Category: Sermons

Sermon Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd
Fort Lee, New Jersey
Sunday, June 6, 2021, at 8:00 and 10:00 a.m.
By the Rev. Stephen C. Galleher

The Three Causes of Suffering
I: Non-Acceptance

“Every detail works to your advantage and to God’s glory: more and more grace, more and more people, more and more praise!” (II Cor. 4:15)

“[God] puts a little of heaven in our hearts so that we’ll never settle for less.”

(II Cor. 5:5)

        It’s time that we looked into why we can stay stuck in our discontents. For the three Sundays in June when I will be with you, I want us to look at some of the things that create our discontent, our unhappiness, even, yes, sometimes our misery. Because I think you may agree that we would prefer to remain consistently happy and not to be tempted to fall into sorrow, self-pity, even misery. In other words, how do we cheer up and stay cheered up?

        I hasten to warn that I am not advocating that we all become cockeyed optimists or deny those times when we are sad, forlorn, disenchanted. Happiness is not about having a perpetual smile on our face. It is much too precious for this cheap imitation called perennial cheerfulness.

We are here to celebrate our humanity, not to repress it. On the other hand, there are insights we can gather and strategies we can adopt to avoid the gloomy traps of pessimism and despair.

        So, the title of these three meditations is “The Three Causes of Suffering.”

        And the title of this first meditation, the first cause of suffering, is our reluctance to accept reality just as it is. Non-acceptance is what lies behind many of our woes.

        I know, I know. Pain is real, suffering is real. Many of us suffer from chronic pain. There is just nothing worse. Thank goodness for medications that can ease pain. But so much pain has suffering behind it, that is, is exacerbated by what we tell ourselves about it. For it is in the mind where most suffering originates. It originates with thoughts like these:

• “Why is this happening to me?”
• “I don’t like this!” “I never wanted this!”
• “It’s all his fault” or “She made me do it!”

I submit that almost every thought like this has behind it a form of unacceptance. In fact, how often do we use the term “unacceptable,” as when we say, “Well, that is just unacceptable!”

        But what a silly thing to say. All it means is “I don’t like this,” for everything is acceptable once it happens. You know why? Because it happened!

        There is the Peanuts cartoon when Charlie Brown complains, “I hear it said that life is full of ups and downs. But my question is why can’t life be all ups?”

        We just don’t always get what we want? Are we not children to complain about this?

        Resistance to change is a very human thing, for change can be fearful. And acceptance can seem unrealistic. Like the joke about the man who falls over a cliff and is hanging on to a branch over a river with alligators ready to devour him. He looks up and says, “Is there anybody up there?”

And God replies, “I am here!”

“God, help me!” he implores.

And God replies, “Let go!”

And the man hanging on says, “Is there anybody else up there?”

        And, to make you feel even worse, have we considered how many times a day we engage in this fruitless exercise of not accepting something? I daresay we underestimate the times by a huge number. If we were to log the number of times we didn’t accept something during the day (from the slightest inconvenience (the weather, the slowpoke in traffic, etc., etc.) to justifiably upsetting things, like bad news about our health), I think we would be quite surprised.

        Of course, as I’ve said, not accepting something isn’t what we actually do, for what is happening is what is happening. We are accepting it, all right: we are just not happy about it; we don’t like it.

        Is this, you think, what God wants from us? For not accepting something is a form of suffering. Acceptance equals happiness; non-acceptance equals suffering, whether an irritation, a swear word, or clenched fists and sobbing. Non-acceptance cuts us off from other people and from our deeper selves. It is very hard to focus on other people when we are complaining and moaning. In fact, focusing on how much we don’t like what is happening cuts us off from love—love of self and love of others.

        So, what is the turnaround? How do we go from a clenched fist reaction to an open palm?

        Resistance to reality is a refusal to see things are they truly are. And if God is reality, even a reality we aren’t happy with, then to cease resistance is a form of faith. There is a writer who proclaims, “My God is reality.” In fact, she wrote a book entitled Loving What Is.

         There is nothing worse when it comes to looking into how we move from resistance to acceptance than to listen to such cheap advice as “Cheer up! Things could be worse!” This may be true, but you know the joke, “So I cheered up, and sure enough, things got worse!”

        No, I’m not sure advice of any sort will relieve us, at least any more than temporarily, perhaps just to get the advice giver to stop giving his or her silly advice.

        So instead of giving advice (sermons should never be about this), I ask you to look into your own lives and your own experiences. Have there not been times when you first are ready to spit nails over what is happening, but then you step back, take a breath, and let the truth of what’s happening sink in? This is when acceptance naturally has its way with you. These are the times when you are resting in the divine lap of God, in the lap of grace and care.

        These moments—and I am confident that all of us have had them—are templates—are they not?—of the readiness of God to comfort us in all circumstances.

Christ with me,
Christ before me,
Christ behind me,
Christ in me,
Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ on my right,
Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down,
Christ when I sit down,
Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.

These words, from the great Irish hymn “St. Patrick’s Breastplate,” are the great affirmation of God’s presence and the acceptance of life as it unfolds for all of us. Strange, that we go very, very deep when we move towards reality and acceptance and turn away from our denial and our disenchantments. This is the miracle of grace. I’ve noticed how much smoother my day goes and how much more at peace with myself and the world I am when I give up managing everything and let life be.

The closer we draw to reality, that is the more we stare at it with open eyes and open heart, the closer we draw to God, for as hard as it is to say it, as much as we touch on great mystery, reality is kind and even as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, God is with us. This is the promise of the God who birthed us and the God who made the promise of his eternal presence in the resurrection of Christ. “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.”  

Amen.

Sermon Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd
Fort Lee, New Jersey
Sunday, May 30, 2021, at 8:00 and 10:00 a.m.
By the Rev. Stephen C. Galleher

The Breaking of an Abstraction!

“[We] acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity.”

(Collect, Trinity Sunday)

 “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.”

                                                                                                                                                        (Isaiah 6:1-8)

        The word “glory” is sprinkled throughout the readings this morning; and at first glance there is perhaps nothing in heaven or on earth less likely to evoke our devotion and awe, much less our admiration of its beauty, than the Trinity.

        Because the problem is that the Trinity often comes across as just about the most abstract term in our Christian vocabulary! And abstractions might be good for nuclear physicists and mathematicians; but I wouldn’t want to bet my life on one or even pick up one hitchhiking at night on a local highway. I don’t have migraine headaches. When I have a headache, the term the doctors use communicates something but it isn’t the concrete, particular pain I feel when having such an episode.

