Sermon for the 4th Sunday of Easter

I love the fact that the Easter season lasts so long
and we can continue to celebrate the greatest and most important event
in our faith -- the Resurrection.

50 days 8 Sundays
Pentecost Sunday being the last day of the Easter Season.

And from that day on, the day of Pentecost,
the Resurrection Spirit of Jesus has been poured out into all the world,
and all those who have been baptized into his Name
are filled with Holy Spirit for empowerment
to carry on the earthly ministry of Jesus, the earthly ministry
of proclaiming salvation,
of acts of mercy and compassion,
of reconciliation,
and of loving one another as he commanded us to do.

So during the Easter season in place of a story from the Old Testament,
the Hebrew Bible,
we get a story from the Acts of the Apostles
showing us the impact of the Resurrection on the disciples of Jesus
and how their ministry was empowered.

We can see that quite clearly in today’s reading from Acts. It begins:

“Those who had been baptized devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of the bread and the prayers.”

Sounds familiar? I hope so.

I hope you can recognize this as the biblical source for the first question asked
after the reciting of the Creed in the Baptismal Covenant.

We are specifically asked to do the same thing as the earliest faith community:
“Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship,
in the breaking of bread and in the Prayers?”
“I will, with God’s help.”

As a congregation here and now,
as a collective of each of us responding to this charge
in the Baptismal Covenant,
have we done what we said?

Well, we certainly haven’t done what the Acts reading states here:
“…many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles.
[and] All who believed … had all things in common;
they would sell their possessions and goods
and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.”
Wouldn’t that be something to see here?!
That’s a guaranteed way to attract new members and add to your number.

Now, there’s no requirement that we practice a form of Christian communism,
such as our religious orders of monks and nuns do,
but it does call us to some self-examination regarding our own giving,
which seldom go past our personal comfort level,
except in times of disaster that directly involves us by its proximity.

“Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship,
in the breaking of bread and in the Prayers?”

The apostles’ teaching…
As associate rector for spiritual formation in this parish
I like to point to this as a direct mandate to be actively involved
in life-long learning and growing in the faith.
If you are not attending the adult ed. class at 9:15,
or in a study group or a prayer group of some sort,

then I would love to be able to assume that you are then
engaged in personal Bible reading and study
or other spiritual practices to deepen your faith – each and every one of us.

If in response to the baptismal question you said, “I will, with God’s help,”
then by enlisting God’s aid, you will continuously be given opportunities
for growing and learning and increasing in faith.

“Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship…” fellowship

You’ve got to know that the word “fellowship” here means more than
what we do on Sunday morning after the Eucharist out there in the Narthex.
There may be no wonders and signs being done,
and while friendliness at the coffee hour may add to the numbers initially,
if that’s all fellowship is, then there’s no impetus
for coming the rest of the way in through the door.
The best church growth programs in the world will bring people to the door,
but it is the Resurrection Spirit of Jesus, the Lord, who adds to the number
those who are being saved.

A sad illustration: Two weeks ago I was in California with my family,
and on Sunday morning I went back to visit the congregation
that had sponsored me for ordination.
It had been 30 years, and I didn’t expect to find many still there from that time.
But 30 years ago
that congregation had been engaged in some exciting church growth work.
It was the fastest growing church in the diocese,
and had around 1,200 members.
Today it is much smaller in number.

When I arrived I was greeted with a smile and handed a bulletin,
but not a word was spoken to me.
So I lingered at the door and finally told someone I was a visitor
and would like to sign the guest book.
People greeted me warmly at the Peace,
but at the end of the service
the same people who had passed the Peace with me
now said not a word to me.

I introduced myself to the clergy, and they talked with me,
and I found one couple I had known before and talked with them.

No signs and wonders there.
No Spirit of the Lord adding to the numbers those who were being saved.
No lasting effects from even the best church growth techniques.

But let’s not congratulate ourselves that we are not like them.
The operative word in this is that Lord added to the number.
It’s more than simply good hospitality.
It’s about being saved.

One of the areas identified for attention by your vestry
has been a perceived need for more communication
and ways to get to know one another here –
fellowship that goes beyond the coffee hour
and that connects us with each other
so that we can give and receive mutual support for living out our faith,
to express compassion and act out of that compassion with one another,
and truly love one another as Christ has loved us.
And just stop and think for a minute about how Christ has loved us,
to what extent he went in loving us.

Let me tell you something about
what is going on with this vestry-identified parish goal.
The staff here – Hunt and myself and Jack and Anna, Dorian and Jon –
are spending some time each Wednesday sitting down together
and deeply engaging in conversation with each other.
This is very much like what I used to do in working with small congregations
with the Total Ministry model
where we would identify a leadership team for the congregation
and they would meet regularly in a care conference,
working collaboratively, identifying needs and planning ministry.
Our staff here at Emmanuel is a team.
We listen to one another and share ideas and concerns.
We are in a constant discernment process about our reason for being here
as disciples of our Lord Jesus.
It’s exciting to be a part of such intentional spiritual work.

