Posted on 04/10/2006 9:51:54 PM PDT by sionnsar
“I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified.”
Easter Day 2002 – St. Paul’s, Chatham
The Rev’d Elizabeth Kaeton
So, why are you here?
I ask that question because, while I’ve only been here about a month of Sundays, it’s hard not to notice that the church is substantially more full than it has been. Oh, I know all about “C&E” Christians – those of you who come to church only on the “High Holy Days” of Christmas and Easter.
When I was in Baltimore, an older man greeted me at the door after church on Easter Day and said, “You know, over the years, I’ve come to like this church, but I gotta tell ya, ya gotta do something about that Altar Guild. Tell ‘em they need to make a few changes every once in a while. Take the flowers on the altar. You know, every time I come here, it’s either Poinsettias or Lilies.”
Some of you come because it seems to be the thing to do on “the holidays.” You come out of a sense of tradition. Others are here because you were taught that it’s what you’re supposed to do. You come out of a sense of duty. Others of you come because you were ‘dragged’ here by your spouse or your parent – and while you are on your best behavior, it’s not too hard for me to tell that you are none too pleased about it either. You come here because someone made you feel guilty.
There are a few reasons: Tradition. Duty. Guilt. You know who you are.
So, why are you here? Don’t be embarrassed by the question. Even the devoted members of this church are asking that question of themselves. They’ve got a holiday dinner to prepare at home. Indeed, I ask myself that question every ‘high holy day’ – when I whip myself into a state of frenzy and near exhaustion, worrying over every little detail of preparing a Eucharistic banquet of Word and Sacrament – not being entirely sure that our guests will appreciate what we are doing. The question is reasonable to ask, then, Why DO we DO it? Why are we here? Why are you here?
That’s the unasked but clearly inferred question in this morning’s gospel. Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary” – probably Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus – went to see the tomb. They went to see the crucified Lord. What they saw, instead, was an angel who must have given them quite a fright because he said, “Be not afraid.” Then, he said to them, “He is not here.”
Imagine! Just imagine their shock! Imagine their excitement! Imagine their joy in seeing that which they could not even ask for or imagine being made true.
I know. Some of you can’t imagine what those women were feeling. You’ve come to the church this morning and are thinking secretly to yourselves, “Yup. Here’s the empty tomb all right. Oh, they’ve got it all gussied up with flowers and candles, and they’ve got some nice music. Even their clothes are nice in a funky kind of way. But, this woman in the pulpit doesn’t know that the angel is right. Jesus is not here. He wasn’t at the tomb where they buried him, and he’s not here in this church. Jesus isn’t here.”
And, you would be wrong. Now, if you came here seeking the crucified Jesus, well, my message from this pulpit to you is the same as the angel gave to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary: He is not here. Not the crucified Jesus. No, not that one. What you will find here, however, is exactly what greeted those two women in an ancient tomb in a far away place, long, long ago. It is more than you could ever imagine.
No, I can’t prove that to you. I don’t have any concrete evidence to lie before you. If this were a court of law, I would soundly loose my case. That’s because Christianity can’t really be proved.
Neither can it be taught. It has to be lived. Experienced. Modeled. Mentored. In fact, if someone is trying to teach you to be Christian: RUN! Run one hundred miles, as fast as you can, in the opposite direction.
When it is at its best, the church is the modern day version of the empty tomb. It is not the place for the dead, but for the living. It is not the place of perfect peace and quiet; it’s the place of noisy, imperfect living. This is a place where you can be who you are – not who you’ve been, or who people think you are.
This is a place where you can bring your questions – even if they seem silly or trivial, or if it seems like a bad time to ask them. At the 7 AM Eucharist from Reserved Sacrament on Good Friday, one of our youngest members sat listening to the story of The Passion – as she do doubt had listen to for the past 5 years of her life. This time, however, she heard the story – and, she was clearly confused and distressed. She put her hand out for the host, and, in a rush to avoid her mother’s attempt to hush her, asked me, right there in front of God and everybody, “But, Reverend Elizabeth, why do they call it Good Friday when they did such bad things to Jesus?”
We didn’t talk about it right then and there, but right after the service was done, she and I sat on the steps to the sanctuary and talked about what was ‘good’ about “Good Friday.” Her little 3-year-old sister sat with us in imitated interest, but soon lost the gist of the conversation and decided that dancing on the steps was a far better thing to do.
She may not have been able to ‘hear’ my conversation with her older sister, and even if she had, she wouldn’t have yet understood. No matter. What she “heard” was something more than what I said. I hope she “heard” that this is a place where you can bring your questions. More importantly, this is a place where you can bring your intelligence. Your curiosity. Your imagination. This is a place where you can hear and be heard – even when you are not able to participate actively in the conversation.
