Easter 6 Homily 2025
Easter 6
St. Alfred's Episcopal Church
Opening
We've been gone
We've been away for a while. I know some of you noticed -- thank you. Others of you no doubt saw my facial hair and didn't recognize me. I forgive you. Of all my siblings and children, I'm the only one who doesn't readily grow facial hair. I keep trying, though, even at my age. Once when my oldest was about 3, late at night after he'd gone to bed, I shaved off the mustache and goatee I had grown. When he got up the next morning, he walked in the kitchen where I was probably drinking coffee. His face totally collapsed, and he said, "No, Daddy, put it back."
I imagine Paul feeling something like my son. "Maybe I should just go back and start over." I'm thinking that as he was dealing with the dramatic twists in his life, from Pharisee to a mute thrown off his horse, healed and called to preach what he once persecuted, there had to be a time he thought enough is enough. But over and over again a voice from within and without would speak to him: "leave behind what you are comfortable with. Come over to Macedonia and help us." And he listened and took another step.
We looked at US from outside
The last few trips that Mary Pat and I have taken have provided us with a perspective on our own country, the place we call home. Two years ago we went to the other side of the globe -- going north to south. In March and April we went to the other side of the globe going east to west and north to south – then back again. (We even traveled in time. We had April 10 twice.)
Many of you have asked, "How was your trip?" I have answered, "It was wonderful." And it was wonderful. Exciting. There were a number of high points. But there were also low points. It was frightening, foreboding, and sobering as we heard the news from back home. In some ways it was depressing, leaving us saying, "What is there to do?" In other ways it prompted motivation to "do something." It encouraged us to ask, "What matters?", or as a former mentor of mine said, "You decide what ditch you're ready to die in."
In other ways it prompted motivation to "do something." It encouraged us to ask, "What matters?", or as a former mentor of mine said, "You decide what ditch you're ready to die in."
The world outside the US looks at folks like us and they often see something quite different from what we in this country imagine. We would generally have dinner each night with different folks. The conversation at the table when all of us were from the US was quite predictable. We talked about the food. About the last excursion we went on. The last cruise we were on. Our favorite cruise line. It seemed as if we never talked about deeper subjects.
When our table partners were international, the conversation seemed to easily shift to some variation of, "What's going on in the US is frightening and crazy." Interestingly there were two couples we befriended that were made up of one US citizen and the spouse who was a citizen of some other country but with a green card. As March and April unfolded the emotional tenor shifted from bemusement at what was going on in the US, and then gradually fear and uncertainty.
There was a sense of powerlessness as our home seemed to be changing beyond recognition as we blithely sailed the Pacific Ocean.
The last words of my last sermon
Some of you may remember I ended my last sermon, before we left for our cruise with the words, "Do something." That was in response to my sense that Christians could no longer be content with being comfortable with the way things have always been. I must tell you that my greatest fear is to be complicit through complacency.
Last week, I heard Fr. Peter commend you for the many things that you are doing. It's really quite amazing. And I second his words. Well done.
But like my son Owen looking at my face without the moustache and beard, what had been familiar and customary appears to no longer be possible. There is no going back from the changes we are confronting.
Question
Where's the peace?
In today's gospel, Jesus's friends were gathered around him for a grand meal. You know how Jesus loved eating with friends. At this particular meal he had a lot of things to say to them. No doubt his friends were focused on how good it felt to have Jesus with them. They weren't really ready for the message he had for them. "I'm going to leave you. I will leave you with my Shalom. You can take that with you wherever you go. But I have to leave and all you'll have is someone who will advocate for me to you.
"I am going away, and I am coming to you." (Now that's the epitome of a paradox)
No doubt they asked the classic questions. "Wait? What?"
He responded, "Things can no longer be the same. Things have changed. You will be moving into uncharted waters. The waters may be choppy, even stormy. But I will be with you.
A little like traveling the South Pacific. A little like coming "home" to a country that has changed in profound ways.
Rejoice that I am going.
Like Paul who set sail after his vision in today's reading. He and his friends would be launched into a world they could not have anticipated. Just so, we had set sail for the South Pacific before Lent and arrived back in the US after Easter day. Mary Pat said, "We gave up the US for Lent."
Inevitably we came back to a world that was changed. The social contract that I had known from my earliest childhood, the quiet agreement about values and principles, was crumbling or swept away. In some ways I trace an awareness of the social contract back to my father.
He was the one who taught me that a gentleman keeps his word. A gentleman always carries a clean handkerchief. (He used the word "gentleman", because he was not aware of gender issues the way we are these days.) That same social contract said, "It is never okay to mock a handicapped person." My father said that his goal was to be as comfortable sharing a meal with the poorest and powerless as with the rich and powerful. He was serious about his Hippocratic Oath, "Thou shalt do no harm."
