Common Ground

Acts 17:22-31, John 14:15-21

There’s a prayer from the Episcopal service of Morning Prayer that I heard over and over again as a child and learned to love. It’s called the “Collect for Guidance.”

Heavenly Father, in you we live and move and have our being: We humbly pray you so to guide and govern us by your Holy Spirit, that in all the cares and occupations of our life we may not forget you, but may remember that we are ever walking in your sight; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

I loved it because of the first line, “in you we live, and move, and have our being”
That line wrapped me in the certainty of being surrounded and supported and loved by God, and gave me a sense of infinite possibility. Those words felt like soaring flight and safe harbor, both at once.

I was hooked.

I said that prayer a lot in my 20s, while I was trying to figure out who, and how, and why I was.And around that time I learned that pretty much all the language I loved in the Book of Common Prayer, in Episcopal worship, came from the psalms, Isaiah, or Paul.

It was this week, however, when I finally realized that this marvelous image of God in whom we live and move and have our being doesn’t come from the psalms, or prophets, or Paul, or anywhere else in scripture, but from some pre-Christian Greek poet.

(One of my sources attributes it to Epimenidies, six centuries before Jesus.)

We find this out in today’s story from the Acts of the Apostles, in a speech that Paul makes to a bunch of Athenian philosophers. Paul makes a point of quoting Greek poets and writers that his audience should know.  He’s establishing common ground with them,

paying attention to a truth already in them, already open to them – a truth remarkably like the one Jesus has to pound into the heads of his disciples over and over in the gospel stories we hear in this season.

We hear it today, as Jesus tells his disciples of God’s Spirit that will come and be in them, and that “you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.”

You can’t separate God from us, or us from God.  We are in one another, intimately entwined, living in the same being, being in the same life.

It’s a truth.

Jesus says it.  Repeatedly.

Centuries before that, the Greek poets knew it; knew it and said it so well that Paul can use that truth to find common ground with a bunch of Greek philosophers in a city with no history or intention of worshipping the God of Israel.

He’s using the truths of non-Christian culture to tell the truth of God.

Though as far as his audience knew, he’s just there for a good chat about new ideas. 

(It’s left out of what we read today, but Luke, the author of the Acts of the Apostles, makes a point of telling us the Athenians loved nothing better than to hear or invent new ideas.  Kind of reminds me of iPhone culture here and now.)

Paul, on the other hand, whether he’s talking about new ideas or old, never passes up a chance to talk about Jesus.

And as Paul talks to the Greek philosophers, in a place named for the Greek god of war,  he finds that common ground, a shared, acknowledged truth from the culture around them all: In God we live, and move, and have our being.

Paul’s found the yearning for God in a super-religious, curious and fast paced culture.

He’s found an altar dedicated to an unknown God, and art that tells the same truth that Jesus lived out among us.

Has that ever happened to you?

Have you ever found a place just yearning for God?

Or heard music, experienced art, or even been bombarded with advertising that tells a truth about God, found a secular song, or story, or catch-phrase that just resonates with truth you know about God?

You never know where you’ll find these things. 

For me, God grabbed me the first time my car radio played a song that was popular about a decade ago – and still gets a little play.  It’s a song never meant to refer to God at all,

whose verses are apparently about either drugs or infidelity,

but the first verse sounds to me like the living presence of the Holy Spirit:

You don't know how you met me
You don't know why
You can't turn around and say goodbye
All you know is when I'm with you
I make you free
And swim through your veins like a fish in the sea”

(Uncle Kracker, “Follow Me,” 2001)

That sure sounds like God in us to me!

You see, if as Epimenidies and Paul and Jesus all say, God is in us, and that in God we live, and move, and have our being, then there is always truth about God in throughout this world we live and move in, not just in the church.

And you and I need to find that ground to stand on, to claim those godly truths that come from the world that’s not the church, to rejoice in them, and to share them without hesitation, so that our common ground is visible, and welcoming and strong, ready for people who know the truths we share, and who might just be ready to meet Jesus.

