Green Blades Preaching Roundtable

The texts for this Sunday are somewhat diverse, but all cluster around the revelation of a God that, in the victory of the resurrection, uses God’s love and power to redeem, restore, revive, and save the world. It is God declaring that whatever brokenness is in the world has been overcome and overruled by the wholeness and rightness of God’s refusal to be sent away by Jesus’ death. Rather the creation is swamped with the dedication and adoring love that Jesus’ resurrection means for the world.

A case study for this is in the Acts text about an Ethiopian eunuch who is heading home from a trip he made to worship in Jerusalem. Philip is sent to meet him in the wilderness on a road from Jerusalem to Gaza. The court official (he deserves to be called something more than “the eunuch”) is fascinated by a text from Isaiah.

“Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.”

What is so important about this text? Isn’t this person a privileged member of the Candace’s court? What does he know about humiliation? Well, his body is a humiliation. He may have power in the court, but his emasculation was not voluntary. He may be respected for his office, but was not respected as a “man”. Not only that, but the design of the Temple effectively humiliated him. The layers of acceptance meant he could not get near an altar, despite a desire to worship that brought him all the way from Ethiopia - the court where the altar was placed was meant for Jewish men, Jewish women were closer to that in the next court, and even the outer ring of the Temple, the court of the Gentiles, was off limits to him because a castrated man was considered an abomination. Four strikes and he is out.

Yeah, I can fully understand why a text about someone who “in his humiliation justice was denied him” and who had to take it “like a lamb silent before its shearer” would be of great interest to him. Philip said that this is about Jesus and that means that it is also about God. What an impact that must have had. The Son of God experienced humiliation and injustice just like the court official. The good news is that through the resurrection, a sign of which is baptism, God replaces humiliation with honor, justice denied with justice granted, life taken away from the earth with life bestowed upon the earth. Then, the court official tentatively asks, “What is to prevent me from being baptized?” From his own experience, the court official could list a dozen things that ought to prevent him from receiving the gift of God’s gift of grace and acceptance. Philip can’t imagine one thing and the baptized court official goes on his way rejoicing.

We can see an abundance of humiliating brokenness around us, but let’s focus on the humiliation in the non-human world. Humans are trashing creation in a manner that dishonors God’s creation. The planet, animals, and plants are treated as if their only value is how these gifts from God can enrich our lives. We have come to recognize that the only way many of these will survive is if we put them on reservations that limit human access to them. This is humiliating injustice. The resurrection of Jesus proclaims honor, justice, and life for the world, not just for humans.

The text from 1 John is clear about this. “And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world”. “God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God’s sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.” John is clear that love is not defined by the love we have for God, but love is defined by God’s love for us, lived out in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Then the writer lays out the way this life of love fits into a broken world. The text makes the case that everything is based on God’s love for us; takes root by God and we mutually abiding and residing in the love of God; is perfected fearlessly not only on the judgment day but also by being like Jesus “in the world”; and is expressed by God’s command that we must love one another as siblings. There is no good reason to exclude the world from the “one another”, these siblings. Indigenous people throughout much of the world acknowledge the family relationship humans have with the creatures and the rocks, soils, waters and air of this world. Living close to creation, they love these as siblings given to us by the Creator. They do not humiliate the world, but honor it. They recognize that if humans cannot love the siblings of the earth that we can see, then we will not be able to love the God that we cannot see.

The psalm this Sunday is from the final verses of Psalm 22. The psalm begins with “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The psalm turns from pain, fear, and despair to relief and praise that God hears and rescues in the verses prior to the beginning of our text. The composer sings praise for God’s gracious intervention and begins with “from you comes my praise in the great congregation”. Praise starts with receiving God’s responses to our needs and acknowledging God’s actions on our behalf. The psalm has been understood as a plea for deliverance for humans and maybe even a single human, but here too, the earth is not left out. “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord”. Even those not currently present, the dead and future generations will praise God. The theme of humiliation continues in previous verses where the composer says “I am a worm, and not human.” Yet God acts to hear and rescue even the worms and those who feel like worms. It is not hard to imagine that all creation joins in the Cry of Dereliction that introduces this psalm. The effects of the extreme rate of climate change induced by human action can be interpreted as a cry for honor instead of humiliation and for justice in place of justice denied.

The Gospel text from John 15 uses a beautiful imagery from one of our plant siblings on the earth to help us understand the relationship of life and power that we have with Jesus and, through him, with God. “Just as a the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you [all] unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you [all] are the branches.” “Abide” is an important word in the Gospel of John. It expresses dwelling in God, remaining in God, and living in the assurance of God’s love. The love clearly comes from Jesus, the vine, and flows into us, the branches, so staying attached to Jesus through his Spirit and working in the faith community is essential.  Those who detach themselves from the vine are like withering branches. The point of this abiding in Jesus is not just for our own delight but so that the Father is glorified by us being Jesus’ disciples and bearing fruit. God prunes and cleanses us - both English words are used to translate the same word in Greek. Pruning a branch directs the energy of the vine into the most fruitful and life-giving acts of the vine. Pruning removes distractions that limit a plant’s ability to send its seeds into the world bringing about new vines and more fruit. God prunes us when the Holy Spirit directs the energy of God’s love more and more into service while convincing us that self-service is not important or life-giving.

These texts give us ample opportunities to raise concern and care for the creation that God dearly loves and for which Jesus died and rose. Happy Easter.