All Things New
John Wilkinson Third
Presbyterian Church
May 6, 2007
Revelation 21:1-6, John 13:31-35
We are in the commencement season. In the next few weeks, countless
young, and not-so-young, people will be receiving some form
of diploma to mark some form of passage. I have been privileged
to hear more than a few commencement addresses. Most are not
memorable. A few jokes. Thanks to the people who supported you
along the way. A wry comment about tuition payments. A few pithy
platitudes. Perhaps a reference to Frost’s “The
Road Not Taken.” The end.
Invariably, each address will contain two points. This is not
the ending, but a beginning. And you are not the future; you
are the present. Both are true. So I would say those two things
to the six people joining this church this morning – Rory,
Jamie, Brett, Jenna, Ben, Caroline. This is not the ending,
but a beginning. You are not the future; you are the present.
Both are true – live as though they are. And don’t
pretend otherwise.
But I would add one thing more: remember your baptism. What
many commencement speeches don’t include is the reminder
that you are a child of God, created in God’s image. Believe
that as well, and live as though you are. And don’t pretend
otherwise.
You have been given gifts and a calling to make a difference
everywhere God calls you – in the church and in the world.
Commencement addresses will include the notion of how everyone
is so proud of you. And we are. But more that pride, the feeling
we have is one of gratitude, with you, and for you. We are grateful
that God has called you to this moment, and with great joy,
and even greater anticipation, we will welcome you almost as
soon as this sermon is over. And so with hopes for the future,
which is now, and beginnings, and sermonic brevity, let us pray.
***
Liturgically speaking, Christmas is one day. Easter, however,
is a season. Easter is in fact a fifty-day season that concludes
with the Day of Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit
to the early church, a day that fully bewilders us Presbyterians.
And so for the next couple of weeks, we will continue to sing
some Easter hymns, as we have done today, and engage the post-Easter
texts, joining the earliest disciples in their efforts at Easter
meaning-making.
Easter is not easy. Thomas Hearn, former president of Wake
Forest University, in, of all things, a Wake Forest commencement
address that insists that this is not an ending, but a beginning,
lifts up a poem called “Easter Morning" by Archie
Ammons. (See “In the Morning of the Day of Hope,”
May 16, 1994) The poem records a visit to the family cemetery,
a place of sadness representing life’s “bitter incompletions”
and “empty ends.” But, as Hearn says, “the
place of sadness is visited at a time of joy, in the morning
of the day of hope, in the season of resurrection.”
“I have a life that did not become, that turned aside
and stopped,” Ammons writes. “Though the incompletions/(&
completions) burn out/standing in the flash high-burn/momentary
structure of ash, still it/is a picture-book, letter-perfect/Easter
morning: I have been for a/walk:… I saw something I had/never
seen before: two great birds,/maybe eagles, blackwinged, whitenecked/and
–headed, came from the south soaring/the great wings steadily;
they went/directly over me, high up, and kept on/due north:/…
it was a sight of bountiful/majesty and integrity: the heaving/patterns
and routes, breaking/from them to explore other patterns or/better
ways to routes, and then the/return: a dance sacred as the sap
in/ the trees, permanent in its descriptions/as the ripples
round the brook’s/ripplestone: fresh as this particular/flood
of burn breaking across us now/from the sun.”
Can we not envision a visit to a graveyard, filled with solemnity
and nostalgia? Not unlike Easter morning itself. And can we
not at the same time envision a powerful moment overtaking us
– perhaps, even – as it has done for me in these
early days of spring – a constellation of birds flying
in dramatic formation or a crocus pushing its way heavenward.
The very Easter rhythm itself. Crucifixion to resurrection.
Death to life.
That is never to say that resurrection is easy. It is not,
and to say so dilutes our faith and makes Good Friday a mere
inconvenience. We know better. A high school administrator disappears
and is later discovered, the victim of forces we cannot begin
to comprehend, and his former students remember him with a poignant
combination of hope and gratitude and despair.
Some weeks back, a college baseball team traveling through
Atlanta loses five of its members as the bus careens off an
overpass. The team now begins every game with a prayer –
not the simplistic and misplaced sports prayer searching for
victory, but a simple prayer that gives thanks for the simple
opportunity of playing together, of community, and that remembers
their fallen friends and teammates.
The very Ester rhythm itself. Crucifixion to resurrection.
Death to life. Inexplicable moments of grief in the face of
the seeming invincibility of life, followed by a new encounter
with life beyond death, forged in grief and despair but never
allowed to linger there.
