In the Spring of the Year

         [Sermon written the day after a tragic death in my parish.]

          In the spring of the year, the time when baby lambs wobble across flower-studded fields and love caresses our hearts like a warm breeze, gallant King David and beautiful Bathsheba fell in love and lived happily ever after.

          Oh wait, that’s not how the story goes? The story starts off right for a happy romance, “in the spring of the year,” but that promising beginning shifts quickly into a minor key: “In the spring of the year …….the time when kings go out to battle” … David gets bored, grabs something that is not his, forces himself on someone else’s wife, takes, lies, kills, abuses his kingly power, his sins ticking past us as automatically as the seconds on a watch. Violence and manipulation quickly take over in a story that first seems to set up love and new beginnings. Stories are tricky that way. They can change in the tiny space between punctuation marks, leaving us to scramble after them, shaken and unprepared.

          “In the spring of the year,” full of confidence and hope after a long winter of rehab, the elderly man stood up, proud to walk with a cane, rather than the ungainly walker he had been using, and moved forward triumphantly across the living room … losing his balance and falling into the fireplace, shattering his newly healed bones.

          “In the spring of the year,” pregnant with a long-awaited daughter, the young woman waited contentedly on the ultrasound table, expectant eyes turned toward the screen where her baby’s face would soon appear …. and the nurse said, “there is no heartbeat.”

          “In the spring of the year,” in the cool breezes that finally chased away the oppressive heat, planning retirement adventures with his beloved wife, Daryl jumped on his motorcycle to run a quick errand…. and in the dark, they found his wrecked bike and body by the side of the road.

          “In the spring of the year,” before last night’s storm, I started out preparing a spiffy sermon that would decry the abuse of power in the David and Bathsheba story, but those preachy words have turned to dust and blown away in the storm, and now we are all sitting huddled in that boat yet again, the boat full of disciples, the boat of the Church that keeps being tossed around on stormy seas. We are shaken and unprepared. We can’t rely on happy endings. We can’t manipulate our way out of sin or plan our way out of death and disaster. We are at sea, at the mercy of wind and waves and sun and season and God and one another and ourselves … We are stuck together to toss and turn and perhaps even to capsize, caught up in a story so much bigger than we can even wrap our minds around, a story where the security of land is too far off to be seen.

On a glorious, sunny day in Nova Scotia, with cool breezes that felt to me just like springtime, my friends and I decided to go whale-watching. On such a beautiful day, even I could put aside my fear of riding in a little boat. From shore, the water was the deep blue of sapphires, the waves were tipped in bright white, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. My carefree, vacationing heart was as light as a feather, and I was relishing the adventure of going out to sea in the little Zodiac raft, excited about spotting a powerful whale, and proud of myself for my courage to live a bit on the wild side for once. “Won’t my kids be surprised at my exciting escapade,” I thought to myself. “I’ll have to tell my parishioners how brave I am, too, after all those sermons about being afraid of water!” I especially thought about bragging to Daryl, who loved to tease me about my fears and who got me to promise that I would ride his motorcycle if he ever consented to becoming senior warden.

They gave us ponchos to wear and said that we would probably get  a little wet, since the winds were so unusually strong that day, and I began to wonder if that meant that the ride might be bumpier than I had imagined. And then we were seated in the boat, and pulling out into the harbor, and the captain announced through the microphone that it was rough going out there, and that the whales were going to be extra hard to spot with all of those big waves, and that the last cruise had lasted an extra half-hour before they found the promised whales. And it was no longer springtime, and I was very afraid. Suddenly, the deep water, only a few feet from me now, looked more blackish-green than blue, and the little raft hit the oncoming 8 foot waves with splash after splash, rising high into the air and crashing back down with a spine-jarring, heart-stomping thud. The crazy captain sped straight into the wind, and I closed my eyes and held the seat and rail with all my might, while I pictured my death from either drowning or fear-induced heart-attack. Even my fellow passengers became ominously quiet as we got further and further from shore and the wind and waves continued entirely unabated. I wanted to stand up and shout that I wanted to go back to shore. I wanted a do-over. I didn’t like the way that this story had shifted. “This situation is out of control. I don’t care about the stupid whales, just get me out of this boat!” I thought, over and over, but all that came out of my mouth were low moans and a bit of very un-priest-like vocabulary. For an hour we fought against those high seas, the captain determined to find a whale so that he wouldn’t have to refund our money and me praying silently to God for all I was worth.

