Sermon for the Seventh Sunday of Easter

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on June 1, 2014
Preaching texts: Acts 1:6-14, John 17:1-11

“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”

“The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.”

All these quotes, both well known or not, point to one simple reality: human beings are painfully short-sighted. We do not often think through the full consequences of our actions and even in those times when we do we often don’t care. We demand a simplified reality and when life offers only complexity instead, we stuff our head in the sand and pretend otherwise. We all live as though we are going to die tomorrow and at the rate we’re going, we just might.

But what we do has its impacts on everything around us. We smoke today, more interested in the nicotine buzz than in the damage we do to our lungs. We like paying low taxes, heedless of bridges falling down and roads falling apart because there is no money to fix them. We like our energy cheap, blissfully and often deliberately ignorant of the damage we’re doing through pollution from fossil fuels. I like paying $5 for a t-shirt, but please don’t tell me it was made by children working in a sweatshop in virtual slavery.

But we are facing a moment of reckoning in our world today. The time to pay the piper has come and we see it on the news. Economic and political turmoil around the world. Environmental catastrophe. Our health plagued by the consequences of excess. And the only people we have to blame for this is ourselves. We did this. We did it, because we chose what was easy and convenient over what was hard and right.

So what does all this have to do with our lessons today?

“Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” The disciples ask Jesus. A question sincerely asked, but also a good example of humans being painfully short-sighted and selfish. The disciples on the mountain of the ascension want what’s easy. They want what’s convenient. They want the glory days again. They want things to be as they once were, with them in charge.

Look at what they’re asking. “Are you going to restore the kingdom?” A fundamentally political question that ignores the fact that Jesus has been a completely apolitical figure. His failure, I’ve argued, to be political is a big part of what got him killed on the cross; he refused to “restore the kingdom” on Palm Sunday and the crowd turned on him. The disciples haven’t learned. This isn’t about them. It isn’t about what they want.

Because what they want won’t help the world. What they want won’t bring people to faith. What they want won’t save anybody, not even themselves. The kingdom restored? That’s not happening.

It’s the wrong question. It’s the wrong question because it’s too narrow. Too small. The disciples are begging for the return of King David and his kingdom. But that period in history was only part of a much larger and much grander scheme.

You see, when God came to Abraham, he made him a promise, a covenant. Abraham’s descendants were to be a chosen people, chosen for a purpose, for from them would come a blessing that would be for all the peoples of the Earth. That’s the Old Covenant at its core, a covenant in which King David played but a small part. But what matters is the promise: a blessing for all, not just for a few.

The disciples seemed to have missed that somewhere. But Jesus didn’t come to resurrect David. He didn’t come to bring back a relic of history. He didn’t come back to establish someone else’s kingdom. He came to establish his own, the one promised through the ancient covenants..  It’s the kingdom of God that’s coming. And the time for that is not yet.

The time is not yet in part because we’re not ready for it. The disciples prove that with their question. We here today are only somewhat better and, in some ways, we’re probably worse. Human progress has never been a smooth process. It lurches. It stumbles. It sometimes backtracks. We’re not ready for the kingdom either. Not yet.

But what will it look like when we are? For that, we can look to Jesus’ own words in his High Priestly Prayer in John’s Gospel. “May they be one, as we are one.” But what does that mean? It’s a call for unity, but do not misunderstand it. It is not a call for a unity of conformity, where we all think, look, and believe alike. It’s a call for a unity of compassion. It’s a call for us to think and feel about other people the way God does. Where we stop worrying about ourselves and devote our energies to the care of others.

Now imagine for a moment what that would look like. And don’t think small, think big. Imagine not driving your car or not powering your house because it creates pollution that hurts our world. How about giving up our bad health habits so that those who love us can have us around longer? How about paying more for products and services from business and government so other people can have a decent quality of life, instead of starvation wages and deteriorating infrastructure?

Too big? Well, probably. I don’t think I could buy into all that, but I did also say we’re not ready yet. But this plague of selfish blindness has to end. Our world is on the brink because we’ve turned inward and cared only for ourselves and what we can get right here, right now. But Jesus’ prayer for us is not “let them grab all they can. The one who dies with the most wins.” No, it’s “may they be one.”

Patriots are often fond of reminding us that “freedom isn’t free” and they’re right. Many of the benefits of our society have a steep price, the sacrifice of those many brave men and women who won them for us. But Christian freedom isn’t free either. Our liberation from sin and death came at a steep cost to our God; it came at the death of his son. To live our lives in selfish ignorance and apathy, with no care for what our actions have upon others, cheapens greatly what Christ did for us. It’s not about us, our wishes, our selfish desires. It’s long past time we stopped pretending it was.

No, it’s about them. It’s about the person next to you. The person on the street. The person half a world away. It’s about them. That’s where our energies are meant to go, our focus meant to be.

But if no one’s looking out for me, what then? I can hear that objection in each of your minds. But that’s small thinking. If you’re looking out for others, and if everyone else is looking out for others, what we discover is that it’s not “no one’s looking out for me,” it’s that everyone is. The person next to you. The person on the street. The person half a world away. You’re in their hands.

May that be one, as we are one. My friends, that’s what it looks like. And I’ll admit it sounds utopian. It sounds idealistic. It sounds impossible. But it’s the world our savior came to give to us. It’s the world his father promised to Abraham and the chosen. It’s the world that we could get maybe just a bit closer to, by choosing to do what is right for others instead of what is right for us alone. Amen.