ACTS 16:16-34

PSALM 68:1-20

REVELATION 22:12-14,16-17,20

JOHN 17:20-26

Sermon – May 23, 2004

“The Acts of the Apostles” could make quite an adventure movie. You have in it heroes and heroines, dramatic speeches, mob violence, thrilling rescues, hairs-breadth escapes, courageous witnessing, healings, spectacular conversions, confrontations with the mightiest empire in the world, travels in exotic places, deep friendships, quarrels, important summit meetings, shipwrecks, miracles, and filling it all, the saga of a bold new set of beliefs infiltrating an anxious, needy but skeptical and often hostile world. Mel Gibson, call your office!

The story of the Acts of the Apostles is the story of the invasion of the western world by the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ. Those born in today’s western world often forget that Christianity is, in its roots, a Middle Eastern faith, just as those who were born in North America and Europe also are often ignorant of the fact that a majority of active Christians today do not live in Europe and North America, but in the Global South, especially Africa and Latin America.

In between Christianity’s Middle Eastern birth and its 21^st Century development as predominately a “Third World” faith was our faith’s journey into Europe and all that happened as a result. The decisive part of that was the presentation to and acceptance of faith in Jesus Christ by people who had been pagans – believers in many gods – and the transformation of values, incomplete as it has so far been, that took place as a consequence.

Today’s dramatic reading from Acts describes an important “skirmish” in the non-violent conversion of Europe by the faith: the experience of Paul and Silas in Philippi of Macedonia, where they heal a slave, are attacked by her owner as being “bad for business”, are the victims of an anti-Semitic mob and an official whipping by Roman authorities as disturbers of the peace and are jailed. While in jail they sing hymns and pray, are miraculously delivered from their chains, stay in jail and persuade their jailer not to commit “hari-kari”, and then convert and baptize him and his family – the first example, incidentally, of baptism without regard to the age of the converts.

A week from Wednesday, I will be in Philippi of Macedonia.

In Philippi a Christian community was formed to which Paul later wrote his “Letter to the Philippians.” His letters to the Thessalonians and to the Corinthians also went to Greek churches, new hotbeds of this new faith which would sweep across Europe by giving people hope, personal and societal transformation and community by the power of the One True God as revealed in Jesus Christ.

Hope, personal and societal transformation and community continue to be needed by people today, East and West, North and South. Christianity first bridged chasms of culture, language and previous religious experience, however, in the journeys described in the Acts of the Apostles to what are now Syria, Cyprus, Turkey and Greece.

So it is that I chose to spend two weeks of my Sabbatical participating in a Study Tour called “St. Paul in Greece”, where I hope to deepen my understanding of how this extraordinary peaceful invasion of faith happened, and what we can learn from it for me, for this parish and for the Church at large today. For this parish as well as the Church at large was a vocation from God to bridge chasms of culture, language and previous religious experience (as well as many other kinds of diversity) as part of binding us and all people together in the love of God.

The Book of Revelation, if you can put the perplexing parts and the gruesome parts in perspective and focus on the main point, is a book about hope. John the seer (not the same as John the disciple) wrote the Book of Revelation in response to a series of dramatic revelations – visionary experiences – he received from Jesus Christ while detained (due to persecution) on the Island of Patmos, in the Aegean Sea between Greece and Turkey. This morning’s reading is the grand finale of the Book. These words were first shared with Christians who were experiencing severe persecution and needed assurance of God’s ultimate victory.

So, let’s remember that there is a two-word summary of this very complex and mysterious book of the Bible: Jesus wins. Whatever horrors are happening now, however much the righteous may be suffering and dying, ultimately, Jesus wins. “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end,” says Christ. This inspired the designer of our stained glass window to include the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet in the design (point out), which links us to Christ in another tangible way here and also to that visionary experience on the island of Patmos.

Since it was not visited by Paul, Patmos is not on the itinerary of my study tour, but I have a couple of days in Greece after the course is over and hope to go there.

In today’s Gospel, another excerpt from Jesus’ discourse to his disciples at the Last Supper, he prays for unity among all the faithful throughout succeeding centuries. He also prays that all the faithful may experience the indwelling of God and unity “so that the world may believe in Christ and so that the world may know that God loves all the world’s people.”

This is a wondrous commission not just to the disciples then and there present or to the leaders of the Christian church since, but to all Christians. How do we, by our words and actions, help others to believe in Christ and to know that God loves them? Do our divisions or ideological battles as Christians hinder people from believing, or knowing, or experiencing God’s love?

The Study Tour I am going on is sponsored by St. George’s College, Jerusalem, an Anglican center in the Holy Land which welcomes Christians from many different traditions. Christians are a tiny minority in the Holy Land and Palestinians are a minority in Israel (though of course whether East Jerusalem is in Israel or not depends on whether you ask an Israeli or a Palestinian), so the people of St. George’s are used to being among the few Christians that people know, and among the few Palestinians that other Christians know.

Ten years ago this summer I participated in a comprehensive study tour of the Holy Land based at St. George’s. We had 40 students from five continents (including the countries of Britain, Uganda, Tanzania, South Africa, Australia, the Philippines, Japan, Canada and the U.S.) and several different Christian traditions, including Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Lutheran, Anglican and Protestant. On several occasions we shared the Eucharist together, feeding each other with Christ’s Body and Blood despite our official differences, and feeding each other with our wisdom and life experiences as well.

And that’s just two weeks of my sabbatical.

There will be time for rest – much needed! – and retreat and prayer, including a week with Elda in a cottage on the Maine coast. And then, I will spend the last three weeks of July in Evanston, Illinois at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, starting a Doctor of Ministry degree in Congregational Development.

Part of me wants to say that I’m starting this doctorate because, after nearly 20 years of helping St. Barnabas develop as a congregation, it’s about time I learned what I was doing! Really, I want to reflect on and integrate what we have learned here so far with the best academic research and practical learning in this field in the Episcopal Church today, to benefit me, this parish, and the church at large.

And then, Elda, Tom and I will have vacation, and I’ll see you all again on August 29.

In the meantime, though, the vocation of St. Barnabas Church continues unabated, because 99½% of the church is YOU. We, all of us, have a vocation to experience hope, personal and societal transformation and community by the power of God and to invite others to experience them too! We, all of us, have a vocation to bridge the differences among people with the unifying power of the Gospel and the love of God – right here.

May the Sabbatical summer be a time both you and I discover new ways to live these vocations, while enjoying rest, refreshment and renewal from the Lord.

(The Rev.) Francis A. Hubbard

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church