Sermon for Advent 3, Emmanuel, Mercer Island

Today I want to talk about grief during the holiday season.

We have had lots of funerals this year,

            and there are too many new widows and widowers in the congregation.

This is a time of the year

            when grief comes more readily to the surface,

            when dark thoughts of impermanence, death and loss

come more to mind.

For one thing, the days keep getting shorter, less and less light;

            and “seasonal affect disorder” can set in.

And then there is Christmas,

            a time of the year associated with rosy family scenes,

                        depicted as happy and comforting, full of expectation.

But if you have just lost a loved one,

or if there is nothing to look forward to,

            Christmas cheer may seem like a cruel taunt,

            something hopelessly out of reach,

            a painful reminder of your isolation and loneliness,

                                                                                                of how bereft you are.

Year after year during Advent

I would preached what I called the December sermon.

This came out of past experiences of innumerable Decembers

in which pastoral care situations would present themselves,

and it became obvious

that December was a particularly difficult month

for more people than you would expect.

It seems to me that for many people the month of December

                        can be a real personal wilderness.

As we look around the pews this morning,

the one you are sitting near could be facing grief

                        or some other bleak aspect of December right now,

or it might be you yourself.

What is the personal wilderness that you may be in at the moment?

Is this a time of facing illness, disability, or the death of a loved one,

            or the memory or anniversary of a death?

Is it some other form of personal loss?

Is loneliness, isolation, or “spiritual dryness” familiar to you,

an arid spirit to match the arid desert?

Perhaps you have been struggling with uncertainty about the future,

                        fear of transition, the pain of self doubt.

Or economic hardship,

or the various ways we can become paralyzed and imprisoned through sin,

            psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Or take your pick of addictions,

where there are attachments that bind and imprison us.

Or relationship issues.

In the spiritual geography of our lives,

wilderness wanderings and desert times might be seen as in-between times:

            slumps or 'valleys' between the 'mountain top' experiences.

We like the mountain tops, the emotional highs of these times,           

We have a wonderful experience of God,

but then those lovely experiences tend to dry up and disappear.

I say all of this simply to acknowledge

something of the major dynamics of December

and the fact that everything is not all rosy with joyful expectation.

Having this opened up in the conversation, put on the table,

may, in some cases, be enough – all it takes - 

         to take the pressure off of unrealistic expectations about Christmas.

So if it looks like everyone around us is so together,

            so blest with family and friends,

then we may think we are silently alone.

But - we observe - pain and grief are universal experiences

            affecting each one of us in varying degrees.

Now, in the news the last few days,

            there have been remembrances of Sandy Hook Elementary,

                        on the one year anniversary yesterday,

but the residents of Newtown CT chose not to hold a public commemoration

            but instead to initiate a “Year of Service.” 

Its purpose is to encourage “small acts or large”

            that will bring out “the best in each other

                                                                        through repeated acts of service.” 

Newtown resident and psychiatrist John Woodall

            explained the town’s decision.  He said:

“We thought, really, what grief is

                       is a form of love, but with the loved one gone,

            so it’s really the heartbreak of separation from the loved one. 

So the work of grief is to find a new form for that love,

            to find a new expression for it,

            a new commitment,

            a way to honor the love. . . .

We came back to this idea that a commitment to transform that anguish

                        into a commitment to compassion and kindness,

            that’s where we wanted to keep the focus.”

Grief is a form of love

            so we need to find a new articulation of love, new expressions for it;

            we need to find new ways to love.

This is tremendously powerful.

And that is what the discipleship of Jesus is – new articulation of love.

            That’s the way to find Jesus in the middle of your life,

                                    in the middle of your grief,

                        by this affirmation and exercise of healing love.

This is the way that grief is dealt with.

Actually the resurrection of Jesus removes all grief

            because it is empowerment to love.

That’s what the Holy Spirit is for:

            to carry out that discipleship of loving one another as Jesus has loved us.

In this there is tremendous hope,

            but we’ve got to make that hope real.

You’ve got to find within yourself the strength

                        to do that healing work of love in the family and in the world.

Our hope is based in God's love for us,

            a love so profound that God became one of us,

                        and was born in Bethlehem

            just so that the times of grief and loss,

                        the wilderness experiences of pain and isolation

could be overcome through and dissolve away in

the love of God

present here and now in the Spirit of the Resurrection Jesus.

John the Baptist sent disciples to Jesus to ask,

            “Are you the One who is coming?”

And Jesus said, “Go and tell John what you see -

            the blind receive their sight, the lame walk,

            the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised,

            and the poor have good news brought to them.”

The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand and has come in Jesus.

            And so we are empowered to find a new articulation of love

                                                            and new ways to love.

Don’t lose hope.  Help has already arrived.

Isaiah 35:10

And the ransomed of the LORD shall return, and come to Zion with singing;

everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness,

and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

Sermon at Emmanuel, Mercer Island, November 10, 2013

In the past after Diocesan Convention in other dioceses

            I usually said a few words about Convention in the sermon

just to remind everyone that the basic unit in the Episcopal Church

            is not the congregation but the diocese

and to highlight what happened that everyone deserved to know.

The last two days Hunt and I and our delegation

                                    consisting of Anne Affleck and John Daugherty

            met with 600 of our closest friends in Tacoma.

Very briefly here’s a report:

            we took pride in the fact that our rector was the only one elected 

            straight out for Deputy to General Convention 2015 in the clergy order.

It took four ballots to select the other three and the alternates.

John Daugherty participated actively in the convention,

            speaking at the microphone more than once

and organizing a lunch conversation group about a report from the day before.

For me at this point in life convention is more about having a big family reunion             meeting up again with those from other congregations

                        whom I have known and loved for many years.

