New!
Fifth Sunday of Easter - May 2, 2010
|
Please note: The following sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him. |
|
Spring is here in full force today, but I'm guessing that not everyone is in a spring-y mood today. I'll guess that there is at least one person here who is thinking... “Well, here we are again. I've managed to drag myself and the rest of the household out of bed, get through the morning hassles, and get here on time. There is still a month and more of school, but many of the kids have already turned off for the year and are goofing off...and I wish I could also. Then we get in here, and get hit with that angular and peppy prelude this morning. I've been looking over the hymns for today, and they are insufferably jovial. Why? I'm in a bad mood, and frankly, I intend to stay that way.”
Perhaps you are stuck in a mood like that, perhaps even with some very good reasons for being pensive or sad. But it is easy to tell that the lessons, hymns, and other music are intending to present quite a different picture, and to pull us in quite a different direction. This is not by pastor's wish or by musician's conspiracy, but by the clear directive of our lessons this day.
At least part of the problem is the way in which we tend to look at the world around us. Our tendency is to say that what is happening now with us and with the world is because of what happened yesterday and the years prior. Things were thoroughly messed up then, and they are now as well. It is a rather depressing assessment.... and it is off-base as well.
There is another assessment, not as depressing, but equally off-base. It was popular 50 – 100 years ago to say “Day by day, in every way, I am getting better and better.” On the basis of what I have been doing, I am advancing myself morally and every other way. Both the pessimistic view and the sweetly optimistic view have a fatal flaw: they are built on the wrong foundation. As Christians, we must start at another place, not basing things on our own accomplishments and worries, but instead basing things on the resurrection of Jesus.
That event is the key to understanding life and living in in this world, no matter what our personal mood. In the resurrection, Christ is transformed into the new life.
Among other things, that means that Jesus is not stuck back there in history, but instead is become the future, Gods' final future. coming to us. He is standing now out in front of us, beckoning us to himself. That is a portion of what the book of Revelation is saying to us when it uses the languages of visions and dreams: that Jesus is now God's final future.
Behold, I make all things new, God says from the throne in this vision. The tense of the verb here is present, not just future. Jesus is the first example of the new life which God is also undertaking in us from the moment of our Baptism and on to our resurrection.
In view of this, our present gathering is not just due to the past, whether we view the past as good or bad, but rather, the most important thing is the future which Jesus brings; the future which even now is beginning to transform us into what we will be.
A transforming change, then, is not something to be feared, but to be expected whenever we gather in the name of Christ. One of the Easter season hymns [LBW148] speaks of this transformation. Now the green blade rises from the buried grain in death. The transformation that begins with Christ will also include us. In the 4th stanza of the hymn we sing:
When our hearts are wintry, grieving, or in pain Your touch can call us back to life again. Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been Love is come again, like wheat arising green.
A transforming change is not something to be feared, but to be expected whenever we gather in the name of Christ. Whenever we share his meal, he is saying: My love for you does change things. These are words that can be trusted, says John the Seer. Hang onto them!
The change is not intended merely to produce a nice warm feeling inside of us. Again and again Christians have written about how this transformation has moved them far beyond what we would call their “comfort zone”. In the Crossways room in these past several weeks we have been watching the movie about Father Damian, a priest who answered a call to serve the leper colony on Molokai, Hawaii. His vision of the creation remade in the resurrection brought him to work to bring that place of torment and despair a little more in line with the hope and shape of heaven. It was dreadfully hard work; there was so much sadness there, and the medicines to effectively treat the disease were still 60 years in the future, but what a change Jesus wrought in the sufferers' lives through Father Damian's work.
His dedication cost him his life at a relatively young age, but he offered it without regret. He knew that each of us must give our lives up in some way, and how much better that it be for a good and transformative cause than for a merely self-satisfying one.
We also watched the additional information that was on the DVD, including interviews with the actors. It was clear that when they were on the original location on Molokai that they knew that they were not just making a movie, they were engaged in an activity which would have an impact on their own lives and on the lives of those who see the movie. It is encouragement and inspiration for us to live like we know the resurrection is both the future for us as well as enlivening the present.
Here are three questions: --What does the resurrection mean for us right now? --What is our mission? --What should I be doing with my life, in whichever decade I am right now?
The three questions are all the same question, aren't they? And we can apply them to our individual lives and also corporately to us as the church.
Is our mission to --each other here today? --former members? --unchurched in this community? --Liberia and the rest of the world? And we know also that the answer is “all of the above”.
A transformation is at work in you and me. Fear based on the past is going to give way to trust based on God's future expressed in resurrection. The final future is sure, our lessons today tell us, and the past can no longer control us. So let's get on with the present, confidently singing:
Oh, fill us Lord with faultless love, Set heart and will on things above, That we conquer through thy triumph. Grant grace sufficient for life's day, That by our lives we truly say Christ is risen, He is living. Alleluia [LBW #143.3] Amen.
|