        At the morning breakfast table, I’m not really eating oatmeal; I’m eating something that looks gray and gooey and has a little fruit mixed in. Words, in fact, are abstractions. When it comes to religion, words like incarnation, redemption, even resurrection can be ideas perhaps better left to the theologians. They don’t move us; we can have trouble living by them.

        When I was studying homiletics in seminary, homiletics being a fancy abstract word for preaching, my professor said that we must constantly move down the levels of abstraction till we deal with the most particular and concrete meaning of scripture. Otherwise we will leave our listeners in the dust, or, a better way of putting it, sleeping in their pews.

        I get it, and it is always before me to ask: just what the devil does this term mean for me and my life? What experience can I relate it to?

        The Trinity is perhaps not the insuperable challenge we can make it. Remember the little child who didn’t have the foggiest idea what the Trinity meant out in her back yard solemnly burying her old, tattered Teddy bear? She intoned, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and into the hole he goes!” This child is humorous and we are tempted to join her in her ignorance.

        But let’s reverse gears on this word. We can come to see the Trinity from another point of view. After all, I was asking myself, why in the world does Trinity Sunday come right now in the church year? Is it not perhaps because it is the climax of the Lent and Easter seasons, a kind of summation and pinnacle of everything that has been unfolding in the Christian story, even from Advent and Christian, right up ’til now?

        What the Trinity summarizes is this: our creator God, whom we meet surely in moments of awe and gratitude (we’ll return to our experiences of the Trinity in a moment), who plays out life in the form of human beings—and supremely in the person of Jesus bar Joseph—is everywhere, in everything, at every time. Father—awe, gratitude; Son—met in human beings; Holy Spirit—confirmed by the life of love.

        So, I’ve gotten over the hard part, the part that preachers all over Christendom fear for every year on this Sunday. Aye, aye, aye: here we go again [hitting forehead], having to think of something deep about the three in one, one in three.

Well, I don’t know about you, but let’s give up deep. Because I am suggesting that this thing that at first blush may appear so abstract, even abstruse, is anything but! I am suggesting that the Trinity is the most concrete, in-your-face thing there is. It is our life right here and now.

Please join me in experiencing this thing called the Trinity.

Right here, right now, if we ask ourselves what is this miracle thing called the life we are living now, are we not dumbstruck? Do we not in this stillness wonder what the devil is this thing called my life? And is this wonderment God the Father? Just words, I know, but we are aghast at the sheer fact of our existence. This is what is behind the child’s question where did God come from? Or what is behind the philosopher’s question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?”

Sheer existence. We never leave it. It is always here. God the Father.

And then I have you to deal with. I mean each of you. And you have me to deal with. There is more than one of us. In fact, at last count there are 7.8 billion people walking the earth. That’s a thousand million times 7, almost times 8. That’s a lot of people to love, since we are charged to love our neighbor. And every single one of those people (including each of us) bears the stamp, the mark, the character of this wonderment, this God, who is our Father. This God calls each of us and each of them sons and daughters; and we should therefore call them beloved friends. Each of these 7.8 billion people carries the twinkle of God’s love, just as Christ did. That was what was so beautiful about Christ: he kept saying this, pointing to this, saying that but for our blindness, this is who each of us star: starlight. God the Son.

Finally, nothing could be more concrete and particular than this simple fact of our existence now and that we are sitting side by side with over 7 billion other people just like us. And finally, we have but one task, namely, to show our kindness and love towards them. Of course, this is a tall order. It involves treating them justly; doing unto them exactly as we would have them do unto us. The history of humankind is the history of just how hard an undertaking this is. But don’t we know it to be the tall order? We sense it; we know it. Love our neighbors as ourselves. God the incarnated sons and daughters.

The Holy Spirit is nothing other than the playing out of this majesty, wonder and awe in the everyday course of our lives. The wind blows where it will. Some days this picture seem occluded. We wonder if God has perhaps abandoned the creation. But no, wonderment has a way of not going anywhere. Kindness, love, mercy, joy, they cannot be extinguished, despite some pretty ugly evidence otherwise.

This permanence (this steadiness) of love is what our Easter and Pentecost seasons are about. “Fear not, for I am with you always, even unto the ends of the earth.” I dare say if we sit quietly in the lap of the Trinity, we know this. Right here, right now, all is well and all shall be well. I invite you to look deeply into your lives, and see if I’m not right, that all is well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.

One night during my stay at Virginia Seminary, training to become a priest, I took my Volkswagen Beatle out to run some errands. In the course of my trip, I turned left not seeing an oncoming car. I was briefly knocked out. The car was demolished. Later that evening I called my father to tell him of the accident. My father had bought the car for me to use during my studies in Europe. I was ashamed, embarrassed and scared to tell him the news about the car.

His reaction was immediate. “Never mind the car,” he said. “How are you, son? Are you all right?”

I have never forgotten this. In fact, this little experience has shaped my understanding of grace. A love that comes unmerited, that cares despite evidence that might justify another response. I was given a template of the Trinity. My God, coming to care for me, incarnated in the person of my father, expressing like a mighty wind the overwhelming embrace and permanence of a God of love.

I experienced the Trinity that night. There is no escaping it. It is not an idea. It is a radiant reality. Turn here, it is here, turn there, it is here.

I daresay each of us experiences the Trinity—and a lot more often than we have any idea!

Amen.

Sermon Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd
Fort Lee, New Jersey
Sunday, May 23, 2021, at 8:00 and 10:00 a.m.
By the Rev. Stephen C. Galleher

The Day of Pentecost Is Come!

“When the Feast of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Without warning there was a sound like a strong wind, gale force—no one could tell where it came from. It filled the whole building. Then, like a wildfire, the Holy Spirit spread through their ranks, and they started speaking in a number of different languages as the Spirit prompted them.”

(Acts 2: 1-21)

 “[God] on this day you opened the way of eternal life to every race and nation.”

(Collect, Day of Pentecost)

        The appearances of the risen Christ are completed. Christ has taken his place in heaven, at the right hand of God. His earthly pilgrimage, we are told in the story, is over. But something quite cataclysmic happened, in fact, is happening. This story won’t go away. This drama has more unfolding to do. Has the Christ, in fact, gone anywhere?

        Let’s suppose that you have been invited to the most wonderful party in your life. Perhaps you have already gone to such a party. Perhaps you only dream of such an ecstatic event. But you go and you have the time of your life. If you’re having that much fun, then it stands to reason that you don’t really want the party to end, right? “Let the party continue!” you yell. And, guess what? It does continue.

