Sunday, May 9, 2021

Sixth Sunday of Easter
Acts 10:34-48
Psalm 98
1 John 5:1-8
John 15:9-17

All the prophets testify about him, that through his name everyone who believes in him will receive remission of sins.

I loved when my children were small enough to sit in the shopping cart at the grocery store. It was a time of interaction with my child; I took the opportunity to talk to them, to teach them about food and groceries. We laughed together and made choices together. It makes me sad when I see children in shopping carts with their noses glued to a smart phone watching a video. Sure, Mom is able to concentrate on the shopping. Too many of us are so busy that we can’t wander the aisles and enjoy the company of our children. I am sure those moments had a lasting impact on my children’s growth and created a lasting bond between us.

I don’t recall the same kind of interactions with my own mother, but I do remember the many times and ways that she made my life better. It seems hard to believe that she has been gone for more than two decades, but I am still so thankful for her. I went to a craft retreat a couple weekends ago, and my big project was to finally put together a charm bracelet that she began for me. When I was little we often traveled by car to visit her brothers in Kansas and Colorado. Along the way we stopped in Stuckey’s and she bought me enameled state charms. I continued to buy the states I visited, and during my recent cleaning spree I rediscovered the unfinished bracelet. I purchased everything I needed, including a bunch of states I had not yet purchased that I found on e-bay (they are difficult to find anywhere else.)

It was a tough job; those split rings are difficult to work with my old, less than nimble fingers. But it was a joy to do, and now when I show others my bracelet, I always begin with the story of how my mom started the bracelet for me. I think of her whenever I look at those charms and I remember our trips. We had some interesting adventures over the years. I miss her and I am very thankful for everything she did for me.

Sunday is Mother’s Day in the United States. Some have suggested that the American Mother’s Day was first started in the late 1800’s by Julia Ward Howe, the author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” She intended the day to be one to promote peace. Mothers were encouraged to gather at an organized meeting in Boston Massachusetts each year. In 1872 she asked for June 2nd to be identified as “Mother’s Day for Peace,” but her campaign was unsuccessful. By 1893 she considered transforming July 4th into “Mother’s Day.” In 1908, Anne Jarvis held a memorial service for her own mother and then campaigned to make Mother’s Day a nationally recognized holiday. By 1911, it was being celebrated all over the U.S. President Woodrow Wilson made it a national holiday in 1914. Anne Jarvis was disappointed that only a few years later the day was already becoming over-commercialized; she intended for the day to be faith-based and include attendance at a special worship.

The focus is a little different in England. While it, too, has become secularized, Mothering Sunday was celebrated on the fourth Sunday of Lent and was a day when Christians visited their home church or “Mother church.” The parishioners gathered together at a special service at a central church that connected local parishes. Domestic servants were given the day off so that they could go to church with their own families. It was not necessarily a day to honor each person’s mother, but rather to celebrate the body of Christ and our “mother” the church.

Mother’s Day has definitely become a secular event with children sending gifts and cards. The flower industry makes 25% of yearly sales during Mother’s Day. Mother’s Day is the most popular day for making telephone calls worldwide. Churches will likely be more full than usual, as children honor their mothers by attending worship with her. The focus will still be more about brunch and presence; worship is not really the purpose of the gathering as it was when Anne Jarvis meant it to be when she campaigned to make it a holiday.

It is good to honor our mothers because her job is never easy. After nine months of carrying another human being in her womb, a woman goes through intense pain so that child will be born into the world. That pain is forgotten as a mother takes her child in her arms and immediately shows her love and care for that little person. The child is completely helpless in the early days. While she often has help, the mother does most of the work changing diapers, carrying, feeding, and bathing the child, loving him or her from sun-up to sun-down. As time goes on they learn to do things on their own, but Mother must continue to care for their needs until they become independent adults. Even then a mother’s job is not complete. I still worry about my children, though both have their own homes. A mother always loves her babies and continues to pray for them.

