May 22, 2011
Acts 7:55-60
Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16
1 Peter 2:2-10
John 14:1-14
Jesus is saying goodbye to his friends. And goodbyes are hard. Their faces reveal the trouble in their hearts. “Do not let your hearts be troubled,” he says, looking around at them gathered there in the dim light of the oil lamps in that upper room. But they are afraid. Why is he going? Where is he going? Can’t they come too?
This Gospel lesson is, I believe, the one most used at Episcopal funerals. It is about goodbye’s and about the pain of goodbyes. And it is also about hope and reassurance in the face of loss, separation, and death.
I once had a conversation with a fellow clergyman who recounted to me his experience of helping the surviving member of a couple plan a funeral.. Reviewing the options, the priest suggested that the Gospel lesson be this one -- the one where Jesus says, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.” “Dwelling places?”the partner said. “Dwelling places?” “You knew John. How gracious and tasteful he was. John would not want just a ‘dwelling place! John would want a mansion. Can’t we give him a mansion – like it said in the older Bible?” And so they did.
When it came time to read the Gospel at the funeral, my friend read from the translation we heard this morning, but, looking warmly at John’s partner as he read, he proudly proclaimed, “In my Fathers’ house are many ‘mansions’. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself.”
Jesus is taking the part of the servant of a nomadic tribe who strikes out ahead of his companions, who rushes ahead to the oasis to set up the tents, to draw the cool water, light the lamps, lay the carpets, and fluff up the pillows. That work done, he will return to the caravan to accompany them, to usher them toward the familiar comfort of their now awaiting home.
And this is his promise to us, too. To go ahead and prepare a place, a dwelling place, a mansion, for each of us.
What do you imagine that home, that dwelling place, that mansion will be like for you and those you love? For desert nomads, it would have been just what I described. A tent set firmly in the sand, providing refuge from the cold desert winds and shade from parching desert sun. Ornate rugs unrolled on the ground, great pillows all plumped up and shaken free of sand, oil lamps lighting the way to the life-giving water of the oasis.
That’s probably not your picture of your mansion in the sky. For you and me, maybe there are rich oriental rugs on the floor, and maybe there are chandeliers hanging from high ceilings. For me, those chandeliers would be full of real candles blazing in hospitable welcome. And they would never burn low or need replacing – or drip wax on the floor! There would be books and books and books. And a great big leather chair with the biggest ottoman in the heavenly furniture store. And a reading light that knows just how to focus itself so that even without my glasses, every word would leap off the page.
And there are pictures on the wall, pictures of beloved memories, pictures of Hawaii – and Rome pictures which, when you looked at them, would be full of the sound of crashing waves, and the smell of frangiapanne or the smell of pizza and the “honk, honk” of Vespas. What pictures will hang on the wall of your mansion in heaven?
But there will be no need of pictures of the people you love. Because all of them, ALL of them, will be coming for dinner. The dining room in that house will be big enough to hold them all, and they will all be there, and there will always be enough time to tell them all the things you ever wanted to. And to hear them tell you in return all the wonderful adventures of their lives. And you will never forget to tell them how much you love them. And they will never forget to tell you the same thing. And you will hear it. And know that it is true. And the food will be fabulous. And the desert tray will never be empty. Now that’s a mansion I could move into. A mansion worth dying to inherit.
But will it really be that way? Well, yes and no.
Jesus has indeed gone before us to that other land to prepare a place for us, and it will not be just a dwelling place. It will be the mansion of your dreams. Will it have comfortable furniture and leather-bound books? I do not know. But Jesus promises it will have all the good things we ever really longed for or needed.
It will be place with the doors flung wide open in welcome. A place in which you are truly known and truly loved. It will be the place you belong. There will be no shame there. No nagging sense that you are not what you ought to be. There will be no condemnation there, no accusing voice finding fault. Only acceptance, understanding, and love. There will be no regret there, because all sins are forgiven and wiped away. No sense that you’ve got to do more than you can, only sincere gratitude and thanksgiving that you have done what you could. And there will certainly be a banquet, where you can wear whatever you want, and stay as long as you need, and share in meal that fills your deepest hunger.
But wait. It seems we’ve stopped talking about furniture and photographs. And started talking about the fruits of God’s love for us. Acceptance, forgiveness, understanding, encouragement, compassion, and love so delicious you can taste it, love so comfortable you can feel it wrap around you and hold you up. This is the furniture of the Kingdom of God. This is the nature of the place Jesus has gone ahead to prepare for us.
