What's New?

 

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.’” 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.

If you had the chance to list of the most significant scientific and technological inventions over the past century, you might include things we use at work or at home: microwave ovens, iPhones, cordless tools, integrated circuits, communications satellites, email, Bluetooth, social media and more. There have been inventions that have saved or improved millions of lives: the polio vaccine, Kevlar, high yield rice and robotics 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 viruses and worms, many new ideas do improve and change lives. With that, we look at what was new in Acts, John, 1^st 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, 1^st 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 1^st 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, or maybe do not consider that encounter with one’s spouse, in-law or neighbor was somehow directed by God. Cornelius already encountered the Spirit before he was baptized, and Peter gave him the words he needed to understand this encounter. In this way, Peter was living out the resurrection. Peter 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?

Over the past four years, we have seen people return to Mt. Olive. We’ve witnessed men and women stepping into leadership roles, taking responsibility for our worship space and our outdoor space. We’ve welcomed new members and initiated new activities. We have witnessed these things and realize that all of it is because of the power of our Triune God at work in our lives. This is part of what happens when people turn their lives to Jesus. Until we turn our lives completely to Jesus, we may think that the credit belongs to a person or human nature.

If you have not turned your life over to Jesus, pray each day 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 4^th century, as Luther of the 16^th century, as Billy Graham or John Paul II of the 20^th 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.