God’s grace, peace
and mercy be with you. … My sermon is entitled “What’s New?” and my focus is all
three readings. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, the psalmist wrote, “I
rejoiced when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’”[1]
Now that our feet are within your gates, we rejoice to hear your Word. As we
listen, may your Spirit enlighten our minds and move our hearts to love deeply
as Jesus loved. This we pray to you, Most Holy Trinity. Amen.
You probably know
by now that we are having a new house built. If you didn’t, now you know. Our
move-in date is May 19th. That said, everyone loves new things, and
there are many new things about the construction of our new home that were not
around in 1955, when my dad built his. From poured concrete walls and prebuilt
trusses to heat pumps and luxury vinyl flooring.
Not long ago,
Popular Mechanics composed a list of the most significant scientific and
technological inventions since 1954.[2] The list includes things
we use at work or at home: microwave ovens, iPhones, cordless tools, integrated
circuits, communications satellites, email, Bluetooth, Facebook and more. There
have been inventions that have saved or improved millions of lives: the polio
vaccine, Kevlar, high yield rice and Prozac to name a few. And if you think
you’re too old to invent life-changing technology, listen to this: In 1980 John
Bannister Goodenough invented the cobalt-oxide cathode, the battery that
supplies your laptops and cell phones. At the time, Goodenough was a mere 94
years old.
Why all this talk
about what’s new? Because while every new invention does not benefit humanity,
such as computer viruses and worms, many new ideas do improve and change lives.
With that, we look at what was new in Acts, John, 1st John and the
Church today.
First, Acts. The
story of Peter and Cornelius is one of the most remarkable in the Book of
Acts—and worth reading in its entirety. Yet none of it would have happened if
these two men had not been open to the possibility of God doing something new.
Peter, a devout
Jew, had never eaten anything unclean. When God gave him a vision asking him to
eat a forbidden animal, Peter’s first reaction was to recoil in horror. But
when three men arrived asking him to come to Cornelius’ house, Peter realized
what the vision meant. Despite the strict separation between Gentile and Jew
that had been practiced for centuries, God wanted him to go.
Cornelius was a
“God-fearer,” meaning he was a Gentile who worshipped the God of Israel. His
openness to God had been nurtured through years of following the Lord. So, when
an angel appeared to him and told him to send for Peter, he obeyed. Then as
Peter was proclaiming the gospel, Cornelius received the Holy Spirit and spoke
in tongues.
Second, John. Throughout
John’s Gospel, the Evangelist affirms that loving words and deeds make God
present. In the prologue (chapter one) the Father told the Son the whole truth
of existence before sending him to earth. The Son is the only one who knows the
Father and is the only one who has heard the whole truth. The possession of
this truth makes the Son a perfect image of the Father. As this Sunday’s Gospel
reveals, Jesus gave us the ability to become such an image for he told the
disciples everything the Father had told him.
Today, the
monologue that started last week with the reading of the vine and the branches
continues. John used two Greek words to describe love: agapaõ and phileõ
which for him are synonymous and mean “to love”.
Here’s what’s new
in our Gospel. Jesus made a sharp distinction between servants and friends:
“those whom one loves.” In the Old Testament, Moses, Joshua, and David were
called servants of Yahweh; only Abraham was called a friend of God. Hence, love
is the essential word of today’s reading. The mutual love of the Father and the
Son provides the foundation for both Jesus’ love for his disciples, and the
love that he commands the disciples to have for one another. It is this love
that will be the source of the disciples’ joy and the condition of their
intimate friendship with the Lord.
In verses 12-13,
Jesus focused attention upon one specific commandment, one specific way disciples
were to render obedience to Him: the commandment to practice brotherly love. This
too is new! And what does this brotherly love look like? What form does it
take? It is sacrificial love patterned after the Lord’s own love for his
disciples and us.
Finally, 1st
John. This is a pastoral letter to churches in conflict. It was written to
address the conflict and to prevent its spread. The problems in the churches
were caused by false teachers who left the church. These false teachers were
haughty and unloving. They denied the deity of Jesus and His Incarnation. They
also claimed not to be sinners. They were precursors of the Gnostic heretics
who plagued the second century Church. These false teachers remained
influential and persuaded new believers to accept their heretical teachings.
In the first words
of our chapter, “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been
born of God,” John directly refuted the false teachers who, because they
taught that the spiritual is good but the material is bad – which is dualism.
In short, they did not accept the deity of Jesus the man. They did not accept
that Jesus is the Christ. They did not accept that Jesus the man was “born of
God.” So, throughout his Letter, John counterpunched the heretical teachings of
the dualists.
