Sermon: Third Sunday of Easter

The Rev. Pamela Cooper-White, guest preacher
Professor of Pastoral Theology, Care and Counseling at Columbia Seminary in Decatur

Come, risen Lord, and deign to be our guest;
Nay, let us be thy guests; the feast is thine;
Thy self at thine own board make manifest
In thine own Sacrament of Bread and Wine.

Today we have yet another of the many beautiful stories in the gospels of appearances of Jesus after the Resurrection. In Eastertide we share with the disciples in that mysterious and awesome threshold or luminal time, when we stand in between the concrete certainty of Jesus’ actual flesh and blood life here on earth, and the now-2,000-year period lived on earth by us and all followers of Jesus—ever since the Ascension and Jesus’ passing the gift of the Holy Spirit to give birth to the church, the new incarnation of Christ in us and in our forefathers and mothers in the faith. Although in this year 2009 we are very far down the corridor of time within this era of the church, every year as we dwell in these 50 days of Eastertide, we step back into a time that is not only lived out here on earth—a time when the realm Heaven reaches into our time from some unfathomable place out of time and beyond, to bridge worlds of knowing and unknowing, temporal and eternal. The Anglican Communion itself stands within this span of time almost like the blink of an eye – begun over 1500 years after Christ’s Resurrection. Even so, we are part of that larger stream of history that embraces all the faithful, who celebrate with joy all the ways in which Christ continues to be raised up in us and among us, even today!

And so in the midst of Eastertide, today, we have this story—perhaps one of the most peculiar, in which Jesus appears again to the disciples, shows them his wounded hands and feet, eats a piece of broiled fish, and then teaches them—in effect, commissioning them and preparing them for the greater commissioning which will come to them at the time of his Ascension, and which will be sealed by the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

This particular story stands in contrast to the Emmaus Road story that immediately precedes it in Luke’s gospel. In that story, the disciples meet Jesus without realizing it as they walk along, and they recognize him only in the moment when he sits down to supper with hem and breaks he bread and blesses the wine. Then he vanishes from their sight! There is a kind of ghost story quality to that story. Jesus is not quite as corporeal. The disciples are not said to have touched him, nor actually eaten with him. He vanishes, and then they feel their hearts have been aflame. Was it really Jesus? Or was Jesus present in some symbolic way in the person of a stranger? The story is enigmatic and ambiguous. It leaves us wondering, and leaves us with an impression of mystery.

Luke tells the story we have today immediately after the Emmaus Road story to underscore the point that this risen Christ is definitively not a ghost (and he takes pains to say so right in the text of the story), not a hallucination. Luke wanted to make it very clear to his readers that these proliferating stories of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances were neither fanciful nor hysterical, but actual, real encounters with the Christ—immediate, embodied, and real on a very down-to-earth level.

He makes the point of saying that the disciples themselves were “disbelieving for joy and wonder.” A powerful statement of the two-sidedness of the post-Easter experience—both disbelief, and joy and wonder. As the eternal penetrated the temporal world again and again over the course of those 50 days, the disciples came to trust that joy, and to prepare themselves to be witnesses to their new conviction that Christ was still alive and in their very midst.

And so we come to that peculiar passage about Jesus asking, “Do you have anything to eat?” They gave him broiled fish, and he ate it in their presence. Hmmm. Why would the resurrected Lord of all Creation be hungry? Commentators and preachers for centuries have simply skipped over that part of the story. Why, do you suppose? Did they consider it trivial? Or just a piece of early Christian legend that was meant to add some oomph to the believability of their story? Surely Luke was impelled to include that detail, partly in contrast to the Emmaus Road story—to say, “Look, see, he showed his hands and his feet, and even ate with us.” This was no ethereal ghost but a real, down-to-earth physical experience. We also have in this a reminder not to separate spirit and body, as the early church often did as it became more influenced by Graeco-Roman philosophy, especially following the lead of St. Paul.

