Sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter May 7, 2023

(Acts 7:55-60)+Psalm 31:1-5,15-16+1 Peter 2:2-10+John 14:1-14

I’m not sure it’s ever a good idea to begin a sermon with a confession. Be that as it may, I have one: I am a huge Sesame Street fan. Okay, maybe this isn’t a Jimmy Swaggart “I have fallen short” kind of confession, but as a reasonably mature grown-up I kind of wonder how normal it is that when a Cookie Monster video pops up on Twitter or Instagram, I can’t help watching it. It helps that Brett Goldstein from Ted Lasso is a big fan of Oscar the Grouch, too, so there’s that.

There is a very old clip from Sesame Street – I don’t even know if it is still played – that is about memory. A little girl is being sent to the store by her mother who gives her some money and tells her to pick up a loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of butter. Her mother asks if she can remember that or if she needs to have it written down, but the little girl assures her mother that she can remember. On her walk to the store, she repeats the list over and over to herself - a loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of butter. When she arrives at the store, she plops the cash on the counter and tells the grocer what she needs, but she can only remember the first two items, a loaf of bread and a container of milk. Rather than panicking or giving up, she draws to mind a mental picture of her mother speaking to her, a little thought-bubble above her head - a loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of butter. She tells the grocer the final item and happily skips home, rejoicing to her mother that she remembered.

Over these last few weeks, we have been hearing resurrection stories, encounters with Jesus experienced by the disciples after the news spread about the empty tomb. This morning, we go back a little further to the night before Jesus was arrested when, in John’s gospel, Jesus washes the disciples’ feet and then launches into what has come to be known as the Farewell Discourse, all of chapters 14 through 17. I imagine that the disciples continued to feel a mix of terror along with astonishment and joy that Jesus had risen from the dead. I also imagine that their conversations in these days focused a lot on what Jesus had told them – that he would be killed and would rise again, for instance, which he claimed over and over again in their three years of wandering. They did not want to hear it at the time he said it, but now, maybe it began to make some sense.

If someone close to you has died, you surely are familiar with the storytelling that goes on as the grief and loss sink in. “Remember when grandma said this?” or “Remember that time that she did that?” The disciples surely scanned their memories to try to make sense of what had happened and what it meant for them. Jesus had assured them, even before his arrest, “Do not let your hearts be troubled…I am going to prepare a place for you…I am the way…whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:1,3,6,9). And like pieces of a puzzle, some sense of clarity came: he said it would happen but that he would still be with us, that he is making everything ready for us, and that we are to do the things he taught us to do. A little later in this farewell discourse, he assures them, “I have said this to you, so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world!’ (16:33).

In the First Letter of Peter, we are reminded that we are called, chosen by God.

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light. 

Once you were not a people,
   but now you are God’s people;
once you had not received mercy,
   but now you have received mercy. (1 Peter 2: 9-10)

We tend to forget the great gift that we have been given by the God who loves us, who loves all of us. There is a responsibility placed on us in our chosenness, however. We are to proclaim God’s mighty acts, to be courageous, to live as if Christ has indeed conquered the world. The victory is won; all we have to do is live into it.

It never fails to astonish me how we turn God’s expansive love for us into some kind of exclusive club. We remember that Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me,” and forget that he also said that there are many rooms – countless rooms – in God’s house, just as earlier he said that there are other sheep not of this sheepfold, and he’s going to take care of them and bring them along, too (John 10:16). The late Rachel Held Evans once said, “The apostles remembered what many modern Christians tend to forget – that what makes the gospel offensive isn’t who it keeps out but who it lets in.”

Our chosenness is not ours alone. Exclusion is not our job. Doing God’s will is our job, and that is to remember those things that Jesus taught, just like that little girl going to the grocery store:

Love God. Love neighbor. Do this in remembrance of me.

Love God. Love neighbor. Do this in remembrance of me.

Love God. Love neighbor. Do this in remembrance of me.