Sermon by Charles Snider – July 2, 2006

Every week it seems we learn something new about George, our recently installed Rector. This week, with me standing in this pulpit, we learn he's a man willing to take risks.

I don't know about you, but I'm mighty grateful to God for the miracle, gift, and fact of the resurrection. I realize we're now well into the season of Pentecost, but I'd like to dwell a little more on Easter for today. It's a great comfort to me to know that in death, as the Prayer Book says, "life is changed, not ended." I know that in our daily lives we all find ourselves grateful to God for a vast number of things, but the Easter collect sets our priorities straight when it says, "…but chiefly are we bound to praise you for the glorious resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord." Talk about the ultimate light at the end of the tunnel.

As a society we make a much bigger deal out of Christmas, especially by beginning its observance, it seems, earlier and earlier every year. I saw a cartoon in The New Yorker once that showed two men on a busy city street, looking up to notice a Christmas wreath on one of the lamp posts. One said to the other, "My word, is it October already?"

But for me, Easter is the bigger deal. In a parish I served in Georgia we had a Rector who was pretty crazy, in a good way. The church could seat only about 200 people packed, yet on Easter there would be almost 40 people in the procession alone. Every acolyte we could find was given something to carry and something fancy to wear, and the Rector would invite every priest in the area who didn't have a regular church to come be with us. Usually it would be him and four other priests concelebrating, each one with a bigger and more ornate cope than the other. There were candles all over the place, the room was filled with delicious incense from not one, but two heavily stoked thuribles, and flowers gushed from every opening and cascaded in a massive flow for some fifteen feet behind the altar in a display that would have even had Gretchen Kenower impressed. We had professional brass players from the local Air Force Base, a choir, and sometimes as many as eight vocal majors home from college added into the mix. How the roof stayed on that little church I'll never know.

But I remember the Rector's brief sermon one Easter, and it was essentially this: Some of you may wonder why we have all these people, all these musicians, these extra candles and flowers and acolytes and priests and deacons and incense. Some of you may think we've gone a bit overboard, and some of you are here because this is the best show in town on Easter morning. But I'll tell you why we do it. It's because it's Easter, and even if we were to double, or triple, or even multiply this festivity ten-fold, we could never, never even begin to celebrate enough the meaning and significance of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

It was at that parish in Georgia that I acquired my taste for liturgical excess. Convincing our own Daughters of the King many years back that we needed more and more and more flowers wasn't that easy, even when I quoted Mae West who said, "Too much of a good thing is wonderful!"

There was another parish in which I served a bit more recently, and which I shall not name but will simply refer to as Our Lady of Apathy. There came an Easter morning when I played an especially loud and boistrous prelude. A few of the parishioners there that day, truly God's frozen people, said they thought the organ had been too loud. One day in passing I mentioned this to our then bishop, Frank Griswold, who, with a look of shock on his face said, "Too loud? There's no such thing as too loud on Easter!" Amen to that.

So as I said, for me, Easter is a bigger deal than Christmas, for at Christmas we celebrate the beginning of life, but at Easter we celebrate the ending of death.

I love the way Jesus could be so dismissive of death. That which we often view through the eyes of great tragedy or sorrow, Jesus sees merely as a small bump in the road. I've so often been struck by this at funeral services when the reading about Lazarus is chosen. Mary offers all sorts of reasons that the situation is hopeless - Lazarus is dead, he's already been buried, the stone is in place, he's been in there for four days, there will be an odor - and yet Jesus takes her about as seriously as today's teenagers when they respond with that charming word, "Whatever."

But even though the deity side of Jesus knew that death was no longer an ending, the human side of him still could not help but cry for the loss of a friend.

The Gospel account says nothing about any great theatrics, no lightening flash or thunderclap, nor did the sun eclipse. Jesus offers a brief prayer then says three simple words, "Lazarus, come out" and it's done. Nothing to it. Lazarus in his grave cloths comes out. But I especially love the last thing that Jesus says, "Unbind him, and let him go." Death has no more hold on him than a few fragile strips of cloth. As the hymn says, "…now no more can death appall, now no more the grave enthrall…" This frightening thing we call death, Jesus sees as nothing more than an annoying fly to be swatted away.

