Appalachian Spring

This week we will begin a sermon series on the Book of Revelation. It is often used by Christians to predict future events, but it wasn't written for that purpose. The Book of Revelation was written to call people to resist the Roman Empire. It carries on the tradition of 'apocalypse' which is Greek for 'revelation'. In apocalyptic literature, God reveals, or makes clear, how to respond to the world in which we find ourselves. But it is written in a way that obscures the message from the people who it critiques.

The story of Pentecost is a story of adoption. God takes strangers and makes them family. And while adoption is good news for those of us who experience it, that good news doesn't make it easy. God brings strangers together and makes them family, but God doesn't make us all the same. We are adopted into God's family with all of our differences and our disagreements. How can we celebrate the differences between us, rather than using them as wedges to divide us?

This week's story from the Book of Acts speaks of the importance of hospitality when life is difficult and dangerous. Where does God call the church to be when people are facing exile, persecution, and danger?

Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow's sermon for May 25, 2025

A queer preacher takes on a notorious “clobber passage” and its history of pain and death. The sin of Sodom has nothing to do with same-sex marriage or trans children—and everything to do with willfully ignoring God's command to welcome strangers and practice hospitality. Let them know we are Christians by our love.

When I have offered hospitality, often I thought I was doing something kind for someone else. And I sometimes have tried to figure out how to get out of it, because it is work to welcome people in to your life. But it has almost always ended up being a much bigger gift to me than it might have been to the person I thought I was helping. God uses the people we meet and encounter in our lives to call us deeper into God's mystery of grace.

The Book of Acts continues the story began in the Gospel of Luke. The Good News of the Gospel is being taken to the ends of the Earth, because the Spirit is on the loose! From being a movement of people who knew Jesus, and people who had heard him teach and speak, it grows. Exponentially. From Jerusalem, to the rest of the Middle East, and then to Europe, Asia, and even San Francisco. This is the Good News--that God's Spirit will not be limited or constrained. How do we welcome and celebrate the differences that come with the Spirit's invitation? How does hospitality create, and re-create the church?

After the resurrection of Jesus, he walks with two men to a village called Emmaus. But his companions do not recognize who he is until they sit down and break bread with him. When have we walked with Jesus without even realizing it? How might we recognize Jesus in others and in the world?

At the start of Lent, the children 'buried' an alleluia in worship. We put the word away during a season. On Easter, we bring it back. On the first Easter morning, the women went to the tomb, assuming their alleluias were going to stay buried forever. Their rabbi was dead. Their hopes and dreams, buried with him. An encounter with the angels in the empty tomb makes them reconsider what they thought they knew of death, of endings. Maybe you've buried a lot of your hopes and dreams recently too. What might the Easter story have to say to us anew this year?