The Rev. Virginia W. Nagel
Ephphatha Parish of the Deaf
Episcopal Diocese of Central NY
Today's readings give us two very important lessons.
The first lesson is given to us in the reading from Acts. Paul and Barnabas had been preaching in Lystra, a city of Greece. There was a crippled man there, and he was listening carefully to what they said about Jesus. Paul saw in the man's face that he had been convinced that Jesus is the Son of God, and so he told the man to get up and walk. The man's faith was strong enough to let him do that. The crowds became so impressed that they decided that Paul and Barnabas were gods come down to earth...you remember that the Greeks had many, many gods to whom they prayed. Of course, those gods were not real gods. They had no real power. That's how you tell the difference between the real, powerful, true God and the gods that people make up to believe in. The crowd wanted to sacrifice animals to Paul and Barnabas and treat them as gods, and the two apostles had a hard time escaping from the crowd. They said again and again that it was not them who had healed the man, but the power of Jesus who had shared his power with them and acted through them. But the crowds did not believe it. Finally Paul and Barnabas escaped, and left the city, and went on their way.
When we see or hear about someone doing a wonderful thing, or just an exciting thing, we people have a habit of treating that person as a god, just as the crowd in Lystra did. Look at history. Think about the ticker-tape parades we give for the team that wins the World Series. Think about how sharply divided people are about the president....some folks think of him as being able to do no wrong, in fact, as a god, while others see him as a human who can and does make mistakes. Think about athletes, movie stars, rock singers who are treated almost as gods by the crowds around them. Of course, they are not God. They are not even "gods-with-a-small-G." They are just people, like you and me. But some people who are treated like gods enjoy the fame and the praise and the power, and start behaving as if they themselves believed that they were better than other folks, high up there with God. We have plenty of examples in history...Hitler, Stalin, other dictators, some
politicians, some rich folks, some religious leaders...remember James Jones who got all 3,000 of the people who believed in him, to drink poisoned Kool-Aid? So one lesson we can learn from this reading is not to allow ourselves to think of or see other people as gods. The Ten Commandments say clearly: You shall have no other God except ME, the one true God. We have to be careful not to make gods for ourselves! If we do, we are making idols, and there is a Commandment telling us not to make idols, too.
The other important lesson is in the Gospel reading. Jesus said, Whoever loves me will obey my teaching. My Father (who is God) will love that person, and my Father and I will come and live with that person. Whoever does not love me does not obey my teaching. The teaching you have heard from me is not mine. It comes from the Father, God, who sent me.
Now, many people have grown up believing that we obey God, or obey Jesus' teaching, out of fear. They think we obey those teachings so that we will be safe from going to Hell. And that is simply NOT what Jesus said. Jesus said that if we love him, we will obey his teaching. We obey out of love, not out of fear. That is very important for us to remember.
We are accepted as God's children because God loves us. Being accepted as God's child is a grace. That word grace means a free gift, something given to us, something we cannot earn or deserve by ourselves. So, being made right with God and accepted into his family is something we could never earn or deserve, no matter how strict we are about keeping God's Law, no matter how perfectly we obey Jesus' teaching. We still cannot earn that right to be a child of God. It always comes to us as God's gift of love. You know how love is: God loves us so we love him back, so we WANT to obey just to make him happy. It's like Mom and the kids. No matter how naughty the kids are, how much trouble they make, Mom loves them, and after years and years of loving, they understand this and love her back. They could never earn her love. They really don't deserve it because they have made so much trouble and work and worry for her. But her love to them is a free gift, and it leads to them learning to love her, and finally obeying because they love....and when they grow up, they do the same with their own kids....keep on loving even when the kids don't deserve it, until finally the kids start loving back, and behaving that way. So...our acceptance into God's family, God's forgiveness for all our sins, God's salvation given to us through Jesus, is all a wonderful gift that we could never get for ourselves. We all need to remember that we do not obey to earn God's love. We obey because he loved us first, and we learned to love him back.
Thursday will be Ascension Day, the time we remember Jesus' going up into heaven, going home to God. The time between Easter and Ascension Day was very important to Jesus and the disciples. Jesus used this time to remind them of all the things he had taught them, because he knew they needed to be clear about these things if they were going to build a church for him. He wasn't thinking about church buildings, but a church built up of people whom the disciples would teach to love God and to obey the teachings of Jesus. We are part of that church, and if you have been coming to church regularly since Easter, you have heard many of the most important things Jesus taught the disciples, taught to us again. We, also, need a reminder or a refresher course, just as Peter, James, John and all the rest did.
Like them, we need to be clear about what we believe and why we believe it. Like them, we need to be aware of the traps we could fall into, traps set by the Devil, and one of those traps is that we can be tempted to make idols or gods out of other people or things. Another trap is the idea of thinking we have to earn heaven by obeying God, instead of accepting God's gift of love and forgiveness as a grace that we could not possibly get for ourselves.
On Thursday, Jesus' ascension into heaven is remembered, and we put out the fire on the big Easter or Paschal Candle. We can no longer see Jesus' presence with the eyes of our body, but we have his promise: Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the world. Amen.
<