        This, in a word, is Pentecost. It is one of those events that you simply never forget. The promise of this event, the Pentecost event, is that it need not mark one event in your life, but can be a prescription for a life of continual joy.

        Well, we demur, let’s not be so fast. Every good thing comes to an end, we argue. Ok, if we want to be sourpusses, but is this what the risen Christ said? He said, “I am with you always, even to the ends of the earth.”

        That may be, but remember at that party, there was a lot of babbling. Everyone seemed to be talking at once, and we couldn’t understand a word—or at least, so it seemed. We’ve been to parties like this. We look for a quiet corner or an empty room—or even better, we just leave.

        Indeed, if we look at the various standoffs in our lives, there is a lot of babbling, people talk at and past one another with no one really being heard. Husbands and wives, parents and children: lots of talking, lots of scolding, lots of unpleasant sounds. Is it any wonder that there is more talking than listening?

        And what about what is taking place between the political parties in our country? Isn’t it remarkable that hearings are held, interviews conducted and yet one side talks and talks and the other side seems not to hear much of what is said. What gives? How can there be conversation, much less harmony, when both sides are blocking hearing what the other side is saying? I know in my own observation of the political scene, that one side seems unreasonable, obstinate, even obtuse—and, yes, a danger to the future of our democracy. But the sad irony is that this is precisely what that side thinks of the side I am on! A lot of babbling but not enough listening.

        And then there is the international scene, fraught with tension, bombings, outright war. Do you think that Jews and the Palestinians will ever make peace with one another? I feel very strongly about this issue, and I’m sure both sides in that decades-long conflict feel that their case is the just one, in fact, perhaps the only right one. Goodness, think of the bloodshed over thinking we are right! A lot of babbling, a lot of screaming, but very little listening.

        What does it take to stop the babbling and start listening, start attending to what is being said.

        I am not sure that tensions in conflict, whether in the family, in our national politics, or among peoples and nations, can cease until we start listening in a new way. You know and I know that the important things that have happened to you in your lives took place above or around or in spite of the words communicated.

        The Pentecost event took place when people from many tribes and nations started understanding one another, even as they spoke their own language. How did this happen? What was going on? What was going on was that their hearts were opening? The silence below the words was breaking forth in song.

        This can happen in the home. One of my favorite stories is that of the couple who were on the brink of separating. Tension had been building for months. One morning, the husband came down the steps in his usual sour and defensive mood and he found his wife sitting at the breakfast table scribbling frantically on a piece of paper.

        “What are you doing?” he inquired.

        “I’m writing down all the things about you that drive me crazy!” she replied.

        “Oh, you have a list too?” he blurted out.

        This was all that was needed to break the tension. They looked at each other and began to laugh. Perhaps the healing could then begin. Something deeper than words was communicated. They listened in that moment and understood one another.

        In East Jerusalem this week, a lot of protests were broken up by Israeli soldiers. And you know who was participating in those demonstrations? Jews and Palestinians together. Jews and Palestinians shoulder to shoulder, sick and tired of age-old differences leading to mayhem and death. That is precisely what was going on at Pentecost.

        What have been your Pentecost experiences? Have you had one? I would bet you have. And I wager that you have had more than one, when something broke through that transcended words.

        Do you realize that music transcends words? Sure, our songs and hymns most often have lyrics, beautiful, inspiring lyrics. But the music itself has no lyrics. It speaks for itself, or rather it sings for itself.

        Songs without words. That is Pentecost.

        There was a medieval mystic named Mechthild of Magedburg. I had never heard of her until recently. She lived in the early 13^th Century in present-day Germany. She was the first mystic, in fact, to write in German.

        She writes:

Lie down in the Fire
See and taste the Flowing
Godhead through your being;
Feel the Holy Spirit
Moving and compelling
You within the Flowing
Fire and Light of God.

        This is Pentecost. It is about a fire that does not go out. It is about a joy that never leaves us. It is about the promise of Christ that love is permanent. It does not ever go anywhere.

        On a YouTube interview with Gene Wilder, the Hollywood actor and comedian, the interviewer noted that in Gene Wilder’s book, he seemed to be quite happy after living through a lot of ups and downs and tragedies. Gene Wilder replied, “I am happier than I have been in my entire life.”

        How many of us can say, honestly, “I am happier than I have been in my entire life!” Is this not the theme and the promise of Pentecost?

Amen

By Deacon Virginia Jenkins-Whatley

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit….Amen

Here is the setting for today’s Gospel. It is the night before Maundy Thursday right before Jesus is arrested and he has been trying to say good-bye to his disciples. While everyone is still around the table and listening, he starts to pray. Last week’s gospel Jesus confesses his love for his disciples and commands that we abide in his love and love one another as he loves us.

Today he is not only praying for his disciples, he is praying to them so that they might also hear some final words of guidance before being sent back out into the world.

“I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world.”

Jesus final message says that God gave you to me, which makes you a gift from God. And I may no longer be in the world, but you are. Not only are you in the world, but I have sent you to be here. And now my works are in your hands. Jesus is praying also for the protection of his disciples Through this prayer, “Jesus is counting on us to be his presence in his absence. As the disciples carry the word of God around the world, we believers spread that word and love to people also seeking God’s presence.

Jesus prays that we will remain awake to his reality. People will travel around the world seeking God not realizing that we are the world. The world God loves so much and that in seeing that and knowing that, we would then be the very presence of Jesus in the world.. You already are the presence of Jesus in the world.

In the chapters that came before this, Jesus spoke about the Holy Spirit and how the holy Spirit is involved in the ongoing work of God in the church. So Jesus here highlights the way that the triune God of the bible is at work, the God who is one God in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Over and over in this text Jesus speaks of the interaction between him and his Father in which he speaks of how they work together, he speaks of the things they share together and he speaks in a variety of ways of their relationship. In the second half of the text Jesus prays for his people which we know from the previous chapters is a prayer about the work of the holy spirit.

So, the Christian doctrine of the trinity is woven through out this text and revealed in it. God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit are active in the salvation of God’s people, in the mission of life of God’s people and in the identity of God’s people.

Basically, he calls us to embrace a salvation by grace in his mercy, embrace his mission to go into the disbelieving world that will hate us, just as he was hated out of sacrificial love just as he did. He calls us to with the proclamation of the gospel in word and deed so that other will come to believe as we have done.

Let us take comfort in his care for us. Let us seek the same thing for ourselves: let us cling to his salvation, let us rejoice that we belong to him and then let us live our lives according to his mission.

