Trusting God, not the world

Homily Easter 7 Year B

I read a story recently about a woman who told an interviewer. I don’t trust people anymore. It was reported that when she is out she is always looking at everyone around her, making sure there is no danger. Now the story was probably about about some criminal activity. And of course we need to be careful.

But we can’t live our lives in fear, suspicious of others. Jesus prays for his disciples and those that will come after them in this Gospel passage.

He prays that they will share his joy. And despite the evil in the world that will make them feel like stangers in a strange land , they will have faith, and in that faith they will find unity.

That prayer by Jesus before he died on the cross, part of the so-called farewell discourses, might seem somewhat ominous. We who follow Jesus are to be hated, to be strangers, to be marching to a different drum---of peace rather than war, of love rather than hate, of sharing rather than hoarding.

Indeed it when the church is “hated” and a “stranger” and when Christians are “hated” and “strangers” to power and wealth that we are truly authentic in our practice of faith.

The sad thing is that historically the church became corrupted when it was aligned with power and wealth in the middle ages and on into the 16th century. The reformation, including the English reformation, was a reaction to that corruption.

Yet since then there has always been a conflict between the church—and this includes all denominations—at its best when it is serving others, and speaking truth to power---and at its worst when it becomes too much part of the power structure and loses its moral compass.

What Jesus stresses is this priestly prayer is love, filled with hope and joy, not in material well being or individual glory, but in community. That’s why community life was at the heart of the early church—as they worshipped in homes led by Jesus disciples and other followers of “The Way,” as it was called then.

So as Jesus saw it there was a clear contrast between the world and his followers. They would need to be in the world, but not of it. As followers of Christ our first loyalty is not to the world but to God. And that puts us in conflict with the world.

The Christian path to peace and joy is not the same path as the world’s path. But some in the churches have never accepted that.

One of the keys to accepting the Christian path is seeing God’s grace active in the world, despite the conflict between the values of the Gospel and the values of the world.

What Jesus prayed helps us understand why it isn’t being without hope, or too pessimistic, or too critical, to not accept the world as it is, and to call for fundamental change.

In Jesus prayer the support for the disciples love for each other is the key to their survival in the face of a hostile world.

What does this mean for you and I today?

We can’t get too discouraged when by the world’s standards we are not quote unquote successful anymore.
Instead we need to seek God’s grace in our community life, not only in the parish but in the broader community.

In a way the story of our parish parallels the community’s story, Sarnia’s story. Only 40 years ago this was a prosperous place, with the Chemical valley booming, a good union town with good paying jobs.

Now while Mayor Mike can talk about Sarnia’s strengths, as he did to our Rotary club, the job market is worse and worse all the time. The call centre closes. The race track may close. Zellers closes. The valley has far fewer employees than it used to have.

So we are not alone in seeing better days, and other Sarnia churches are in the same boat, with a few exceptions—the full service evangelical churches.

But as we move from the season of Easter next week to the season of Pentecost, we recall that the early followers of Jesus faced tremendous obstacles as they sought to live out their new found faith.

But Jesus prays for us—that we might find joy and peace in him, and with holy spirit, and with grace find new life in new ways of being the church. As we prepare to celebrate our 86th anniversary amidst the challenges we face, let us pray that we might find new ways of being the church.