Rector's Sermon
8 May 2011

First Reading	Psalm	Epistle	Gospel
Acts 2:14a, 36–41	Psalm 166: 1–3, 10–17	1 Peter 1:17–23	Luke 24:13–35

       There is something about the sound of the ocean waves upon the seashore that calls me to keep on listening and holds me enthralled as the waves ebb and flow.  I have not convinced myself to purchase an electronic gadget that imitates the sounds of waves, for that seems much too artificial.  Waves should come directly into your ear carried through the air of a mild salt breeze, not by way of a microchip and speaker of cardboard and glue. To listen and admire in person, real waves breaking on a beach is one of summer’s great pleasures. The waves roll, swell and then curl up upon the beach, cleaning the sand, depositing shells, sea glass, multicolored pebbles, and maybe a few strands of dark green rubbery seaweed uprooted from the depths, and then recede to the sea, always in motion, to gain new strength, before coming splashing upon the sand again.  In a sense, waves become the plaything of the currents continually mixing them up into new configurations.  With each individual wave, their changing waters are perpetually gathering and throwing upon the shore a different bounty of sea treasures.  They do their work, rain or shine, hot or cold, day and night, never ceasing; they do not drift off to sleep even if I do.

       Children often have an afternoon’s fun building deep moats and thick walls around their sand castles to channel the water. The barriers work for a while, but the waves patently and methodically erode the walls a little at a time. At first, it may be virtually imperceptible, but as time moves on, the walls are no match for even gentle waves, and come the next morning, the sand will be as smooth as before. Of course even granite cliffs may be ground smooth by the waves’ persistence, and in regular winter storms and hurricanes, not too mention the terrible freaks of nature called tsunamis, large bays and islands form and reform where a fishing village once flourished or a strand of proud trees held sway.

       The appearances of Jesus right after the resurrection are always tied to persons being encouraged in going out and spreading the good news. The appearances are never anchored to one place. Jesus is always on the move, appearing in the cemetery garden, in the upper room in Jerusalem, on the road to Emmaus, by the shore on the Sea of Galilee, on a hill of the Mount of Olives, and on the Damascus Road. As minds are opened, scriptures make sense, past teachings fall into place, horizons are stretched and the risen Lord is recognized as being present. Then those who are witnesses are, in turn, sent on to somewhere else with the assurance that Christ awaits to be discovered anew. I wonder if the kiss of the Spirit of the risen Christ isn’t always waiting and ready to work upon us, forming and shaping us like waves that move down a coast kissing its sandy shore.

       We all know that one can’t preserve a wave in a bucket or take it home in a jar.  A bucket can only hold what will become still water. We can’t hold the risen Lord to the past, the present, or try to summon him in the future like a genie kept in a bottle. If we try, I assure you that we won’t have the living Christ, at best just a stale reminder and a ghost with no substance.

       One of the important lessons from the history of the young church, is that we will always have to deal with well meaning but misguided actions which often unknowingly attempt to hide God’s grace in the debris of history and tradition, or to ensnare the Holy Spirit in the romantic trappings of a certain culture, or limit God’s mission to known boundaries of past successes. There are times I wonder if in a way, we spend so much time building castles of sand and moats and walls to protect the Good News, that we take them much too seriously. I wonder whether there is a lesson to be taken from the children who furtively cry as their sand castles at the end of the day’s play are swept out into the afternoon tide. God’s power to form us and open new channels into our hearts isn’t in the dikes and castles we build. It’s in the waves of the Holy Spirit! Yes there are those who cry like babies when their sand castles are swept away. People of faith are like the happy children who laugh with glee and wonder as the water magically dissolves the sand swirling and making a little pond with a half dozen fiddler crabs, before running down to join the great mother of waters again.

       We are never going to capture the power of the ocean in our little buckets or harness its power with a plastic toy shovel and sand sieve. I don’t think you can experience the ocean without acknowledging in some way the movement of its waves. Filling a blow up plastic pool with salt water and dumping a pile of sand beside it, isn’t like going to the seashore.  In the same way the mighty signs of the power of the living Lord, are not replicated in the water of our containers or by the castles we build with our sand piles. We meet and discover the living Christ in the movement of our lives.  Maybe that is why when I read the story of the disciples on the Emmaus Road, I thought of waves along the seashore that carry the sound of the ocean in motion, a sound like no other on earth.  

       And I offer this to you in the name of the Living God, Amen.