7 Easter
Transcribed from a sermon given on
May 20, 2012
At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church Arroyo Grande
By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart
Every year the Church go through the whole history of Christianity. We recently celebrated Easter and the resurrection followed by the time when Christ was with his disciples and appearing to them after his resurrection. Last Thursday was Ascension Day, which in spite of the fact that it is not celebrated very often is actually one of the main liturgical holidays of the Christian calendar. It could be considered number four after Easter, Pentecost and Christmas.
We are right now, today, in an interesting spot of the church year. Jesus’ physical presence as the resurrected Christ is not longer with the disciples, he has been taken up into heaven, and yet the Holy Spirit on Pentecost has not yet come upon the disciples. Now represents that odd time of waiting, watching and wondering what’s next. How do we see him? He was alive, he died, then he was resurrected and now he’s gone. How is Christ known in the world now?
The gospel reading today is a continuation of the prayer of Jesus during the last supper when he is prayed for his disciples. Remember that when he is praying for his disciples it is not just those that are physically present that his is praying for, it is for all of us who throughout time will be his disciples. That prayer is for us.
Once Jesus was no longer physically present, Christ’s presence, God’s presence, is made known in the world through us, through the disciples, through the people of God.
What Jesus prays is about relationship. He prays that the disciples may be one as he and the Father are one. This means that he prays that we would be one as Jesus and God are one. It is interesting, this emphasis on relationship. It is part of why that wonderful confusing mystery called the Trinity is so important. It is all about relationship. God’s very essence is a relationship among a unity that also has some separateness to it. A unity of three persons. There is only one God but it is in three persons, which is totally confusing, but it speaks to the understanding that God IS relationship. God is often referred to as love and love is about relationship.
In this Gospel reading, Jesus is praying that that relationship manifested between Jesus and the Father would be alive in the community of his followers. That sense of a unity, of oneness, and yet separateness. We are all separate human beings and yet we form one body. We are Christ in the world - in unity. It is a little like a dance of relationship, a dance of love and caring for one another. It is how we manifest Christ in the world.
Christ is seen by how we relate to each other, which is sometimes good news and sometimes is not such good news. Think about when people come to the church for the first time, when they finally get the courage to open up those doors and walk in. Sometimes they are coming because they hear that we have great music, sometimes they may be coming because they hope that they will get an inspiring sermon. Usually they are not quite sure why they are coming. But the way in which Christ’s love is made known to them is by the community of who we are and how we live as Christ’s disciples. It is our love for one another, it is our relationships with one another and our openness to inviting others into that relationship, that is the way we manifest God in the world.
We are Christ’s eyes and ears and hands and feet. We are the body of Christ. Some research has shown that after a person comes to a church for the first time, if they don’t within two months have a first name relationship with at least eight people they probably won’t come back. It’s about relationship. We have a couple of months to establish a relationship. That is how God is known. That is how God’s love is expressed.
When we were getting the Sunday School going we agreed that the main priority for Sunday School is that each and every one of those children feel safe and loved and cared about. If they happen to learn some scripture, great, but what’s really important is that they feel cared about and loved because we preach with our relationships. Remember, Christ prayed for us that we would be in unity as he and the Father are a unity.
He also prayed about the idea that we were in world, but we are not really of the world. As I have been thinking about this sermon I went to a conference at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. At the cathedral they have a labyrinth, which is a circle on the floor that has a path that winds back and forth and back and forth and eventually gets to the middle. The idea is that you walk that path until you get to the middle, you stop and pray there, and then you walk back out. It is a powerful walking meditation that I like.
I hadn’t been to Grace Cathedral in a long time, so after the conference I decided to go and walk the labyrinth. One of the things about the labyrinth is that it winds. You’re on the outside for a while and then you go toward the middle and then you are back out on the outside again and then you finally find yourself in the middle. So while you are walking it can be a little disorienting. You just have to focus on the path in front of you.
There were a few other people who were also walking the labyrinth and they were going at different speeds. Some were coming out and some where going in. Sometimes we were far apart and sometimes we were close together. It is kind of how the church community works. We are all walking the path, we are all walking on that faith journey. Sometimes we come real close together and sometimes we look like we are further apart. Sometimes somebody is coming out while you are going in and you almost bump into each other if you are not careful. You’ve got to make room for each other. There is a sense of almost being in a dance. If you are watching some people walking the labyrinth they seem almost like they are dancing when they come close together and then they go far apart.
That for me is a wonderful description of what the community of faith is like. We are each walking the path to Christ. It is our own path yet we are in relationship as we do that.
On a beautiful Saturday in San Francisco there are tourists, lots of tourists. Grace Cathedral is one of the places that tourists come. When you come into the cathedral there is the baptismal font and then the labyrinth is right there. You have to walk across the labyrinth to go down the main aisle of the cathedral. When tourists are looking at the stained glass windows, or are looking at the architecture, or are taking pictures, or chatting with each they may walk right across the labyrinth without knowing it.
Those of us walking the labyrinth probably look really strange to the tourists. We are walking and then turning and then walking and turning. They probably can’t figure out what we are doing because they don’t even notice the labyrinth on the floor.
It is a very interesting experience to be focused on following this path and then all of a sudden encounter a family that is walking across in front of you or somebody standing and taking a picture. There was a sense that those of us walking the labyrinth were walking our spiritual path, and the world was going on around us. We weren’t separate from the world, we were perfectly aware of the tourists and the cathedral and everything that was going on, but our focus was on following that spiritual path, while these others didn’t even see the path that we were on and probably couldn’t understand why we were walking the way we were.
I think that is a great description of what our life in the world is like. If we are following whatever path Christ is calling us to walk, and if each step along the way we are trying to follow where Christ is calling us, we may look a little odd at times to the world. Our responsibility is to keep focusing on our own path. We are still in the world and the world is still going on around us.
Another thing about the labyrinth is that as you walk in you walk toward the center which represents reaching Christ. When you arrive you just stand and experience and let in that presence of Christ, but you don’t get to stay there. There is no bed there to stay in. You can’t set up your tent. You have to walk back out and go back out into the world. That is the part of the spiritual journey where we come together as a community, we support one another and we nourish one another but we don’t do it for our own sake. We don’t nourish each other as a community just because it feels good, we do it to empower us to go out into the world and to share God’s love in the world. To minister to others and to share that love beyond ourselves.
We are the body of Christ. We are in Christ’s prayer that we might be in unity as God and the Father are one and that we might be in the world, and yet not totally of the world.
Amen
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