In today's Gospel lesson Jesus looks at the people gathered at the house of Jairus and asks them, "Why are you making a commotion and weeping?" as if to say, "Surely you don't take this death stuff seriously, do you? It's nothing." And then as simply as he brought Lazarus out of the tomb, he takes the little girl's hand and tells her to arise. Again, nothing to it. Yet it would appear that this resurrection stuff can be pretty tiring, for just as in after his own resurrection he directs her family to give her something to eat. I can see him standing before his own disciples after he was raised and as their faces are transformed with amazement, and in my own re-writing of the Gospel he would say to them, "Yeah, I know, I was dead but I'm not dead anymore. I need a snack."

Not only is Jesus dismissive of death, but even scripture itself can be just a little bit taunting: "O Death, where is your sting; O Grave, where is your victory?" Thankfully, that victory is now ours. It is our inheritance. Again the Easter collect tells us, "by his death he has destroyed death." Don't you know why the devil is such an angry character? It's because even he knows he's never really going to win.

Though I may be taunted myself I'm going to once again cite another instance from the Oprah Winfrey show. Oprah finds a very deserving woman who is a single mother, has several jobs, a small, poorly furnished home and lots of children, many of whom she's adopted and taken in to care for. Her credit card debts and other bills are up in the the tens of thousands. She's gotten herself into an enormous bind and can see no way out. So Oprah brings her on stage and shows her all her bills, one after another, taped together in a long strand that goes for some 25 feet. Then she flips though each of the bills and says to the woman, "Paid, paid, paid…!" This woman was chosen not simply because of her incredible need, but because she was considered to be incredibly worthy as well. For these reasons, Oprah had chosen to pay all her bills for her.

How wonderful it is that Jesus has done the same for us, yet Jesus manages to go beyond even Oprah's generosity, for he hasn't chosen one from among us, or just a few because of our need and worthiness. Indeed, surely none of us is worthy. I know I'm not. Through our unworthiness we dare not, and in our blindness we cannot ask, yet even without our asking Jesus himself has erased our debt to death for every last one of us. From the cross he looks each one of us in the eye and says, "Paid, paid paid." I ask you, is there any better news than that?

This morning, little Molly Rose will also come to share in that boundless good news, for as our baptismal liturgy says, "that all who are baptized into the death of Jesus Christ may live in the power of his resurrection…" We will be reminded once again that in the water of Baptism "we are buried with Christ in his death" and therefore share in his resurrection.

Recently, I've been thinking a lot more about death after my Father died in early March. He and my Mother both have been dealing with Alzheimer's and they have both been confined to a secure unit in a very caring nursing facility owned and operated by the United Methodist Church in Georgia. My prayer to God has been that they would be free of anxiety and fear, that they might know some measure of happiness, and that the part of their mind that would tell them they're stuck in that place might be one of the parts that Alzheimer's has already taken away.

I worried what Mother's reaction might be if Dad died before she did, but God took care of that for me. They were always in separate rooms, and in the last few months before he died she no longer recognized him when they took her to see him. The stranger with whom she has shared her room is, in her mind, her husband. When Dad died I asked the nurses if they thought it was best to not tell her, and they agreed. When I saw her during my trip to Georgia for the funeral I asked if she had a room mate and she said she did. I asked who it was and she said, "It's my husband, but I don't know where he is at the moment." It was with great confidence that I was able to say to her, "Well, I think I know exactly where he is."

Just before our former deacon and friend, Jeannine Mahon, died a few years ago I wrote an anthem using the beautiful poetry of George Herbert and dedicated it to her. This past Holy Week I know of five churches in the eastern half of the United States who chose to sing my anthem during one of their services. My Father never got to hear one of my compositions while he was alive, but I realized this past Holy Week - he would hear this one. I also realized he would finally meet Jeannine and Bruce and that they might even be mischievous enough to introduce Dad to Ken Hansen. I realized that the baby boy my Mother lost at birth a year before I was born, my brother, would now get to meet his Father. And I realize now every Sunday that Dad can hear me playing, can hear our wonderful choirs singing, and can be caught up with this entire parish, with angels and archangels and with of all the company of heaven of which he is now a part.

From the pen of the Anglican priest and poet, George Herbert, Jesus says to us from the cross:

Betwixt two thieves I spend my utmost breath,

As he that for some robbery suffereth.

Alas! What have I stolen from you? Death.

I don't know about you, but I'm mighty grateful to God for the miracle, gift, and fact of the resurrection.

Amen.

2 July, 2006