Sermon — April 14, 2024

Michael Fenn

Lectionary Readings

One of the things I love the most about summer camp, particularly Christian summer camp, is that when you cross the line into camp–almost everything about who you are outside of camp does not matter anymore. Your varsity letter, your GPA, your parents divorce, your above-average reading level, your below-average reading level, the name of the school you go to, even your cat allergies don’t really matter once you cross from the outside world into the world of camp.

For many people, campers and counselors, this is a very freeing experience. Many sports people steer clear of the basketball courts at camp, many artists will never go in the arts and crafts shed, and the high achievers realize that there is actually nobody around to give them a grade for rock-wall climbing. 

Of course, I will admit, there are some exceptions to this relatively utopian picture I have painted. A basketball star will continue to be a basketball star at camp, and they might gain a lot of notoriety for that. A skilled painter will still have people ooh and aah over their work. Musicians will get roped into being in the camp band. However,  any of these things only go so far in the community. Your basketball skill, your paintings, your musical prowess are reduced to no more than what they are. To really parse it out, there are no grades given, no medals awarded, and nobody to put you on varsity. Any particular skill becomes less than what it actually is, and more what it does to foster joy, connection, or help your cabin win something (which is a form of joy and connection, actually).

I know this to be true because I have, honest-to-God, hand on heart, one of the most highly valued skills in the camp world. More than dunking a basketball. More than passing any swim test. More than fire building. I am not overstating this. I can start boondoggles. If you don’t know what that is I have brought one. For those you can’t really see it, it is one of those plastic lanyard things you or your kids likely made at school or a summer camp at any point in the last half century. Not only can I start them, I can start almost forty in just one minute. In the outside world, this matters unfortunately very little. However, in a world where collective joy is highly valued, such a skill is of critical importance. 

I fear I may have digressed to deeply into the skills and talents that may give you notoriety at summer camp. But the point I have been trying to make is this: the beauty of camp is that when you cross the line from the outside world, the evaluations of the outside world fall away. Instead, you are judged differently, through a lens of connection, love, and joy. By your ability to start boondoggles.

In the letter of first John today–which is a lovely letter, and for those of who who may have missed the memo, it is the subject of our Easter-tide sermon series. One phrase in particular caught my attention. In his letter, John makes the extremely bold statement that “we are God’s children”. This designation–God’s child–at the time of this letters composition, was strictly reserved for emperors, heroes, and Jesus himself. It did not have the more acceptable, perhaps even jovial usage that we have today. 

To make the statement that we are God’s children is a bold one–so bold in fact, that in the Eucharist prayer, before we pray the “Our Father” (a prayer where we reference God as a parental figure) the minister says “we boldly pray..” Listen for it if you haven’t noticed it before. Suffice to say it would be unthinkable, blasphemous, and even treasonous to call yourself a child of God in the way the author of 1 John uses it. 

Even aside from the boldness of the statement, what does it actually mean? For the ancient world, it would seem to proclaim that–to quote a different epistle–that there is no more slave or free, male or female, Jew or Greek. In the ancient context, whereever you were born, and to whom you were born, pretty much determined how your life would look. For most people, this meant that their hard life, and low social status, were inherent to their very existence. Only now, the labels that get put on them by their society, by the empire they live under, are no longer their true identifiers. Instead, they are adopted by God, they are not lowly peasants, fishermen, or carpenters, they are beloved children of a God who cares deeply for them. 

For us today, it is no different. We may have more democracy, more social mobility, and different occupations. But to be a child of God means that, just like when we enter camp, we leave all kinds of allegiances and memberships behind. It is a fundamental new identifier, one that exists deeper in us than any report card, evaluation, collegiate affiliation, or social club. 

Maybe this new state of being is not obvious to the outside world. The letter says as much, the people who aren’t children of God don’t necessarily get what it is that is different–there are no physical changes and no huge jump upward into the higher social strata. However, it is something of an internal characteristic, a metaphysical change, that we understand about ourselves, and about the people we share community with–our fellow Cbristians. 

But then, the letter gives us a more ambiguous message. After this really bold statement about what we are now–children of God. The author kind of says “we don’t really know what happens next–what we are going to be later, or what will necessarily happen to us. We get the general idea that it will continue to be something good, based in our new identity as children of God. However, we get what it is not in the next section–it is not lawlessness and chaos. The author of the John letters seems to think it is important to stress that just as much as we are beloved by God, that does not give us license to cause chaos and strife.

