Acts 2:14a, 22-32
Psalm 111
1 Peter 1:3-9
JOHN 20:19-31
“As the Father has
sent me, so I send you.”
Jesus said to his
disciples, “’Peace be with you. As the
Father has sent me, so I send you.’”
He hardly gave them
time to catch their breaths after their shock and delight at his resurrection,
didn’t he? Just that morning, Mary
Magdalene had come running from the tomb to tell the guys that Jesus was alive,
and in the very incident described in this morning’s Gospel, that evening Jesus
appeared to the men for the first time.
“Appeared” may be the wrong word; Jesus was real and solid enough,
though he had materialized before their eyes out of thin air inside a locked
room. You’d think Jesus would at least
have sat down to supper with them before he said, “Now here’s what I want you
to do next.”
But Jesus, newly
raised from the dead, fresh from his victory over sin on the cross and over
death itself on Easter Day, was already focused on The Next Big Thing.
And do you know
what that was?
US.
Jesus didn’t just
have in mind the people in the room at that moment when he said, “As the Father
has sent me, so I send you.” He had in
mind all who did or would call
themselves his followers.
Christ sent his
disciples out to preach the Good News of salvation and new life in Christ to a
world accustomed to worshipping gods and goddesses who were as fickle and moody
and prone to playing favorites as any mortal human being. He sent his disciples out into a world in
which other people worshipped whatever new cult blew into town that week, or
worshipped wealth and power, or “wisdom” of a type too refined for any but an
elite, and in which everyone was
commanded to worship the Emperor.
Christ sent his
disciples out to preach the Good News of God’s transforming love in a world in
which most peoples’ lives were indeed, in Thomas Hobbes’ words, “nasty, brutish
and short”, in which women were (at best) second class and children were less
than that, and in which the popular entertainment of the day involved watching
gladiators fighting to the death, or watching members of unpopular minority
groups get thrown to the lions.
Christ sent his
followers out to be his ambassadors to a world which needed to be transformed
by those who sought to know and follow the will of the one true God, that all people are due respect, care,
justice and honor, that torture and brutality are unacceptable, that earthly
rulers and material temptations need places not at the center of peoples’
lives, and that all people can have hope for personal salvation by faith in the
One True God.
All this was
radical in ancient times (and most of it still is). For example, I think we’re all familiar with the elaborate tombs
which the pharaohs of ancient Egypt had, with their depictions of a serene and
plentiful after-life? Early ancient
Egyptians believed in that afterlife, and built tombs, for an elite. You know what happened to your body in Old
Kingdom Egypt if you were an ordinary working stiff? It got fed to the crocodiles in the Nile. So the idea that everyone has a chance for eternal salvation was pretty attractive
to people who were used to the same kind of “class” barriers in the after-life
as they experienced in this life.
Well, the world
has changed since the First Century, but I think that there is still unfinished
business to take care of.
Who do you think
Christ has in mind to take care of it?
If not
Christians, then who?
In early 5th
Century Ireland, the practice of infanticide – the murder of babies – was
widespread, as was slavery. There were
no Christians in Ireland at the time.
God sent one Christian,
himself a former slave, who started the conversion of the entire land to Christianity
which also meant, within his lifetime or shortly thereafter, the elimination of
both despicable practices from his adopted homeland. These practices were unacceptable, he said, “So I do not accept
them.” Anyone who wants to be a
Christian needs to understand that eliminating these is part of the
package. This man had heard the word,
“As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
His name was Patrick.
Mid-19th
Century Boston had not a single nursing home which would accept patients who
had tuberculosis, and not a single
nursing home which would accept any black people at all. This is unacceptable, said some women newly
arrived from England. “Oh, what can
women do” some people probably said.
Well, these nuns – the Sisters of St. Margaret of the Episcopal Church –
started a nursing home which – you guessed it – took black people with
tuberculosis. The old situation was
unacceptable, so they did not accept it.
Other nuns, also
trained as nurses, also came to Boston and found enormous cynicism about
medical care for children. “Why
bother?” some people said, “any sick child is just going to die. That’s just the way it is.” Did you know that in the Middle Ages
children under five were not counted in
the census, because child mortality rates were so high people thought it wasn’t
worth counting them until they had lived five years? Can you imagine being a parent in a society with such an
attitude? And it was a long time after
the Middle Ages before the attitude really changed.