Mothers not only provide for the physical needs of a child, but also the intellectual and emotional needs. From the day of birth, mothers talk to their children, holding them close and whispering love and encouragement through the tears, fears and hurts. Mothers sing songs, such as the Alphabet Song, that help her children in language development. Mothers provide opportunities throughout their toddler and school age years for continued learning and growth. That’s why those moments in the grocery cart were so important to me.

Mothers also provide for the spiritual welfare of their children. Christian mothers promise to provide every opportunity for their children to hear the stories of Jesus. They take the children to Sunday school, Vacation Bible School and worship; they give them copies of the Bible so that they can read and study it on their own. Mothers teach the children the Lord’s Prayer and other ways to speak to God. Mothers teach them the ways of living faith, so that they will be obedient to God our Father in Jesus’ name.

Mothers suffer many things. They suffer through the pain of childbirth, the rambunctious toddler years, the preteen years when children begin to grasp their own independence and the teenage years that provide their own difficulties. Mothers do their best to raise the children in the ways of Christ, pray for them and hope that they will continue to walk in those ways. Children always rebel in some way and they will even reject their mothers sometimes, but the seeds of faith that were planted in the hearts of our children will grow into lives of grace, thanks to the endless sacrifices of our mothers.

A mother lays down her life for her children. They set aside their own hopes and aspirations, at least for a time, as they love their children into the people God has created them to be. Oh, mothers aren’t perfect, and there are many mothers who do not sacrifice everything for the children’s sake. However, all mothers make sacrifices of some sort or another. Even if they are struggling to pay the bills they make sure their children are fed. They have sleepless nights as they worry about a sick child. They clean up the messes left behind by children of every age. They cry the first time their child says, “I hate you,” and they forgive when the child has done something to disappoint.

Mothers lay down their lives for the sake of their children because of love. They sacrifice and suffer to provide everything a child needs and even a few things they don’t. In this way mothers are like Christ.

The Gospel lesson for today is from the final discourse from Jesus on the night before He was betrayed. Jesus offered the final lessons, the final encouragement, the final words of hope that were meant to help the disciples through the three days between His crucifixion and resurrection. They were about to lose Him; they would be scattered, confused and afraid. Jesus warned and commanded them to abide in His love. They were about to experience sadness beyond anything they ever knew or expected, but Jesus told them to be filled with His joy. The sacrifice was necessary and the suffering real, but it was the moment when God revealed to us His deep love and invited us to truly abide in Him.

The apostles continued to live as Jesus lived, sacrificing themselves for the sake of the Gospel. It was a sacrifice for Peter to go to the house of the Gentile centurion named Cornelius. It was a sacrifice for him to go in to a room filled with Gentiles and to speak a message he thought had been given solely to the Jewish people. It was a sacrifice for the community to welcome these new believers into their midst, knowing that their whole world would be turned upside down. Peter decided to be obedient and take the risk. He decided to follow God’s vision for the Gospel.

The Jews had such firm beliefs about how things must be done and who might be allowed into their fellowship that this event at Cornelius’ house must have rattled their understanding of faith. It was a sacrifice for him to risk becoming unclean to share the Gospel message with that family. The Jews weren’t allowed to eat with Gentiles, but in giving the Holy Spirit, God broke down a wall that Peter could never rebuild. When Peter saw what happened in Cornelius’ house, he asked, “Can anyone forbid these people from being baptized with water? They have received the Holy Spirit just like us.” We might want to forbid someone from coming into our fellowship, but if God welcomes them, how can we say “No”?

Peter said, “God has offered forgiveness and mercy and grace to these Gentiles, who are we to suggest they can’t be part of our group?” So, he called the gathering to join in the celebration of baptism, to welcome them into the fellowship of believers.

We may have very good reason to keep people out of our midst. At least they seem like good reasons to us. The community that gathers for the craft retreat is extremely diverse. There are women of every age, from young mothers to great-grandmothers. Some come from the city and others from rural areas. We have a wide range of political opinions and religious understanding. Some are extremely talented at their craft and others claim they don’t have a creative bone in their bodies. If we are honest, we’ll admit that we don’t always like everyone. Yet, we all love Jesus and that is enough for us to love each other. We must sometimes sacrifice certain aspects of our own lives, hopes, ideologies, understandings, so that we can follow Jesus and do His work.