Interestingly, in the gospel today, Jesus makes his big first appearance to the expanded group of followers. And I am going to take this as a cue into the ambiguity of what we will be according to John. The very first thing Jesus says is “Peace be with you all”. The second thing he does, after calming down the disciples, is ask them if they have any food. Resurrecting is hungry work. They give him broiled fish, which I take to be the “ordering Dominos” of ancient Galillee. Then, Jesus sits and explains all the weird scary stuff that happened. Finally, he tells them that they are witnesses to all of this. 

Here is where we have something of a touchstone in the ambiguity of what we will be. Just as we are children of God, we are witnesses to all that has been done. Maybe what we will be is witnesses to this wonderful thing and this good news in Christ. For now, maybe that means in the joyful wake of a bright Easter…we take some time….order dominos…and reflect on what this good news–that we are children of God, worldly titles be darned–means for us. Maybe in our lives as Christians, pulled in many directions as we stumble along, this ambiguity of not knowing what we will be invites us into knowing that as much as we try to do good in the world, we don’t really know what we will be. 

And to return to the question we are exploring in the sermon series– maybe this is what it means to be a community of Christians in the light of the ressurection. To honor that fact that as Christians, we are given a fundamental new identity that usurps all of our other ones– children of God. To figure out how this fits into how we live our lives with one another. Of course, this is much easier at camp in a place away from typical pressures of modern life–no building job portfolios, no report cards, no quarterly reviews; where there is no rent to pay, and all your meals are cooked for you (for better or worse). But maybe we can look to that as an example for how to begin to think about it. To think about how we can uplift ourselves and others in ways that recognize that we are children of God–be it starting for starting boondoggles or something else. And also, to remember that in all of this trying and thinking, we still do not know what we will be or where God will lead us. We remain works in progress even as we are children of God. In the name of the one who loved us first. 

Sermon — April 7, 2024

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

“Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us, from God the Father
and from Jesus Christ the Father’s Son, in truth and love.”
(2 John 3)

(A greeting from the Second Letter of John. More on that in a moment.)

I love this Second Sunday of Easter. Not just because of Doubting Thomas, whose faith I admire. But because it’s “Low Sunday,” when all the detailed preparations of Holy Week are over and the bells of Easter have stopped ringing in our ears; when the crowds of Easter Day have come and gone, and now a smaller group of us are left asking: “Alleluia, Christ is risen—Now what?”

On these Sundays after Easter, our readings begin to explore what it means to be an “Easter people,” what it means to live as a community in light of the Resurrection. Our first reading each week is drawn from the early chapters of the Book of Acts, following along with the community of the disciples in the days immediately following Easter. Our second readings come from 1 John, written a little less than a hundred years later, from an early church leader to a community of Christian believers. And since we only get 1 John once every three years, and because it’s one of my favorite books, and because this is after all, Saint John’s, this Easter, I’m going to preach my way through 1 John, asking every week, “What does it mean to be people of the Resurrection according to the First Letter of John?”

Although — It’s not really a letter, and it might not be by John.

We read the beginning today; there’s no greeting, and no signature. It’s more of a sermon than a letter. And 1 John doesn’t claim to be by a person named John, nor do 2^nd or 3^rd John. Nor does the Gospel of John, for that matter. 2 and 3 John are addressed from “The Elder” to “The Elect Lady” and “To Gaius” respectively. The Gospel of John talks about a “Beloved Disciple,” but it doesn’t say he’s the author and he’s not named John. So Scholars sometimes distinguish between John the Apostle, the brother of James and son of Zebedee; the Beloved Disciple (who may or may not be John); “John” the Evangelist (author of the Gospel); “John” the Elder (author of the letters); and John of Patmos (who wrote the Book of Revelation, and who does call himself John). Ancient church traditions say the Evangelist and the Elder are both the Apostle, who’s the Beloved Disciple, and even then they argued about whether Revelation was written by the same John—and we haven’t stopped arguing about it since, such that you can make a Biblical case for the existence of one, two, three, four, or five different Johns.

By the way, this is why, when people occasionally ask me who this church is named after, I either sound really pedantic or woefully uninformed. “Oh, which Saint John?” Uhhh…I don’t know.

