Sunday, May 25, 2014

We Are Like Him

On the wall in our family room hangs a picture of my paternal grandfather, who died before I was born. Every time I go by the picture, I stop for a moment. Hard as I try to discern my father’s face in the face of my grandfather, I can’t do so. Apparently my father resembled his mother, who was so superstitious that she would never allow anyone to take her picture. I favor my father’s side of the family and apparently also look like her. Alas, I will never know whether I do or not, at least on this side of the grave. On the other hand, I once saw a picture of one of my father’s cousins. Although I had never met him, I knew him immediately as a member of my father’s family. By the same token, anyone meeting our younger daughter would know immediately that we were mother and daughter. Our older daughter and son? They tend to favor Jack’s side of the family.

It’s a favorite game, isn’t it, especially among extended families, and especially at family gatherings, or when we look through old photograph albums. Who is like whom? Who favors whom? Is that Uncle Phil around the eyes? From which family member did he inherit his musical talent? Is she as good an athlete as Aunt Phyllis was? Who will the baby favor when he is grown?

Our readings for today invite us to look at resemblances in another way, to look through a different lens. Besides our natal families, as Christians, as human beings really, we are all members of a much larger family. As baptized Christians, we are members of Christ’s family – we are his brothers and sisters – and we are also members of the human family, all children of God. Our texts invite us to see ourselves through a different lens, not the photographer’s lens but God’s lens, to see a different kind of resemblance among us, and to see that we might resemble someone else besides Grandpa Jim or Aunt Louise.

Our first reading from the Book of Acts continues the story we have been hearing throughout Easter tide of the outward expansion of the fledgling Christian community. Besides giving us a flavor of some of the issues faced by the early followers of Jesus, the book depicts the various missionary journeys of Paul after his encounter with the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus. Now we are in the second half of the book. We catch up with Paul as he is preaching on Mars Hill, the place where many famous philosophers, including Socrates, expounded their ideas. An outstanding speaker himself, here Paul notes that the Athenians are a very religious people and worship many different images. He then suggests, through his allusion to the Unknown God, that the Athenians already sense that there is a deeper truth underlying their usual forms of religious practice.

Paul also quotes from the Athenians’ own philosophers, suggesting that they already know that, “In him we live and move and have our being.” Echoing the assertion in Genesis that God created humanity in God’s own image, Paul then reminds the Athenians that “we too are his offspring.” The implication is clear: we are God’s children. We are loved, treasured, and valued, and we live by the grace of God at work within us. Most important, unlike the Greeks, who believed that the gods were fundamentally different from humankind, Paul asserts that we resemble God in the core of our being. We are like God, and we all have what Quakers call “that of God” in us.

Today’s psalm also points to “that of God” in us. Speaking for those who have experienced the wilderness, the psalm reminds us that God is not distant from us but, rather that God upholds us, God “holds our souls in life.” More important, for the psalmist, God listens to us and hears our prayers, not from an unbridgeable distance, but from within. Since God is within, we can express both our gratitude for God’s deliverance from trouble, and, what is more important, our deep sense of being heard and known by God. As the psalmist says, “God has heard me, he has attended to the voice of my prayer…. He has not rejected my prayer nor withheld his love from me.”

Our reading from the first letter attributed to the apostle Peter gives us a different lens through which to see ourselves. We have been hearing portions of this letter throughout Easter tide, because the letter states so well the impact of the risen Jesus on the early Christian communities. The letter was probably written in the late first century by a disciple of the apostle in order to offer consolation to a Christian community that was facing persecution at the hands of the civil authorities.

Here, the writer invites his hearers, and, by extension us, to adopt a “theology of identity,” i.e., to know ourselves, by virtue of our baptisms, as members of Jesus’ family. If we are members of his family, then we are invited to perceive our intrinsic value and worth to God. We are so valuable, the writer assures his hearers and us, that Jesus was willing to die for us. Because we are valuable to God, because we are members of Jesus’ family, we can let go of self-pity and doubt, even in the face of suffering. We can be assured that we are growing in our capacity for love and in our ability to live as Jesus lived, and that, with Jesus as our guide, we can even forgive those who persecute us.

