Our sermon for the Day of Pentecost is given by Eugenie Dieck, a licensed lay preacher. She talks about daring to be wonderfully awkward as we go out and share the gifts we have received, particularly the gift of our faith.

Today's readings are:

Acts 2:1-21

Psalm 104:25-35, 37

Romans 8:22-27

John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net for the Day of Pentecost, Year B

Transcript:

[Introductory music]

[Eugenie Dieck] May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

Let's begin with a hypothetical moment. You have just been given a gift that grows if you share the gift with others. What will you do? My guess is that you will share the gift. However, sharing can be hard. We hope some of the gift will be left for us. And we have to trust that other people will want the gift. Finally, we have to maintain our generosity if the gift is refused.

Today is Pentecost Sunday when the apostles, and all of us, are given the gift of the Holy Spirit. Pentecost Sunday, for all its drama of wind, and flames, and speaking in tongues, is really straightforward - Pentecost Sunday is about how the Holy Spirit enables us to share the gift of Jesus Christ with others.

Our work, as the laity, is not primarily in this church building and on this campus. Our work is in the world. We come to St. Martin's to be together and to be renewed. We leave our church home to go out into the world to do the work God has given us to do. Yes, this work involves good works and our daily labors, but it also involves the work of proclaiming the message of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.

As Christians, we do our work in a world that can be indifferent, or even hostile, to the gift of Jesus Christ. Talking about our beliefs, and taking actions based on these beliefs, can be AWKWARD. The word "awkward" means to cause difficulty, to deal with something that is hard and may even be embarrassing. I assert that if we are truly evangelizing, we are intentionally being awkward. We are causing difficulty. Let's embrace the awkward, take joy in the awkward, because we are sharing, through the gift of the Holy Spirit, the gift of Jesus Christ.

Here's how I live into the wonderfulness of the awkward...here's my evangelism story.

I preach at St. Martin's, and I tell people outside of St. Martin's that I am a preacher. Both preaching and talking about preaching are evangelism. As you might guess, when I tell people that I preach many of the responses are a combination of confused looks, long silences, and earnest questions: Why do you preach? What do you talk about? Do sermons make a difference? Aren't you scared?

Why do I preach?

I preach to sing a song of praise to God. Preaching is my aria of belief. When I preach, I share God's love. The love I have for God and God has for me is real love - with sorrows and joys, failures and achievements. Most of all, this love is unconditional and constant because of the promise of salvation. I preach to encourage each of you to share God's love, to sing your song of praise.

The pivot of Pentecost is that the Apostles were free to go into the world and declare the message of Jesus Christ. How do you declare? That is not a hypothetical question. I ask each of you "what is your declaration of faith?"

Do others - your family, friends, acquaintances, and colleagues - know how much being a Christian, an Episcopalian, and a member of St. Martin's means to you?

What do I talk about when I preach?

Sometimes when I preach, I start softly and gently for tentative folks. I will talk about God. I talk about hope. I talk about ways to love others when it is hard to be loving. Other times, I share the whole massive gift -- I talk about Jesus and the Trinity, about salvation and the resurrection, about sin, repentance and forgiveness.

My enthusiasm overtakes me, and I admit my enthusiasm may overwhelm others.

I startle some people on purpose to create the AWKWARD. Not for me, but for God.

When the apostles spoke in tongues, they were giving away their belief, they were sharing the gift and they were letting go...they were speaking as the Holy Spirit directed, in languages that could be understood by others. The apostles were proclaiming Jesus Christ and they were not in control - the apostles were experiencing the AWKWARD.

I invite you into the AWKWARD - Are you willing to be awkward for Jesus Christ?

Do sermons make a difference?

That is not a question I can answer definitively. The difference a sermon makes doesn't necessarily happen on a given Sunday or in the same way for everyone.

Some years ago, I gave a sermon that evoked extreme reactions - one person said they were deeply, profoundly blessed by the sermon and another person shared that the sermon filled them with rage.

Confusing...perhaps at first, but not really when we consider how faith lives in each of us. I thanked each person for their honesty and suggested they weave their feelings of joy or rage back into their prayer life. The sermon I preached made a difference only because it prompted further conversations with God.

The sermon is never about the sermon itself.

A sermon is like the apostles speaking in tongues - one person experiences great joy, another person erupts with anger. Both of these emotions are real experiences of faith. The purpose of a sermon is to share faith with people; God will take it further.

So, what language has the Holy Spirit given to you? To whom are you called to proclaim the gifts of faith?

Am I scared when I preach?

This is such a great question, as it asks, "what are you afraid of?" Are you afraid of what others may think? Are you afraid of failing? Are you just afraid?

I am not afraid to preach. I feel full of courage and joy to talk about God, in God's house, surrounded by friends. Preaching is not scary.

What is scary is to be a proclaiming Christian in a hostile world.

Proclaiming, "I believe in Jesus Christ."

Proclaiming, "All that I am and all that I may become is because of the courage given to me by the Holy Spirit."

Proclaiming, "I am a breath of love in this world because God's full breath of creation brought me into existence."

Proclaiming is scary and exhilarating and awkward. Rational people do not say these things. Faithful people do, this faithful person does. Perhaps faith is not rational and that is part of the gift. Faith is transformative and transporting, which is wonderfully scary.

What is scary for you? How do you proclaim your faith?

Let's go back to the trick hypothetical question...what are we going to do with the gift that grows when we share with others? What ARE we going to do with our faith in Jesus Christ?

Someone may have shown you the way or may be supporting your faith right now. Others need your faith, no matter how tentative or challenged you think your faith may be. Your faith might be a small light and not a huge flame, but your faith really matters. Your faith may be the gift to bring someone out of darkness. Today, my proclamation is emphatic. Your proclamation may be a gentle whisper. All proclamations are gifts worth sharing.

At the end of today's service, we will leave this comforting place and encounter a world hostile to Jesus Christ.

As a Christian, you may be afraid and feel awkward, I am afraid and awkward much of the time, so I trust God.

I urge you to trust God, to have enough trust to be like the Apostles drunk with belief, and love, and hope, this morning and every morning.

Let us go forth from this place to do the work God has given us to do.

Proclaim the gift of Jesus Christ, share the gift of faith with abandon.

Be awkward and be fearless. The Holy Spirit is with you and me and all of us.

Happy Pentecost Sunday. Amen.

Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187. All rights reserved.

Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org

In his sermon for the Seventh Sunday of Easter, the Rev. Jarrett Kerbel likens the gap between the Ascension and the arrival of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost to a committee meeting. Without their beloved leader and protector to guide them, they turn to control and tidy order. Is this what God wants for us? Or is there something more on the way?

Today's readings are:

Acts 1:15-17, 21-26

Psalm 1

John 17:6-19

Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net for the Seventh Sunday of Easter

Transcript:

[Introductory music]

[The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel] Please join me in a spirit of prayer.

Lord God, you have opened our minds and hearts to many new revelations in this past year. But chiefly have we learned how much we need you to sustain a life that we might even begin to call Godly. Lord God, in our exhaustion, in our knowledge of our limits, and our humility we know that we need you and we need your Holy Spirit. Lord God, plant us by streams of living water so that we may live in glory to your name. Amen.

Please be seated.

My wife had a very pious and devout secretary when she worked at Bucknell University. Her name was Ruth Craven, God rest her soul, and she loved to repeat the following joke. It's a church joke. So, Ruth would say again and again to my wife, "A pastor got into the pulpit and said I've had a long and difficult week with many challenges that prevented me from preparing my sermon as I usually do. So today I will be trusting in the Holy Spirit. Next week, continues the pastor, I promise I will do better."

