For The Life Of Betsy D. I. Smylie
Sermon
Sermons on the Gospel Readings
Series III, Cycle B
Object:
For many thousands of years, men and women of myriad tongues and races have gathered underneath the first full moon of spring to celebrate, to sacrifice, to participate in fertility rituals, to appease the gods, and to ask for their blessings.
And we, as educated and sophisticated members of our cultured communities, so often cut off from our earth's cycles and rhythms, find ourselves here, under that same moon. Perhaps we wish we could also celebrate the Passover meal, with lamb and wine and unleavened bread, in an unbroken tradition stretching back 3,500 years, and we now find ourselves gathered here around the altar to celebrate in the ministry of the bloody death of our God, the one true God, come to earth as a human.
C.S. Lewis says in an essay that this Christianity is quite an amazing religion -- that week-by-week civilized Englishmen should gather for a ritual blood feast. And it is quite amazing, isn't it, that these ancient and awful stones should grip our hearts so deeply and draw us from our intellectualizations, from our aloofness, to gather here this night around this holy table?
It is not a "nice" story we recount here. If we ever have the opportunity to tell this story to our children or grandchildren, we may be struck again and again this week as we hear it as if for the first time through their young ears. It is a story of slavery, of plagues, of dead babies, and of drowning in the Red Sea. It is a story of betrayal, of denial, of mockery and anger and hatred, and of the betrayer's suicide. It is tangible and bloody and you can't philosophize nice little moralisms out of it -- it hits you in the gut.
It is a story that is real, a story that touches us in our deepest selves, draws us, and heals us. For the gore is not useless theatrics in our drama acted out tonight in word and sacrament, for some of us in Seder meal, and altar stripping; it is not just cheap drama to entertain our emotions. Out of the horror of Egypt came a new Israel and Jesus' spilled blood becomes the holy food of the resurrection people.
We are here tonight and we do not shy away from the somberness of this story, because we live in a world that desperately needs to hear that God gets involved in the dirt and the blood of this planet. We live in the world filled with dying babies and betrayal, with terrorism and torture, with suicide and slavery, and our story affirms that the God of the Israelite slaves and the God of the crucified Christ is there in the midst of all that suffering, washing feet and feeding the hungry, saying, "This is my body, this is my blood."
Let us be washed by the crucified one this night, let us be fed here at this altar, and in the strength and joy of that feeding and cleansing, let us spread the word to a dirty and hungry world, that God cares. Amen.
____________
Offered with gratitude for the life of Betsy D. I. Smylie (1953-1999).
And we, as educated and sophisticated members of our cultured communities, so often cut off from our earth's cycles and rhythms, find ourselves here, under that same moon. Perhaps we wish we could also celebrate the Passover meal, with lamb and wine and unleavened bread, in an unbroken tradition stretching back 3,500 years, and we now find ourselves gathered here around the altar to celebrate in the ministry of the bloody death of our God, the one true God, come to earth as a human.
C.S. Lewis says in an essay that this Christianity is quite an amazing religion -- that week-by-week civilized Englishmen should gather for a ritual blood feast. And it is quite amazing, isn't it, that these ancient and awful stones should grip our hearts so deeply and draw us from our intellectualizations, from our aloofness, to gather here this night around this holy table?
It is not a "nice" story we recount here. If we ever have the opportunity to tell this story to our children or grandchildren, we may be struck again and again this week as we hear it as if for the first time through their young ears. It is a story of slavery, of plagues, of dead babies, and of drowning in the Red Sea. It is a story of betrayal, of denial, of mockery and anger and hatred, and of the betrayer's suicide. It is tangible and bloody and you can't philosophize nice little moralisms out of it -- it hits you in the gut.
It is a story that is real, a story that touches us in our deepest selves, draws us, and heals us. For the gore is not useless theatrics in our drama acted out tonight in word and sacrament, for some of us in Seder meal, and altar stripping; it is not just cheap drama to entertain our emotions. Out of the horror of Egypt came a new Israel and Jesus' spilled blood becomes the holy food of the resurrection people.
We are here tonight and we do not shy away from the somberness of this story, because we live in a world that desperately needs to hear that God gets involved in the dirt and the blood of this planet. We live in the world filled with dying babies and betrayal, with terrorism and torture, with suicide and slavery, and our story affirms that the God of the Israelite slaves and the God of the crucified Christ is there in the midst of all that suffering, washing feet and feeding the hungry, saying, "This is my body, this is my blood."
Let us be washed by the crucified one this night, let us be fed here at this altar, and in the strength and joy of that feeding and cleansing, let us spread the word to a dirty and hungry world, that God cares. Amen.
____________
Offered with gratitude for the life of Betsy D. I. Smylie (1953-1999).
