Acts 10:34-43; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-18Happy Easter!
My dear friends,
I wish you much joy in the risen Christ this Easter Day. In the words of one of the Easters collects, may we “live with him in the joy of his resurrection” – both in heaven – and may those we love be with him in his joy in heaven – and here, day by day, in this life.
… with him in the joy of his resurrection
I have a favorite book and a favorite sentence from my Lenten reading.
A friend emailed me asking if had I heard of Helen Vendler’s recent book on Emily Dickinson. Not only had I heard of it, in December I got a copy of it at the Seminary Coop Bookstore to have as a sort of stocking gift for Eve and myself for Christmas, and hid it away – and it was still in its hiding place, and it was still tucked in its hiding place when my friend emailed at the beginning of Lent.
If you Google Helen Vendler, you will find at least two good interviews with her about writing this book. In one in the Harvard Gazette she says she started to read Dickinson at age 13, when she had to memorize some of the poems. Although in another interview she notes those were the “bad” old versions, she called them. Dickinson’s family made some rather substantive changes to her work, tidying up – the New England phrase gussying up comes to mind – her punctuation and word choices! But good for Helen Vendler’s teachers for having her memorize. At exactly the same age, my English teacher Vaughn Ketchum made us learn passages of Whittier and Longfellow I still quote. A bit later a French teacher had me memorize La Fontaine. One day in Paris, in the park by the Marmottan Museum, we came across a monument to La Fontaine with a fox and a crow and a piece of cheese – and I started reciting and gathered quite a small crowd …
Maître Corbeau, sur un arbre perché, Tenait en son bec un fromage.
This has been a cold Lent – the Day School is having a supper Wednesday cancelled the night of The Snowstorm – to celebrate helping a school in Haiti. The Websters have spent some evenings in front of the fire. The rectory living room over in the residence building is my favorite room. I had a New England skepticism about a gas fire in the fireplace when we first moved here – it is not like a real fire in New Hampshire – but I have learned an important way it is not like a wood fire is that it is a whole lot easier to deal with. My phobia about leaving a fire burning when we go out or go to bed is quite solved by simply turning the gas off. And we are not living on Cape Cod or New Hampshire with wood stacked outside the door, but in the middle of downtown Chicago and it is a whole lot easier not to have to carry wood in. And our two cats stretch out quite contentedly in front of it.
This Lent I have had some quite lovely peaceful evenings in front of the fire reading. Helen Vendler – she takes a Dickinson poem and then comments on it. I think of Emily Dickinson in her upstairs room in the house in Amherst – the house and room still there (although the furniture from her room is at Harvard) – hard at work, a hard working poet. Her solitude not crankish but intentionally making a place of creativity and indeed hard work and great new beauty. Emily Dickinson was not conventionally religious – not conventional in a lot of ways – but important in the Christian life, in the spiritual life to value poetry and beauty and using the gifts I believe God gives.
And also in front of my fire, reading the latest Henning Mankell mystery (yes, yes, my Swedish pronunciation is not correct). Just before moving here, my spiritual director at the Society of Saint John the Evangelist suggested I read a mystery story while on retreat, along with the Gospel – to relax – and he gave me a Sarah Paretsky to read (complete with a murder in, if I remember correctly -- Winnetka).
My favorite Lenten sentence
My favorite Lenten sentence was in a book I was re-reading, -- good to re-read old friends, for me especially poetry. We intentionally re-read the Bible all the time – fascinating to me how I hear new things, sometimes new meanings and sometimes I say to myself I never heard that before. I believe the Holy Spirit, God living within us, lights up words and phrases and images – I love the Quaker phrase, the Inner Light. So God speaks to us by means of the Scriptures.
And it was reading an old book that I came across my favorite phrase from this Lent – something I have read before but struck me anew. I should preface this favorite quote by saying that for me there are several different meanings of darkness in the Bible.
The most immediately familiar is the contrast of light and dark – very present in John’s Gospel. In our reading from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel this year, Jesus called us to let our light shine before others – I love teaching the kids This little light of mine/I’m going to let it shine.
Reinhold Niebuhr (he and his brother Richard graduates of Elmhurst College) in 1944 wrote his great book The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness which is still important and relevant.
As Easter Christians we are called to bring light to the dark places – “where there is hatred, let us sow love … where there is darkness, light. In Matthew 25 Jesus said when we serve the least – when we feed the hungry or visit the sick or welcome the stranger we serve him. We set the tall Paschal Candle in the church today, symbol of the presence of the risen Christ – may we bring his light.
That is probably the most immediately familiar meaning of darkness, set against the light.
But there is quite another meaning of darkness – a meaning found in today’s Gospel – the beautiful dark and night when we encounter God who we cannot see.
The Easter Gospel
In today’s great Gospel (John 21:1-18), Mary Magdalene came to the garden the first Easter morning, while it was still dark. When she was left alone, weeping, she saw someone she mistook for one of the gardeners working there. It was Jesus – in one of these beautiful appearances the first Easter, given for a very short time (Acts has the Biblical time of forty days). Quite characteristic of these stories that she does not recognize him until he spoke her name, “Mary” – he is the same person, yet – Paul’s great word set to music by Handel – yet changed.
She encounters him in the darkness and night -- we even more for we are not given this visible presence and indeed he tells her plainly not to hold on to that.
“this dark night of living fire”
Sitting in front of the fire at home, I came across this phrase in St. John of the Cross. The poet wrote of
… this dark night of living fire
St. John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul
Translated by E. Allison Peers
Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959, page 136
… esta oscura noche de fuego amoroso
San Juan de la Cruz, Obras Completas
Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 2005, page 549
For that is where we meet God, in the dark and night, for we cannot see God.
God sent Jesus to us, as a human life – a truly human being, truly God but also truly human. So we might see – in a person we could see and remember and listen to and picture -- the glory of God’s love for every human being. For me, for you – not one left out, not one forgotten.
Jesus died and was buried and rose from the dead and is at the heart of God the Trinity, and when God draws near, he draws near.
Risen Jesus, you are God with us.
You invite us to stay close to you in your story – we can listen, meditate, picture, use art, use poetry, use music – hymns and choirs – to bring alive your story. You speak to us by your story, you draw near to us by your story.
You invite us to share your Supper – to take and touch and taste these signs of your presence.
You call us to serve you by serving anyone in any need. Where there is ignorance, to teach and bring learning. Where there is sickness, to bring healing. Where there is loneliness, to be there. When a stranger comes, to welcome.
Woven through all these things we see and hear and touch and do, you meet us in this dark night of living fire. In the Temple within us.
Where we do not see, nor do we hear. But you are there. And call us to trust your presence and love – trust that God loves us with your love, and we accept your love and thank you for it, and return it, in the fire of love you kindle.
Risen Jesus, may we live close to you in the light of Word and Sacrament and in the beautiful night of the presence of God – the night of meeting and being together, of God being with us.
Loving us. Each one. With us. Amen.
(This sermon was preached by the Rev. Raymond Webster, Rector in St. Chrysostom’s Church, Chicago, Illinois on Easter Day, April 24, 2011.)
