Micah 4:1-5
Acts 4:5-12
Luke 24:36b-48
Psalm 98

I have been thinking about what to say, since this is likely my last chance to speak to some of you before you leave for the summer, or for good.

I feel like the old guy (which I am) giving advice to young people going off into the world (which you are). As it turns out I have learned some very important lessons through personal experience, which I now offer to you.

First off, if you ever lose your car remote, do not get one from the dealer. Get a used one off eBay and then find programming instructions on the web. Much cheaper.

Always unplug electrical appliances before taking them apart, especially electric clothes dryers which use extra strong deadly powerful voltage.

Do not start a campfire with gasoline unless you have been properly trained.

When splitting wood with an axe, do not hold the piece of wood between your knees. This is very important.

Even if your 7th grade English teacher has a sense of humor you will still get in trouble if you kick her in the the butt.

Those are the most important, or perhaps just the most memorable, of the lessons I have learned on my own.

It is possible that better and richer lessons have come to us, not so much on our own but in our shared work this year on Stanton Street.

Today’s passage from Micah speaks directly to our reasons from coming to this street, because Micah wrote it during a time of trouble yet he points to a final deliverance. This is a picture of what the world will be like when God sets all things right. People will be drawn to learn the ways of God. Disputes of all kinds will be rightly settled, and injustice will vanish. Instead of preparing for war, everyone will work to create, to cultivate, and to make the world beautiful.

But notice the last line: “All the nations may walk in the name of their gods; we will walk in the name of the LORD our God for ever and ever.” On first reading that line might convey a tone of elitism or triumphalism, as if to say, “Everyone else is stupid and wrong; our religious ways are right, and we are proud of it.”

But that is not Micah’s tone. He has just given a vision of how things will be when God judges and saves the world. But things were not that way yet, and things are still not set right. Things are badly wrong in many ways, as you know. Micah wrote from a minority position of weakness. He was at odds with the powerful prevailing culture. Most people did not share this vision, this dream for a world set right by God. Most people still do not. Anyone who chose to walk in the name of God, that is, to live praying and working for God to judge and save the world, would be in a peculiar minority, in a subversive community that lived differently because it dreamed the future differently. They would be small and a little odd, not powerful and proud.

Likewise in the Acts passage. The last line is often read as a sort of high-pressure altar call: Your only chance to go to heaven after you die is to cut a deal with Jesus. But this is not primarily what Peter is talking about.

At that time the Roman empire ruled the whole world. One of their claims was that the emperor Caesar was the son of God and the savior of the world. He saved the world from chaos by bringing in the Roman way to live, through the power of the sword. They had a propaganda line they would repeat: “There is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved except Caesar.”

So when Peter erases Caesar’s name and puts Jesus in its place, he is challenging the whole way the world is run, and pledging to live according to a different king, with a different dream for the world. And this is exactly what the early church did, to the befuddlement of all observers: they loved one another, they cared for the poor, and they resigned from a life of self-serving, power over others, and violence.

And this is the lesson for me out of this past year: God has called us to resign our loyalties to the false gods of money, power, unhealthy pleasures and addictions, violence, and denying the image of God in others. God calls us to join a subversive community of Jesus, living a peculiar life of love and servanthood. Fitfully, unevenly, I have seen us do that.

Here is what I have seen:

I have seen you welcome the neighborhood kids who plop themselves in your laps and completely invade your personal space. When you welcome them, you welcome Jesus.

I have seen you shovelling rotting leaves and garbage out of the street gutters. When you do that, you declare that God will one day set the world right, and not even the gutters will be left out.

I have seen you organize the kids into fun games, perhaps shouting yourselves hoarse to get it done. When you do this you declare that God has something better for them than aimless wandering and fighting and vandalism.

I have seen you hurry to take the role of the janitor, to mop and sweep and carry heavy things. When you do this you remind people that Jesus came to be the servant of all, and took the lowest place.

I have seen you break bread with the least of these: the homeless, the addicted, the suffering, the sad, the sinners and the sinned-against, and all the bruised reeds and smoldering wicks of this neighborhood. When you do this you imitate Jesus himself, who gently bears all those who have special needs.

Beloved friends, that was well done.

All this was for me a glimpse, a hint, a taste, of God’s dream for the world.