After awhile, I did have the presence of mind to think about my recent sermons about water, and I thought about the story that we read today, with the disciples in their boat, as Jesus approached them, walking on the water. I began to open my eyes and glance cautiously around, but I didn’t see Jesus coming toward us over those roiling hills of water. Yet suddenly, there they were! A whole pod of pilot whales, complete with mama and baby whale, slipping under and over those big waves with grace and slippery ease. They swam in amazing synchronicity with one other, diving and jumping as one body, unfazed by the stormy seas or by the boats full of seasick tourists or by the captains with their loudspeakers. They were Job's Leviathan, the magnificent beast that God made for the sport of it, sporting through a world that had terrified me, swimming with the power and joy of God striding across a stormy sea to reach out a hand to his fearful followers. “'I AM' is with you," cried the bobbing whales through their blowholes; "there is beauty out here on these waves." There is strength in the divine hands and feet that are reaching out to you. Awe can replace panic. The Creator is in control of the Story.

Suddenly, I noticed that the captain had turned the boat around and we were speeding almost smoothly toward shore. The sun was shining. The waves were sparkling. And I smiled. “You look like you are happy to be alive,” joked a friend. Indeed. Alive in my God, in the spring of the year.

          “In the spring of the year, at festive Passover time, God did miracles through his Son, and the people hailed him as their king …. Yet he ran away to a deserted place. and God was nailed to a cross and died,” goes our Story.

“In the spring of the year,” Jesus rose from the dead, and rough barley bread becomes his broken body, and we all sit down together on the green grass beside the still waters and are fed until we can eat no more. And there are leftovers. And nothing is lost. And the lost are found. And the boat reaches the land toward which they are going, even when life stories change in midsentence. For nothing can separate us from the Love of God, the God who will cross over to us as we huddle in our little boats...

In every season of the year.

Amen.

Where You Went to Highschool Doesn't Matter in Tragedy ... or in Christ

         “Where did you go to high school?”

When I first came to Louisville, I didn’t realize the importance of that seemingly innocuous question! “High school?” I would wonder. “If strangers are going to make conversation with me, why don’t they ask me where I went to college or where I work, for goodness’ sake?” The Question can begin with an appraising glance, a piercing look balanced upon an invisible measuring stick, a haughty hesitation that expects a certain answer. Or it can pop out in a spontaneous, friendly way. But however the question is asked, in this town, whether one spent four years at St. X or Trinity, Sacred Heart or Assumption, St. Francis or Collegiate, Male or Manual or PRP … that is the standard by which we categorize one another. So ingrained is this way of thinking that people don’t really know what to do with you if you say that you grew up in another town. I know that when I would tell people that I went to high school in Houston, they might look at me with wide, uncomprehending eyes, unsure how to proceed with me, until I learned to interject that my mother grew up here and graduated from Atherton. Only then could they relax, able to place me in a known category.

          In Louisville, already a city with clear geographical divides of race and class, we mentally line up our dividing walls around our high schools, creating a complex mix of subtle partitions that juggle differences in religion, class, race, academics, wealth, and even sports. So engrained is this way of thinking, that we often don’t even realize that we are judging when we ask the high school question, but we are. Perhaps St. Paul, if he were writing today to Christians in Louisville, would argue, “Christ is our peace; in his flesh he has made all high schools into one and has broken down the dividing wall... He has abolished social cliques with their rules and etiquette, that he might create in himself one new humanity, thus making peace.”

          I sighed as I read today’s Scripture lessons that point out so clearly that Almighty God cannot be enclosed in a house built by human hands or human minds, and that Christianity is to be a religion without dividing walls. You don’t even need a sermon from me in order to recognize the truth of these things. And yet, where is that promised peace and unity in Christ? It is so easy to say that Christians are supposed to welcome everyone into one family in Christ, that we are all supposed to get along, that the dividing walls are to be no more. We don’t seem to be any closer to attaining it today, though, than the quarreling Jewish and Greco-Roman Christians were in Paul’s day. Even in a loving Christian community like St. Thomas, one can often see walls between age groups, between parishioners and staff, between present vestry and past vestry, between ministry groups, between church and preschool, between parishioners and “renters.” In our diocese, we maintain walls of rivalry between one parish and another, and our churches can’t seem to breach those walls that divide Louisville into separate enclaves. (I am ashamed to admit that I have never set foot in either St. George’s or in Messiah-Trinity, and I doubt that I am alone.) At the wider church level, as we work to break down a wall to include one group, we often alienate another group, who start piling up stones for a new wall on the other side. And of course, among clergy, the question is not, “Where did you go to high school?” but is instead a sneakily suspicious, “Where did you go to seminary?” as we roam between partitions made of theology and churchmanship.