These unnamed 11 days, this odd season of the church, this anxious, uncertain interim 11 days after Ascension Day and before Pentecost, are here to remind us how much we need the Holy Spirit if we are to take on the mission of Jesus Christ in a hostile world.

The gathering of the Jesus people after the Ascension and before the Holy Spirit is portrayed in our reading from Acts of the Apostles and many commentators see a warning in it - this is what the church without the Holy Spirit looks like. It looks like a committee meeting.

The Acts of the Apostles reading reads like the minutes of the first church meeting. Behold the banal birth of the bureaucratic organization soon to be known, after it is born again from above by the Holy Spirit, as The Church. A technical problem is identified, we have 120 members and only 11 leaders and 12 would be much more orderly. 10 per liter, and the 12 tribes of Israel, and such so, we need one more leader and all will be tidy. There's a three-step process: nominations based on qualifications, prayer, and the good old Torah practice of casting lots. Even the nominees are lackluster. One has three names listed, as if in retrospect the author is not sure who he was, and Matthias never appears in scripture again.

However, all is in order. All is tidy. That is, after all, what God wants, isn't it?

No, it's not.

This is not what Jesus has been prepping the disciples for over 40 days from Easter to Pentecost. He wasn't teaching them Robert's Rules. "Be my witnesses to all nations," says Jesus. "I send you out into the world," says Jesus. "Why are you standing there looking into heaven?" says the man dressed in white on Ascension.

We are not leaving the world with Jesus. We are not an other-worldly faith. We are not avoiding the hostile world and living lives of faith in an easier place. We are sent back into the same empire that crucified Jesus to live the life that got him crucified, and that is why we need the Holy Spirit. We will need the life of God in us. We will need to be so wrapped up in the inner life and the mutual love shared between the Creator and the Son if we have any chance of living lives of witness and mission. Lives of healing and peacemaking. Lives of loving and restoring in Jesus' name. The name of that shared inner life, that mutual, loving relationship. The name of what flows in the life of God is the Holy Spirit and we need it.

Jesus knows what we will need if we are to do what he charges us to do. We hear it in his great prayer in the Gospel of John today. Three times Jesus mentions protection; two times in petition for his community and once referring to himself as the protector, the guard. This is a prayer for the ears of an anxious community. An anxious community in transition, feeling threatened, feeling loss, feeling vulnerable, feeling edgy. Abandonment is one of our most primal hard-wired fears. In the 11 days the disciples face that fear head-on. Are we being abandoned by the One who loves us and protects us? Who provides our basic need for security and safety, they wonder with nerves on edge.

But not only are they confronting the most basic fear we all share, there's more. They know they are to be sent out into that same hostile world that murdered their leader. So they are also afraid of opposition. They are afraid of hostility. They are afraid of vulnerability in the service of mission. They are wondering to themselves, "so are we now abandoned and exposed to a threatening empire alone and without recourse?" This crucial moment begs the question, can we do this on our own?

The answer is a resounding, no. Followed quickly by, we need the Holy Spirit.

We cannot sustain ourselves, we cannot sustain our community, we cannot sustain our mission and witness and faith in a hostile world without the gift of the Holy Spirit.

See you next week.

Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields.

Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org

On this Sixth Sunday of Easter, as we celebrate Mother's Day and Jesus's abiding love for us, the Rev. Carol Duncan leads us on a visualization into the "elemental love of parents for children and of God for us".

Today's readings are:

1 John 5:1-6

Psalm 98

John 15:9-17

Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year B.

Transcript:

[Introductory music]

[The Rev. Carol Duncan] Please pray with me.

Holy One, here we are to bask in the glow of your mothering love you have given us life. Open our ears and our hearts to your invitation to abide as your children in the endless outpouring of your love Amen. Please be seated. So nice to see so many people here; I just love it!

Mother's Day gives us space to talk about love. Mothers may feel more freedom to talk about love than is generally considered polite in european heritage culture. Mother's Day is such a simple holiday. We sometimes diminish it to a greeting card, but all of us entered life through being born of our mothers. Our mothers bore us. Our God sustains our lives and gives us meaning and purpose. I want to celebrate the elemental love of parents for children and of God for us.

This morning I am inviting us to revel in Jesus's love poured out in today's Gospel. Open your imagination to the invitation to join Jesus's disciples at their last gathering. The space and time of this morning is sacred and holy. Allow your mind's heart to enter the presence of Jesus the Eternal One. Take a deep breath and let it out. Let your shoulders fall. Close your eyes if that helps you imagine. Jesus's true words come to us in scripture so that with the company of saints we, in our time, and our children and our children's children can find the true vision faithfully over the years. Discover yourself now in your mind's heart. Discover yourself in a room whose thick walls block out any outside sound.

We are seated at a table. It is night. Feel your clean, bare feet that earlier this evening Jesus has knelt down before you to wash. Feel your stomach satisfied from a simple meal with unleavened bread and several cups of wine. Hear the gentle interweaving of conversational threads. Mention of Jesus works of healing, mourning the rejection of him by some, a bit about the frantic Passover preparation that got us here, amazement at the throngs of worshipers in Jerusalem. Feel as well a backwash of discomfort from the sudden departure of Judas which reminded us how closely the authorities are tracking our movements. They want to accuse us of sedition, or worse.

Lean in now, close up Judas's place. Lean in a little closer to hear Jesus's soft clear voice. His breath sweetly caresses your cheek as he speaks. The warmth of bodies surrounds you. Listen: "As my Father loves me, so I love you."

I love you. My love is your dwelling, your home. To know my love, to inhabit this home, practice loving as I love. As my Abba loves me. when you live in this love you will experience my joy, my complete joy, as I have felt with you. Breathe in my abiding love. Take in my joy. My simple, single commandment is that you love one another as I have loved you.

I have loved you with my life. Being with you, showing you what it means to love the people we have encountered. You have been with me. You have served the crowds that we met. You are no longer servants, you are my dear ones, my friends. I chose you because I know that you will carry out this work of love.

The work we've done and the words you've heard from me will endure. My Father's purpose and desire that generations will experience his love are planted and will bear fruit through you. I am speaking openly about how much I love you, so that you can hear it clearly.

Love one another. Find ways to show your love. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another. Breathe in, know I love you. Breathe out, know I love you.

We are the ones Jesus has chosen. Ours is the joy of the Eucharistic feast whether they're taken physically or spiritually. We move now into the practice of love in the Eucharist.

Keep breathing, keep loving, enjoy Mother's Day.

Amen.

Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187. All rights reserved.

Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org

The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel's sermon for Eastertide Evensong brings together preteen questions about the Seven Deadly Sins, ancient Greek philosophy, Emmanuel Kant, the arts, and a very powerful set of very good friends. All to remind us who we are, whose we are, and how we live into it.

This evening's readings are:

Wisdom of Solomon 7:22-8:1

Matthew 7:7-14

Readings may be found on Mission of St. Clare

Officiant: The Rev. Barbara Ballenger

Preacher: The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel

Crucifer: Riley Prell

Director of Music: Tyrone Whiting

St. Martin's Vocal Ensemble: Krystiane Cooper, Alyson Harvey, Ross Druker, John Wentz, Martha Crowell, Jean McConnell, David Cybulski, Ralph West

Lectors: Leni Windle and Harry Gould

Liturgical Support: Cathy and Gary Glazer

Tech Director: Daniel Cooper

Altar Guild: Tina Bell

In the Same Breath

Sermon by the Rev. Jarrett Kerbel for Eastertide Evensong

Sunday, May 2, 2021

Using readings from the Daily Office

[Introductory Music]

[The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel] Please join me in a spirit of prayer.

