Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year B, May 3, 2015; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

O God of Love, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

This morning I want to preach about everything – the humanitarian crisis in Nepal; Baltimore and the widespread damaging effects of racism in the United States; my discoveries sifting through family archives when I was in Denver for my aunt’s funeral last week; the huge number of people who go hungry in Massachusetts, where the poverty rate is at its highest since 1960 (the year I was born); the pending jury decision about the sentence for Johar Tsarnaev; and the 100^th anniversary of the sinking of the Lusitania, and that’s just for starters. Bishops and scholarly theologians in the Anglican Reformation had a remedy for this kind of challenge: they wrote approved homilies to be read at sermon time. Article 35 in the 39 Articles of Religion, pages 874 and 875 in the Book of Common Prayer (the red prayer book in your pews), states that homilies from an authorized book are “to be read in Churches by the Ministers, diligently and distinctly, that they may be understanded of the people.” But then in 1801 as the Episcopal Church was being organized in the post-Revolutionary War era, the requirement was suspended “until a revision of them may be conveniently made, for the clearing of them, as well from obsolete words and phrases, as from the local references.” We are still living in that suspension!

It seems to me that 100 years ago, on the Fifth Sunday after Easter, The Rev. Elwood Worcester, our fourth rector at Emmanuel Church, Boston preached about everything, even as he focused on the sinking of the RMS Lusitania, passenger ship sunk by a torpedo as it traveled through a declared war zone. Although he probably did not yet know the allegations that the passenger ship carried undeclared munitions, he surely knew that the German Embassy had placed a warning notice next to the Lusitania departure advertisement in fifty American newspapers that ships flying a flag of Great Britain or her allies were liable to be destroyed if they entered the waters adjacent to the British Isles.

Mr. Worcester said from this very pulpit: “In this church we are not merely a congregation, we are a large family. No one suffers alone, and the fate of several of our beloved people brings the whole dreadful tragedy [of the Lusitania’s demise] very near to us. …The present seems a time for self-control and silence in order to give greater effect to the words of him whose duty it is to speak for us… Among those whose deaths are most personal to us are Mr. and Mrs. Stewart S. Mason and Mr. Edwin W. Friend. Mrs. Mason, Leslie Hawthorne Lindsey was the daughter of our friends and parishioners, Mr. and Mrs. William B. Lindsey.” (Edwin Friend was the husband of friend and parishioner Marjorie Patten. Marjorie Patten Friend stayed behind in Boston while Edwin Friend went on a business trip.) Mr. Worcester went on to say, “I will not display a less courageous spirit than his bereaved and stricken wife has shown. He died…while attempting to serve others.” Elwood Worcester had presided at the weddings of both young couples, and he then presided at the funeral of Leslie Lindsey, at which her bridal ushers returned to this sanctuary to serve as her pallbearers.

Here’s the heart of Mr. Worcester’s sermon that day, which bears repeating because it speaks deep truth to our contemporary circumstances: “In these days when the foundations of life are shaken, and things on which men have built for ages seem to be crumbling, we cannot help trembling for our ideals and for the future. There are certain ideals of justice, benevolence, and freedom which seem part of the very program of human life. Belief in them is necessary to make this world intelligible and life desirable…What amazes me today is the discovery that these beliefs seem to exercise so slight an influence on the conduct of men. In times when it requires no particular effort or sacrifice we acknowledge them and rejoice in them…but when the test comes apparently we are willing to put all the holy ideals of life from us and to regulate our conduct by what appears to be the necessity of the moment… If a nation gives itself up to blind ruthlessness, can any victory repay it for what it has lost of its own higher qualities and for sacrificing the general esteem of mankind? …In more than one sense war tries the spirit of man and reveals what is in him. God shakes the world in order that the things which can be shaken may be removed to make way for the future. Among these the great and permanent ideals of the human race, justice, benevolence and freedom are not included, for humanity cannot take a step without them. They alone unite us and give light and meaning to life, an object higher than ourselves toward which to struggle.”

Worcester concludes: “Will God cast off …people because they have forgotten [God] and have cast off for the time being the lessons [God] has been at so much pains to teach them?” …[No, because God’s] patience is inexhaustible…God uses one means [Love] to accomplish many ends, and [God] will not cease to use [Love] until [God’s] end is accomplished and [God’s] will is done.” [1] That is everything, isn’t it?

