EASTER APPEARANCES John 15:9-17 INTRODUCTION FERLINGHETTI NEW HARMONY

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1 EASTER APPEARANCES L. Michael Spath, DMin, PhD Emmaus Road Mennonite Fellowship 6 May 2018 abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am INTRODUCTION Here s a thought for the day: Change is hard, birth is a process, the new always brings growing pains. That s why, while Christmas lasts for twelve days, Easter lasts for 50, seven full weeks. Easter takes awhile; its intensely personal. The resurrection happened at night, in utter darkness, but it wasn t discovered until the dawn. When an angel says, Do not fear, fasten your seatbelts, everything s about to change. In John s Gospel, Jesus says he must leave so that the Advocate could come. Think about that he needed to leave so the Spirit could get loosed in the world. Yet we who are his friends continue to see his Spirit here and there what we call Christ even if it s not in the form of Jesus. So today that s what I want to talk about in the three months since I ve been here, Easter appearances in surprising places and the strangest of forms. FERLINGHETTI I ve been to Washington DC twice in the last three months. Three weeks ago, I was there for the annual meeting of the United Church of Christ Palestine-Israel Network; we met at the Methodist Building, sandwiched between the US Capitol and the Supreme Court. I had grabbed a book of poetry off the shelf on my way out the door to the airport, and so during a lunch break, I opened it up, and the poem I turned to was, well, providential; more relevant now than when it was first written. Forty years ago, I discovered the Beat poets Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, the incomparable Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Ferlinghetti is still alive, 99 now. Based on a poem of the same name 75 years prior by Lebanese poet, Khalil Gibran, in 2007, Ferlinghetti wrote, Pity the Nation. This is the poem I was reading, sitting on a bench in the shadow of two of the three pillars of our government. See what you think. Pity the nation whose people are sheep, and whose shepherds mislead them. Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced, and whose bigots haunt the airwaves. Pity the nation that raises not its voice, except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero, and aims to rule the world with force and by torture. Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own and no other culture but its own. Pity the nation whose breath is money and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed. Pity the nation oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode and their freedoms to be washed away. My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty. Can the Easter that is lived out here, can the Easter you believe in, can your Easter speak to a world, to an America like that? An Easter challenge from an old hippie poet. NEW HARMONY Before I headed to DC, a few of us friends traveled to New Harmony in southern Indiana for a weekend together. New Harmony, as you know, is the sight of two early 19 th century utopian experiments the first, a transplant from Harmonie, PA, of German Pietists (hence the name, New Harmony).

2 The second, by Scottish social reformer, Robert Owen. Under Owen s leadership, New Harmony became a famous center for geology, one of the earliest advocates for women s rights, birth control, and the abolition of slavery (already in the mid-1800 s). And New Harmony s schools were the first public schools in the United States open to both boys and girls, the site of the first trade school, and the oldest continuously operating library in Indiana. I ve been drawn to New Harmony for over 30 years because of its association with my theological mentor, Paul Tillich. He spent his life building bridges between the Christian message and contemporary culture. Easter, for Tillich, is not simply a resuscitation of a dead body, or something that happens after you die. Something new is interjected into the history of the world. It s a second chance or third or fourth the possibility for you of a new start, a new you unbound by the baggage of the past. Resurrection presents us with an alternative vision a new way is possible not simply a continuation of the old. A new vision. A new you. God can t be contained that s the meaning of Easter. Not a holy book, a church, a religion; not even the grave the grave might even mean the grave of our own minds how many people have died in the history of the world because people thought they knew the will of God? Jesus pointed beyond himself to a greater reality the kingdom of God, some today call it the kindom of God ; I ve begun to call it the ecosystem of God. God cannot be domesticated, God s full of surprises. And God s love, like the Spirit, blows where it wills, utterly free, often in non-religious forms. Sometimes it brings comfort, more often it draws us into uncomfortable yet necessary places of growth, even beyond our own limited understandings of God. We must learn to let go of the lesser so that we are able to grasp the whole in which the lesser is included. God can t be contained; that s what Easter means. That s why we who are his friends still recognize his Spirit in the world what we call Christ even if it is not in the form of Jesus. The first buds of spring. An unexpected kindness. A scientific discovery. Truth spoken to power. All these. And in a southern Indiana utopian experiment that honored learning, the diversity of nature, women s rights, human dignity. And the gathering of friends. The moving of the Spirit. Another Easter appearance. MLK Which brings me back to Washington DC. The week after Easter, Mary and I accompanied our Fort Wayne daughter and her three daughters to Silver Spring, MD to meet up with our son, his wife, and their two boys; and our daughter from Boulder flew in with their son. Our three kids, six grandkids ages seven to a year-andthree-months all together. We decided one day when the weather was nice, to head downtown to show the kids some of the sights. We parked on Constitution Avenue, and the eleven of us walked from the WWII Memorial, past the Reflecting Pool, silently through the Vietnam Memorial the flowers, pictures, tears. We were standing at the base of the Lincoln Memorial when I received a call from Terry Dougherty, and we discussed the letter I was writing for the Journal Gazette for our Indiana Center for Middle East Peace board, condemning the Israeli military s vicious attack on Palestinians non-violently demonstrating in Gaza. We hung up, then climbing the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, inscribed on the north wall, the last words of his Second Inaugural Address, a month before his assassination, two months before the end of the War: With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. Then to the Korean War Memorial where we lingered awhile. Our girls are adopted from Korea so we took a moment to talk about what s happening there today, we remembered their stories, and how they came to be ours. We crossed Independence Avenue, walked through a grove of trees budding with cherry blossoms in full bloom. And we came upon another memorial from behind.