Finally, he calls us to delight in the reality that we are not our own, but we belong to him. He has made us for himself and our hearts are restless until they rest in Him.

When working on my sermon last week, as I read this gospel passage, I had flashbacks of my mother and her last days of life. We were called to the hospital to say our last good-byes because she was losing her 10 year battle with cancer and would be gone shortly. I summarized some of what she said to us. For years she would say I am not going to live forever and you all have to learn to live in this crazy world without me. I pray for God to bless you,keep you safe and watch over you all day every day. There are people that hate you and don’t know you. The color of your skin is a neon sign for hate. I have constantly told you that you are all beautiful and smart and you have to succeed in life. You can’t do it without a good education, make God first in your life and rise above the ignorant people that judge you by the color of your skin. Be good to yourselves and others. Save your money.

I will always be with you in spirit. If you feel a pinch in the middle of the night when you are not doing the right thing, that will be me. I can die in peace knowing that I raised you all the right way. You are good people. You were raised believing in God and the love of life. Don’t cry for me smile knowing you are loved, continue to always believe in God.

Last Sunday was Mother’s Day and we remembered what she had told us and laughed about how many times we felt that pinch at night. Reflecting on my mother’s words helped me to appreciate what was going through Jesus’s mind in this gospel.

Sermon Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd
Fort Lee, New Jersey
Thursday, May 2, 2021, at 10:00 a.m.
By the Rev. Stephen C. Galleher

Fear Not!

“[The Jews]…were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles.” (Acts 10: 44-48)

“Pour into our hearts such love towards you that we will love you in all things.”
(Collect, Easter VI)

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you….I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.” (John 15:9-17)

Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

        The appearances of the risen Christ, at least how the Gospels report them to us, are intended to communicate one thing. That this risen Lord is with us always. This means now, in our present life. Eternity is now and we are in it. Startling, isn’t it? Eternal life is not something we await. It is something we possess. Our baptism affirms it. Christ’s resurrection reaffirms it.

        And along with this assurance of God’s continuous presence with us throughout our earthly journey (and, for good measure, always) there are two other things that the risen Christ announces in practically all his appearances. The first is, “Peace be with you. My peace I give you.” And the second is, “Fear not.” These are about the two most wonderful gifts that we human beings can receive. In fact, the gift of peace and the gift of release from fear are closely related. When we are free of fear, we are at peace, are we not? A peaceful heart is a heart that is unafraid.

        Let’s look at fear a little more closely, for I know of no human being who has not been visited by fear. It is part and parcel of our humanity. From fear of heights, spiders and snakes to fear of losing something we treasure or of getting something we do not want.

Some of my favorite silly fear jokes:

I have a fear of speed bumps. I’m slowly getting over it.

What do you call the fear of being trapped in a chimney? Claus-trophobia.

How do you get over a fear of elevators? Take some steps to avoid them.

What lies at the bottom of the ocean and shakes a lot? A nervous wreck!

        Wild, isn’t it? Fear is an embrace of, or rather a revulsion toward something that is not here, that has not happened! I fear going to the dentist, but I am not yet in the dentist’s chair. I fear the death of my sick loved one, but my loved one is not yet dead. I’m scared of dying, but, to put it bluntly, I ain’t dead yet.

        Several quick questions to ask about fear?

        1) How many things that you have feared have not come to fruition, have not happened? How about the things you fear now? Do you think they will actually happen, or that they will happen in precisely the way you fear? Remember last week how I spoke of the silver lining that often awaits the bad things we thought were to come to pass? Things that we dreaded often turned out to be not so bad after all, even sometimes as blessings.

2) How often have you been mistaken about what you were fearing? Isn’t fear behind so much of our tribal politics today? We tend to think that someone else or some other group of people will take away something dear to us? Racism has this fear built into it. Perhaps one of the reasons that Congress can readily pass an Asian anti-discrimination bill is that our Asian brothers and sisters do not pose any discernible threat to our (I might as well say it, “white”) way of life as African Americans and Hispanics can…and seem to be doing. And isn’t it interesting that so many of the attacks on our Asian friends come from African-Americans?

And why else are a good number of Americans falling into a kind of psychosis, refusing to accept the reality that is before them? Is it not fear of the challenge that our black and brown brothers and sisters pose to the white, male dominating class?

How tragic is it to see such class and economic divisions create such hatred in our land today! Where is the love for goodness sakes! Just as the Jews were appalled that non-Jews were accepting Christ and being baptized, so certain of our citizens think that they and only they should benefit from the riches and benefits of our country? They fear losing something that they think should be only theirs or of being brought into a way of life that they simply do not want!

It’s all about fear. Fear blocks love. Fear diminishes love. Where there is no fear, love can blossom and flourish. And who does not want love, lots and lots of it in fact? That is why Christ gives us this gift. “Fear not.” This is what he says over and over again. Why do we not listen? Fear must be the answer.

Fear is awfully, awfully strong. In fact, I suggest it may be behind every withholding of love. It may require some sacrifice on my part. I have to give up something I just do not want to give up. Trust me, in my case, I have a lot left to give up. Fear. Love casts it out!

Think what a sigh of relief we could release if we stopped fearing one another. I can hear the wind being released from our lungs. And that beautiful sense of peace that would fill our hearts. Yes, that peace is with us always, but we paper it over with the fretfulness we live with and with which fills our public channels.

Remember. When Jesus uttered those words to his disciples, the Romans still held power and authority over Israel. Crucifixions and stonings still took place outside Jerusalem. We’d like to think that strife and war somehow took a holiday. But, no, the world rolled on. As it has for two and more millennia. Discord, mayhem, war.

My goodness, only God knows why God remains patient with God’s creation.

But then just as now. I suppose if God is so patient, perhaps this is what we must be as well. The gift of the resurrection is the gift of faith. Are we going to receive it, or postpone it? Don’t you love the hymn: “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.” Let us look… and this time really see. Let us enjoy the life we have rather than the one we wish it be. For when this peace is in our hearts, it is already changing the world. Think about this.

Let there be peace on earth
And let it begin with me
Let There Be Peace on Earth
The peace that was meant to be

With God with us
Friends all are we
Let me walk with these friends
In perfect harmony.

Let peace begin with me
Let this moment be now.

With ev’ry step I take
Let this be my solemn vow
To take each moment and live
Each moment in peace eternally
Let there be peace on earth
And let it begin with me

Amen.

Sermon Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd
Fort Lee, New Jersey
Thursday, May 2, 2021, at 10:00 a.m.
By the Rev. Stephen C. Galleher

Look for the Silver Lining!

