EASTER 6A - Acts 17:22-31; Psalm 66:7-18; 1 Peter 3:13-22; John 14:15-21 - 27 April 2008 -

A sermon given by The Rev. Peter A. Munson for St. Ambrose Episcopal Church, Boulder, Colorado

One Person’s Testimony to the Presence and Power of God

INTRODUCTION - A tradition of testimony

I am reading a wonderful book right now. It is called Christianity for the Rest of Us, by Diana Butler Bass. It’s basically about mainline Protestant churches that are alive and doing very well - without gimmicks - and what the people in those churches are doing. Probably it should be required reading for all of us who care about Christ and the Church, for all of us who have a passion about our calling and our mission. And if you care about people being transformed by the power of God - deeply transformed in real ways that go way below the surface - this is definitely a book for you.

One of the chapters that I read this week is about the power of testimony. When people talk in church about their experience of God, they are changed. But the people who hear those testimonies are also changed. Diana Butler Bass writes this:

“In many ways, testimony is the most democratic - and empowering - of all Christian practices. The entire New Testament is a testimony, a record of experiences that early Christians had with the transformative power of God. Those early believers wrote down their testimonies, their experiences of sharing their testimonies, and the impact of their testimonies on the people around them. This basic structure underlies almost every book of the New Testament - most of which claim to “witness” or “testify” to the love and grace of Jesus Christ. Indeed, the Book of Acts asserts that the church itself started with the apostle Peter’s testimony on the day of Pentecost: “This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses” (Acts 2:32). From that point onward, famous disciples, like Peter and Paul, and regular converts and believers spread the good news of Christian faith across the Roman Empire through their testimony. Their stories of experiencing God were so powerful, so personally transformative, that many were willing to die rather than recant their testimony.” (Christianity for the Rest of Us, p. 134)

Butler Bass then goes on to tell the story of certain churches around the country, and how they encourage their members to share their testimonies - their experience of God - often during Sunday morning worship. She writes about how the spiritual practice of testimony is one of the practices that is transforming these churches and their members.

In today’s lesson from Acts, Paul has just spent some time traveling around Athens. He has observed all the idols in the city (Acts 22:16), and found himself debating with Epicurean and Stoic philosophers there. Mostly though, he came to tell them about Jesus and his own personal experience with the risen Christ. He started with things he had noticed around him as he walked the streets of Athens. He saw an altar with the inscription, “To an unknown God.” He then proceeded to tell them about the God that he knew. He gave his testimony.

In the first letter of Peter, we hear, “Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence.” (1 Peter 3:15-16) In other words, don’t be afraid to testify of your experience of God in Christ. And in the Gospel, Jesus tells the disciples that when he leaves them, he will not leave them orphaned. He says he will pray to the Father, and that they will be given the Advocate, the Spirit of truth. This Spirit will be their guide, and will lead them into all truth. The Spirit will also give them the power to testify about their experience of God. Jesus said at one point, “When they hand you over, do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say; for what you are to say will be given to you at that time; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.” (Matthew 10:19-20)

It is obvious that I have not been arrested for my faith, as the early Christians often were. I am not being persecuted for my faith, as many were then, and as many Christians are in other parts of the world today. I am standing here in front of other believers, other pilgrims on the journey. And yet, the time seems right for me to give an accounting for the hope that is in me.

“Holy Spirit, I pray, give me words that aren’t so much my words, but the Spirit of my heavenly Father speaking through me.”

A TESTIMONY...

I grew up in a faithful, church-going family. I received a lot from this family. I got my love of sports and exercise and hiking and mountains and all of nature from my family, and my love of music. I have three older sisters and I am the youngest child and only son, and many people over the years have asked me if I was spoiled. I was loved and cared for and taught important values and my parents had a lot going for them, but it was not a perfect family, and I was not spoiled. At times it felt like I had five parents. My folks were very into image, into how things looked, and in some ways I am still trying to come out from underneath the weight of that particular load.

