Thursday, September 2, 2010
Sermon update September 2010
The Rev. Garrison has been on maternity leave through most of the summer. She is back at work but her sermons have been more spontaneous than scripted so there have been no copies to post.
Monday, June 7, 2010
June 6, 2010, The 2nd Sunday after Pentecost
SERMON preached on the Second Sunday after Pentecost (5C)
6 June, 2010 - Ted Berktold
When I was a young child, my awareness of wartime casualties centered on an annual Memorial Day visit to the grave of my uncle Joe, who was buried in the military cemetery at Fort Snelling, Minnesota. Mom would cut a bouquet of flowers, pack a substantial picnic, and the whole family would drive off for the day listening to the car radio and my mother's re-telling the tragedy of his death on the beach at Anzio in far-away Italy before I was born. He was a name to me - that's about all. I remember a photograph of him - a handsome young man in his soldier's uniform. Watching Ken Burn’s epic series “War” a few years ago gave me a new perspective on Anzio, in the prayer of a soldier there. “God help us,” he said. “And you come yourself. Don’t be sending Jesus. This ain’t no place for children.” When we would arrive at the cemetery with its row upon row of white markers, I would realize that many other people must have died as well, but the numbers never meant very much to me. The day was largely an outing, an unusual kind of outing, but there was nothing sad or gloomy about it. Even my mother used to enjoy it, although she would always end the day saying: "I suppose the time will come when no one will do this." She was right - we don't do it any more. My father is dead, Mom’s in a nursing home, my brothers and sisters are grown up and moved away like me and have other things to do on Memorial Day, so no one goes to that cemetery any more.
Memorial Day is more than an outing. When I visited the D-Day beaches several years ago, I found it more than a tourist destination in the Normandy countryside. Instinctively, I became more and more somber as I drew near the beaches. When I reflect on the amount of life lost in the wars of the last century alone, I shudder. Millions have been killed, including hundreds of thousands of Americans. Millions of British and French and Germans – tens of millions of Russians and Japanese soldiers and civilians - more than I ever imagined looking at those rows of white markers honoring America's dead at Fort Snelling. How many have been scarred or disabled, some for life? How difficult it is to pray out name and rank, week after week, remembering the dead in Iraq and Afghanistan in our own day.
There is a truth, found in Memorial Day, which goes deeper than statistics, a truth we know, but do not always stop to remember. It is this; someone has paid for everything we have. Think about this parish. Although some of you are founding members, this parish was here for many of today’s members when you arrived. Someone else started it. Life is never a free ride. There is a cost involved in anything that amounts to something. No baby is born; no child is raised to maturity without cost to its parents. No job continues through dozens of years without sacrifice. No marriage vows are kept though a lifetime without cost to both people. No nation has ever existed that has cost its people nothing. Think of our own nation, its original inhabitants from whom so much was taken, and its European settlers who established our government and made our laws. Present-day Americans have what we have because others were willing to pay the price for it. Some people paid the full price of their lives to preserve it.
One of the gravest dangers facing the world today is that we think, or at least we are sometimes encouraged to think, that we can have what we want for nothing. If we want happiness, someone else will give it to us. If we want peace, someone, somewhere, will give it to us. That isn't true, of course. The good things in life are bought with a price. The price of our salvation was paid by the blood of Jesus on the cross. In the first centuries after Jesus, spreading that news cost people their lives. Salvation is offered freely to anyone who will receive it, but it came at a great price.
Memorial Day and D-Day raise a question in me. Why do people fight? Why have so many people been killed? What was the potential of the young theologian Dietrich Bonheoffer, executed in a Nazi prison just before the fall of Berlin in 1945, or my own uncle Joe, or the young men and women we name in our prayers each week? How many others were lost who had within them the possibilities of great and creative things that never came to pass? And why do people in families fight? Why are management and labor always at war? Why young and old? Why do Christians fight so much? I don't pretend to know the answer, but this much I can say: People fight because they are aggressive by nature, some much more so than others. We must be aggressive up to a certain point. When we see something we want, we go after it. The complication is that two people often see the same thing. You see it happen among children. Two children want the same toy, so they fight over it. Two business firms want the same contract and fight to get it, because they feel that their future depends on closing that deal.
Competition adds fuel to the aggressive instinct. On a still greater scale, two countries want the same land, the same natural resources, the same oil fields or water, or the same prestige; and they fight for it. They fight, and history makes it clear that one fight leads to another. The war to end all wars was not the last fight. The treaties that followed, according to some historians, made World War II inevitable. To make things more vicious, when one person does something wrong, innocent people suffer the consequences. Life would be much simpler if that were not true. I don't know why God allows that to be. I don't think God planned it so. All I know is that evil is contagious.
The question all this raises on such a weekend is: Must this go on forever? Are we doomed to live in a world like this for the rest of our lives, and are our children to face a world like this? Aggressive people, aggressive nations. One fight leading to another. The innocent suffering as well as the guilty. This much we can say - the cost of life will continue. Aggressive instincts will not disappear from human nature. Conflict of interests will always be a factor in situations and relationships. But fighting need not continue. Peace is possible. We can learn to disagree with opponents and help them learn to disagree with us without destroying one another. We can learn to handle hostility, and keep it under control in our relationships.
The authors of several gospels saw the truth more clearly than we often do. They used a language we don't easily understand; it is the language of the spirit of God. They said, “You can’t serve two masters.” They didn't have to fight people because they didn't have to fight God. Through their relationship with Jesus they were able to tell us that God's love dwells among us, and because of that, peace is possible. Peace on earth, good will among people - that is God's will.
For those who have seen war and felt the power of death, D-Day and Memorial Day are more than an outing. For those of us who have felt God's saving grace, this sacrament is more than a picnic. It is a sacrificial prayer we make in the name of Jesus who died that we might live; who gave his body and his blood as a sign of God's endless love for us. In doing so, he gave us the peace that passes understanding.
Let us pray:
Loving Lord
Let your love be here
Fill us with your peace
Let your joy be here
Fill us with your grace
Let your light be here
Fill us with your power
Let us know that you are here
Fill us with your presence
Today and every day.
Amen.
6 June, 2010 - Ted Berktold
When I was a young child, my awareness of wartime casualties centered on an annual Memorial Day visit to the grave of my uncle Joe, who was buried in the military cemetery at Fort Snelling, Minnesota. Mom would cut a bouquet of flowers, pack a substantial picnic, and the whole family would drive off for the day listening to the car radio and my mother's re-telling the tragedy of his death on the beach at Anzio in far-away Italy before I was born. He was a name to me - that's about all. I remember a photograph of him - a handsome young man in his soldier's uniform. Watching Ken Burn’s epic series “War” a few years ago gave me a new perspective on Anzio, in the prayer of a soldier there. “God help us,” he said. “And you come yourself. Don’t be sending Jesus. This ain’t no place for children.” When we would arrive at the cemetery with its row upon row of white markers, I would realize that many other people must have died as well, but the numbers never meant very much to me. The day was largely an outing, an unusual kind of outing, but there was nothing sad or gloomy about it. Even my mother used to enjoy it, although she would always end the day saying: "I suppose the time will come when no one will do this." She was right - we don't do it any more. My father is dead, Mom’s in a nursing home, my brothers and sisters are grown up and moved away like me and have other things to do on Memorial Day, so no one goes to that cemetery any more.