It doesn’t work perfectly – it never does, and it didn’t for Paul. Lots of his hearers scoffed at him, despite the common ground. Others were curious, but not interested in committing. But there were some who stood on that common ground, and heard, and loved, and believed.  Some new believers who mattered so much that their names were known soon to other Christian communities, and remembered in our scripture and story.

It’s not a miracle, common ground, it just matters.

So this week,

listen with your heart and your ears to the world around us.

Listen for the truths about God that you hear in popular music, on TV, in movies, blogs, gardening catalogs….or even in advertising (it’s there!).

When you hear and see those truths, collect them; steep yourself in the worldly things that speak God’s truth to you. Because that’s how we live the rest of the church’s prayer to God in whom we live and move and have our being, that:

in all the cares and occupations of our life we may not forget God,

but may remember that we are ever walking in God’s sight.

So listen. 

Listen and hear the Godly truths in the common world,

and share. 

Play your music for others, share that holy humor or life-giving art on Facebook. Ask someone else what that holy snippet means to them. Take a chance on telling them what it means to you. 

Find your common ground, so you can invite people in;

so we can invite others to rejoice in the truths we already know,

and God will do the rest.

You Know the Way

John 14:1-14

In my life before seminary, I worked for an adventure travel company. I spent most of my time in an office, doing all the behind the scenes work to get other people to wild or distant places to have an adventure. But from time to time, I headed out to those wild or distant places myself, to serve as host and guide – often in places I myself had never been.

That’s how I ended up on the island of Crete one September day, driving a rented, stick-shift VW van – kayaks strapped to the top, luggage piled in the back, and a group of guests in the seats – looking for the town of Agia Galini, where we would spend the night.

This was before GPS navigation, and I had never seen a road map of the island, much less the route.  I had been told by a fellow guide that I should get on the road out of the town we were in, then follow signs to such-and-such town, then signs to Galini, then our inn for the night should be well-marked. 

Now, I am the queen of Google Maps (or, 15 years ago, full size paper maps and the occasional MapQuest printout), and I would never willingly get behind the wheel in unfamiliar territory without a visualized route and a paper backup.

Still, it was my job, and I had seen plenty of road signs on Crete that included English transliterations of the towns, so the signs should be easy to follow, right?  Then we came to the first turn-off sign I needed. 

All Greek.

Not an English word or alphabetical character to be seen.  I could make an educated guess, but….

“Don’t worry,” said Jesus. “Do not let your hearts be troubled. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling-places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? … And you know the way to the place where I am going.”

There was a place prepared for us in Crete that night – we all knew it, and were eager to get to an abundant dinner, and our beds with views of the Mediterranean Sea.  Nancy had gone on ahead; and she had told me where we were going, but…

Thank God for Thomas, who always says out loud what I’m quietly thinking – every time I hear this story, and during most of that particular week in Greece:
“No, we don’t know where you’re going. (It’s not like we’ve been there before!) How do you expect us to know the way??”

And Jesus answers, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life...”

That’s true.  It’s always been true.

Jesus, God-made-flesh, is always the way to what God has prepared for us, always the truth that sets us free, always the life that gives us life.

And still there are times when you wind up on an unpaved road a kilometer from the turn off, nothing in sight but a few goats and a bright green sign in unfamiliar Greek.

When this sort of thing happens to you or me, it’s not always about being literally on a road without a map. Thomas and the other disciples having this conversation with Jesus were all sitting around the dinner table in Jerusalem together, and knew exactly where they were, and probably had a decent sense of the local geography. But for you and me, just as for Jesus’ first disciples, it can often be very hard to know where Jesus is going.

It’s one thing to believe in God’s plan for the world, or your own life, but it’s quite another to really understand where that plan is going!

And sometimes we’re forced to come face to face with that awareness that we don’t know.
For the disciples, it was Jesus’ announcements of his coming death and resurrection that brought them face to face with the unknown. For us, maybe Greek road signs. Loss of a job. Graduation into a new world. Loss of a spouse, a parent. The beginning or the end of marriage. That itchy feeling that there’s something more, something I can’t quite see or understand…

This encounter with the unknown happens in joy and in sorrow, in the face of resurrection as well as in the face of death.

God has a plan, yes, Jesus has a way – but just how are we supposed to know where we’re going??