The Gospel according to John was also written for a persecuted community. Written in the late ‘90s, the gospel was addressed to a community at odds with the wider Jewish community and its leadership. These were people who were wondering whether they had made the right choice in following Jesus. Through Jesus’ words at his last gathering with his disciples, the evangelist provides the reassurance that we all need to hear. Jesus reminds his friends that, although he is leaving them, they will always have him with them. Through the gift of the Holy Spirit he will always be inside them – and not only he himself, but God the Father as well. He will be in them, he tells them, as a kind of “organic indwellingness,” working from within them, through their own spirits. This is really the good news in a nutshell: even though Jesus is physically no longer present to us, the Holy Spirit is within us, making Christ present to us from within, enabling us to live as he lived, and continuing to remind us of our membership in his family and our resemblance to him.

If we are God’s offspring, if we are valued and loved by God, if God’s Spirit dwells within us, if we resemble Jesus, then what are we called to do? If we turn back to the letter of Peter, we hear the writer contrast those who did not “obey” with Noah and his family members who did “obey.” Noah, you remember, after the flood, was the first human being with whom God made an everlasting covenant.

So, first we are called to “obey.” Now, that is a word that gets a bad rap in our culture for anyone past childhood. The word “obey” equals “follow blindly” for us. We can’t help remembering, for example, the Nazi soldiers and officers who were only “following orders.” However, the word we translate as “obey” means, in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin to “listen closely,” in order to deepen one’s trust in God. Some of you know that I am training to be a spiritual director. Spiritual direction is a listening ministry, in which one person helps another listen more closely to God. Zalman Schacter tells us that “a nun once told me so beautifully that ‘spiritual direction deals with only one thing: how to reduce our resistance to God.’” We are called to listen, in spiritual direction, in prayer, in contemplative reading of Scripture, in calming our mind through the use of Anglican prayer beads, in any way that will enable us to open our ears, to hear God, to remain connected with God, and to trust God.

And then we are called to do what Jesus commands: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” What does Jesus command? That we love the Lord our God with all our heart, and soul, and strength, and that we love our neighbors as ourselves – actively. And here is the good news: because we resemble Jesus, because we are members of Jesus’ family, because we have God’s Spirit within us, we can live in confidence and hope that we can be and do all that God asks of us. We can evangelize, we can endure hardship for God’s sake, and we can love and serve all those around us.

O God the Holy Ghost …
Evermore enlighten us.
Thou who art Fire of Love,
Evermore enkindle us.
Thou who art Lord and Giver of Life,
Evermore live in us ….

Sunday, May 18, 2014

Bearing Witness

Why are December 26th and December 28th important days on the church calendar? During the twelve days of Christmas tide, when we joyfully give thanks for the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, most of us slide right over these two days. We shouldn’t. On December 28th, we remember the Holy Innocents, the boys under two years of age murdered by Herod’s soldiers as they went looking for the child sought by the Persian astrologers. These boys were the first to die because of Herod’s fear of the one born “king of the Jews.” And on December 26th – Boxing Day in the U.K. and Canada – we celebrate the feast of St. Stephen, Deacon and Martyr. Some of you may even remember the old carol that begins “Good King Wenceslas looked out/ on the feast of Stephen ....” which describes the king’s encounter with a poor man the day after Christmas.

So why are we hearing about Stephen now, and in Easter tide yet? Is it only because Stephen had a vision of the risen Christ standing at God’s right hand? Is it because the text mentions Saul, the Pharisee who had yet to become one of the greatest evangelists of the early church? Actually, the reason may be that we are far enough into Easter tide that the lectionary encourages us to ponder the deeper implications of life in the risen Christ. It’s true that we will continue rejoicing in the Easter event and shouting our “alleluias” until Pentecost. It’s also true that every Sunday in the church year is a celebration of the resurrection. Yet the further we go into Easter tide the more we realize that, as followers of the risen Christ, we are called to do more than simply rejoice in what God has done. We are also called to bear witness to what we see and experience of Christ, to “proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Christ.”