Memorial Day is more than an outing. When I visited the D-Day beaches several years ago, I found it more than a tourist destination in the Normandy countryside. Instinctively, I became more and more somber as I drew near the beaches. When I reflect on the amount of life lost in the wars of the last century alone, I shudder. Millions have been killed, including hundreds of thousands of Americans. Millions of British and French and Germans – tens of millions of Russians and Japanese soldiers and civilians - more than I ever imagined looking at those rows of white markers honoring America's dead at Fort Snelling. How many have been scarred or disabled, some for life? How difficult it is to pray out name and rank, week after week, remembering the dead in Iraq and Afghanistan in our own day.
There is a truth, found in Memorial Day, which goes deeper than statistics, a truth we know, but do not always stop to remember. It is this; someone has paid for everything we have. Think about this parish. Although some of you are founding members, this parish was here for many of today’s members when you arrived. Someone else started it. Life is never a free ride. There is a cost involved in anything that amounts to something. No baby is born; no child is raised to maturity without cost to its parents. No job continues through dozens of years without sacrifice. No marriage vows are kept though a lifetime without cost to both people. No nation has ever existed that has cost its people nothing. Think of our own nation, its original inhabitants from whom so much was taken, and its European settlers who established our government and made our laws. Present-day Americans have what we have because others were willing to pay the price for it. Some people paid the full price of their lives to preserve it.
One of the gravest dangers facing the world today is that we think, or at least we are sometimes encouraged to think, that we can have what we want for nothing. If we want happiness, someone else will give it to us. If we want peace, someone, somewhere, will give it to us. That isn't true, of course. The good things in life are bought with a price. The price of our salvation was paid by the blood of Jesus on the cross. In the first centuries after Jesus, spreading that news cost people their lives. Salvation is offered freely to anyone who will receive it, but it came at a great price.
Memorial Day and D-Day raise a question in me. Why do people fight? Why have so many people been killed? What was the potential of the young theologian Dietrich Bonheoffer, executed in a Nazi prison just before the fall of Berlin in 1945, or my own uncle Joe, or the young men and women we name in our prayers each week? How many others were lost who had within them the possibilities of great and creative things that never came to pass? And why do people in families fight? Why are management and labor always at war? Why young and old? Why do Christians fight so much? I don't pretend to know the answer, but this much I can say: People fight because they are aggressive by nature, some much more so than others. We must be aggressive up to a certain point. When we see something we want, we go after it. The complication is that two people often see the same thing. You see it happen among children. Two children want the same toy, so they fight over it. Two business firms want the same contract and fight to get it, because they feel that their future depends on closing that deal.
Competition adds fuel to the aggressive instinct. On a still greater scale, two countries want the same land, the same natural resources, the same oil fields or water, or the same prestige; and they fight for it. They fight, and history makes it clear that one fight leads to another. The war to end all wars was not the last fight. The treaties that followed, according to some historians, made World War II inevitable. To make things more vicious, when one person does something wrong, innocent people suffer the consequences. Life would be much simpler if that were not true. I don't know why God allows that to be. I don't think God planned it so. All I know is that evil is contagious.
The question all this raises on such a weekend is: Must this go on forever? Are we doomed to live in a world like this for the rest of our lives, and are our children to face a world like this? Aggressive people, aggressive nations. One fight leading to another. The innocent suffering as well as the guilty. This much we can say - the cost of life will continue. Aggressive instincts will not disappear from human nature. Conflict of interests will always be a factor in situations and relationships. But fighting need not continue. Peace is possible. We can learn to disagree with opponents and help them learn to disagree with us without destroying one another. We can learn to handle hostility, and keep it under control in our relationships.
The authors of several gospels saw the truth more clearly than we often do. They used a language we don't easily understand; it is the language of the spirit of God. They said, “You can’t serve two masters.” They didn't have to fight people because they didn't have to fight God. Through their relationship with Jesus they were able to tell us that God's love dwells among us, and because of that, peace is possible. Peace on earth, good will among people - that is God's will.
For those who have seen war and felt the power of death, D-Day and Memorial Day are more than an outing. For those of us who have felt God's saving grace, this sacrament is more than a picnic. It is a sacrificial prayer we make in the name of Jesus who died that we might live; who gave his body and his blood as a sign of God's endless love for us. In doing so, he gave us the peace that passes understanding.
Let us pray:
Loving Lord
Let your love be here
Fill us with your peace
Let your joy be here
Fill us with your grace
Let your light be here
Fill us with your power
Let us know that you are here
Fill us with your presence
Today and every day.
Amen.
Monday, May 24, 2010
May 23, 2010, The Day of Pentecost
SERMON preached on May 23, 2010 -Pentecost - Ted Berktold
Church of the Resurrection, Eugene
When a volcano erupts, what happens on the surface is a result of unseen things happening underneath. Heat and pressure from gases and molten rock build up. They cause the ground to bulge and quake and then, amidst fire and flooding mud and flowing lava, a volcano is born. What happens under the earth’s crust happens to people. The People of Israel, God's Chosen People, once spiritually powerful and influential, lay dormant despite so much potential force, talk of a messiah, and the promise of God's power. Some Jews thought that the eruption had come with Jesus, the carpenter from Nazareth. But it blew up in their faces. Dreams of glory were buried under fear and death, and their hopes were turned to ashes. The disciples, however, did not disband and go fishing. They did as the Lord instructed; they waited. The Lord of all creation, of all the past and all the present, had claimed to be the Lord of the future as well. So they waited.
During Jesus’ time on earth, the disciples got to know him as they walked together and talked together, felt his healing touch, and heard his words of comfort and truth. They began to respect and love him, and place their hope in him before his arrest, but “He was crucified, died, and was buried,” says the Creed. Then something tremendous happened within the earth; so tremendous it still brings a shout of “alleluia” to our lips two thousand years later. Inside the earth itself, God gave life to the crucified one. The stone was rolled back; the Holy One of God arose to rejoin those who had followed him faithfully. Although they had no hope of ever looking into his eyes again or hearing his voice or touching him, they found themselves doing all those things. Now their relationship with Jesus changed. He was still who he had been before the cross, but they made it clear that now he was more, much more. They could touch the holes made by the nails and the spear. They recognized him in the breaking of bread. He came through closed doors. He had become, to use the words we know so well, the risen Christ.