“Almighty God, whom truly to know is everlasting life.” (Collect, Easter V)

“Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God.” (John 4:7)

Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

        One of the wonderful features of this year’s Sundays in Easter are the readings, not just from the Gospel of John, but also from the first Epistle of John, this latter being surely one of the greatest hymns to love in all literature. I have used the Message Bible’s translation this morning for its down-to-earth rendition of what love is. “Everyone who loves,” it states today, “is born of God and is in relationship to God.”

Such a beautiful thing. It’s not about what you believe, the opinions you hold or whether you are right or wrong. No, it’s about whether you love. And in that loving, whether you be a Jew, a Christian, a Muslim or, yes, an agnostic or atheist, you are in relationship to the most important thing…to God!

        In fact, and there is the down side of the passage, and it is this: if you refuse to love, you don’t know the first thing about love. That’s pretty strong language, isn’t it? Because—and surely this is one of the wildest statements in scripture: “God is love.” So, John logically concludes, we cannot know God if we do not love.

        How beautiful is that? And yet, as much as love is a pleasant, beautiful, even joyful thing, and as much as we have a lifelong insatiable need for it…we often withhold it from others. As a friend used to opine: “Everyone wants to be loved, but so few of us want to do the loving!”

And this withholding of love has, no doubt, a variety of reasons. We do not love when we feel unloved, either in general or by the one for whom we are withholding love. Someone hurts us, so we hurt back. Isn’t it remarkable how we live our lives in this kind of reciprocity? It’s natural, but it brings a lot of heartache. Love is withheld from us, so we withhold it from others.

But I do not wish to dwell today so much on the complexity of human relationships and how love is choked, blocked, and strained in all our hurts and resentments. God knows, this is the subject of many a discussion.

No, I want to discuss the things that eclipse our love of life, our gratitude for the commonest of things. This eclipse of love results from two major sourcs. The first source is from our feelings about ourselves. I am continually amazed by how so many of us who should know better, by age, maturity or training, hold ourselves in such critical, low regard. We tell ourselves stories about ourselves that can be more critical than those told by even our worst enemies. Many of us wouldn’t dare hug ourselves believing that we aren’t worth it. Is this not tragic? Think of what we are missing out on! Like a bad habit that we know isn’t good for us.

But there is a second source of that eclipse of love, not just our low regard for ourselves (shame on us!), but the gloomy assessments we can carry about how our lives are working out. These assessments can result from so many things: illness, for example. Goodness gracious, bodily aches and pains and chronic illness can take their toll and can, either temporarily or for the long haul, turn us into grouches.

And we can turn gloomy from staring too long at the circumstances of our world. Politics, the pandemic, global warming, nuclear weapons. We could add to this list for hours. Not exactly cheerful subjects, and we can give them such a negative spin that Chicken Little would blush and run from our pessimism.

This is why the messages in John, and indeed the message of Easter is such a restorative of sanity and cheerfulness. It encourages us to turn away from our painting of the world as dark, our opinions of the world as going to hell, and our gloompot assessment of our own lives. God is love, and, as John says, “you can’t know God if you don’t love.”

There is a beautiful song that can help me turn away from the dark moods that can overtake me. It goes like this:

As I wash my dishes, I’ll be following a plan
Til I see the brightness in every pot and pan
I am sure this point of view will ease the daily grind
So I’ll keep repeating in my mind:

Look for the silver lining
Whenever a cloud appears in the blue
Remember, somewhere the sun is shining
And so the right thing to do is make it shine for you

A heart, full of joy and gladness
Will always banish sadness and strife
So always look for the silver lining
And try to find the sunny side of life

So always look for the silver lining
And try to find the sunny side of life

Isn’t this something? That in washing the dishes, we look to see brightness in every pot and pan. Oh, how I wish I could live this adage more fully. Are there situations in your present where you spend more time worrying and agonizing over what has not yet happened than over enjoying the present moment? I can bet you that you have had plenty of such moments in the past. Times, that is, when your concern for something that had not yet happened consumed you to the point of frenzy.

I have had such moments for sure. Plenty of them. There is something about the mind that it tends to forecast doom and gloom. Sure, we look forward to a vacation or the birth of a grandchild, but more often than not, we think about the rain that’s coming, the republic that’s falling and the world that’s ending. Even Shakespeare failed to write tragedies as gloomy as those we tend to write in our heads.

But I wish to ask you to reflect on those gloomy prognostications from your past. Did they ever turn out as tragically as you thought they were going to? In fact, look again at such moments (pick out one particular occasion when you projected the worst). How bad did that moment turn out? Be honest. Ok, it may have turned out pretty poorly, but did you learn anything from it? Was there a silver lining in it? I bet there was. At least there has been in almost every case in my own life.

I could give you illustrations, things I had foreseen as ominous and bad that turned out not to have been so tragic. In fact—and here’s the point—those things sometimes turned out to be blessings, just the opposite of what I had imagined!

Look for the silver lining. Is this not good advice? It most surely is good advice in my case, for in retrospect almost always (I hestitate to say “always”) a beautiful blessing has emerged as my life has unfolded. So why not bring this advice and this experience into my lived life now?

So I need not just look for that silver lining as something in my future. I can live that silver lining now. Is this not what resurrection means? Easter is now. Love is now. Love is permanent. There is nothing to anticipate when love is in the picture. After all, among Christ’s parting words were, “Fear not, for I am with you always.” Always includes now.

As John says in our Epistle today: “God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we’re free of worry.”

Amen.

Sermon Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd
Fort Lee, New Jersey,
Thursday, April 25, 2021, at 10:00 p.m.
By the Rev. Stephen C. Galleher

Resurrection Is Built into Creation and Is Now!

“And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us.”

 (I John 3:24)                                                                         

“Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd.” (John 10:11)

Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia

Resurrection happened, we declare, in a most singular and particular way… a long time ago. No one knows for sure the exact date. Calendars were different then. Some scholars guess that it occurred sometime in early April A.D. 33. Nowadays dates after Christ are referred to as CE, meaning Common Era. This is to avoid an explicitly Christian reference. CE: Common Era. B.C. is now BCE, Before the Common Era. Confusing, yes? But how important is this date anyway? Is it important to you?

        Because resurrection—while it is likely in some, as-yet-to-be-understood sense an historical occurrence—points to a larger meaning, a meaning with impact for all time and all history and most of all for each of our lives as lived now. It is not simply an event to be noted and perhaps remembered as we remember the date of the fall of the Roman Empire or the dates of the American Civil War. If this is all it is, then we would be justified in giving it only the barest attention.