Jesus always answers that question the same way he answered Thomas: “If you know me, you know.”

He explains it in messy, complex, clauses (since the disciples were still scratching their heads): If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Creator, you’ve known Papa, God.  I am in the Father, the Father is in me. God speaks in me, I am in God; you see the wonders and the works done by God in me. Ask something from me, and the Father will glorify….

Sometimes it’s an impenetrable thicket of words, but the overall shape of that Way, that Truth, is that intimate relationship with God that happens when you really spend time with Jesus, with God-among-us, flesh and blood and holy mystery.

Jesus is asking us, telling us – in generous love and a certain amount of exasperation – that our relationship with him, our trust in him, is the simple path to God’s destination for us, and for the world.

Your trust in Jesus, your willingness to depend on that relationship even when you can’t see where he is, and the trust to ask for wonderful work in yourself and in our world,

is the way – direct or winding – to everything God has prepared for us.

Jesus is reminding, inviting, even pleading with his disciples – with us – not to wrap ourselves up in a map, or tie ourselves to the turn-by-turn certainty of a GPS;  not to worry about directions to where we’re going, but to remember that no matter where we are or what we see, we’re traveling with Jesus, whether he’s off ahead, riding shotgun, or completely invisible and silent.

And if you can trust that you do travel with Jesus, all the time, you get where God’s going, every time.

That day on Crete I didn’t think once about trusting Jesus, quite honestly, and I wasn’t entirely sure that I trusted Nancy’s directions, or my own driving. But once started, there was no other way to the place prepared for us that day, and I had a bunch of other people depending on me to get them there.

It wasn’t my mind that managed it, but somehow my hands on the wheel and feet on the pedals and my gut in the seat seemed to trust the way, despite myself, and as I slowed for the approaching turn off to wherever the road might go, I saw a sign at the new road (far too late to turn if I hadn’t trusted), proclaiming the destination in Greek, and in English.

So we came to the place prepared for us, after some uncharted distance of dirt roads, goat herds, and Greek signs. We arrived at the place prepared welcome, and light-hearted, and ready for the next adventure.

Do not let your hearts be troubled, Jesus says. Trust in God, trust also in me. 

There is a place prepared, and you know the way.

And we do.

You do.

Ice Cream Joy

Matthew 28:1-10

Can you feel the joy? Almost taste it?

That’s something I love about Easter morning – there’s a brightness and a joy to this day that lifts my heart and the corners of my lips whether I’m ready for it or not.

We’re lucky, you and I, to know that when we come to church on Easter morning we are coming to joy, because this story didn’t start out simple and predictable, or all that happy.

Nearly two thousand years ago, in the pale morning twilight, Mary Magdalene and The Other Mary went quietly to visit the tomb of their dead friend and leader, the one who had made God so present in their lives.

Fresh in their grief, all unprepared, they tumble into startling drama:

Earthquake!

Lightning!

A dazzling angel, who tosses aside the massive rock sealing the tomb, and then casually sits on it, while the governor’s best soldiers go catatonic in shock.

Special effects are marvelous in movies and TV, but they are damn scary to live through.  I imagine the Marys must be burying their faces in each other’s shoulders and waiting to die,

when the angel calls out, announces resurrection, coaxes them to view the empty tomb, and speeds them off to carry the news.

No wonder they “ran from the tomb in fear and great joy!”

Mary and The Other Mary have been tossed into a new world,

one where all the certainties are gone,

earthquake is par for the course,

death is not death,

and they – the often overlooked women – they are responsible for reshaping the minds and hearts of the other disciples with this news so that those disciples can go to Galilee to meet the risen Christ and begin a whole new life that changes the world.

Are you ready for that?

Mary and Mary surely weren’t ready,

but that’s resurrection.

That’s Easter.

That’s actually what this joy is all about.

It’s about life-giving changes that turn everything we’ve expected upside down.

Easter happens, more or less predictably, every spring in the church’s calendar.

But Easter happens, too, in our own lives and world from time to time.

An unexpected opportunity that sweeps you to a new home halfway across the country or the globe.

Babies happen.

And ice cream.

Yes, ice cream.

Anyone here like ice cream?