But this, too, had an end. Christians have always regarded the Ascension of our Lord as the ending of Jesus’ presence among us in a special, personal way that will only begin again in the kingdom of God, after this phase of our life has ended. The early Church would need half a century to absorb his departure and speak about his return. The phrase that comes into my mind when I think of the Ascension is “Parting is such sweet sorrow.” In his account of the Ascension, Luke says that the disciples and Mary went home with joy after Jesus ascended into heaven. I know that we must read the lines of scripture before we read between the lines, but I can’t help feeling that their joy was mixed with sadness on the day Jesus departed. I'm not surprised that scripture mentions only joy, for joy and sadness are opposite ends of the same line, and are often intermingled. So they waited, because he told them to. On the Jewish feast of Pentecost, 50 days after Passover, when Jews commemorate the giving of the Law to Moses on Mount Sinai, the waiting stopped. We read in the Acts of the Apostles: “And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 2: 2)
We live in the area of active volcanoes. But we know that the power of a volcano is nothing compared with the power of God; nothing. The disciples poured out of that room on fire with the Holy Spirit. Like volcanic ash, they began to choke the world, and its powers. They drifted toward Spain and Africa, Rome and Corinth. Those original followers, many who had never left their tiny homeland, covered the known world. They preached love, forgiveness. They preached Jesus Christ. They baptized; they immersed others in the Spirit of God which was poured out in them, the same Spirit which is poured out into us in baptism. “In each of us the Spirit is manifested in a particular way; wise speech, healing, ecstatic utterance, or ability to interpret it,” said Paul. He expanded the list in the 12th chapter of Romans. The gift of the Spirit can be administration, teaching, giving to charity, leading. Paul gave no definitive list. The Spirit blows where it will, he said. We do not know where the Spirit of God will be tomorrow.
According to Paul, the gifts of God are given for the building up of the church, Christ’s visible, tangible presence on earth. They are not for the elite few, these gifts. Each member of the church has his or her particular character, from the youngest to the eldest. There is no Christian who does not have one or more of the gifts of the Spirit, and no individual has them all; not even the bishop. So the question for Paul was not: “What is biggest, best gift for a Christian to have?” but rather, “What gifts has the Spirit given to me?” and “How can I use those gifts?” How can the Church discern the gifts of each person, recognize those gifts, and celebrate them? Some gifts are extraordinary, miraculous, sensational. Some are quiet and ordinary, as modest as a welcoming smile to a newcomer on Sunday morning. At bottom, all the gifts are one gift. There is one Lord, one Spirit, who gives the gift of eternal life. “Almighty God, on this day you opened the way to eternal life to every race and nation by the promised gift of your Holy Spirit,” says the collect for today. That life begins today when we live the love of Christ. Love is our experience of eternal life now.
As their relationship with the risen Christ ended when he ascended, the disciples realized that the love they had come to expect from Jesus would now have to come from among themselves. Chapters 13 -17 of John’s Gospel, the portion of the Gospel we have been reading since I came at the beginning of May, are known as the Farewell Discourses because, in them, Jesus was saying goodbye and handing on his work to those who were to continue his mission. Today’s Gospel (John 14: 8-17) is a key section of that farewell speech. The test of their love for him, he said, is that they continue to practice all he taught them. At the end of the Discourses, at the 2Oth verse of Chapter 17, Jesus prayed not only for the disciples among whom he had lived and ministered, but also for “those who believe in me through their word.” Jesus was praying for us; inviting us to inherit the gifts and become divine love in our own day. He knew people would no longer run into him at the marketplace; they would run into us. They would see and hear us, and he knew that through us, they might eventually come to know him. Over the centuries, by way of water and Word, bread and wine, that first Christian community has become us and we have become them. Like the disciples, we may feel tempted to look back nostalgically to the times when Christ was there for us, and not realize he wanted us to be here for him.
Pentecost redirects our vision from ascending Lord to empowering presence; from sky to earth; from far-away God to Christ in our midst. Pentecost is the mission statement of the Church. Celebrating it with you today is a privilege and a joy. Within us burns the flame of Pentecost. Embowered by the Spirit of the Living God, may we always be Christ to each other. Thank you for being Christ to me today.
Let us pray:
May the Spirit’s fire be in our thoughts
Making them true, good and just
May it protect us from the evil one.
May the Spirit’s fire be in our eyes
May it open our eyes to what is good in life and
protect us from what is not.
May the Spirit’s fire be on our lips, so that we may speak the truth in kindness
That we may serve and encourage others and
Be protected from speaking evil.
May the Spirit’s fire be in our ears
that we may hear with a deep, deep listening
and all may know that we respect them.
May the Spirit’s fire be in our arms and hands
So that we may be of service and build up love.
May the Spirit’s fire be in our whole being; in our legs and feet
Enabling us to walk the earth with care
So that we may walk ways of goodness and truth. Amen.
Church of the Resurrection, Eugene
When a volcano erupts, what happens on the surface is a result of unseen things happening underneath. Heat and pressure from gases and molten rock build up. They cause the ground to bulge and quake and then, amidst fire and flooding mud and flowing lava, a volcano is born. What happens under the earth’s crust happens to people. The People of Israel, God's Chosen People, once spiritually powerful and influential, lay dormant despite so much potential force, talk of a messiah, and the promise of God's power. Some Jews thought that the eruption had come with Jesus, the carpenter from Nazareth. But it blew up in their faces. Dreams of glory were buried under fear and death, and their hopes were turned to ashes. The disciples, however, did not disband and go fishing. They did as the Lord instructed; they waited. The Lord of all creation, of all the past and all the present, had claimed to be the Lord of the future as well. So they waited.
During Jesus’ time on earth, the disciples got to know him as they walked together and talked together, felt his healing touch, and heard his words of comfort and truth. They began to respect and love him, and place their hope in him before his arrest, but “He was crucified, died, and was buried,” says the Creed. Then something tremendous happened within the earth; so tremendous it still brings a shout of “alleluia” to our lips two thousand years later. Inside the earth itself, God gave life to the crucified one. The stone was rolled back; the Holy One of God arose to rejoin those who had followed him faithfully. Although they had no hope of ever looking into his eyes again or hearing his voice or touching him, they found themselves doing all those things. Now their relationship with Jesus changed. He was still who he had been before the cross, but they made it clear that now he was more, much more. They could touch the holes made by the nails and the spear. They recognized him in the breaking of bread. He came through closed doors. He had become, to use the words we know so well, the risen Christ.
But this, too, had an end. Christians have always regarded the Ascension of our Lord as the ending of Jesus’ presence among us in a special, personal way that will only begin again in the kingdom of God, after this phase of our life has ended. The early Church would need half a century to absorb his departure and speak about his return. The phrase that comes into my mind when I think of the Ascension is “Parting is such sweet sorrow.” In his account of the Ascension, Luke says that the disciples and Mary went home with joy after Jesus ascended into heaven. I know that we must read the lines of scripture before we read between the lines, but I can’t help feeling that their joy was mixed with sadness on the day Jesus departed. I'm not surprised that scripture mentions only joy, for joy and sadness are opposite ends of the same line, and are often intermingled. So they waited, because he told them to. On the Jewish feast of Pentecost, 50 days after Passover, when Jews commemorate the giving of the Law to Moses on Mount Sinai, the waiting stopped. We read in the Acts of the Apostles: “And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 2: 2)
We live in the area of active volcanoes. But we know that the power of a volcano is nothing compared with the power of God; nothing. The disciples poured out of that room on fire with the Holy Spirit. Like volcanic ash, they began to choke the world, and its powers. They drifted toward Spain and Africa, Rome and Corinth. Those original followers, many who had never left their tiny homeland, covered the known world. They preached love, forgiveness. They preached Jesus Christ. They baptized; they immersed others in the Spirit of God which was poured out in them, the same Spirit which is poured out into us in baptism. “In each of us the Spirit is manifested in a particular way; wise speech, healing, ecstatic utterance, or ability to interpret it,” said Paul. He expanded the list in the 12th chapter of Romans. The gift of the Spirit can be administration, teaching, giving to charity, leading. Paul gave no definitive list. The Spirit blows where it will, he said. We do not know where the Spirit of God will be tomorrow.
