The glory of God evens out everything else*

Last week I preached about doubting Thomas, sort of. I’m a supply priest now and that’s just like a substitute teacher, you just go where they need a fill-in. Also, for a long time before moving to Wisconsin I was an assisting priest. Either way you get Christmas 2 and Easter 2—John’s Christmas story and Doubting Thomas, because those are Sundays when the regular clergy typically take vacation after the labors of the most intense seasons in the church year.

I spent some time thinking about how Thomas might have been feeling when that story took place, and I used the example of having a loved one in the hospital and being torn between hope and worry. I should know better. Monday my husband texted me as I was leaving to get a hair cut to say he was not feeling right and long story short we spent the next 48 hours at the hospital while they figured out it was nothing (this has happened to me as well, must just be age). I’ll have to be more careful before I preach about reality again.

That reminds me I’ve been thinking a lot about prayer. I know prayer is efficacious (that’s a big word that means something along the lines of “it works”) but I don’t know how it is that it is efficacious. I have a friend, a priest, a companion in ministry, and we pray for each other, and we’ve both figured out that our prayers for each other are powerful but our prayers for ourselves often are not. There’s nothing directly in the scripture about that, except of course, that the entire point of being a child of God and inheritor of God’s kingdom revolves around giving up self. So to some extent it makes sense that one’s prayers for others might be more efficacious than prayers for self. But that always raises the question, what do you do when you need prayer? The answer is you ask a partner in the church to pray for you. If you don’t have prayerful partners in the church, well, you’d better work on that.

But that also got me to thinking about praying about elections, and humorously, or sadly (your choice), I realized prayer has got to be specific, incredibly specific. I remember getting in a taxi in Philadelphia on election day in 2000 and praying “God please elect Al Gore President.” It turned out to be the wrong prayer. Because, as you know, Al Gore was elected president. I should have prayed “God please MAKE Al Gore president.” Because even though Al Gore was elected, that other awful guy was made president.

This is important again because we have so many nitwits running for president. So please pray constantly for wisdom, and pray constantly for guidance … and be careful what you pray for along these lines.

This Sunday’s scripture is perhaps the richest New Testament scripture in the lectionary. We have the conversion of Saul, who in the aftermath became St. Paul, the worker-founder of much of the church as we know it. We have the image from the Revelation of the glory of the angels around the throne of grace together with every creature in heaven and on earth, singing praise night and day. A few weeks ago when I went to the special convention to elect a new bishop for the Diocese of Pennsylvania, I was (of course) irritated it was beginning at 8am. I was on time though, and although I missed the opening moments I followed the procession into the worship space, and as soon as the crowd began to sing the sound overwhelmed me emotionally. I felt just as though I were in this scene from the Revelation, as though I were once again in the bosom of the church, and as though the music was the very cloak of glory. The 500 or so people there that day sang and sang and sang all day as we worked through the many ballots of an episcopal election. In the singing together was the glory of the citizenship in God’s kingdom we all share.

The Gospel story is that wonderful resurrection story on the beach. John says “Jesus showed himself again” as though it by now had become a regularity. It was on the beach at breakfast … they’d taken the boat out at night and caught nothing but at daybreak Jesus stood on the beach and miraculously filled their nets with fish. The disciple whom Jesus loved was the first to realize it was the risen Jesus, and then the story reminds us they all were naked, because that’s how one dressed to fish in those days. They went ashore and Jesus had built a fire to barbecue fish and he had some bread and he shared the bread and fish with them at this first resurrection breakfast, just as he had shared the bread and wine at the last supper.

I remember in seminary first learning to understand this story through gay eyes. This crowd of disciples was made up mostly of young men, bonded in honor and bonded in service but mostly bonded in the love of God which they had come to experience through following Jesus. The first resurrection experience was to the women, to Mary Magdalene in particular, and later Jesus appeared to the whole group in the locked room. But this one, this resurrection appearance can be read as a male bonding resurrection.

But before I leave you thinking I am saying this is a gay story, let’s look at the end, where Jesus reminds them that as young men they fasten their own belts, but later someone else fastens a belt around them. We are supposed to think (because it says this) that this is about Jesus’ condemnation and crucifixion. But, if you are of my age you can read this story to mean us. When you grown old you begin to lose that fierce independence and eventually even the means to fasten your own belt around you. So perhaps this also is the Gospel of resurrection for older people, those who are more closely en route to the kingdom. The lesson, of course, is that the Gospel speaks to everyone. Our job as Christians is to learn to see ourselves in these stories, the better to understand the revelation given to us through the narratives.

Friday night we were honored to be invited to the celebration of marriage of two women, one of whom is a priest in this diocese. Our bishop was seated near us, the place was packed, the singing was glorious. The gradual hymn was that hymn from 1 Samuel with the refrain “Here I am, Lord, Is it I, Lord? I have heard you calling in the night. I will go, Lord, if you lead me, I will hold your people in my heart” (Wonder Love and Praise 812). This hymn often is sung at ordinations and the first notes grabbed me emotionally. Because, of course, I have heard and answered that call. I suppose I’ve wound up on more dusty roads like Saul than breakfast barbecues on beaches. But then again, the celebration was one of those events where the glory of God evens out everything else. Experience, witness, trial and celebration, joy and weeping all at once. In one dimension was the amazing presence of God witnessed in this union of two women, united in marriage and blessed in the church. In another dimension was the tangible presence of God within and among all of us present. It’s one of those things that’s tough to explain in words but becomes manifestly clear in the living.

Of course, this is one interpretation of the message of Easter—that the glory of God evens out everything else. Alleluia! Christ is Risen! The Lord is Risen Indeed, Alleluia!

©2016 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

3 Easter (Acts 9:1-6, (7-20); Psalm 30; Revelation 5:11-14; John 21:1-19)