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April 29, 2007
Easter 4, and baptism
St. Edmund’s, San Marino
The Rev. Rob FisherActs 9:36-43; Psalm 23; Revelation 7:9-17; John 10:22-30
May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer Amen.
When I was a hospital chaplain in Brooklyn, my supervisor was a man named Peter Poulos. His parents had immigrated from Greece to New York, and he was born and raised in Park Slope, a brownstone-lined neighborhood of Brooklyn. As a young man, he planned on becoming a Greek Orthodox priest, and he went to seminary. But when he did a short stint as a hospital chaplain, he felt that this was his true calling. So he dedicated his life to hospital ministry, and to training other hospital chaplains.
He was very compassionate and also very matter of fact. He had a very similar accent and inflection to Christopher Walken. He had served New York Methodist Hospital for decades, right in the middle of his home neighborhood.
One of the wise things that I remember him saying was that all life is relational.
The most important aspects of all of our lives are our relationships with those around us our family and our friends. But not only that. We are in relationship with the place where we live. And we are even in relationship to our own physical bodies. This was especially evident in hospital ministry. Some people had a relationship with their knees, say, that had carried them faithfully up and down subway steps for seventy or eighty years, and now these knees were not able to carry them any longer. For them, their relationship with their bodies was at a turning point.
Emerging from this morning’s texts is the theme: relationship.
The passage from Revelation is a very mystical, dreamlike vision. There are tens of thousands of people robed in white, surrounding the throne of the Lord. It is an image of the kingdom of God.
The staging of this scene is striking, and though it grabs our attention, what is mort important is the relationship that is described. These people who are from every nation, tribe and language are the Lord’s flock. And the Lord cares for them very much.
According to the text, “The one who is seated on the throne will shelter them. They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”
Likewise, in Psalm 23, God walks with the psalmist through the valley of the shadow of death, giving comfort and protection. It is a relationship of healing in the face of adversity.
In the Gospel reading, Jesus is being questioned by pesky religious authorities.
And by the way, we need to note that the text refers to those who challenge Jesus as “the Jews,” but this is a poor choice of words considering that Jesus and all of his disciples were Jews, also. The people who challenged him were those people who were skeptical, and probably in line with the religious authorities who could not accept Jesus’ claims.
And their questions of him show a bias that he was not the Messiah. Rather than ask a sincere question, it is more like they are saying, let’s get on with it. Either say you are not the Messiah (which we don’t expect you to do) or say that you are (so that we can go ahead and get to work mocking you and trying to disprove your claim.)
Jesus does not play along with their game. (He never does.) And instead offers a teaching about what it is like to be in a true relationship with him. He says, “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.”
And that is the bottom line of the Christian message. It’s all about relationship.
We started out in the garden, and in the original creation we were all made good, in the image of God. And there was no barrier in our relationship with each other, or with God. And God told Adam and Eve that the only thing they could not do was to eat the fruit of a certain tree. It was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
And what is the meaning of this commandment? It is symbolic: to try and gain this knowledge is to try and take the place of God; to try and live as if we don’t need God. This story is true, whether you read it literally or not, because this is exactly our temptation and often our failing! We eat of that tree, and we try and take the place of God in all kinds of ways, just as Adam and Eve did.
And doing so, we impair our relationship with God and with each other.
As a result, Adam and Eve felt ashamed. They sew fig leaves for themselves, not to hide immodesty but to hide themselves. They hide from God, but it is pointless. God calls out to them, why are you hiding? And then when God asks them why they did it, they start the blame game. Adam blames Eve, and Eve blames the serpent. Tragic barriers arise, and we suffer as a result.
But Jesus comes to restore relationship. He brings God’s hope to grow re-creation in us, bringing us back to that original state, which was God’s intent. And all we have to do is receive the gift. It is hard work of trust that leads to our being able to receive it, but that is what leads to being in right relationship with God after all.
Being baptized is a major way of taking that step towards receiving that beautiful relationship, where we recognize that God marks us as precious in God’s eyes. We belong to God, and we trust that God is a good and loving shepherd who will faithfully take care of us. Amen.
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