According to Paul, the gifts of God are given for the building up of the church, Christ’s visible, tangible presence on earth. They are not for the elite few, these gifts. Each member of the church has his or her particular character, from the youngest to the eldest. There is no Christian who does not have one or more of the gifts of the Spirit, and no individual has them all; not even the bishop. So the question for Paul was not: “What is biggest, best gift for a Christian to have?” but rather, “What gifts has the Spirit given to me?” and “How can I use those gifts?” How can the Church discern the gifts of each person, recognize those gifts, and celebrate them? Some gifts are extraordinary, miraculous, sensational. Some are quiet and ordinary, as modest as a welcoming smile to a newcomer on Sunday morning. At bottom, all the gifts are one gift. There is one Lord, one Spirit, who gives the gift of eternal life. “Almighty God, on this day you opened the way to eternal life to every race and nation by the promised gift of your Holy Spirit,” says the collect for today. That life begins today when we live the love of Christ. Love is our experience of eternal life now.
As their relationship with the risen Christ ended when he ascended, the disciples realized that the love they had come to expect from Jesus would now have to come from among themselves. Chapters 13 -17 of John’s Gospel, the portion of the Gospel we have been reading since I came at the beginning of May, are known as the Farewell Discourses because, in them, Jesus was saying goodbye and handing on his work to those who were to continue his mission. Today’s Gospel (John 14: 8-17) is a key section of that farewell speech. The test of their love for him, he said, is that they continue to practice all he taught them. At the end of the Discourses, at the 2Oth verse of Chapter 17, Jesus prayed not only for the disciples among whom he had lived and ministered, but also for “those who believe in me through their word.” Jesus was praying for us; inviting us to inherit the gifts and become divine love in our own day. He knew people would no longer run into him at the marketplace; they would run into us. They would see and hear us, and he knew that through us, they might eventually come to know him. Over the centuries, by way of water and Word, bread and wine, that first Christian community has become us and we have become them. Like the disciples, we may feel tempted to look back nostalgically to the times when Christ was there for us, and not realize he wanted us to be here for him.
Pentecost redirects our vision from ascending Lord to empowering presence; from sky to earth; from far-away God to Christ in our midst. Pentecost is the mission statement of the Church. Celebrating it with you today is a privilege and a joy. Within us burns the flame of Pentecost. Embowered by the Spirit of the Living God, may we always be Christ to each other. Thank you for being Christ to me today.
Let us pray:
May the Spirit’s fire be in our thoughts
Making them true, good and just
May it protect us from the evil one.
May the Spirit’s fire be in our eyes
May it open our eyes to what is good in life and
protect us from what is not.
May the Spirit’s fire be on our lips, so that we may speak the truth in kindness
That we may serve and encourage others and
Be protected from speaking evil.
May the Spirit’s fire be in our ears
that we may hear with a deep, deep listening
and all may know that we respect them.
May the Spirit’s fire be in our arms and hands
So that we may be of service and build up love.
May the Spirit’s fire be in our whole being; in our legs and feet
Enabling us to walk the earth with care
So that we may walk ways of goodness and truth. Amen.
Monday, May 17, 2010
May 16, 2010, 7th Sunday of Easter
Sermon preached on Easter 7 (16 May, 2010) by Ted Berktold
At the Church of the Resurrection, Eugene
The whole of the Easter season is God’s answer to our unavoidable concerns about death. Jesus was killed, dead as could be, then rose from the grave. Perhaps that’s the focus for the whole Church Year, and the reason we don’t need to build pyramids to house a corpse. We hold onto the promise that our essence will continue when our bodies die. “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” we say when we bury someone. Much of our faith is about the body; the physical human body. It is, after all, the death of the body of Jesus, and the death of our own bodies, that initiates eternal life in its fullness. We believe that death is our entrance into the presence of God in a way that we can only sense here on earth. We get a foretaste of heaven in the Eucharist. We feel a union with God here in the midst of the Body of Christ, the Church. But we follow and celebrate a Savior who brings eternal life out of death.
My thirteen year old granddaughter prepared a list of books for me to read now that I am retired. Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings top that list. Then comes: “Katurah and Lord Death” by Martine Leavitt. I read it first since it was a single modest volume. It’s a blend of folktale, myth and romance. Katurah is a young woman, lost in a forest, who is able to charm Lord Death with a story and gain an extra day of life, in which she must find true love. At one point, when she asks him if it hurts to die, Lord Death replies, “It is life that hurts you, not death.” “Tell me what it is like to die,” she says. “Is it like every night when I fall asleep?” “No. It is like every morning when you wake up,” he answers.
Some say that we are preoccupied with our bodily existence. Medical advances and our civilized way of living have prolonged life. We live, on average, twice as long as people lived a century and half ago. For most of us here today, physical existence is just about as good as it can possibly be, ever, anywhere, for anyone. Death brings that existence to an end. I think it is not so much that we are afraid of death as it is that we begrudge it. It interrupts and interferes with an existence that most of us enjoy, in spite of a certain amount of pain and anxiety. So we tend to think of death as the worst thing that could happen to anybody and we do everything we can to act as though it did not exist. We cloak it with flowers, we screen it behind sentimental music, and we almost never speak about it. It is the elephant in the room for us, isn’t it? Even as we rejoice with Natasha+ and Blaine at the birth of Thomas, we, like them, pray that he will survive multiple operations on his heart; that he will grow up and live a good life.
I want to speak about death today, not in the full splendor of New Testament faith, concerned not so much with what comes after death, as with the coming of death itself. Obviously my perspective is that of an older man who has already lived out most of his years. And I want to begin with this fact; death is not like a disease that comes to some but not to all; death comes to everybody. When you hear people talk about death it often sounds as if they were talking about a terrible accident, as though it struck some poor person who might ordinarily have been expected to avoid it. Death isn’t like that. Death isn’t a tragedy that hits one family and leaves another free and happy. It is more like birth; it happens to everyone. It has no favorites. The person who wrote the 90th psalm, one of the psalms used at burials, took a grim view of life, but at least he was realistic about death. “We are like grass,” he said. “In the morning, with the dew on it, we are fresh and green and alive, but then the reaper comes during the day and mows it, and when you see it in the evening, it is faded and withered.” We are like that, all of us. Here today and gone tomorrow.
The life of every single one of us comes to an end like a story that is told; that is finished. We don’t have all the time in the world. Some people have more time than others, but when you think about the age of the oldest person you know, it’s not very many years. So the psalmist prays, “Teach us so to count our days that we may take it to heart.” Recognizing the shortness of life, we can also appreciate the seriousness of it. I remember my favorite aunt’s final days when I was in my teens. She was a young Franciscan nun, a dynamic high school teacher, full of life and fun, and she was dying of cancer. She said that something happened to her in the few minutes after she left the clinic the day she was diagnosed to be terminal. Everything from that moment on made a deeper impression on her. She went back and read some of her favorite books, and enjoyed them even more than the first time she read them. She came to our farm to spend time with my Mom and our family, and then visited her other siblings. She eventually had only a few weeks, and then a few days. Every day was something precious; every moment was something to be treasured. The love we hoard up in ourselves and never spend on others, we will never give and never spend. The things we don’t appreciate now in life, the beauty in the world and all the things that make life so good, we will never enjoy. We have only one chance to live each day.