It is frightening to take the risk. But fear is not the way to life. Love is.

There is a museum in Xi’an, a city in central China which displays an army of terra-cotta warriors created to guard the tomb of China’s first Emperor. These 7500 amazing life-size clay statues are being carefully exhumed and restored for modern archeologists to study and people to see.

The ruler was Qin Shi Huangdi. He began his life as a ruler in China when he was just thirteen. He was a warlord who fought against other warlords for twenty-five years, taking control of more and more men until he had an army of over a million. He dominated the people, using violence to gain power over his enemies until he was the most powerful man in the land. He then took on the name Qin Shi Huangdi, which means “First Divine Emperor in China.” He was in some ways a good ruler. He unified China, built the great wall, and developed a capital city with excellent infrastructure. He was so confident about his power and position that he claimed his dynasty would last ten thousand years.

Qin Shi Huangdi was afraid of death. He built hundreds of palaces that were connected by underground tunnels. He slept in a different palace each night to avoid assassination. He even refused to die a normal physical death; he sent his wise men to locate the fountain of youth so he could live forever. They didn’t find it, of course.

The Emperor accomplished great things, but he did it with excessive cruelty. He slaughtered people and destroyed the treasures of their culture. One day, the prime minister conspired with others and the Emperor was assassinated when he was just forty-one years old. The conspirators sent a forged letter to his only son and convinced him to commit suicide. Instead of lasting ten thousand years, his legacy was the shortest dynasty in China’s history.

Qin Shi Huangdi lived in fear, for though he was a very powerful man he did not know grace, mercy or love. He knew only his desire to live forever and treated his people as if they were only the means by which he would get what he wanted. He was the exact opposite of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, which we see revealed in Jesus Christ. Jesus came not to gain power, but to bring forgiveness. He came not to build a kingdom through violence, but to unify people by the Word of God. He came to give us the love of God so that we can live in that love and share it with others. He did not fear death, but laid down His life for our sake.

The terra-cotta warriors stand as a testament to the life of the first man to unify China and who brought good things to the people of that great land. It is also a testament to how human desires and accomplishments pass away quickly. The dynasty of Qin Shi Huangdi lasted less than a lifetime because the emperor did not know the power of love; he only knew the power of the sword. He came to an end just as he brought the end to many. But the kingdom of God is eternal; He reigns here and now and in the future, because it is built on love and mercy. Our Lord Jesus grants salvation freely to those who believe in His name. Through Him we are heirs to a kingdom that is built to last, to endure even longer than ten thousand years. It is in that kingdom we are called to live and join in the psalmist’s songs of praise. We are the warriors that stand as a testament to His grace.

Today’s psalm tells us about the good things God has done: how God has won the victory over Israel’s oppressors and how He has saved them from exile. The psalmist sings about God’s faithfulness and His love for His people that is lasting. Telling others about the great things God has done is just one of the many ways we can sing His praise. The psalmist tells us other ways. We can sing a new song. We can sing praises with a harp. We can sound trumpets. The creation even gets involved with the heavens and earth joining in the noise of praise. The sea roars, the floods clap their hands, the hills sing.

We are commanded to love, and there are many times when this is very difficult. We struggle when people don’t fit our expectations or when they disappoint us. We wonder how we will ever obey. It is in faith that we abide in the love of Christ, obeying His command to love one another with a sacrificial love while bearing fruit that will last. Faith and community are connected. Christ loved us, chose us and calls us friends so that we will obey His command to love each other. In love He has made us part of a body, calling us to love that body. We love because He first loved us. As we love one another, we will see the fruit God calls us to bear, the fruit that is the witness to our love for God.

The love we give is to be like Christ’s love: sacrificial. Sacrifice means giving up something, perhaps even something we love. Many mothers give up careers so that they can give as much time as is necessary to raise their babies. Sacrifice means changing our lives. Peter’s sacrifice was to be disobedient to a religious law which defined his faithfulness. He risked losing everything by stepping out of his world into another because he loved God. What he found was joy, because the Word he shared with the Gentiles bore lasting fruit.

