On November 2, 2015, our Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry, made a video about what he believes is the Jesus Movement, which set the tone for his leadership for the next nine years. In this video he stated:
"God came among us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth to show us the Way. He came to show us the Way to life, the Way to love. He came to show us the Way beyond what often can be the nightmares of our own devising and into the dream of God’s intending. That’s why, when Jesus called his first followers he did it with the simple words “Follow me.”
“Follow me,” he said, “and I will make you fish for people.”
Follow me and love will show you how to become more than you ever dreamed you could be. Follow me and I will help you change the world from the nightmare it often is into the dream that God intends. Jesus came and started a movement and we are the Episcopal branch of the Jesus movement."
He goes on to say:
"A few years ago I was in a coffee shop in Raleigh, North Carolina, just a few blocks away from our Diocesan House there. While in line I started a conversation with a gentleman who turned out to be a Mennonite pastor. He had been sent to Raleigh to organize a church in the community on the streets without walls. As we were talking over our coffee, he said something to me that I have not forgotten. He said the Mennonite community asked him to do this because they believed that in this environment in which we live, the church can no longer wait for its congregation to come to it, the church must go where the congregation is.
Now is our time to go. To go into the world to share the good news of God and Jesus Christ. To go into the world and help to be agents and instruments of God’s reconciliation. To go into the world, let the world know that there is a God who loves us, a God who will not let us go, and that that love can set us all free.
This is the Jesus Movement, and we are The Episcopal Church, the Episcopal branch of Jesus’ movement in this world."
These last two weeks have been a whirlwind for me. Just after Pentecost, I spent time with my colleagues talking about how the Diocese of Eastern Oregon is participating in the Jesus Movement. We talked about partnerships across denominational lines, we talked about how we serve our brothers and sisters outside of the church walls, we talked about how we offer care, comfort and challenge to those within our immediate communities. We celebrated who we had been under various bishops, and dreamed of who we might become under Bishop Pat’s leadership. I was inspired, energized and incredibly hopeful.
And then this week that hope and energy became larger. Gathering with young-ish clergy from around the country in Portland, we created sacred space for hard conversations about addictions within our church and the role we play in helping to heal our communities. We shared stories of marginalization faced by women and women of color in leadership positions, and invited our brothers to stand with us and heal our system. We sang hymns together that brought us to tears. We told jokes that made us laugh until we cried. And we shared visions, dreams and hopes for how we might do our part in the Jesus Movement. New relationships were formed, and old friendships were renewed. It was a beautiful and hard week overall.
So all of this talk of the Jesus Movement brings me to Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Now Paul is not one of my most favorite people in the bible. He’s complicated...sometimes he gets it right, and sometimes he gets it wrong. And I think part of why I’m not particularly comfortable with Paul is that he’s too much like all of us--sometimes we get it right, and sometimes we get it wrong. Paul, like us, can be zealous, argumentative, egotistical, and a know it all. And like us, Paul also deeply loves the people he ministers with, and is committed to Jesus. He didn’t need a Presiding Bishop to declare that we are part of the Jesus Movement...he knew it first hand because of his lived experience on the road to Damascus. He was a man whose heart was transformed.
Let’s put Paul in his context for this morning’s reading. Our reading is the beginning of Paul’s letter to the churches in Galatia, and he is writing to explain whether or not non-Jews had to convert to Judaism in order to then become Christians. In other words, he’s trying to explain who can identify themselves as a follower of Jesus. Unlike some of the disciples, Paul makes the claim that conversion to Judaism was not a prerequisite for Christianity. While this may not seem like a big deal to us today, it was a very big deal at the time because it meant that the identity that those early Jesus followers had shared--the ritualistic and legalistic life of Judaism, the identity that sustained them in slavery, in exile and in wandering the desert, was no longer a necessary requirement to be a Jesus follower. It meant that people who did not share the values, practices and heritage of the Jewish community would be welcomed into those early Christian churches. For Paul, the Jesus Movement meant moving beyond the Jewish world, and inviting Gentiles into a new community that was based on the love and message of Jesus. In many ways, Paul was a heretic...and as we know, this idea of inclusive, divine love that he preaches...gets him into a lot of trouble. For Paul, “One’s status and condition do not need to be altered in order to be invited into divine love.” (Wendy Farley, Feasting on the Word, Year C, Vol. 3)
My favorite part of this particular section of chapter 1 is this:
Am I now seeking human approval, or God's approval? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still pleasing people, I would not be a servant of Christ.
That right there, is the hard work of the Jesus Movement. Who’s approval are we seeking? Who is invited in?
I know I’ve told this story before, but I’ll tell it again...just in case you forgot. When I was in seminary, I went to an Episcopal Church Women’s conference in Los Angeles. There, the guest speaker was Jane Williams-- the wife of Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury. And what she said in her remarks has stuck with me all these years. She said (and I’m roughly paraphrasing), that if you want the church to be made up of people who look like you, think like you, and believe like you, then you’ll be all alone. In other words, the Jesus Movement isn’t predicated on us all being alike. For Paul, it wasn’t predicated on being Jewish before being Christian. Being a follower of Jesus in the early church, as well as today in 2016 is based on love; a love that, “is not conditioned by anything but God’s own self-initiating love for humanity…[it is a gift] which reveals that every single human being is an object of divine love.” (Wendy Farley, Feasting on the Word, Year C, Vol. 3)
So when I read Paul’s words, “Am I now seeking human approval, or God’s approval? Or am I trying to please people?” I immediately recognized the challenge that Paul is presenting to us in the here and now. What role does St. Mark’s play in the community--are we here just taking care of ourselves, inviting like-minded individuals to join us--or are we meeting people where they are, in their varied life circumstances, inviting them into a loving relationship as members of the Jesus Movement? Are we being faithful to the gospel of Jesus Christ to love our neighbor as ourselves?
This is what these last two weeks have been about for me; wrestling with the question of how I am a servant of Christ. One of the questions we were asked this week was to create a six-word story of our ministry. Mine was “I can’t say no to God.” What’s your six-word story as a member of the Jesus Movement?
Amen.