It helps me to remember that death is a normal part of a person’s existence. In itself, it is not evil. There may be evil circumstances, like the death that comes from terrorism or disease, or the painful death of starvation which thousands suffer every day. But death in itself is not evil, any more than birth is evil. Nor is death sad when you think about it as a universal experience. Many of us know all too well that with death comes sadness too deep for words when we are separated from someone we have loved. Separation saddens us.
Let me tell you something else about death. There are things that do not die. Beethoven died in 1827, but the concerto he wrote when he was a young man will outlast him for how many years to come? God’s creation, the mountains and the oceans, the sun and earth and stars, outlast and outlive us. Last week I was on the way to school with my grandson who is in the first grade. He informed me that the sun would burn up in five million years and suck the earth and the planets into itself. Not knowing if this worried him, I said, “We won’t have to worry about something that going to happen so many years from now, will we?” “Well, Grampy, you sure won’t!” he replied. Our birth, our life, our death, rest in God in whom we can put our trust. The majesty and timelessness of God is our final defense against the fear of death. The beauty all around us and the glory that can only be from God gives us hope. In spite of the fact that death comes to all of us, that life is short and therefore so serious, nevertheless, life is safe because God is so great. God is our dwelling place from generation to generation. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray:
The God of each sun rising
With new life so surprising
Come to us
The Bread of Life, our Savior
Live in us forever,
And give us the grace to come to you. Amen.
At the Church of the Resurrection, Eugene
The whole of the Easter season is God’s answer to our unavoidable concerns about death. Jesus was killed, dead as could be, then rose from the grave. Perhaps that’s the focus for the whole Church Year, and the reason we don’t need to build pyramids to house a corpse. We hold onto the promise that our essence will continue when our bodies die. “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” we say when we bury someone. Much of our faith is about the body; the physical human body. It is, after all, the death of the body of Jesus, and the death of our own bodies, that initiates eternal life in its fullness. We believe that death is our entrance into the presence of God in a way that we can only sense here on earth. We get a foretaste of heaven in the Eucharist. We feel a union with God here in the midst of the Body of Christ, the Church. But we follow and celebrate a Savior who brings eternal life out of death.
My thirteen year old granddaughter prepared a list of books for me to read now that I am retired. Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings top that list. Then comes: “Katurah and Lord Death” by Martine Leavitt. I read it first since it was a single modest volume. It’s a blend of folktale, myth and romance. Katurah is a young woman, lost in a forest, who is able to charm Lord Death with a story and gain an extra day of life, in which she must find true love. At one point, when she asks him if it hurts to die, Lord Death replies, “It is life that hurts you, not death.” “Tell me what it is like to die,” she says. “Is it like every night when I fall asleep?” “No. It is like every morning when you wake up,” he answers.
Some say that we are preoccupied with our bodily existence. Medical advances and our civilized way of living have prolonged life. We live, on average, twice as long as people lived a century and half ago. For most of us here today, physical existence is just about as good as it can possibly be, ever, anywhere, for anyone. Death brings that existence to an end. I think it is not so much that we are afraid of death as it is that we begrudge it. It interrupts and interferes with an existence that most of us enjoy, in spite of a certain amount of pain and anxiety. So we tend to think of death as the worst thing that could happen to anybody and we do everything we can to act as though it did not exist. We cloak it with flowers, we screen it behind sentimental music, and we almost never speak about it. It is the elephant in the room for us, isn’t it? Even as we rejoice with Natasha+ and Blaine at the birth of Thomas, we, like them, pray that he will survive multiple operations on his heart; that he will grow up and live a good life.
I want to speak about death today, not in the full splendor of New Testament faith, concerned not so much with what comes after death, as with the coming of death itself. Obviously my perspective is that of an older man who has already lived out most of his years. And I want to begin with this fact; death is not like a disease that comes to some but not to all; death comes to everybody. When you hear people talk about death it often sounds as if they were talking about a terrible accident, as though it struck some poor person who might ordinarily have been expected to avoid it. Death isn’t like that. Death isn’t a tragedy that hits one family and leaves another free and happy. It is more like birth; it happens to everyone. It has no favorites. The person who wrote the 90th psalm, one of the psalms used at burials, took a grim view of life, but at least he was realistic about death. “We are like grass,” he said. “In the morning, with the dew on it, we are fresh and green and alive, but then the reaper comes during the day and mows it, and when you see it in the evening, it is faded and withered.” We are like that, all of us. Here today and gone tomorrow.
The life of every single one of us comes to an end like a story that is told; that is finished. We don’t have all the time in the world. Some people have more time than others, but when you think about the age of the oldest person you know, it’s not very many years. So the psalmist prays, “Teach us so to count our days that we may take it to heart.” Recognizing the shortness of life, we can also appreciate the seriousness of it. I remember my favorite aunt’s final days when I was in my teens. She was a young Franciscan nun, a dynamic high school teacher, full of life and fun, and she was dying of cancer. She said that something happened to her in the few minutes after she left the clinic the day she was diagnosed to be terminal. Everything from that moment on made a deeper impression on her. She went back and read some of her favorite books, and enjoyed them even more than the first time she read them. She came to our farm to spend time with my Mom and our family, and then visited her other siblings. She eventually had only a few weeks, and then a few days. Every day was something precious; every moment was something to be treasured. The love we hoard up in ourselves and never spend on others, we will never give and never spend. The things we don’t appreciate now in life, the beauty in the world and all the things that make life so good, we will never enjoy. We have only one chance to live each day.
It helps me to remember that death is a normal part of a person’s existence. In itself, it is not evil. There may be evil circumstances, like the death that comes from terrorism or disease, or the painful death of starvation which thousands suffer every day. But death in itself is not evil, any more than birth is evil. Nor is death sad when you think about it as a universal experience. Many of us know all too well that with death comes sadness too deep for words when we are separated from someone we have loved. Separation saddens us.
Let me tell you something else about death. There are things that do not die. Beethoven died in 1827, but the concerto he wrote when he was a young man will outlast him for how many years to come? God’s creation, the mountains and the oceans, the sun and earth and stars, outlast and outlive us. Last week I was on the way to school with my grandson who is in the first grade. He informed me that the sun would burn up in five million years and suck the earth and the planets into itself. Not knowing if this worried him, I said, “We won’t have to worry about something that going to happen so many years from now, will we?” “Well, Grampy, you sure won’t!” he replied. Our birth, our life, our death, rest in God in whom we can put our trust. The majesty and timelessness of God is our final defense against the fear of death. The beauty all around us and the glory that can only be from God gives us hope. In spite of the fact that death comes to all of us, that life is short and therefore so serious, nevertheless, life is safe because God is so great. God is our dwelling place from generation to generation. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray:
The God of each sun rising
With new life so surprising
Come to us
The Bread of Life, our Savior
Live in us forever,
And give us the grace to come to you. Amen.
