The Rev. Peter M.
Carey
12 May 2013 – Sermon - St. Paul's Memorial Church, Charlottesville
8am Holy Eucharist
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.
In today’s reading from Acts, we have an amazing description
of the overwhelming and abundant power of God to overtake the ways of the
world. It is exactly this kind of power that you and I have perhaps prayed for
in our darkest moments, in our saddest times, and in those days when we cannot
see any way forward or any route out of our present circumstances. It is hard, at time, to believe that God’s
power can actually come into our lives as it does to Paul and Silas, jailed and
beaten, but then set free through the miraculous power of God. In our rational and logical world we are like
Spock on the U.S.S. Enterprise in Star Trek, arguing that logic does not allow
for such things as the hear, or for emotion, or for anything that is beyond our
understanding. However, we all have some
notion of the peace which passes all understanding or we would not be here today,
waking up early on a glorious morning and skipping out on our coffee or tea, on
our New York Times crossword, or our NPR weekend edition, or on our
Sportscenter, or on our beach reading which arrived from Amazon.com just
yesterday.
What brings us here, I would hazard a guess, is that we do
believe, we do have some notion that the power of God is really beyond our
understanding, and to this I say Alleluia!
Alleluia! We live and breathe and
make our way in this world, and in this time of Easter we do proclaim that
Christ is Risen, he is risen indeed – even though we may have a hard time
describing just what this might mean to the logic-centric mind of Spock, or to
our friend who wonder why we need to schedule a later tee time so that we can
go to church. The reality is that we
yearn for what God provides, we yearn for the walls of our own jails to be
broken open, we yearn for an earthquake or a thunderstorm to crash in on our
small and limited lives, on our locked in/restricted existence. We yearn for the peace which does pass our
understanding, we yearn for the peace which
may come, even when disappointment hits, even when our five year plan
explodes after a few months, even when some of our dreams have to be set aside
because of the vicissitudes of life.
In some ways, the peace which passes our understanding is
going to shake us up in ways that we cannot control, that we cannot predict,
and in ways that may, at the time seem
to be nothing like grace, and perhaps even nothing like peace. God can be like that in our lives. We make plans and they get jettisoned, we
embark on journeys and then we swerve, we sit down and chart out the future,
and then we realize that we are more servant than master, more follower than
leader, more rider than driver.
Who Makes These Changes
Who makes these changes?
I shoot an arrow right.
It lands left.
I ride after a deer and find myself
chased by a hog.
I plot to get what I want
and end up in prison
I dig pits to trap others
and fall in.
I should be suspicious
of what I want.
~Jelaluddin Rumi
However, God may be breaking us open for some new delight,
even when the unexpected happen.
The Guest House
This being human is a
guest house.
Every morning a new
arrival
A joy, a depression,
a meanness,
Some momentary
awareness comes
As an unexpected
visitor.
Welcome and entertain
them all!
Even if they’re a
crows of sorrows,
Who violently sweep
your house
Empty of its
furniture,
Still, treat each
guest honorably.
He may be clearing
you out
For some new delight.
The dark thought, the
shame, the malice,
Meet them at the door
laughing,
And invite them in.
Be grateful for
whoever comes,
Because each has been
sent
as a guide from
beyond
He may be clearing us out for some new delight!
And, so in this last week of Easter, we affirm that the
peace which God sends is beyond our understanding, and this may be scary, this
may fill us with holy fear, with awe (awe-some) (awe-ful), however, think of
Paul and Silas in the jail, and think of the jailer. God was at work, in a most incredible and
dramatic way and god is also at work today, even for folks like us who cling to
our “spock-ness”, our logic, our focus on rationality, our skepticism. Leave these aside, and see who may be
knocking at the door, perhaps, indeed, it is the living God. Perhaps we need our spiritual houses swept
clean of its furniture, perhaps we need to be cleared out for some new delight.
We gather here at this table, and we remember and re-member the remarkable last days of
Jesus Christ on Earth, of Emmanuel, God With Us, and we pray that God would
send His Holy Spirit, even today, even in this place, even in the midst of
those of us who are morecomfortable with logic, reason and skepticism. Here in this place, we call up on the living
God to be in our midst, just as when Paul and Silas were singing and praying in
that place. Are we ready for God to
enter, are we ready for the peace (and the clearing out!) which may pass our
understanding. I pray that we are,
because God does have plans for us.
On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside
the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of the conditions. Does any-one have the
foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does
no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor
with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning.
It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should
all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal
flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake some day
and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never
return.
Teaching a Stone to Talk, Harper & Row, 1982
Acts 16
About midnight
Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were
listening to them. Suddenly there was an earthquake, so violent that the
foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were
opened and everyone's chains were unfastened. When the jailer woke up and saw
the prison doors wide open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself,
since he supposed that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted in a loud
voice, "Do not harm yourself, for we are all here." The jailer called
for lights, and rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. Then
he brought them outside and said, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?"
They answered, "Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and
your household." They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who
were in his house. At the same hour of the night he took them and washed their
wounds; then he and his entire family were baptized without delay. He brought
them up into the house and set food before them; and he and his entire
household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God.
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