        Resurrection is built into creation. If it is true, it has been true from the beginning and for all time.

There are hints of it throughout the Old Testament. When Job, after suffering the tortures of hell itself, proclaims—surely one of the great affirmations in all scripture—“But I know that my Redeemer lives and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. And though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God!” (Job 19:25-26)

Is this not a foreseeing of an ultimate bliss beyond the vicissitudes of everyday life? In fact, it reflects back into this present life. In other words, it is not just a forecast, but a proclamation of the joy of all life, both now and forever. “For now is Christ risen,” yesterday, today, and forever!

[Play video of Handel’s “I Know That My Redeemer Liveth”]

        Remember the colorful but scary story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, who refused to bow before the gold statue that Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar had set up? These fellows’ defiance resulted in Nebuchadnezzr throwing them into a roaring, fiery furnace. Furious that these rascals refused to worship his idol, the king fired the furnace seven times hotter than usual. It was so hot, in fact, that those throwing Shadrach, Mesach and Abednego into the furnace were scalded and killed  in the process.

        Then the king shouted in amazement, “Didn’t we throw three men, bound hand and foot, into the fire?…But look,” he continued, “I see four men, walking around freely in the fire, completely unharmed. And the fourth man looks like a son of the gods,” elsewhere translated “the son of God”!

        Isn’t this the resurrection? “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the ends of the earth.”

        These Old Testament illustrations hint very clearly that the resurrection is built into life—God created the earth and everything in it, not to desert it, but to remain cheek by jowl with it, closer to us than our beating hearts. And God can manifest itself in the most trying of circumstances: with Job in his trials, with Shadrach and his brothers in the fiery furnace and with our Lord Jesus as he cries out for his very life on a wooden cross.

        Elizabeth Kubler Ross once said, “The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”
        Do we not sense this in our own lives? Have we not known the living, resurrected Christ in the events of our lives, sometimes on occasions of great anxiety and even sadness?

        I’d like to tell you a story about an experience of a good friend of mine, a retired Episcopal priest colleague. He and I were ordained deacon together at a ceremony in Charlottesville, Virginia, back in June 1970. Bill was assigned early in his ministry as curate in a large parish in Roanoke, Virginia, and was left on his own, still wet behind the ears, while the rector took a brief holiday with his wife out of town. Alas, a diocesan-sponsored ski trip of teenagers to South America met with tragedy when an avalanche overturned the bus they were riding on. Bill was called by the parents of one of the girls on the bus; and he went to the home with news that the daughter was likely still alive, since they had not yet gotten any word. Upon returning to his home, Bill got word that, in fact, the daughter had perished in the avalanche tragedy. He returned to deliver the sad news. The parents said that as they saw Bill drive up, they knew he came with the truth of what he had learned about their daughter.

        Later, with the rector returned, the rector and Bill met the parents at the Roanoke airport to greet the cargo plane with the returning casket of the parishioner’s daughter. The family lined up outside the cargo door where the forklift was removing the plywood coffin. It was gently raining as it came out on the lift, and the rain drops made distinct indentations on the soft wooden frame. Bill knew just then that these were the tears of God.

        Resurrection. Easter. In the midst of tragedy.

        It cannot be accidental that this is Good Shepherd Sunday. And the twenty-third psalm is an Easter hymn if ever there was one! It is a hymn about üpresence; üeucharist; üovercoming strife; and üeternity

        This translation is from the Message Bible:

Psalm 23 The Message

23 ^1-3 God, my shepherd!
    I don’t need a thing.
You have bedded me down in lush meadows,
    you find me quiet pools to drink from.
True to your word,
    you let me catch my breath
    and send me in the right direction.

⁴ Even when the way goes through
    Death Valley,
I’m not afraid
    when you walk at my side.
Your trusty shepherd’s crook
    makes me feel secure.

⁵ You serve me a six-course dinner
    right in front of my enemies.
You revive my drooping head;
    my cup brims with blessing.

⁶ Your beauty and love chase after me
    every day of my life.
I’m back home in the house of God
    for the rest of my life.

 I believe that the extent to which we do not live these lines, absorb them into our hearts and lives, we sell short our joy and miss out on the cup brimming with blessings.

We needn’t blame ourselves for what we may be missing. Our secular world, even our church at times, sells us false goods, things that postpone us out of existence: fulfillment down the road, after we’ve made our earthly fortune or after we go to heaven. Phooey!

Resurrection is now. Hallelujah Christ is risen! This is the eternal proclamation of the Christian church, indeed of the world where God resides, and we heed it precisely to the extent that we intend joy for our lives, now and forever.

        Amen.

By Deacon Virginia Jenkins-Whatley 

Luke 24:36b-48

When I was in college I worked in the local hospital as a nurses aide in the Oncology hospice care unit. I was terrified working there because you would have 5-10 terminal patients who pass away so quickly before you could get to know them. I was almost immune to final preparations for the deceased.

 I did become attached to a very lovely married couple, Irene and Frank McDougal. Frank was hospitalized for a few weeks before he requested hospice care at home.  On my nights off I would care for him and he would be so challenging. One night he told me I didn’t have to return because he was leaving. He said that I had been great. I could tell by the expression on his face he was serious. He gave me a bottle of Irish whiskey  and said don’t drink it all at once. After all these years  I still have that bottle.

After his passing I would visit with his wife. She was in and out of the hospital. A year had passed since Frank’s death. Irene and I talked about all the funny stories he would tell us.  She had been in the hospital for three weeks and I tried spending time with her as much as I could.

I was home studying for finals around 11 p.m one night. I was drifting off to sleep and I heard someone calling my name but I didn’t see anyone outside. I lived alone and no one was in my apartment but me.

I took a shower and went to bed. I was getting very drowsy and I heard a voice again and turned and saw Irene just as plain as day sitting in my lounge chair. I looked at the clock and it was 11:10 pm She said she missed seeing me tonight. She said she just wanted to thank me for being so very nice to her and Frank. She said I was always a comfort to her and that she wished me the best in everything I want to do with my life. I drifted off to sleep.

When I woke up, I wasn’t sure if I had dreamt about Irene or not.

I had one eye open and scanned the room. I was scared. Fear overcame me. I called her room at the hospital and no one answered. When I went to work that evening, I did not say anything to anyone. I went to Irene’s room and she was not there.

When we were given patient report they told me that she had passed away last night and was calling for me. They said that she passed at 11:10. I was terrified. I didn’t say a word. After my shift, I went home. I had every light on in the apartment. I asked my brother to meet me there so that he could take the lounge chair with him to his place.