And, dear friends, there is no reasons that place should be just there and then. It is the place we are called to live in right here and right now. If we are not busy furnishing this place, this world with those things, then we’ve got it all wrong. A church, a parish church, must be that place where acceptance, and forgiveness, understanding, compassion, and love so delicious you can taste it, may be found. Insofar as it is, then we really are that community Jesus calls us to be. Insofar as it is not, then we’ve got work to do.
Churches do not exist to build real mansions on earth, but to build on earth our very best attempt at that heavenly place where God would have us live. A place where all God’s children learn and know that they are forgiven, are accepted, and are loved. A place where we do not fear condemnation and judgment because we learn and know that in God’s eyes all is forgiven, every debt has all been paid. A place where each one’s gifts are celebrated and shared to the good of everyone else. A place where we can truly, deeply, passionately be at home. That is what we need to be building here. The furniture of love, acceptance, and forgiveness, and mutual support are the stuff we need to be setting about us in this place. Anything else is a waste of our time.
And what about that banquet, what about that great dinner party at which all those we love, those whom we see no longer, are gathered together? The tears wiped from their eyes and ours? Just what about that circle that will “be unbroken? “
Dear friends, that too is here. Right here and right now. Gathered around us at this table are all those we love and who love us. This table only appears to be limited to time and space. In reality, only one end of this table is here. The other end stretches to the skies; and gathered around it is the whole company of Saints basking in the light of a million candles -- a million candles which all together do not burn nearly as brightly as God’s love lighting every face in that fabulous company. The bread there never runs out, and the wine is always flowing. That bread, that wine, that table are right here. Right now. There is indeed a mansion prepared for us, a dwelling place in God’s Kingdom. Open your eyes and see it. In our Father’s house are many, many mansions, and this place is called to be one of them. That doorway flung wide open in welcome to all God’s children must be right here.
And the party has indeed already begun, right now. And all goodbyes were only temporary. Everyone is here already. Even those we see no longer. They are here, and we are with them and they are with us.
Come, let us keep the feast.
Monday, May 23, 2011
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter
Trinity Church
May 8, 2011
Acts 2:14a,36-41May 8, 2011
Psalm 116:1-3, 10-17
1 Peter 1:17-23
Luke 24:13-35
Cleopas and his companion were walking home, back to what was familiar. So much of what had happened to them in the last three days was not familiar, was not the world they wanted to live in. They were taking a walk in which it was painful and hard to put one foot in front of the other. They were coming from Jerusalem on a Sunday afternoon heavy with the memory of all that had happened there. They had seen the crowd go wild as Jesus rode in on donkey. They had heard him hailed as king and messiah. They had felt their hope and the hope of their people well up in their hearts as this gentle teacher moved into the holy city as a hero.
And then it had all fallen apart. He had been tried and brutally killed. And hope had died in their hearts. And so now they turn toward home, walking together, remembering and regretting, wondering how it had all gone so disastrously bad so terrifyingly fast.
Their world is falling apart, and it always does when worlds fall apart, it appears that it can never be put back together again.
But that is not God’s way – merely for worlds to crumble and nothing more.
For Cleopas and his companion, the new world that is about to emerge for them is more wonderful than anything their old world had to offer. In their old world, dead is dead. In their new world, the awareness is beginning to dawn that love conquers all things – even death.
The stories we hear in our Scriptures are paradigms – that is they reveal the great, overarching patterns at work in the universe. That is to say, the stories in our scriptures reveal what kind of God God is. And if that is true, then the story about Cleopas and his companion reveals God to us.
How is that so, and how does it matter?
What I have in mind, of course, is all the times our lives seem to be coming apart at the seams. Times of illness, times of death, times when careers or relationships go bad.
If we take the story Cleopas and his companion as our paradigm, what do we learn?
First we learn that they grieve and that they do it together. They were “talking with each other about all these things that had happened;” and when the encounter a stranger “They stood still looking sad.” [LK 14 ff] They are not pretending. They are not sugar-coating it. Though they can make no sense of what has happened, of what is happening, they do not deny it or say it isn’t so or that their pain isn’t real. I am never as deeply concerned for the psychological health of someone who cries as I am for someone who is never, ever known to do so. Grief is real, and like all feelings it must be expressed not suppressed. Cleopas and his companion grieve. And they share their grief. We, none of us, is ever meant to bear our grief alone.
But they do not shut down and give up. Though it may look like the end, they are still willing to engage a stranger whom it would have been just as easy to ignore or to shut out because their grief was too private, too personal. Nothing is too private or personal to share with those who genuinely are your companions. Nothing.