All our lessons remind us of our call to bear witness. The writer of the first letter in Peter’s name reminds us that we, like his original hearers, have become “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” In our reading from the Gospel according to John, the evangelist shows Jesus, in his last speech before his execution, restating for his friends and us who he truly is, assuaging our fears of being abandoned, and alluding to the unified community we are to become as his disciples. Most important, the story of the death of Stephen gives us a concrete example of witness to the impact of experience of the risen Christ and a foretaste of the consequences of letting Christ into our lives.

Actually, we’ve been hearing selections from the book of Acts all through Easter tide. The Acts of the Apostles is a continuation of the Gospel according to Luke, and it was compiled by the author of the Gospel. It vividly tells the story of the creation and expansion of the earliest Christian communities following Pentecost. In previous weeks we have heard excerpts from Peter’s sermons, which helped the church grow in Jerusalem.

Now we see some of the controversy that the new community of Jesus’ followers provoked. As we read in chapter 6 of Acts, Stephen was one of the seven chosen to serve the community, its first deacon. Like the other disciples, Stephen also performed “signs and wonders.” He also eloquently proclaimed the good news of Jesus to his fellow Jews. It wasn’t long before he was dragged before the religious leadership and accused of blasphemy. In answer to the charge, Stephen launched into a lengthy sermon, defending his faith in Jesus. He also enraged his fellow Jews by accusing them of unfaithfulness to God. When he described the risen Jesus, the mob took him out to lynch him. Like a faithful follower of Jesus, and like Jesus at his own execution, Stephen asked Jesus to receive his spirit and prayed for forgiveness for his persecutors. Ironically, as a result of Stephen’s death, the Christian community moved out of Jerusalem, as the disciples fled the city fearing that further persecution would follow. Sometime later, the young Pharisee Saul had his own encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus.

As we know only too well, Stephen was hardly the last Christian martyr. Indeed, Christians endured persecution throughout the first three centuries after Jesus’ death. Peter and Paul were both martyred in Rome, probably in 64 A.D., under Nero’s persecution of Christians. The long list of those who went to the lions, the stake, and the gallows includes Blandina and her companions in Lyon, Ignatius of Antioch and his successor Polycarp, Justin, the noblewoman Perpetua and her servant Felicity, 14th century Czech reformer Jan Hus, Joan of Arc, and our own Thomas Cranmer, author of the first Book of Common Prayer, who was sent to the stake by Queen Mary in 1556. Closer to our own day, we continue to venerate dissenting theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, hanged by the Nazis in April 1945. And just this week we remembered the Martyrs of Sudan, the Christian bishops, chiefs, commanders, clergy, and people of Sudan who bravely declared on May 16, 1983 that they would not abandon God as God had revealed himself to them, even when they faced death at the hands of the fundamentalist Islamic government in Khartoum.

Perhaps some of you saw the 2010 film Of Gods and Men. If not, perhaps we should see it together as a parish. In 1996, during Algeria’s civil war, seven French Trappist monks from the monastery of Tibhirine, Algeria, were kidnapped by the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria. These gentle monks had been grounded in a peaceful routine of prayer, as they provided medical and other assistance to the local community. Even though civil order broke down and the monks were threatened by extremist groups, they bravely decided to remain in place and continue to serve the Muslims among whom they lived. Sometime after their kidnapping they were found beheaded. Like the story of Stephen, Of Gods and Men portrays lives poured out in service to others, even others who might be considered “enemies,” and even at the cost of one’s own life.

By God’s grace, you and I live in a country where, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ….” By God’s grace, we are free to practice our chosen religion – or no religion at all. We welcome Christians of all stripes, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, and atheists. God willing, no one will turn wild animals loose on us or point guns at us demanding that we practice a certain religion. So what is our challenge as followers of Jesus? How do we understand the witness that Jesus calls us to bear? Here is how I would answer that question. First, we are to take seriously our baptismal promise to “proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Christ.” Like Stephen, we are to have the courage to speak of what we know of Christ and of what we experience in our own lives of the risen Christ. And like the Trappist monks we are to steadfastly continue showing forth our commitment to Christ in our service to others.

