Easter Sunday 2009
I have a question for us today. Why am I here…..
a) Today is by far the day when the most people who are drawn to Christian faith show up in church. What is it that makes us do that? Maybe you know the answer and maybe not.
i) Is it because you are always here on Sunday morning?
ii) Is it because you are visiting your parents and they dragged you here?
iii) Is it because you are a new parent and you would like to have your child baptized?
iv) Is it because there is something difficult going on in your life and you feel a need to be reassured of God’s love for you
v) Is it because you have been told all your life that if you do not go to church at least on Easter that you will surely go straight to Hell and so you get up and come out of obedience to some distant ethereal father figure.
vi) Is it because you got up this morning – heard the bells of some church and felt a strange warming in your heart that you had not felt in many years but which you knew to be God’s call to you to come.
You know each of these reasons is – at least in my opinion a good and valid reason for coming. I especially like the one about obedience as that is the one I lay on my children when they come to visit me.
vii) Maybe you are not really sure why you made the effort to get out of a perfectly good bed this morning, rushed to get everyone ready, left a long lingering breakfast and the Boston Globe lying on the kitchen table and headed out to Trinity.
viii) I am not always sure why I come either but what I do know is this. Easter is about far more than habit, obedience, or the promise of life eternal up in the clouds.
Easter presents us with a whole new reality of what the world is like. Easter pulls us out and up because it is the most amazing proclamation of all time. It is at once mysterious and utterly transparent. The Gospel lessons leave no doubt in the reality of the crucifixion, the death of Jesus and of the empty tomb. The Easter lessons do not really need a commentary by any preacher. It is the story of new life in Christ that we come to hear on Easter morning
But if we end it there then I believe with all my heart that we will have missed the boat. Because Easter is not about one day out of the year. Easter is about one day after another – about day in and day out living into the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is who we are – it is our nature – it is our baptism
In that first lesson that we heard this morning from Acts. Peter speaks passionately and eloquently about his experience of the Risen Christ. The story though begins with some mysterious, but fateful dreams. Cornelius was a Roman Centurion, who was most likely taught the belief in Roman gods at an early age, but he was a man who had become during his tour of duty in Palestine, if not a believer then at least respectful of the belief in one God. He lived on the coast in Cesearea, and was known for his generosity to the poor. .
b) Cornelius had a dream. In the dream he is told to send envoys to Joppa, to find a man named Peter who was staying in the house of Simon the tanner. About the same time, Peter had a dream that gave him a new understanding about what and who is acceptable to God and what and who is not. God tells Peter in the dream that in spite of what he has learned from Jewish dietary laws, “what God has made clean, you must not call profane.”
c) Peter does not really understand the meaning of the dream right away. Scripture tells us that as he is lounging on the roof post afternoon nap, he hears the men who have been sent by Cornelius asking for him at the door.
d) Peter comes down from the roof and accompanies them to Cornelius’ house where Cornelius has gathered several of his friends to hear what Peter has to say.
e) And so we get to the passage we heard today. Peter begins to teach them the Gospel, the Good News of Christ, more particularly he begins with “I truly understand that God shows no partiality” and ends with “everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through His name.” It is a wide reaching statement that expands access to God to all people – not to just a chosen few. God welcomes all comers.
f) When Peter finishes his sermon the Holy Spirit comes upon the gathered Gentiles and they are baptized by Peter. That event sets up a level playing field – showing that God acts through the Gentiles as well as through the Jews. It is a powerfully inclusive act.
2) Peter tells this gathering that they know that Jesus had come preaching peace by Jesus Christ. Peter is telling us that in the act of overcoming death, God has acted to overcome the barriers that separate us from each other. The Peace that Jesus’ brings in his ministry, death, and resurrection is the cosmic power of God to erase the anger, jealousy, and hatred that separate us.
Later on in Acts Peter is challenged by his fellow Christians in Jerusalem – Jewish converts who believed only Jews to be acceptable to God – Peter tells them something that has become increasingly important to me as I have grown in my own ministry . Peter tells them and I quote from Acts 11 –”And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, "John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.17 If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?" When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, "Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life."
“Who was I that I could hinder God?” I believe that those are some of the most important words in scripture. My ministry, as I understand it, is to set a table where all are welcome. It will not be you or me who transforms another person – it is God who transforms each of us and no one should stand in the way of God’s intervention.
It is my experience in life that God is known in the silence of a walk in the woods, in the home where children run around in their diapers playing with Mom and Dad who must work every day but Sunday in order to feed and house the family. God is found on the golf course with friends, God is found in the work of one who must go to care for an aging relative each morning, God is found where ever we open ourselves up enough to be aware of God’s presence in our lives. And each one of these ways in which we grow to know God better is both valid and vital in our lives – I know this because I have known God in these places too. Who am I to hinder God when God meets you or me outside the walls of this church?
But there is another equally valid truth. We also meet God here. God invites us here to be in community, to learn and to grow together. Scripture tells us that the women who ran from the tomb in awe and amazement and fear of the reality of God’s action in raising Jesus from the dead, grew to be powerful voices of the Good News, they came to be disciples who carried the Word to others in proclamation and deed. They were able to do so because the Spirit moved through that early community of believers and gave them a passion, an urgency, and a hope that God was indeed supreme over the forces of evil and death in the world and that they were empowered to be the emissaries of that Good News.
God’s Spirit is moving mightily among the people of Trinity, Haverhill. I see it in the work of those who come to feed the poor. I see it in the faces of the children eager to learn about God’s Love. I see it in the faces of those who have been hurt by their friends and family - who seek to know deeply the forgiveness and the acceptance of God. I see it in the work of the musicians who bring their gifts and their energy to make these walls sing with joy. I see it in the teens who are not quite sure that this is a place that fits into their lives right now and for whom we who are grounded in the traditions of the past, must open ourselves up to new ways of being church so that they too will know God in this place – even if that means our sensibilities are a little shaken.
In just a few moments we will renew our baptismal vows. As we do so we will recommit ourselves to support each other with our prayers, our service, and our presence. You do not have to be in this space to be in the presence of God, but it is for sure a powerful experience of God’s action in this world. Each time you come and kneel before this altar you are supporting those who support you and you are filled with the power of the Holy Spirit through the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ that is an experience like none other in this world.
The resurrection that we proclaim today throws open the doors of Love and Grace to all who seek to know God or to be known by God.
This is the day that we, as a community of faith, proclaim our hope in eternal life because this is the day that God proclaims that we are all God’s chosen, God’s loved, God’s desired.
This is the day for us to go from this place and to ask ourselves:
a) What door is God opening for me?
b) What new experience does God have in store for me?
c) Who is God asking me to stand beside?
d) How can I be helpful in finding new and different ways for all of God’s children to find a home at this altar?
Each and every Sunday is an opportunity to celebrate the resurrection of Christ. It is my desire – my hope – that each one of us will celebrate that Good News each and every day not only with our lips but in our lives, giving up ourselves – our souls and bodies - to God’s service in the world.
Amen