"An opportunity to testify"-Sermon for Proper 28, Luke 21:5-19:
Both of my daughters attended pre-school at All Saints’ Episcopal Day School, which is a part of All Saints’ Episcopal Church…located basically on the northwest corner of the UT campus. Now, as many of you know, for the 6 years prior to planting St. Julian’s, I was the Episcopal Chaplain to the University of Texas, which is also located at All Saints’…right next door to the pre-school. In fact, we shared, both college students and preschoolers…a fun combo, a chapel and some meeting space. And, just outside the doors of the pre-school and campus ministry, sort of nestled between them, is a memorial garden. And, in that memorial garden, I buried the ashes of my father Nathan, after he passed away in 2006, whose story, both the blessings and struggles, I shared a bit about in my sermon on All Saints’ Sunday two weeks ago. Nathan loved UT…maybe second only to his family, and I couldn’t imagine a better place for his earthy remains…sitting, in perpetuity, almost in the shadow of the UT tower. And, just to be clear, though I too love UT of which I am alum, I hope for my remains to be in our memorial garden here at St. Julian’s…but I digress.
Well, several years after leaving the campus ministry to begin St. Julian’s, and a couple of years into my oldest daughter, Amelia’s, time at All Saints’, I just happened to be in that garden with her one morning…she was about 5 at the time. I think we had arrived early for school, or some such, and were killing a few minutes, playing in the garden, till the school opened…when it dawned on me that I had never told her that her grandfather’s remains were buried just outside the doors of her school that she loved and where she spent so much time. I suppose I thought it might be comforting to know he was so close to her each day, as she was learning and playing alongside her friends. Well, after telling her about her grandfather, who she never actually knew in person, she took a long pause. It felt really long in the moment. I was worried the info had the opposite effect than what I intended. But, I waited and eventually she spoke. She looked up at me and she said very intently, “No, dad. Nathan is not here in the ground. Can you see the rainbow I see? It connects the ground to heaven…that’s where Nathan is…with God.” Friends, I could not see the rainbow. God had revealed it only to her…or maybe I just couldn’t see it through my tears…or maybe my faith was not as strong as her child-like faith was to be able to see it. There is a reason Jesus said that it is to children, and those who see like children, that the Kingdom of God belongs. But, I believe with every fiber of my being…with my whole heart…that the rainbow was there. And, indeed, she was entirely right…Nathan was not there in the garden. He was and is in heaven with God alongside those he loved who proceed him…feasting with the saints in light…whole, healed, standing upright, with head held high, as fully the person God made him to be…from everlasting to everlasting.
Now, I will come back to that train of thought, but for now I want to say how grateful I am to all of those who shared an Impact Report in this Season of Giving Thanks that comes to its conclusion today on In-Gathering Sunday. Impact Reports is what we have been calling those testimonies that have been shared over the past 5 Sundays about how individuals and families have been personally blessed by God through this family of faith. And, I want to thank them all again by name: Paula McLaughlin, Olivia Parkey, Jaden Daly, Scott Beachy, and the Meyer family. They have all been so sincere, moving and encouraging. They have all reminded me of why the work of creating and sustaining this Christ-centered family of faith, we call St. Julian’s, in the very midst of our sorely divided and, often, death-dealing world, is so vital…so profoundly important and life-giving.
And, I have been thinking for a week now, in particular, about a comment that Wright Meyer made last Sunday during his family’s Impact Report. After sharing so sweetly about why St. Julian’s matters to their family, he said, and I am paraphrasing him here…so sorry Wright if I get it a bit wrong…but he said, “So, our family invites you to pledge your financial support to what is going on here at St. Julian’s.” And, then he continued, and this is what is resonating so loudly in me, he continued, “Pledge…because the good news of Christ’s empty tomb has been made known to you.” He did not say…pledge so that we can keep the lights on…or pledge so that we can pay the staff…though, as a member of the staff, I am very grateful for that…or pledge because you get so much from this place…or pledge because your kids are growing so much through our youth group. And, though all of this true, good and worthy of your generous support…he said, again, “Pledge…because the good news of Christ’s empty tomb has been made known to you.” That’s it! He nailed it! Sign him up for seminary! That’s everything! Pledge…not just your money…pledge your whole life to God and God’s loving work in the world…for the through the empty tomb…that sign and symbol of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead…God has defeated sin and death for all time and for all people…love wins…the rainbow-colored bridge connecting heaven to earth and earth to heaven has been firmly established and nothing can tear it down. Resurrection assures us that we belong to God and God will never let us go. Now, that’s some good news that, indeed, we might want to pledge our whole selves to…to supporting…to making known…in our lives and the lives of those we live alongside.
Friends, our Gospel reading today is from the 21st chapter of Luke, and it belongs to a narrative tradition in the bible that we call apocalypse…a word that means a revealing. Jesus is not a fortune teller, and he is not predicting the future for us. He is, instead, holding up a mirror that reveals to us the world as it actually is…not was or will be…but as it is…a world I have already described as sorely divided and death-dealing. False prophets abound in the sacred and secular world…vying for our attention and allegiance…promising us that our wildest dreams will come true if we but fall into line and follow…promising a cure for all our ills. Hunger, violence, warfare, heat, storms, mass-incarceration that disproportionately targets people of color and the people who are most vulnerable among us…is a sign of our times…and it is that which is revealed to us in the apocalyptic mirror that Jesus is holding up before us today. Jesus is not revealing to us the future…but our present. And, it is into such suffering, the suffering of our present time and of all time…that Jesus will soon and personally go and suffer greatly himself…but not just to suffer…but to save…to save us. The 21st chapter of Luke ends 18 short verses after today’s Gospel lesson, and the 22nd chapter of Luke that follows begins with a plot, led by the those in authority and one of his own beloved friends, a plot to kill Jesus. And, I will note, at least at first, it is a successful scheme…that leads to Golgotha, a hill, on which stands the cross of Good Friday…and on which Jesus will suffer and die. But we know, and this is the knowing that Wright Meyer named for us last week, we know how the story ends…not on a Friday…but on a Sunday…and not on a cross…but with an empty tomb. It is life, not death, that Jesus is revealing to us…life emerging in the midst of the world’s greatest suffering. And, if that rainbow is not obviously seen in the mirror…then surely it is in the one who is holding it before us…in the face of Jesus.
It is to this revelation that we pledge ourselves today…to the sure and certain knowledge of love’s victory over sin, life’s victory over death in the glorious resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord. And, more specifically, it is to this revelation, as we have come to know and experience resurrection as a lived reality in this God-formed family we share called St. Julian’s, that we pledge today to keep alive and even grow…right here…in this place. For that resurrection love that’s stronger even than death, which we have come to know in this family of faith, is the hope of the world. It is what our friends and neighbors need to also know, and what this life we have formed together with the risen Lord at our center provides them, help to find their own way forward in this present darkness. For, we all have times when we need help, as Amelia provided for me, to see the rainbow connecting heaven to earth and earth to heaven…especially when the world’s suffering feels overwhelming and immobilizing…especially when the voices swirling around us seek to confuse and mislead us…especially when we need to find enough light to place one foot in front of the other…especially when we need to find courage to speak up, speak out, and act…on behalf of those who suffer much more than we do.
And so, we pledge together today to keep the power on in this place, and I am not talking about the light bill, but the power that flows endlessly from the empty tomb that we have come to know and experience in this place…that is alive and active in this place…till all can catch a glimpse the rainbow…that is from everlasting to everlasting. Amen.