Perhaps more important, we are also called to pray: to pray for victims of violence and persecution everywhere. We are called to pray for Christians who still face persecution today. But we are also called to remember that, in the sad history of the world, Christians have not been the only martyrs. Other religions have also suffered persecution – often at the hands of Christians. Millions have been martyred for their ethnicity – think Armenians, Jews, or Tutsis – for economic and social reasons, for their race – think people of African descent in this country and much of the new world – for their gender – think of the burning of widows in India, female infanticide, and, just two years ago, the near-fatal attack on Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai – or for their sexual orientation – think of Matthew Shepard in Wyoming. We are called to remember that no one – whatever their religion, ethnicity, social status, race, gender, or sexuality – is excluded from God’s love. We are called to pray for all who have suffered for their beliefs and for who they are.

We are also called to pray for the courage and self-sacrificial love of martyrs like Stephen and others whose faith inspires us. We are called to remember that the celebration of Easter goes beyond colored eggs, flowers, and butterflies. Most important, we are called to stand with those working for the cessation of violence and for peace among all people. Do we take our Scriptures seriously? Then hear the challenge of the Book of Proverbs: to “speak for those who have no voice, for the justice of all who are dispossessed. Speak up, judge righteously, and defend the cause of the oppressed and needy” (Proverbs 31:8-9). God grant us the grace, strength, and courage to follow behind Stephen, to bear witness to the risen Christ, and to answer God’s call.



Sunday, May 11, 2014

Wonders and Signs

“Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles.” When was the last time you were awe-struck? How often do we see wonders and signs? We have been hearing Luke’s account in the book of Acts of the beginning of the community of Jesus’ disciples. We hear from Acts in Easter tide because the apostles so clearly proclaimed the resurrection of Jesus and showed its impact on the lives of Jesus’ followers. There was clearly something exciting and compelling about the work of Jesus’ earliest followers: they were emboldened by the Holy Spirit, they performed miracles, and they preached a message that left large numbers of people awe-struck and eager to join them.

Miracles, wonders, and signs seemed to have been common in the earliest church. St. Paul had a miraculous vision while travelling on the road to Damascus. As an evangelist of gentiles, Paul later rebuked the newbie Christians at Corinth for over-emphasizing ecstatic experiences of the Spirit. Many first and even second-century accounts of the Way, as devotion to Christ was called, depict miracles, visions, ecstatic speech, and other visible manifestations of the Holy Spirit. However, as the church became institutionalized, especially after it became the official religion of the Roman Empire, visible experiences of the Spirit, “wonders and signs,” became much less frequent. Although mystics continued to have intense – and often visible – experiences of the presence of the Holy Spirit, awe at God’s wondrous presence virtually disappeared in most church communities. In mainline Protestant congregations today, including Episcopal parishes determined to do everything “decently and in order,” awe at God’s wonders and signs might even be suspect!

And yet awe is just what we should feel! God is all around us. In God “we live and move and have our being.” God’s wonders and signs are visible everywhere, if we would but open our eyes to see them. More important, contemporary scientific discoveries have given us new ways of experiencing God’s presence, new ways of looking for “wonders and signs” that ancient thinkers and religious leaders could not see. When we contemplate what those discoveries have shown us, truly the only reaction we could possibly have is awe.

I recently read a book entitled Radical Amazement by Catholic laywoman Judy Cannato. In a surprisingly accessible way, Cannato relates all that we now know about the cosmos to our faith as followers of Jesus the Christ. Consider, Cannato says, the vastness of the universe. Where the ancients could only see the sun and the planets revolving around the earth, we now know that our galaxy, the Milky Way, is one of millions of galaxies, most of which are larger than ours. The distances among all these galaxies are millions of light years. We also know that the beginning of the cosmos, an explosion of matter and energy now called the Big Bang, occurred more than thirteen billion years ago. Scientists also theorize that if the Big Bang had been one trillionth of a second shorter, matter and energy would have collapsed inward, while one trillionth of a second longer would have flung all the matter and energy irretrievably apart. We know that the cosmos is continuing to expand, and at an accelerating rate. Scientists have discovered black holes, dark matter, and dark energy, and theorize that 95% of the cosmos is invisible to us.

