Sermon for IDAHOT at Open Table Liverpool 21/5/2017
i Peter 3:14-17; Jn. 14:15-21]
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
At the end of last week and the beginning of this one, that other Communion, the Lutheran World Federation held its general Assembly in Windhoek, Namibia (50% of the country's Christians are Lutheran).
It was its 12th Assembly since the LWF's foundation in 1947, and obviously it being 2017 and Reformation500 it was of particularly special and commemorative importance.
In the run up to this, Lutheran pastors and preachers under the age of 33 from all member churches were invited to send in their sermons on the Assembly's theme 'Liberated by God's Grace'.
It was Revd Lydia Posselt, pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, who was invited to preach at the closing worship.
In her sermon, pastor Posselt had the following striking things to say:
"I belong to Christ, and you belong to Christ, and together, we get to march in the parade led by the Holy Spirit.
This parade leads us out into the world, out to our neighbours, where the fruits of our freedom in Christ are given away to others, not hoarded or stored up for our own benefit." -end quote.
How wonderfully it ties in with our readings today of Jesus' promise of the Spirit and Peter's description of some of the fruits of the Spirit.
When Christ ascended bodily and rejoined His Father in Heaven, there was created a space for another, an Representer, He or She non-bodily who would incorporated the divine in a personal and individual yet communal and interconnecting way.
This one-to-one and also group link -this first century Palestinian WiFi if you will- leads, nourishes, builds up; it offers courage, joy and faith; in the Church it works through Word and Sacrament; and rolls downs like righteousness, healing and forgiveness, an everlasting stream of respect, human rights and religious freedom.
The Spirit was there at creation, in Christ's salvific existence and work, and still roars in the Abba-Father cry of each person; unbound by circumstance, time and space.
Because of this, He-She-It can't be claimed nor pinned down by any particular group for their own means, their own agendas, their own exclusive claims of judgemental superiority.
And we're all called to march along, limp along, roll along, dance along, carry the dying and the dead along, and be carried!
We're all called to claim this promise, to cling to it!
The Spirit is the seal that our Lord is truly a resurrected Lord; Jesus lives, so we live, so others live, so we live for them.
The Spirit is the seal that God truly is love; Jesus loves, so we love, are called to love our neighbours as ourselves.
However,
Hands up if, even with the Spirit's invigorating empowerment, you find this more often than not a sheer impossible task!
Hands up if even with the Spirit's constant creative ways to overcome any obstacle, you crawl rather than march.
Because let's face it, a great many people are very often just not likeable, let alone lovable!
Sometimes it even seems that some of them -them including us!- just don't seem willing to even make the slightest effort.
The Galop Hate Crime Report of 2016 states that 4 in 5 LGBT people in the UK experienced hate crime last year, of which 1 in 4 suffered physical assault, 3 in 4 verbal abuse, 1 in 3 were threatened, 1 in 3 were targeted online, and 1 in 10 subjected to sexual violence.
Shocking facts, sad facts.
Jesus wept!
So, no need for a Gay Pride or for an International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia, is there!? Really!?
How to love, how to live when others for no scientific and ethical reason whatsoever deny you your place in the parade, target you, threaten your job, your house, your rightful place among family and friends, even your church and your god!?
How not to abandon the parade altogether!?
Can there truly be comfort in the knowledge that our Lord suffered first, was abused and denied and spat upon and killed first!?
Is the knowledge that the Spirit will keep the candle, the flame, burning and will keep marching on, enough!?
Thursday is Ascension Day, Sunday next Pentecost; very important feast days, too often neglected.
Nonetheless, they should be up there with Christmas and Easter, even if we don't always really know what to do with them, if they're not as physical and as tangible, not as easily pinned down, because their messages are just as important, just as inspiring, vital.
They're festivals that assure us that when the material, that wonderfully and equally created, that bodily is under attack, under threat, discarded, the Spirit will keep rebuilding, will keep creating, indiscriminate, unfettered, alway there, always cheeky, always marching.
And we can and must march with Her; we've got every God-given right to do so, not just for our neighbours but also for ourselves! We cling to the promise!
When there's hatred and bias perhaps-maybe-somehow there's also an inkling of hope in the human knowledge and the theological fact that we're included in the marching orders; in this call from the Spirit we owe it to ourselves just as much as to others.
In Windhoek, Namibia, at the end of the concluding service, the newly elected and installed LWF President, Archbishop Musa Panti Filibus from Nigeria, declared the 12th Assembly of the Lutheran World Federation over, and offered this blessing and mission to all participants for their work ahead:
“Go to the north, to the south, to the east, and to the west and proclaim freedom, and live the gift of God’s grace.
Go forth into the world in peace.
Hold fast to that which is good.
Give to no one evil for evil.
Support the weak.
Comfort the afflicted.
Confront the principalities and powers.
Strive for justice.
And may our gracious God, who broods over Creation as a mother over her children, bless and keep us all.”
Amen.