In today’s reading, the disciples, also were startled and terrified. They looked as if they had seen a ghost. Then Jesus asks them “why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?” This is the first time Jesus had showed himself to all of the disciples since his resurrection. So perhaps the disciples had a right to be afraid. They had not experienced the resurrected Christ for themselves. I think it’s only natural for them to have been afraid. I think fear and being startled is a predicted reaction to seeing the deceased now raised. It may be easy for us to shake our heads in disbelief, but we are at an advantage. We know more about Jesus now than the disciples did at that time.

They experienced the loving, understanding Jesus. The Jesus who understood that despite telling them that he would be raised, that showing them his hands and feet is what it was going to take for them to believe. Jesus was willing to do whatever it was he needed to do so that the disciples would not be afraid.

Fear is such a powerful motivator in our current culture. It keeps us behind locked doors, much like the disciples. Fear keeps us from living fully into the disciples that God created us to be. Fear keeps us from accepting grace.  Fear keeps us from full faith.

I feel that, when we resist the actions that Christ calls us to because of fear then we aren’t worshipping God, we are worshipping fear. We are a people who declare that Alleluia! Christ is risen! (Christ is risen indeed!) And when we declare that, we are declaring that not even death can stop Christ. Christ has defeated death. Christ can defeat our fears.

Jesus sees what the disciples need and he meets them where they are. He offers them his hands and feet, and then, after eating, encourages them to keep going. There is nothing to fear. Jesus reminds us of his promises by using scripture. Jesus frees them from their fear and Jesus frees us from ours.

We cannot escape fear.  We can understand that Christ can triumph over fear. But that doesn’t mean that fear will no longer exist.  We are witnesses to the fact that Christ has triumphed over death. We are witnesses that cry out “Alleluia! Christ is risen.” But as long as fear lingers, even behind closed doors in my bedroom, even in the nooks and crannies in our minds, we are not completely secure. Only Christ can save us. Our fears certainly can’t do that.

Jesus came to issue the disciples, and us a call. He came to remind us that our call is to proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins. But Christ shows us that hope is stronger than fear. Christ shows us that an empty tomb is stronger than a cross. Christ shows us that locked doors cannot keep him out.

Christ has called us to be a witness to his presence among us: in our words, in our deeds, and in our presence in the world. Our faith is stronger than our fear Faith moves us on, into the world, proclaiming Christ’s love and forgiveness to all people.  Alleluia! Christ is Risen! (Christ is risen indeed, alleluia!)

Sermon Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd
Fort Lee, New Jersey,
Thursday, April 11, 2021, at 10:00 p.m.
By the Rev. Stephen C. Galleher

Have You Died and Gone to Heaven?

“With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.” (Acts 4:32-35)

Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed!

Yes, the Lord is risen. Indeed, that is one wonderful half of our Easter celebration. That this individual, Jesus the Christ, lived a life so free of ego that he was liberated to live without reserve, with no holds barred. As a friend’s rewording of today’s collect goes, “Jesus’s life was so trusting and true that death could not hold him.” Christ showed in his resurrection appearances that God does not and will not abandon us. And he delivers his peace by showing that being in a resurrection environment is a place where peace reigns—a peace that passes understanding.

        But where does that leave us? Without some impact on my life here and now, it’s just a charming and dramatic history lesson from a long-ago time and place.

        I am sure that we all know that old saying, “I’ve died and gone to heaven!” I don’t know if there is a Korean equivalent for this; but it indicates, does it not, that our life is going so well that things just couldn’t feel better for us. We say it, do we not, when we are in a state of relative bliss? We just didn’t know we could feel this good and still be alive! But when things slip, when our lives meet challenges, then our wings are clipped and we usually stop saying it.

        But my question this morning is, “Have we, in fact, or have we not, in fact, died and gone to heaven?”

        For this question gets to the heart of our life, goes straight to the meaning of our Baptism, and challenges us to listen again to one of the final statements of Christ: “Let me give you a new command: Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another.” (John 13:34-35)

        So, we ask in a more somber vein, “Have you died and gone to heaven?” Have you really died and are you now in heaven? Of course, many of you will object, “Of course not. I am not dead, nor have I gone to what’s next in store for me!” Ok. If you want to be that way! If you want to think that you live, then you die, and then you go someplace else. That’s a pretty literal picture; and if you feel comfortable in that rocket ship, enjoy the voyage. I fear that many of us cannot come along with you. Many young people reject their religious heritage because they find that view of their lives to sound far-fetched. They just can’t relate.

        But we Christians, whatever we think about what happens to us after we die, tell another story. And that is that our lives are presently transformed, shot through now with a new perspective, a new reality, the reality that we have died and been risen with Christ. To me, this means that our lives now are lived in eternity, in the bosom of Abraham, in the arms of the risen Christ, we are in the presence now of this God who never leaves our side, who is closer to us than our very breath. In fact, this God is the very breath of our lives.

        Paul, in one of his most ecstatic passages, says in poetic language what I am getting at. He writes, “Since you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated, at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on the earth. For you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” (Colossians 31-4)

            I do not believe that this writing is as abstract or impractical as we might at first think. It is borne out in our life experiences. When we are in the presence of the death of a loved one, for instance. Do we not in some sense feel that we are still present with them, with their love? Our love for them and their love for us has not disappeared. We witness near and far unbelievable acts of service, bravery and sacrifice, like the thousands of health care professionals who show up for work during this time of COVID and do their duty and yet save the lives of those they are waiting on. In fact, all similar service workers, grocery store clerks, sanitation workers, bus drivers. Are we not in the presence of the holy? Are these not sacred people doing holy things?

        Paul says, “Since we have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above,” and a bit later, “Set your minds on things that are above.”

        Is that “setting-our-minds-on-things-that-are-above,” about love? After all, that is Christ’s final commandment, that we love one another.

The beauty, but also, the challenge of this commandment is to love absolutely everyone, with absolutely no exceptions.

        So, have we died and gone to heaven? Heaven is not just a place where we are loved unconditionally. It is also a place where we love unconditionally. Whoops. Thereby hangs the problem.

        Yes, how do I love others unconditionally? Can I say that I do this? I know that we will confess that we do not do this in anywhere near a perfect way.

        But, being in heaven, we need not despair. For heaven is where love is, we are, remember, in the bosom of Abraham. The risen Christ said that where we are, Christ will be also. His love infuses, embraces, encourages, uplifts us into God’s love.