So you’ll understand why a particular news story caught my attention last week when it was headlined by a new and different ice cream shop.

This particular ice cream shop is in Butare, a provincial capital in Rwanda.  And this month Rwanda is marking the 20^th anniversary of the genocide that devastated that country.  For a period of just over three months in 1994, sanity and relationships shattered and death took over, as eight hundred thousand Rwandans died – mostly the minority Tutsi population, but also thousands of Hutu who opposed the genocide while its kill-or-be-killed atmosphere prevailed.

It’s a devastation I can’t truly imagine, a national death that spelled the end of everything for so very many people. More shock and grief and desolation, probably, than even the Marys carried to Jesus’ tomb.

But Easter happens in the midst of that horror, too.

More slowly and painfully than the fast special effects Matthew offers from that dawn in Jerusalem,

but after that horror comes the challenge of new life,

with all the certainties upset,

and an opportunity to change the world.

Even with ice cream.

This shop in Rwanda started from a conversation between American entrepreneurs and a Rwandan woman with a dream of assuring her struggling neighbors that life is sweet.

Now the shop - the only ice cream store in Rwanda - is staffed with women who’ve learned to promote reconciliation and bend expectations as survivors of the genocide, and are they are facing the massive cultural challenge of teaching Rwandans to eat ice cream.

One of the shop’s employees remembers her first taste of ice cream.  It reminded her of the hailstones that fall on her home, she told the reporter, rubbing her jaw as if in pain. “I wondered if it was dangerous,” she said.

That’s Easter.

Like ice cream,

it’s sweet, bright, dangerous joy that knocks down custom and expectation and requires us to reshape our lives, even our world, around abundant life.

You see, ice cream is as alien to Rwanda as resurrection is to death.

In spite of a warm climate and a general love of milk, ice cream is new and shocking.

And then there’s the fact that in Rwanda, unlike in Lombard, you can’t sit out on the corner or stroll down the block from the Dairy Queen licking at your cone. It’s a culture that simply doesn’t eat in public.  Munching in the street is rude, embarrassing, or shameful, like burdening all your neighbors with your private needs.

But you know ice cream, right?

You know the power of the simple physical joy that comes from the bright, cold sweetness – at least if you lick, and don’t chomp or gulp your way to a headache!

Ice cream joy is a gateway drug for resurrection and abundant life.

The manager of Inzozi Nziza (“Sweet Dreams”) is quoted as dreaming of the renewable joy that can come with opening Rwandan culture to this sweet, startling treat.

“We would like to change the culture,” she says, and describes eating ice cream as freedom from fear, an opportunity to enjoy the abundance of life. 

Ice cream is the bright, simple symbol that life has delight in the midst of struggle.  Ice cream cones are a symbol of a deep change, of a kind of freedom to express abundance and joy that matters tremendously in the long-lived pain and devastation that Rwandans have experienced.

For the shop’s manager, the sight someday of Rwandan teenagers walking down the street eating ice cream cones will be the sign that “real peace is here to stay.”

That’s Easter.

Resurrection.

Rwandan ice cream.

Bright simple joy that’s part and parcel of an earthquake of change,

the leading edge of lively abundance, 

a sweetness that challenges the certainties of death, but demands that every other certainty change, too.

Can you taste that, like cool milky sugar on your tongue?

Will you taste that - taste abundant, Easter life - the next time you open a pint, or lick a cone?

Like Mary and Mary at the tomb, like the women of Inzozi Nziza,

God challenges us, today, to let go of all the certainties,

to plunge forward into earthquake and the unexpected,

to use our freedom and joy to reshape our hearts and minds, and those around us, so that we’re ready to meet the risen, living Christ in ordinary Galilee,

ready to change the world.

That’s Easter.

That’s resurrection.

And it’s a lot like ice cream.

Bright, simple, risky, joy that knocks down all custom and certainty, opening our world to abundant life.

Can you taste it?

Alleluia!!

How Rwanda's Only Ice Cream Shop Challenges Cultural Taboos NPR, All Things Considered, 10 April 2014

Genocide In Rwanda, UN Human Rights Council

Inzozi Nziza, Blue Marble Dreams