(John 15:9-17) - Jesus said to his disciples, "As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.

"This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another."

This past week I received a questionnaire from a group called The Consultation. It is a gathering of various interest groups in the Episcopal Church, and I was sent the questionnaire because I have been nominated for election at General Convention this summer to the General Board of Examining Chaplains. The Consultation wants to know where I stand on a number of issues.

One question was about environmental awareness. How has my life been changed, I was asked, by the crisis our world faces? I did not mean to be flip, but my answer was along the lines of the following: “Hey, my parents grew up in the Depression, and as a result we never wasted anything, and at the end of the day I am a chip off the old block. We threw out nothing, and if “”recycle was not a word in our vocabulary, “re-use” certainly was. It even included what happened when we took trips. The car was stuffed with every imaginable thing that we might need, in part because we were taught not to waste things, and in part our fear that we would not find everything we wanted at our destination. Long term self sufficiency was indeed our byword. It was a habit that flowed over into our later air travels. Before security became so onerous, you could have opened my mom’s or my suitcase and found everything from Band-aids to a portable iron. I think I even threw in some toilet tissue one time on a trip to Europe. After all, I had heard about those ancient stand-over-the-hole-in-the-floor toilets in small Italian towns, toilets with no amenities. It certainly made for some heavily burdensome trips.

It was not so bad years ago when I did not travel much, but now I find myself in a plane every month. And what I am finally learning is that I never need assume that nothing will be available when I arrive at my destination. It is already there. It seems that every hotel room has an iron and ironing board, there are toiletries all lined up in the bathrooms, little signs that say that if we left something at home not to worry because there are supplies at the front desk, and even different types of pillows so that we can sleep better. No need to worry.

You might think that this is a purely modern phenomenon, the world being pulled in tighter and tighter due to marketing and the fight for the consumer’s money. Well, if you think that, go reread today’s reading from the Book of Acts. The reality that everything is already present wherever the evangelist goes is at the heart of what we hear today.

First, some details on how we got to this point in Acts. Today’s selection is part of a much longer story, one that goes on for a chapter. Cornelius is a centurion in Caesarea, and more importantly for this story, a Gentile, not a Jew, unlike the first followers of Jesus. He has a vision that he needs to hear the good news from Peter. Peter meanwhile has a vision that God has declared all sorts of animals clean, a set up for his later meeting with Cornelius.

Long story short, Peter arrives at Cornelius’s house and begins preaching the good news. I wonder if Peter thinks that he is bringing God to Caesarea. But as our story begins today, Peter is interrupted in his sermon. He has not even had a chance to start baptizing people, when God’s Spirit begins causing the people present to speak in tongues and extol God. And what may be disconcerting to us two thousand years later (as it probably was at the time) is that Peter has to admit that God has been present with these people even before baptism.  We talk about baptism bringing us into relationship with God, and confirmation being the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, as if the church brings it to someone, when all along God has been present. It is as if we had to start saying that Christians are present even before we get a chance to get our hands on them and baptize them, and that the Holy Spirit has been powerful in their lives even before I as bishop lay hands on folk in confirmation.  Why did I drive all this way to bring something that you already have?

The radical good news of the gospel is that God is already present in our lives regardless of who we are or where we are. And it is a reminder to the church: God is already present in the lives of people even if we are not ready to admit it. We travel to the corners of the earth and God is there. We travel into the dark places of humanity and God is there. Thus, for all of us church professionals as we call ourselves, both laity and ordained, we can afford to travel lightly, take ourselves a little less seriously.

Did you hear what happened in Caesarea? When the Spirit came, the circumcised believers, that is, Jewish followers who believed that Jesus was the Messiah, were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out “even on the Gentiles.”  People who had been on the outside for a thousand years as far as the Jews were concerned had the gift of the indwelling of God in their lives. That is what resurrection is about: when we start seeing the resurrected Christ in the most unlikely of people. At this moment in the life of the church, the Jewish believers were experiencing resurrection. We might even want to call it a resurrection appearance, just as real as when on the first Easter the disciples on the road to Emmaus saw Jesus in the guise of a fellow traveler. Or just as we might see the risen Christ in the guise of someone who lives on the other side of the tracks, as we like to say, or outside the fold.

In its own way, it is like going into a hotel and realizing that everything we need is already there. As Christians we don’t have to worry about where God is not because God is already there. It ought to make our journey in faith easier. It is our good news that the future is going to be okay, no matter where we are called. All will be well, because wherever we go, God will be present. Our call is affirm that truth, make it clear. It ends up being why I really drive all this way to confirm and baptize. I come to help you see what you already have and to celebrate your many and varied gifts. I come, not bringing very much, but just enough so that every one of you might realize how much you already have to share. Amen.