        How broad is the heart of the ocean? If you think of the ocean as one big heart, where are its boundaries, where does it cease to be heart? There is no outside of the ocean. Similarly, there is no outside to God’s love since we are never outside it.

        The Resurrection tells us that we have died and are in heaven? Does that mean that our bliss should remain undiminished? Of course not. We are human beings and we deny the reality of pain, suffering, loss and grief at the peril of our mental health. But resurrection does tell us that nothing need diminish our sense of joy, as difficult as the circumstances may be. Being outside of the world but still in it, we are outside time in a sense also. We are free to do as we please. And all there is to do is what Christ commanded us to do, that is, to love.

        A friend said something very simple to me the other day, but I took it as a sign to preach on the theme of dying and going to heaven. He said, “I have nothing but time to be kind.”

        Paul said it, “Love never ends.” Love is like the width of the ocean.

Life begins with love, is maintained with love, and ends with love.

Resurrection is now. “Christ is risen, the Lord is risen indeed.” Christ is risen and we are risen indeed!

Amen.

Sermon Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd
Fort Lee, New Jersey,
Thursday, April 4, 2021, at 10:00 p.m.
By the Rev. Stephen C. Galleher

Love Makes Us Permanent

Allelulia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed!

“But here on this mountain, the Lord of Hosts
    will throw a feast for all the people of the world,
A feast of the finest foods, a feast with vintage wines,
    a feast of seven courses, a feast lavish with gourmet desserts.
And here on this mountain, God will banish…
The shadow of doom darkening all nations.
    Yes, he’ll banish death forever.
And God will wipe the tears from every face.
    He’ll remove every sign of disgrace
From his people, wherever they are.
    Yes! God says so!” (Isaiah 25:6-8)

Yes, this Resurrection event, which we live again this morning, is another kind of feast, a continuation of sorts from Thursday, Jesus’s last meal with his disciples. It was a return to communion, “communion” meaning participation in something together. Communion is a love-in, a reunion of men and women in fellowship, of handshakes replacing fists, of hugs replacing blows, of warmth replacing a cold heart.

        There is an expression that I was taught as a child after finishing the main course, after the entre. My mother would say, “Keep your fork.” This meant to take my fork off the plate, set it aside and wait for the next course, the dessert. This is what we have done from Maundy Thursday until this morning! This is where we get to taste the divine end of the passion event, the sweet ending to a harrowing tale.

        Let us look at two examples of just what has gone on between Thursday evening and today, the day of Resurrection.

        It was January 6 of this year, when a gang of angry rioters stormed the nation’s Capitol, and pushed through the doors and broke windows and violently overcame the Capitol police who were protecting the entrances.

[Project photos of Hodges] Daniel Hodges was crushed and pinned with a policeman’s shield inside a doorway. Simply performing his duty to protect the chambers, he was pinned in that door jamb. Such is a picture of pain and suffering on behalf of others. A microcosm of all the pain and suffering all around us every day. Both from circumstances that the world dishes out and from what we dish out to one another in our fear and ignorance, our hatred and violence.

        [Project photos of Eugene Goodman] And then, again, from January 6, as the mob drew closer to the legislators, Capitol policeman Eugene Goodman called to the mobsters and drew them up the stairs, away from the Senators who were hiding in a safe room in the basement of the Capitol. He was given the Congressional Medal, our country’s highest civilian honor. I think of Jesus Christ as our scapegoat, taking on our dishonor, willing to die for the likes of us as we continue to dish out enmity and hatred towards our neighbors. This policeman was a man of love, doing his duty, yes, but risking his life in the process.

        This Jesus is not just the historical figure, but the eternal Christ, pointing the way into the suffering of the world and showing us a love that permeates yet transcends the surface of our lives. The love that was demonstrated by those assaulted policemen is the love of Christ, the same love.

        Similarly, the love that broke through all that suffering and death on Easter morning is the same love we see all around us when we open our hearts and eyes to that love here and now.

        So, what does it mean, what is it saying? What does the Resurrection mean to you? Is there any other question really worth asking, for if the Resurrection of Christ has no impact, no relevance to your life, then are we not wasting our time celebrating it?

        In my own experience, I find its impact in two ways, just from being still before this event. It is more than an historical occurrence. I see and feel it bursting forth in all of life’s circumstances. I see it played out by Officer Goodman leading the Capitol rioters up those stairs and away from the senators. This is what love looks like. And, yes, I see it and hear it in the agony of Officer Hodges as he screams in pain trapped in the Capitol door. This is what love looks like and what love sounds like. Love bursting out of every situation, however dire, even however deadly.

        Yes, you may think it odd, but I interpret resurrection from events such as those I have illustrated. But I also sense resurrection in my own life, not just in the awesome, sometimes ordinary things that result from my life as lived, but particularly in retrospect. When I reflect on the course of my life, there is only one thing that limns it, and that is love. Love.

        I ask that each of you reflect even casually on your life. There have been happy, joyous times, triumphant times; and there have been disappointing, sad, yes, even tragic times. But can you say that any of those times have been times devoid of love? Please be honest. It is perfectly fine if you do not see all the events of your life the way that I am suggesting.

        But what triggered my interpretation of my life by saying it has been all about love was a statement that a retired friend of mine said to me the other day. It was only a four-word sentence, but its power entered me deeply. He said: “Love…makes…us…permanent.”

        Love makes us permanent. Love does not come from nowhere and it does not leave once it is here. Don’t you feel this with all those family and friends who have passed, who loved you and whom you loved? They haven’t gone anywhere. This is resurrection.

        Love makes us permanent.

        William Penn, a famous Quaker and the founder of the colony of Pennsylvania, was also a religious thinker and writer. He wrote: “And this is the comfort of the resurrection, that the grave cannot hold us, and we live as soon as we die. For death is no more than a turning of us from time to eternity.”

        I love this sentiment. But eternity is not something after death. Aren’t we in eternity now? Isn’t our Baptism telling us that we have been buried and risen with Christ? We are already Christ’s own forever. So, speaking metaphorically, there is nowhere to go! There is no where to go to!

        I hope that we all on this Easter morn receive a renewed sense of the glory and power of our own resurrection with Christ. It’s as simple as a loving kiss for our partner, a gesture of reconciliation toward someone who has been off our radar, a beautiful thought wafted outward for a blessing from the warm air that greets it.

Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete….

When I was an infant at my mother’s breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.

We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! …

But for right now…we have three things to do to lead us [home]: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love. (Corinthians 13:8-1300

Amen

Amen.