Blessed Creator God, we give you thanks for the gift of your Sophia, your wisdom that pervades all you have made with your love and your goodness. She reflects your eternal light. She is a spotless mayor of your workings. She passes into holy souls and makes us friends of God and prophets, for God loves nothing so much as the person who lives with wisdom. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Well, welcome back to Evensong! Isn't this great? Except for the 16 layers of clothes I'm wearing, it's fantastic.

So, at our church, there is a junior high student who loves to engage me in theological and ethical discussions. I relish his engagement. Nothing quite tests a seminary education like a preteen. His favorite recent topic - drum roll please - is the seven deadly sins. Today he asked me the profound question, "Jarrett can you rank them in order from the worst to the least bad", certainly not the best.

"Which deadly sins are more serious than the others?" he asked. "That is hard to answer," I replied, "After all, they are all deadly. It's hard to get worse than that." So I asked him, "Which ones are you concerned about?" He replied, "Pride and sloth. Pride is just being proud of yourself," he said, "what is wrong with that?" "Well," I said, "Yes, that's very good. Here's how I think it works: healthy pride is in the middle. That is, when we mirror God's delight in us and our delight in ourselves much like Sophia, on the one end there is too much pride and on the other too little pride. It's on the edges where sin comes into play," I said. "Same with sloth. That's a fun word to use. Healthy leisure is in the middle that God delights in, on one side is too much indolence and on the other side of the spectrum we're overworking and addicted to our work."

He accepted this answer with a thoughtful look and I spared him the footnotes. You get the footnotes. What I taught him, and this is crucial to my sermon, comes from Thomas Aquinas. And before Thomas Aquinas it came from the great Greek philosopher Aristotle. Healthy Christianity has this long, healthy, happy history of productive relations with reason, philosophy, science, logic, and all the liberal arts and I want to celebrate that. I want to celebrate that connection at this evensong where we have a glorious passage from the Wisdom of Solomon and we have the Golden Rule from the Gospel according to Matthew. Let's take that Golden Rule and the categorical imperative as a place to start. "Act as you would want all other people to act towards all other people," says Immanuel Kant. "In everything, do to others as you would have them do to you, for this is the law and the prophets," says Jesus. "Using pure reason alone, the great philosopher arrives at the same truth as Jesus speaks from tradition and revelation. And I'm not the first one to point out that Kant setting out to strip away all tradition and revelation still manages to discover 18th century Protestant theology in the process.

For the attentive reader of the Bible, this should be no surprise at all. We know that God speaks the lean language of reason. God speaks the logos. God speaks the Sophia. God speaks in tradition, in story, revelation, science, poetry, and all the arts in the same breath. The name of that breath is Sophia, and she is celebrated as an emanation, an outpouring of God's inner life, in this gorgeous passage from the Wisdom of Solomon. Using the language of middle Platonism, the unknown Egyptian author who is masquerading in this book as King Solomon, lays out the gift of wisdom for an imaginary audience of all the world's leaders. So, not only does God's wisdom exist in everything, it's available to all people. Wisdom is God's voice speaking through all of God's creation, showing us order, purpose, meaning, and process. Ultimately showing us a loving God who delights in all that God has made. The whole world communicates. The world is intelligible to us. The world is impregnated with God's loving presence and we are part of God's communicating abundance as learners, listeners, explorers, thinkers, singers, worshipers, scientists, on and on. I love this so much because we have an image here of wholeness. An image that brings all parts of humanity together. Reason and knowledge are not merely for dismantling, they're not merely for disintegrating.

Stuck in the terms of stale 19th-century reductive rationalism, we can be caught thinking that when we take a car apart we prove there was no car in the first place, just a lot of parts. Stuck in a stale 19th-century debate we think science and religion are incompatible. We react to a reductive science with an equally reductive fundamentalist religion and we go nowhere. Stuck in 20th-century scientism we think knowledge is the sole province of the scientific method and while it is so abundant in truth, there's a more-than. There is room for more and there is this wonderful web of liberating, loving, communal wisdom we hear praised in the Wisdom of Solomon and gorgeous poetry.

Every spring I start flowers from seed under a grow light in my mudroom. Nothing fancy. My favorite flower is the morning glory. First, two leaves spring up and then two more come after that. By this week we have a vine growing at a rapid pace, two or three inches a day, that finds the nearest vertical structure and starts climbing it, at least in my mudroom, in a counterclockwise direction. I want to know if in Argentina it goes the other way. But that's the curiosity we're talking about here, right? The world is wonderful! What if it does go clockwise in Argentina? That is God's whimsy, I would say, and gravity and something else. It's all good, see? It all works together. Without eyes, this plant has no eyes, it finds this vertical support, searches out, grabs it and climbs it while reproducing cells at an astounding rate. I would love to hear the complete biological account of this plant behavior. I really do want to learn that and, and this is an and, I want to delight in it. I want to take joy in it and wonder from observing it and I want to thank God for it, all in the same breath. All in the same breath, the breath of Sophia, where all knowing comes together as God's mystery, spoken so we can receive it.

Now, you'll excuse me but we're going back to Kant. And I love Kant. He's hard to argue with, God forbid I would try. Yet he almost got it right. Almost. There's a more. You see, if you start off with a false dichotomy you end up with half of an answer, or less. When you split tradition and reason you lose something, something is lost. It is absolutely true that we owe to others what is owed to us. In our humanity, however we resist it, and we do, however we violate it constantly, reserving it for family and friends, reserving it for people we like and people like us, reserving it for local people and not people far away, and on and on and on, but here's what Kant misses: God owes us nothing.

God gives us everything without owing us one thing at all. This is grace. We are not entitled to God's freely-given forgiveness, or God's freely-given love, or God's freely-given son. Only through what God graciously gives us are we restored to live the grace of the Golden Rule. To live the grace of the categorical imperative. That is God's dream of wholeness that God breathes into us. God's dream of humanity reharmonized with creation and reason and every other way of human perception and discovery. God breathes God's reconciliation through it all. And her name is grace. And she is a very good friend of Sophia.

Amen.

Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187. All rights reserved.

Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466.

https://www.stmartinec.org

In her sermon for the fifth Sunday of Easter, the Rev. Barbara Ballenger admits to some hesitancy to be in the powerless and vulnerable position of prune-able branch of Christ the vine. She also reminds us that our job is to stay with the vine and that, "Our role as disciples of Jesus, as branches of the vine of Christ, is to help people find God's love right at hand."

Today's readings are:

1 John 4:7-21

Psalm 22:24-30

John 15:1-8

Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net

Transcript:

[Introductory Music]

[The Rev. Barbara Ballenger] Let us pray: Lord Christ, help us to recognize you in the love that flows through us, in the way we bloom and bear fruit. Amen. Please, be seated.

This past Earth Day the Climate Action Team led a sunset compline walk along Forbidden Drive down by the Valley Green Inn. Between evening prayers, parishioner Sue MacQueen invited us to tune into the sounds and the sights of the vast network of life that we were part of. At one point she called our attention to a dead tree. A living tree might hold a hundred different species of life within it, she said. But a seemingly dead tree is teaming with life, housing and nourishing thousands of species of all kinds.

