Sermon

St. Philip's Episcopal Church, Durham, NC

April 22, 2007 - Third Sunday of Easter

The Rev. Vicki L. Smith

Acts 9:1-19

I’ve done my share of pre-marital counseling and the couples almost always share a wonderful, starry-eyed adoration. Most couples are in their 20’s or 30’s, but even the ones in their 70’s can be completely smitten.  I dutifully raise the issues of married life – budgets, children, career choices, etc., but I know those conversations are only minimally effective.  Most of it floats by the lovers into the ether that surrounds them. 

And that is okay.  Because I also know that as their relationship progresses, they will learn, as all couples do, that love is more than starry-eyed devotion.  That’s the place to start but genuine love goes beyond words and moony looks to a deeper level that calls for more from us than that.  This is true of the love that couples share, the love that families share and most especially the love we share as followers of Jesus.

That is Jesus’ point to Simon Peter, and to us, in today’s gospel lesson.  Jesus, in one of his resurrection appearances, asks Peter three times, “Do you love me?”  On hearing “yes” Jesus then says, “Tend my lambs,” “Feed my sheep.” “Tend my sheep.”  These are “if/then” questions, without the “if/then.”  If you love Jesus, then feed and tend his sheep. 

Peter was hurt that Jesus asked him repeatedly, but I think that Jesus was helping him understand that as far as love goes, words are not enough.  Loving Jesus, and loving others in his name, requires more than words and more than promises – it requires feeding, tending, caring and involvement.

Jesus probably wouldn’t say it this harshly, but talk is cheap.  As a society, we say that we care about our schools, but we cut their funds; we say that we will tend to the mentally ill, but we continue to close clinics and limit options; we say that we will care for the homeless at the same time that we gentrify neighborhoods and push the poor aside.  Talk is cheap and mere words of love are not enough – not in a marriage, not in a family and not in our Christian faith.  The words and the promises are only a beginning.

We need to understand that loving Jesus and loving others in his name may, in fact, ask a great deal of us.  Look at Ananias, in today’s first lesson.  It is easy to miss his story in the drama of Saul’s conversion but Ananias is a tremendous example of loving Jesus and others even when it is scary and difficult. 

Ananias was sent by Jesus to heal Saul after Saul’s sight was lost in his vision on the Damascus Road.  Saul was probably the greatest enemy the early Christians had.  He was breathing fire and actively seeking Christians to capture and prosecute.  He was searching out believers to take them to Jerusalem for trial and probably execution.  For the early Christians, Ananias among them, Saul being handicapped or slowed down in any way was a good thing – it helped keep them alive.

But it was exactly to Saul that Ananias was sent.  Loving Jesus and others in his name can indeed take real courage.  Ananias walked into the lion’s den of Saul’s presence, hoping desperately that it would be okay.  Ananias, trusting in Jesus, went to Saul and called him Brother, and he meant it.  He reached out to Saul, not as an enemy, but as another of God’s lambs. Ananias laid hands on Saul and Saul’s sight was restored.  Ananias was the vehicle of Jesus’ healing for this fallen, sinful man – a man that he would probably rather not have touched; a man he was afraid of; a man he perhaps even hated.  Jesus touched both Ananias and Saul, so that they could touch each other in healing and in love.

Ananias shows us that loving others in Jesus’ name can take great courage and a real willingness to see others, even scary others, as Jesus’ sheep to be fed and tended.

Loving others in Jesus’ name may also be quite costly.  That’s what Jesus makes clear to Simon Peter.  Jesus says to him, “when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and go wherever you wished but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take where you do not wish to go.”  If we, like Peter, tend Christ’s sheep, we too may end up going where we do not wish to go.  Loving others in Jesus’ name took Peter and Saul (aka Paul) all over the known world, to people and places most unexpected.  Loving others in Christ’s name may take us anywhere – to Urban Ministries of Durham, to Panama or to Mississippi; into hospital rooms or jail cells, into communities or climates we never expected to live in, and into conversations and relationships we never expected to have with people we never expected to know. 

Loving others in Jesus’ name calls for us to let go of our limited expectations, to cast out the net again even after it has already come back empty, to keep trying, and try anew, whenever Jesus asks us to.  Loving others in Jesus’ name call for us to let of our assumptions about others and our expectations of ourselves, opening ourselves, our lives and our world to new possibilities in Jesus’ name.  Who would have guessed that Saul, the fire breathing enemy of Christ, would become one of his greatest witnesses of all time?  Who would have guessed that Simon Peter, a simple fisherman, would travel the world in witness to his Savior? 

This Easter season invites us to embark anew on loving others in Jesus’ name – we are invited to move from our starry-eyed wonder at the resurrection into the deeper love of tending, feeding and healing his sheep. 

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