Just as astounding is what we now know of the origins of life. Scientists have begun to understand that the earth is about 4.5 billion years old, that life arose from light, and that life became ever more complex through a process of self-development and evolution. Although we are intimately – in our very molecules and atoms – connected to every other form of life, even to the rocks and stars – we humans appear to be the most complex form of life. We are also the most self-conscious form of life, able to reflect on our relationship with our creator, in whose image we are made, and our connection with each other and the rest of creation. As followers of Jesus, God’s expression of Godself in human terms, we glimpse what human life might become in the completion of God’s plan. Although God reveals Godself in God’s creation, we acknowledge that ultimately God is incomprehensible mystery, the Holy One of whom we limited humans can say little or nothing.

Wonders and signs! When we contemplate all this, the cosmos, the earth, the miracle of complex human life, how can we not be awe-struck? How can we not resonate with Abraham Heschel’s reminder that awe is “a way of being in rapport with the mystery of all reality?” How can we not agree that, “Awe enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal.”1 And when we understand our deep and intimate connection to all this immensity and vastness, how can we not be left utterly speechless?

Awe-struck by God’s wonders and signs, speechless at God’s creation, what do we do now? How do we live our lives when we contemplate our connection with all of God’s wondrous creation? Following Judy Cannato’s lead, we can begin by expanding our image of God.2 We can remember that God is both transcendent and immanent. God is more than all of creation. Yet God is intimately connected with creation and reveals something of Godself in all of it, from our DNA to the farthest star. We can embrace a God of incomprehensible mystery. Although we are made in God’s image, we can never assume that God is like us. We can never assume that we have God nailed down, God neatly confined in the box of our own intellect. In his last discourse in the gospel according to John, Jesus reminded his disciples that “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth….” We must always expect God to surprise us and continue to reveal more of both Godself and God’s creation.

If we are made in God’s image, and we believe creation to have sprung forth from God, then we must also expand our embrace of all creation. All life is connected, both physically and spiritually. To see ourselves as atoms, separate and distinct from each other and the rest of creation is, as Albert Einstein called it, “optical delusion.” And yet, for the last several centuries, that is exactly how we have seen ourselves. We have poisoned rivers and lakes, we have created the great Pacific trash island, we have caused acid rain, and we have removed mountain tops. We have even begun to change the climate of “this fragile earth.” In an arresting article on the website of the magazine Sojourners Wes Granberg-Michaelson pointedly asks us, “Who will take personal responsibility for denying climate Change?” Granberg-Michaelson goes on to remind us that, “those who have denied climate change and thwarted actions to prevent or mitigate its effects have not just been mistaken. They are responsible for the increase in human suffering that has resulted now, and will continue in the future, from its effects.”3 Even if we accept the reality of climate change, we are still bound to ask ourselves how we can better care for creation. Can we support local farmers? Plant our own gardens? Decrease our use of plastic? Decrease our trash? Support recycling?

If we are truly awe-struck by the grandeur of God’s creation, we can also work at rising above self-preoccupation and pursue communion and relationship with each other. And perhaps, most important of all, we can open ourselves to God’s presence in silence and contemplation. We can take the time to savor our time and place, to pray through our days, acknowledging God’s presence with us in all things. And we have help in doing this. Celtic prayer, the prayer tradition of Ireland and Scotland, recognized God’s intimate connection with all creation, ourselves, the rest of earth’s creatures, and the cosmos, long before contemporary scientists did. We can offer to God all that we do, and have, and are. We can experience God’s presence not only in formal worship but also in all the “domestic mess” of our daily lives. In all that we do we can gratefully acknowledge God’s presence in, with, under, around, and through us.