From my teenage years onward I heard every Sunday the words:
"Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself...
I understood those words to be a powerful and concentrated expression of what one must do as a Christian. The answer to the question, "What should I do?", is: Love God and Love your neighbor.
The country we came home to seems to have canceled the neighbor part of that. Or at least it understands "neighbor" in a far too literal and narrow a way. Jesus's parable of the Good Samaritan shows clearly that Jesus understands neighbor in a far broader -- and uncomfortable -- way.
I learned a lesson about neighbor from a bishop from Brazil.
Camara
In the early 80's I attended a national conference of Pax Christi -- "Peace of Christ" in English. One of the featured speakers was Bishop Helder Camara of Recife, Brazil. He was known to many of us a saintly figure who prominently cared and advocated for the poor in his city who lived in the slums -- favelas of his city. Many of us in the audience thought of him as a living saint. When he walked into the hall I was initially startled. He was a little tiny man. Maybe 5 feet. But when he walked up through the 100's in attendance, I had the distinct sense that he was Moses parting the waters of the Red Sea. And then he spoke. It was a tinny high pitched voice. Like a child's. But his message to us was thunderous. Like a prophet's.
He said to us:
"There is no peace for the people of my home because they do not know where their next piece of bread will come from. We must feed the hungry before peace is possible."
Coming home?
Coming home has really been something of a conundrum for me. In the face of the changes, Diana Butler-Bass recently wrote that she genuinely doesn't know what to say. And she makes a living by knowing what to say and write. What do you say or do when your world seems to have turned upside down? Mostly I don't know what to say.
But I'm reminded of my words in January: "Do something."
Home is ever changing. Change is inevitable. An ancient writer said:
"No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man"
"Where is the peace?" the disciples might rightly have asked Jesus? Or, "What do we do now?"
Change
Everything will be okay?
Things may look dismal at a particular moment. Certainly Jesus's friends at that dinner were in for a startlng awakening when they looked at him later, from a distance, executed on a cross.
I tell myself the church has lived through the centuries with countless rulers, kings, emperors, and tyrants. It has often looked bleak indeed.
But just as invariably there have been moments where you can see the "water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city", as we heard today from the 21st chapter of John's Revelation.
There's a saying that keeps me going, taking one step at a time. I laugh to think that I first heard the phrase in a wonderful film about old people moving to India. Some on the internet claim that John Lennon said it, but there appears to be no evidence for that, only that people have repeated it and the internet has multiplied it an unfathomable number of times.
"Everything will be okay in the end. And if it's not okay it's not the end."
Apocalyptic
Bible 101
You know the first thing you learn in Bible 101 about the last book of the Bible is that it is written in the genre known as apocalyptic. The second thing you learn is that the purpose of the various books in the apocalyptic genre is to encourage people during times of persecution and suffering.
After that, the third through the 150th, things you learn -- well that's kind of all over the place.
We are now living in interesting times. It is for Christians a time of crisis. In Chinese -- I read in Wikipedia -- the word for "crisis" is a combination of danger and change point. A crossing of paths.
Time of persecution
And so it begins. A rich, provocative, alluring, vision -- like a kaleidoscopic, slowly unfolding, dream sequence -- a huge metaphoric vision -- that leads to the passage we've heard today. It may not look good now, but in the end it will be glorious.
... the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. "In the end everything will be okay. If it's not okay now, it's not the end." Things are not okay yet, but in the end it will be glorious.
Standing still is not an option
Paul, Friends
As Paul headed north and west to Macedonia, he had no inkling of the storms that the church would face. There were setbacks and roadblocks. There would be persecutions sponsored by the kings and emperors of the time. But along the way there would also be lights abounding. Beacons of light to shine the way.
Keep heart and keep your ears focused on the Grace that abounds. Don't stand still. Do something.
The times they are a changin'
What do we long for?
It's a time to ask what do we hold fast and what is fleeting? What is the basis for our convictions? What is the priority for our day to day decisions? What motivates each 24 hours that we are given?
Love? Peace? We yearn and long for those. But many of our neighbors throughout the world don't know where their next meal will be. Many of them don't know if they will even have 24 hours to live. Such as these are our neighbors. Paul's missionary work guaranteed that.
Love God. Love your neighbor.
We're not there, of course. But we haven't given up either. Be of good cheer -- even in the midst of chaos and conflict, for many of the saints who have gone before us have walked these roads ahead of us.
It will be okay in the end.
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