Easter Vigil and Easter Day 2018

Grace Episcopal Church, Galveston
Gospel: Mark 16:1-8

That which is unknown and unexpected evokes fear.

Take this illustration, for example: you open a kitchen drawer and quickly note, out of the corner of your eye...something was moving in there.  Before you can consciously identify the form as a lizard, your heart is pounding and your legs have seemed to have taken you away on their own.  Only then do you see that you’ve overreacted.  This fight or flight response is as ancient as it is adaptive.  You are hardwired with this unconscious highjacking, so to speak.  Had this been an actual threat you might have been harmed had you needed to stop and think in order to decide what to do.

Our Gospel reading is the rather abrupt ending of the Gospel According to Mark.  It ends on Easter morning, when some of the women who had been following Jesus and who had witnessed his crucifixion went to his tomb.  The Sabbath was over and with the light of dawn, they had a less than pleasant job to do.  As was the custom, they needed to anoint Jesus' body with fragrant spices. To their surprise, they found the stone had been rolled away and inside a messenger in a white robe saying, as angels so often do, “Be not afraid.”  I’m thinking that the words of the mysterious messenger, that Jesus was raised and had left the building, and the sight of the empty platform where Jesus’ body should have been...this unexpected and unknown experience triggered a deep sense of danger and an unconscious flight to safety.  They did not linger to ask questions but ran in fear, their feet taking them away before any pondering could occur.  Can you imagine their thoughts when they did start thinking?  What could the empty platform mean?  What happened to Jesus? What is going on?  Have the Romans taken his body?  Will we be blamed?  Was this a trap?  Are the Chief Priests trying to frame us?  In situations of uncertainty it is so easy to assume the worst.

Of course, we know the story does not end with fear and silence.  Something new had happened...Death was not the final word….Jesus was raised to a new kind of life and would keep revealing himself for a season.  And what of those women?  They would overcome their fear, focus on the words of the angel, and proclaim what they had seen and experienced to Peter and the others.

Fear is not the final word.  And, it is nowhere near the emotion for this day.  Today is all about the joy of the Resurrection!

I think the best kind of learning is associated with joy.  Have you ever been delighted when you’ve suddenly made a connection.  You know, like when you are a child and your family has been telling you about the ocean and what to expect, but you’ve never seen the ocean before...and then you see it for the first time.  If you live in Galveston long enough, you will see parents with their child on the Seawall, and the child is jumping up and down pointing to the water.  The youngster finally experienced what his or her parent had been telling them... the connection was made, a lasting memory formed, endorphins were released, and the feeling was pure joy!

Once I was preparing a sermon for a funeral when a family member of the deceased shared a story.  She had been with her father shortly before his death when she became aware that he was tracking something around the room with his eyes.  She could not see what he was looking at.  Then, she saw a wide smile on his face as though whatever he was seeing brought him great joy and peace.  I knew this man to be a person of strong faith, and wondered, did he make a connection between what he was seeing and something that he had learned in church?  Was he finally seeing for himself what he had known previously only by faith?  Did this learning bring joy to his heart? Would he have pointed while jumping up and down like a child had his failing body allowed it? I wonder.

Today is the celebration of what has been handed down to us of first importance: that Jesus was raised on the 3rd day to a new kind of life...recognizable to us but clearly on a different order.   Jesus has promised that we too will share this life with him.  Jesus went ahead of his disciples to Galilee, and he has gone ahead of all of us to the Father in Heaven.  He has sent the Holy Spirit to inspire and strengthen us in this life, and finally, to help us when it our time to see with our own eyes the first glimpse of the other side.  One day we'll all have the opportunity to make the connection between what we have learned together in this place and the vision of what comes next. 

The Resurrection is not a concern only for the life to come; it means that the Love of God continues, informing how we live our lives, how we treat one another, how we approach everything with a feeling that all manner of things work for the good despite everything we must bear.  With the help of the Holy Spirit, may we all experience, today and every day, a foretaste of the joy to come because we already know that victory belongs to our God.  AMEN.

