April 29, 2007 - Easter 4, Year C
Saint James Episcopal Church, Saint James, NY

Today
is the day after.
Yesterday
we had a wonderful day of celebration.
There were bishops and a deacon, incense and smoke,
acolytes and crucifers and a whole procession of clergy;
There were many parishioners,
from a four year old through to those just a few years older,
all taking a formal part in the liturgy.
And together we renewed our commitment to ministry as the people of St James
and I was formally welcomed as the sixteenth Rector of this church.
And then we had a party over in a beautifully decorated Mills Hall.
It was a wonderful celebration.

And today, inevitably, feels a little flat.
We're back to normal;
some of us relieved
that it's all over and we can collapse and rest,
but feeling kind of out of place.
And somewhere lurking at the back of our minds we wonder,
"what's next?"
That feeling is compounded
by our readings this week.
Because if you remember last weeks' readings,
this week's ones
are not much different.
Another story
about someone preaching a sermon in Acts;
another chunk of Revelation,
full of angels and a lamb
and so much metaphor and visual imagery
that it makes it difficult
to imagine with any reality;
and a few words of Jesus
comparing himself
to a shepherd.

It's not very exciting
if you've been in church the last few weeks and listened to the readings;
nothing new
if you've been round the church
for any length of time.
Just the same old story
repeated
ad infinitum.

But maybe,
maybe that's why
the people who put together the lectionary did it this way.
Because this is life.
We'd like it to be all about celebration and high points and excitement
but that's not reality.
Reality is the same old same old
day by day.
Occasions like yesterday
are rare.
Life is far more often
like today,
when we get up and do
what we have always done.
Routine, habit, ritual.
It's what we have always done.

And of course, it's what we have always done
at church.
Churches are places
that tend to put a premium on routine and habit and ritual,
on doing things
as we have always done them.
Which is important,
as one of our functions is to preserve the tradition of our faith,
to guard it, if you like.
But sometimes what happens
is that in the middle of all that routine and habit and ritual
we forget
the very core of what we are about here, the core of our faith,
this thing called the gospel, the good news of God in Christ.

What we do here
is not about fancy processions and great celebrations,
wonderful as they are;
nor is it about the more ordinary week by week progression of word and prayer and sacrament,
important as they are;
what we do here
is first and foremost
about Christ
and if this church were to be destroyed tomorrow — though I sincerely hope it won't be — if this church were destroyed tomorrow,
we would still have
what really matters,
our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ.

And that's what our readings point us to today. They point us to Jesus Christ, crucified and risen,
the one at the very core of our faith.
On this fourth Sunday of Easter,
when the story of the resurrection has become kind of ordinary,
we need to be reminded
that this story
is astounding news that breaks in
even in the midst of our routine and habit and ritual.
And not only breaks in
but is at the core of our routine and ritual and habit.

And the story is simple. You know it.
Jesus, God's own son,
was betrayed and condemned and put to death.
And then they placed his body
in a tomb.
And then, unexpectedly, God raised him from death, and Jesus appeared, risen, to people all over, and those people are now witnesses.
And God has fulfilled his promise
to set us free from our sins,
fulfilled it
through Jesus, crucified
and risen.

That is the good news
at the core of our faith. Christ is risen
and we have forgiveness,
Christ is risen
and we have hope,
Christ is risen
and our perspective on life
has fundamentally shifted.

So, that's all very well, but so what? On yet another Sunday in the season of Easter
what has this
got to do with us? What difference does it make?

If you listen to the press,
you will hear all sorts of stories about the Episcopal Church. And unfortunately, most of them aren't good.
If you type "Episcopal Church" into the search box of google news,
predictably the top three stories
are about a church with gargoyles raising money for restoration,
Bishop Gene Robinson in New Hampshire,
and a scheduled visit of Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria
to install a bishop of the Church of Nigeria
to preside over conservative congregations, with all the tensions that invokes around bishops interfering in other bishops' dioceses.
If you tried to get an idea of what our church is about from the press,
you'd end up thinking that historic restoration, sexuality, and boundary disputes are the things that we care most about, the things that are at the core of our faith.
You could be forgiven for thinking
that all we ever think and talk about
is those contentious matters,
and preserving our buildings.
But we know, we are reminded in our readings today, that they are not the things
that define us as the church, that make us who we are,
they are peripheral.
What defines us, what makes us who we are,
is the gospel, Christ crucified and resurrected,
offering us forgiveness.

We need to be clear, as our preacher yesterday reminded us,
that as Christians
that
is the core of our faith. Christ crucified and resurrected,
offering us forgiveness. This is what we hold in common;
this is what all of us
can agree upon
no matter where we stand
on contentious issues.
And we need to be clear on it
when we're trying to keep our historic buildings upright. We do not exist for the sake of our history; our history exists
to serve and support us. We discovered that
a couple of weeks ago when we had blowback in the boiler for the Christian Education building, and had to move our services to Mills Hall.
It might not have been as beautiful, but it was just fine: what mattered
was that we could worship God
that we could proclaim Christ's death and resurrection
at the center of our faith.

And it's Christ's death and resurrection
that is our job to tell others about,
to testify, just as Paul and Barnabas did
to the wonderful work of God, the good news of the gospel.
And that doesn't necessarily mean
spending our days carrying placards that say, "Repent or go to hell";
it doesn't necessarily mean wearing sandwich boards of scripture;
it doesn't necessarily mean
going out knocking on doors and asking people about the state of their salvation.
But it does mean being ready, being ready to tell our stories, our stories of salvation, our stories of what God has done for us, our stories of Christ crucified and resurrected. It means being ready to talk
about the core of our faith.

Because that's what Paul and Barnabas were doing. Someone came and asked them,
"Tell us a story. Give us something
to strengthen our faith."
And so they told a story, the story we all know so well.
It's their story,
but it's ours as well.
The story of Christ crucified and risen, of forgiveness and love and hope. It's a story for celebrations,
and it's a story for the everyday, the more prosaic ordinary time
when we fall back on the core of our faith.
"Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. Alleluia!"

 

©Raewynne J.Whiteley, 2007