easter-7-homily

May 13: The Seventh Sunday of Easter:

The Sunday after the Ascension (Mother’s Day) – St. Paul’s?

lectionary

The Collect

O God, the King of glory, you have exalted your only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph to your kingdom in heaven: Do not leave us comfortless, but send us your Holy Spirit to strengthen us, and exalt us to that place where our Savior Christ has gone before

• the lot fell on Matthias
• 1 John: God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.
• John 17: And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.

We have just heard a small slection from the very long address that Jesus gives his disciples on his last night with them – as related in the gospel of John. The “Final Discourse.” In this long address he tells them that he will be leaving soon – in the gospel tomorrow he will be executed – and that the Holy Spirit will be given to them as a comfort in the absence of his death. In the final section – which we hear from today – he prays for them. His prayer for them – for us – is that while one part of the relationship is coming to an end, another more wonderful one is about to begin.

Themes of Ascensiontide:

Last week we were anticipating Ascension and I said here that there would be time to deal with Ascension when this Sunday rolled around. The 40th day of Easter has come and gone and here we are. The last Sunday of Easter before Pentecost.

We are faced with more than we can deal with – a superabundance of options for the preacher.

Absence / Presence of Lover / Redeemer

The presence of the Lord through Resurrection is at the heart of Christian faith – what set it apart from countless other followers of martyrs. So it is that Easter is the key to the Christian experience. We celebrate the feast not just once a year, not just a week – we do keep “Easter week” – but for a week of weeks. Next Sunday, the feast of Pentecost, marks the end of the “week of weeks” – the “50th day.” Not only that, but every Sunday, the first day of every week is regarded as a little Easter.

Nevertheless, as the feast of Ascension makes clear for us, as Jesus says explicitly in his final prayer with his disciples, there came a time when the presence became an absence. The transition from a time of intense even physical presence to a time of spiritual presence was a necessary transition to the power of what would come next.

Waiting / Expectation

At the same time as we experience a premise and a promise in the absence of our loved one, we enter with Ascensiontide a time of waiting together with an expectation of what is to come next. The bedrock of Christian faith is in part built on an expectation of that which is not yet: even as we have known the Lord in his rising from the dead, we anticipate his second coming. The Parousia.

The development of the Church is built on the delayed Parousia. Paul wrote of it. The early church leaders had to grapple with it. We live in a time of already / but not yet.

Liminal time:

It is a liminal time, this in-between time. Ascension, Ascensiontide, the days from 40 to 50 of the Easter season, these are days that have been marked as in between times. Another name for it in religious studies is a liminal time. It is a Time between times. No longer that but not yet this.

The liminal time is perhaps that time at the Eucharist where the priest holds up hi the bread and the wine. It is no longer ordinary food but it is not yet the sacred food nourishing God’s people. In the ancient manner of doing baptism, after many months or even years of preparation the people come to Easter and hear the sacred stories. they are then stripped of their clothes and enter naked into the water. It is that point in the water that is the liminal time. They are no longer what they have been and they are about to become what they shall be. It is at that point when they come out of the water that they are clothed with new clothes.

• The time that God very often acts.
• between-time: no longer that but not yet this.

“Thin places”

It is in *thin places* that this very special kind of time and place if found.

A notion that has been attributed to the ancient Celts, thin places are where in some manner or other the distance between God and humans isn’t very far. Ordinarily the sacred world is someplace set apart from our ordinary life, from ordinary places. God is at work in those places, to be sure, but we experience God’s action there as something extraordinary.

Thin places are places that somehow you expect it. When I was planning the move to the Carolinas after Mary Pat accepted the position at Rock Hill, I discussed with my spiritual director strategies for adjusting to the very different kind of place we were moving to. A trusted counselor friend had told me that moving from New York to Maryland was like moving to a foreign country. How much the more in a move from Hawai’i to South Carolina?

He and I had talked with some frequency about the notion of thin places, and it was his view that Hawaii was one such place. You may not know that about Hawaii, but I experienced it very soon after my arrival there. Two places where it has often been experience that the divine could be found was in the oceans and in mountain tops. Oceans where the place where great voyages took place, and one encountered strange and exotic lands. Mountain tops have been the places where the Gods dwelt. Hawaii has both.

Image of the boundary between the ocean and the land – the shore, the inter-mingling.

What my spiritual director said to me as I anticipated leaving Hawaii, he said, look for places that are influenced by indigenous peoples. Indigenous peoples, he said, are more natural with the comings and goings of the sacred, with the messengers of God, which is what angels are.

It turns out that in this general part of the country there have been frequent comparisons to other thin places. It is a part of the country that has attracted spiritual Seekers and those hungry for contact with God.

Turning goodbye into joy

That’s why Jesus, when bidding farewell to his friends before his ascension, spoke these words: “It’s better for you that I go away.” “You will be sad now, but your sadness will turn to joy.” “Don’t cling to me, go instead to Galilee and I will meet you there.” St. Louis: re. Mark

It’s why in ’John 17: Jesus prayed for those left after – i.e. all of us.

It is in thin places and liminal times that God has a special delight in changing us. Jacob wrestled with God in a liminal experience. God changed his name and he became Israel. When we wrestle with God we are changed.

Saying goodbyes and welcoming hellos are an obvious liminal occasion. Today we are engaged in a little goodbye. With great joy and gladness Mary Pat and I have been traveling to Monroe several times a month for more than ½ a year. That time is coming to an end and a new era in your life as a community will begin. In a few weeks you will be engaged in a much bigger hello as you welcome your new Rector. It is a liminal time. It is a thin place.

It is an Ascensiontide kind of time for you. There is sadness, but there is the expectation of new-found joy. Ascension points the way for transforming goodbyes from sadness to joy.