FIFTH
SUNDAY OF EASTER Year
A May 7, 2023
Acts 7:55-60 • Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16 • 1
Peter 2:2-10 • John 14:1-14
A glimpse of heaven.
How would it impact us if we had a vision of Heaven and saw the glory of
God? Stephen, the church’s first martyr,
is not the only person to have had a vison of the glory of God. If you google search glimpses of heaven,
there are some incredible stories of experiences telling of the love of
God. I imagine from what we know of God,
a vision of Heaven would be an experience of surprisingly thorough love and
acceptance.
In contrast to that love and acceptance, is our
experience on planet earth. Once upon a
time children being called nasty names would reply, “Sticks and stones may
break my bones, but names will never hurt me.”
In our modern times this is never quoted in the playground, as our
generation has realized the power of words and the lasting impact that these
make. Children who are told all their
lives that they are stupid will often grow up believing that they are not very
capable. And on the flip side is the
story of Thomas Eddison.
The story goes like this; “One day, as a small
child, Thomas Edison came home from school and gave a paper to his mother. He
said to her "Mom, my teacher gave this paper to me and told me only you
are to read it. What does it say?"
Her eyes welled with tears as she read the letter out
loud to her child ...
"Your son is a genius. This school is too small
for him and doesn't have good enough teachers to train him. Please teach him
yourself."
Many years after Edison's mother had died, he became
one of the greatest inventors of the century.
One day he was going through a closet and he found the
folded letter that his old teacher wrote his Mother that day. He opened it ...
The message written on the letter was "Your son
is mentally deficient. We cannot let him attend our school anymore. He is
expelled."
Edison became emotional reading it and then wrote in
his diary:
"Thomas A. Edison was a mentally deficient child
whose mother turned him into the genius of the Century." A positive word
of encouragement can help change anyone's destiny.”
Similarly, rejection and acceptance are powerful in
our society. This is one of the basic
things we try to teach our street Chaplains.
Our acceptance of people on the street conveys love and, most
importantly, the love of God. Recently I
saw the movie, The Jesus Revolution, where this openness to accept the hippies
gave rise to the revival in the church.
But I also need to talk about the negative side;
Rejection, because, unlike St. Stephen who was stoned to death, rejection is
how most of us will experience persecution.
In Jesus’ day the aspect of rejection was just as powerful as it is
today. People followed Jesus or rejected
him, sometimes based on the opinions of those around them. Peer pressure is powerful. The Pharisees had rejected Jesus and so
Nicodemus came to Jesus under the cover of night. It was a crowd, a mob, who called out
“crucify him” when Jesus was on trial.
Did they all really reject Jesus or were they just scared of being
rejected themselves? And on Palm Sunday,
did they all follow and accept Jesus, as they cried, “Hosanna” or were they
wanting to belong… to be accepted themselves…. And not rejected.
We still tend to go with the loudest voice. Our society’s values have been largely shaped
by the media and those voices who make us feel that we might too be crucified
if we disagree… well, maybe not crucified, but certainly rejected.
Rejection is powerful.
What we witness in our readings, is that once we know we are loved and accepted
by God, we can then overcome the power of rejection in our lives. We see this in Saint Stephen. In fact, St. Stephen, showed no fear at
all! It is quite probable that the key
to nullifying the fear of rejection is to understand and experience the unconditional
acceptance we have in Christ. As the
Bible tells us, perfect love casts out all fear. This is the love we need to experience in our
relationship with God.
I hope and pray that none of us ever have to face
violent persecution for our faith such that we are stoned to death, but we
already face the name calling, discrimination and other kinds of
persecution. Recently, a muso friend of
mine, who has recently become a Christian, was doing a gig. He said that it was going really well… people
were enjoying the music, and he was enjoying being the entertainer. As he finished, he said something to the
effect of, “May the good Lord, Bless you all”.
Within a very short space of time, he received a call from his manager
to say that the venue manager never wanted him to perform there again due to
his speaking about God.
We are sometimes called flat earthers… even though we
are not, and when I worked as Youth Worker in the Anglican school in Cairns,
the teenagers informed me that I hated gays because I was Christian. I had
never and would never say anything of the kind, and even have some gay
friends. Rejected and judged quite
wrongly, but all because we bear the name, Christian. But should we justify and explain? We could, and there is a time and a place to
do so, but to some extent we need to quote that old playground rhyme; Sticks
and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me…. And we need to do a Taylor Swift and “Shake
it off”. As Taylor says, “haters gonna
hate, hate, hate, hate… I’m just gonna Shake it off… shake it off.” And we are called to do more than this… to
love.
Our letter from St. Peter tells us again, what we
already know, that Jesus was rejected.
