BCP - Easter 3 C - 22 Apr 2007

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Brother Joseph Brown, n/OHC
BCP – Easter 3 C - Sunday 22 April 2007

Two things can happen when you are preparing a sermon. Either you read the text and come up flat with nothing to say, or the text is so rich that to try to talk about everything, which leaves you saying nothing. Today’s readings are the latter for me.

The account of Paul and Ananias, Jesus’ third post-resurrection appearance on the Sea of Tiberias and the Revelation to John are so full of meaning and symbolism that it was very difficult for me even to begin focusing a train of thought. I wrestled and chewed and prayed over the text, hoping for some wonderful insight or profound extrapolation. I read commentaries and search the internet. I looked at journals and patristic writings. They were all very interesting and fed my intellect but I know that what I have been fighting against in composing this sermon is that they all leave me cold.

The Venerable Bede and John Chrysostom have pages of commentary on what the mystical ramifications of 153 fish could mean. I looked through websites of information regarding Greek and Jewish numbers mysticism looking for something to spark me. The fact that Peter was naked in the boat, but put on clothes to jump in the water could keep a monk busy for years looking for the hidden nuances of what that means. The image in Revelation of a slaughtered seven-eyed, seven horned lamb is not something you are going to see on a greeting card in a Christian bookstore any time soon. Profound depth, deep thought and inscrutable mystery are all available in today’s text. So why was I finding so difficult to know what to say, what message I wanted to give today?

What I realized is that the texts tell of someone else’s experience of the Risen Christ. Paul’s encounter on the road to Damascus, the apostle’s encounter on the shore of the Sea of Tiberius, John’s vision of the heavenly throne are all their experience. What burns in my heart is to tell you my experience of the Risen Christ. The Gospel writers wrote what they had heard and seen to encourage us to reflect and write on what we have heard and seen. The Risen Christ is not just locked away in the past, in some far away land or some celestial liturgy. Christ is here, now, moving among us. He is not dead, He is risen! I am to proclaim the good news of the resurrection. But if I don’t do that by telling you how Christ, the Risen Lord, has revealed himself to me, then I am just relaying someone else’s experience. My understanding of Christ can be informed by another, but my conversion can only come from my own encounter.

I was 22 years old. I was sitting in a bar, reading a book on black magic, slamming back my 3rd or 4th gin and tonic. I looked like the kid all of us has seen with the black clothes, black fingernails and dyed hair. I was white as a ghost and my soul was dead as a doornail. I was earnestly searching for the spiritual, but I was looking in the wrong place. All I knew of Christianity was what I heard as a child in Baptist Sunday school, and what I read in accounts of medieval witchcraft and Satanism. I was sitting at the bar and a man walked in. All I remember about him is that he was well dressed and had on a long trench coat. He sat next to me (I was the only one at the bar at 2 in the afternoon, and I thought it odd that he sat right next to me) and we started some small talk. I asked him what he did and he said “ I am a…psychologist.” I don’t know why, but I opened up to this man, unlike anyone ever before. I told him how I was afraid I was crazy and that I was so afraid of my life, my drinking, my thoughts and though I cannot really remember anything I said specifically, I remember what he said and did with perfect clarity. He looked me straight in the eye, put his hands on my shoulders and said “You are going to be okay. I promise.” He kissed the top of my head, grabbed the book I was reading off the bar, and walked out the door. I was arrested later that night for driving under the influence. A month later I was in the hospital for drug and alcoholism treatment.

The first night I was there, I was laying in the bed. The man in the bed next to me was named Lloyd, and he snored horribly. He also was in the last stage of delirium tremens. He moaned and cried out constantly, in a way that horrified me. The sound coming out of him sounded like what Dore’s engravings of Dante’s Hell looked like. What happened next, I am unable to describe even 20 years after the fact. The room filled with light. Not a misty light, but a startling, crystal clear light. Nothing seemed to have a shadow. Everything was lit from inside. I gasped and was terrified. What was happening? Did I finally snap? Did I die?

Love. The most intense, sharp, breath-taking feeling of being loved. In a second, in the time between two heartbeats, I experienced the Risen Christ and I knew it was the Risen Christ. The Christ of Paul and Ananias, the Christ of Peter and John, the Christ of the heavenly glory. He was real, he was risen and he loved me. And I saw that man from the bar again in my mind and he smiled and said “See, I promised.”

There is the good news I must proclaim. There is the gospel I must spread. Jesus is alive! He is not dead! He is Risen. He walks among us and with us. He brings life and light. He challenges us to see his hand in the daily work of greeting guest or hauling nets of fish. He demands that we welcome the other, the stranger, the enemy, even if that enemy is armed with certificates giving him or her the right to imprison us. That we listen to the angels that he sends into our lives, whether they are named Ananias, or whether they wear trench coats. That we listen and hear the pain of our own souls in the cries of another. Join me in writing your own gospel. Write down, shout out for the rest of humanity how the Risen One has revealed himself to you. And knowing, always knowing that he, Jesus, is not locked away in the tomb of text, the dusty pages of papyrus or the electronic font on a computer screen. On the road between Jerusalem and Damascus, on the shore of the Tiberian Sea, in the smoky dank bar, in the hospital room in a rehab, in the darkest recesses of our hearts and minds, Christ is there. He is alive! Alleilulia!