Such public moments of ill-timed death now inevitability include
the news reports that counselors are being made available to
help with the healing process. That seems important, and I am
as much for mental health as one can possibly be, and the support
of mental health providers to pursue it. But the news reports
don’t get that. They report it as if “healing”
and “closure” are boxes on a checklist to check
off, like buying eggs or milk.
You are healed. Check. Grief is closed. Check.
Healing does not work like that, as we know so well. I read
the story of a Virginia Tech student who had been wounded in
the shootings of April 16. He has now gone back to class. In
his body somewhere remains a piece of shrapnel; the doctors
determined that it would be better for his body to let the bullet
fragment remain than to risk taking it out. He agreed, and he
said something to the affect that his body will form a cocoon
around the bullet. My body will know it is there, but it will
work around it and live with it.
That seems true to our experiences as Easter people. Hurt happens.
Brokenness happens. Disappointment happens. Death happens. And
resurrection – of life, of the spirit – does not
make the old go away, but grows something like a cocoon around
it, so that our lives may continue, reformed, transformed, by
the experience, not defined by it, but not enshrining it as
a matter of ancient history.
It is not forgive and forget, as convenient as that sounds.
Ask the Rutgers women’s basketball team. Forgive, yes
– but rather than forget, learn and grow from the experience.
It is not healing and closure and then a case of amnesia, because
how would we human types grow and develop.
Resurrection does not ignore crucifixion. Like the poet, we
visit the graveyard on an Easter morning. And like that poet,
despite our imcompletions, we look up and see something amazing
and do not linger at that place of death.
From cover to cover, the Bible is an Easter document, a book
whose many books – histories, poems, letters, visions
– tell the story of a God who seeks out a people and who
never stops, who turns chaos into blessed order, mourning into
dancing, darkness into light, death into life.
This is no marketing ploy – a favorite you keep buying
because you think it’s pretty good until a new version
is unveiled that is new and improved. This is a new thing God
is doing that is powerful and true and real. Cover to cover:
* In the book of the prophet Isaiah, God says: “Do not
remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I
am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not
perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers
in the desert.”
* In our passage from the Book of Revelation: “Then I
saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the
first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I
saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven
from God…He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from
their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain
will be no more, for the first things have passed away.’
And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I
am making all things new.’”
* And Jesus, in a pre-Easter discussion about post-Easter life,
teaches his followers: “I give you a new commandment,
that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also
should love one another. By this everyone will know that you
are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
New heaven and new earth. A new commandment. All things new.
We read the Bible and are perplexed by issues of time. There
are points when all of God’s plans seem destined to unfold
in the future – as in the dramatic images from Revelation.
There are other times when it is clear – as in Jesus’
commands to his followers – that the new thing is beginning
now. We are to love one another now, live into the new commandment
now.
As in most things, this seems to be a “both-and”
situation rather than an “either-or” one. We live
in hope for the future but we live in determination for the
present, believing that God’s agenda of transformation
and renewal is for the present moment and every moment. And
we live like it. We live as if God is working in the here-and-now,
because God is. And we live as if God is working in the yet-to-be,
because God is.
And while the burden is on God, we, too, are invited into the
transformation and renewal business. Because we have been loved,
we are called to love. Because God will wipe tears away, we
are called to do the same – our own, when that difficult
moment comes, but more so the tears of those we love and for
whom we are called to care.
It seems clear what newness the world needs: war, poverty,
deep division between groups of people, environmental threats.
It is not always so clear how we will get there, but it is clear
that we are called to get there, or rather to cooperate with
God who is leading us there. Or what newness is needed in our
own lives: newness of body, or spirit, or living, or relationship.
This resurrection business is never easy, and to suggest otherwise
dilutes our faith and makes Good Friday a mere inconvenience.
I believe that one of the problems with a particular Christian
perspective, often explained through an interpretation of Revelation,
is that God wipes history away, like some cosmic chalkboard,
and starts from scratch. That’s not the way it works,
it seems to me.
A father of one of the ball players who died in the bus accident
is asked whether he is angry. He will not forget his son, or
the sad things that has happened to him. But he says that “David
was a gift from God I had for more than 20 years. How can I
be angry about a gift?” (Sports Illustrated,
May 7, 2007, page 82)
And there God is, wiping away tears, loving the grieving, doing
a new thing with that team who plays now not just to drive in
runs or turn a perfect double-play, but to remember, to encircle
and be encircled with a deeper sense of connection.
Every day is like a walk in the graveyard, waiting for something
transforming and new and life-giving. And every day, every day,
resurrection happens. Easter happens.
Christ is risen. Christ is risen indeed. Amen.
