Rector's Sermon - Sunday, May 12, 2002

First Reading	Psalm	Epistle	Gospel
Acts 1:6-14	68:4-10, 33-36	1 Peter 4;12-14, 5:6-11	John 17:1-11

      Our first child was born exactly on the date the physician first predicted. To the medical staff it was a normal, routine delivery. Within minutes after she was born, our daughter was wrapped up in a blanket, and the staff handed her to her mother, said, "Here, before we do anything else we know you two want some time alone with your new daughter" and they walked out closing the door leaving the three of us alone. It was a wonderful moment, to behold this tiny creature in her first few minutes of life and to know that she was part of you. It was also quite a disconcerting and even scary moment. We realized that it had really happened, we were parents, we now had a child. What do we do, where are the instructions? We were quiet and at a total loss for words. It was also a moment when the presence of the Holy felt very close. Somehow the birth of our daughter and the disclosure of the Holy were intimately connected.

      The period immediately after Easter morning was as disconcerting and scary as it was promising and filled with euphoria. After that terrible week in Jerusalem, the resurrection was as wonderful as a new birth and as exhilarating an experience as anything that could have been imagined. Yet there was also a sense among all of Jesus' followers of "what do we do now?". They knew God had profoundly changed their lives and that they had been given a great gift, but there were no definitive instructions of how they were to proceed. I suspect that is why the Gospel stories after Easter are very sketchy and even contradictory. The post-Easter Gospels are hardly like the polished and detailed narratives of Holy Week. Those who wrote the Gospels seem to have been at a total loss for words.

      I don't think it was surprising that when the disciples sensed Jesus' presence among them, they began asking anxious questions. "Lord will you now restore the kingdom of Israel?" was an open plea for a definitive glimpse into the future. It expressed a yearning for security and certainty. They knew by then that Jesus wasn't going to force himself on the world, but their hearts so wished for an easy answer and they couldn't help themselves. It was a foolish question, but it just popped out and it couldn't be taken back. Jesus didn't scold them. Jesus reminded them again that answers to those questions were not very helpful, for ultimately they would be used to restrict the action of God to one narrow set of ideas about the future. Then Jesus went on, to give them words they needed to hear. "You will receive power, you will be my witnesses. The new life that Easter brought, will grow and grow and grow in you."

      I think it is great that Benjamin is being baptized today and that his father will be graduating from Cornell Law School shortly after the service. What an exciting day! Yet I am sure that in a quiet moment for both Matthew and Elizabeth there is a keen awareness that by their choices, a different life, a new chapter in their marriage, a whole new future, impossible to predict, is opening for them.

      This period of Easter tide is telling us that God's presence is indeed very close; in such periods of birth, change and challenge, is often precisely the time God may touch us is special ways. Disciples of the resurrection, followers of the living Christ, always find futures opening with no definite instructions. I don't know really what will be the future of St. John's or the diocese or my personal ministry, any more than I know the future of Ben right before us. Yet there will be moments ahead when it is obvious that God has not left us. "Don't be afraid," Jesus is telling us, for there will surely be occasions when we realize that in some way all these new births are connected with God's presence.

      And I offer this to you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen