May 6, 2023

 Many times when I pray for you, I picture you in a kind of interconnected web and when I lead worship I visualize you all connected together by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Today, I’d like to make that web as we explore the scriptures together.  We start here at Jesus, at the cross.  We anchor our connection here with our Savior.  Pass this ball of yarn along and keep a little bit as you share it with your neighbors so that we can see this web we form.

In today’s Gospel reading, he is about to be crucified and later he will ascend.  He will seem to be away from his students, his disciples.  However, here he is reminding them he is still with them.  He is with them in all the memories they have shared.  He is still with them in the power he has given them to do the works that he does.  He is still with them in Spirit.  They can pray and communicate with him.  They can find him in the poor, the hungry, all those they serve, teach, heal, and feed.  They can find him in their midst in so many ways even though they won’t be able to see him. 

We are very much like these disciples because we can’t see the physical Jesus.  We rely on the scriptures to show us how to find Jesus in our midst.  We rely on the scriptures to tell us what it was like when Jesus walked this earth as a human being.  We rely on the scriptures to share stories like this one of Jesus’ reassurance of the 12 Disciples, but also all of us, of his presence with us even when we can’t see him. 

Jesus begins from a place of love.  That is the connection, the primary relationship.  God has that love for us.  God has that love for the son.  We have that love for each other and not just for those who can reciprocate that love.  Love is the glue that holds us together.  The word religion is related to the word ligament.  The body is held together by ligaments.  The body of Christ is held together by love.  Our religion is our connection to God, to each other, and to this world and good creation. 

Part of our dilemma is how far this connection goes.  We all have ideas of how far this connection, this love, should reach and we all have ideas of limits.  I thought that I was supportive of all loving couples and then my cousins got married to each other.  I had to rethink my whole philosophy of love and how far I thought that God’s grace extended.  Sometimes we extend the reach of our love only a little—when we are feeling protective, when we are feeling vulnerable, when we face a lot of challenges.  There are time when the reach of our love isn’t so wide and it isn’t anything to judge ourselves or others about.  Sometimes we just don’t have the resources or energy to reach out super far.

Sometimes making those connections is really hard.  We are planning to celebrate Pentecost with Santa Cruz at the end of this month, another bilingual service.  This is a good time to pass the ball of yarn across the aisle to illustrate a further reach.  Here is a congregation that we are connected with.  Sometimes we are excited about this connection.  Sometimes we might feel anxious—what if we can’t communicate?  What if we get in each other’s way?  What if I get distracted and don’t feel the Holy Spirit?  Still we share the connection, trusting God to weave us together.  Using the body of Christ imagery, with the ligaments, we find that Santa Cruz is like our right arm.  They know things we need to know.  They are not just an afterthought but part of everything we do.  They are an essential part of us and always have been, but maybe we didn’t notice.  Maybe we took them for granted.  So now we are finding ways to make that connection, but it’s hard because we have a flow and a pattern and an expectation of worship that we can understand every word.  We like to feel centered and fulfilled.  But now we find someone else in our midst that always has to wait for translation, that is used to interruptions, that is used to looking for clues about what is being said.  And they are teaching us cross-cultural communication, and the de-centering of ourselves to be open. We are used to everything being in our language, everything being the way we are used to. We are used to being in the center. But if Jesus came into our midst, we’d have to get a translator in here.  We’d have to wait for communication to become clear.  We’d have to be frustrated.  But wouldn’t we be leaning forward in anticipation to know what he would say?  So we pass that ball of yarn a little further.  We make that connection with the faith and hope that we will benefit from waiting and being frustrated and our flow being interrupted.  And it helps us to practice.  We practice with Santa Cruz.  We practice with the children.  This practice is also helpful as we change and age—maybe our hearing isn’t what it once was.  Maybe someday we won’t be able to get up to the front to receive communion.  Maybe every time we are unsettled it is practice for what the rest of life is bringing and maybe it increases our compassion for people with even more unsettled lives than we have.  We are stretched.  We are growing.  We are learning to be patient with others and ourselves as we try to understand each other and make ourselves understood.  It is hard, but it is good work.

So here we come to Paul in the Areopagus, making this speech.  Paul was already one who made the widest possible connections.  He went to all different communities with the good news of God’s love and he brought them into the fold.  He communicated, he shared, he faced many frustrations, interruptions, cross-cultural moments, and he trusted God that the seed planted there would grow.  And thank God he did, because his connection made it all the way to us.  He was courageous and put his own desires aside and because of that we know the good news of God’s love.  We have heard of that love of Jesus and felt it for ourselves.  So we take that ball of yarn and we take it the furthermost reaches, across seas and continents, ligaments that link us together across the ages, in connections of love.

Paul heard about an unknown god they were worshipping in Athens and instead of criticizing them, he saw a connection.  Maybe they were worshipping the one God without knowing it.  Paul names that.  He gives them credit.  He gives God credit for being there ahead of him.  He extends the thread of connection, recognizes a ligament or an appendage that has been there all along. Sometimes the Holy Spirit stretches our connection so much more than we thought possible, and bridges divides that seem to us enormous.

On Good Friday, this year, we sat here in the fading light, after the altar had been stripped and we shared the story of Jesus’ suffering and crucifixion.  We were together, hearing the story each in our own languages, 80 people for this highest of Holy Days  in English and Spanish.  We stumbled to read in the dark.  We struggled to sing each other’s songs.  And then a woman, reading in Spanish, moved by Jesus’ suffering began to weep, and suddenly we were all connected.  Emotion and compassion bridged the distance.  We all knew where this woman was in her heart and we were all there with her and God was there showing us that we are all God’s children, that God means for us to be in relationship and learn from each other.  For a moment, through the power of the Holy Spirit, we spoke the same language and it was love.  It was compassion for the suffering—for Jesus and for all who struggle.  God pulled on that cord connecting us all and drew us all together. Holy Communion is that cord, drawing us all together, people of all times and languages and places, all those who have come to this table who now celebrate the feast without end, all those who will ever receive the living God.

May we notice the connections, make the connections, bear discomfort to be held in connection.  May the God of love draw us together as the body of Christ and make of us all a new Creation.