Sermons are better when you listen to them!
Grace, Mercy, and Peace to you from the Holy Trinity, Amen.
Alleluia! Christ is Risen! (Christ is Risen indeed! Alleluia!)
In the event that you haven’t been glued to your liturgical calendars the way I have, today is the last Sunday in Easter. That’s right, Easter lasts for 50 days, a whole 10 more than lent that precedes it. And yet, try as I might, I cannot find a cadburry cream egg for the life of me anywhere in this city (which is distressing because I forgot to buy one this year).
I could go on a tirade about how society co-opts Christian holidays only to bastardize them through commercialization and an unwillingness to accept that they might be more than one day long for a reason. Which makes little sense – since who WOULDN’T want to celebrate Easter for 50 days especially if it means more chocolate But, instead of theologizing about society, this week I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about the last sentence in the reading from Acts that we heard a moment ago. “and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God.”
The He being referred to is of course is the jailer who was watching over Paul and Silas while they were in jail for casting out annoying demons and such And who, in response to the prisoner’s chains being broken draws out his sword to kill himself. It seems that a feeling, of guilt...or shame...or fear...or some combination of all of those...made the jailer want to take his life because it seemed like the best option for him. And yet the same night...a matter of hours later...he was rejoicing because he was a believer in God, surrounded by other people of faith, eating dinner together.
As I spent this week thinking about rejoicing, and thinking about each of you, I came to a realization. If you have spent much time around here, I don’t think it will come as a surprise for me to tell you that I believe I have the spiritual gift of Joy. I cannot tell you the number of personality inventories I had to take before and during seminary to discover what kind of person I am, and approximately no times was it ever a surprise....I have an extreme capacity for joy. Rejoicing is pretty much the default mode for me. Someone baptized? Rejoice. Got in an argument? Rejoice because I learned something about myself. Easter Vigil went off without a hitch? Major rejoicing. I don’t tend to think twice about rejoicing, so for me this story seemed kind of bland.
Until I thought about what you all have taught me this year.
I think often about each of you as I see some of you crying out and others of you reassuring with "Do not harm yourself, for we are all here." through requests for prayers on Facebook, and in the prayers of the people, and through conversations that take place in supper clubs, on retreats, and in coffee shops during office hours. And the next day I see the roles reversed. I know that this carries some of you through your deepest moments. But I believe that God, in some way, brings all of you together to be part of each other's sorrows and each other's joys.
I know this community has an extreme capacity for intensity, listening to the prayers of the people crying out Kyrie Eleison and begging for healing, comfort, hope. I know this community can grieve together, be angry together, and forgive together when children get murdered in elementary schools. I have seen this community pour out it’s collective heart on a forgotten street, in a forgotten neighborhood, on the Friday that our Lord was nailed to a cross. Your ability to feel things, especially dark things, and be vulnerable enough to talk about them, and ask for help from others....it never ceases to blow my mind.
And yet, this church still celebrates Easter like no one’s business. We bless bicycles, we grow food to give away, we sing hymns at the top of our lungs in a bar, and we have dance parties, chocolate fountains, and bacon. And Easter isn’t confined to 50 days in the spring, because every day God raises the dead parts of each one of our lives and the lives of those around us to become renewed and refreshed, but these 50 days are set aside for us to rejoice in the mystery of the death of Christ and the empty tomb.
What you have taught me about rejoicing comes from what you’ve taught me about your intensity for carrying pain. I have learned from you that the two go hand in hand...your deep capacity for holding pain and being vulnerable and telling the dark truth means you have the same deep capacity for rejoicing, especially rejoicing in the promises of grace and new life brought to us through Easter. You have the same capacity for joy as suffering because you have experienced both. And that capacity for both is what made this story about rejoicing so much more powerful for me...it is not just a story about rejoicing...it is a story about why people can rejoice. You have taught me that we cannot be a community which prays intensely without being a community that rejoices intensely, and conversely, you have taught me that I cannot be a person who rejoices without end without being a person who allows myself to feel pain, to walk with you in your pain. The jailer, moments before he rejoiced, felt pain enough to draw his own sword on himself...he did not later rejoice in a vapid and fluffy way...he and his family rejoiced because he had experienced the grave and was experiencing newly belonging to God’s family, he rejoiced because he had experienced new life.
Having experienced graves of our own, we are then able to rejoice. Like the jailer’s family, we have rejoiced the day people were baptized because something...the body and blood of Christ for Sherry, the promises of grace and forgiveness through hearing the gospel preached for Cassie...because something pulled them into a life of faith in God. In those moments of baptism, surrounded by a community which knows how to rejoice, two children of God were claimed as members of the body of Christ.
Just last week more than a couple dozen folks showed up *in the middle of the night* to surround friends and strangers with the love of Christ and sing praises to God as we celebrated and blessed their joining together in a legal union. And in the tears of joy that were shed that night, I saw the family of the jailer...rejoicing. Rejoicing because these people had experienced rejection and now were able to realize a new life, a celebrated life together. We rejoiced together in presence and in spirit in a way that only a community deeply rooted in the sacraments of baptism and communion can.
Rejoicing in the way we do, with prayers of thanksgiving, shouts of Alleluia, and even some good old fashioned beer and hymns, is a response to the connection we all share in Christ. The places our lives intersect with one another and with God, both places of fear and doubt which give others the chance to tell us "we are still here" and places of joy and gratitude which give all the chance to rejoice, are holy places. They are places rooted in the resurrection hope of the Risen Christ who is present with us in water, wine, and bread which feed and sustain us as we share in life together, connected through God, to one another.
Amen.
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