But this much I can tell you: I was always provided for. My parents cared about me - what I did, who I hung out with, where I was, how well I did in school, what I would become. And I would say, looking back, that God has always provided for me. I was never one of those kids who was very popular, but I always had at least one good, close friend. At times in my life I have been fortunate enough to have even two or three or four close friends, and that is saying something.

Though my family was faithful and church-going, we weren’t a family that really talked about our faith. We said grace before meals. My parents got involved in church and were active beyond Sunday morning. They did not just sit on the sidelines. In fact, in his retirement years, my dad even served as Senior Warden one time! But we didn’t really talk about our experience of God. Our faith was a rather private affair.

Just before I started high school, we moved from Charleston, South Carolina to Virginia Beach, Virginia, and my parents found their way to the Episcopal Church for the first time. They never switched denominations again. I remember all us fumbling around in the Prayer Book, and trying to figure out when to stand, when to kneel, and when to sit. We hung in there. We caught on. I remember taking the Confirmation Class at 13 and memorizing a bunch of things, and taking a test at the end, before we were confirmed. Faith was more about what you knew, it seemed, than about having a relationship with God through Christ. That started changing for me as I got more involved in the EYC - the Episcopal Young Churchmen. It was a fun youth group with good music, good leaders (both older high school kids and adult sponsors), and fun weekends away, and faith was suddenly more interesting.

I traveled west to begin college at the University of Colorado in the fall of 1975. CU is a big tradition in my family. My maternal grandfather graduated from CU, both my parents, my three older sisters... one of my aunts used to be on the faculty, a close friend of my parents was the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences when I was at CU. I joked about maybe going somewhere else, but who was I kidding?

I was one of those college students who hit the books really hard and didn’t have much of a social life. Thanks be to God, I was blessed with another close friend, Mark Westhoff, who I met during my very first semester, just a few doors down from me in the basement level of Baker Hall. Mark and I ended up being roommates for the last 3-1/2 years of college, after both of us had disaster roommates our first semester. For the most part, though, my social life was during the summer months, when I worked at the YMCA of the Rockies in Estes Park, first as a camp counselor for elementary school kids, and then, for three summers, as a “hikemaster”- leading guests all over Rocky Mountain National Park and the Indian Peaks Wilderness Area.

I would come back to campus in the fall and bury myself in the books again, and get lost socially at a very big university. I was not a partyer. I have never been a partyer. I went to a party my freshman year in Baker Hall. There were about 500 people there. I stayed about five minutes, which was about four minutes and 30 seconds too long, and I made a u-turn and headed back to my room, so that I could breathe again. I never did that again.

I was not only lost socially. I was also lost spiritually. I dibbled and dabbled with Campus Crusade for Christ, but in the back of my mind, or maybe in even in the front, I realized that they were way too rigid and fundamentalist for me. So that didn’t last. I returned to my earliest religious roots and rode my bike down to the Congregational Church on Pine and Broadway, just about every Sunday. There were some friends of my parents in that congregation, and I liked their emphasis on social justice, but hardly anyone ever spoke about a personal relationship with Christ, and I knew I needed something personal and real, something that touched my soul. I knew that I needed to be awakened, and that I was missing something. A number of years later I discovered that St Augustine had said something in the 5^th century - that our souls are restless until they rest in God. That was me. I had a hole in me that only God could fill, and I sensed that.

I met a couple of wonderful people during the summer of 1979. One of them was a young woman my age, who, as I got to know her, I realized had a real and personal relationship with Christ, the kind that I was looking for. The other person was a woman with terrible knees who was in her 70's, who was basically hired by the Y every summer to be the camp sage. I don’t know what her title was, but almost all of us college students went to Anne Austill because she glowed. She had lived a lifetime with Christ, and it showed, and if you needed some advice, you just found yourself seeking out Anne. (She was an Episcopalian, by the way. Probably still the most alive Christian and Episcopalian I have ever met.) I can’t begin to take the time now to describe to you all that has happened since I first prayed, a few months after I graduated from college, during the summer of 1979. I prayed something like this: “Lord Jesus, I believe in you. I want to know you. I want to follow you and have a relationship with you. I don’t know much about you. But I need you, and I want you to be a much bigger part of my life.”

