| Rector’s
Sermon
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| How hard it is to say “Goodbye”, sometimes. How great it is to say “Hello”, sometimes. Think for just a minute about a difficult “Goodbye” you have had to offer recently. But then think for just a minute about a “Hello” that you were especially excited about. I can well imagine that if all life were only these hard “Goodbyes” how painful that kind of life would be. But maybe God provides us with the “Hellos” because God doesn’t want us to live only in pain and anxiety but in hope and in happiness. My guess is that many of us thought about someone who has died or someone who has moved away, perhaps never to be seen again, in thinking about those hard “Goodbyes” of life. And I can also imagine that many of us are thinking about the birth of a child or a returning member of the family or friend in thinking about the “Hellos” that God provides for us. But the truth is that God’s self is also subject to our “Goodbyes” and “Hellos”, that God comes and goes, or at least that’s our perception of God and certainly as that perception is recorded in the Bible. Marcus Borg is a Biblical scholar and theologian some of you have been reading who wrote a book titled, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time. He also wrote a book titled, Reading the Bible Again for the First Time. Both titles suggest a relationship with God that comes and goes if not a God who comes and goes. In the Old Testament we have a long period of time when the Israelites who were living in Egypt did not know the God of their fathers and mothers. There were also significant events in the Old Testament such as the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem when one interpretation could surely be that God had abandoned his people, had left his people. And purely from a spatial perspective, God is often described as “in heaven” which is “up there” or “out there,” a place to which we perhaps might attain but certainly a place that is different from this place. Now to be fair, the Bible also pictures God as everywhere. In Psalm 139 the question is asked, “Where shall I flee from your spirit?” The writer then imagines journeying through the ancient three-story universe: “ascending into the heavens, descending into Sheol (or the place of death), and then traveling to the furthest corners of the earth.” The refrain about God is constant: “You are there.” And in our first lesson this morning Paul talks about God as “the one in whom we live and move and have our being.” God is not somewhere else in these pictures but all around us and all in us. Theologically this image of God as all around us and all in us is assigned to God as “spirit.” In fact, the Hebrew and Greek words for “spirit” also mean “wind” and “breath.” So which is true? Does God come and go, or is God the very air we breathe? I think both are true, in their own way. And perhaps they can be more clearly defined by looking at these series of readings from the Gospels during the Easter season. In today’s Gospel, Jesus is essentially saying “Goodbye.” The disciples had thought he had gone when he died on Good Friday, but then he was miraculously raised from the dead and we have these stories about his appearing to his disciples, to Doubting Thomas, to several of them on the road to Emmaus, by the Sea of Galilee. But now here at the end of the 40 days that he was with them in the Resurrection he’s saying “Goodbye.” And we have a picture of that—a very dramatic picture—when we celebrate the feast of the Ascension when Jesus is literally lifted up into the clouds, seemingly never to return again. Remember that the Book of Revelation hadn’t been written yet so all of those Second-Coming illustrations had not yet been etched into the mind of the Church. It was definitely a “Goodbye” moment. But before his ascension Jesus says to his disciples that he is going to send someone else in short order that he calls an Advocate. In other texts he refers to this person as a Comforter. We know, in hindsight, that it is the Holy Spirit because we know that ten days after the Ascension the Holy Spirit said “Hello” to the disciples and filled them with power and resolve to be the Church. We often call Pentecost the Birthday of the Church, when out of the sadness of Christ’s departure something new was born by the influence of the Holy Spirit. And so from a purely space-time perspective we have this picture of Jesus, God’s son, being taken away and then after ten days this return of God in the form of the Holy Spirit bringing new life. All of these pictures, however, anticipate the Church’s celebration of Trinity Sunday which is always the Sunday after Pentecost. On Trinity Sunday we celebrate the fact that God has been revealed in very specific ways throughout the history of our awareness of God. God as Creator has been with us from the beginning. God in the person of Jesus came to be with us for a very short time in order to show us how God’s love could be experienced in that one person’s life and death and then his resurrection. But then God is also known as Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, who (and this is where it gets complicated) with Jesus and God the Creator has been moving across the face of the waters and in the minds and the hearts of everyone searching for God from the beginning and forever. Another way to put it is that God is both very specific and very universal. God is “Hello” and “Goodbye”-able, AND there all the time. It’s a mystery. But maybe that’s why God is God who is by definition unlimited and eternal and people are people who are by definition finite. Now I’m not the least bit embarrassed nor am I the least bit apologetic about my need for having to picture God in some way. In fact, that’s what Jesus was all about. Jesus was a living, breathing, picture, as it were, of God. And even though we use the word “person” in our creed to describe the Holy Spirit, Jesus was really more “a person” in our use of that word than the Holy Spirit is, and the Holy Spirit is that part of God which does in fact permeate all things, that part of God in whom we live and move and have our being. Now on our part of this human/divine equation, there are times in our lives when God seems to be far away, when our “Goodbyes” seem so final (and so heart wrenching). Think back to your earlier recollection of a “Goodbye” and remember the feeling you had about the separation it represented. It’s not a good feeling, and it’s very possible you have trouble finding God in that heartache. But remember as well the experience of the Church when the Holy Spirit came and your own experience of dramatic “Hellos” that have had the power of being life-changing, and remember that God’s distance from us is really only in our minds, that God’s presence permeates everything, however difficult it is to perceive it. There is a story I often tell at funerals that helps me with this struggle over the separation that death represents. It’s probably familiar to some of you but bears repeating in any event. A Parable of Immortality
And then there is a prayer I often pray at funerals which also addresses our feelings of hurt over separation. Let me conclude with this, then.
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