Easter Sunday 2022 St Mary's
Gatesville, NC
April 17, 2022 Thomas E Wilson;
Guest Celebrant
Invitations in Creating
a New Future
Alleluia, Christ is Risen!
The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!
What do we celebrate today? Is it the
beginning of the end or is it the end of the beginning? And the
answer is “Yes!”
I want to thank you for inviting me to
join you on this Easter Morning. I join you as a guest and you have
done me the honor of welcoming me as if I belonged to this community
of St. Mary's. I am already here but not yet a member of this
community. We share some beliefs, some norms of behavior but in
order to be a member of this community I would need to be with you
day in and day out, sharing laughter, arguments, weep and rejoice at
the same time together; that is what makes a church.
Diane Butler Bass observed in her book,
Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of
a New Spiritual Awakening:
“Instead of
believing, behaving, and belonging, we need to reverse the order to
belonging, behaving, and believing. Jesus did not
begin with questions of belief. Instead, Jesus’ public ministry
started when he formed a community.”
The end of the beginning, an invitation
in creating a new future, a new community, is one of the themes in
the lessons for today. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Faith is
taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”
In the beginning of creation, God created a vision for a new future,
a community with God. But, as the story goes, the people decided they
wanted to be in charge of their own staircase to the future. There
were people like Jacob who saw the staircase in a vision, as an
invitation to community. But even then, his sons shattered that
community by selling their brother Joseph into slavery into Egypt. It
should have been the beginning of the end.
Even then, God called forth Moses to
bring the people back into community with God. But the people formed
into competing groups, splintering the staircases. When Moses brought
the people into the Promised Land, he shared God's vision for
community; but over the years the vision that the people came up with
was not in community with God, but rather to be in charge of their
own staircases with Kings, Class structures and Religious
Institutions.
In response, God called for Prophets to
share the vision of a community with God going deeper down the
staircase into the heart of God. In the Hebrew Testament lesson for
today from the School of the Prophet Isaiah, the writer echos the
invitation to the people in Exile in Babylon to take the first step.
The school of the Prophet Isaiah, scholars theorize, began around 740
BC with the Prophet urging the people and rulers to to live into a
community of justice instead of exploitation and greed so as to be
worthy of being a Kingdom of God. The rulers were proud and
stubbornly refused and the county was taken over by Assyria and later
conquered by the Babylonians in 587 BC. who dragged away many to live
in exile in Babylon. The school of Isaiah continued to comfort and
minister to the people in the exile period and then in 539 BC , the
Persians conquered the Babylon and allowed the people of Judah to
return. The school of Isaiah ministered to the hopes of the returning
exiles and painted a vision of the renewed community. They saw the
hope that it was not the beginning of the end but the end of the
beginning. This is language of the vision of the new heavens and new
earth in the lesson for today. It was an invitation to work together
for a new return to a deeper community. However, the nation chose to
put its faith in a new Temple and religious institutions. Therefore
it continues its decline and becomes a corrupt puppet state in the
backwaters of the Roman Empire. That should have been the beginning
of the end.
But Jesus echos the school of Isaiah as
he begins his public ministry at the Synagogue in Nazareth, and he
begins to gather a community of followers with his vision. This new
community lived as if was already, but not yet; it was the not the
beginning of the end but the end of the beginning. Yet, the vision
was thwarted when they squabbled among themselves over who was the
greatest. When Jesus was destroyed by the corrupt religious, economic
and political institutions, the community fell apart. It should have
been the beginning of the end.
Yet, some still held on to the hope. As
the Gospel lesson for today starts off: “Early on the first day of
the week, while it was still dark,” a hint by the writer that a
whole new dawn is coming. In this already and not yet, the already
and not yet is about the struggle to believe the witness of the empty
tomb and enter into community to walk down the stairway together.
Peter sees the empty tomb, and goes back to regather the community
together. Mary has a meeting with the risen Christ, but she want to
hold on to the past, hold on to him. He tells her that the past is
gone and it is time for a new vision for the future; she is told not
to hold on to him; don't hold on to the past, but catch the vision of
a new community. It is not the beginning of the end but the end of
the beginning. The witnesses see the empty tomb but do not begin to
believe, or change behavior or understand until they re-create a new
community. However the community is stymied by divisions about who
really belongs in the community and who is in charge.
The apostle Paul spends his energies trying to help mold a new
creation of community following the Risen Lord and he lives
faithfully inviting others to join to go deeper together down the
staircase into the heart of the Risen Christ. Paul writes that letter
to the Corinthians and to other churches that a creation of community
is being thwarted by the squabbling over matter of doctrine and
personality.
The church keeps revisiting the staircase of the vision of the
future. However they waste time in squabbles over doctrine and
behavior so that start to cling to opposing views as heresy and
refuse to speak to each other.
Constantine three centuries later, made the church the official
religion of the Roman Empire, but it was an already and not yet
exercise over squabbles of doctrine and control, which continues to
this day.
I have been going to church for three quarters of a century. When
it was time for me to be confirmed, more than six decades ago, a
learned a song at church camp sung to the tune of “God Bless
America”:
I am an Anglican,
I am P.E.,
(Protestant Episcopal)
I am High Church and Low Church,
I
am Protestant and Catholic and free.
Not a Presby, or a Lutheran,
Or a Baptist white with foam,
I am an Anglican,
Just one
step from Rome
I am an Anglican,
Via media, my home.
I lived in towns with rows of competing churches. I worshipped in
churches which split between radical liberals, mainstream liberals,
mainstream conservatives and radical conservatives and people who
just didn't care.
Divisions between races,
between economic classes,
between political persuasion,
Division about what was thought to be really important - things
like; should women come into church with heads uncovered.
About how to deal with women.
How to deal with gay children.
You name it and we would fight about it and push people out of
community.
Today is Easter Sunday, the day we keep hearing:“Early on the
first day of the week, while it was still dark,” a hint by the
writer that a whole new dawn is coming. Like Mary. it is not a time
to hold on to the past, but to be open to see a new vision of
community and join in creating a new future. It is about going beyond
the boundaries of the traditional church structure; about joining
with other churches, even to joining with those who do not profess a
Christian doctrine, joining with people with whom we disagree to
build community. A community, not as the beginning of the end but the
end of the beginning, which is always what resurrection means. For
as Isaiah reminds us what God continues in saying: “I am about to
create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be
remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I
am creating;”
Alleluia, Christ is Risen!
The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!
Invitations in Creating
a New Future
The death of
someone loved, we see as an end,
wanting so
desperately to hold on to a past,
as if we'd a power
or permission to be asked,
yet, allowing that
spirit into our soul to emend.
His hopes and
dreams becoming one with mine,
as I surrender
myself from the center of being,
allowing him bond
with me, new eyes seeing
a deeper reality,
with a strengthening of spine.
His end was really
the end of our beginning,
a resurrection
into a new life in this world,
to journey into
his dreams with sails unfurled
to live a
resurrection life to new hope clinging.
The sun rising
means that a new future begins,
in which we work
together as if his love wins.
