Between noon and three

…spare us in the youngest day when all are shaken awake, facts are facts, (and I shall know exactly what happened today between noon and three); that we too may come to the picnic with nothing to hide, join the dance as it moves in perichoresis, turns about the abiding tree. — W.H. Auden, "Compline"

Month: May, 2017

May 15, 2017

“That where I am, there you may be also.”

On Sunday, May 14, the Fifth Sunday of Easter, the Rev. John Hartnett, of St. Elizabeth’s in Ridgewood, NJ, was our guest preacher at the 9:15 service; his excellent sermon can be heard here. This sermon was preached at the others.

Collect: O Almighty God, whom truly to know is everlasting life: Grant us so perfectly to know thy Son Jesus Christ to be the way, the truth, and the life, that we may steadfastly follow his steps in the way that leadeth to eternal life; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Readings: Acts 7:55-60, 1 Peter 2:2-10, John 14:1-14

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen:

“That where I am, there you may be also.”

This phrase is often overlooked as Christians meditate on the more famous sections of this passage: “In my Father’s house are many rooms.” Or, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father but by me.” Or, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” But I am certain that there is no concept more central to the Gospel than this: “That where I am, there you may be also.”

We read this passage from John on this Sunday, the fifth Sunday of Easter, as we prepare to celebrate the Ascension in another week and a half. We’re getting ourselves ready to mark the day when Jesus ascended into heaven and left his disciples on their own, aided and enlivened by the Holy Spirit, to carry on the work of the Church. And this passage, from the Last Supper the night before Jesus’ Crucifixion helps prepare us just as it helped prepare the disciples for getting on with the work of the Gospel in a world where Jesus is not physically, personally present with his people anymore in the familiar way he had been.

“That where I am, there you may be also.” It’s a word of comfort to the disciples, as their Lord is about to be taken from them: first to Calvary, and then to the right hand of God in heaven, that he will take them to himself; that their life in this world, that our life in this world is not the end, that there is more for us beyond the veil of death, above the sphere of this mortal world, that our true home is with him in glory, and we will not be at home here on this earth our whole lives through; that we will not be at home until we meet God face to face in heaven.

It’s tempting to regard this world as the end, and even Christians get embroiled in it: we fight, we worry, we are desperately concerned with the success or failure of the mighty work with which we are entrusted, with the way the church seems to be going (whichever way you think that is), with the way our lives seem to be turning out. 

It’s tempting to regard this world as the end, because it’s what we’ve got to work with, because it’s hard to see past the all-consuming day-to-day tasks of managing our lives in this world. And yet Jesus here at the Last Supper tells his disciples that he goes to prepare a place for them in his Father’s house. This place where Jesus goes is our home, and he goes so that “Where I am there you may be also.”

If we feel as though this world can’t continue, or that our lives can’t continue as they are; if we feel uneasy with “the way things work” or that we simply aren’t at rest, it’s because this world is not our home; and our home is where Jesus has gone. In large measure the greatest challenge of our lives as Christians is to behave here as if we were already at home there, to make this world, our lives, reflect as much of that world, of that life as we are given the strength and the grace to achieve; but at the same time, if the work never seems to be finished, not to despair, because this world is not the end. Christ goes on ahead of us, “so that where I am, there you may be also.”

At the same time, our first lesson from Acts recounts the martyrdom of Stephen: Stephen the Protomartyr he’s called, because he is the first and the prototype of all Christian martyrs after him. It’s always remarkable to me that Stephen’s death mimics so closely the events of Jesus’s own. Stephen faces a mock trial before the Sanhedrin, he speaks almost the same words Jesus did from the cross, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” And finally he forgives his persecutors even as they stone him to death. Before he goes to his death he sees Heaven opened, and Christ himself standing at the right hand of God.

Jesus says to his disciples, that he leaves them in order “That where I am, there you may be also.” Stephen lives the promise more fully than nearly anyone else in Scripture. Christ is certainly enthroned in glory, and we worship him as King of Heaven. But in this life, in this world, he suffered injustice and crucifixion. That is where Stephen found him, and saw him most clearly: in Stephen’s own moment of suffering, in his own unjust execution, there he encounters Christ most profoundly, there he found him strong to save. 

Yes our Lord has gone ahead of us into heaven. But he goes in order that “Where I am, there you may be also.” It’s a promise and a challenge both. This world is not our home. And while we work to make it reflect what we know of heaven, the irony is that the clearest reflection of heaven can’t be found in the halls of power or glory, but rather in humiliation and defeat; in forgiveness rather than vindication; in death, in resurrection, rather than in any kind of earthly victory. These are the places where Christians will find Jesus most clearly present, most mighty to save. These are the places which are the seedbeds of the kingdom of God.

I don’t mean somehow to glorify suffering, or sin, or death, but only to point out that these are the places where Redemption happens, these are the places where we begin to see and know the goodness of God. If you know music at all, you’ll recognize that there is a dissonance at work here, whose resolution we will not hear in our lifetime. And yet the more we lean into that dissonance, the more we are people of prayer and mercy and love even in its midst, the sweeter the resolution will finally be, the more richly will the full vision be revealed to us, the more clearly we will know the love of God in our lives and in all things.