But I find even more in this passage about Jesus eating the fish than a kind of literalistic “proof of life.” The fish in this story is a symbol carrying multiple associations and meanings, many of which might have been quite transparent to Luke’s own readers. Fish, as a very common food in a coastal society, appear in many biblical stories going all the way back to the Hebrew Bible. While the primary use of the fish was for food, fish also came to symbolize—are you ready for this?—not only food, sustenance, life, but death! In the Book of Exodus (7:21), Moses and Aaron caused the river to turn to blood, killing the fish and polluting the water so that the Egyptians would die. In the Book of Isaiah (50:2), the death of the fish was associated with God’s rebuke against the people: “By my rebuke I dry up the sea, I make the rivers a desert; their fish stink for lack of water, and die of thirst.” In Ecclesiastes (9:12), fish were associated with untimely death: “For no one can anticipate the time of disaster. Like fish taken in a cruel net, and like birds caught in a snare, so mortals are snared at a time of calamity, when it suddenly falls upon them.” The fish in today’s gospel story, then, may represent Christ’s own death, but also the final death—the death of death itself!

Of course, sometime early in the church’s history, the symbol of the fish also came to represent Christ himself, perhaps in an association between the fish and Christ’s victory over death. The acrostic derived from the Greek letters for the word “fish”—ichthys—stood for he Greek words for “Jesus Christ God’s Son, Savior.” Now the symbol of death had become a symbol of life! Jane Flaherty, a priest in Portsmouth, Virginia, once wrote, “I wonder if the practice of eating fish on Friday comes from the symbolism of the fish as Jesus’ death. Perhaps we should eat fish on Sunday as a sign of the risen Christ—not as [fasting or] penance, but as celebration.”

The activity of fishing, which so dominates the stories about Jesus’ life and the everyday lives of the disciples, also became the central metaphor for becoming “fishers of people” (John 21:19). In another resurrection story, the risen Christ directs the disciples to cast their net to the right of the boat, and they catch 153 fish! Then he broils fish for them for breakfast on the beach. Here in our story today, Jesus begins to prepare the disciples for their own commissioning, as witnesses—for which the Greek word is martys—witnesses, martyrs, and evangelists—tellers of the good news—a life-and-death commissioning that would demand their all, but which they also now trusted would give them the same victory over death that Jesus so dramatically revealed.

But there is still one more element. The fish recalls the story we heard, not long ago, about the feeding of the 5,000 on the hillside, and the miracle of the loaves and fishes.

We meet, as in that upper room they met;
Thou at the table, blessing, yet dost stand:
“This is my Body”; so thou givest yet:
Faith still receives the cup as from thy hand.

This miraculous feeding, with a great flowing abundance that resulted in baskets overflowing and even food left over, is a story of the Eucharist—Christ’s abundance that feeds us and nourishes us in both body and soul. In the miracle of the loaves and fishes, the loaves and fishes have a certain symmetry, like bread and wine. The English word “Lord” means, literally, the loaf-ward, the warden of the loaves, so when we call Jesus “Lord,” we are saying that he is the one who feeds us with the most basic stuff of life. So why did we need fishes in the miracle? Fishes have in many cultures and mythologies been a symbol for the unconscious, and for dreams. Picture golden carp flashing beneath the surface of a Japanese pond. The pairing of loaves and fishes is a pairing of here-and-now with vision, conscious with unconscious, body with mind and spirit.

So fish also is a Eucharistic symbol of Christ’s own hospitality, and Christ’s overflowing abundance. But there’s something different about today’s gospel story! Now the tables are turned. It is the disciples who feed Jesus. The gift of hospitality has been passed on to them. Jesus is now both host and guest.

Come, risen Lord, and deign to be our guest;
Nay, let us be thy guests; the feast is thine;
Thy self at thine own board make manifest
In thine own Sacrament of Bread and Wine.

In these times when the church is so fragmented across the world, and the Anglican Communion itself struggles with so much division, this gospel message is one of both hope and challenge. The hope is that we as the church are Christ’s body, Christ’s hands and heart in this world. In spite of our brokenness, we are still united as members of this Body, and we still belong to God and to one another. This is both our hope and our joy!