And now take a careful look at what the stranger says to them, “Oh how foolish you are.” [LK 24.25] Not exactly the gentlest thing he could have said to them. But it is the truth. Even though it is a harsh truth, they are willing to hear it.
This is a story I’ve never told from the pulpit before. Some weeks after my mother died, my friend and mentor Sam Lloyd, asked me how I was doing. I told him the past weeks had been very rough. That the grief and the memories sometimes overwhelmed me. And then I began to recount in vivid detail how difficult her last hours had been for her and for me. I was telling the story with all the immediacy of feeling it had had when it was occuring. Sam gently placed a hand on my shoulder and said, “Scott, that is over. It is not happening now.” I was shocked back into the reality of the present – the only place we can really live. Some might think his words were harsh, but I can tell you they were exactly the dose of reality I needed to take stock of myself and my faith and begin to put parts of my life back together and get on with my life.
Cleopas and his companion receive a similar jolt from the stranger – and they do not rebuke him or claim some kind of wounded pride or hurt feelings. They recognize the truth – and the truth can only bring healing. Not only do they embrace the hard truth – that they are being foolish, that there is so much they have misunderstood – they embrace the one who brings it to them. It is so much easier to shoot the messenger. It is so much easier to blame others for our situation.
And then the good news breaks forth – Jesus, the world they thought has vanished, is right there before them. He is not dead, but alive. Their world is not over, it is just sustaining a new beginning. Love, grief, truth have brought them to this moment.
Let’s apply this to our own situation. You have heard for over four years now that the church as we have know it – that means the WHOLE church and this parish church are changing. They will never be the way they were.
Our first response needs to be to accept the reality of that and to grieve – honestly, deeply, truly grieve; but then be willing to hear hard truths – hard truths rooted in our Scriptures. Truths like, “the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’” Rev 21:5 (NRSV) Truths like, “And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’” Rev 21:5 (NRSV) And truths like “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, 3 for you have [already] died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. Col 3:2-3 (NRSV) And truths not so hard to hear, like, “Jesus said, ‘. . . I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.’” Matt 16:18 (NRSV)
If we would come together and read and listen deeply to our Scriptures like Cleopas and his companion did, I am sure our way forward would become clearer and clearer. And we too would know Jesus in the breaking of the bread.
Notice that phrase, “in the breaking of the bread.” Not in the bread, but in its breaking. The great paradigm of the universe is that all things, ALL things break and are transcended, but that the God we know in Jesus Christ is present and active throughout it all and can be counted on to be present forever.
Think of that when you see that whole, unbroken piece of bread lifted up. Whole, unstained, undamaged and pure. That is not the world I live in. I don’t think it is the world you live in either. Watch as that bread is broken, broken into many pieces and then given to each of us who share in the broken-ness of this world.
Look and hope with all your heart, soul and with all your mind – and I promise you, you will see Jesus. He will be known to you in the breaking of the bread. He will be known to you as the world around us breaks, as it must and always has.
Sermon for Easter Day
Trinity Church
April 24, 2011
Acts 10:34-43April 24, 2011
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
Colossians 3:1-4
Matthew 28:1-10
Life and death. Life and death.
These two have been the church’s theme throughout last week, Holy Week. We have walked the way of the cross. Followed Jesus as he rode into Jerusalem, filling the city with hope as a lively, adoring crowd ran along beside him, a crowd overflowing with joy and life. But then we watched with horror as the crowds that had praised him so, the crowd in whom he had inspired such jubilant life, turned on him and demanded his death. Life and Death.
On Thursday we gathered with Jesus and his friends as, once more, he shared a meal with them. He gave them bread and wine as a way to keep his life ever present to them, not just as a memory, but as sound and taste and touch and sight and smell. We shared a meal together here that night and we heard the words “Blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of the universe. You bring forth bread from the earth; and on this night you have given us the bread of life.” You have given us the Bread of Life and a way to have you always with us even after your death. Life and Death.
And on Friday, Good Friday, we stood at the foot of the cross as he said, "It is finished. My work is done. "Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit . . . They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths . . . and in the garden there was a new tomb . . . they laid Jesus there.” [JN 19.30 ff.] A life too good for governments and religions and ordinary people to bear, dead on a cross. Laid in a tomb. Life and death. And life and death. And life and death.
