I find the toughest thing about Holy Week preaching is to come up with words to match the story we're telling that don't sound as if I'm just repeating old tropes over and over. Writing four sermons is also very challenging. And, as much as I do enjoy insights from commentaries, I also think that the worst sin preachers commit is when we get too worried about staying "above the fray" if you will and not drawing on our own relationship with the Holy, which, hopefully, we have one that we have experienced and tended to through our own prayer life. I have personally hated those times when I am listening to my priest preach a sermon knowing full well that half of what their saying is not even remotely close to the person they present to me and others when they're out of the pulpit.
That's why I was so happy that I took the time on Tuesday of Holy Week to attend the service where the bishop, priests and deacons renew our ordination vows. As I sat in the pew in Cordele, I contemplated and reviewed in my mind's eye all the bumps, bruises, joys, sorrows, struggles, rejections, affirmations, and a-ha's that I had experienced along my faith journey... from the time I was an acolyte at Christ Church in Exeter, NH, to the first affirmation at St. Thomas in Thomasville as a deacon, and then that incredible moment of feeling all those hands on me as I became a priest at St. Barnabas in Valdosta.
In all of it, I experienced the promise of God, a God who has come to the aid of all who have ever been rejected by the church or society or both.
To hear the sermon Bishop Logue delivered at that service... and to have had that review of my own path toward ordination... gave me some great words to share with the congregation assembled for The Great Vigil of Easter.
Text: Ezekiel 37: 1-14
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We heard the reading from Ezekiel only a couple weeks ago. Our
lectionary diviners paired it with the story of the raising of Lazarus.
Now we hear it in the context of the resurrection of Jesus.
And just a few days ago… it was brought to my attention again when
I went to the service with Bishop Logue where priests and deacons renew our
vows of ordination.
So wisdom tells me… if I hear something that many times and in such
a short time span… I might want to pay attention to what is going on here.
I’ve already talked about the meaning behind this moment with the
prophet of Ezekiel staring at a landscape littered with bones.
This is a metaphor for what has happened to Israel with one
invasion after another… the scattering of the people… all the best minds captured
and taken off to Babylon.
In some ways… this feels like an apt image for our times.
War has scarred and battered the people of Ukraine.
Violence and catastrophes have sent many fleeing from their
homelands in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Central America.
And in our own country… we are deeply polarized along political
lines to the point where we can’t seem to agree on basic facts. And some of the
most marginalized groups are getting further shoved into the proverbial corners
of society.
That question… “Can these bones live?”… is so haunting and feels so
real under the circumstances.
Bishop Logue recalled the words he heard our late Presiding Bishop
Frank Griswold speak when he was addressing the students and faculty at
Virginia Theological Seminary. Griswold… who led a life steeped in prayer…
quoted from the mystic Thomas Merton’s Seeds of Contemplation as he considered
the Valley of Dry Bones. Merton wrote:
In the whole world, throughout the whole of
history... Christ suffers dismemberment... All over the face of the earth the
avarice and lust of [humans breeds] unceasing divisions among them, and the
wounds that tear [people] from union with one another widen and open out into
huge wars, murder, massacres...Christ is massacred in His members, torn limb
from limb.”
Merton added: “As long as we are on earth
the love that unites us will bring us suffering by our very contact with one
another. Because of this, love is the resetting of a body of broken bones.”
Bishop Griswold applied Merton’s thinking
to the Ezekiel 37 reading we’ve heard. Griswold said this reading is about “the
resetting of broken bones.”
He said: “Through Baptism we are all caught
up in this resetting of broken bones, which is the work of love in us. The
Eucharist then is the unfolding of the mystery of communion over time, by which
we are formed into a people of communion.”
We can hear that, can’t we, in the reading.
God commands Ezekiel to tell these bones
that God is going to restore them… with breath… and ligaments… and
sinews. God will pull this broken and desperate people out of their
depression and misery and give them new life.
In our Christian story… on this morning… we
recall the way God resurrected Jesus from the dead… to the surprise and
astonishment and awe of Mary Magdalene and all the other followers of Jesus.
This resurrected Christ stands as the
symbol to all who have felt the sting and pain of society’s hatred and
rejection and have had our voices silenced or ignored by the powerful and
privileged.
But Love will not go away or be put down so
easily.
Through the waters of our own Baptism… we
have been made one with the Crucified Jesus who triumphed over the grave.
Our bones… dry and brittle… at odds with
one another… can be made into a living, breathing, and healthier community.
While the world keeps pushing for us to
divide ourselves… and dismember Christ… Love insists on coming back from the
dead…and piecing us back together.
The light keeps piercing through the
darkness.
We are brought back together in communion…
no matter who we are…or what ideological positions we hold.
And through the sharing of bread and wine God
re-members us back into the Body of Christ.
In just a moment… we are going to be
renewing the vows made at our baptism.
It is in our baptism that our lives become
joined like bone-to-bone into one Christian body.
Listen to those promises which we make with
God’s help.
May we recommit ourselves to the mission of
Love and putting our trust in a God who is ready to breathe us back to life.
In the name of God… F/S/HS.