That’s because the crucified Jesus is not here. If you are looking for that Jesus, you won’t find him. This is not a place for guilt. Or, duty. Or, tradition. That may translate into a wedding or a baptism or a funeral. In my trade, we call that, ‘The Rice, Water and Dirt Crowd.’ That’s not a bad place to begin. Many of us had that same inauspicious beginning. And, we’ve grown from that place to here – and, thanks be to God, we’re still on the journey.
That’s where many begin their relationship with God in Christ. Out of a sense of guilt or duty or tradition. And then, one day, you’ll get it. Just like that light that dawned in the early morning darkness on my six-year-old friend on Good Friday, you’ll get it. You’ll understand that the crucified Jesus is not here. That the old has passed away and behold! God is doing a new thing from this empty place.
The insight will burst upon you like the shocks of yellow forsythia that have just begun to burst into bloom along property borders and on the side of the roads and highways. Understanding will push its way up through the dirt like the stubborn purple crocus. There will be no words broad enough to carry it – no stone strong enough to contain it.
There you will be, just like Mary of Magdalene and the other Mary, filled with fear and joy, because you know that the church is more than a receptacle of ancient, dead beliefs. It is the place where you can meet the Risen Lord. And that means only this:
that you can know hope in the face of despair. Belief in the face of doubt. Peace in the face of turmoil. Celebration of diversity in the face of prejudice and intolerance.
This church is filled with surprises – some of which you will be asked to find in the form of Easter Eggs for your children. You will find other surprises in the symbolic gift we are giving to all children in the form of flower seeds. Instead of our “traditional” flowers, we are asking you to take home the bundles of sod pots, soil and flower seeds. Our hope is that, as you help your children plant these flowers, you will teach them about sowing seeds of hope. We have faith that these will grow into seedlings that will become part of a Municipal Diversity Garden at the train station, which we will be planting with all the other congregations in the Chathams on the Feast of Pentecost and Festival of Shauvot.
This is our response to the recent acts of hatred toward us because we are sharing our space with the Jewish congregation of Beth Hatikavh. Does this surprise you? You might wonder why we are not doing what some will cite that the bible says to do: “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.” We do these things because, you see, death has no meaning. The crucified Jesus is not here. He is Risen. Do not be afraid.
But, you ask, why are YOU here? I can’t speak for everyone, but I will say this: We come here to celebrate his resurrection. We come because we are Christ’s body in the world. We come to be nourished that we might continue the work of Jesus in the world. We come because we are invited to use our intellect and our imaginations. We come because we are loved for who we are – not what people think we are. I’m the first and best example of that.
We come because we know we are not alone – and need never be alone. Our baptism is our membership in the communion of saints, past, present and yet to come. We come because we are an Easter people in a world which is stuck in Good Friday.
This is not a perfect place. Not by any stretch of the imagination. We are flawed and faulted, but we are also forgiven and free. We come because the desert here is dry enough; the well deep enough; the wilderness wild enough to do all of our searching and dying and being born again.
So, I ask you – those of you who are new and those of you who are long time members – the same question which was asked of those two women early on that first day of Easter. Why are you here? I will make of this question my Easter gift to you. Follow that question faithfully.
Find the answer for yourself and you, too, may hear a heavenly voice saying, “Do not be afraid. He is not here. He is risen!”
And, because of that, Jesus lives in you and in me. The mystery of our faith is hidden in this truth: It is meeting THAT Jesus in THIS place that keeps so many of us coming back.
Alleluia!
And, Amen!
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Speak the truth in love. Eph 4:15
Well, it's not the best sermon in the world, that's for sure. But the preacher does say, "Christ is risen." A lot of sentimental nonsense mixed in, and a rather confused stumbling about, but not heresy.
I have heard worse, much worse, from pulpits. The denial of Christ, the equating of Him with other religious leaders. Much worse.
My reaction exactly. Not heresy--and proclaiming the resurrection (if weakly). The woman may even be orthodox or evangelical... but why is it I have yet to hear a really good ECUSA sermon???
No, not even close. Given the target audience, it isn't that bad. She preaches (I flinched when I wrote that - you know my views on ordination of women) a living and resurrected Christ. She doesn't deny the Crucifixion - she explicitly acknowledges it.
I don't see any real theological error in the text. If I'm missing something because of the late hour, I'd appreciate someone pointing it out to me.
I doubt I'd be a fan of the 'multicultural garden', but she does manage to put it in a context where it is directly relevant to the congregation.
"We come because we know we are not alone – and need never be alone. Our baptism is our membership in the communion of saints, past, present and yet to come. We come because we are an Easter people in a world which is stuck in Good Friday."
This paragraph struck me as symptomatic of the issue here. What appears to be a sensible and orthodox thought gets pinned to the ground with a commercial tag-line. I know what it's like to have a nifty literary construction occur to you, one like "Easter people" vs "stuck in Good Friday", but this kind of startling comment needs to be framed and then explored. It is telling enough (were it true) that the congregation should have at least a few minutes to contemplate it. This sermon does not provide that, but steamrolls right on. I can imagine a few raised eyebrows as she moved to her final points, not at the content (I suspect that this congregation really does congratulate itself on being joyous no matter the time of year), but rather at the trivial use of what might well be a foundational concept for these people. She just tosses it off, which to me tends to reduce it to an auto commercial jingle.
