June 6, 2010
The Second Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 5, Year C)
I Kings 17:8-24; Psalm 146; Galatians 1:11-24; Luke 7:11-17
(Last sermon preached by the Reverend Gale Davis Morris as
Rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd)
Today’s lesson from Kings and from the gospel of Luke have parallel stories of healing: Elijah recalls the widow’s son from death by starvation and Jesus recalls the widow’s son during his funeral procession. Most of the commentaries I read this week point out that each story is sympathetic to the place of women in the culture of their time – which was no place at all without a man. Those women needed their sons in order to survive.
And in the lessons this morning, the sons were recalled from death and restored to their mothers.
Of course, they are also “miracle stories,” and when we read them or think about them in the context of our own lives, we often expect or want the same kind of miracle to happen for us, to be recalled from death, to be healed or restored and then able to “carry on” as we would choose or as we instruct God to allow us. Sometimes we are healed in the way we hoped, and sometimes we are not, even though things do not go back to the way they were before that death to life experience.
But the kind of recalling/healing I want to talk about this morning does not involve mortal death – after all none of us will be saved from that eventually; it’s all a matter of timing. But I want us to remember that in our lifetimes we are faced with many “deaths” or irreparable changes that require us to let go of life as we have known it and move forward into a life we can only guess at and hope for. We move from end to beginning, from death to life, over and over again, if we but have eyes to see.
Today, you and I are at such a “death point” in our lives. And isn’t it yet again amazing that what is presented to us in the lectionary are stories of that movement from death to life, stories of moving on, of being reminded to ask ourselves the question, ”Where in our lives do we need to be recalled from death into life?” And I would add, “Are we listening for the call that comes from Jesus as we listen for that calling?” Are we open to hearing what God would have us do rather than what we have predetermined we need/want/have to do?
Of course, this morning I am probably preaching more to myself than to any of you on this topic of movement from death to life, but maybe if you listen to my internal, spiritual struggle with this death to life reality I am facing, you will hear something that resonates and invites you to think about your own call too.
Jesus and Elijah both knew the plight of the widows that they encountered; both knew the mor-es and realities of their day; and both acted as an agent of God to recall life, not only to the child, but to the mother who loved him. Today the plight of women is not nearly so drastic. Women can and do make their own way without being attached to a man. And yet we all know that sexism is alive and well in subtler ways! But that is the topic for another sermon in another time and place.
Today I want to deal with the simple reality that life can come out of death. We know it from the resurrection story, of course. But we also know it from these stories of mere mortals that are not resurrected, but resuscitated, and recalled to life in ways they could not have imagined. The mothers could have hoped, of course, but their understanding of the realities of physical matter, and life’s needs, and death would have prevented them from suspecting that the circumstances they were in could be about birth more than death.
As I leave you (this is the last sermon I will preach here as next week Canon Lloyd will be preaching), I have the very strong sense that something I care about and love is dying, my term as your rector. It doesn’t feel like birth! Part of me is dying with the death of our relationship as rector/parish. Being among you has been mostly grace and life giving, for me and for most of you as well. But I know that in order for me and for you to really live again, to be born again, I must leave and I must let go. I must hope to be “recalled” to a new place to serve and exercise the gifts that God has given me and asked me to use in service to the church. I know, we know, there is no intervening miracle that will prevent my leaving. And so I must let go to and I must move on. And so must you!
Thank God you have each other! This is a wonderful community (that has gotten a bit distracted of late, to be sure), but all the essentials for being a thriving, exciting, worshipful community are still here, and come August, you will be joined by a fine and enthusiastic priest who will join you in a new life, birth, a new way of being. What we have done and been together will become ballast to be sure. That is, it will inform and influence what happens next just as our mortal lives inform and influence who we are eternally. But it is also an opportunity for you to do it better, to get it right, to move forward, into a life that God will lead you toward, not move backward to be as you used to be either when I was among you or before that. You are not without challenges, to be sure, but most of the challenges you face are financial challenges. And I trust that together you can face into those challenges and move beyond them, especially if every single one of you remains here as part of the new life and doesn’t pull away. Everyone is needed. Everyone!
As for me, I do not know where I am going. I remember as a child going into a “fun house” at a theme park of some sort, and we were to walk through it to the other end where we got an ice cream cone of our choice! Of course, there were many opportunities to take the wrong turn, to be plunged into darkness and to get lost, but at the other end was that man with the ice cream! And so like everyone else I went forward as best I could. I do love ice cream (almost as much as chocolate!) Right now I feel like I am in that “fun house,” inching my way forward in the maze, feeling my way along a wall or through total darkness, and needing to feel my way out, not knowing the way to the ice cream at all, but trusting that it is there, knowing that it is there for me. I know that as well as I know that you are already on the right path for all of you! The ice cream will be yours! (and mine) At different times, in different places, maybe even different flavors! But life awaits us all.
What this story means to me, this last sermon after twelve years of preaching from this pulpit, is that life doesn’t just go on. It remakes itself in each of us, becomes stronger and more fruitful if we are willing to make our way in the confusion and darkness for a while. If we keep moving forward dependent upon Jesus and the Spirit to guide us, then we will find that life and it will be better than ice cream – or even dark chocolate for that matter!
God loves you. I love you. God will be with you as you go forward. And I will continue to hold you in my prayers and thoughts as we separate and each move into our new life, the life God will help us find and will guide us toward and through. In the mean time enjoy the “fun house” walk of mystery, be open to going a way that seems a bit unorthodox, laugh at yourself in the distorted mirrors, wobble with the wiggling floors, dare to push the walls when you seem to be boxed in, and walk through the previously unimagined openings that appear when you do. You are a people of faith and you will make it through the “fun house” and into the light of new life, maybe even to the ice cream! And sooner than you might imagine!
Amen.
The Reverend Dr. Gale Davis Morris
Church of the Good Shepherd