But this is not an exercise we are doing just for ourselves.
We’re looking at how to engage everyone in the parish
in more substantial fellowship that will also serve deepening in faith
in such a way that we can offer effective ministry in the world.
We’re working on a plan
and as preliminary to that we want to use the summer
to try out some ways for us to be together
in configurations that would provide opportunity
for more personal sharing with each other in small groups,
and for exploring and discussing together relevant questions of faith,
and to do this in the setting of breaking bread together, shared meals.

We may look sort of wimpy
in comparison with that first century faith community
who had just been empowered in a very striking way
by the Spirit of the Risen Lord,
but I would really want us to look at this example from Acts
to catch a vision of what might be possible for us too.

The Resurrection Spirit of Jesus has been poured out into all the world,
and all those who have been baptized into his Name
are filled with Holy Spirit for the purpose of empowerment
to carry on the earthly ministry of Jesus
of proclaiming salvation,
of acts of mercy and compassion,
of reconciliation,
and of loving one another as he has loved us.

This Resurrection presence is the reality of the Gospel,
but can we recognize the potential potency for effective mission,
let alone Holy Spirit present and within us?
Will you recognize it? Will I?

One might say that we could be as dumb as sheep about not seeing this.

Which leads into the Gospel for today.
The 4th Sunday of Easter is always Good Shepherd Sunday,
and in each of the three years in the lectionary cycle
this Sunday has a portion of the 10th Chapter of John for the Gospel reading.

This year one of the great points of the Good Shepherd passage
is that even dumb sheep are capable of recognizing their shepherd’s voice
and following it.

“He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out…”
These have been words of great comfort and encouragement for two millennia.

But notice here in this part of the whole passage
that Jesus is calling himself the Gate, the Door
for the sheep, for those who follow his voice.

“I am the gate for the sheep…
Whoever enters by me will be saved
and will come in and go out and find pasture.”

He is the Door, much as he is the Word who was in the beginning with God.
Through him all things came into being,
the Door at the Source of our being,
the Door for coming to be born and coming into the world,
and the Door for going out, for leaving this world.
We are utterly his, the whole of our lives.

As we heard in the Epistle reading from 1 Peter:
“By his wounds [we] have been healed.”
And so if you feel as though you have been going astray like a sheep,
do not hesitate to “return to the Shepherd and guardian of your souls.”

Listen!
Listen for his voice calling your name.
Listen,
and follow.

Sermon for the Easter Vigil

Now listen carefully! This is going to be short – but important!

Here we are at the Axis Mundi,
the Center of the Earth, indeed the Center of the Universe,
at the heart of our Faith.
Right now we are connecting in with an eternal moment of priceless worth,
because this is the pivotal point for all our Holy Week and Easter commemorations,
at the center of what gives us reason for being as Christians.

The Easter Vigil is poised between the death of Good Friday
and the resurrection of Easter Day,
weaving it all together in what has been called in the Apostolic Tradition
as the Paschal Mystery.

This is the liminal place between Christ’s death and resurrection,
and it is the most apt time for baptism.
that in-between place,
the transition between one day and the next,
at the end of the darkest night of death
and the beginning of the brightest day of new life.

For those of you who were here Palm Sunday,
you may remember what I said in the sermon:
I said Palm Sunday represents delusional hope,
and Good Friday is then the collapse of all our delusional hope,
crushed and nailed to the Cross.
Yet Good Friday is the necessary and beneficial collapse
of that delusional hope.

And then the Resurrection is the transcendence of this collapsed, delusional hope.
Easter is a revelation which could not be anticipated.
But we can’t get to Easter, to resurrection, by any other way
than through the collapse of delusional hope and the Cross of Good Friday.

Now we are at the transcendence point
represented for us in the sacrament of Baptism.
Baptism, I would like you to note, is not a one time event,
but rather it is an ongoing sacrament;
it is a state of being.

In baptism, the Apostle Paul tells us,
we are united with Jesus in his death and resurrection.
Baptism is the sign of our union with him,
the outward expression of what Jesus was talking about
when he said, “I am the Vine and you are the branches.”
In his letter to the Colossians, Paul wrote:
“You have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God,”
and in Galatians, “I have been crucified with Christ;
it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”

The implications of these statements are profound.
What does this say about our own lives, our deaths?
Jesus took the death for us.
In that one death, death has happened for all of us.

How can this be? Here we all are, sitting here very much alive.
Aren’t we too going to die? We see a lot of people dying all the time.

Well, yes, the body will die. We know that for sure.
But who we think we are in terms of our consciousness, our very essence,
has already had that kiss of death.
In the water of baptism we are buried with Christ in his death,
and by it we share in his resurrection.
The life we now live is resurrection life.

When this body wears out and falls away,
life is not ended; life is changed.

So now, at this moment, this very moment,
we are living in the resurrection.

Everyone needs to discover this for themselves,
and not just be told it.
For resurrection is transformation of our conscious awareness,
so that we get it, so that we realize
the truth and power of life in Christ.
Everyone needs to discover this for themselves.

Alleluia! Christ is risen.
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!