Why Call It Good Friday?

Palm Sunday, 25 March 2018
Note: Bishop Doyle preaches at Grace Episcopal Church on Palm Sunday.
  

Here is a 2012 post from the blog I maintained while head of school at Trinity.  Kids ask great questions, and here's one to help us focus as we move through Holy Week:

Why do we call this Friday "good?"   This is a perfectly understandable question asked recently by members of our 5th Grade class.  Since the Friday of Holy Week is the day we associate with Jesus' death on the cross, "good" doesn't seem like....a good word to describe it.  On this day, perhaps the year 33 CE, Jesus was put on trial, abandoned by his friends, mocked, scourged, and painfully put to death.  Jesus is in Christian theology the very embodiment of God, in no way deserving of the punishment he received on this infamous day.....so, why call it Good Friday?  First, we need to realize that words can have more than one meaning.  In this case, "good" is used in an old and uncommon sense of "pious" or "holy."  Much in the same way that we might refer to the Bible as the "Good Book."  So Good Friday is a day that is spiritually edifying.  Observing this day puts us in touch with the mystery of God's saving action....which brings me to a second point.  Even in the sense where "good" means helpful or beneficial, we can think of it describing this day.  Good Friday marks the day in history when Jesus demonstrated God's love for us by laying down his life.  He paid the price for our sins and transgressions.  Thanks to Jesus' sacrifice, love is the final word and all of the failings of humanity are, by comparison, like "a live coal dropped into the sea."  When you think of it this way, it really is Good Friday.

5 Lent 2018

Sermon Notes
Grace Episcopal Church, Galveston
5 Lent 2018
The Rev. David C. Dearman

"Switch Gears & Let Go"

In today’s reading from the Gospel According to John (12:20-33) Jesus sees a sign that it is time for him to change course.  Jesus had just entered Jerusalem with his disciples.  The time of the Passover Festival was nearing and many other visitors were in town for the Festival.  Among these visitors were some Greeks, not Greek-speaking Jews, but foreigners who took their spiritual journey seriously enough to want to experience Passover and to see this amazing teacher called Jesus.  When Jesus heard that some Greeks were asking to see him, he saw that as a sign.  He switched gears and began to say, “The hour has come.”  He spoke about how a grain of wheat must fall into the earth before it bears fruit; he spoke about his glorification, he spoke about his being lifted up from the earth.  Of course, he was referring to his death on the Cross.  This is the Glory of God because the Cross is the final sign, the one to which all other signs point.  The Cross is the most poignant outward and visible sign of God’s transformative love.

As Jesus is switching gears from a ministry of teaching to a ministry of laying down his life as the one, full, sufficient sacrifice for our sins, he was also speaking to us.  “Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”  But what do these words mean for us?  For one thing, these words mean that Jesus calls us to be his disciples by following him….to love a life in the service of Jesus so much more than a life following the distorted values of this world.

To borrow words from our Wednesday speakers, Brother Michael and Father Peter, we are called not to adore Jesus, but to serve him.  That means going forth from this Church and being ministers, that is, being the hands and feet of Jesus to our neighbors.  This reading is merely dust and ashes unless we ask ourselves how we are called to switch gears, let go of selfishness, and enter more fully into the role of a Jesus servant.  Adoring Jesus from a distance is easy but what Jesus asks of us is difficult.  Why? Because Jesus calls us out of complacency to roll up our sleeves, get our hands dirty, and take seriously Jesus’ command to love our neighbor.  Lent reminds us that following Jesus is not about a comfort zone, being a disciple means trying to make a real difference in the world.  And if you are going to do something significant, be the change you want to see in others, then you will be vulnerable...I wish it weren’t so, but that’s the deal.

