5th
Sunday of Easter; Yr. C, April 28, 2013
Acts 11:1-18; Psalm 148;
Revelation 21:1-6; John 13:31-35
Sermon
preached at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church
Today we will begin reading Richard
Rohr’s book called “Falling Upward”. In it Rohr talks about what he calls the two
halves of the spiritual life. The first
half being the time when we build what he calls, “the proper container” for our
lives. We answer such questions as “what
will I do”, “who am I”, “how do I support myself”? That first half of life is primarily
concerned with issues of life, success and security … externals. The second half of life, he says, is more
concerned with what fills us. It takes
into account the fact that we are part of a community. We’re concerned about what feeds us, but also
about how our life affects others. We
acknowledge ourselves as part of a community.
In Revelation, God says, “I am the
Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.” God sees all time in one fell swoop, not in
halves. God sees us as a baby at our
mother’s breast and lying in our bed close to death … all in the same instant …
in all its completeness. We see in
linear time, and so beginnings and endings are discreet events, like the gun
shot at the start of a race, and the checkered flag at the finish; alpha and
omega exist at two ends of the spectrum.
We can only live one moment at a time even if our minds jump ahead to
the future or get stuck in the past.
Each of us has Alpha stories, beginning stories that ground
us. My story begins in North
Carolina. Even though I long ago lost
that southern drawl that distinguished me in my first year in school in
Pittsburgh. I cannot deny that I was
born under the Carolina blue sky of Shelby, NC. I remember playing in the fields and forests
near our house in the new development where our home had been built. I can still feel the blistering heat of the
asphalt roads and the excitement of hopping across it to walk barefoot on the
cool yellow line down the center. I
remember long summer days playing outside, magnolias as big as houses and kudzu
growing like thick braids up the trunks of trees. Maybe that’s why I love the outdoors so much
now.
Our house was filled with the sounds of family, brothers and
sisters … laughing, playing, squabbling, my mother and father. Always someone to play with, and a mother who
stayed home with us. A mother who was
there when we needed her. Even though I
knew we weren’t rich, there was food on the table every night, and warm kisses
on our cheeks as we pulled the sheets up to our chins at night. These are my alpha stories. I’m sure you have them too, but they’re yours
… and just as mine formed me … yours formed you.
My brothers and sisters and I all grew up in the same household,
but if you asked any one of us about our childhood, chances are you’d get a
different story from each one of us.
It’s not that one story is true, and the others are false. It’s that we can’t help but insert bits of
ourselves into the story. The story is
told from one perspective. It gets
interpreted in the telling. Each of the
stories is true, at least to the storyteller,
even if they aren’t the same. Who we
become depends a lot on which story we claim for ourselves.
Where does our faith story begin? Luke begins it with a
geneology tracing Jesus’ ancestry all the way back to Abraham. Mark begins it with John the Baptizer
offering a baptism of repentance in the wilderness. Luke starts with the story of Elizabeth and
Zechariah. And John? Well, John goes back to the very beginning
before the world even existed when there was only God and a formless void. John goes back to creation.
In the beginning God created the heavens and
the earth. The earth was without form
and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was
moving over the face of the waters. (Genesis
1:1-2) And God created the heavens and
the earth, all living things. At the end
of each day of creative work, God declared, “it was good”. And the creation of humankind was better than
good. It was VERY good. And then God rested.
But in the second chapter of Genesis a different version of
creation finds a voice. In the day that the Lord God made the earth
and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of
the field had yet sprung up … then the Lord God formed man of dust from the
ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a
living being. (Genesis 2:4b, 7) And
woman was created from the man’s rib as a companion. They had free run of the garden and
everything they needed could be found there.
But there was a tree that was not theirs and as soon as God said not to
eat from it, of course, they did … and in the end God put them outside the
garden forever.
Two alpha stories. Two
different beginnings. Both sacred. Both true.
Which one do you think of first when we talk about creation? Which one has the Church remembered
best? Which one has the Church told the
most often? For far too long, the church
has spewed vitriol and fire, trying to put fear into the hearts of the
faithful, calling to mind that second story of paradise lost … of humanity
becoming outcasts … of the origins of sin and shame. For too long, the church has forgotten to
remind the faithful that God created us in love, to share in community, to live
in harmony with nature, and the whole thing was good, very VERY good.
Would it change things if we told that first story more often
than we told the other? Isn’t that what
Jesus did? I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should
love one another. By this everyone will
know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13:35)
We may not get back to that garden of paradise, but we do have a promise
… a different omega story that we can hold onto. It’s the story of a new heaven and a new
earth. The story of a holy city, not a
garden; the story of all peoples coming together in God, in love. It’s a paradise lived in community, a
community that has made a home for God.
God will live there with us on earth, not in some heaven far from us,
but in our midst. All pain and anguish
will melt away like snow in spring. See, I
am making all things new. Write this,
for these words are trustworthy and true. (Revelation 21:3b, 5) That’s our omega story.
It’s not a story of death; it’s a story of life. It’s a resurrection story, like the one in
our gospels … the one Jesus lived to life for us. It’s a story of self-giving, of letting go
for others and of obedience to God. It’s
a story of suffering transformed. That’s
the story of the life of the faithful. It’s not a story of pie in the sky happiness
at every turn. It’s a story of suffering
and pain overcome and transformed. It’s a
story of relationship and healing. If
stories do form us, if our foundational stories do have such power … then we
need to pay attention to the stories we tell ourselves and others.
I am girl from the south, transplanted at a young age into the
lush forests of the beautiful northeast.
I grew up Roman Catholic and became an Episcopalian in my
mid-thirties. I found the love of my
life when I was twenty-six, and adopted my second love when I was
forty-two. I started to love myself when
I was loved deeply by someone else, but it took a long time to understand that. Love is the glue that links the beginning and
the end. God is that love, the alpha and
the omega. God dwells in love, and that
dwelling is made in us when we live in love.
When we reveal God’s loving presence to others the glory of God shines
through us like sun breaking through the clouds on a rainy day. Then we are the disciples Jesus knew we could
be.
What are your alpha stories?
What stories define you? We have
time to write them and revise them if we keep our eye on the holy city, and the
God who draws all the peoples there.
Your story will start in a unique place, and travel its own path, but as
Christians we are moving toward the same end in God, the alpha and omega.
Amen.
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