Monday, May 10, 2010
May 9, 2010, 6th Sunday of Easter
SERMON preached on Easter 6 (Mothers’ Day), May 9,2010, by Ted Berktold
Church of the Resurrection, Eugene
"If you know what's good for you, young man," my mother used to say, ""you'll do as you're told." She was right. Her bonding of obedience and goodness holds true. In today's reading from John's Gospel, Jesus says: “Those who love me will keep my word.” (John 17: 20-26) It is an alternate version of last week’s gospel, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments." (John 14: 15) "You'll do what I say." And right there you find the secret of discipline - of discipleship - for they are one and the same. There you find authority, obedience, and love. Without any one of those three, there is no discipleship.
Very little has ever come about in this world without discipline - in a family, in a nation, in a human being, in a church. Self-discipline makes us who we are. If you really care about good health, you have to do what it takes to stay healthy. Have your flu shot, eat right, and get enough sleep and exercise. See your doctor when you need to. I know what happens to me when I ignore the rules. On Mother's Day, I think of the ways Jesus' words apply to a family. There's nothing as enjoyable as a family that knows what discipline means, an orderly way of life that doesn't crush a person's spirit, but releases members of a family so they can be in healthy, happy relationship with others. We've all seen children who, when asked to open a door, close it; or if told that its time to go to bed, even if they are tired, pay no attention and stay up. Going to bed becomes a battle in which both child and parents are miserable.
Some families have the wrong kind of discipline, where there is simply authority and obedience without love. It’s a sad fact that we need agencies to protect children who are victims of unhealthy, unloving authority in their own homes. Obedience for fear of punishment was not the way of Jesus. Unless children love and respect their parents, they will obey them only until they have a chance not to. My fear of my parent's anger seldom matched my deep urge to obey and please them out of love. They acted consistently, important for any authority figure, and they acted as one. At night, they didn't just send me off to bed. One of them went up the stairs as if they were going with a friend. When Jesus returned to Nazareth and was obedient to his parents, he was responding to people who meant what they said, people who loved him, people who walked the roads of life with him. He had, even in childhood, a habit of responding to God with perfect obedience.
What works for families works in communities. If you want to learn anything at school, you have to listen to others, to those who know more than you do. The same applies when you finish schooling and take a job. One of the great fears in American cities today is the alarming growth in the crime rate. While Eugene is not among the most dangerous cities in America, it is also not listed among the safest. A state-wide study indicates that alcoholic beverages are served illegally to one in every three minors seeking to buy them. Would it really feel better if we kept juvenile crime down while adult offenders multiplied? We have a 25 mph speed limit on most streets. Have you ever been in a flow of traffic that observed that speed? You might argue that speeding is not all that bad, but the young might argue that neither is underage drinking. For young and old, in matters large and small, obedience is a thing of the past. Authority has given up in despair. The jails are full. Love has been dropped as an impractical or unsuitable motivation, and we hear a cry on every side, especially in election years, for a return to law and order; enforced law and order. What about the Church? How many people follow the canons which say a member of the church is one who attends worship every Sunday, participates in the activities and ministries of the church, and contributes a portion, a tithe, of their income?
Jesus was a great teacher, one of the greatest in history. He spoke with authority, says the Bible. That doesn't mean he shouted. His disciples knew he meant what he said because he went with them through every thing, through every valley, to the top of every mountain. He went with them because he loved them. He still goes with us in the power of the Holy Spirit because he loves us. Sometimes we would like to forget what he says: Deny yourself, take up your cross every day, take the lowest place, forgive your enemies, be with the sick and the poor and those in prison, love God and love one another; the list goes on.... As his students, we know that what he requires, he requires. Either you do what he says or you leave the class. He doesn't threaten us to get us to listen. We hear what he says because he loves his subject so much, and he loves us so much. His subject is the Kingdom of God and he cares about us with such passion because it was meant for us. His disciples tried to do as he asked, because they loved him. They never quite made the grade, but they never completely gave up, nor did they realize what he was about until they saw him die. That's when they knew how much he cared, and they began to take seriously the commandments he had given them. Their obedience grew out of their love.
W. H. Auden wrote: Obedience to some authority is inescapable; if we reject the authority of tradition, then we must accept the authority of local fashion." Our tradition is Christianity. The authority of that tradition has often been exchanged for the authority of local fashion. I can't help wondering how many people in this un-churched state miss the love of Christ every day, and especially on Sunday, because of local fashion. I believe it’s more important to be here than sipping mocha at Starbucks or out on a golf course; to bring your children here instead of to T-ball or a soccer match. When Jesus says we can't live on bread alone, he means it. When he says you can't live a completely self-centered life, he means it. When he says you have to keep his word, not just hear it, not just repeat it, but keep it, he means it.
We did not come together today to pass judgment on others. We came here to look at ourselves and to remember that we are under the authority of Christ who first loved us and who loves us still, in spite of everything. We came together in love. I believe my mom was right. If we know what's good for us, we'll do what Christ told us to do. Only then can his will be done is us; his kingdom come in us.
Let us pray:
In our worship, in our work, and in our daily living,
May our hearts touch the things we do with love.
May who we are and what we do
bring healing and renewal to others,
the way Christ touches lives all around our community and our world.
May our days never burden us,
and may we approach this day with dreams, possibilities, and the promise of eternal life. Infused with Christ, may our lives become gifts to be received and, at the same time, gifts to be given away. Amen.
Church of the Resurrection, Eugene
"If you know what's good for you, young man," my mother used to say, ""you'll do as you're told." She was right. Her bonding of obedience and goodness holds true. In today's reading from John's Gospel, Jesus says: “Those who love me will keep my word.” (John 17: 20-26) It is an alternate version of last week’s gospel, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments." (John 14: 15) "You'll do what I say." And right there you find the secret of discipline - of discipleship - for they are one and the same. There you find authority, obedience, and love. Without any one of those three, there is no discipleship.
Very little has ever come about in this world without discipline - in a family, in a nation, in a human being, in a church. Self-discipline makes us who we are. If you really care about good health, you have to do what it takes to stay healthy. Have your flu shot, eat right, and get enough sleep and exercise. See your doctor when you need to. I know what happens to me when I ignore the rules. On Mother's Day, I think of the ways Jesus' words apply to a family. There's nothing as enjoyable as a family that knows what discipline means, an orderly way of life that doesn't crush a person's spirit, but releases members of a family so they can be in healthy, happy relationship with others. We've all seen children who, when asked to open a door, close it; or if told that its time to go to bed, even if they are tired, pay no attention and stay up. Going to bed becomes a battle in which both child and parents are miserable.
Some families have the wrong kind of discipline, where there is simply authority and obedience without love. It’s a sad fact that we need agencies to protect children who are victims of unhealthy, unloving authority in their own homes. Obedience for fear of punishment was not the way of Jesus. Unless children love and respect their parents, they will obey them only until they have a chance not to. My fear of my parent's anger seldom matched my deep urge to obey and please them out of love. They acted consistently, important for any authority figure, and they acted as one. At night, they didn't just send me off to bed. One of them went up the stairs as if they were going with a friend. When Jesus returned to Nazareth and was obedient to his parents, he was responding to people who meant what they said, people who loved him, people who walked the roads of life with him. He had, even in childhood, a habit of responding to God with perfect obedience.
