayer you heard in today’s scripture is an anti-imperial prayer. See if this replacement of “world” with “empire” makes sense: “They do not belong to the empire, just as I do not belong to the empire…As you have sent me into the empire, so I have sent them into the empire.”[4] The world that John’s Jesus talks about is the world of empire. The world of injustice. The world of dog-eat-dog. And the kingdom of God provides the only vital and viable alternative vision to those elements of the “normal” course of human civilization.

You and I don’t have to be part of that imperial world…Jesus has invited us to be part of the liberating reign of God. It takes time; progress is slow and often takes two steps forward and one step back, but don’t give up hope. You and I probably won’t be here to see the kingdom come into its fullness, and that’s why we have the church, which will continue to work for the reign of God long after you and I are gone.

I close with the words of Reinhold Niebuhr, one of the guiding lights of the UCC in the 20th century:
“Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. 
“Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. 
“Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.”

The world needs saving. The world needs us working together. So may you keep hope, keep faith, and keep love. Amen.
 
© 2018 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal@plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.
 


[1] Mark 14.36, cf. Luke 22.42, Matthew 26.38-39
[2] Ernst Käsemann, quoted in Gerald Sloyan, John. (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1988) p. 196.
[3] John 3.17
[4] cf. John 17.16 &18