And the challenge is this: When we see persons who hunger in our own time, we are called like the disciples to answer the question: “Do you have anything to eat?” And we are called to give of our abundance. In so doing, we both feed Christ himself, and become Christ for the other, just as that hungry other person has shown Christ to us, wounds, hunger, and all. It is this, and not clinging to one side of a church fight or another, one part of the worldwide church or another, that makes us Christians, and makes us Christ’s own. It is by feeding others that we are fed. By feeding others, we take the feast of the Eucharist with us into the world, truly sharing the body and blood of Christ in our own time.

One with each other, Lord, for one in thee,
Who art one Savior and one living Head;
Then open thou our eyes, that we may see;
Be known to us in breaking of the Bread.

Amen.

Sermon: Easter Day

The Very Rev. William Thomas Deneke, rector

We have gathered this morning to celebrate a mystery. A mystery born out of darkness but shaped by love.

The Easter mystery speaks dramatically to the darkness of our existence. It addresses sorrow, suffering and death. The resurrection does not deny death; it does not negate grief, but it offers hope in the place of despair.

Resurrection is different from the so-called immortality of the soul. Immortality suggests some sort of soulful, mist-like existence that continues on without a body. The Easter story knows nothing about such as this.

The Easter experience was not a theory or a grasping for immortality, but a one of a kind experience. Witnesses to the raising of Christ had to come up with an explanation to describe it. They used the Greek word “anistamai” for “resurrection”, which means “an act of standing up after having lain down.” Resurrection was a gift from God. It did not represent immortality of the soul. It was not resuscitation or revivification in which the revived would die again. Resurrection was a wondrous gift that opened not only the tomb of Jesus but also a window into the very heart of God. And that, more than anything else, is what we are here today to celebrate.

Easter addresses every fear that we have ever had or will ever have. During this past week our liturgies have addressed the suffering and death of Christ. We witnessed Christ’s agony and fear, and, finally, his horrible death and burial in a tomb.

All of us have been or will be in that tomb. We all have been in places of darkness, in places where life has run its course, where we are not able to summon what is needed to deliver us.

Some have experienced that in depression. Some in the loss of a loved one, some in finding their lives turned upside down by the loss of a job or the discovery of a terminal illness. Others have experienced the tomb through the suffering of the world, through hunger, oppression, genocide and greed. And all of us know, on some level, that one day we will be placed in some resting place where God alone can rescue us.

Whether or not we attended the services of Holy Week, we can sense the shadows of death over our shoulders even if we choose to ignore them.

That is the context for Easter. And while the resurrection of Christ reveals the wonder and love of God, it also calls us to turn from dismissing human suffering and to respond to it with Easter hope.

Hope is not the same as optimism. Optimism is based on indications that things are going well; optimism assumes that the present trajectory will continue and bring positive results. It is an attitude whose roots, ironically, are often fear-based.

Hope, on the other hand, does not arise from a perceived pattern of success. Hope can come into being amid the worst kind of gloom, the kind fit only for a thoroughgoing pessimist. Hope arises not from the situation itself but from something outside the situation. It is a light entering into the darkness. It is something beyond us. A gift of grace.

Easter is about hope. Holy Week sets the stage by presenting the dark and ultimately helpless condition of humanity. No degree of optimism will roll away the stone from the tomb. No embrace of a purpose driven life will save us from the results of crucifixion. But because of Easter, we can go to our crosses with hope in God’s love. We can enter the tomb trusting in the One who raised Jesus from the dead.

Easter is not theory based. It is experiential. The Easter faith of the earliest Christians came not from arguments but from experience. They had no way of assembling a “body of evidence” to convince unbelievers of Jesus’ resurrection. Each person had to decide for himself or herself.

And that remains true for us. Resurrection is always beyond whatever arguments we construct for it or against it. It is too embedded in the mystery of life, too dependent upon the love of God to be affirmed or dismissed by arguments.

Easter is a mystery because it is so close to the heart of God. It is a wonder because it reveals the smile on God’s face.