Another angle on the lesson here is that we have to discern what to let go.  I recall a story read to our children many times when they were young.  The book, entitled Henry’s Awful Mistake, was written by Robert Quackenbush and told the story of a homeowner who was preparing to entertain a friend with dinner.  This was a first date, so Henry wanted everything to be perfect.  While he was preparing dinner, he saw an ant.  He stopped his work on dinner and began to go after that ant.  He was worried that his friend would think his home was not clean, and this feeling fueled his frenzy to find that ant.  He pulled out chairs, table and appliances eventually going after the ant with a hammer as it was crawling up the wall.  On his last try, he missed the ant but ended up crashing through the sheetrock and breaking a water line.  Water spewed everywhere, the date had to be called off, and the house needed extensive repairs.  The story picks up again months later in his new home when once again he is attempting dinner for his friend.  As he answers the door, he sees the ant again….and having learned a valuable lesson, this time, he simply looks the other way. Henry learned to let go of obsessing over that imperfection.

I love this story because it teaches children, and their parents, the problem with obsessing over small things. It reminds us that we should learn to let go of things that are not really important, especially when we start to obsess over them...when reason “leaves the station,” so to speak.

So today’s Gospel reading reminds us of our calling to follow Jesus. Doing this joyfully depends on our letting go of things in life that hold us back from serving joyfully.  When we are obsessed over perfection, unwilling to begin serving Christ until this or that has been completed, we are called to switch gears. In Lent, we might take the opportunity to let go and begin to experience greater freedom to follow where Jesus leads.  The obsessions may be different for each of us, but the calling is the same.  We must “hate” or reject any life that draws us apart from God in order to enter a spiritually abundant life closer to God.  With the help of God’s Holy Spirit may our journey this Lent see us responding anew to the transformative power of the Cross.  In this way, may we glorify God by serving the One first glorified on the Cross, the One who calls us by saying, “Follow me.” AMEN.

4 Lent 2018

Sermon Notes
Grace Episcopal Church, Galveston
4 Lent 2018
The Rev. David C. Dearman

"Hope is the Feathered thing that Perches in the Soul - Emily Dickinson, American Poet as quoted by Meg Murray in A Wrinkle in Time."

A new movie is out this weekend based on Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time.  I have not seen the movie but can heartily recommend the book.

L'Engle died in 2007 but her influence lives on into a new generation.  You should know that she was an Episcopalian, and her faith informed her writing.  Although I met her only once, I can claim her as a spiritual mentor because I have read and reread her journal-based books on theology, art, and Christian life. The books are so personal, it's like she's sitting next to me sharing her life story.

I don't want to give away the plot of "Wrinkle," but will say that it is a story of good versus evil, of how we must struggle to know our value against forces that tempt us to think we are not worthy of love.  It is a story in which faith, hope, and love are gifts we have been given to sustain us and to allow us to battle the adversary.

The story enfleshes the idea that, when you boil it down, there really are only two choices in life, two ways of seeing, two frameworks, two paradigms, two ways to live your life in each moment: love and fear.  Love is related to faith and hope...but the greatest of these is love.

In our reading from the Book of Numbers we see that our spiritual ancestors were having a crisis of faith.  Their wilderness journey was becoming tedious; the power of God to save them from the Egyptians was a distant memory; the miraculous manna now seemed dull and repetitious.  Life in the wilderness was no picnic and there seemed to be no end in sight.  The people lost faith and with it their hope that something better was coming.  Some may have wanted to return to slavery in Egypt, a small price to pay for better food and security.  The people became angry and looked to blame God and Moses...and to make matters worse, they came to believe that God was punishing their lack of faith with an infestation of poisonous snakes.  The people were in a pickle and given the choice between love and fear, they had taken the route of fear, hook, line, and sinker.

In desperation, the people asked Moses to plead with God on their behalf.  God heard them and gave Moses the instruction to create a sign of hope for the people:  Moses created out of bronze the image of a snake and lifted it on a staff for the people to see.  