What works for families works in communities. If you want to learn anything at school, you have to listen to others, to those who know more than you do. The same applies when you finish schooling and take a job. One of the great fears in American cities today is the alarming growth in the crime rate. While Eugene is not among the most dangerous cities in America, it is also not listed among the safest. A state-wide study indicates that alcoholic beverages are served illegally to one in every three minors seeking to buy them. Would it really feel better if we kept juvenile crime down while adult offenders multiplied? We have a 25 mph speed limit on most streets. Have you ever been in a flow of traffic that observed that speed? You might argue that speeding is not all that bad, but the young might argue that neither is underage drinking. For young and old, in matters large and small, obedience is a thing of the past. Authority has given up in despair. The jails are full. Love has been dropped as an impractical or unsuitable motivation, and we hear a cry on every side, especially in election years, for a return to law and order; enforced law and order. What about the Church? How many people follow the canons which say a member of the church is one who attends worship every Sunday, participates in the activities and ministries of the church, and contributes a portion, a tithe, of their income?
Jesus was a great teacher, one of the greatest in history. He spoke with authority, says the Bible. That doesn't mean he shouted. His disciples knew he meant what he said because he went with them through every thing, through every valley, to the top of every mountain. He went with them because he loved them. He still goes with us in the power of the Holy Spirit because he loves us. Sometimes we would like to forget what he says: Deny yourself, take up your cross every day, take the lowest place, forgive your enemies, be with the sick and the poor and those in prison, love God and love one another; the list goes on.... As his students, we know that what he requires, he requires. Either you do what he says or you leave the class. He doesn't threaten us to get us to listen. We hear what he says because he loves his subject so much, and he loves us so much. His subject is the Kingdom of God and he cares about us with such passion because it was meant for us. His disciples tried to do as he asked, because they loved him. They never quite made the grade, but they never completely gave up, nor did they realize what he was about until they saw him die. That's when they knew how much he cared, and they began to take seriously the commandments he had given them. Their obedience grew out of their love.
W. H. Auden wrote: Obedience to some authority is inescapable; if we reject the authority of tradition, then we must accept the authority of local fashion." Our tradition is Christianity. The authority of that tradition has often been exchanged for the authority of local fashion. I can't help wondering how many people in this un-churched state miss the love of Christ every day, and especially on Sunday, because of local fashion. I believe it’s more important to be here than sipping mocha at Starbucks or out on a golf course; to bring your children here instead of to T-ball or a soccer match. When Jesus says we can't live on bread alone, he means it. When he says you can't live a completely self-centered life, he means it. When he says you have to keep his word, not just hear it, not just repeat it, but keep it, he means it.
We did not come together today to pass judgment on others. We came here to look at ourselves and to remember that we are under the authority of Christ who first loved us and who loves us still, in spite of everything. We came together in love. I believe my mom was right. If we know what's good for us, we'll do what Christ told us to do. Only then can his will be done is us; his kingdom come in us.
Let us pray:
In our worship, in our work, and in our daily living,
May our hearts touch the things we do with love.
May who we are and what we do
bring healing and renewal to others,
the way Christ touches lives all around our community and our world.
May our days never burden us,
and may we approach this day with dreams, possibilities, and the promise of eternal life. Infused with Christ, may our lives become gifts to be received and, at the same time, gifts to be given away. Amen.
May 2, 2010, 5th Sunday of Easter
SERMON preached on Easter 5, May 2, 2010, by Ted Berktold
Church of the Resurrection, Eugene
It is a great privilege for me to join you, the Episcopal Church of the Resurrection, as the Church Universal continues to celebrate our oldest, most important feast, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. We had forty serious days of preparation in fasting and prayer and a dramatic series of services during Holy Week. Now we are part-way through the seven weeks of the Easter Season. All of this helps us to focus on the FACT of the resurrection. We are a religion based upon reported facts. Our first question as Episcopalians is not: "Do you know where you're going when you die?" but rather: "Do you know what Christ, who is alive, has done for us? Do you know the power of the resurrection?” People believed that Jesus rose from the dead because they saw him. They saw him dead; then they saw him risen and alive. They talked to him, the way we talk to each other. They touched him; touched the wounds in his hands and side. They ate meals with him, remembering that special Passover meal they shared on the night he was taken away from them.
There are theories that the women in the Gospel story went to the wrong tomb and in a case of mistaken identity, heard a young man (not an angel, of course) say: "He is not here." Perhaps they only thought they heard him say, "He is risen." The cynic might think that the disciples were a radical group capitalizing on a situation to make a social movement out of it. Even for the cynic, however, common sense says that the body of Jesus would soon have been located by his enemies to dispel this talk of resurrection. Jesus' friends would not have been able to destroy his body to make their story sound good - they loved him too much to do that. You may not care what the disciples thought. But they sincerely believed that Jesus was alive after his death.
Not only is it true that they believed Jesus was alive; they believed it unanimously. They disagreed about many things, as we still do throughout the Christian world. Today’s first lesson from the Book of Acts is all about the disagreement over sharing Jesus with non-Jews. After the vision with clean and unclean, or kosher foods mixed with foods that are not kosher, Peter says that God told him not to make a distinction between them (gentiles) and us (Jews). (Acts 11: 1-18) The disciples had opinions on who would be first in God's kingdom. They didn't agree on Jesus' title, or his status. They argued about money, and the role women could play in this new movement. Some of his teachings were slow to win acceptance among them, especially that bit about serving others and dying to self. But when it came to believing that he was alive, that God raised him from the dead, there was not one dissenting voice.
As you might expect, they didn't all speak about it in the same way. Some spoke of the physical dynamics; of wounds that could be touched, of a breakfast they shared with him on a beach. St. Paul spoke of it in terms of a blinding light that struck him down on the way to Damascus. Others said it was the presence of one who joined them as they walked along a road to Emmaus on a dreary day, and made himself known to them at supper, in the breaking of bread. The way you experience another person's presence is not the essential thing. You don't always need to see someone or hear a voice to feel a presence. Sometimes you just know that person is there. The people who knew Jesus best and loved him most knew that he was still with them. They proclaimed it unanimously; they proclaimed it with passion.
We don't often say things with passion. Some people think its bad manners to get too excited, especially in church. It’s hard to get excited about the amount of rainfall this year, or the distance from here to Portland. But if someone you love is falsely accused of a crime, and your opinion of his or her innocence or guilt is asked, you will probably respond with passion. If you asked the early Christians, "Do you believe in the ten commandments?" I'm sure they would all have said, "Yes, we believe." If you asked them, "Do you believe that Jesus is alive?" they would have said exactly the same thing, "Yes, we believe." The difference would have been in the passion with which they said it. They were willing to die for this belief. They were willing to die rather than deny that Jesus was alive, that Jesus was the Christ of God. They weren’t thrown to the lions by the Romans because they ate fish on Friday, sang too loud at services, or wore modest togas. They died because they believed in the resurrection.