It seems to me that this is the heart of the Good News – the steadfast love and faithfulness of the God of Israel, relentlessly proclaimed by the Hebrew Bible scriptures, embodied by Jesus, and joyfully experienced by his followers. For example, Acts tells the story of Phillip’s encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch. This is a great story, and my favorite line is what in our translation is in parentheses: “this is a wilderness road.” That’s the line that invites you and me to understand that we have something in common with these characters, because we too are on a wilderness road, aren’t we? You might know that eunuchs and anyone with a physical infirmity or irregularity were prohibited from serving as priests according to Leviticus (21:20) and from being admitted to the assembly of the Lord, according to Deuteronomy (23:1). But the Prophet Isaiah declares that God will honor faithful eunuchs.

I love Philip’s question to the Ethiopian eunuch, “Do you understand what you are reading?” It’s a great question because biblical scholars throughout the ages have debated the meaning of the passage from Isaiah without coming to agreement, but Philip was confident that, for him, it’s all about Jesus. That takes, what Walter Bruggemann calls “an immense act of imagination” to manage the long discontinuity between this old poem from the sixth century before the common era and Philip’s recent memory of Jesus. It’s not that Isaiah cannot be legitimately read with Jesus in mind, it’s just that a churchy claim that Isaiah refers only or even primarily to Jesus is endlessly problematic. [2] Don’t get me wrong, I like immense acts of imagination, I just think we best proceed with humility (for the love of God)!

Speaking of the Love of God, the First letter (or essay) of John tells us that love is from God, that everyone who loves is born of God and knows God; that whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. This John is not writing about an abstract theological concept or emotional affect, but actions consistent with justice, benevolence, and freedom. Unlike the writer of the Gospel of John and the writer of the Revelation to John, this John opposes the schisms that have torn faith communities apart over theological arguments. This John sees schisms as evidence of the refusal to love one another, of the unwillingness to abide in Love, which is God.

So perhaps when we encounter a text like today’s Gospel, we could pause to remember that Jesus says “do not be afraid” more often than anything else. Perhaps we could employ an immense act of imagination and view the Gospel lesson for today through the loving lens of the First Letter of John. Instead of reading this as justification for splitting off undesirable groups or members of community, as a proof text for pruning as excommunicating or shunning, perhaps we could read this as Good News of how the loving vine grower cares for the vines. We could imagine that Jesus is the true vine and, at the same time, know that Jesus is not the only vine.

Here’s where I think we should begin our immense act of imagination: with the idea that this is a teaching about each one of us as a vine, and the idea that bearing fruit means demonstrating love. I can easily admit to you that every branch inside of me does not bear fruit. And I can easily admit to you that there are fruit bearing branches in me that could benefit from pruning to help them bear more fruit. I can appreciate the removal of dead and withered branches in me, you know the trash that gets in the way of loving. I would be so relieved and grateful to have it cleared. I can give thanks for what has been cleared and burned, used as fuel to warm or cook, or just to create a beautiful fire to watch and wonder. I can believe that I cannot bear fruit by myself; that I need Love in order to be able to engage in loving actions, and that being a disciple of Jesus, for me, has been the way to glorify the Holy Name and to grow in love.

Jesus is saying that fruit-bearing (or loving actions) will appear whenever you abide in love and love abides in you. (“Whenever” is a better translation than “if.”). Whenever you abide in love and love abides in you, request whatever you wish and it will become you. It’s not so much about having, or getting whatever you ask “done.” It’s about becoming more love in Love, the relentless, patient Love of God. It is up to us to insist on and to enact justice, benevolence, and (not or, and) freedom for all of God’s children.

In the introduction to Elwood Worcester’s book that contains the May 9, 1915 sermon, he described his time at Emmanuel in a way that rings true for me as well: “a steady procession of men and women seeking moral and physical aid has passed through the portals of Emmanuel Church, and they have received such services as we could render them, without money and without price. As I look back over these years they seem like a marvelous dream, an opportunity of service, and of intimate access to all that is best and worst in men and women for which I can never be grateful enough, the reward for which I am most thankful is that the more I have learned of human nature even at its worst, the more I have found to love and admire in it.”

I invite you all to keep coming back because it really works.

← Back to sermons page