Happy Easter

Today is often called Good Shepherd Sunday.  It is obvious why. Reverend Susan opened up the Mass with the appointed collect of the day...O God, whose Son Jesus is the good shepherd of your people...

The Psalm continues, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want

Finally, in the Gospel we hear Jesus say, I am the good shepherd.  One of the many famous “I Am” statements found in John’s gospel.

A Shepherd. A reference that we see used through many books of the bible. One of the oldest occupations and one that the people could relate. A shepherd would spend so much time with their flock, that they could often tell one from another. Unusual markings, the way they walked, their voice, and many other characteristics. Like wise, the flock would know their shepherd.  His or her voice or call was distinct enough that the sheep would know with whom to go. In fact, sheep would often recognize the face of their shepherd. The shepherd was charged with protecting the flock from predators and leading them to food, water, safety, and bringing the lost back into the fold.


Jesus speaks about the hired hand who is not the shepherd, the hired hand that does not care for the sheep, who sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away. When we walk into church, we bring everything in our lives through those doors.  Things in our lives that are not easy to share or those parts of ourselves that we hide. We bring our faults, struggles, failures, worries and hurts of the world. The wolves in our lives. As we feel defenseless and unsure, these wolves snatch our peace and scatter our lives.  We feel lost. We seek out understanding and answers. Searching for ways to fix those hurts that we have and those pains that we see in the world. We easily hear and may even say ourselves, where is God? Where is God to protect? Where is my shepherd? Perhaps it is in that question. Where is God? Where is the good shepherd? As if we are suppose to be looking around for Him, searching for Him. We often forget - we do not find God, God finds us. It is not the sheep that searches for their shepherd. Jesus as the good shepherd seeks us out to find us when we are lost.

God knows each one of us.  He knows our laughter, the way we talk, the things about ourselves that no one knows. When we are lost, He knows. He knows because the flock, the community, is just not the same.  Something is missing. How do we know he is searching for us? It is because we hear his call, his distinct voice. Just as sheep recognizes the voice of their shepherd, we recognize Jesus’ call to us. That call sometimes comes quietly in our hearts, so quiet that we just have to stop what we are doing and listen.  Other times the call comes loudly and literally smacks us on the head. A call that confronts us head-on. Sometimes we are too busy that call comes and goes unnoticed.

We are all children of God and that Jesus lives in each one of us. Since Jesus lives in each one of us, who do we shepherd? Our children, family, friends, those who seek public office, others that lead us? What about the stranger, the homeless, the sick, and those that are outcast or need help? Does the shepherd in us stir? Do we hear the cry of others being lost? Doesn’t that voice with in us call out to them? Do we let our distinct voice out so that they may hear it? That they may be found? What about those that have the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses to help.  Do we call to them? Do we shepherd them as well?

We are called to be like Christ. We all serve as shepherds in the world and community around us. We heard in John’s first letter, “Let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” Not just talk about it, but to do something. To advocate, to protect, to revive, to lead, to share. To be living examples of Christ in our world. Powerful actions are not always large, sweeping, and news worthy. Sometimes the most powerful actions are small and unnoticed. The simple act of opening a door for someone. Saying thank you. Sharing the gifts we have with others. Gifts of love, time, companionship, a meal, a shoulder, our experience, a conversation, a smile, compassion, patience, and countless other gifts. When we share our gifts, we see God. We see God when those gifts are used for one another. Gifts that when shared are multiplied many times over and returned to us.

Yes, there is a great deal of struggle and pain in this world, but I do not think God asks any one of us to fix it all alone.  God asks that we just help. To shepherd in the ways in which we are able

We see the wolves in the world. Do we run?

The Good Shepherd is risen indeed. The Good Shepherd is alive in each one of us.

Close your eyes. He calls to us. Do you hear it? How do we respond?

It’s Not a Club—It’s a Church:
A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Susan Allison-Hatch

What was your first church like?  How did it feel to you to be there?  Did you feel welcomed?  Loved?  Accepted for who you were?  Did you have a niche to fit in?  Space to grow in?  Did people know your name and the names of those you loved?  I can imagine that there are as many different first experiences of church as there are people in this room.  Churches take so many different shapes and forms.

Maybe yours was one of those churches where you knew you were loved right down to the tips of your toes.  Maybe you could count on someone smiling warmly when you caught their eye—even if you were in the midst of making mischief.   When you shrieked—as most kids do—did folks turn to you and smile or did they turn and scowl or did they not respond at all just pretending that that noisy you wasn’t there?  

One of my good friends often talks about the church she was raised in.  My friend was never an easy person to pigeonhole or to control.  She pushed every boundary she could find.  But that church of her childhood not only accepted her, they reveled in her.   My friend knew she was loved no matter who she was or wasn’t—no matter what she did or didn’t do.  That’s how my friend came to know she was beloved of God.  That’s how my friend grew to love God.  She was loved and that was all she needed.

My friend was lucky enough to be born and baptized into a community that knew how to love the children in their midst.  They weren’t perfect, but they knew how to love their kids.  I suppose you could say that that was one of their special gifts, one of their charisms, one of the marks on their part of the body of Christ.  What a gift that community gave their children!  What a gift that community gave the future!

