Alleluia, Christ is Risen

The Great Vigil of Easter 2015

Finally! There is the faintest glimmer of hope. We gather in the chill of the night and warm ourselves around the fire. We remember what he tried to tell us time and again but we would not listen. We simply could not understand it. So, counting hope against hope we light a candle and process into our gathering place and instead of cursing the evil in the darkness, we light all our candles. At least we’ve learned that much. We gather around this marvelous flame. We sing the ancient song of our Passover. 

Then we read of our deliverance at the Red Sea, the valley of dry bones, and of our calling to be God’s people. 

We remember how he raised Lazarus from the dead and his many miracles and his healings which were all daily occurrences for him; those with mental and physical ailments. How we wish we could heal those who are sick now and suffer so. For when we had our hopes up the faintest bit, we must now admit just how real suffering and death are even on this side of the resurrection.

Still, we set the Table as he taught us to do. We remember him but not as if he lived and died a long time ago. But we remember him now as the one who died and then rose again. Well, lets face it there are those who are not quite convinced on that point. That’s why we have Thomas the Doubter who famously said: “Not until I see it with my own eyes, touch it with my own hands, not until then will I believe.”

The Surprise of Faith, let me tell you, you are in for a wondrous and mighty surprise not just if you doubt, but even for those of you who believe! Such a Surprise that will fill your hearts with indescribable joy! A joy that will change your life! Right here, right now!

This is because Jesus brought us into eternal life beginning with our Baptism. All he asks of us is to die to sin and to rise to newness of eternal life both in this life and in the life to come. So lets not wait ‘till we’re dead. Lets get at it right now. For the time to do eternal life is here in our midst

This is the essential Teaching or Didache of the Church. The first document we have after the New Testament writings is a brief “catechism” if you will of teachings used for new converts to the faith including and especially directed to our young people. This document is called the Didache, a word which shares the same word as “didactic” or “teaching”.

All this is because in those days the world these kids grew up in was an especially dangerous one. Therefore all converts and members of the church were required to be mindful, to understand, and to master the essential teachings of the Didache; The Teachings of the Church.

Those essential teachings begin with this extraordinary statement;

There are only two ways to live; the way that leads to life and the way that leads to death. 

You can see that choice all around you if you but open your eyes to what is going on around you.

There is the way of violence, hatred, warfare, oppression and bigotry. Good heavens there is abundant dosage of that all around us. And much of it supposedly in the “name of God”. But we know such things lead to the destruction and death of God’s creatures. We are called to renounce them.

Instead we are called to peace with justice, love, compassion and an open heart that leads to life.

There is the way of fear, anxiety, and depression. That sure sounds like current events to me. But such a life leads to darkness and despair. That approach doesn’t make much sense to me and besides it will shorten you life, will it not?

But there is also courage, joy, good humor, gracious affection and good cheer. Such an internal reorientation leads to much, much more life, a life that leads to an eternal life like Jesus lived.

There is, of course self centeredness. One the other hand there is a life that we can live in concern and care for others. The former will destroy the latter builds up.

Need we point out the difference between greed and its antithesis generosity? Seldom have we seen such a stark reminder of the difference than we see in our own present historic context.

There is the matter of self indulgence and self discipline. Life will teach you that lesson sooner or later. Let’s keep one another in eternal life. 

All we have to do is read the papers or watch the news to see what destroys human life near and far away. Sin, by the way, is the only doctrine in our catechism we have abundant proof for. Everything else we believe in we have to take on faith. Ah but not sin…look around you. Its everywhere! It is no wonder so many take to the way of sin.

But still ultimately, it only leads to death and God is pretty consistent on this point; “As I live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from their ways and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways; for why will you die, O house of Israel?” ~Ezekiel 33:11

Back now to the “remembrance of  him”. Back to that surprise and that joy! That Greek word “anamnesis” means to remember not as if we were recalling some ancient sadness or tragedy; the word means to remember as if we were bringing that ancient moment into the living present, as if we were invoking the presence of Christ as this very Table, which is exactly what we do in the Eucharist.