That shouldn't have been a very hard concept for me to grasp, given how complex and interconnected a species we ourselves are, how reliant we are on systems upon systems of relationships. But at that moment I felt a little like an outsider staring at a city from a great distance. It can be very hard for me to shake the great myth of individualism that shaped me, the sense that I'm a free agent, self-made by myriad individual choices. It can be very hard for me to see myself in the bigger picture, how I'm shaped by what I'm a part of and what is part of me.

The NIH reminds me that the micro-organisms that my body hosts outnumber my human cells 10 to 1. I don't like to think about that all that much.

But even if I set dead trees and gut flora aside, today I'm faced with the story of the Vine and the Branches, in which I'm invited to see myself as a small, prune-able part of something that's largely out of my control, while channeling within me the generative power of God's love.

"Abide in me as I abide in you," Jesus says in today's Gospel from John. "Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me."

How exactly do God and I abide in one another? Abide, it's a word that means to remain with or to stay with. And it means to live. Remain in me as I remain in you. Live in me as I live in you.

The vine is a brilliant metaphor for this. In Jesus, God plants the divine self in creation, and the Christ, the Word of God, emerges in our world like a vine -- reachable and knowable and believable. The life-sap of that vine is the love that the author of First John is talking about, bursting out in branches and flowers and fruit. Who are those branches? You are those branches, Jesus tells his disciples. We are those branches, he tells us. And our job - allow that love to bloom, bear fruit.

The Scripture writers knew that this cooperation with God may seem simple, but it's certainly not easy. You don't usually get admonitions to love one another if everyone is already doing a great job of it. Moses gave us the 10 commandments after all, not the Top 10 list of Israel's best qualities.

The health and wellbeing of the vine as a metaphor for the health of Israel's relationship with God is found throughout Scripture. Isaiah points out how much tending a vineyard requires - a bit different from those seeds that are thrown willy nilly on all sorts of ground. Vineyards are planted very intentionally, protected with walls. Watchtowers are built to guard the harvest so it isn't stolen. The vineyard master waters and tends the vines.

In the Hebrew Scriptures, Israel is the vine that God plants and tends. God often laments the quality of harvest when God's people produce wild, inedible grapes and the wood of their vine isn't good for anything but burning. Until Jesus himself becomes the vine in John's Gospel. Jesus is Israel at its most faithful -- fully covenanted, abiding completely in God. And in Jesus, the ancient promise of the wider world coming to God through Israel occurs.

But this didn't prevent the strife that grew up among the members of the early Christian communities, especially the ones for whom this Epistle and Gospel were intended. Their disagreement over teachings about Jesus threatened the whole faithful enterprise they were part of.

The advice the Epistle writer gives them is: let God love through you. Let that love push out the fear that causes communities to split apart. The Gospel writer would say: remain a living branch on the bigger vine that is Christ.

To participate in the generative work of God in the world, one has to stay with the vine. Disciples who have lost access to the love that flows from that divine relationship will not bear fruit, and their faith will die, and they will fall away, or be trimmed away by the vine grower.

I have to admit the metaphor of the vine and branches makes me a little uncomfortable when I really think about it. First, being a branch is a pretty passive role - not like being the hands and feet of Jesus or heading off to pasture with the flock. Being a branch feels more like letting everything happen through me, without my complete control. In the metaphor of the vine and the branches, there's a whole lot of pruning going on, and I'm not in control of the clippers.

Maybe it's easy to lose sight of who we are in metaphors like these - perhaps we confuse God's role with ours.

Throughout John's Gospel, Jesus explains who he is in a variety of ways, many of which start with an I am statement. Now in biblical language, especially in the Hebrew Scriptures, I Am refers to God. When Moses asks the voice in the burning bush what name to give it, God replies: I AM Who I AM. So whenever you run into the phrase "I AM" in the scriptures, pay attention, because God is near.

So Jesus says in various places in John's Gospel: I am the bread of life, I am the light of the world, I am the door or the sheep gate; I am the good shepherd; I am the resurrection; I am the way, the truth and the life; I am the vine. Each one of these statements describes not only who Jesus is, but who God is in relation to humanity - each describes how God reaches out to humanity through Jesus.

That begs the question: who are we then in these descriptions? We are table guests; we are travelers on a path following a light; we are receivers of truth; we are sheep who are led and protected; we are the dead restored to life; we are branches that bear the fruit of God's love in the world.

Without this dynamic mutuality, this systemic life in God, Jesus becomes just a historical figure, or worse yet, an idol. Belief becomes an argument and the church becomes a discriminating club. I wonder sometimes if people's distaste for Christianity is really a distaste for those things - the idol, the apologetics, the club. I have to believe that the world does have a taste for, in fact a deep thirst, for the love of God that is described in First John.

Who doesn't want life, and a deliverance from and a righting of the world's evils? Who doesn't want to be free of fear? Who doesn't want to be forgiven instead of punished? Who doesn't want to be included and accepted rather than despised and hated? Who doesn't want the boldness and confidence and courageous relationships that come from that kind of love?

Our role as disciples of Jesus, as branches of the vine of Christ, is to help people find God's love right at hand.

In these demanding and exhausting times, there is something almost restful about being a branch on Christ's vine. What would it take for me to ease up a bit, let go of my fear of getting it wrong, and just let God's world-changing love flow through me and out to others who need it.

Parishioner Scott Robinson put it this way in a Facebook post recently:

It occurs to me the vine is not separate from the branches; in fact, they are made of the same stuff--they are all of a piece. When I am having trouble tuning in to the divine presence, I can remind myself that I am already a branch of the vine.

What if we saw ourselves as already teaming with the life and love of God? What if we stopped wrestling with God for control of the clippers and just let God be the vine grower?

What greater yield might we bear? And who out there might finally find what they've been hungering for: Love right at hand, fruit ripe for the picking.

Amen.

Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187. All rights reserved.

Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org

On Good Shepherd Sunday, the Rev. Jarrett Kerbel challenges our illusions of safety and security and invites us to consider who are the sheep and who are the wolves in our society today.

The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel's sermon for the fourth Sunday of Easter.

Today's readings are:

1 John 3:16-24

Psalm 23

John 10:11-18

Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net for Easter 4, Year B.

Transcript:

[Introductory Music]

[The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel]

Abiding God, we give you thanks that you are greater than our hearts. Dispel in our hearts all self-torment and self-judgment and negativity that hold us back from the boldness we are called to in the power of your love. Lord God, make us bold that we may follow your Good Shepherd who is our model of a life lived for the most vulnerable. In Christ's name we pray, Amen. Please be seated.

While at the altar at the 8 o'clock service, and having meditated on the Good Shepherd this whole week, what came up in my heart most strongly was my most inspiring models of the Good Shepherd in ministry that I know. And so if you're at home you can open up a tab on your computer, or on your phone in the pew actually, and Google Father Stanley Rother, a priest martyred in Guatemala in Santiago Atitlán. I think I've talked about him before, but he is my great example of what a Good Shepherd is. So please take that as a little homework to go deeper into the Good Shepherd story with Stanley Rother. And also the martyrs of Quiché, who were just beatified yesterday, three priests and seven lay catechists, including a 12 year old boy, who were martyred by the Guatemalan military. Look them up if you want to go deeper into the boldness of the Good Shepherd. That's a bit of an improv there at the beginning, but I wanted to assign homework early.