But the overall sense I get from this is a desire to toss everything she has into this one pot and stir mightily. As others have said, it's mostly not unorthodox (it isn't robustly orthodox, either), but it also doesn't quite hang together. That's an important characteristic for sermons. We are taught to focus on one element of our text and clearly meditate and expound on it. This focus should permit side comments only to the extent that they clearly and meaningfully illuminate the central idea being pursued in the sermon.
Finally, I think the worst aspect of this is that it has no firm theological boundaries but allows language that has no defining sense to describe concepts that really need rigorous defense. For instance, the idea of giving out seedbags has many orthodox uses. She mentions one (planting hope). But then she opens the door we're so used to seeing them insist upon: let's make this a Multicultural Garden.
I say, let's not. Let's make it an Easter garden or the Hope of Easter garden or the Resurrection garden. Any of these would be stricter in sense and reinforce the connection between the church giving out seeds to children and the church giving out hope and faith to the congregation.
Deacon Paul+
Women aren't supposed to be Pastors ... .
If they read the Bible, they'd know this ... .
The role of a Pastor is for the male.
They can do nearly anything else but not head the church through being a Pastor.
Meditation on Isaiah 11:10
On that day
the Root of Jesse
shall stand as a sign, a banner, a signal
to the nations,
and the Gentiles shall seek him, inquiring,
for his place of rest shall be glorious.
What sign did he give us?
A babe so poor
that he sleeps in a stable,
laid to rest in a feeding trough
for lack of a bed,
A babe so special
that the heavens could not contain their joy,
for Love had wrought what only Love can do,
Giving all in the name of Love,
no matter what the cost.
What sign did he give us?
A beacon on a hill,
Arms outstretched
in bloody sacrifice,
he the lintel,
he the blood offered
He the lamb consumed
in this new Passover,
for Love had wrought what only Love can do,
Giving all in the name of Love,
no matter what the cost.
What sign did he give us?
An empty tomb
A discarded shroud,
A promise fulfilled,
Hope in the darkness,
Joy in his touch,
Peace,
for Love had wrought what only Love can do,
Giving all in the name of Love,
no matter what the cost.
O Jesus!
Where you are is the glory of God,
Be with me
O Love incarnate,
O Light,
O Peace,
O Hope,
This day, and always.
Amen.
I'd have to say the worst sermon I ever heard was the guy who - and I kid you not - taught high school kids they were wasting their lives if they pursued an education, financial stability, artistic or musical achievement or scientific knowledge because these were the "things of the world." He wanted all the young men to plant more [his denomination] churches because "only in the [this denomination] is there liberty to worship in Spirit and in Truth." When I went up for clarification, and rebuked him, it was revealed that I had left his denomination (and was in attendance because I still helped with some youth stuff). He told me I needed to repent of my apostasy because I left [Protestant Denomination] for the (conservative) Presbyterians. You can't make this stuff up.
She explicitly preaches Christ Crucified - as in the scripture "Why do you seek the living among the dead?"
It's a little unfocussed, and there's an excess of warm fuzzies in there (I like a more hard-hitting homily myself), but I don't see any serious theological error.
I have heard much worse sermons from ECUSA pulpits, mostly of the "I'm ok, you're ok, everybody's ok" variety.
Gotta disagree. Not a bad sermon, and to extrapolate 'God is doing a new thing' into some kind of convoluted justification for changes some of us don't like is kind of a reach if you ask me.
Of course, you didn't.
Actually, "what you will find here" is pretty much exactly what Paul, quoting Psalm 5 in his Letter to the Romans, said you would find in a church like this - an empty tomb, full of nothing but air, and nothing to show for it:
"THEIR THROAT IS AN OPEN GRAVE, WITH THEIR TONGUES THEY KEEP DECEIVING"
You do know that Kaeton is a Lesbian and sometime leader in Integrity.
You do know that Kaeton is a Lesbian and sometime leader in Integrity.
..lady, you are in the wrong vocation--for many reasons...
‘The Rice, Water and Dirt Crowd.’ I just like the name; be great for a country band! Gave me a good laugh, and if that be the case this can not be the WORST sermon ever.
We call em CEOs: Christmas and Easter Only
I really enjoyed your analysis of her sermon. Thanks for posting your thoughts.
The loosely-defined vocabulary of many Christian leaders allows those outside the body to think they are part of the body. It gives them false comfort instead of challenging them to yield themselves to Christ.
Non-confrontational Christianity is not Christianity at all.
Reminiscent of a Congregational preacher from my youth who was enamored of Harry Stack Sullivan, who constantly tried to recreate the Cana miracle by turning a gallon of water and one lemon into a bucket of lemonade.
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