The Rev. Noah Van Niel
Christ and St. Luke’s
April 17th, 2022
Easter Day: Isaiah 65: 17-25; Ps 118:1-2, 14-24; Acts 10:34-43; John 20:1-18
(The full service can be viewed below. The sermon begins at 32:30)
Well, shucks. Y’all really know how to roll out the red carpet! The flowers, the brass…this is what it’s like every Sunday around here, right? But in all seriousness: thank you all for the warm ways in which you have already been so welcoming to me and my family—Melinda, Vincent, and Arthur. Though this is my first Sunday with you as your new Priest-in-Charge, it feels like home already. I do also want to thank your vestry and search committee, particularly Heidi Anderson your Senior Warden who chaired both during this interim time. They went about their work faithfully and diligently and represented your parish extremely well. Thank you also to your wonderful staff, whose work continues to be disrupted due to construction, but who have maintained the excellence in worship, liturgy, and programming that is the hallmark of this parish, and all with smiles on their faces. And finally, my appreciation to Fr. Win, who has offered kind and generous guidance as I have made this transition, which I imagine is no surprise to you all who knew him to be that kind of man and priest. And special thanks to Fr. Joe, Fr. Jess, and Fr. Vince, who have had their hands on the pastoral tiller and made sure the spiritual needs of the parish were taken care of in the interim. My sincerest thanks to all of them, and to all of you for your prayers and your patience. And now, here we are!
Those of you who have been attending or tuning in to our services the last year or so will know that Fr. Vince has established a practice of giving a six-word summation of his sermons at the outset. So, I thought I’d take up that challenge, at least for this week. Today’s sermon in six words: Hush. Hush. Somebody’s calling your name. These words may be familiar to you because they come from an old African-American spiritual. Hush. Hush. Somebody’s calling your name.
Now, though today is my first Sunday with you, it is not my first service with you. We began together a few days ago, on Maundy Thursday when we washed each other’s feet and celebrated the institution of the Lord’s Supper. We then wept together on Good Friday as we walked the way of the cross, and just last night, we huddled in darkness and joyful expectation at a beautiful Easter Vigil. When I told my colleagues I was going to start my new position in Holy Week, they were bemused. “Why not wait until Easter—that’ll be much more fun,” they said. “Why not wait a week, that will be much less work,” others joked. But walking the steps of Holy Week together, passing through that dissolution before we celebrated the joy of resurrection, was important to me, not just because I love those services and wanted to share them with you, but because the travails of Holy Week map very well onto the experience I, and I imagine many of you, have had these last couple years. Things start out fine, normal even. A Passover meal celebrated with friends in Jerusalem. And then, all of a sudden everything changes. And fast. Where joy and happiness filled the air now exists death, despair, fear, anger, loss, disorientation. The journey from the table to the tomb is supremely destabilizing. Those things which the disciples thought they could count on were now totally upended, their plans, their ideas, all their dreams suddenly deferred.
Does this sound familiar to you? As the pandemic crashed upon our shores we were forced, to a large extent, to cut the anchors that steadied us on life’s stormy seas. We were forced to put distance between ourselves and our family, our friends, our workplaces, our schools, our church. All this left me, (and maybe you?) feeling unmoored. As we lost touch with others, we lost touch with ourselves. And, maybe even, our God? Because this separation led to confusion and confusion leads to anxiety, which leads to sadness, and fear and for some, anger. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that as the pandemic has worn on, we have seen a rise in mental health crises and a troubling increase in violence: shootings, riots, war. This is the outgrowth of our disorientation, and disconnection: a withering of our compassion and well-being. And unfortunately, this destabilization is now raging, tragically, on a global scale. The whole world seems lost.