The theme for this convention was “Proclaiming the Word of God,”

and a key report was about the diocesan project called “Outside Church Walls.”

Those reporting talked about moving from being a welcoming church

-       how to welcome and incorporate visitors -

into being an inviting church

-       actually inviting others to come to church.

Well, that’s fine, but why would we invite them to church?

What is the Word that we are to be proclaiming?

Short answer:  It’s what’s at the center of our faith – Jesus.

The Gospels present Jesus and his powerful words and actions

            that reflect to us what the Kingdom of God is like.

But it is his death and resurrection that bring home to us very personally

            the redeeming, reconciling and healing love of God.

So let me do a little proclaiming of the Word of God

                                                            that we were being directed to do

            based on the Gospel reading for today.

It’s about a question posed by the Sadducees that is meant to catch Jesus.

Consider, we hear more about Pharisees in the NT than Sadducees,

            so who were the Sadducees?

The Pharisees were those who observed a pious faith in God

            and lived out their faith by careful observance of the Torah.

Theirs was a spirituality centered in the Law

and in hope for the Messiah.

In contrast the Sadducees were predominately the priests and the aristocracy,

            so they were heavily invested in the continuation of the Temple,

            and so also in continuing to live at peace with the Roman presence.

For them the coming of a messiah would be threatening

            to their ordered lives that provided the people with essential services.

Their spirituality was centered in the ritual of the Temple.

But the main difference apropos to this Gospel reading

            is in how they viewed resurrection.

The Pharisees believed that there was resurrection from the dead

            while the Sadducees held to a “genetic” resurrection,

                        that is, that life was extended through offspring.

            You lived on through your descendents

                        as they remembered you and as they carried on your name.

This is akin to our remembering those who have gone before us in the faith 

            each year at the celebration of All Saints.

So that makes this question that the Sadducees pose to Jesus

                                    particularly significant.

Their theology about resurrection in this way is expressed

through the hypothetical situation they present to Jesus.

And how purposely ridiculous they make the situation.

In order to have a way to pass on inheritance,

and to assure being remembered,

one needed to have descendants,

            hence the Mosaic law about raising up offspring through the brothers.

This is a kind of practical and concrete resurrection.

So how outrageous if then all the characters in their example

            were to come back alive,

                        such as the Pharisees believed,

and then how could they figure out to whom the woman belonged?

-       as though the woman were something                                     

that could be possessed/owned by the husbands!

Jesus responds by telling them they’ve missed the point about resurrection

            - it’s not life like it used to be.

            Resurrection is not life like it used to be.

I think we all get interested in life after death,

            more so with each year that passes

            and with each family member or old friend we bury.

There are a lot of ideas about what life after death is like,

            but what is Jesus saying here?

First of all, the topic is resurrection, not resuscitation.

It’s not coming back from the dead

            and essentially being the same sort of being.

It would seem that Jesus is saying that the old relationships,

such as a man possessing a wife, don’t figure in resurrection life,

since there is no need for procreation and raising up offspring

                                    to carry on the family name and inheritance.

One could say that in Resurrection there is a new way of being

that has transcended all previous forms of relationship.

Death is no more,

which is to say that one may come to see that

death never touches this resurrection life.

For one who lives in Resurrection life there is no death.

The body may disintegrate around us

            and drop away like a snake-skin sloughed off,

but in Resurrection one does not even taste death.

Romans 6:3  

     Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus

were baptized into his death?

4   Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death,

so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father,

so we too might walk in newness of life.

5   For if we have been united with him in a death like his,

we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

By faith we live a new life in Christ,

            and so have already passed over from death into life,

and the life that we now live,

                        is the Resurrection Life of Jesus.

We call this the New Creation, newness of Life.

I am not talking about a theoretical concept to be understood,

            but a new reality to be experienced,

                        experienced spiritually but truly experienced,

            like one day you know, you just know

                                    that life is new, that life is resurrection.

Resurrection is about union with God.

            And in that union with God

we then are in perfect knowledge and union with the will of God,

with the Mind of Christ.

God is the God of the living, not the dead,

            the God of those who are alive in Christ,

                        of those who realize that they are living in Resurrection – NOW.

May we come to this realization so profoundly

            that we begin to see the effects of Resurrection

                        in our own lives and how we live them,

            that we see the effects of Resurrection

                        in this Parish family

                                    and how we live together

                                    and how we relate to one another,

            and that we begin to see the impact of Resurrection

                        on our witness to the world outside these walls.

…because there are implications,

implications of resurrection as new life,

     expansion beyond the limitations of our culturally conditioned perspective on life,

            life that is lived in union with Jesus and the Father,

            life that is not conditioned by our bodies or our circumstances,

so much so that we can say when someone’s body gives out

                        and we get a flat line across the monitor,

            “Life is not ended, but changed.”

So the obvious question is:  Are we experiencing resurrection?

Are we aware that we are swimming in resurrection, the new creation?

If not, then what are we to do about that?

            What can we do about that?

or as the gospel reading states,

                        to be those considered worthy of a place in the resurrection.

Well, we won’t get there by studying,

            although that will help.

We won’t get there by being squeaky clean morally,

            although that won’t hurt.

We won’t get there to that place of realization of resurrection

                        by tithing, or acts of mercy, or being of service,

            although all that is good for our souls’ heath.

Only one thing – put ourselves in the best posture for being able to see,

            to  experience, to realize.

It’s our openness, our submitting ourselves to grace.

Let the One who is the Master do the work in us

            of healing our sight, opening our eyes.

That is what makes us worthy of resurrection.

Sit down, be still and cease from limiting the grace of God

                                                            through our ego-invested efforts.

No need to roll away stones from tombs to see resurrection.

Resurrection will be visible everywhere.