But those who
truly followed a Savior who said “Let the children come to me and do not hinder
them, for to such as these belongs the Kingdom of God” such a situation and
attitude would be unacceptable. So they did not accept it. And so began Children’s Hospital in Boston, now
the greatest children’s hospital in New England.
In the same
century some people thought that all mental illnesses were incurable and that
alcoholism was a “moral failing”, not a disease which affects a person
medically, spiritually, emotionally and relationally.
Others found such
attitudes unacceptable. So they did not accept them. Out of that progressive thinking came McLean
Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, now the psychiatric and addiction treatment
wing of Massachusetts General Hospital. In 1981-84, I served as a chaplain at McLean, and one of my jobs
there was to lead periodically what was called the “Religious Resources
Didactic” – a “bull session” about God and faith. I was working with people who were in a 30-day inpatient
treatment program for alcoholism, and when I walked into that building I passed
a bust of one of the early benefactors of the hospital who helped make treatment possible and for whom that
building was named. He was William
Appleton, and he was my great-great-great grandfather. (My name is Francis Appleton Hubbard.) So, I felt like we had both heard the word,
“As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
And that is my
segue to today, here at St. Barnabas.
For while many people – not all, but many people – finally recognize
that alcoholism is a multi-faceted disease,
all too many people think it is “someone else’s problem,” and even more
think that addiction in other countries is definitely
“someone else’s problem.”
For us as
Christians, such an attitude is unacceptable,
so we do not accept it.
And because all Christians are
sent by Christ to be on mission in the world, and because over 99 ˝ % of all
Christians are not ordained, it is fitting that today we will be commissioning
three of our lay members as missioners to one of those countries too many
people in this country would ignore to bring the Good News of God’s healing and
transforming power to people who are serving other people who otherwise might die as a result of these addictions.
Terry Webb, Noel
Ilogu and Mary Dashiell go to Kenya this week to share life-saving knowledge of
the multi-faceted nature of addictive diseases and of the multi-faceted nature
of Recovery from addiction, and of prevention.
They go with extra urgency now, because the “flames” of the A.I.D.S.
epidemic in Africa are being fed by the “gasoline” of addiction and the
promiscuous behavior it encourages.
If we remove the
“gasoline” of addiction, we have a chance to contain the “flames” of the
A.I.D.S. epidemic. If we do not, even more millions of children will be
orphans than have become so already, because unlike many epidemics,
H.I.V./A.I.D.S. does not kill primarily the very young or the very old, but
people in the prime of life who are supporting
and caring for the very young and the very old, with devastating
consequences for society.
Ignoring the
emergency is unacceptable. Considering the people to be not worth
saving is unacceptable. Writing off the situation as hopeless is
unacceptable. We are Christians, so when faced with an unacceptable
situation (congregation joins in!) we do not accept it. All this is because “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,
that whoever believes in him may not perish but may have everlasting
life.” The world – not just “me” or “me
and you” or “this neighborhood” but “God so loved the world.”
But it is not
just Noel, Mary and Terry who are going on mission. All of us are on
mission. By our prayers we will lift
them up and offer them our love and spiritual support during their two weeks in
Kenya even as our contributions have helped make it possible for them to go
there and share their hard-earned, life-saving knowledge, and to learn from their hosts in a profound way. All of us are on mission also because
millions of people here on this side of the globe need to hear the
Good News of Christ’s personal love for each person, his offer of healing and
transformation, his stand for justice and dignity for all people, his
invitation to hope for the ultimate healing of heaven through faith in him.
Who is sent by Jesus Christ to bear this Good News? We all are.
How will anyone know how profound Easter is unless those who really know
and believe it share that news? How
will those who are starving for Good News in their lives be fed if not by those
who have already received the Good news of Jesus Christ?
We are sent by Christ. All
of us. We are all good enough to do
something to share God’s love and
new life with others, to make this Easter Season a new dawn of hope in
someone’s life.
Jesus said, “As
the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
The Rev. Francis A.
Hubbard
St. Barnabas Episcopal
Church
Monmouth Junction, New
Jersey
April 3, 2005