What we can do is hope in Christ. What we can do is live each day remembering God’s smile by sharing the good news in how we relate to others. What we can do is to stop being so self-absorbed and concentrate more on discovering God’s love in all sorts of places, even in the graveyards of human misery. We can respond to the Easter mystery by supporting love among the suffering and by lifting up those who live in darkness. We can dare to hope in Christ, not in a way that denies suffering and death, but in a way that trusts the love of God to transform darkness into light. We can be willing witnesses of that transformation and willing supporters of God’s Easter experiences.

When we are freed through hope, we discover joy and strength we never knew we had. Consider the change in Simon Peter, a disciple of Christ. At the trial of Jesus, Peter denied knowing Jesus. Driven by fear and failed optimism he became lost in darkness. Later, after the resurrection, Peter, with courage and strength, confronted the very authorities he once feared with his Easter faith, even though this would lead to his own execution.

Easter hope takes away the fear of death, not death, itself, but the power it exercises over us. Easter hope enables us to live fully not grasping for control but trusting in the love of God.

And so this morning, we gather around the wondrous Easter mystery. We come with thankful hearts, and we come in hope. Not the shallow hope of optimism or the skewed hope of argument. But the hope revealed in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, an Easter experience of the love of God beyond our imagination but as near to us as the air we breathe.

Let us pray:

O Lord, you enter into the tombs with us and bid us stand. You are beyond all marvels, and we are blessed beyond measure by your love. Give to us the hope of Easter, not as a balm for our anxiety but as openness to your wonder. Enable us to see you in others and to affirm your presence even in places of death in our own lives and in the lives of our neighbors. When we forget your wonder, remind us of Easter, and when we die, hold us close to your breast. We are grateful and our hearts are filled with joy because of Easter. Alleluia. Amen.

Sermon: Maundy Thursday

Justin Yawn, seminarian

“Unless I wash you, you have no share with me”

Today we encounter two great actions of Christ as he spends his last night with the disciples. First, the act of humility by Jesus when he washes the feet of his disciples and, secondly, the institution of the Last Supper. Each is of great importance in the Christian tradition and especially in our liturgy tonight. This night we will follow Christ’s example and wash one another’s feet and then we will gather at the table to share in the last feast together as a faith community before heading to Calvary and the tomb.

If you notice the Gospel narrative does not mention the Last Supper. It is through the reading in 1 Corinthians that we begin to see the entire picture. The Epistle will come alive a little later as we gather at the table and celebrate the last feast with our Lord. It will be a feast of celebration and departure. But first, let’s take a moment and focus on the foot washing and the actions of Jesus. Let’s ask ourselves, how does this relate to us today? Is there more to this story than just an act of humility by Christ himself?

These questions bring us into the core of that night in a room inside the walls of Jerusalem. What was Jesus trying to accomplish through this humble act? Let’s explore this from three different perspectives that I have borrowed and adapted from Mary Louise Bringle. First, we will focus on the interaction with Peter and the words that I repeated at the beginning of this sermon. Peter proclaims to Jesus, “You will never wash my feet.” It is a formidable statement. After all the time Peter has spent with Jesus, it has come to more opposition. Jesus has knelt down and is crawling around like a servant and washing the feet of his disciples. However, Peter does not want to relinquish control over this action and his relationship with Christ.

Peter, upon first glance, seems to come across as modest in his action not to let Jesus wash his feet. It seems to be a form of pride that is illustrated through the opposition of Peter. Peter is trying to choose what he wants to accept from Jesus. Often it seems we might fall into this trap of selection and choosing what we want to accept from God. All through our early lives we are dependent on those around us.

I remember, well I don’t think I actually remember, but I heard stories about how I struggled with a form of meningitis that attacked one of my eyes. I had no control over the situation and all I could do was trust that my parents and doctors would provide for me what was needed to care for me. Here we see Peter trying to refuse this gift from Jesus who is trying to take care of him and prepare him for the future.

Pride can be a scary thing, something many of us might struggle with. In the contemplative tradition of the early church fathers and mothers, you see pride in a way that is slightly different then how we might think about it. St. Maximos the Confessor refers to the demon of pride in two distinct ways. First, it will try to get us to promote our achievements to others or it will cause us to belittle those around us who we think are not as perfect as us. Either way, as Maximos points out we turn ourselves away from the love of God which is first and foremost.