And then comes today. Easter Day. Today Mary Magdalene and another Mary, two women Jesus had made feel so alive, have come to a place of death, a tomb, to do appropriate honor to one whom they loved who has died. To honor one who had brought such life to them and now was dead.
And they hear news too incredible and confusing to believe. “He has been raised from the dead.”[Mt. 28.7]
So maybe it isn’t just life and death. Maybe it is life and death and life again.
Life and death and life again. That is the message of Easter Day. That is God’s message to each of us, to each of you, this day.
Somewhere along the way Christianity got sidetracked. It got to be about a transaction between us and God. A “we-do-something-and-God-does-something-back” kind of arrangement: We are good and God rewards us. We are bad and God punishes us. And if we’re really, really bad, God punishes us forever. A message about the gift of life became a message about rules and fears and threats and obligations.
But that is not what Christianity is about. Christianity is about learning what life is all about, about how all creation is put together and who’s in charge of it and how we fit into all of that. And, while it is very important that Jesus’s friends saw and believed that though he was dead yet he lived, that is only part of it. That Jesus was dead and yet he lives is a message, it is a revelation – it is the revealing to you and me of the nature of creation. Easter Day reveals to us the truth about our existence – that the ultimate rule and pattern of the universe is not Life and Death, but Life and Death and Life again.
Those two Marys saw Jesus right before their eyes. “ Then Jesus said to them, "Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me."
“Now You have seen me alive,” he says, “now go tell the others that too shall see me.”
They saw Jesus. If only you and I could have that experience too. Maybe then we could have more faith that the message of Easter is true. That the pattern and meaning of it all is “Life and death and life again.”
But where should we look? And would we know him if we saw him? That is the challenge life offers us: Where and how to see the living Jesus.
It is a cliché, of course, to invite you to look at spring time bursting out all around us – but in my experience, clichés got to be clichés because the keep being true over and over and over. Winter gives way to spring, again and again and again. It is a glimpse of the way God has created the universe to work. Life and death and life again.
Yes, spring and summer do go down to winter again, and life can be looked at that way if we choose. But “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” [JN 12.24-25] Grain does not live so that it may die, it dies so that it may have even greater life. But you know that instinctively, don’t you? That the emerging life and beauty of spring are truer to God’s ultimate purpose than the death that is winter. You know it because that is the way God made you – to value life and to know that it is meant to be yours. Life and death and life again.
But that, of course, is not our only clue. Far from it – If we have eyes to see.
Have you ever experienced forgiveness? Have you ever been a part of a relationship that was caught up in the deadly cords of hurt and resentment and anger? Of course you have – and I truly, deeply hope that at some point in your life you have also known the mending of the broken relationship –the healing of the hurt, the letting go of the resentment, the subsiding of the anger. If you have, and I pray you have, you know that the anger and the resentment are deadly. They weigh you down to the earth. And the reconciliation, the forgiveness, the healing brings joy and hope and strength and peace. Once-deadly relationships can be restored to life. Life and death and life again. To know that experience is to know Jesus, to glimpse the power of his reconciling love. Love that brings life to dead relationships can only be expected to bring life to us. That is where we must look to see Jesus – in the healing of division, in the forgiving and being forgiven that free us from the cords of deadly resentment and fear.
Anger and resentment and fear have no life to offer us. Forgiveness and reconciliation – person to person, race to race, nation to nation – there is where Jesus is to be found. It is where he has gone ahead of us and waits to see us there.
Life and death and life again.
Today we have the privilege and the joy of baptizing two young children. In a few moments they shall be baptized as all Christians have been.
A their baptisms, as at our own, they will approach waters of chaos and death. “In [the waters of Baptism] we are buried with Christ in his death.”[BCP] Those threatening, deadly waters will wash over them. And then they shall, as we once did, emerge on the other side of that water, full of new life. Born again into a Life that can never be taken away. We will receive them unconditionally into God’s family, God’s household, the Church, just as God receives us unconditionally into everlasting life with him. In Baptism, we all have died, and now our life is hidden with Christ in God. [COL 3.3]
Life and death and life again. It is the deep, enduring, unchangeable truth at the heart of creation. A truth that you already know because nature and your own experience tell you so. A truth that we reenact and recreate here today. You have only to look at these children and at that font to see Jesus. He has gone there ahead of us, and there we can see him, if we will.
That is the message of Easter Day. The message of every moment of our lives. In Christ we have already died. That is behind us now. And we have been raised to the new, unending life God has always intended for us.
Christ is risen, and so, in the power of his love shall we all also be.
Alleuia, Christ is risen. The lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.
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