6 Easter Church of the Redeemer The Rev. Nancy E. Gossling
During a time of personal and professional transition,
I served as a consultant at Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin, Ireland for
three months. I lived in the city close to the Cathedral and within walking
distance of everything I needed. During my free time, without a car, I explored
every inch of Dublin on foot. Oftentimes the tears of my grief over the recent
losses in my life were co-mingled with the rain. After that, I walked the
streets of Barcelona during a 6 week Spanish immersion, and then walked the
last 100 Kilometers on the Camino to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. And so it
began: my new prayer practice of walking as a way to connect with God.
When I arrived and
settled in Boston some years later, I began walking the streets here in this
city. Like St. Paul in Athens, I “went through the city and looked carefully at
the objects of our worship.” Like the earliest Christian communities, I was
searching for God, perhaps even groping for God, as I tried to make sense of my
life, the culture in which I lived, and what Jesus had to do with it. There
were a lot of unknowns in my life at that time and I was looking for some
answers.
At the center of our
city is the Boston Common, a place where people of all ages, colors, nations,
and socio-economic levels gather for various reasons, our common humanity in
full display. There, like in Athens, we can see signs of life and death all
around us. In the flowers and animals, in the beggars and street vendors, in
the protesters and prophets. Memorials to people and events are both old and
new. Recently added is a sculpture called The Embrace. It is a testimonial to
the loving sacrifices and religious witness of Martin Luther King, Jr. and his
wife Coretta.
Indeed, we have many shrines to our unknown God
throughout the city; for God is a holy mystery, and quite frankly, never fully
known to us in this life. But, there are always signs of God’s presence,
provision, and power all around us, if we only have eyes to see them.
Periodically we will look, maybe even grope for God,
oftentimes at different inflection points throughout our lives, most often when
we are troubled, in transition, or grieving. Or maybe when we are struck by
grace and aware of how blessed we are, and then we become incredibly grateful
for certain people, places, and events. We can find joy in sacred moments like
this morning, when we celebrate the gift of new life in baptism, when we
remember our God, known to us in the sacrificial love of Jesus. And in that
grace-filled love of His, and the promise of new life, we place our faith, and
hang on to our hope.
In today’s gospel passage, Jesus is giving his
disciples hope; for without hope our lives become meaningless, rudderless, and
lacking in direction and purpose. Without hope, when people we love and see no
longer disappear from our earthly lives, we may find our grief too difficult to
bear. And yet, although Jesus was about to disappear from their lives, Jesus
gave them hope in what has come to be called his “Farewell Discourse.”
Barbara Brown Taylor once wrote, “If you read the
gospel of John straight through, things slow to a crawl around chapter
fourteen. The last supper is over. Judas has left the room like a hive of
yellow jackets were after him. Everyone’s feet are clean and Jesus’ hands are still
puckered from washing their feet when he begins to talk.” (Gospel Medicine, pp 86-87) And then, as
you may recall in the gospel of St. John, Jesus talks and prays, and prays and
talks, as he walks the Way of Love to the end of his own earthly journey.
Last Sunday, Jesus assured his disciples that He was
going to prepare a place for them in the home of God. It is a place where there
are enough rooms for everyone. There are no tent cities for the homeless. No
addictions. No broken political, religious, educational, and financial systems.
No diseases of any kind. It is a place where there is enough food for everyone
and plenty of left-overs. So do not let your hearts be troubled, Jesus told
them.
Today He makes
some promises. “No worries.” He tells them. “I’ll talk to your God and my God
and we won’t leave you orphaned. I’ll still be with you and you will see me.
And when you don’t see me, the Holy Spirit will be with you. And because I
live, you also will live.” Now there’s some hope in which we can place our
faith and our trust!
As Christians, we believe that our unknown God
revealed God’s sacrificial love in the person of Jesus. Jesus modeled that
loving behavior to his disciples, giving them a new commandment, to love others
as he had loved them. Similarly Jesus reminded them to obey God’s commandments;
the first and second commandments being the greatest. To love God with all our
hearts, souls, minds, and strength. To love our neighbors as ourselves.
Our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry is fond of saying,
“God is love.” Internationally, Bishop Curry became known for his sermon at the
wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. In it he talked about the
transformative power of love, not only for individuals and families but also
for the whole world. “There's power in love,” he preached. “There's power in
love to help and heal when nothing else can. There's power in love, to lift up
and liberate when nothing else will. There's power in love to show us the way
to live,” he said.
And like every love story over time, from the
beginning to the end of our salvation story, in the public drama of famous
people, and in our own personal relationships, there is both brokenness and
reconciliation, there is division and unity, there is ugliness and beauty.
Indeed we see love throughout our world and when love is a verb it is a labor
that is messy, costly, complicated, sacrificial and like Jesus, both human and
divine.
St. Paul told the Athenians that, “the God who made
the world, who you claim to be your unknown god, is not far from each one of
us.” He reminds them that in God we live and move and have our being. Our
unknown God is revealed to us in the myriad ways of human life, in the highs
and lows of our relationships, and in the beauty and the brokenness of our world.
Where there is love, God is there.
And so St. Paul invites us to open our eyes to see
God’s hand at work in the world about us. In the arts and in our culture. In
creation and in all creatures, great and small. In newborn babies, in toddlers
and teens, in young adults and old ladies like me. Purposefully and lovingly,
God reveals God’s presence, provision, and power in every generation, in the
good, the bad, and the ugly; for God is love, and God’s love never ends.
When we open our eyes to see God at work in the world
around us, we will see hands that do not hit nor harm. We will see hands that
feed, pray, and heal like Jesus did. We will see hands that reach out with arms
of love in order to embrace another person, to lift someone up, to be an
advocate, to build and not tear down. These hands are God’s hands, scarred by
human violence and hard work, and yet hands that offer forgiveness and a peace
that the world does not yet understand.
After Jesus said farewell to his disciples and before
He ascended into heaven, Jesus asked God to give us an Advocate who would be
with us forever. This Advocate will abide with us, defend us, guide us, comfort
us, and empower us to love as Jesus loves us. When we pray and talk, and talk
and pray, when we walk the talk in the Way of Love, we reveal the power of Love
to other people. We become God’s hands enfolding others in a warm embrace.
I like to think that our hearts are broken on our
earthly journeys so that the love of God and the light of Christ can enter into
them. I like to think that God reveals God’s self in those hands that are
begging for love as well as the hands that are embracing it. I like to think
that someday, my own broken heart, scarred by a lifetime of little cracks and a
million little pieces, will be finally and fully healed by the grace of God.
Grace, the unmerited, undeserved, and unconditional love of God. Grace, the
love of God, given for me, for you, and for all God’s beloved offspring.
So today, look for those signs of love everywhere; and
you will see our unknown God!
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