My sermon is called "Naming the Wolf." We need to be careful about how we name the wolf. We also need to be careful how we name the shepherd, need to be careful about our assumptions about the sheep. I could preach a sermon about wolves in general, and shepherds in general. I could use pastoral stories about sweet sheep and scary wolves. I could talk about sheep as an undifferentiated mass of docile creatures standing in for people as the metaphor invites. Likewise, I could preach about the wolf as a generalized existential fear we all share, and boy have we shared it this past year. And we could talk about sheep representing a general human need for protection, once again something we have all felt this year. However, the murder of George Floyd, the uprising that followed, the trial, and now the verdict on this past Tuesday remind us of the importance of naming who is threatened by who. Naming who are the wolves, and who we assume to be wolves, and who we may or may not think of as a Good Shepherd, because it seems it is often the protector who is threatening, and the one falsely perceived as threatening who needs protection

The story of the Good Shepherd, when taken seriously and in the context of scripture, convicts us, and it convicts the way we order our world and prophetically offers a new world, ordered justly. In our society, the most powerful claim to be the most fearful, and that fear is manipulated and then manufactured politically to create systems of public safety and incarceration that inflict massive damage and violation on the most vulnerable. The protectors protect the most secure, and inflict threat and fear and violence on the most insecure.

I have a friend who lives way out in the Northwest suburbs, way up the extension, and she lives in a gated community. And I love to ask her "gated against whom?" She lives in a house with an elaborate alarm system and I love to ask "Why?" She is behind a blue wall of well-funded police and private security, not to mention a full gun cabinet in the house. This friend is fully wrapped up in this idolatrous atmosphere of manufactured fear. This person is constantly alarmed, constantly on edge by how much time I spend in Philadelphia, in Germantown, in North Philadelphia, and the people I interact with there. She's constantly worrying about my trips to Guatemala and Haiti and the danger I must be in there yet. She has it exactly upside down. She has the exact reverse from inside this manufactured bubble of fear. She does not see the protection granted me by my whiteness, by my maleness, by my social class, and when out of the country, by my American citizenship. She sees threat where her run-of-the-mill American racism has taught her to see threat, in Blackness, in brownness, in foreignness, in poverty, in "urban" areas.

So we must be careful how we name the wolf, and how we name the shepherd, and how we understand the sheep. The Israelite audience that Jesus would address would know all this already. For them, the Good Shepherd is obviously a political image. This is the Good Shepherd who is the righteous ruler of God's people. We, in the centuries since, have made it a pietistic, personal, and sentimental image, and taken away its root meaning. If we were deeply steeped in the Hebrew prophets like the original audience, we would hear the Good Shepherd as political, communal, and divine. We would hear it in the light of Ezekiel Chapter 34, where God claims the title of shepherd as a divine name, a name for God, and where God names his servant David, an actual shepherd, as shepherd of his flock. In this passage, in Ezekiel 34 (which I recommend as more homework--you didn't know that you're going to get so much homework this morning), the Good Shepherd is the leader who is set apart to "feed his sheep with justice." Feed his sheep with justice. The Ezekiel text gives the following examples of what that looks like. The Good Shepherd is to put the sheep into the right order, to protect the leaner, weaker sheep against the fatter, stronger sheep. On the face of it, that is a political instruction, putting our common life in right order. The shepherd is to stop the fatter, stronger sheep from trampling the grass in the pasture left over for the weaker, leaner sheep after the fatter, sheep are done feasting. The Good Shepherd is to stop the fatter, stronger sheep from budding the leaner, weaker sheep with flank and shoulder away from the good pasture. The Good Shepherd is to stop those same fatter, stronger sheep from fouling the clean water with their feet so the leaner, weaker sheep who come after them may have pure water to drink. And someday, I will do an Earth Day sermon on this exact same text.

The sheep, it seems, are wolfish. The wolf, in fact, is already in the flock. It is in the sheep, in the rapacious, predatory, ravenous, greed and bullying of the strong dominating the weak. God's predicament is this: how do you get a wolf out when it is already inside? And not just inside the sheepfold running amok, but inside the sheep themselves running amok in their behavior. God's response is to send a very particular and very strange Good Shepherd, one who lays his life down for the sheep. Meaning one who takes the place of the weak against the strong. A Good Shepherd who protects without creating new victims. A Good Shepherd who gives new life without taking life. A Good Shepherd who defeats our wolfishness from the inside-out. A Good Shepherd who lays down his life without sacrificing us.

The laying down of the life of this shepherd is a reference to the cross of Jesus. It's how the author of John talks about the cross. And the author of the Gospel of John sees the cross in a very unique way, through the lens of victory, not the lens of victimhood. Jesus lays down his life under his own power. He repeats that. Jesus lays down his life under his own power as an act of loving intervention, putting his body between the threatening power of empire and those oppressed, damaged, and violated by that power. We all know that the oppressor always claims to be the protector, always claims the mantle of Good Shepherd. So God does something utterly startling, something that is not to be found in Ezekiel or in Psalm 23. The Good Shepherd shows the true power of love by absorbing all the oppositional power the world has to offer in the most loving act imaginable: giving one's whole life for the weak.

So this past week, I received some "fan mail" in my email inbox. The writer recommended, in no uncertain terms, that I stick to saving souls and not worry so much about racism. After much thought and prayer, I replied "I would love to engage you in a conversation about this, and in the meantime let me say this: At St. Martin's this is really not an either/or between saving souls and fighting racism. In fact, saved souls love their neighbors. Saved souls love their neighbors and seek to protect them from the powerful, uncaring forces that violate them."

Those of us who are saved by the Good Shepherd, saved by his laying down his life for us, are saved to a very particular life, in the model of the Good Shepherd. When George Floyd's life was taken from him, when he was laid down against his will and murdered, those who understand the message of the Good Shepherd stood up, and we put ourselves between the murdering power of state violence and those most exposed to that violence.

We followed the leadership of those who are really most threatened, so to intervene and disrupt a world designed to make more and more victims. Peacefully, we stood up. Boldly, we stood up, in the power of the one who laid himself down, to say "no" to more victimizing and say "yes" to the victory of the one who has defeated every victimizing and every wolfish power in ourselves and in the world. Amen.

Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org

The Rev. Barbara Ballenger's sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter.

Today's readings are:

Acts 3:12-19

Psalm 4

Luke 24:36b-48

Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net

Transcript:

[Music]

[The Rev. Barbara Ballenger] When Bob was a young Catholic priest, he would make pastoral visits to an institution called Apple Creek in northeast Ohio. It was a home for people with physical and cognitive disabilities. The visitors would bring with them a box full of items with which to create a sacred space for them, candles, a bible, Eucharistic elements, a portrait of Jesus by Francis Hook. It was the portrait of Jesus that got Bob thinking. It was the one where Jesus' hair is kind of blown back and he looks rugged and healthy, like he could be selling athletic wear or singing labor songs.

Bob wondered if this portrait of Jesus looked like anyone that the residents of Apple Creek would recognize. He wondered if it would remind them of themselves, people who had Down's Syndrome, Cerebral Palsy, who used wheelchairs and walkers, who had the kinds of impairments that you could see from a distance. He wondered what a portrait of Jesus would look like if it were modeled after people who lived at Apple Creek.

So he decided to commission one. He worked with his friend Dan Whitely, a local artist. Participants in the diocese's ministry to people with disabilities modeled. Dan created a series of paintings called Jesus and his Disciples.

They were big bold colorful paintings, more than 3 and a half foot square. When I worked with Bob in the performing arts ministry in the 1990s we would take one of the paintings with us to programs - a large scale oil portrait of Jesus, whose model had been Donna, a woman with Down's Syndrome. Bob would tell the story about Apple Creek and about commissioning the paintings, and then he would pull this piece of art from the large cardboard box and announce, this the latest portrait of Jesus Christ. What do you think?"