Not long after I prayed that prayer, I began law school at CU and began the most tumultuous three years of my life. Let me clarify. God did not cause my turmoil. I was in turmoil because I started to wake up and seek God’s guidance for my life. I was in turmoil because I started to grow up and ask who God was calling me to be, outside of all the other influences in my life. And it wasn’t at all clear to me whether I was supposed to be a lawyer or not. Again, God put people in my life that were the right people at the right time. And I even discovered that there was a group at the law school called the Christian Legal Society. Those men and women became my peer group, and helped me survive all the turmoil of law school.

The rest of my life since then has been mostly about trying to listen and pay attention to God. I acknowledge this, first and foremost: I am not God, and am glad God has that job. And God, being God, knows way, way more than I do, and keeps showing me that I don’t know that much, and that I tend to forget the most important things a lot of the time, and occupy myself at times with things that aren’t really that important.

I have discovered this: if I put my trust in God, I am never disappointed. I have discovered that if I am open, and not closed off, God teaches me the next thing I need to learn, or just gives me the strength I need to take the next step of faith. And then things sort of unfold from there. I have come to know Jesus as my friend, the Holy Spirit as my guide, and God the Father as the one who loves me infinitely - no matter what I do, or how I miss the mark - and calls me His beloved child. I know God to be a presence in my life, a Force who has given me all the things that I truly need, and blessed me - beyond measure - mostly with people. People like Julia and Zach and Hannah, yes, most certainly. But also spiritual mentors, teachers, authors, faithful people on the journey - like all of you - in all the churches where I have served.

I am with you as your priest, and you look to me for certain things, especially spiritual guidance. I am a priest, but I am a pilgrim, a seeker, a learner - someone trying to make my way in the world in a way that is faithful, someone who is trying to follow Jesus - exactly like you.

I have never had anything published. Someday that might change. But one of the things I consider myself to be is a writer. I don’t have to be paid to be a writer. For many years now, I have been writing - filling up journals, writing letters and cards, writing letters to the editor at times, writing sermons (over 800 and counting), and more recently, writing meditations. Most recently, I have been doing something new, thanks to modern technology. I have been writing things that come to me - in the moment - on my phone... on my Blackberry! Here is something that I wrote a month or two ago. It is entitled “I Tried”, and it is part of my testimony.

I tried:

- to love my Lord

- to love my family and friends

- to pray for my enemies

- to forgive others and not be unduly hard on myself

- to climb lots of mountains, to enjoy the trail (both ways), my companions, the summit, and to always come home in one piece

- to find balance in my life

- to love my parishioners, remember the poor, and have some fun

- to be generous

- to be honest and real

- to take note of beauty, in whatever form it might appear

- to be a priest who blessed others in the name of Christ

- to preach so that people would connect with God and be inspired to pursue God further

- to preach about love and grace way more than I preached about sin and judgment

- to learn and grow

- to be open and not prejudge things or people

- to stay connected with my friends

- to be grateful

- to be faithful, no matter what circumstances I was going through

- to overcome my fears and not worry so much about what people think

- to pay attention and see evidence of the holy and the Divine in everyday life.

I have tried to do these things. I have not always succeeded. But despite that fact, I know my Lord to be a good, loving, merciful, inviting and forgiving God, who only wants what is best for me, and who invites me to keep taking risks - for my own good, and for the good of others.

CONCLUSION

Each one of us has a testimony. In some ways, I am at an unfair advantage, in that I can stand up every Sunday and talk about how I experience God. That’s fine, as far as it goes, but it is far from complete. The truth is that all of us benefit and are changed by hearing each person’s testimony of faith. So you and I need to be praying and talking about what might shift, here at St. Ambrose, so that more of us share our testimonies. I am open to figuring that out with you. Thank you for being in this community, and for traveling the Way with the rest of us. Amen.