Sacrifice means letting go of one’s own self for the sake of another. It means hearing the call of God and following, even when God’s call sounds different than you expect. It means loving God’s kids even when they do not stand up to your expectations. It means facing change for the sake of the Gospel of Jesus even when change will rattle your whole world. Jesus chose you as His friend and He has appointed you to go and bear fruit. Sometimes that means entering into a world that is beyond our understanding and outside our expectations. We are afraid of what we might find, but when we step out in faith and in the love of Christ we will find joy. Abiding in God’s love is a life of joy, even when it means sacrifice.

The passages from John’s Gospel and Epistle use the words “obey” and “command” several times. It is so easy from our human perspective to embrace those words while missing the true message of these lessons. We like to know that we have done something good, that we’ve had an impact on the people of this world by our power and ability. We are quick to list our good deeds before men as proof of our love for God. We even point to these passages and say, “See, this is how God told us to live!” That’s the way it was for the Jews in Jesus’ day. If they lived according to the Law, if they were good enough, gave enough, did enough, then they would be children of God. The trouble is no one is able to carry this heavy burden. Those who thought they could be God’s by their own works were blind to their own sin, hiding behind a facade of self-righteousness and justification by excuse. They pointed their fingers at others while denying their own inability to live rightly before God. They saw themselves as greater than the others and had no mercy on those they deemed as sinners. But God turned things around. He sent Jesus to reveal to the world the truth of His love which is found only in His grace.

Isn’t it interesting how much like God’s love is a mother’s love? She loves her child even before he or she is born. She willingly does the messiest things to make sure that the completely helpless being is safe and clean and happy. She sacrifices aspects of her life for the sake of her little one. A mother doesn’t love because the child does something for her; the child is completely incapable of doing anything. God does not love us because we have done good things or because we have lived according to a set of rules. He loves us and because He does, we can love Him back and be the vessels by which He reveals His love to others.

That’s exactly what happened in the lesson from Acts. Peter was telling a gathering of people at Cornelius’ house about Jesus and His ministry in this world. He told them about Jesus’ death and resurrection, His appearance to a select group of witnesses, His command to preach the Gospel and to testify that He is the Christ. These people were not Jews, they were Gentiles, yet God's love reached them also as the Holy Spirit fell upon them at the hearing of those words about God's grace. The Jews were amazed that they could become children of God. Those who were there were baptized into the Church of Christ and became part of the Kingdom of God.

John tells us in his first epistle how we can know that we are children of God. When we are born of God, we become His child. What happens for those who are born of God? We overcome the world. What does this mean? Last week we heard that the only way to bear fruit is to be connected to Jesus, who is the vine. We are part of Him by faith and as such He bears His fruit through us. That fruit is salvation, forgiveness of sin and reconciliation to God achieved by the blood of Christ Jesus. We overcome that which burdens us such as the desire to earn grace by good works and perfection, and we are given the victory through faith in Jesus Christ. In Him we are made perfect, justified by His grace, and called to remain in His love.

It is only after God has given us that great gift of salvation that we become His children, and as such we show the world His righteousness by our right living. It is only then that we can carry out His commands. What is it that He commands? He commands us to love one another. In faith, we love as God first loved us, a sacrificial love, willing to give everything we are for the sake of another. Peter did this in the home of Cornelius, first of all entering into the home of a Gentile which was against the Law of the Jews. He spoke to them about Jesus, which must have seemed like a waste of time to the circumcised believers because how could they believe if they had not been obedient to God’s Law?

Yet, God gave them the same gift of faith in Jesus Christ, salvation and the Holy Spirit. They became part of the vine, part of the Kingdom, part of the body of Christ. They have been embraced by His love and become part of the circle of friends of Jesus, who by His power will love others into the Kingdom. God also embraces those who do not fit our own understand and expectations of faith, and He calls us to be like Peter, to take the risk to be obedient to His command and share the Gospel with the very people we do not believe deserve it. We will join with Peter and experience the joy of knowing that God’s kingdom has grown because we were willing to make the sacrifice for someone else’s sake.