Here, he gave a
solid reason why anyone who loves the Father will also love Christian brothers
and sisters, who are God’s children. Our heavenly Father loves His children more
than any earthly father loves his children. If we have any love for the Father,
we need to honor his love for his children by sharing his love for them. This
too refuted the attitude of the haughty false teachers, who looked with disdain
on those who did not share their spiritual vision of “true Christians”.
Now, there is much
more that I can say about our readings, but, in short, you get the point. To
sum up our readings, we have something new in Acts, John and 1st
John. This is especially clear in Acts. The Holy Spirit was already at work in
Cornelius’s household before Peter arrived to share the Gospel and offer
baptism. Peter's preaching helped Cornelius and his family to put words to
their experience of God’s presence. Peter’s actions allowed the Spirit, which
had been working in subtle ways, to become fully manifest.
To conclude, disciples
today must continue the same task. The Spirit fills the world, and many feel
the presence of God but lack the words to understand what God is doing. We who
know Christ must, like Peter, help others understand their experience. We can
do that only when we live by the Gospel that Jesus learned from the Father and
passed on to us. We make the risen Christ present whenever we seek out the
world’s broken places and, trusting in the Spirit already at work, speak of the
love of God. Then we are rightly called his friends.
How can we be open
to the Lord and whatever “new things” he may want to do through us? First, like
Peter and Cornelius, we need to stay close to God in prayer. Because of their
faithfulness, God was able to speak to both men and show them how he wanted to
bring salvation to the Gentiles. Second, we should be careful not to place
limits on God. Peter had to trust God with a new and different way of living
his faith. Cornelius had to be open to receiving new life in the Spirit through
Baptism.
Many people
experience God at work in the world, but they lack the words to understand that
experience. Cornelius already encountered the Spirit before he was baptized.
Peter gave him the words he needed to understand this encounter. In this, Peter
was living out the resurrection. He became an icon of the risen Christ as he
shared his knowledge of the loving work of God. So, how do you make Christ’s
love present? What loving words can you speak to help others understand God’s
presence? Are you open to anything God might ask of you?
Today, pray for
the grace to see where you might have drawn a line in the sand that you have
asked God not to cross. God can, and will, use you—as long as you remain open
to him. Our life in Christ manifested in our love for him and for others, shows
that we are friends of Christ today, living in imitation of him in the world.
Love for our
brothers and sisters in Christ may mean the sacrifice of our time, our comfort,
our personal interests, plans and desires, our resources and so on. Love for
our brothers and sisters in Christ may mean the sacrifice of our pride, our wounded
spirit, our sense of moral indignation against offenses perpetrated against us
as we extend forgiveness to those who have wronged us.
And although my
focus today is on what’s new, we turn to something old. We turn to a sermon
that is 1700 years old by one of the Church Fathers, Augustine. In a sermon on
Psalm 149, Augustine recited the first verse of the psalm and then said this: “‘Sing
to the Lord a new song; his praise is in the assembly of the saints.’ We
are urged to sing a new song to the Lord, as new men who have learned a new
song. A song is a thing of joy; more profoundly, it is a thing of love. Anyone
who has learned to love the new life has learned to sing a new song, and the
new song reminds us of our new life. The new man, the new song, the new
covenant, all belong to the one kingdom of God, and so the new man will sing a
new song and will belong to the new covenant.
There
is not one who does not love something, but the question is, what to love. The
psalms do not tell us not to love, but to choose the object of our love. But
how can we choose unless we are first chosen? We cannot love unless someone has
loved us first. Listen to the apostle John: We love him, because he
first loved us. The source of man’s love for God can only be found in the
fact that God loved him first. He has given us himself as the object of our
love, and he has also given us its source. What this source is you may learn
more clearly from the apostle Paul who tells us: The love of God has
been poured into our hearts. This love is not something we generate
ourselves; it comes to us through the Holy Spirit who has been given to
us.”
Augustine
continued to exhort and encourage Christian believers before concluding his
sermon with these words. “Now it is your unquestioned desire to sing of him
whom you love, but you ask me how to sing his praises. You have heard the
words: Sing to the Lord a new song, and you wish to know what
praises to sing. The answer is: His praise is in the assembly of the
saints; it is in the singers themselves. If you desire to praise him,
then live what you express. Live good lives, and you yourselves will be his
praise.”
My friends, today,
perhaps you have learned something new. Perhaps not. Perhaps my sermon has not
inspired you as Augustine inspired Christians of the 4th century, as
Luther of the 16th century, as Billy Graham or John Paul II of the
20th century. If not, then perhaps your prayer today will include me
as one called to preach God’s Word to you. Do that, and when you do may the
peace of God that surpasses all understanding keep your minds and hearts on
Christ Jesus. Amen.
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