Back in the late 80s – yes, I am really old – I began a nearly three decades long involvement in a domestic and overseas service program called Volunteers in Mission or VIM. My very first experience was international, with an indigenous congregation in a small Panamanian frontier coastal town near the Costa Rican border. It was a dingy, dirty port town. I recall that we were warned not to swim at the beach which was polluted and littered with garbage and waste. We were a team of about twenty and we lived with various members of the congregation and worked alongside them, helping with a very much needed rehab of their dilapidated church building and grounds.
We learned a great deal from them about their country and the region, its people, its history and of their plans for the future. The powerful stories they told us remained in my soul. Later VIM work trips took me to places as diverse as the Navajo reservation in Arizona and the Oglala Lakota Pine Ridge in South Dakota to the depressed coal mining country of deep Appalachia. I also took teams to Russia six times where we lived, stayed and worked in orphanages. Everywhere I have been I have found people of deep faith and sacrificial commitment to justice.
One of the stories I heard on a VIM trip lifts up Jesus’ and Peter’s words in today’s lections. We were in the midst of the poverty of coal country Kentucky. And yet there in this small town I witnessed how these people were embracing new immigrant refugees from Somalia and how they were helping these folks settle into a new life in a very different place far from their native land. The new ones were assisted and welcomed by sisters and brothers who had accepted them into their community. This story illustrates the love people can hold for one another and how human kindness and empathy can embody peace and harmony.
I don’t need to tell you that our nation and world are embroiled in all manner of struggles over race, gender, sexuality, age, wealth and poverty, religion, immigration, climate, politics and more. Daily these struggles get played out and demand our attention. The fight for justice continues. The words from Revelation today about a new heaven and a new earth that can be realized is the fuel we need to keep the flame of hope flickering, a hope that the struggle is not in vain. John’s visionary dream points us to the need to keep on keeping on and to the knowledge that God empowers us with the strength to do so.
Still…sometimes amid all the struggles that demand our attention, I find my heart and head and hands getting weary. And I find myself wondering if that amazing vision of Revelation can ever really occur on earth. Can life, as we know it and experience it really be renewed, made new again? Are we able to take to heart and treasure Peter’s words in Acts which urge us not to make distinctions between people of diverse backgrounds – “The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make distinctions between them and us” (Acts 11:12)? It’s hard for me sometimes amid these very charged times to refrain from judging others and comparing them to myself and others of my tribe. How I really view people who are different in culture, lifestyle, race, politics and a zillion other human distinctions can be challenging.
I wonder sometimes if it is even possible for human beings to reach that place of “shalom.” I know that peace will not occur if we continue to supersede God’s will with our own! And we certainly will not enjoy the beauty of learning from one another as long as nations continue to fight against each other, seemingly oblivious or uncaring to the devastating effects that conflict has on people. Ask the residents of Gaza or the Ukraine. When we human beings assume that some of us are superior to or more important than others, shalom eludes us. When a blind eye is turned to the sinful accumulation of wealth by a very few well-off, well-to-do, and well-connected who believe they can manipulate the broader social fabric to serve their interests, while children go hungry and millions of people live in poverty and disease, I fear John’s dream in Revelation will not occur “on earth as it is in heaven,” as we pray.
I remember early on in my volunteer in mission experiences returning home to Waterloo, Iowa after a work trip to Russia. The trip took place not long after the fall of Soviet Communism. I had witnessed long lines everywhere as the Russian people clamored for what few goods remained on store shelves. I recall making a trip to my local K-Mart (I told you it was a while ago!) where the shelves were full and I could buy whatever I wanted. I felt guilty. Even the grocery store had fresh strawberries for me to buy even though their season had long passed in Iowa. To this day, I am reminded of the privileged circumstances in which most of us in this room live. The ludicrous complaining about the price of eggs or of a gallon of gasoline sounds of political pettiness and manipulation. We enjoy conveniences that others do not experience or possess, living in comfortable homes, driving to and from one place to another or even enjoying the luxury of “working from home.” We send our kids and grandkids to good schools and colleges. We receive good medical care. Most of us have comfortable retirements. It is crucial to accept these things as gifts, as blessings, and never to take them for granted, remembering that God has placed us into positions in which we can effect change, advocate for others, and pray and work for their well-being. As people who are often considered “privileged” by many standards, we are called to care for others. That caring is how we respond to Christ’s unconditional love. Like the imprisoned John of Patmos who never ceased to share the vision of a new heaven and a new earth, God is still speaking empowering us to that same better day.
We are responsible for working with those who struggle with issues of inequality, poverty, and injustice, and to associate with organizations and others committed to justice and peace. When we do this work, we show the love which Jesus talked about in his Upper Room table talk that night: “I give you a new commandment that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” (John 13:34).
The kind of love Jesus is talking about here is not some sweet old fashioned notion (no offense Tina Turner). Neither is this love a compelling physical attraction or a sentimental feeling. The kind of love Jesus is talking about is nothing less than the expression of the whole person: the involvement of heart and soul and mind!
We opened our service with a hymn by Charles Wesley. Now we hear from his even more famous brother, John Wesley, who launched the worldwide Methodist movement amid the horrible poverty, injustice and slavery of the 18th Century British Empire, and who admonished his followers to live out this love which is the expression of the whole person, heart, mind and soul, in this way:
“Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.”
To love like that in the name of Jesus makes us new persons. We become more and more imaged in God. We become more and more identified with the One whose love for us and the world Jesus embodied. And through this love a new world is possible. Anyone who sees the suffering of humankind and the degradation of God’s creation, if they have a heart, must long for a whole new world and must struggle to imagine such a thing.
Newly elected Pope Leo reminds us: “God loves us, all of us. Evil will not prevail. We are all in the hands of God. Without fear, united, hand in hand with God and among ourselves, we will go forward. We are disciples of Christ, Christ goes before us, and the world needs his light.”
The call upon us and the church today is to help people see God’s own dream for all of creation and to draw them into participating in it. The late Marcus Borg reminded us that the “dream of God is for this earth, not for another world.” Loving as Jesus loves is what we are called to be, and what God empowers us to do. It is truly the only dream worth dreaming.