May 16, 2021
/The Seventh Sunday of Easter
1 John 5:9-13 | Ps 1 | John 17:6-19
The Rev. Bradley Varnell
I’m guessing y’all have seen the Marvel movies, right? Spider-man, Thor, Captain America, Black Widow, all that. They’re quite good. They’re so good, in fact, because of how well they create the cinematic world where the stories take place. All these little bits and pieces work together to form this coherent whole. The writers and directors have gone to great lengths establishing a universe where superheroes are just a part of life.
I thought about the Marvel movies and the Marvel Cinematic Universe reading this passage from the Gospel for today. Jesus, praying to God, repeats twice that his disciples, just like him, do not belong to the world. Sometimes we use “world” as interchangeable with “earth.” That’s led to some bad readings of the Bible, readings that make it seem like Christians are somehow better than or above the planet. That’s not right at all – we are deeply, deeply bound up with our planet. So what if “world,” like Jesus uses the word, means something more like “world” when we talk about the Marvel movies. Worlds are something we create, we fashion them. They have histories and characters, rules that govern them. What makes the Marvel movies or the Lord of the Rings books or whatever sci-fi or fantasy thing we’re enjoying so great are the worlds they create.
I think, in some ways, like authors and directors, we humans create our own worlds. The earth is a given, but the world or worlds we create on this earth are determined, in large part, by us. We create the worlds we live in. Worlds are what happen when humans encounter nature and each other. We take the raw materials around us – human and otherwise – and form them into something meaningful. Ways of living together, eating, the hows and whys of worship and government, the traditions that mark time and transition, all of these and more go into creating our worlds.
The worlds we create, much like the worlds of our books and movies, are worlds filled with hurt and harm. Humanity can produce incredible good, amazing beauty, right alongside unspeakable, almost unfathomable evil. That’s why Christians talk about a fallen, sinful world: no matter the worlds we dream up, we can’t seem to escape creating worlds touched by evil, by death, by destruction.
So, Jesus has entered into the worlds we have created, to save us from our worlds, by inviting us into a world created by God. This world, which the Gospels call the Kingdom of God, breaks into ours. Jesus is the crack, the break. Through Jesus healing, mercy, forgiveness, - eternal life enter our world! God’s world presses on us. The resurrected Jesus is our escape, not from the earth, not from our bodies, but from ways of living that are marked by sin and death. Jesus invites us out of the worlds we have created into his new world, from the kingdom of death to the kingdom of God.
Jesus does not belong to the world, because Jesus does not belong to sin or to death. His life, as Easter reminds us, cannot be stopped by death. Jesus does not belong to our world, and by grace, neither do we. In our baptisms, we change our address! We no longer live in the worlds which humanity has made, but in the world which God has made. This is the true world, the world we were made for. This world is one of peace, mercy, forgiveness. It is a world in which God is worshipped and our neighbors loved. This is a world that is overflowing with life, with justice, with abundance! This is the world – this is the kingdom – which God is bringing to bear on the old worlds of sin and death. And you and I are called to be a part of that.
Belonging to this world, preaching this world, will often put a target on our backs. God’s world simply produces enemies, folks who are more invested in the world as we have made it than the world as God intends it. The fight against slavery and for civil rights is a case study in this, but it’s something we all have to be aware of. Each of us, in some way, is invested in the world as it is, we have to ask Jesus for the grace to die daily to the temptations of this world, and the strength to turn our hearts to the world which he has brought.
The church must also wrestle with this. Plenty of good Christians, plenty of good Episcopalians stood by while abolitionists and protesters fought for the end of slavery and the granting of equal rights in the US. The church in America has spent much of its life seeking to be acceptable to the world it finds itself in, and it has led us to a point of massive decline, decline that will probably be accelerated by the pandemic. If want to continue as a church, if we want to have a church to give to our kids, godkids, and grandkids, we need to start preaching and proclaiming the world that Jesus Christ has brought, bearing witness in our lives to that world. Jesus said we do not belong to the world of sin and death. We belong to another world, and we have to act like it. As we come back together there will be a strong temptation to “go back” to normal. But what if that’s not what we’re called to, though? What if God is calling us to imagine what we can be? What if God is calling us to imagine new kind of parish life, a parish life where the world of God, a world of mercy, grace, and love is boldly, unapologetically, proclaimed? We may be hated, we may even be crucified, but that can only be a prelude to resurrection. Amen.