The 6th Sunday of Easter Sermon at St. Matthias

Easter 6B

1 John 5:1-6

Ascension

May 6, 2018

A train leaves Philadelphia at 3 pm on Tuesday traveling west at 65 miles an hour.  Another train departs Kansas City at 4:00 pm on the same day traveling east at 70 miles an hour.  What time will they pass?  Several of you – no doubt – just had flashbacks to your high school math class.  The very thought of word problems when I was in 11^th grade sent cold chills up my spine.  You may as well have asked what time it was in Greenland?  Late in life, I have discovered that I actually enjoy math.  And I’m pretty good at it when it comes to bookkeeping and flying airplanes.  NOW it all makes sense.  But when I was in high school, I just couldn’t make the connection.  What do two imaginary trains have to do with ledger entries at the Abbey?  I did not know in 1973 that speed and time tell you how far you’ve gone which is especially helpful on a cloudy night in an airplane. 

Now I want you to think of our reading from 1^st John as a math problem of sorts.  You will remember from 2 weeks ago that 1 John is really more of a sermon than an Epistle.  These were early Christians from the 2^nd century who were accepting the Gospel message on faith.  They were NOT there when Jesus fed the 5000 or walked on water.  They did not stand at the foot of the cross or at the opening to the empty tomb.  They came to know Jesus AFTER the resurrection and now their faith was challenged – not because of persecution or threats of arrest AND crucifixion.  These early believers were challenged by the same problems we often face – living the Christian life Monday THROUGH Saturday.  It is easy to come to Church on Sunday, sing hymns, hear the scriptures, receive the bread and wine AND see our friends.  But then comes Monday and traffic and work and it seems so often the love of God we find at St. Matthias fades as the rest of our lives takes over.  How can we make Sunday last all week?

I often ask the same thing at Camp McDowell.  In the woods outside of Double Springs, I feel surrounded by God, the love of Christ, and the presence of the Holy Spirit.  Some years ago, I was at a Happening Weekend.  Now if you are not familiar with Happening, it is a weekend retreat for high school students where a lifetime of questions about Jesus and faith and what we believe as Episcopalians are crammed into 3 days.  At the end of the weekend, we celebrated the Eucharist.  Afterward, we would all go home.  Bishop Stough had come for the day.  He stood up and said, “People will tell you that now you have to go back to the real world.  I am here to tell you that this is the real world.  Now go out and share it.”

John was trying to tell the early Christians that what they found in the Gospel message is real life – eternal life.  It is real life as well today.  John lays it all out for us in his Epistle as a faith problem – a faith challenge.  Follow the logic. One plus one always equals two.  Jesus is the Son of God.  God loves us and Jesus loves us. We live in this love as children of God.  We obey the commandments because of this love and we conquer the world. 

Now, this last part is the answer to how St. Matthias and Camp McDowell and the presence of God stay with us every moment of every day.  When we live in the love of God we live in the world in a new and different way.  We walk through our week in the footsteps of Jesus and we change our world RATHER than letting the world change us.   We love others because Christ first loved us and we change our world.  We proclaim the Gospel in word and deed and the world is changed because the light always overcomes the darkness and love always wins.  Love conquered the hate of the cross and opened the path to eternal life in the resurrection for all who believe.  And when we proclaim that WE BELIEVE, we live in the Love of God which conquers the world.  This is the message of John.  Through faith in the God who loves us – our world can be changed and we can live eternally Monday through Sunday.

Now the thing is it will take a while for the rest of the world to notice.  You see they won’t know our world has changed at all AT first.  REMEMBER, Love IS patient.  Start living in love slowly at first.  Say a prayer in the morning.  Consider one thing you can do today to share the love WE have found here at St. Matthias.  Spread that love in that one thing.  Give thanks in the evening to God for His love.  The next day start over.  Soon you will find 2 opportunities to share the love of God and then a third and a fourth and so on.  Mission and ministry always grow when people live in love.  It’s exponential.  It’s mathematics.  And we have to start with one.  One God who loves us.  Each ONE of us who will share the light and love we find here at St. Matthias.  ONE whole world looking for hope.  That’s the kind of love that will conquer our world.  

Now just so you know, assuming a straight-line distance and a constant speed, that train from Philadelphia should meet the train from Kansas City at about 10:40 EDT near Richmond, Indiana – where the people of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church are changing their world through the love of God, one day and one person at a time.  See, we can all like math in the kingdom of heaven.