It is hard for us to see the import of this symbol because the snake has such negative connotations.  (Garden of Eden, visceral, subconscious reaction we've inherited from our ancestors, etc.) In history and legend, the snake was a symbol of healing, perhaps due originally to the snake's ability to slip out of its skin and emerge anew.  I'm also reminded that the anti-venom needed to counteract a snake's poison is made from that same poison. Even today, we often see the staff of Asclepius (one snake coiled around a staff) or the Caduceus of Hermes (two snakes around a staff in a double helix) used in the medical profession.

In our reading from the Gospel According to John, Jesus speaks of the snake lifted up for healing in the wilderness as a kind of prefiguring of his own death on the cross.  The cross is a negative symbol if there ever was one... it signified state execution, after all.  It was something that evoked fear and shame at the same time.  But, God's love has transformed the Cross into a sign of our healing.  Jesus was lifted up, so that by faith, we might have the power to choose love over fear.

In Lent, we remember that life is a wilderness.  Madeleine L'Engle taught that God does not promise us a life without challenge.  "A comfort zone was never part of the deal." (Anyone with mileage knows that is an understatement.)  In times of stress, we are called to gaze upon the Cross, so to speak, to seek healing and transformation in this tangible sign of God's love for us. 

I close with my favorite Madeleine L'Engle quote: "Faith is what makes life bearable with all its tragedies and ambiguities and sudden, startling joys." from Walking on Water, Chapter One "Cosmos from Chaos." AMEN.

Lent Police: Hot Cross Bunnies

Stuffed rabbits displayed during Lent...they don't look pleased, do they? I spotted them at the Buccee's off 290 near Camp Allen the last weekend of February.

3 Lent 2018

Sermon Outline
Grace Episcopal Church, Galveston
3 Lent 2018
The Rev. David C. Dearman

“The Rule of Love: When the Commandments Are Written on our Hearts”

I. The 10 Commandments: the Core of God’s Law

The idea of “right and wrong” is common to humanity

Any drive up to Houston along I-45, and you will identify someone doing something clearly wrong! Speeding, going too slow, driving recklessly, failure to secure items on a truck bed.  What if most people did not obey traffic laws?

The Code of Hammurabi predates the 10 Commandments by hundreds of years

Ancestors in faith saw the 10 Commandments not as the edict of an earthly ruler who was in turn authorized by God, but as God’s law written by the finger of God...a divine gift

The Commandments so revered that the tablets were kept in the Ark of the Covenant….in the most sacred place in Solomon's Temple, the Holy of Holies

II. 10 Commandments in Lent

Anyone who considers the commandments and comes away feeling successful and smug has been deceived

Three examples:

1. You shall have no other gods before me (Our “ultimate concern” so often something different)

2. Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy (difficult in a 24/7 world)

3. You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor (desire and being self-centered pull us toward jealousy)

III. Bottom Line: we are measured and found lacking every time

IV. The Cleansing of the Temple

John places early in Jesus ministry to show that Jesus replaces the Temple, like the wine replaces the water in Cana

For Christians, obedience to God’s Law is important but it is not at the center of faith

For Christians the center of our faith is the Cross (what saves us is not our own obedience to rules but our trust in Jesus whose death paid the price for sin.)

The Law helps to convict us, helps us to know in our bones that we have fallen short and are called to repent and seek renewal of life.

V. Today’s story of Jesus is just dust and ashes unless we also ask what Jesus seeks to cleanse from our own lives.

The Grace of God is no cheap Grace...it comes with a spirit who drives us into the wilderness of repentance and renewal, of forgiveness and call to change, from death into life. ...and we are moved by the spirit in this way again and again

VI. The 10 commandments are a gift from God: Jesus Seeks to Write them on our Hearts

the rule of law is central to living in any community...but the commandments are not the power of God. The Power of God is always the Cross. In the end, the power to transform us is Love...that is the power by which each of us will be healed, love is the light we are asked not to hide under a basket, love is the pearl of great price, Love is the new commandment given to all who would put their trust in Jesus. When we answer the call to Love God and Neighbor, this is the move from the commandments being written on stone, to being written on our hearts. Amen.