“That where I am, there you may be also.” Our challenge this Easter is to long for the fulfillment of our Easter hope with Jesus in his Father’s house in heaven. But even as we long for that world, we strive to live the life Jesus lived in this world: going to the places where he himself went, doing the kinds of things which he himself did, not being distracted by whatever difficulties we face, not being afraid of darkness or pain, but following him even to ignominy and death if need be.

Like Stephen, let our own moments of fear and struggle be occasions to offer forgiveness, unasked for and undeserved — so that, with Jesus in his cross and passion, we might share with him the glory of his resurrection.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Amen.

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May 1, 2017

The Road to Emmaus

This Sunday at the 9:15 service, Bp. Smith confirmed and received almost fifty of our youth and adults into the Episcopal Church. This sermon was preached at the other services, at 8am, 11:15am, and 5:30pm.

Collect: O God, whose blessed Son did manifest himself to his disciples in the breaking of bread: Open, we pray thee, the eyes of our faith, that we may behold him in all his redeeming work; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Readings: Acts 2:14a, 36-41, 1 Peter 1:17-23, Luke 24:13-35

The road to Emmaus is one of my favorite of the resurrection stories, because it makes Jesus seem like he has such a good sense of humor. I can just imagine him grinning to himself as he walks along the road with these disciples: they haven’t gotten the joke yet, they don’t see yet that it’s him, risen from the dead, walking there with him. But it’s not a cruel joke: he takes time to explain to them what’s going on: he takes the whole journey in fact. And so warmly do these disciples feel towards this mysterious companion that they beg him to say with them that night.

It’s a wonderful portrait of Jesus’s light-heartedness, and the affection he elicits from people just in the course of conversation. At the same time, I think the road to Emmaus functions in a really important way for all of us, as we think about the task of Christian learning in the first place. April is almost over and May is coming: the end of the school year looms in front of us. At the 9:15 service today, the Bishop will confirm almost fifty students and adults in the next step of their journey into the life of the Church. Learning and its tasks are in the forefront at such a time as this.

When we think about learning, especially in the Church it seems, we think about learning things: facts, figures, stories, reference points, processes. How many eyes does a seraph have? Why do we have four Gospels? What does salvation mean? Why do different churches add or subtract certain books from their Bibles? What is heaven about? How about the Trinity? The Sacraments? 

We learn all these things in the course of our lives as Christians, and continuing to learn more and more is an essential component of growing in faith. But increasing the sheer quantity of information in our brains is emphatically not the point of Christian learning; I might argue it’s not the point of any other kind of learning either. The Road to Emmaus for me is the clearest illustration in Scripture of what learning is really about, of what growth as a disciple is really about.

When Jesus appears alongside them, he presents the question that cuts to the quick: what is this all about? It’s almost a test – tell me what you know, tell me what you make of all these events. And they tell him plainly, that they don’t know what to make of them all: they had believed Jesus to be the Messiah, they had been prepared to believe he would deliver Israel. But their grief is all the greater because they don’t understand how to make sense of his crucifixion.

So Jesus teaches them on the road. He opens the Scriptures to them, he goes through the whole thing, showing that from the Books of Moses on forward, all the prophets bear witness to himself. What always strikes me here, is that even after spending an entire day alone with Jesus, hearing all of these things explained to him, they still don’t recognize him. They know they’ve been affected, they say later their hearts burned within them, but they still cannot see what is there to be seen. 

Only when they beg him to stay with them, and they sit down to dinner, where he blesses the bread and breaks it; only then are their eyes opened and they see. This is the point of the whole operation. Only when the disciples invite Jesus to stay with them, only when they invite him to share this meal, this mundane but intimate encounter, only then are their eyes prepared to see what has been there all along.

This is the point that I want to make about Christian learning and growth in discipleship. All the doctrine in the world, all the most brilliant explanations and arguments, all the facts and figures, knowledge and data, finally do not avail. They cannot bridge the gap between earth and heaven. All that knowledge can do, all that learning can achieve, is to prepare us for the encounter with Christ: it can only ready the ground in our hearts to behold him alive for ourselves.

This is why, when it comes to faith, we cannot rely merely on books, why prayer is absolutely the central companion of Christian discipleship. Because knowledge is nothing without encounter, without the actual personal encounter with the risen Christ, who transforms our lives and our world.

The disciples dropped everything and ran all the way back to Jerusalem when they recognized Jesus. Knowledge alone cannot achieve that kind of transformation. It can only prepare us, as it prepared them, for encountering Christ himself, for recognizing him right in their midst, as, himself, the only explanation for all their wondering, all their confusion.

So it is with us: Christian life is meaningless, Christian learning is meaningless, if it is not ultimately oriented towards Christ himself as the final source of all meaning, all knowledge, all life. Seeing him, recognizing him, loving him.

This Easter, you and I are invited afresh to let all our learning, all our growing point us finally toward Christ himself, to let all our striving teach us not to be satisfied with mere facts about him, but to long for his presence, to love him more and more: in the bread that he breaks for you and me, the bread that is his body, which gives life to the world; and to love him in all the places where he himself has said he would be: in the Church, in our neighbors, in our enemies, in the needy.

This Easter let us look for him himself, and be satisfied not with any amount of facts or figures, but only with love. As we grow in love, let us see him more and more clearly; and as we see more and more clearly, let us love all the more, and find the world shining with his glory to the ages of ages.

Amen.

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