This remembrance is as real and as joyous as today right here among your friends and your family.  We have this joy, this now, this eternity right here for all of us to see. 

For Christ is alive in this glad Easter tide. We have seen him with our own eyes.

Alleluia. Christ is Risen

The Lord is Risen indeed! Alleluia!

And now may the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God and the Fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all evermore. Amen.

Fr Paul

The Easter Reason to be Alive

The Reason We Are Here

In the Passover meal that Jesus had with his disciples, in the Passover meal all Jews have with their families and friends, the evening begins with the four questions; “Why is this night different from all other nights”? Then the Papa, tells the story; “The Liturgy of the Haggadah”; that is to say the “telling” of the mighty acts by which God delivered the Children of Israel out of their bondage in Egypt into the Promised Land. The Christian year now comes to Easter Day. We’ve had a remarkable Lenten journey tracing the Eucharist historically through time, a liturgy that find its roots in the Passover meal itself.

Why then is this day different from all other days for us? On this day we sing of Jesus’ Resurrection and his power over sin and death.

Do we understand and believe what such songs sing?

Will we really live again?

Has Jesus really delivered us from the power of evil?

Why is this day so different from all other days?

Our souls come to rest on how we answer such questions. 

That Jesus has such power as to rise from sin and death is not really so difficult to comprehend. After all if we believe he was indeed the “sinless one” and if he really was the Son of God, then the power he has over life and death would be self evident. His resurrection is really not so much of a stretch.

But why would he want to share this victory with each of us? Why would he love us so? In fact why did he go to the bother of making us in the first place? Why the fall into sin, only to redeem us back again? That seems like a set of imponderables to me.

I often wonder about the business of being alive. The very notion of being carries a mystery with it if we take a moment to ponder from time to time. The Mystery and the Majesty of life itself; Its purpose?

Then I wonder why we make it so difficult on ourselves and others. 

Why the sin?

Why the hate?

White supremacists? Jews? Arabs? Blacks? Whites? Republicans and Democrats?

Men and women can get into it and the nature of those conflicted relationships can baffle the best.

The whole business of sexual orientation has gotten to the point that the Church in Uganda has supported capital punishment for folks just for being who they are. Then they turn around and accuse us of being Biblically unsound because of our compassion and inclusivity. Talk about baffling!

In the midst of it all we have the Russian Army on the Eastern Front of the Ukraine, the Crimean Peninsula already annexed. Putin has it in mind that the great tragedy of the last few decades was the disintegration of the former Soviet Union and oh wouldn’t he like to be able to put that broken egg back together again. On the other hand there is the army of the Ukraine. And we have more or less thrown ourselves into the conflict on the side of Kiev. NATO forces are now mobilizing on the Western front of the Ukraine. Oh my aching head!

Kids and drugs, unemployment, crime…I could go on.

None of this is new.

The world Jesus was born into was occupied by the Roman legions, and the “Herods” ruled in brutal succession. It is interesting that of all the places on earth to select for birth, God choose the most conflicted place in history. There were wars, rumors of wars, insurrections and a whole lot of bloodshed.

And don’t forget the poor, the lame, the outcast, the lepers, the tax collectors, the prostitutes and sinners of all sorts. You name it, Jesus loved them all. Jesus loved us all even in the very center of our sins.

It was his idea to love us whoever we were. This offended the religious authorities who had a strict set of rules about who could come to the Temple and who could not, in order to offer sacrifices to God. Jesus, on the other hand loved those folks who had been marginalized and excluded. And the idea caught on with the early Christian Community. 

The first great controversy in the church, and yes, we’ve been embroiled in one controversy after another ever since, that first controversy was over whether you had to be Jewish first in order to be a Christian. After all, up until this first council in the Acts of the Apostles, from which we read today, everyone in the church was a Jew. Therefore all future Christians should be be Jews, correct? Peter and Paul in the meantime began to hear what Jesus had said about going into all the world and preaching this Gospel message of Forgiveness, Reconciliation and Love and likewise the Power of God over all sin and death. So then in today’s reading from Acts Peter says; "I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.” 

