homily preached
at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Bellingham, WA
by the
Rev. Josh Hosler
Wednesday,
May 16, 2018 (5:30 p.m.)
O God,
the King of glory, you have exalted your only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph
to your kingdom in heaven: Do not leave us comfortless, but send us your Holy
Spirit to strengthen us, and exalt us to that place where our Savior Christ has
gone before; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in
glory everlasting. Amen.
My mother used to tell me, “Some days you get the bear, and some days the bear gets you.” Or as a Haitian proverb has it, “A day for the hunter, a day for the prey.” Our lives contain states of anxiety and of comfort, and we fluctuate between them. And so we have structured our church calendar to honor these human fluctuations.
My mother used to tell me, “Some days you get the bear, and some days the bear gets you.” Or as a Haitian proverb has it, “A day for the hunter, a day for the prey.” Our lives contain states of anxiety and of comfort, and we fluctuate between them. And so we have structured our church calendar to honor these human fluctuations.
The season
of Advent is a time of anxiety: everything is falling apart, everything seems
to be ending, and we long for the coming of God into our lives. Then come
Christmas and Epiphany: comforting times in which we experience Jesus of
Nazareth, Emmanuel, God-with-us, and we learn the many ways that God is made
manifest in the world. During Lent, we enter the wilderness with Jesus, to
experience and to understand rejection and even the complete loss of hope. Our
supposed Savior goes to the Cross, and there is only trauma and loss. Then our
wildest hopes cannot compare with the shock and mystery and joy of Easter.
Jesus is among us again—granted, he’s changed, but he’s also the same, even if
we don’t always recognize him right away. And then, at the Ascension, he’s gone
again.
We’re in the
in-between, between Jesus’ Ascension and the Day of Pentecost. We had 40 days
of joy and wonder. Now we’re in 10 days of uncertainty and anxiety—a seemingly comfortless
time.
When we feel
that we have been left comfortless, we long for a few things that might give us
hope. We want protection from all that threatens us. We want unity, so that we
don’t harm each other as we work out what all this means. We want strength to
endure whatever we’re going through.
There are
also things we need that we might not immediately recognize as wants. We need
God to make us holy, even in or possibly as a result of our sufferings. Then,
sanctified and exalted, we need to be sent. Turning outward to give hope to
others is the best way of conquering hopelessness in our own lives.
All of these
gifts would come to the disciples on the Day of Pentecost, through the gift of
the Holy Spirit. But first there was an anxious, in-between time, when nobody
really knew what to expect next, and when fear of permanent loss was palpable.
Do you have
a sense of a past, blessed time in your life—a golden age? Do you wish you
could get it back again—the time when the job was exciting, when the marriage
was fresh, when the children were innocent, when some beloved person was alive?
We see this in our country today: people longing for a past that they imagine
once existed. There’s a desire for an idealized America that never existed, or
at least that didn’t exist for a great many people. But even if it had existed,
the past isn’t coming back. It was the same with the disciples: Jesus was back
from the dead, but he was changed, and then he was gone, but he left them with
a promise. We are only ever moving forward into something new.
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| "I'm freeeee ..." Everybody sing! All together now! |
See, that’s
what God is like: all things new, all the time. If we try to clutch and to
cling tightly to yesterday’s gifts, we’ll only burn up needless energy while
refusing the gifts of tomorrow. Our fear of the unknown can make us bitter and
resentful. They say of death that “you can’t take it with you.” That’s also
true of life. To practice resurrection is to practice letting go.
Paul boarded
a ship in Ephesus heading for Jerusalem. He was going there to bring money for
the building up of the church in its place of origin. From there, he intended
to launch a mission to Spain. But his friends in Ephesus knew that they would
never see him again, and so there were tears and hugs and kisses.
Jesus gave
his disciples a farewell discourse on the night of his arrest, and he flipped
back and forth between counsel and prayer. Jesus intentionally relinquished his
friends into the hands of God the Father, and then he went to his death. In the
garden Jesus experienced the depths of human anxiety. But when he rose again
and appeared to his disciples, the anxiety was gone. There was no bitterness,
no retribution after the disciples’ abandonment of him. There was only peace, a
peace that he shared with them. And then he left them again, ascending in order
to make a space for them to step into.
All good
leaders do this, and good parents, and good mentors. We share of ourselves, and
then eventually, we move on. At some point, sooner or later, we all must commend
our loved ones into the care of God and into the care of those who will come
after us.
Nothing is ever truly lost. Christ’s Resurrection has assured the raising of the entire cosmos, and all of us are ascending with him into the nearer presence of God. Amen.
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