lamentations

I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord;
he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live;
and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.

I know that my Redeemer liveth,
and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth;
and though this body be destroyed, yet shall I see God;
whom I shall see for myself and mine eyes shall behold,
and not as a stranger.

A reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah (25:6-9):

And in this mountain shall the Lord of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined.
And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations.
He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the Lord hath spoken it.
And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us: this is the Lord; we have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation.

O God, whose mercies cannot be numbered: Accept our prayers on behalf of thy servants, who have died in war, civil strife, natural disaster, gang violence, and massacre, and grant them an entrance into the land of light and joy, in the fellowship of thy saints; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (BCP 470)

Have you ever been shot at?
Has anyone ever pointed a loaded gun at you?
Has anyone ever pointed a gun at you and pulled the trigger?
Have you ever heard automatic weapons fire as you laid in your bed at night?
Has a place where you worked, or played, been destroyed by a terrorist act?

 Do any of these questions make you impatient?

They are the sort of past experiences that may have come to mind this past week. By Sunday evening, we knew that people had lost their lives in war, civil strife, gang violence, natural disaster, and a massacre at a Las Vegas concert.

It kind of hits you in the gut. Or not. But if it does, if it is the sort of thing that lingers and eats at you, you are not alone. Here on the border - we are well within 100 miles of Mexico - many of our friends and neighbors have been touched by tragedy, personally or in community.

Veterans, refugees, law enforcement, everyday ordinary people - we all have something to mourn when a mass tragedy occurs. And some of us carry with us the seeds of reaction from a past tragedy. Seed of trauma relived - and also perhaps seeds of compassion.

Newspapers tell us to pray - or forget about it. They tell us to take action - of some sort - for the good of our own souls, if nothing else. That may be wise.

But we as Christians, as a church, have something more to offer - to ourselves, to each other, to God. Yes, we offer prayer - and live and act, knowing our faith is true - knowing that our own Lord was bent by trauma, by the horrific experience of betrayal, interrogation, torture, and death.

And he endured the shock of resurrection. We celebrate all this as we come together this Sunday, as every Sunday, in the Eucharist. And from here, as we take it all in, death, sorrow, comfort, and joy, from here we go forward remembering that God is with us, all of us, in these moments of compassion, remembered grief, cheap advice, and even anger. We go forward -

We go forward in the name of Christ, to bring comfort, honesty, compassion, and fortitude, with resolution, to build, and continue to build, a world in which tragedy does not go unnoticed, where one does not go alone, but where we continue painfully to seek answers, and solutions, even as we know they may be hidden from us.

What we do know is that we are with each other, beyond mourning, because God is with us.

What we do now - and maybe from now on - may look the same as what others do - but we do it in the name of Christ, as servants of the prince of peace. We may look at causes, debate actions, give of ourselves, look out for others, listen patiently - all of it that we do, or don't do, we do knowing we are not alone, we are people of faith, for we know the end of the story: that love is strong, strong as death, and love will last - as God is with us.

Where was God last Sunday? At a country music festival. At a hurricane relief station, lining up for water and food. Carrying a stranger's child across the border from Burma to Bangladesh. In the waiting area of an emergency room. And at a child's bedside as she fell softly to sleep.

God was with us.

God is with us.

God be with you. And me.

Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is
hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where
there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where
there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where
there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to
be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is
in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we
are born to eternal life. Amen. (BCP 833)

Patrick

Ellen Sasahara sent me a copy of a book she had designed: St. Patrick of Ireland: A Biography by Philip Freeman (Simon and Schuster, 2005). Together with the sermon by Herbert O'Driscoll given at Saint Alban's Church, Edmonds, Washington, January 31, 2010, it was the primary resource for this day's preaching. I did not stick to my notes. These are the notes I walked away from:
 

When the world came to an end, it was the summer of the year 410. Rome fell – civilization was erased. A century and more before, Roman officials had executed a Christian martyr in Britannia, one Alban. Then Constantine took legions to the continent and won the imperial throne. But now a century after these events Rome crumbled before the onslaught of a Visigoth horde.

Arthur held together some promise of hope in Britannia. He called it Logres – kingdom of the Grail. And Ninian set sail for the north, Galloway in Caledonia. On the shores looking west and north to Hibernia, however, Irish pirates came across the water and they brought chains. They came for slaves.

One son of a patrician house, now we call him Patrick, was too near the shore, and he was taken. He found himself far across on the other side of a strange island and it was not until he was a teenager (and more) that he left the sheep he’d been set to herd – and walked away, across the island and back across the sea – but to a new future.

He fetched up in a monastery started by Martin of Tours, and he learned a new depth of Christian hope and practice. He was going to be a priest.

Strangely enough it was, then, that this trafficked human, enslaved by the Irish, saw in a dream his calling: to serve those who’d enslaved him, to free his captors. “Come here and walk among us!”

So to Ireland Patrick sailed. He even sought reconciliation with his old master. And he became a champion, confronting the evil of the slave trade, human trafficking.  When in turn Irish Christians, ones he himself had baptized, were captured by British Christian slavers, he wrote an excoriating letter, naming and rebuking one Corocticus, making a plea (a strongly worded one) that the slave-master set his fellow Christians free.

Patrick and other mission bishops brought the gospel to fertile soil in Ireland. They were a people ready to receive the word, and it quickly grew, in part because of the form, or lack of it, he used to carry it.

The world had come to an end, the Roman world, and there was little left to hold onto, few elements of the sacred, clad lightly in poverty – not wealth.

But he embraces that poverty, poverty of worldly means, as he taught people to embrace the only things that mattered, that remained (and as long as we have these, Herbert O’Driscoll taught us, we’ll be all right).

These are just a few things – look at the postcard – six words to define the church – and here are six: story, water, oil, bread, wine, people.

We are the water oil bread wine story people.

We have the gospel – the story of God’s love for humankind, the Spirit’s restless seeking for our souls.

We have the baptismal waters and the oil of Chrism (“you are sealed as Christ’s own for ever”).

We have bread, the bread we need, and wine – sustenance and reminder of the Godly provision of Christ our Savior.

And we are the people imbued by the Spirit, called and gifted to tell the story, immerse and bless, share the Table’s abundance, and – gather others in. For these gifts are not ours to keep to ourselves – they take us, break us, transform us, and make us ambassadors for Christ.

And we love to tell the story, and spread the news. He whom Mary wept over and anointed and served is the One who shed more than tears for us, who died indeed and rose to new life, that he might take us with him, and with us others, that all may be reconciled to God, all be freed.

Working for the simple physical liberation from slavery of trafficking victims, we work also for the liberation of souls – even of those who enslave.

May we live into this costly freedom, heed God’s call, and follow the dream of our own calling, that we may come over and bring Jesus even to those once separated from us by far more than a sea. May we be one in Christ, reconciled to one another God through the power of the Spirit, and the work of our Savior, in whose name we pray, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Isaiah 43:16-21
Psalm 126
Philippians 3:4b-14
John 12:1-8
Fifth Sunday in Lent

Herbert O’Driscoll – 10:30 Service January 31, 2010

JRL+