Please note how fundamental this idea is to our faith. Anyone means anyone. Everyone means everyone. There are no exceptions. Even when Phillip the Evangelist baptized the Ethiopian Eunuch along the Gaza strip; I can well imagine the reaction back at headquarters; “You baptized a what?” We know that Paul had broken down the dividing walls between Jews and Greeks, slaves and free, male and female, now the dividing wall means even the Ethiopian Eunuch! Where will it end? Thanks be to God, it doesn’t. This is Easter at its heart. This Gospel message applies to all of you, no exceptions! The ever widening and inclusive embrace of Christ continues even unto this day.

The Gospel had become universal, in other words it had become “catholic” in its original sense. The church had become One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic. The Good news now came to all, and covered as we might say a multitude of sins.

And if that wasn’t enough, Mary went to the tomb early on that first great Easter Day, not expecting much of anything except for the exquisite sadness of yet another death, but she found that the stone had been rolled away. Grave robbers! That was her first thought and she told the gardener so. But the gardener was somebody she had already known quite well. Interestingly enough she did not recognize him at first. Easter is, after all, a total surprise. No matter how many times Jesus told them that he must suffer, die and rise again, these people were not ready for that moment when it happened. He turned to Mary. He was not the gardener after all. He was Jesus. He was then and is now the Risen Christ.

“Mary”, he said to her. 

It wasn’t until that moment that she recognized him. “I have seen the Lord!”

That is how it will be with us too. All our lives long we hear the church tell us about our forgiveness. We hear about the resurrection. But we’re not really going to believe it until that moment comes when Jesus says to me; “Paul”. You won’t believe it until he calls you each by name.

So why are we here?

What is the purpose of my life?

You are here to bring good news to the poor.

To comfort those who mourn

To lift up the meek and the lowly

To satisfy those who hunger and thirst for righteousnesses

To be merciful and to obtain mercy

To be pure in heart and to see God

To be peacemakers, because this is what the children of God do.

And indeed to be persecuted for the sake of God, as you shall discover when you stand up for the poor, the meek and those who mourn and all the vulnerable of the earth.

The Wolves of Wall Street will seek to devour you. Greed, power and voracious sin is alive and well. There are all kinds of forces out there and in here that seek to devour and destroy the creatures of God. Make no mistake about that. That’s why we need to have our wits about us and become intentional about our discipleship.

We have a reason and a purpose to be here. We have been redeemed in order that we may participate in God's work of redemption for all. God wants to salvage whatever is possible of our lives and the lives of others. God wants us to be sure we know we are forgiven, and to make sure others do as well. God wants us all to be reconciled. We have put to death all our sins and nailed them to the cross of Christ. Thus as we die with him we are now raised with him in his glorious resurrection. Jesus Christ is Risen today!

Happy Easter my friends! Thank God at least we know why we’re here!

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

Fr Paul

Easter Joy! Easter Surprise! Easter Power!

Happy Easter

Happy Easter. Let me greet you with the Joy, the Surprise and the Power of Easter Day.

First let me greet you with the Joy of Easter.

There really is no greater Joy than Easter. The songs of Easter, the festive gathering of God’s people especially on this one day of the Christian Year, the day that marks the Queen of Festivals. We gather as God’s family today to feast at the altar of God, so too I wish you every joy as you gather with your families and friends around your dining room tables later today. 

The Joy of Easter is a recognition that everyone is welcome within God's saving embrace without exception. “Now I understand that God shows no partiality” as St. Peter puts it in today’s first lesson from the Acts of the Apostles. “For in any nation anyone who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to him”. Anyone means anyone. Anyone means you. That’s the joy of Easter. And the fact that it is you means no one can say that it is not you. The events of these last days in Holy Week are a proclamation of Godly generosity. There can be no exceptions to God’s generosity, God’s love, and God’s compassion. This is the Joy of Easter. 