And why not? They lived in a dark and dangerous world. We like to think that our world is dark, full of risks and threats of terrorism and war, a dark cloud of volcanic ash crippling airline traffic, and we feel the urgent need for an extra hour of daylight in the summer months. But their world was really dark. There wasn't much for them to look forward to, the little people who knew Jesus. So if death had no power over Jesus, it meant that the light was in him; that light which had almost been blown out over and over again, especially on Good Friday. His resurrection meant that nothing could put out the light. They believed with such a passion because, if Jesus was alive, death was not the last word. There was something for them to look forward to, something for them to live for. Their defeat could be turned into victory. Their darkness could become a divine light. Now the world in which they lived and suffered was a different place.
Easter is about this different world. In it, the Spirit of the risen Lord is present. The Church has always made this its central, passionate fact. Wherever, whenever two or three of us gather in Christ's name and spirit, he is there. He is here, right now. Whenever we rise above resentment and hatred and forgive the one who has offended us, Christ is there. Whenever people like us rise above our trials and tribulations, he is there. Whenever we love unselfishly, there is the risen Christ. “I give you a new commandment,” says Jesus in today’s gospel, “that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” (John 13: 31-35) Whenever we let the light of God shine through us so that others might know and feel the presence of Christ in us, there is Jesus, in the power and glory of his resurrection from the grave. The Lord is risen. Sin and death have no dominion over him. Sin and death have no dominion over us. God has willed to lift us up out of the dust of the earth and make us one with Christ. That is cause for our song of “Alleluia.” That is the heart of our faith.
Let us pray:
The Lord of the empty tomb
The conqueror of gloom
Come to us
The Lord on the road to Emmaus
The Lord giving hope to Thomas
Come to us
The Lord appearing on the shore
Giving us life forevermore
Come to us
The Lord in the garden walking
The Lord to Mary talking
Come to us
Abide with us
And fill us with your love. Amen
Church of the Resurrection, Eugene
It is a great privilege for me to join you, the Episcopal Church of the Resurrection, as the Church Universal continues to celebrate our oldest, most important feast, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. We had forty serious days of preparation in fasting and prayer and a dramatic series of services during Holy Week. Now we are part-way through the seven weeks of the Easter Season. All of this helps us to focus on the FACT of the resurrection. We are a religion based upon reported facts. Our first question as Episcopalians is not: "Do you know where you're going when you die?" but rather: "Do you know what Christ, who is alive, has done for us? Do you know the power of the resurrection?” People believed that Jesus rose from the dead because they saw him. They saw him dead; then they saw him risen and alive. They talked to him, the way we talk to each other. They touched him; touched the wounds in his hands and side. They ate meals with him, remembering that special Passover meal they shared on the night he was taken away from them.
There are theories that the women in the Gospel story went to the wrong tomb and in a case of mistaken identity, heard a young man (not an angel, of course) say: "He is not here." Perhaps they only thought they heard him say, "He is risen." The cynic might think that the disciples were a radical group capitalizing on a situation to make a social movement out of it. Even for the cynic, however, common sense says that the body of Jesus would soon have been located by his enemies to dispel this talk of resurrection. Jesus' friends would not have been able to destroy his body to make their story sound good - they loved him too much to do that. You may not care what the disciples thought. But they sincerely believed that Jesus was alive after his death.
Not only is it true that they believed Jesus was alive; they believed it unanimously. They disagreed about many things, as we still do throughout the Christian world. Today’s first lesson from the Book of Acts is all about the disagreement over sharing Jesus with non-Jews. After the vision with clean and unclean, or kosher foods mixed with foods that are not kosher, Peter says that God told him not to make a distinction between them (gentiles) and us (Jews). (Acts 11: 1-18) The disciples had opinions on who would be first in God's kingdom. They didn't agree on Jesus' title, or his status. They argued about money, and the role women could play in this new movement. Some of his teachings were slow to win acceptance among them, especially that bit about serving others and dying to self. But when it came to believing that he was alive, that God raised him from the dead, there was not one dissenting voice.
As you might expect, they didn't all speak about it in the same way. Some spoke of the physical dynamics; of wounds that could be touched, of a breakfast they shared with him on a beach. St. Paul spoke of it in terms of a blinding light that struck him down on the way to Damascus. Others said it was the presence of one who joined them as they walked along a road to Emmaus on a dreary day, and made himself known to them at supper, in the breaking of bread. The way you experience another person's presence is not the essential thing. You don't always need to see someone or hear a voice to feel a presence. Sometimes you just know that person is there. The people who knew Jesus best and loved him most knew that he was still with them. They proclaimed it unanimously; they proclaimed it with passion.
We don't often say things with passion. Some people think its bad manners to get too excited, especially in church. It’s hard to get excited about the amount of rainfall this year, or the distance from here to Portland. But if someone you love is falsely accused of a crime, and your opinion of his or her innocence or guilt is asked, you will probably respond with passion. If you asked the early Christians, "Do you believe in the ten commandments?" I'm sure they would all have said, "Yes, we believe." If you asked them, "Do you believe that Jesus is alive?" they would have said exactly the same thing, "Yes, we believe." The difference would have been in the passion with which they said it. They were willing to die for this belief. They were willing to die rather than deny that Jesus was alive, that Jesus was the Christ of God. They weren’t thrown to the lions by the Romans because they ate fish on Friday, sang too loud at services, or wore modest togas. They died because they believed in the resurrection.
And why not? They lived in a dark and dangerous world. We like to think that our world is dark, full of risks and threats of terrorism and war, a dark cloud of volcanic ash crippling airline traffic, and we feel the urgent need for an extra hour of daylight in the summer months. But their world was really dark. There wasn't much for them to look forward to, the little people who knew Jesus. So if death had no power over Jesus, it meant that the light was in him; that light which had almost been blown out over and over again, especially on Good Friday. His resurrection meant that nothing could put out the light. They believed with such a passion because, if Jesus was alive, death was not the last word. There was something for them to look forward to, something for them to live for. Their defeat could be turned into victory. Their darkness could become a divine light. Now the world in which they lived and suffered was a different place.
Easter is about this different world. In it, the Spirit of the risen Lord is present. The Church has always made this its central, passionate fact. Wherever, whenever two or three of us gather in Christ's name and spirit, he is there. He is here, right now. Whenever we rise above resentment and hatred and forgive the one who has offended us, Christ is there. Whenever people like us rise above our trials and tribulations, he is there. Whenever we love unselfishly, there is the risen Christ. “I give you a new commandment,” says Jesus in today’s gospel, “that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” (John 13: 31-35) Whenever we let the light of God shine through us so that others might know and feel the presence of Christ in us, there is Jesus, in the power and glory of his resurrection from the grave. The Lord is risen. Sin and death have no dominion over him. Sin and death have no dominion over us. God has willed to lift us up out of the dust of the earth and make us one with Christ. That is cause for our song of “Alleluia.” That is the heart of our faith.
Let us pray:
The Lord of the empty tomb
The conqueror of gloom
Come to us
The Lord on the road to Emmaus
The Lord giving hope to Thomas
Come to us
The Lord appearing on the shore
Giving us life forevermore
Come to us
The Lord in the garden walking
The Lord to Mary talking
Come to us
Abide with us
And fill us with your love. Amen
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
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