It's been more than 20 years. I still remember the responses from scores of these conversations.

Some would say: I don't like it. It makes me uncomfortable. That's a woman and Jesus was a man. Jesus was perfect and this Jesus is not. It's not historical -- Jesus was not retarded. Others would say, it's perfect. It makes me want to cry. I see myself in that painting. I recall a person with cognitive impairments saying, "It looks like me."

When this portrait of Jesus entered the room, people were startled. Some were doubtful, some were joyous, some believed and others did not.

Those responses align somewhat with what the followers of Jesus experienced when Jesus appeared among them and said "peace be with you." They did not immediately recognize him - for understandable reasons.

You have to remember that this was the first time that most -- maybe all of them -- had seen the effects that the crucifixion had on his body. He died just before the sundown that started the Sabbath and he was entombed hastily. Most of his followers had fled. Here he was pointing to his marred hands and feet. If these wounds remained, I imagine the evidence of the whip and crown of thorns did as well.

The thing that stuns me most about this story is not that Jesus came back from the dead, and appeared to his followers and ate in front of them. It's that he came back with a body marked with the scars of his humanity - some that were visible and I'm sure some that were not. And he asked to be recognized by these - and offered his friends the intimate and horrifying invitation to touch them in order to know that they were real.

We have spent millennia erasing the humanity from the risen Jesus in our art and our imaginations - it's almost impossible not to see that fair skinned, long haired, Anglo-Saxon man whose hands and feet are tastefully marked to indicate his time on the cross. That's how we know Jesus. What comes to mind first, his pretty face or his wounds?

And I'm afraid that this distorted memory of Jesus' resurrected body has distorted our own body image as well. It must take a perfect Jesus to remove our imperfections, our disabilities, our weaknesses, which is why he came, wasn't it? To make us perfect? Only the most beautiful and hale and fair can model for that kind of portrait. Think about this and you begin to see the power that a distorted image of the body of Christ might have on how the living body of Christ sees itself and behaves.

When we would reveal this oil painting of Jesus modeled after a woman with Down's Syndrome, I could sense another feeling in the room - there was also a measure of fear there, I think, as people felt the weight of the consequences of changing the traditional image of the Christ from healthy, white, male to someone else. What would become of the church if we opened the door of our imaginations that wide to allow for a Black, Asian, Indigenous Christ? Trans Christ? Wheelchair using Christ? Cognitively impaired Christ? Why, Christ could then be recognized in just about anybody.

Jesus returns from the dead with the body he died in in order to remind us that he did not abandon his humanity when he rose from the dead. God stayed with us in order to draw us into the Divine body. The signs of our sinful attack upon Jesus' body didn't go away - and they don't go away -- but their power did and does. That's what Christ's healing does, what his resurrection does - it removes the scathing power of rejection and it loves the skin we're in - scarred, blemished, aged, pigmented, toned or flabby - and that's not even mentioning all the marks and impairments that can be hidden from others. In disability studies people without impairments are called the "temporarily able bodied." Hold that up against the promise of being eternally beloved.

"Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself," Jesus says in Luke's Gospel.

In her book The Disabled God: Toward a Liberation Theology of Disability Nancy Eiesland reflects on this passage. "Here is the resurrected Christ making good on the incarnational proclamation that God would be with us," she writes, "embodied as we are, incorporating the fullness of human contingency and ordinary life into God."

"The disabled God is not only the One from heaven," she goes on to say. "But the revelation of true personhood, underscoring the reality that full personhood is fully compatible with the experience of disability."

See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are, says the author of First John. Because that is what Jesus is.

Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.

And perhaps to see Jesus as he is, we have to see ourselves as we really are. And if we're really honest with ourselves there is not one of us that does not know impairment, does not have an inventory of our hidden wounds, has not been dis-abled in some way by the life we're in. And the Good News of Jesus is that none of that makes us less than beloved in his eyes.

But we are not only caught up in and claimed as beloved in the risen body of God, we are commissioned.

When Jesus appears among his followers hunkered down in that upper room, it is not only to bring peace, though that's the start. It is to call them to the life they are to live in this new world that Jesus has brought with him:

They are to proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins to all nations in his name, beginning from Jerusalem. Because they have seen the risen Christ and thus are witnesses of these things.

And that good news that they are to proclaim and that we are to proclaim is that no one is to be denied entry into the life of God because of their humanity, their current wounds, their past sins. As long as they are willing to enter that life not by their ability to dominate, or force, or explain or of even understand. But rather by their ability to see in Christ's wounds their own profound limits and the world-changing possibilities that come from being children of God.

In short, by their own willingness sit among all their vulnerabilities and impairments and to model for the next portrait of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187. All rights reserved.

Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org

The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel's sermon for the Second Sunday of Easter.

Today's readings are:

Acts 4:32-35

Psalm 133

John 20:19-31

Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net

Transcript:

Please join me in a spirit of prayer. Lord Christ, in your risen, wounded body, in your Holy Spirit, you give us all that we need to follow in your way. We thank you for this gift and we pray your grace, that we may follow. In Christ's name we pray, Amen. Please be seated.

I want to begin with a word of thanks to our quartet who are operating without our Director of Music, Tyrone Whiting who's under the weather. So love to you, thank you. We are grateful as always. Boy, so good that music.

Here we are, one week later, and the disciples are still in the house. The Beloved Disciple and Peter brought a report of an empty tomb. Mary of Magdala met the Risen Christ and brought the good news to the disciples. The Risen Christ himself appears. One week ago, in the house where the disciples huddle, Jesus shows himself, displays his wounds, grants them the gift of peace, breathes the Holy Spirit on them and gives them a command to go forth.

One week later, they're still in the house.

Like the cat in the song and the postman who rings twice, the Risen Christ keeps coming back. The one who said keep knocking on God's door until God pays attention, knocks on our door persistently and repeatedly until we begin to respond.

What God has done, God has finished. Jesus is risen from the dead. Peace is secure between humanity and God the stone is rolled away, the gate is open, Alleluia Alleluia. Now, the ongoing drama is in the souls of the disciples, the students of Jesus, and the ongoing drama is in our souls, as students of Jesus. As we slowly wake up to what is now possible for us, as we slowly wake up to what risen life means for us.

In relation to this good news of risen life that I struggle to take in, I sometimes see my soul as a big chunk of ice thrown onto the embers of a winter fire. On one side, I'm melting, I'm warm, I'm starting to steam a little, and on the other, I'm still hard and cold. The human soul has a density a defensiveness well learned and sometimes necessary, so it seems that it takes repeated exposures and reassurances from God for most of us to melt into His life.

So Jesus persists each time he appears, he speaks peace to the frightened disciples in the house "peace be with you." He says it three times in this chapter of John. He is ministering to them. They are not at peace. He is bringing them a gift that they need, and we can easily imagine why. This room they're in is swirling with feelings: guilt, shame, fear, trauma. These souls are full of conflicting feelings, keenly aware of their shortcomings, their betrayal, cowardice, and the guilt and shame that go with it, agitated to their core in their fear of the Roman Authorities, the temple authorities, and not to mention their fear of God. How will they stand before God when he appears? What will that encounter be like when the one who vacated the tomb comes to visit? Agitated as well by the tension between disbelief, and perhaps even more dangerously, belief.

If I believe in this Risen One, what are the wild implications for my life? Their world is topsy-turvy. They are spiritually seasick. They need love and reassurance to rebalance, find their keel, find themselves in this new life they've been given. They need time to process. Our human minds and souls are narrow and short-sighted. This is a lot to take in.