So it’s not clear who wrote 1 John; I’ll just say “the Elder.” But it’s very clear that 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd John come from the same tradition or the same community as the Gospel of John. The letters and the Gospel share themes, and imagery, and even sentence structure, and you can hear it from the very first words of the letter we heard today: “We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life… God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.” If you know the Gospel of John well enough, you hear echoes of it constantly in the letter. And this shared tradition is sometimes called the “Johannine tradition” or “Johannine community.” We can only speculate, but you can easily imagine for example that 2 and 3 John are cover letters, addressed to the leaders of Johannine churches in two different cities along with a copy of the First Letter of John, warning against wandering prophets who’re preaching in a way the Elder doesn’t like, and reminding them of the ideas and the faith that they share, and which we have received in the form of the Gospel of John.

So to shift gears a little and with my apologies for the extended preface, here—What are those ideas? What is the Johannine answer to the question, “What does it mean for a community to live in the light of the Resurrection?”

I can’t help but notice that the first thing John wants to do, after his introduction, is to ask people to take a real, hard look at their lives. “If we say that we have no sin,” the Elder writes, “we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:8-9) It’s a little ironic that we read this during Easter, when we traditionally omit the confession of sin on Sunday mornings.

But for the Elder, an honest reckoning with sin is inextricably linked to the hope of the Resurrection. He wants to hold these two sides together. By our Lenten human nature, we are imperfect. By God’s Easter action, we are forgiven. If we say we have no sin, we’re only deceiving ourselves; but if we confess our sins, he will forgive us our sin. The Elder is writing these things to us so that we may not sin; but if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with God in Jesus Christ. (2:1) (Advocate—Paraclete—there’s another good Johannine word.)

The Elder closes the letter: “I write these things to you who believe…so that you may know that you have eternal life.” (5:13) Not so that you repent and change your ways. Not so that you come to believe. But so that you know that you have eternal life. To talk about sin, in other words, is not to condemn ourselves, or condemn someone else; it’s to acknowledge that we might actually need forgiveness, so that we can remember that God has already forgive us. And that’s just the beginning of the path into the abundant and eternal life that God is already inviting us to live, in this world.

The Elder will go on to offer some of the most beautiful words that the Bible has about the gifts of love that we’ve received from God and the spiritual journey of transformation that we all share. But if we as human beings are going to aspire to love, we have to be honest about the ways in which we’ve failed to love, so that we can make amends with one another and grow together toward God.

It’s easy to think that this is an individual or a moralistic thing. But it’s not. It’s a letter about the life of a community, written to a community. And we read it today as part of a community that’s starting to do some real reckoning with its own sins in the past, and how they’ve shaped our life in the present, and that’s where I want to close, today.

Last month, our diocese published a historical study of the ways in which our parishes and the Diocese as a whole profited financially from the kidnapping and enslavement of people from Africa, entitled “‘And You Will Know the Truth, and the Truth Will Make You Free’”—another quote from John, by the way—“A Historical Framework (1620-1840) for Understanding How the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts Benefits Today from Chattel Slavery and Its Legacy.” The level of historical detail is astounding. The founding of every one of our colonial-era parishes was in some way funded by practices of enslavement. Dozens of clergy and founding members of parishes enslaved Africans, or made their livings through human trafficking. The booming Massachusetts economy that funded the Episcopal resurgence in the early 19^th century was fueled by processing cotton grown by slaves in our mills, selling food and supplies to slaveholding plantations, and building the ships that made the Triangle Trade work. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, which existed to strengthen the Church in North America, actually owned plantations, extracting revenue from unpaid enslaved Africans in Barbados and using it to fund preachers in Boston and around New England. Without a doubt, some fraction of the endowment of our Diocese of Massachusetts, and of many of our parishes, ultimately derives from the profits of the system of chattel slavery, one of the greatest sins human beings have ever committed.

“If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves…”

This is one part of what it means for us, as Episcopalians, to be an Easter people today. To accept and acknowledge the sins of our past, and to ask how we can turn them into love in the present. The promise of the Resurrection is that our sin can be transformed, and that God is inviting us together into a new life of love. The promise of the Resurrection is not only eternal life in the future; it’s a new kind of community in the present.

After all: “If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie… but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another.” (1 John 6-7)

In the name of the God who is faithful and just: Amen.