Abandoned

 7 Easter, Grace Episcopal Church, Monroe, La.

I am a teacher. I have earned my living primarily with words. Then I became a deacon and my diaconal ministry consisted of more talk, working together with other folks across the social, economic, and religious spectrum to shape public decision-making to benefit the common good.

 

Being a deacon includes preaching. But today, because of the confluence of events and the church year, I stand before you charged with the task of filling this space in our worship with words… and I have none. I feel abandoned. Quite utterly abandoned.

 

 

And not just by words. Jesus the Christ has left us. We have spent the last several weeks reading about and contemplating his resurrection appearances. Last Sunday he told us clearly that he was going and that we could not go with him. He ascended into heaven several days ago, according to the church calendar, and the Holy Spirit has not yet come.

 

Before he left us, Jesus prayed for us. We call it the High Priestly prayer. It is a wonderful, multilayered expression of his love for his followers.

 

Only the Gospel according to John records this prayer. It is a long prayer, the longest prayer Jesus prays in his time on earth, at least according to the written record. Thus our lectionary divides it into 3 parts: Year A gets the first part, Year B the second part and Year C—the year we are currently in—gets the 3^rd part, which I just read to you.

 

And it is in the 3^rd part that Jesus prays specifically for US. He prays not only on behalf of those with him at that moment, but, he says, also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word. That, friends, would be us.

 

So reading this tender, loving prayer, in which Jesus invites us into communion with himself and the Father, and invites us to experience his glory, and offers to fill us with his love… Reading this prayer for us should be comforting.., should it not?

 

Usually, for me, it is. “Comforting” is exactly how I have experienced it many times in the past.

 

But not this year. This year reading this prayer floods me with grief, and helpless anger, and most of all.. an overwhelming conviction of unworthiness. Utter unworthiness. Hopeless unworthiness. For we have failed. Again. And yet again.

 

I mentioned a confluence of events with the church year, and to that I must turn our attention… dragging my feet every step of the way.

 

Some of you will recall that just over 4 years ago, I was on the docket to preach here at Grace Episcopal just days after the murder of 17—teenagers and teachers—at a high school in Florida.

 

I’m not going to preach that sermon again today. Should anyone want to review it, it is still available on my sermon blog here.

 

But, sadly, that sermon is as relevant now as it was the day I preached it. So today it seems, simply, futile. Futile, because the same empty excuses about why we can’t do anything about gun violence began to flood our airways and social media almost before the sounds of the shots in Buffalo, NY, and Uvalde, TX, had died out.

 

Here's one thing that’s changed. Today I’m a grandmother. My precious grandbabies turned 5 months old just a few days ago. In a couple of weeks, they will be baptized and made Christ’s own forever.

 

And I know just as surely as I stand here this morning that even though they are infants now, I will blink my eyes and they will be going off to school. I am terrified at the thought.

 

Yesterday, writing this sermon, I got to exactly this point, and stopped. I didn’t know what to say next. So I went outside and pulled weeds, and hosed down the carport, and dug up a couple of oak saplings that had taken root in a flower bed. And after several hours of intense yardwork, I came back to my computer and… I still didn’t know what to say next.

 

And so I turn to prayer, the only kind of words I know of that have much chance of changing us, because I believe changing us is the first necessary thing.

 

These words come from a group of Episcopal bishops who responded to a mass shooting by writing a litany to commemorate the dead, to comfort their loved ones, and to honor survivors and first responders. It has been updated many times and is very long. I have arbitrarily edited it down to include only mass shootings in schools.

 

If you share in my heartbreak and rage and despair, feel free to join in the response, “Let light perpetual shine upon them.”

 

Let us pray.

 

God of peace, we remember all those who have died in incidents of mass gun violence in this nation’s public and private spaces.

 

Thirteen dead at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.

Give to the departed eternal rest.
Let light perpetual shine upon them.

 

Twenty-eight dead at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
Give to the departed eternal rest.
Let light perpetual shine upon them.

 

Six dead at Santa Monica College, California.
Give to the departed eternal rest.
Let light perpetual shine upon them.

 

Five dead at Marysville Pilchuck High School in Washington.
Give to the departed eternal rest.
Let light perpetual shine upon them.

 

Ten dead at Umpqua Community College, Oregon.
Give to the departed eternal rest.
Let light perpetual shine upon them.

 

Seventeen dead at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
Give to the departed eternal rest.
Let light perpetual shine upon them.

 

Ten dead at Santa Fe High School, Texas.
Give to the departed eternal rest.
Let light perpetual shine upon them.

 

Four dead at Oxford High School in Oxford Township, Michigan.
Give to the departed eternal rest
Let light perpetual shine upon them.

 

Twenty-one dead at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
Give to the departed eternal rest
Let light perpetual shine upon them.

 

All those who have died in any incident of gun violence.
Give to the departed eternal rest.
Let light perpetual shine upon them.

 

To survivors of gun violence, grant comfort and healing.
To those who have lost loved ones to gun violence, grant peace.

Protect and strengthen first responders who care for victims of gun violence.

Move us all to act in whatever way we can to end the evil of gun violence in our society.

Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.

 

In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, AMEN

Material Guy

 Grace Episcopal Church, Monroe, La.

I think St. Thomas the Apostle gets a bad rap when he is called “Doubting Thomas.” I think he was just “a material guy,” albeit not in the sense Madonna intended when she sang about a “material girl.” Here’s what I mean.

 

Our Biblical stories of Christ’s passion and resurrection are vivid and full of details that engage all of our senses. I’m sure I’m not the only one who shudders as Jesus is whipped, who cringes at the sound of nails through flesh into wood, who shrinks from the sight of the bloody man on the cross.

 

On Easter morning, I crumple to the ground with grief-stricken Mary. I feel the earthquake one of the Gospel writers describes. I am blinded by the light of the angels seated inside. I run with the disciples and always wonder: Would I be the one who gets there first but hesitates at the entrance? Or would I bring up the rear but dash headlong into that cold, dark space?

 

 

Our Easter story is tactile, visible and audible. Those firsthand witnesses send it down to us through the generations using words that enable us to experience it again and again.

 

But let’s back up a bit further and recall that this whole story of our faith, from beginning to end, is about incarnation—that is, God becoming a material being—the same God’s breathe-enlivened matter... of which we are made.

 

I love how Fr. Richard Rohr sums up the meaning of incarnation. “Matter matters,” he says.

 

I think it interesting and relevant that Thomas doesn’t ask just to see Jesus. No, he says ‘I must touch him, I must put my hand in his side…” And sure enough, artistic renditions of this scene show Thomas not merely peering at Jesus’ wounds, but putting his finger in them.

 

Thomas was a material guy and he had known Jesus as a material being. And seeing, in fact, is not always believing!

 

Witness, for example, the many stories of Jesus appearing to his disciples post resurrection, and not being recognized by them. I have always tended to think that was because Jesus’ appearance had been rather dramatically changed by death and resurrection.

 

Well, it probably was changed somewhat, but… remember the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus, who did not recognize Jesus, even though he walked along with them and taught them the scriptures for an entire day. In that story there’s a line that clearly states, their eyes were kept from recognizing him.

 

Now what would keep eyes from recognizing a person they knew well? I can think of several things. First, there’s fear. Fear clouds our vision. And our judgement. Nations have gone to war, people do hurtful things to each other.. out of fear.

 

Jesus’ followers had good reason to be fearful. We know that thousands died at the hands of the Roman state because they would not denounce God and worship the emperor. Their fear was legitimate and it could have clouded their vision.

 

 

Second, I think of grief. Grief clouds our vision. One moment the world is bright and sunny and full of promise, and the next it is dark. The future is grim; we despair. Been there, done that.

 

Last night I read a tweet from a woman I scarcely know but see occasionally on Twitter. It was a simple, desolate, 2-line tweet. She said, My husband died today. I will never be the same. Social media creates some issues for sure, but one of the great things about it is that we can reach out to people in their times of trouble.

 

But the third thing I thought of that clouds our vision is probably the hardest of all to overcome. And that thing is.. having our minds already made up and our expectations set. Sometimes what we already think, believe and know about how the world works is our worst enemy.

 

Speaking as a teacher, nothing is harder than teaching something to someone who is sure they already know!

 

So… what we know gets in the way of seeing something new. And Jesus was something new. Resurrection was new. Yes, Jesus had told them, more than once, but the Gospel writers tell us over and over again that even his disciples just didn’t get it. They couldn’t hear it, and now they couldn’t see it. It was just too contrary to reality as they knew it.

 

Moreover, it wasn’t just the resurrected Jesus that was new. Consider that this Jesus—the material being they had followed and loved—was NOT what they expected. The Messiah of the Hebrew Scripture they expected was to be a conquering king who would liberate Israel from the cruel reign of the Roman Empire.

 

How could this carpenter’s son, this man of humble origin who taught love and peace and would not even act in self-defense, nor allow anyone else to act in his defense.., how could this material man… be the one?

 

Jesus the Christ was a new creation in every possible way. Add on the layer of newness of being a resurrected body—not merely spirit, not merely disembodied eternal soul, but resurrected body… and it’s absolutely no mystery that his followers did not recognize him by sight alone. Jesus the Christ challenged everything they thought, believed and knew… about both God and reality.

 

And so today, we have St. Thomas the Material Guy to thank for reaching out and touching that resurrected material body. Otherwise, how would we know? I wonder.., after Thomas, did any of the others have the courage to touch as well?

 

 

Of course, the New Testament does give us a few other ways for us to know the Risen One. The disciples on the road to Emmaus knew him in the breaking of the bread. And that is surely what keeps us coming to Holy Eucharist again and again.

 

Mary Magdalene knew him when he said her name. I think God says our name many times and in many ways, for example, by putting people in front of us who need our loving touch. I would even count my happening to read the tweet of a woman who had just lost her husband as God saying my name.

 

How is God saying your name? What is the material situation right in front of you that needs your touch? What do you already think, believe and know that might be clouding your vision and your understanding? These are the questions I urge us to reflect on today.

 

In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, AMEN