This, on a more personal scale, is the story of Holy Week. And no one epitomizes it more than Mary Magdalene. Mary was as devoted a disciple as Jesus had. But now, in a matter of hours he is gone. Dead. Buried. And she is supremely disoriented. She comes to the tomb, to at least be near his body, hoping to recover something from the wreckage which can keep her afloat. But when she comes the tomb, she finds the stone rolled away and the body gone. This is TERRIBLE news! Her last hope, just being near him, has been taken away from her. She’s got nothing to hold onto now. She runs to get Peter and John but they’re no help, and so she just dissolves. She stands there sobbing because everything she knew and believed and understood and needed in her life is gone. She is bereft. She is angry. She is lost. Even the appearance of the angels doesn’t snap her out of it. Even the appearance of Jesus doesn’t snap her out of it. She’s flailing. And it is into that storm, that chaos, that turmoil that Jesus speaks her name. “Mary!” And like the sea of Galilee that went calm at a word from his lips, she stops and finds herself on solid ground. Just as she feels herself slipping away Jesus calls her back.
If you recognize yourself in any of this, if you are still feeling in any way disoriented, disconnected, disrupted, disquieted by all that you have suffered these last two years, if you feel like in losing touch with others you have lost touch with yourself, and you fear for the future of a world that seems to have lost maybe its mind, but definitely its heart, then you are not alone. But on this Easter morning, the same one who called Mary by name those many years ago, calls to you as well. Listen for him. It can be hard to hear over the chaos of life. But remember the first Easter was as quiet as a graveyard at sunrise. Hush. Hush. Somebody’s calling your name. Jesus is calling you back to yourself. Calling you back that which is good and right and true. Calling you back to your church. Calling you back to your God; the very God who calls Jesus back from the darkness and disorientation of the tomb. The one whose presence persists even past death.
But that is not all. For the Resurrection does more than just call us back to ourselves. It also calls on. When Mary hears her name, she runs to grab onto Jesus. She seems to be hoping that if she can hold him tight enough, they can go back to how things used to be and pretend like none of this terrible stuff ever happened. Like many of us, as we come back to ourselves, the desire is to rush back to how things were. But that’s not possible. She can’t hold onto him the way she did before. Things are different now. We’re different now. That’s why Jesus resists her. He’s not there just to call her back to herself, he’s there to call her on to something new. He says to her, “Do not hold on to me…But go and tell my brothers what you have seen.” And so she does. And it changes the world. You see –the Resurrection anchors and orients us but then it says, “Go. That way.” It’s not enough just to come back and be stable. We are called onto something more. We are called to live and proclaim a whole new reality. A reality where even death itself is put in its rightful place. A reality that looks a lot like what the prophet Isaiah was describing in our first reading this morning.
“For I am about to create new heavens, and a new earth,” says the Lord. This new creation will be one of joy, where everyone—everyone—will have access to a full and abundant life. “For I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy and its people as a delight…No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime.” It’s a world of stability and security for all: “For like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.” It’s a world of peace where even the wolf and the lamb shall feed together and where none shall “hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.” Wow. Wouldn’t that be something? A world of peace, joy, stability, abundant life. Can you even imagine such a reality?
Friends, that is the world we are being called to. The Resurrection initiates that new reality, but ultimately it is only brought into being with our cooperation. That’s why Jesus is calling your name. Because you have the ability and the gifts to help bring about this new world. And that’s what we as Christians should be about. That’s what I hope we at Christ and St. Luke’s will be about. Creating a reality of joy, and stability, and abundance, and peace. A world governed by the law of love. That is the world I’m looking forward to building with you; nothing less than the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. As we emerge from the disorientation and disconnection and dissolution of Good Friday we are not just coming back, we are moving on. We are stepping out onto the precipice something new, not just in our church but in our world. A new creation is available to us if we would but answer the call. But if we’re going to answer that call first, we have to hear it. So this Easter day, if you feel like Mary, lost amidst the chaos of life, listen. Say to all your fears and frustrations, “Hush.” Say to all your anger and anxiety, “Hush.” Say to all your sadness and sorrow, “Hush…Hush.” Because somebody’s calling your name.