3 We passed through a narrow, open-air passageway, facing the Jefferson Memorial across the Tidal Basin. We turned, and out of the rough-hewn white granite, there was the visage of Martin Luther King, Jr., arms crossed, gazing down upon us. And carved into the granite, Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope. WWII. Vietnam. Civil War. Korea. The struggle for civil rights. And Gaza. All in a couple of hours. Hope? I thought. There are other King quotes on the wall adjacent to his statue: Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. And: The ultimate measure of a person is not where you stand in moments of convenience and comfort, but where you stand at times of challenge and controversy. Easter changes everything. But Easter isn t easy, it asks a lot of us. This is no joke. People have been shunned, persecuted, imprisoned, and killed because everything s changed; they caught a vision they re fearless now, nothing can touch them now, all because they abide, strong, resilient steadfast. Where is that immovable place in you? Easter presents us with hints of a promise not yet fulfilled, the hope of a world not yet fully come but it might, it could, but it s up to us, the final fruit of Easter is in our hands. To paraphrase Gandhi, First they think you re crazy, then they fight you, then all of a sudden, you change the world. A Stone of Hope. CONCLUSION Well, let me wrap this up. Easter takes awhile. God can t be contained. Easter changes everything. No longer do I call you servants, Jesus says, because the servant does not know the master; I call you friends because I have given you everything. Everything! All this, so that you may love one another. And that s the final truth of Easter: God s love never fails to rise. God s inscrutable, boundless, intimate, strong love will rise will it rise in you? God s love always rises.

4 JOHN 15:1-18 I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. 2 He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes [a] to make it bear more fruit. 3 You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. 4 Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. 5 I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. 6 Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. 7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another. 18 If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you. + At the Last Supper, right before he leaves for the Garden of Gethsemane Chapter 14 Jesus says he has to go, so he will send the Counselor, the Advocate paracletos + Divine mimesis the child the same as the parent imitation Kathos just as, as 31 times in John = a mutuality between Father, Son, and community + Abide yielding, dwelling, resting, the freedom of the contented not situation-dependent or based in emotion à an abiding relationship à faithfulness meno to stand strong, to stay, resolve, steadfast meno (verb) is the Greek form of sumud; to abide = to remain steadfast Give full attention to the present, fully present To continue under adversity, not letting exterior circumstances change you, not alter your course remain, continue, dwell 17 of the 18 times the word, abide, occurs in NT à John or Epistles of John + Christfriends intimacy lay down his life also a Johanine theme Not once in the OT does a shepherd lay down his life for the sheep. This is something new that a shepherd would lay down his life for the sheep. + fruit that will last some fruit doesn t last, some fruits rot still fruits but not lasting

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