Sermon from 2023 Easter
Vigil, Matthew 28:1-10
Where is home for you? Now, before you give me your address
and zip code, I want you to pause, take a deep breath and picture home. What
image appears in your mind?
For me, it’s an orange wooden house on a one way street.
It’s the house I grew up in, and the first image that comes to mind is a vivid
memory I have of being very young and walking down the street with my family in
the cold. We lived just down the street from the high school and must have been
walking home from some performance for my oldest sister. I remember feeling
warm inside even though my cheeks were cold- as I saw the big bright Christmas
bulbs lining our porch, partially covered in snow. It was beckoning, it was
warm, it was safe, it was where I wanted to be, it was home.
As I read the scriptures for today I find myself returning
again and again to that image, that concept, that feeling … called home. In the
first reading from Exodus, God is actively bringing the people away from the
place they had lived to a new land, one where they can be free, one where they
can live as God’s people, one that has been promised. As they begin this
journey, they must have been trembling. Trembling from the trauma and grief
they endured through the plagues and death, trauma from what they endured as
slaves. They may also have been trembling from awe and wonder as they witnessed
inexplicable miracles and heard God’s words to them through Moses. They must
have been trembling with fear as they left everything they had known and
desperately ran toward a wilderness with no map and no emergency preparedness
plan. There was so much trauma, pain, emotion and unknown. But God was calling
them, to a new place, beckoning them to a place of freedom … bringing them home.
In the reading from Baruch, the people are being called to
follow the “shining light” of God’s presence and wisdom, to leave the foreign
lands they occupy, hear the calling of God and live as God’s people. In
Ezekiel, God tells the people that God will gather them up, clean them, and
they will live as God’s people, God calls them home to the land of their
ancestors. In Zephaniah, God says “I will bring you home” and we again have
this vision of restoration, regathering ... coming home. Tonight as we read
through these scriptures, we were brought on a journey in the darkness and
called to hear God calling us home, longing to regather us, to restore us, to
bring us to a new place … a shining light.
And then, God does something new, God enters humanity through
Jesus Christ. God walks among us. And through the words, actions, love and
presence of Christ we hear that same call … come home. But this isn’t a new
land or a geographic location we are called to, it is union with God through
the resurrected Christ.
As I talk about home, I think of two of our newly baptized
Christians as they pack up the home they have known and prepare to move to a
new state, a new land, a new home. It is fitting and beautiful that Kirstyn and
Amy were baptized here tonight, with us, before they leave. This place has been
their home in many ways. They have built relationships here, become excellent
acolytes and leaders in the youth group and literally grown. Oh, and they have
giggled … a lot. But when I think back on their years here and the seven years
I have known them, it is clear that they have been their authentic selves …
always. From the days when they were two wide-eyed and round-cheeked choristers
to now- they have never pretended and have always challenged others to be
themselves as well. They ask the hard questions, they question authority, they
push boundaries and they love … fiercely. I have watched them laugh, cry, ask
hard questions, take risks by opening their hearts to others, make mistakes,
make confessions and wrestle with all the hard stuff and good stuff of life and
always in a way that is so authentically them. And so I know that this place,
these walls have been a home to them, a place where they can feel safe and
cared for. But I also know that when they move far away, they won’t be leaving
home because they will always be their authentic selves wherever they go and
their direct gaze and blunt honesty will call others to that same authenticity.
They will take home with them, because home is with them, in them, always
accessible within their souls.
This is the home Christ calls us to in the resurrection.
Not a place we need to travel to, but a place that is always accessible, as the
resurrected Christ dwells in our souls. Jesus calls us to union with God and
shows us that our relationship with God doesn’t end when we change locations or
when we make that final earthly journey through death.
When
Mary Magdalene and the other Mary go to the tomb to be where Jesus is, they
find that he is not there and then, as they leave, as they walk away with fear,
there they find him. Right there with them, on the journey- not at the
destination, but present with them.
Jesus
is present here with us, in the bread and wine, in the waters of baptism and in
our soul. Each person that was baptized is marked by the Holy Spirit forever, a
mark that will always remind them that Christ is with them. As they journey out
into the world and leave behind this moment of baptism, as they walk away from
the empty tomb, there Christ will be … on the journey … not at some final
destination … but present with them. A permanent home that can never be taken
away. A permanent home that you can always find.
In
her book, The Interior Castle, Saint Teresa of Avila writes extensively
on her own inner journey that she believes is an experience universal for all
who seek to dwell in Christ and have Christ dwell in them. She writes beautiful
descriptions of various dwellings one must travel through to finally get to
that final place where one can experience the full union of Christ. But these
dwellings are not landmarks, or houses or churches, they are within and
accessed through prayer and devotion. Of the seventh and final dwelling she
writes, “When the soul approaches the Beloved now, he bestows upon her the kiss
sought by the bride. And enfolded in this kiss are all the other blessings that
come with every degree of prayer that has unfolded along the soul’s journey
home to him. In my understanding, it is here in this dwelling that all the soul
has been longing for is fulfilled. Here the wounded deer is given abundant
water to drink. Here the soul delights beneath God’s holy tent. Here the dove
Noah sent out to see if the storm was over finds the olive branch as a sign
that firm ground exists amid the storms and floods of this world.”
What
St Teresa writes of is home, but not in some distant place, right here, right
in the midst of a world that is broken. A world where there is fear, there is
danger, there is pain, there is sadness. And right in the midst of your heart,
a heart where there is fear, there is pain, there is sadness. That is where
Christ meets us. No longer confined to a body, Christ is in all things and all
places and at all times. Christ within me, before me, beside me.
That house that I talked about … the orange one with the
big Christmas lights … I went to see it last year. I was visiting family and
wanted to show it to my kids. It is now gray, not orange. The house next to it
has been torn down; the school up the street from it has also been torn down.
All the kids I ran around with in the summer have moved away and the family
inside of it- we have all dispersed and live in all different places. I have no
idea who lives in it now. It isn’t home anymore. It’s just a building that
triggers nostalgia. But the warmth of those Christmas lights and the love I
encountered there are still home- and they exist in my heart, along with many
many experiences of love from my years of living in many different houses. I
moved away but home never left me. Because the source of love, the Spirit that
cleansed me at my baptism is ever present within me and each person baptized
tonight, and each of us, and our beloveds who have died. And so we sing
Alleluia because Christ has not left us, and we are home, here beneath God’s
holy tent. Here at the baptismal font and the Eucharistic table. We are home
with the risen Christ and so we say, Alleluia … Amen.
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