The community to which John wrote or maybe preached was also a community with charism—a special gift.  The gift of that community was the gift of an active love for one another.  It wasn’t something that came easy to them—time and again in the three short letters of John—we hear about the challenges they faced as they worked to live out their life in Christ as a life grounded in love for one another.  But work at it they did.

I wonder how they did it—I wonder how they kept coming back to that practice of love. How they returned to love when they felt cranky, hurt, ignored, misunderstood.  How they returned to love when the love they gave was not met with love.   I wonder how they learned to live that active kind of love—that love of neighbor that loves no matter what is given back.  It couldn’t have been easy.  If it were easy, we’d have no letters from John.  He wouldn’t need to write.  But write he does.  

Could it be that that little community was one grounded in connection—connection with one another and with God?  How does John put it---“we are God’s children” and “we will be like him”.  They weren’t strangers tossed together, they weren’t people gathered together because they shared a common interest or a common end.  They weren’t an interest group or a business or even a club.  They were brothers and sisters—all children of God, all beloved of God.  Children of God joining together to help one another live in love.  How they lived with one another, how they treated one another, what they said about each other, what they held dear mattered.  Such things matter for us as well.    

Today we are baptizing Silas Jude Ruiz.  We are welcoming him into the Body of Christ.  This is not something I do or his parents do or his sponsor does.  This is something we all do together.  We receive him into the Body of Christ and commit to helping him live his life in Christ.  

We welcome Silas into a community where all are welcome.  We welcome Silas into a community where all can safely live.  We welcome you, Silas, into a community where you can grow into the person God created you to be.  Challenge us.  Inspire us.  Help us to grow in our life in Christ.  Shake the walls.  Rattle the foundations.  Keep us ever mindful of the One in whose name we gather.  Like you, Silas, we are marked as Christ’s own forever.  Thanks be to God.  

Happy Easter!
Our bulletins this morning say “2nd Sunday of Easter,”
    and our Easter season will last seven weeks and end with Pentecost.
But does it really feel like Easter any more?
The eggs have been colored, found, and made into egg salad.
The chocolate bunnies have been eaten and Easter baskets put away.
For most people, Easter is over.

Which is a shame.
Because we live in world that needs Easter.
Not just one day, but every day.

As my husband, Lee, recently said to me,
    if you feel your spirits getting too high,
        just spend a few hours reading or listening to the news.
News reports are full of violence, around the world and here at home;
    insensitive comments and inappropriate conduct by politicians;
    and constant fear for the future of our economy.

It is in this context that we come to church this Easter season,
    to hear again the stories of the Risen Christ and his followers.


The stories began with an empty tomb.
Mary Magdalene came to the tomb of Jesus that early Sunday morning,
    to pay her respects to her dead friend and lord.

It was already the third day – the third day in a world Mary Magdalene could not imagine
    – a world without Jesus.
So she came, weeping, to his tomb.
She expected to find it sealed.
Instead, she found that the tomb was open, and empty.
She heard her name spoken, and everything changed again.
Her grief was replaced by wonder and joy.
Mary was no longer lost, but given a new purpose –
    to share the good news about the risen Christ.


That same evening, the disciples were gathered in a locked room.
They did not believe the crazy story Mary came running to tell them that morning.
They did believe their lives might be in danger,
    from the same men who had arrested and killed their teacher.
They did believe that everything they had longed for was gone –
The one they thought was God’s promised Messiah was dead,
    and with him, all their hope.

Then Jesus came to them.
Just like that, Jesus appeared, and everything changed again.
“Peace be with you.” Jesus said.
“As the Father has sent me, I have sent you.”
Then he breathed on them, saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

Once before, Jesus had called these men and women to leave the lives they knew
    to follow him.
Now he gives them a new promise.
He offers them a peace that the world can not give –
    the peace of knowing and being known by Jesus,
        who has conquered sin and death.
Now he gives them a new purpose –
    sending them out, filled with the Holy Spirit,
        to witness to what they have seen and heard.
He sends them to bear witness to what God has done
    in the life, death, and resurrection of their Lord, Jesus Christ.

After his resurrection, Jesus appears three times in the Gospel of John.
He visits twice in a room where the disciples are meeting, fearful and doubting;
    and he appears to his friends as they fished,
        and eating with them on the beach.
Every time he comes to them, they become stronger, wiser, kinder, more daring.
Every time he comes to them, they become more like him.

Jesus is making them Easter people –
    his followers,
        filled with the news of the resurrection and the power of the Holy Spirit.


A while ago I read an interesting quotation from a book called The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish Perspective, written by the Jewish NT scholar Pinchas Lapide.
For him, the proof of the resurrection lies in the changed lives of the disciples; he writes:

“When this scared, frightened band of the apostles, which was just about to throw away everything in order to flee in despair to Galilee; when these peasants, shepherds, and fishermen, who betrayed and denied their master and then failed him miserably, suddenly could be changed overnight into a confident mission society, convinced of salvation and able to work with much more success after Easter than before Easter, then no vision or hallucination is sufficient to explain such a revolutionary transformation.”