And if we need words to express our awe at the signs and wonders of God’s presence in creation, we might turn to Psalm 8:

When I behold your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars which you set in place –
what is humanity that you should be mindful of us?
Who are we that you should care for us?
You have made us barely less than God,
and crowned us with glory and honor.
You have made us responsible
For the work of your hands,
putting all things at our feet….
YHWH, our Sovereign,
how majestic is your Name in all the earth!4

1. God in Search of Man (New York: Farrar Strauss Giroux, 1955), 74-75, quoted in Judy Cannato, Radical Amazement (Notre Dame, IN: Sorin Books, 2006), 142.
2. Based on Cannato, pp. 137ff.
3. http://sojo.net/blogs/2014/05/08/who-will-take-personal-responsibility-denying-climate-change .
4. The Inclusive Bible (Plymouth, UK: Sheed and Ward, 2007), 373.

Sunday, May 4, 2014

Lives Transformed

What does Easter mean to you? It’s still Easter, and it will continue to be Easter tide throughout this month. So what does Easter mean to you? German pastor and social activist Christoph Blumhardt said that it is not enough to celebrate Easter by saying, “Christ is risen.” It makes no sense to make such a proclamation unless we can also say that we have died with Christ and we have also risen with Christ. Yes, we acknowledge Jesus’ victory over death, but does what happened to Jesus have any impact on our lives? What does Easter mean to you?

What did Easter mean to those who encountered the risen Lord in the flesh? Our Scripture stories tell us that their lives were utterly transformed. Mary Magdalene and the other women become the first evangelists, enthusiastically delivering the good news of the empty tomb to the other disciples. Seeing Jesus’ wounded side and hands, Thomas was transformed from a skeptic – or at best someone who was confused by all that had happened – into a person of deep faith who could proclaim, “My Lord and my God!” Indeed, from that upper room, Thomas went out to become the first evangelist to India, so tradition tells us, and founded what is now called the Mar Thoma Church in southwest India.

And the transformation of Peter? Although Peter was traditionally the first one to declare that Jesus was God’s anointed one, Scripture also shows us that Peter went up the mountain with Jesus, but completely misunderstood what he saw there. He fell asleep in the garden of Gethsemane, even though Jesus had asked him to stay awake, to “watch with me one hour.” After Jesus was arrested, Peter denied three times that he even knew Jesus. As Jesus hung in agony on the cross, Peter was nowhere to be seen. And, although Peter was the acknowledged leader of Jesus’ closest friends, he huddled behind a locked door with the others on Easter evening, afraid to imagine what might happen next.

Is the Peter that we just heard in the Book of Acts that same Peter? We heard only part of Peter’s sermon that he delivered after experiencing the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. Yet, aren’t you amazed at how boldly Peter can speak the truth to his fellow Jews? Isn’t it astounding that he can proclaim so eloquently and so fearlessly everything that God has done for them in Jesus? Calling himself a witness to the risen Jesus, Peter has clearly been transformed – into someone who will spend the rest of his life spreading the good news among other Jews, and finally dying for his commitment to Jesus during Nero’s persecution of Christians in 64 AD.

And how about those two dispirited and fearful friends along the road to Emmaus? Downcast and disappointed as they trudged home from Jerusalem, they had fervently hoped that Jesus of Nazareth would be God’s anointed one, the king who would finally free the Jews from Roman oppression. Perhaps they had stood by Jesus as he slowly bled to death on the cross. The claim of the women that his tomb was empty, and that angels had told them he was alive, was sheer nonsense to them. And then that mysterious stranger began to explain the Hebrew Scriptures to them. He showed them that his death took place according to God’s plan. Their hearts warmed to him, as they began to see that Scripture tells us a consistent story of God’s great love. As Jesus was about to leave them on their own, the companions were moved by the Holy Spirit to invite Jesus to come in and share a meal with them. Miraculously, instead of guest, Jesus became host. He broke the bread, blessed it, and broke it, and gave it to them – and they recognized him!