Peter is struggling with this notion of pride, he wants so bad to take control of an uncontrollable situation. He is missing the big picture. Jesus reminds him, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me”. Powerful words are uttered out of Jesus’ mouth. Jesus is trying to show Peter that trust is what is important and letting go. Think how much different our life would be if we stepped out of the driver’s seat and let Christ take the wheel?

This brings me to my second theme; learning how to serve. Jesus gets down on his hands and knees and proceeds to wash the feet of his disciples. Not excluding one of them, not even Judas. The servant role Jesus takes on calls us to think about the details in our lives. He takes aim at a small thing. Jesus does not get up and do something flashy or elaborate to express his love. He does not pass onto them some material gift that will help them in the world. Instead he offers them a towel off his body and water. Water that would have become filthy and a towel that would be hardened with the mud.

However, it is in this place that Jesus is calling us to. It is a place of dirty water and towel. Sometimes we spend our time focusing on ways of serving people that bring us glory or get our name on the map. The act of water and a towel call us to focus on the little, the exhausting, inelegant demands of service. Service is not always a glamorous task. When my uncle was ill with Cancer my Aunt spent most of her time tending to remedial tasks. She had to help him eat, clean, move and many other things. It was through this service in the minute details that brought comfort and peace to my Uncle during the last days of his life with us. Another important thing to note is, the very stoles that Bill, Allan, and Deborah wear all have their roots in the towel that Jesus used this last night with his disciples. It calls us to think, “How are we all being called to the towel of extending God’s hospitality to others?”

The last lesson I believe can be gleaned from this action of humility is one of reconciliation. As we notice in the text Jesus washes all the disciples’ feet even Judas. Jesus knows that Judas is about to betray him and hand him over to be crucified. However, Jesus is not letting that stop him from sharing in the fellowship with his disciples. Jesus is modeling service and willingness to reach out to those around him. Today we live in a world that is seemingly enveloped in violence.

All one needs to do is turn on the television and watch for about 5 minutes to be reminded of the violence around the world. Every day in Africa someone is killed for their political, religious, or ethnic affiliation. Today, women are beaten by their husbands repeatedly without any chance of escape. Today people in our own country steal and malign those who are unable to defend themselves. But through all of this comes signs of hope. In Rwanda, a woman whose family was killed in the genocide returns to offer love to her perpetrators. In Iraq, troops help Iraqi families rebuild their houses. Here at Holy Trinity, people seek to rid Haiti of its water problem and try to provide hope for a better future. Perhaps this is what Christ was modeling when he was crawling around washing the feet of his disciples. Calling us to remember that all have a share in this salvific act and it is by our actions that we represent this.

Christ says “Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them”. It is a simple statement that reflects the obedience and more importantly, the humility of Christ. We are called to walk in this journey and be a reflection of God to those around us.

Just as the disciples were washed as a community of believers, so we are as well. It is at this point that The Holy Eucharist, foot washing, and our baptisms collide. Tonight we will wash ourselves in the spirit of Christ’s humility and gather as a community at the Table. Perhaps when we were younger we were baptized given the spirit and brought into union with our faith community. Through the cleansing of ourselves we begin to see the work at hand; the life that Christ calls us to, and more importantly models for us.

The act of foot washing and the Lord’s Supper all show how we as a community partake in the body of Christ. The lessons that we can glean from Christ’s humility are all reminiscent of the love Christ has for us. Through waters of Baptism we are brought into the fold, through the body and blood of Christ at the Eucharist we are united together.

As we leave here tonight in anticipation of tomorrow let us not forget the events of this night. Let us try not to jump ahead to Saturday night and forget the tools that Christ was leaving to his faithful followers that still resonate with us today and will be the tools to remember when Christ leaves us. As a community of faith let us go out and share the humble love of Christ to those around us. I can assure you that where love and charity abound then God is reflected. I think if we can do this then we are living into the command that Jesus leaves his disciples with: I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."