If anyone could judge them for their failures, it would be Jesus, or could be Jesus. Jesus does not. Jesus raises no word of judgment. Instead, Jesus ministers to the guilt and the shame and the fear and the nausea by saying "peace." Like he calmed the storm on the Sea of Galilee, he is calming the storm of fretful souls in his community. "Peace be with you."

"Peace be with you," which is to say we are not at war, we are not in conflict, you are okay with me, we are working together and we're on the same side. "Peace be with you," which is to say you will need this peace, this peace that passes all understanding, because I'm giving you everything you need to leave this house of fear and confront the same forces that crucified me.

He shows his wounds. He allows the wounds to be inspected. Those marks are his calling card, and what holds the disciples in fear is represented by the wounds. He is showing them the marks of what they fear, and he is showing that he has defeated what they fear. Those terrifying marks of God rejecting violence are now surrounded by the living body of their gentle loving Lord. He is victorious, he is vindicated, he is teaching them once again by saying "peace be with you, I am your passport across the border of fear and guilt and shame that keeps you stuck in this house."

How are we stuck? How are you stuck? How were you stuck and are not stuck anymore, and are rejoicing for it? What fears are confining us to a smaller life, huddled and timid when God is calling us to so much more? Why are we holding on to turmoil, agitation, and guilt when God has made peace with us? The drama going forward is in our souls. God has made peace with us and accepting that gift is our spiritual life. Accepting that gift comes with the next gift: purpose, mission, for each one of us, a mission to go out, to serve in Christ's name and Christ's love, confronting all the forces that marked his body with torture and death. Going out in service, going forth in faith that his risen life has already overcome and overwhelmed everything that opposes God. Thanks be to God.

Just for a moment--you thought i was done, psych! You wish I was done. Just for a moment (maybe I should be done), just for a moment, take that room where the disciples are huddled and hold it in tension with the reading from the Acts of the Apostles: how they go from that place stuck in fear to this beloved community of sharing all goods in common. Referencing our own souls, think about all that had to be overcome to get from there to here. Referencing our own souls, what transformation was made possible by this resurrection, to go from stuck in fear to selling everything for the good of your fellow community member. And you get a sense of the power of the gift that's been given to us, what it can do in our lives.

The Risen One comes back again and again, persistent and repeatedly, equipping us, resourcing us encouraging us, showing us that the way he calls us to, the way he sends us out to live is the way of life, abundant life, a way of life fully animated by the Holy Spirit, to confront all crucifying forces with courage, faithfulness and peace. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org

Sermon by the Rev. Jarrett Kerbel for Easter Day, the Feast of the Resurrection of Our Lord.

Today's readings are:

Isaiah 25:6-9

Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24

1 Corinthians 15:19-26

John 20:1-18

Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net

Transcript:

[Introductory music, played by brass instruments: Jesus Christ is Risen Today]

[The Rev. Barbara Ballenger] Alleluia, Christ is risen!

[Crowd] The Lord is Risen indeed, Alleluia!

[The Rev. Barbara Ballenger] Alleluia, Christ is risen!

[Crowd] The Lord is Risen indeed, Alleluia!

[The Rev. Barbara Ballenger] Alleluia, Christ is risen!

[Crowd] The Lord is Risen indeed, Alleluia!

[The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel] Please join me in a spirit of prayer.

Gracious God, how can we thank you for this gorgeous Easter Day, under the sun, on a football field, worshiping you? Lord God, we thank you that your risen life fills our lives with goodness and that your love is undying and unbreakable and shines upon our hearts and invites us into an open-hearted life of grace and hope and courage. Following in the way of your Son, growing into his stature, living his life as a body in his name in your world. How can we thank you, Lord for the grace of this day where death is defeated and your life is affirmed. May we live each day in the light of your resurrection, open-hearted and living in response to your Risen One. Amen.

Please be seated.

(Struggling with a loose cloth mask, it flies off, another surgical mask is underneath) Okay, whatever.

Happy Easter, y'all! Christ is risen!

Here we are on the home field of the Devils.

Celebrating Easter.

So much for home field advantage.

There is no better place to celebrate Easter than on this field. We did consider using the scoreboard and I really wish where it says Home it said Devils because we could say Devils zero, Jesus one. Or in better respect to our gracious hosts, SCH (Springside Chestnut Hill) Academy we could say, Jesus one, Death zero. Let me give heartfelt thanks to the Blue Devils of SCH for helping us gather as the Risen Body of Christ this Easter morning, coming back to life. And, I promise, no more football jokes.

In our Easter Gospel we have a foot race. We have a laundry list. We have a lot of weeping and a case of mistaken identity. Through it all, the abundant Good News of risen life in Christ pours out to us as God's invitation, "Come back to life". In the one story, we have two contrasting sections: the first with Peter and the Beloved Disciple, and the second with Mary of Magdala and Jesus. Two ways of responding to God's abundant invitation.

Now I think of the Peter and the Beloved Disciple part as slapstick. Like boys do, and very much in character for Peter, the two disciples compete in a foot race to get to the tomb of Jesus after Mary Magdala, serving as the first apostle by the way, gives them the news of an empty grave. How many times had Jesus taught them "the first will be last and the last will be first"? Yet here they are, still caught up in a competitive spirit, sprinting to be the first man....[responding to a vocalization in the crowd] He gets it...The first man on the scene. Me first, me first, me first, me first, sprinting to outdo one another. And I find myself wondering, worrying even, identifying just a little bit, will their competition and haste cause them to miss what has been done for them? Indeed Peter, very much in character, walks away from the miracle of an empty tomb with a laundry list, a precise accounting of the linens that has been passed down to us through the Gospel. Perhaps a subtle warning by the Gospel writer for us to avoid crass literalism on Easter morning. Yet whatever their bumblings and whatever my bumblings and our bumblings, we walk away with our first gift of this Gospel story. The Gospel writer says the Beloved went into the empty tomb, saw and believed, for as yet they did not understand.

Not understanding and believing. Believing and not understanding. Two great tastes that go great together, side by side. This is the first gift for us today because I know many of us are in just that place or we remember that place on our journey into faith in Christ. What a gift we can believe and know that we don't know all. At the same time, for all who are on the edge of that journey into believing, this is a gentle, generous invitation: even a mustard seed of curiosity gets us started. And oh, my friends, the understanding will come. The understanding will come with abundant rejuvenating gifts which stretch our conventional imagination, our narrow intellect, our cramped souls, and our pinched hearts into the fullness of Christ's love. So my friends, if you're sitting with confusion know that it is a gift. Our thinking does not save us. God's coming back to life saves us.

So after the slapstick of the Beloved and Peter, Mary of Magdala is left in her weeping and her confusion outside the tomb.

She is the one who is first to meet the Risen Christ. First the angels ask her - and always know that angels are just the front line of God, so God is talking, they're the messengers - the angels say, "Woman why are you weeping?" and then Jesus asks, "Woman why are you weeping?" And we know it's hard to see with eyes brimming and swollen with tears, so maybe this is why Mary mistakes Jesus for the gardener. And a gardener is a giver of life, so she's close.

Woman, why are you weeping? Jesus asks. The question is asked twice. There must be something important in the weeping.

