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RCL Year C, The Feast of the Resurrection, April 8th, 2007
Acts 10:34-43; Psalm 118: 1-2, 14-24; 1 Corinthians 15:19-26; St. John 20:1-18
St. Edmund’s Episcopal Church
The Reverend George F. Woodward IIIIt is not the most beautiful of Southern California mornings, but it is great to be together for the worship our Risen Lord; may God bless you and your families this Eastertide. There is an Easter Egg Hunt today following the service, and I hear we may just receive a visit from one very busy Easter bunny, so hang on to your hats!
I heard a rabbit story this week. A large rabbit hops out onto Huntington Drive right in front of a fellow who is driving just a bit too fast. The man swerves, but unfortunately he hits the rabbit. Being a good soul, he pulls his car over and runs back to see what can be done, but alas.
A Volvo pulls in behind him and a woman gets out and when the fellow tells her what’s happened, she runs back to her car and returns with a spray can, kneels down and sprays the contents all over the rabbit, which miraculously, jumps up, waves at the man and woman and starts hopping down Huntington Drive. After about ten feet the rabbit stops, turns and waves again, then hops another ten feet, stops, turns and waves, and continues on this way until it’s nearly out of sight.
The astonished man says, “Just what’s in that can anyway? The smiling woman turns the can so he can read the label, which says: “Hair Spray. Restores life to dead hair, and adds permanent wave.”
I’m convinced the best way to learn about a new city is to get lost. When I was in Buenos Aires last summer, I would often take the Metro to some interesting part of the city, get off and wander, searching maybe for an art museum I’d read about, or an interesting landmark or a music store. I would inevitably become disoriented, and the disorientation itself became part of the discovery. Rounding a corner I would find some wholly unexpected wonder: a spectacular eighteenth century edifice, a park with a jazz band playing, a great flea market.
When home is a great city like Los Angeles, it’s easy enough to stray from your customary turf and found yourself somewhere unfamiliar. You find yourself surrounded by Hassidic Jews, round a corner and go into a Jewish deli for one of the most amazing pastrami sandwiches you’ve ever had. Wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t gotten lost!
Lately I’ve been meeting with parishioners who are preparing for Confirmation in the Episcopal Church. To a person they have expressed concern over what they don’t yet know or understand about the Christian Faith, or what they don’t yet understand about the Episcopal Church. They want to be adequately prepared for Confirmation, which is a good thing, of course. The City of their newly chosen Faith is disorienting for them, and they wonder if the experience of disorientation is somehow disqualifying.
This is all a preface to say, just in case you wonder where I’m going with all of this, that a bit of disorientation can be a very good thing! We intentionally disorient ourselves in Lent, making sacrifices to jar ourselves from habitual patterns. Somethimes we learn we’re not the slave of those indulgences we thought we were, and sometimes we discover we have more work to do than we thought!
Confirmands and Lenten pilgrims and all of us navigating rapid cultural shifts, national political upheaval, and an Episcopal Church that sometimes seems to be sparring in a mirror arrive here on Easter Sunday feeling maybe a little disoriented.
Make no mistake, Mary Magdalene was disoriented when she arrived at Jesus’ tomb ready to embalm Him, finding instead the stone rolled away and neatly folded grave cloths. Peter and John race to the tomb. John beats Peter, but Peter goes in first. None of the three have any idea what to make of the place in which they find themselves; they are lost and found all at the same time. Remember how all of the disciples were initially full of doubt, Thomas most spectacularly?
Doubt is just the right place to start when you are lost in a city, a national debate, a church fight, a cultural shift, or standing before an empty tomb. Science has taught us just how many theories have to be disproved along the way to the establishment of a verity, and theology uses a similar method called the via negetiva.
It’s the same in the art world. Theodor Adorno tells us a work of art is completed by “commentary, exegesis, and criticism.” The full reality of a work of art depends on our response to it—on how we answer its call to our attention. John Constable, now happily on display at the Huntington Library, wasn’t much appreciated in his own day; time for reflection was needed for a successful judgment.
The human condition is one of incorrigible uncertainty. Some of what is claimed with confidence today will seem a travesty in the future. Some ideas now discounted will one day prevail. That is why the Episcopal Church values doubt and debate, with respect and tolerance and openness of mind and yet with a sense too, of urgency, for much is at stake. In our moments of uncertainty, that most perpetual of human conditions, choices have to be made and courses set and these choices will affect our lives and those of our families and the cultural tone of our society for years and maybe generations! The most momentous decisions in human history are undertaken in uncertain times.
I read last week’s Newsweek poll that says 91 percent of American adults believe in God and 87 percent identify with a specific religion, generally some variety of Christianity. That’s the good news. The poll goes on to say that half the general public rejects the scientific theory of evolution, 34% of college graduates confuse the Creation Story of the Bible with literal fact, and 73% of Evangelicals believe God created human beings in their present form within the last 10,000 years. Episcopalians may be glad so many Americans believe in God, though dismayed by the literalism reflected in that poll. We have a lot of work to do!
We would prefer to see a belief in God that more willingly embraces doubt; that is willing to wander the city and get lost now and again. Only then can you round the corner to new wonders and fresh discoveries. The opposite of doubt is not certainty, but commitment. We would prefer to see deeper commitment to God, and less certainty regarding the precise ways God is at work in the world. "If it happens that the authority of Sacred Scripture is set in opposition to clear and certain reasoning," said Saint Augustine, "this must mean that the person who interprets Scripture does not understand it correctly. It is not the meaning of Scripture which is opposed to the truth but the meaning which he has wanted to give to it."
A commitment to God, a belief that God works with us, strives through us, and that something is at stake in the human project; that kind of commitment understands that one has to turn aside from the idolatry of certainty; the one thing not permitted human beings. There is no promised land of unequivocal assurance, only the witness that comes when we turn aside to wherever the light falls.
The Welsh poet R.S. Thomas wrote a poem I like, and it serves the Easter cause. It is called “The Bright Field.”
THE BRIGHT FIELD by R.S. Thomas
I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurryingon to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.Today, Easter Sunday, is a turning aside to a lit bush, to an empty tomb. After wandering lost in the city, it is a rounding of a corner. Peter and John went into the tomb and saw the grave cloths lying to one side. They believed, but they didn’t know yet what it was that they believed. Mary Magdalene confronted the gardener, who turned out to be the Risen Lord, and when He spoke her name, she clung to Him. But that would not do, the Lord told her: “Do not hold on to Me.” Certainties cannot be too tightly held by those on pilgrimage.
Peter later understands the witness of the empty tomb to be a radical call to equality from a God who shows no partiality, and Paul understands the witness of the empty tomb to be the heralding of eternal life for all of us who will place our confidence in God rather than in our provisional certainties. There are many implications of the resurrection of Christ for your life, for the life of our Church and its witness, for our nation and our moral and public choices. The full reality of a religious insight, depends on our response to it—on how we answer its call to our attention. These things will come as we persevere. But today is a day for turning aside like Moses to the miracle, turning aside to gaze at what God hath wrought in an empty tomb. It is a day to commit ourselves to our Lord even as we release our hold on Him and on all our easy certainties. We commit ourselves to the God of surprise, of insight and resurrection, in the Name of Christ the Risen One. Amen. GFW+
© St. Edmund's Church