          Strangely enough, it is not joyful worship but tragedy that seems to push us to tear down our dividing walls. That movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, was made up of people from different high schools, ages, classes, churches, political parties, and races. They were sitting peacefully next to one another, ready to lose themselves in a story, rather like we do in our church services. Yet, there too, the peace was only surface deep. A discussion or a common project or, Lord knows, a committee meeting, would have stirred up the judging wall-builder within each one of them. When the larger-than-life deranged gunman entered, however, and tore through their lives with evil and death and sprays of bullets, these strangers suddenly became brothers and sisters. According to the news reports, they shielded one another, pulled one another to safety, collapsed with relief on one another when it was over, and reached out to the families of strangers who had died. The survivors of that attack are now members of a community so strong that the dividing walls have all come tumbling down. I would even venture to say that our compassionate God now dwells in the midst of them. And if we were to meet one of them on the street, we would not ask him where he went to high school. We would not ask her if she were gay or if she believed in Evolution. We would not turn up our noses at the way he dressed or spoke. We would automatically reach out with love and offers of help.

          As good, obedient Christians, we try to make peace and unity happen in our communities like we try to get people not to chat noisily in their pews before the service. We think that it is something that we can moralize about and will upon ourselves as we sit in meetings and in the pews. According to Paul in our lesson from Ephesians, however, peace and unity are the result of Jesus Christ entering our lives and our communities in a powerful way—almost, dare I say it, with the force and overwhelming drama of a madman entering a movie theater. The shock of God upon the Cross is supposed to rip through our lives like a spray of bullets. The powerful promise of Life in Christ is supposed to unite us just as strongly as the threat of death from a killer with a gun.

          We read in our Gospel lesson of the transformative power that Jesus had over the crowds. All anyone had to do was to touch the fringe of his cloak, and they were healed. When he traveled throughout the Galilee, the crowds followed him everywhere. So hungry and desperate were people for the healing and new life that Jesus and his followers could give them that they pestered them without ceasing, not even letting them eat a meal in peace, racing ahead of their boat to meet them when they tried to get away for a rest.

          So … what is missing today? Where is Christ’s commanding presence among us, his followers? Where are the crowds? Why are our communities transformed by the aftermath of sin and death, yet not by the power of life? Paul writes, “Jesus himself is the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord … into a dwelling place for God.” Perhaps we, like Nathan and David, have been too busy planning our own dwellings for God, rather than letting ourselves be inhabited by Christ. We Christians are now the Body of Christ; we are the ones with the arms and legs to walk into the crowds and bring healing in Christ’s Name. We are the ones to turn things upside down by our proclamation of a crucified God. Is that what we are doing? We are only in unity insofar as we are in Christ, bringing Life and caring for his sheep.

          I can actually give you all a fresh, real-life example today of what I am talking about. When you get home, go to the St. Thomas Facebook page and take a look at the picture of the five children from this week’s first annual Reading Camp standing in front of our church. You will see five elementary school children who will probably attend five different high schools. This picture could be a poster for racial diversity. The children have their arms around each other in genuine affection, and they have huge smiles on their faces. These are children who have trouble in school and who spend most of the school year “like sheep without a shepherd,” not needy enough to receive special services in the classroom, yet struggling to keep up with their classmates. Yet, they had so much fun working on their reading skills all morning at St. Thomas and then receiving attention and affection from St. Thomas parishioners all afternoon, that they didn’t want the week to end. This Reading Camp was a lot of work for our volunteers. Our parish is so small that it was a risk for us to plan on inviting even 5 or 6 children to a complex camp like this one. We had to raise money with a silent auction at Bluegrass and Burgoo, and that was a lot of stress for many of you. We had to cook and serve two meals each day at our camp; we had to have transportation for field trips; we had to plan lessons almost from scratch; we had to figure out logistics; we had to displace two important groups in our parish to have room in the Fellowship Hall. And yet …. I saw nothing but peace and unity this week at Reading Camp. I saw older parishioners and teens and even some out-of-town family members who joined us, working together with huge smiles on their faces. I saw a public school working hand in hand with a Christian church for the good of the community. I saw compassion. I saw healing. I saw the Body of Christ. Will this Reading Camp change the East End? No. Will this Reading Camp “grow our church?” No, I doubt that we will get any new members from it. But, by allowing us to reach out in Christ’s Name, to proclaim the Life and Healing that Christ offers to us all, it brought us one step closer to becoming “citizens with the saints” and “members of the household of God,” a dwelling place in Christ. That is the kind of growth that every parish needs more of, even the big ones. Giving of ourselves as Christ’s Body is not easy, but it is the only way to peace and unity within. It is the only way to combat the insidious divisions among us and the only way to transform the world with light and life, not darkness and death.