When they met the risen Christ, the disciples were transformed,
    from a frightened band of misfits
        to God’s powerful witnesses in the world.


We, too, have met the risen Christ.
We, too, have been filled with the Holy Spirit,
    and sent to bear witness to our Lord.
And so we go –
    hoping that we, too, will become stronger, wiser, kinder, and more daring;
    praying that we, too, will become more like him.
God changes hearts and transforms lives to create God’s Easter people.
This is how God continues God’s work of resurrection in a world in need of healing –
    by sending God’s Easter people to bear witness to the truth.

Easter people know that our sins are forgiven,
    so that we might forgive others.
Easter people know that Jesus loves us unconditionally,
    and sends us to love as he has loved.
Easter people know that whatever we face, whatever we fear,
    it cannot be more powerful than the God who broke the power of death itself.


Our world desperately needs Easter people.
People who bring comfort and peace where there is grief and despair,
    bring reconciliation where there has been hatred and fear,
    bring new beginnings where there has been death and chaos.


Jesus lives!
–    not only 2000 years ago, leaving behind an empty tomb,
    but now, here, among us.
We have heard him call our names –
    in the water of baptism, in the bread and wine,
    in the many and varied ways Jesus encounters each one of us in daily life.
And so we are his Easter people.


Alleluia! Christ is Risen!      
    (Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!)

Eastering:
A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Susan Allison-Hatch

“Enough,”  he says, “I’ve waited long enough.  I’m heading home.”

Rising, he turns to his companion.  “Are you coming with me?” he asks.

She shrugs her shoulders and gets up.  What else is there to do?  They’ve waited long enough.  Three days,  an empty tomb, rumors of angels claiming that the one they love lives, but still no sight of him.  The tomb is empty.  He should be here by now.  And yet He’s not.  They’ve waited long enough.   It’s time to go.

And so they leave that locked-up, stuffy upper room and head down the road to Emmaus—two despairing hearts welled up with grief and fear and pent up pain.

They had hoped—oh how they had hoped—that He would be the one, the one to change the lop-sided world  in which they lived; that He would be the one to throw off all those chains that bound them to a life of burdens they often couldn’t bear.

But now—but now He’s gone.  Leaving them with only their hopes, a promise and an empty tomb—hardly enough to penetrate their gloom, hardly enough to keep them waiting in that upper room.  

So down the road they walk. As they walk they remember what He said, what He did, what He promised, and maybe most of all how He treated them with dignity and with love.  They remember how he lived that Reign of God he talked about so much.  Sometimes it almost felt as if they were living it too.

Lost in their memories and in their conversation, they don’t see the stranger coming their way.  They don’t see Him until he’s right there in their midst.  And even then they don’t really see him at all.  Their eyes are blinded by their dashed hopes and unfulfilled expectations.  So focused on what they expect, they miss the risen Christ in front of their eyes.  

I think Cleopas and his companion are not alone in that.  Expectations too clearly drawn and too tightly held can keep you and me from seeing the risen Christ standing right before us.    But the risen Christ isn’t that easy too shake.  Like the stranger on that road to Emmaus, the risen Christ comes to us in different ways, in different shapes, at different times in our lives.   Sometimes as a neighbor, sometimes as a friend, sometimes as a stranger, and sometimes a pesky co-worker or an annoying cousin.

Sometimes we meet him in a story told—a story that shifts our understanding of our world and our place in it; a story that helps us see our way out of a dilemma we thought we were stuck in; or maybe one  that expands our horizons just a little.  

Sometimes we meet him in a question asked.   “Are you sure?  Are you sure that’s how you want to play it?” someone says to us in one of those moments when we’re about to cut a cord of connectedness.  In the question we meet the risen Christ Eastering us into a different way of living, into a different way of being in the moment.  

Sometimes we meet him in an invitation offered.  “Won’t you join me?” or “You’d be great at...” or “I hear they need some help...”  Invitations to join the risen Christ in the work of Eastering the world in which we live.  

Cleopas and his companion meet the risen Christ in their despondency and despair. Walking with them, He begins to Easter them into new life.

Eastering.  As Cleopas and his companion can attest, it’s not a one-shot-only kind of thing.  Eastering.  For some of us it happens slowly over time.  A brush with newness here.  A glimpse of hope there.  First stirrings of new life.  

We get a whiff of Him and a sense of something changing in our lives.  

And then the wine is poured, the bread is broken, a glass is raised, a loaf is shared.  Gathered around the table we meet Him in the breaking of the bread.  

In our best moments we, like Cleopas and his companion, rush off—off to join the Resurrection.  Off to be the Resurrection bringing light and life and word of the living Christ to the dark corners of our world.  Off to do the work of Eastering.  

Eastering.  It’s not something to put off until the just the right moment appears. Eastering.  It’s not something we wait for.  Eastering.  It happens when we work for justice. It happens when we live with love.  It happens when the passion for God’s reign burns white-hot in our hearts.  Shall we be off to our work of Eastering?