Sermon: Easter 2007

April 9, 2007

I am reminded this Easter of a story told by the architect and author George Docsi about a formative event of his youth in Hungary, as recounted in Robert Bly’s short volume entitled A Little Book on the Human Shadow. Docsi explains:

“When I was a boy I loved dinner. I loved to go into the dining room and sit in front of the big plates, and have the maid come in and serve the soup. One evening I went downstairs, and the dining room was in an uproar. A pogrom [a persecution] had taken place in Russia, and many Jews were fleeing over the border into our town. My grandfather went down into the railway station and brought home Jews whom he found there. I didn’t know what was going on, but I could see old men with skull caps in the living room, mothers with nursing babies in the corners of the dining room, and I threw a fit. I said, “I want my supper! I want my supper! One of the maids offered me a piece of bread. I threw it on the floor and screamed, “I want my supper!” My grandfather happened to enter the room at that moment and heard me. He bent down and picked up the piece of bread, kissed it, and gave it to me. I ate it.”

There is something very compelling in George Docsi recollection of his grandfather’s response. The old man did not punish him, nor lecture him; he spoke not even a word to him. Rather, he took to himself the rejected piece of bread, blessed it with a kiss, and gave it back. What understanding; what fidelity; what immeasurable love.

In this season of the Resurrection, my heart is once again filled with the image of Docsi’s grandfather when I heard the familiar words of Luke’s gospel, “On the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices which they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body.” Like the old Hungarian, God had taken what humankind had rejected – the bread of life, the incarnate manifestation of God’s own love – gathered him into God’s self, proclaimed his true identity with a kiss of resurrected life, and given him again to us. Given him again to us who had rejected him, that through him we might receive divine love anew. Without punishment. Without lecture. With not even a word. What understanding; what fidelity; what immeasurable love.

This reality of the Resurrection can be witnessed every single day. God takes what is broken, discarded, given up for loss, and left without hope, and God raises it up, proclaims its divine value with a kiss of new potential, and gives it once more to us to be treasured. Over and over, God does this with our parishes and our communities, with our households and our families, with those whom we love and those whom we despise, with those who care for us and those who cause us harm. And God yearns to do it with me and with you in every aspect of our lives. That is the unimaginable depth of God’s love.

Each of us knows how easy it is to feel defeated by fear or loneliness or despair, by illness or pain or sorrow, to feel isolated by pride or self-pity or envy, by hatred or resentment or helplessness. Each of us knows how easy it is to feel overwhelmed by any of the things the power of evil heaps against us to separate us from the love of God. But nothing is lost to God. When we give any one of these emotions or realities of our lives to God, even the thing we are most ashamed of, most afraid of, or most protective of, God raises it up, kisses it with the blessing of new possibility, and gives it back to us with godly potential.

Neither is a single one of us ever lost to God. When we give ourselves back to God, when, in the words of the Eucharistic prayer, “we offer ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice,” we, like Jesus the Bread of Life, are raised up, kissed with the blessing of new possibility, and returned to the world as grace. Every time we celebrate the Holy Eucharist we live out the mystery of this resurrection, God’s lifting up, transforming, and returning for new and godly use. We do it when we offer to God the elements of bread and wine, and receive them back as the Body and Blood of Christ. We do it when, at the Offertory, we give back to God of the various treasures God has given us, so that they may be renewed in purpose and redirected to serve the misseo Dei, the mission of God. And we do it when each of us steps from the pew into the holy procession that leads to God’s own table where we offer ourselves in our Lord’s own sacrifice, to be made “one body with him, that he may dwell in us and we in him.” With Jesus, we give ourselves back to God that God might lift us up, bless us, and make of us what the world most needs for its healing.

It happens not because of us, but because of God. Not because we deserve it or earn it, but simply and only because God loves us. And as St. Peter proclaimed, God shows no partiality, but wants to draw deeper into faith, deeper into God’s own heart, deeper into true godliness, every precious child of creation, no matter who we are – old or young, poor or rich, well or ill, female or male, white or black, straight or gay, catholic or evangelical, traditional or progressive, liberal or conservative. As God has done with the body of Jesus, the Bread of Life, so God does with you and with me. No matter who we are and what we have become, God raises us to God’s self, kisses us with new life, and gives us back to the world that we might feed it with love. That is the resurrection of the body – Jesus’ body, our bodies, the Church as the Body of Christ.

The Apostles’ Creed, from which come the first three doctrinal questions of our Baptismal vows, proclaims our belief in carnis resurrectionem, that which we translate as “the resurrection of the body.” Carnis means, literally, flesh. That early creed, perhaps first used as a summary of Christian doctrine for baptismal candidates in the fledgling churches in Rome, proclaims the making new by God of the flesh, of our lives, not after this life by some rapturous salvation, but today, in this life, saving us for the immediate and ongoing salvation of all God’s creatures and creation, saving not in the sense of preserving and protecting us as we are for eternity, but rescuing us that we might be something new today. I sometimes wish that a century later the Council of Nicaea might have proclaimed in its great creed that we look for the resurrection of the living, rather than the dead, for that is indeed what the Christian community, then, was claiming. It was not proclaiming new life in the afterlife; it was proclaiming new life in this life, with no one left behind. It was echoing God’s claim through Isaiah, “I am creating new heavens and a new earth…I am creating Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight…no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress…They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit…They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity; for they shall be offspring blessed by God.” If Jesus can raise the dead Lazarus and God can raise the crucified Jesus, surely God can bring to life a humanity that is dead to the needs and the care of this world and her inhabitants, and make us new.

In the five baptismal vows that follow those first three creedal statements, we spell out through our promises to God and one another just what our own resurrected life in this life looks like: worship, change of heart, evangelism, service, and justice. New life in this life. Our salvation for the salvation of all creation. Raised, kissed, and returned. Like George Docsi’s cast down piece of bread, you and I are gathered up by God in Christ’s resurrection, kissed with renewed possibility and life, and given back to a world hungering for healing and peace. To a world ravaged by war, poverty, suffering, and disease, God gives us. For this and nothing less has God made us. All of us. As plain as bread we are. But in Christ, as the Body of Christ, we become the Bread of Life, the Bread of Heaven, bread for the world.

Patiently and faithfully, God provides ceaseless opportunity to draw us deeper into godly life. Relentlessly and continually, God calls us to be Easter people – as Bishop Barbara Harris says, Easter people in a Good Friday world – gathering us in the mystery of the Resurrection wherein we, with Jesus, are lifted up, kissed with the blessing of new life, and returned to the world, that through us the world might partake of the grace and love of God.

When you take into your own hands the Bread of Heaven, perhaps you will recall with me George Docsi’s Hungarian grandfather and the image he reveals of God’s divine understanding, fidelity, and immeasurable love. And most of all remember that in Jesus’ resurrection, you and I are gathered, blessed, and returned to the world in newness of life, to be the bread that feeds her every need.

Alleluia. Christ is risen!

The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!

The Rt. Rev. Mark Hollingsworth, Jr.

Bishop of Ohio