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Hope for the Now
Sermon by Catherine W. FitzGerld April 3, 2005, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill
The trials of the Lenten Season and the pain of Holy Week, has led us here—to Easter. We have gone through many painful memories of the sacrifices our Savior made. And even on Easter we have lived with our doubts and yet boldly proclaimed and celebrated the Resurrection and the promise it brings. Having walked with Jesus into the tempestuous pits, we have come out again, raised up in hope. And yet, the word “hope” itself implies something that is off in the distance—something in the future which we can’t get at quite yet. We are to hope for eternal life with God. Our hope lies in this promise of the resurrection—that thing which we least understand, the element of our faith which requires the biggest leap, and yet is the crux of our belief. Last week, with great candor, Cindy acknowledged that we are a Saturday people—still too often unsure of the promises fulfilled on Sunday. In this sense, hope is difficult for us. Hope may even be frustrating—for if the entirety of my life exists in hoping for something that I cannot obtain in this life—I may be driven to madness! I have often been frustrated with this hope for the future kingdom—a kingdom that seems so far off in the distance. While I sincerely delight in the arrival of Easter morning, I am more comfortable on the previous days. When I hear about Jesus as despised and rejected, though I have never suffered to this degree—I have met suffering face-to-face. Grief, I get—pain, I get—they are real to me, they are part of my present. I find it hard to understand resurrection as part of my day-to-day reality. It’s not really about whether or not I doubt the resurrection—it’s about wanting something for this life. Wanting a hope with a more immediate return. Craving the embrace of that part of the kingdom that is already upon us. The resurrection hope sustains us in many ways, but I think we need hope for this day as well. Rev. Sharon Betcher would call this hope that I crave hope for my mortality (as opposed to the resurrection hope of eternal life). Perhaps we want to throw away this mortal self—to dismiss it because of its failures—to live only for the hope of a redeemed life in eternity with God. This was how it was with the disciples as they fearfully gathered together on Easter night. They lived with the pain of loss and the guilt of deserting the one whom they loved so dearly. No doubt that their doors were secured for fear of further persecution—but there was probably another reason for their fear. Of the disciples state, Betcher writes: “In these wee hours after horror, there appears one further holy terror. By dynamics they never would have chosen, these friends of Jesus are going to have to deal with their martyred brother face-to-face. Now if it were not horror enough to recognize one’s own complicity in putting the Spirit of Life to death, they are haunted by the presence of Him who they had ever so slightly hoped would not show His face around there again, Him in whose presence they were mortally embarrassed.” I love this idea of “mortal embarrassment”—the embarrassment we feel when we know the way we should be, but can’t seem to overcome ourselves enough to get there. Think back to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden—their eyes were opened and they knew they were naked. They were shamed—mortally embarrassed—and so they hid from God. For the disciples, the mortal embarrassment came in their face-to-face encounter with the risen Lord. But Jesus is not caught up in the awkward moment. He does not reproach them for their indiscretions, but greets them openly with the traditional Hebrew “Peace be with you.” Though from his moment of crisis in the Garden of Gethsemane through his very crucifixion they continually fell short of their promised allegiance, he greets them with the peace—offering them grace and forgiveness. This was the first peace blessing—and from this small phrase their relationships were restored. His offering continues: “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Jesus was sent into the world as the reconciling act of God. So he calls the disciples to be just that for the world. Our Presbyterian Book of Confessions affirms this belief: “God the Holy Spirit fulfills the work of reconciliation in man. The Holy Spirit creates and renews the church as the community in which men are reconciled to God and to one another. He enables them to receive forgiveness as they forgive one another and to enjoy the peace of God as they make peace among themselves. In spite of their sin, he gives them power to become representatives of Jesus Christ and his gospel of reconciliation to all men.” It is true, the disciples have been “ordained” into their positions in the past—he has made disciples of them so that they might do his work in the world. But he gives them something more here—he gives them a deeper understanding of spiritual relationships. This is the new peace. His promises are fulfilled—and they aren’t just promises that he will be resurrected—they are relationship promises. God will be with them through the Spirit. “He breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” Now, in my research I came across massive sections analyzing the nature of Christ’s pulmonary exhalation—I will spare you the details. As I understand it, this is John’s way of connecting us to the beginning of our story, when God breathes life into Adam. For it is this gospel writer who proclaimed: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” John wants to tell us the whole story…this is the big finale. Though the Word was with God from the beginning, he was gifted to us in mortal flesh at a specific point in time. Through Jesus we know something more of God than had ever been known in the past—we know of his love for us and his desire for our reconciliation. Jesus’ promise of the Spirit is fulfilled in this Easter moment and later in the account of Pentecost in the book of Acts. And in this way, he will never be apart from his disciples again. In this breath, our mortality finds redemption. He gave the disciples the gift of the Spirit and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” The world has a moral code—Christianity cannot lay claim to its origins—our uniqueness is in this message of forgiveness. Robert Capon writes: “What the world cannot get right… is the forgiveness business – and that, of course, is the church's real job. She is in the world to deal with the Sin which the world can't turn off or escape from. She is not in the business of telling the world what's right and wrong so that it can do good and avoid evil. She is in the business of offering, to a world which knows all about that tiresome subject, forgiveness for its chronic unwillingness to take its own advice.” Jesus does not give us moral imperatives, he give us forgiveness. In this sense, he gives us life. The life-giving Holy Spirit is that which provides hope for the now…a day-to-day hope that keeps us going when we would not have the power to do so on our own. When Jesus promises on the night of his betrayal “On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you”—he is not saying that he is in us so we will be gods—he says, ‘I will be with you—you will have me always at your side.’ It is not a power of our own that sustains us—it is a power gifted to us in form of the Holy Spirit. It is not a power that necessarily prevents us from sin—but it constantly reminds us of forgiveness. For when we are worn down by the transgressions of this world against us, we are called to the peace which passes all understanding—we are called to forgiveness. Rev. Ellen Adams’ poem “Anger” beautifully identifies this forgive and forgiven element:
of justice and truth and took it to the altar to be blessed by God. “Why thank you, Ellen, another pruning hook.” I wept, knowing that God was not the blind one, and realizing once more, that if God has enough mercy to forgive me, God has enough mercy to forgive my enemies. |