It took Peter time to come around to this knowledge just like it takes time for the whole church of God to come to the knowledge of God’s full and inclusive love. This to me is the Joy of Easter. All means all. Thankfully we belong to a church that now recognizes that there are no distinctions to its membership or ministry based on race, ethnicity, class, gender, or orientation. It took us a while to come to that understanding, but here we are. Like Peter, we too, now know that "God shows no partiality".

So let me also greet you with the Surprise of Easter.

When the women went to the tomb early that first Easter day, they were prepared to go through the customary preparations of the body for its final burial, and they brought the spices and the balm that were used for the purpose, steeling themselves for what, of course, is an exquisitely unpleasant task. What they were not prepared for was the Resurrection of that Body. When it was not there they supposed that perhaps he had been removed. It would have been, of course, the final indignity. Mary, stood there weeping, weeping from the very crest of grief. She supposed that he was the gardner, the one who spoke to her, and so she asked if he had taken the body, and where had he taken it.

Finally he said to her; “Mary!” 

Here is the surprise! She did not recognize him at first. It would come as no surprise to me if any of us really recognize Jesus ever at first, but especially on our Easter Day. We can certainly recognize him within the life of his teaching, his healing, his miracles, and even on the day of his death, that we can all recognize. We are all too familiar with all of that.

But on the Day of his Resurrection? And the Day of our Resurrection? Or now on this Day. The Day of the Resurrection of those we love who have all been gathered to our ancestors. That’s the surprise we’re all in for.

My step-father was a wonderful man. But he was a kind of a hard bitten German fellow. In fact his family came from a hard life of farming both here in Pennsylvania and then later in western Ohio. These people were a very practical people, and they learned their lessons from the school of hard knocks. My step father, “HK” as I called him; his name was Homer Kershner, went on to become an engineer. So for all he knew, only those things existed which you could see and measure and mould with your hands and with man made machinery. He allowed as to how there may very well be a God. It was nice of him to allow God existence, I often quipped. But the whole thing about heaven. That he was quite convinced. There is no evidence of such a thing. When you’re dead, you’re dead. I think he actually took some comfort in that declaration. After all, my mom was a feisty sort of woman and more than once I saw her sharp personality pierce into the hearts of those she loved as well as those who loved her, my own heart included. Oh but how he loved her! And so I often said to him; “Listen here, HK for loving my mother, you’re going to heaven whether you want to or not!”

We all laughed. But I meant it then. I mean it now. Hey, HK, “Surprise! You're in heaven!”

What a wonderful surprise we're all in for.

And finally let me greet you with the Power of Easter.

Several days ago I took some pictures of the full “worm” moon. It is called that by the Algonquin native Americans to characterize the new life that begins to emerge near the end of March. Forasmuch as the tender tendrils of earth’s new life push through the softened ground as prepared by the humble earthworm who in turn invites the robin’s return, and too as even the tiniest green shoots of grass break through concrete cracks in our sidewalks as Spring’s new life burst into the sunlight, so too our Jesus conquers the grave on this Easter Day, on all Easter Days, and most importantly on your Easter Day and mine.

God knows I understand how real death is. I’ve known it in my family and among my friends, I’ve certainly sat at the bedsides of many others I’ve served through the years, over 1000 at last count; I've shared the sorrows of many a family, and in my own flesh and bones I know the facts of my own vulnerability. But on Easter Day I proclaim the Power of Easter over Sin and Death.

Jesus Christ is Risen today! Alleluia!  What gives me the knowledge of this Power is not my mind, or the intellect or even in any theological reflection or any proofs for the existence of God, or Heaven or Eternal Life. What gives me the knowledge of the Power of God is my heart where I know the love of my family and friends, and God’s family and friends. For it is because I love you that I can believe. In fact, it is because of my love for you that I know that my Redeemer Lives. 

Thus as you prepare to walk with your next priest, prepare to walk with him or her with warmth, affection and love.  For as long as you can walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God, then too you can walk with your new priest and one another.  This too is the power of Easter.

So then I wish you a very happy Easter. I wish you all of its Joy, I pray for its Surprise. And this I know, we will all come to know its Power.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.