We should understand that we, as his followers, are bound to be rejected
sometimes. Saint Peter tells us that
Jesus is the cornerstone that the people rejected, but the stone that God has
chosen and we being his people need to become stones like him, built onto that
corner stone.
But what gives us the power to Shake off the pain of
that rejection? It isn’t the exhortation
from Taylor or even that childhood rhyme.
The power to shake it off comes from knowing that God has chosen us and
to know the acceptance and love of God through Christ.
And here is where it gets tricky. We can be told that God has chosen us and
that God loves us so much that he sent his son to die for us, but we need to
receive it, and experience it for ourselves, for it to have any impact in our
lives… and even that is easier said than done if all we have experienced in our
church family and in our world is rejection.
In our Gospel reading we have Jesus talking about
going away to prepare a place for us.
This is the most common reading for funerals because it indicates that
there is something beyond the grave and a place for us in the kingdom of God,
but possibly the more important part of this reading, for the purpose of our
discussion, is when Philip asks Jesus to show them the father.
“Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you all
this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen
the Father. How can you say, 'Show us
the Father'?”
Jesus is making it clear that He and the father are
one…. He is in the father and the father is in him… the mystery of the deity as
trinity is puzzling, but one thing is certain; the unity of the Father and the
Son is such that if you have experienced one, you have experienced the
other. The disciples had experienced
Jesus and knew that they were loved by him.
Jesus said there was a place for them in the Kingdom of God and they
knew that because Jesus loved them and accepted them, God the father also loved
and accepted them.
Many years ago, I was part of a group of young adults
who worked together to put on an event called Youth Encounter. The guest speaker was a man called Mike
Nelson. As part of the organising
committee we got to know Mike really well.
Mike was a regular speaker with the international
Bible school Capernwray. At one of his
speaking engagements, I heard him speaking about love and how he didn’t find it
easy to love people so he deliberately prayed that God would help him to love
people with the love of God.
In about 1999 Mike Nelson died. He had long struggled with an hereditary
liver disease and he passed away during an operation to try to prolong his
life. It came out among the comments
after and during the funeral, that people generally had the sense that God
loved them, because they felt Mike loved them.
There was this strange sense of God’s love in the relationship that we
had with Mike. I would say, God well and
truly answered Mike’s prayer and, though he may have been largely unaware of
it, God loved people through Mike and his willingness to be a vessel of God’s
love.
Likewise, others can feel rejection or God’s love
through us. Through the Holy Spirit we can allow the love
of God to flow and show in our lives – through our actions and words. I really do believe, like Mike Nelson, that
most of us need to pray for God to love through us. We are not naturally able to be loving and
show the love of God… in fact sometimes God’s love might have boundaries.
When we are on Street Chaplaincy, the challenge is to
always be loving, but this sometimes means we need to be firm and tell someone,
in as caring a way as possible, that their action needs to stop… and even
sometimes we may add that if they don’t stop, we will need to call for police
help.
Loving with the love of God can not be achieved very
effectively in our own strength. On the
flip side, even when we are unaware of it, if we are asking God to love through
us, he will most certainly do so. He
will do so because this is His will. He
wants to love and work in and through us.
This is the work of the Holy Spirit.
We have this promise of answered prayer through the
words of Jesus in our Gospel reading; “Very truly, I tell you, the one who
believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater
works than these, because I am going to the Father. I will do whatever you ask in my name, so
that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.”
We know that amazing things happened after the Holy
Spirit came on the disciples, but the question is; are we seeing these things
today? We desperately need to see these
promises of Jesus realized in our day and age… and the key is the Holy Spirit.
The disciples, after the resurrection were joyful, but
still fearful. They hid away and prayed
behind closed doors. At the coming of
the Holy Spirit everything changed.
Through the Holy Spirit they experienced for themselves the love of God
and they knew the total and sure acceptance of God. The Holy Spirit taught them this … taught
their hearts, not just their heads.
It was Saint Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, who saw
the vision of heaven…. And through that same spirit he, full of the love and
acceptance he had in God, could intercede for those who were stoning him
saying, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them."
It is not a natural thing to be able to show the
genuine love of God, and continue in unconditional love for our persecutors,
but it is possible and even natural when we are filled with the Spirit of
God. It is more than likely that there
will be times ahead when there will be more rejection and even persecution for
those who follow Christ. How will we
respond? How are we responding now? Sticks and stones may break our bones, but
names will never hurt us when we are totally secure in the love of God and
surrounded by a loving Christian community.
As we journey to Pentecost, we reflect on our need for
the out pouring of the Holy Spirit in our lives, in our church, and in our
community. There is a world of people
out there who are desperate for the indescribable love of God. May we be like Saint Stephen in the face of
persecution, declaring the vision of Heaven and lavishing love on those in our
world.
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