And the two companions were utterly transformed! Then they knew for certain that what the women had said was true, and that Jesus was indeed alive again. Even though it was now night, and even though they were tired from their seven miles’ walk to Emmaus, they were so joyful and excited that they turned around and ran the seven miles back to Jerusalem. They joyfully shared the good news with Peter and the other disciples. And all of them knew that not only was Jesus alive again, but that he was especially present to them as they broke bread and shared the cup in his name.

What has Easter meant since the books of the New Testament were written and brought together? Were those we hear about in Scripture the only ones – the last ones – to be transformed by the presence of the risen Christ? Absolutely not! St. Paul did not encounter Jesus in the flesh, but the vision that he did have on the road to Damascus so transformed him that he spent the rest of his life proclaiming the good news of Christ to gentile communities in Greco-Roman territories outside Israel. The desert fathers and mothers, founders of monastic communities like Benedict, mystics like Hildegard, Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, those who cared for the poor and downtrodden like Francis of Assisi, holy women like the Beguines of France and Belgium, Protestant reformers like Martin Luther, our own Thomas Cranmer, and John Wesley, all found their lives transformed by the risen Jesus, and all shared with others their joy in the discovery of God’s great love.

Even in our own day, lives are being transformed through those who share God’s love with others. Let me relate just one story among so many. April 25th was World Malaria Day. In some ways it’s a sad anniversary, in that it reminds us – now for the seventh time – that one of the Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations is the prevention of malaria. Our own Episcopal Relief and Development, through its Nets for Life program, trains local community leaders to work throughout Africa, distributing the nets and offering the guidance on diet that will help to reach the goal of the eradication of malaria. And lives are being transformed. Margaret Atieno Juma, a petite mother and grandmother, used to suffer bouts of malaria about two or three times a year. Though we can scarcely imagine having malaria so frequently, Margaret grimly battled the disease, even traveling many miles to a clinic for treatment. Nets for Life has made all the difference in her life, as she put up the bed net in her small mud hut and learned how to keep from contracting the disease. Thanks to ERD and its local representative, it has been over a year since Margaret last contracted malaria!

So what does Easter mean to us? Can we too be transformed, as those in our Scripture stories were, or as Margaret and those who brought her life-saving nets were? We can! Every time we gather in Jesus’ name, every time we are nourished by the bread of Scripture and the bread of the Eucharist, we too can be transformed. Those who come from other traditions often wonder why Roman Catholics and Episcopalians continue to celebrate the Eucharist Sunday after Sunday after Sunday. This is the reason why: it is in the Eucharist that we continue to meet the risen Christ. It is in the Eucharist that he continues his work of transformation in us. We come to this place as we are. Some of us are sad, some of us are wounded, some of us may even be broken. Some of us may be full of energy, but some of us may be full of doubt and questions. Some have many needs and desires, and some have next to nothing but their love for their friends.

And yet God works a transformation in all of us. As we hear God’s word in Scripture, the Holy Spirit helps us to hear with fresh ears, gain new insight, and see more clearly what we are called to do with our lives. As the bread and cup of life are blessed, broken, and shared, Jesus enters our very bodies, nourishing us and transforming us from the inside out. As we gather round the table with Jesus, as we receive Christ’s body and blood, our transformation has begun, but it is not yet complete. Mystics speak of “the slow work of God.” Each of us must return again and again to Christ’s table, letting him continue to change us, letting him continue to feed us, letting him forgive and heal us, letting him continue the lifelong process of growth in wholeness that he began in us in baptism.

Lord, that we may know you in the breaking,
in the break of day, in the breaking of hearts,
and in the breaking of bread,
help us to know that you are risen indeed,
and that you are with us in the holy communion.
May we ever proclaim your presence,
and know that you travel with us on the road we go.
Teach us, Lord, to abide in you, that we may know that you abide in us ….
Lord, abide with us,
that we may abide in you.1

1. Modified from David Adam, Clouds and Glory (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse, 2001), 63.