How does Mary answer Jesus here is how I hear her answering. I hear her in the full-throated voice of lament and mourning. I hear Mary of Magdala saying, "Why? Why? Because the one who loved me was murdered. Why? Because the one I loved with all my heart was tortured to death, buried, and then stolen away from me. Why? Because all that I cherished as good in the world has been crushed and destroyed. Why am I weeping? The one who loved me into freedom is gone. Because everything I hoped for, everything I believed in, all that I held as good has been lost!" Mary mourns and weeps and through her tears she is the first to see the Risen One. Through her tears the Risen One appears to her, comes into focus. Mary, the faithful mourner, who knows what was lost on the cross. Mary, the one who weeps, is the one who sees.

Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are those who are pure in heart for they shall see God.

Blessed are those who thirst for righteousness for theirs is the kingdom of God. Mary of Magdala is the first person to live the life of beatitude. The life of beatitude that Jesus taught us, that Jesus offers us, that Jesus lives in us.

Now, over the past few years we have collectively experienced the fragility of the good.

The fragility of the good, and the vulnerability of all that we cherish. We have experienced the danger to the goods we have in common. Years of mourning, loss, anger, and fear and I want to suggest that it is through our tears, through our sorrow, through our heartbreak at the loss of what is good, what is best, that we will see the Risen One come into focus in our lives. It's through that lens of mourning the good and aching for the good. It's through that that we will see Jesus rise again in our lives and bring us back to life. The goodness of God's creation, the goodness of God's community, the goodness of God's way in Jesus have overcome all that opposes it, and they are victorious. God's vulnerable goodness. God's gentle, loving goodness. God's fragile, breakable, embodied life. Affirming and human-crafting goodness. God's simple, aching desire to love us no matter what. All these are victorious in the Risen One and we are invited to live in that same open-hearted space with Christ.

Alleluia! The Risen life of Christ is stronger than death. Alleluia! Stronger than empire. Alleluia! Stronger than hate. Alleluia! Stronger than anything that would separate us from the love of God. Alleluia!

So my friends, I pray you and I will accept this invitation of new life in Christ, and together we will come back to life. Amen.

Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187. All rights reserved.

Photographs, video, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org

Thanks to:

Producer/Audio: Daniel Cooper

Video: Jason Fifield

Live Tech: Elton Cannon, Cole Appelman

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Editor: Natalee Hill

The Rev. Barbara Ballenger's sermon from the Great Vigil of Easter.

Today's readings are:

Genesis 1:1-2:4a

Psalm 136

Exodus 14:10-15:1

Ezekiel 37:1-14

Zephaniah 3:12-20

Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net

Transcript:

By Barbara Ballenger, Easter Vigil, 2021

[The Rev. Barbara Ballenger] When I was a little girl attending Catholic School, the main lesson we learned at this time of the year was that Jesus died to open the gates of Heaven. And I have this very detailed image in my head of great locked white gates being opened by a little cross-shaped key with Jesus on it. It must have come from a film strip. I'm sure it was done by the same artist who illustrated my children's bible and book of saints.

Why did Jesus die on the cross? was the question. To open the gates of Heaven, came the answer. And that served me pretty well back then. It was tidy, bloodless, and put everything nicely in the past. Now I could go to Heaven when I died. Thank you Jesus.

But that story also created an image of Easter that really didn't have much to do with my every-day life, birth to death. It made Easter about the afterlife. It didn't suggest that as soon as Easter happened something profound changed on this earth, in this life, and by consequence, my life.

Now around the same time as I was learning those answers in religion class, I discovered an even better theology of Easter - though I didn't realize it at the time. It was written on a coffee mug that sat near the tooth brushes in my grandma's bathroom. My grandma lived in a tiny little house on Oregon Street in Lafayette Indiana. For the first 10 years of my life we would make the seven-hour drive twice a year to visit her there. And because it was before the invention of hand-held electronic devices, I had very little to do on those visits. So to keep myself entertained, I explored. And believe me there wasn't much real-estate at hand. So I peaked in the drawers and hampers, pulled out the few ancient toys that were available, swung on the porch swing on the tiny porch and prowled through the seven rooms that made up her house.

That's how I found the mug in the bathroom. It was printed with this saying: An Irish Toast. Here's to you and me and the space between us. Should one of us depart, let it not be you nor I but the space between us.

I think I was about 9 when I figured out what it meant. It made me laugh. And then I forgot about it for about 45 years.

Until a few weeks ago as I was gathering up my thoughts about the cross, like a priest does in Lent, and up came that old Irish toast unbidden: Here's to You and Me and the Space Between us, should one of us depart let it not be you nor I but the space between us.

And it occurred to me that it was a theology of the cross, or perhaps of the resurrection. Or maybe God actually is Irish, as some of my ancestors suspected I'm sure.

Why did Jesus die on the cross? was the question? To remove the space between us, came the answer. To remove that painful emptiness that can lie between us and God and us and one another. To remove it by filling it with something else -- the presence of God. I think that has been God's agenda from the beginning, since that first moment when humanity discovered the distancing qualities of the knowledge of good and evil.

This past year the space between us has taken on a very particular quality - it's at least six feet. It requires a mask. For more than a year the space between us has been cemented between thresholds that can't be crossed, into hospitals, or nursing homes, or houses where loved ones are and we can't go. The space between us has been physical and palpable - even for those of us who kind of liked our space, liked some distance. Even for introverts, I'm told.

And we learned again this year that that space between us is also ethical, political, historical - as we struggled again with the impassable spaces we've constructed out of race and difference and fear, out of violence, and terror and power. That's when the space between us is the measure of our sinfulness, that distance that we pace off between us and God, between us and the rest of God's good creation.

Jesus died to remove the space between us. Which is ironic, since crucifixion separated Jesus from those he loved by the greatest of distances - not the one that God made by locking the gates, but one that humanity made by turning the back. And Jesus hung there looking across the space between us and him, between us and God, and he chose to fill that space, to close that breach, with forgiveness.

His death should have been the final departure, the great cutting of the ties between God and humanity, it should have sent us careening back to the formless void. But instead Jesus' death and resurrection became a return, a healing of the breach, a re-creation of the world where he could be discovered again and again, recognizable, alive and everywhere.

Each Easter Vigil invites us again to cross that threshold and live into that space, in the belief that what fills the gaps between us and one another and between us and God -- is God. Call it amazing grace. Call it the Kingdom of God. Call it an act of faith that our divisions and distances from one another are healable - in fact might already be healed.

Paul said it this way in his letter to the Romans, people he knew at a distance, whom he never got to meet (Rom. 8: 38-39)

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Paul could have added neither shipwrecks, nor arguments, nor broken relationships, nor jail time, nor stonings, nor beatings, nor temptations, nor slightly oversized egos can separate me from the love of God ... for all those things were his to bear. You can insert your own list there.

How might the quality of the wounds, and chasms and distances we might list change if we live in this way - in the promise of Easter, that blessed assurance that God fills the space between us. We know the list itself doesn't go away, but something about the quality of the space it describes changes. Where there was despair there is hope. Where there was death there is life. Where there was suffering there is beatitude.

To live in this way is a choice - because we always have a choice. It is something we can believe in or not. The very same life can be lived in an Easter way or a non-Easter way. We can live as though at a distance from God. Or we can live in the presence of God.

To live in the presence of God is to begin to see Jesus appearing everywhere. Not shut tight in bibles or theology books or behind church doors. But in faces, and in conversations, in silences and song, in longings and belongings, even written on the side of an old mug, in a bathroom, of a tiny house in a distant memory:

Here's to you and me and the space between us. Should one of us depart, let it not be you nor I but the space between us. Happy Easter.

Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187. All rights reserved.

Photographs and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466