LAKE JAMES

NORTH CAROLINA

Easter Day + April 8, 2007 + St. Paul’s Church, Lake James

+ In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

In this life, there are two types of (quote) things one has to do (unquote). There is the category of transcendently important things such as re-reading “War and Peace” when one gets the time, or, for me, going back to re-read T. S. Eliot’s poetry in a systematic way which I haven’t done since a college literature class required it so many years ago. The list might include setting aside quiet time to enjoy a long visit with the music of Mozart, or calling or writing old friends with whom contact may have slipped to exchanging Christmas cards. These are the kind of “important” things one has to do – someday, when we have the time!

There is another category of “things one has to do” such as paying one’s bills, doing laundry, and when the fuel gauge in the car reads “low,” getting to a filling station regardless of the steadily rising gas prices. Those are things which can’t wait for “someday.” They have to be done, and done now! The Easter proclamation of Christ’s resurrection confronts us with one of the things often assigned to the “someday when I have the time” category. What do you believe – really believe – about Jesus rising from the dead? What do you believe – really believe – about what will happen to you after your body dies? Not just what do you think about those questions in the abstract, but where are you, truly, about Christ, and life after death, about your life after your death?

Most of us have been to many Easter services. We have heard it all before, so there can be a sense of déjà vu to it all. Our Easter worship can center more in the pleasure of singing the old, familiar Easter Hymns and enjoying the lovely decorations, than in a facing of the astounding claims made by our religion. It is quite possible to walk out of church after the Eucharist this morning in virtually the same state as when we came in – unless something somehow gets our attention to change that.

It happened to me.

Many of you know that this past January I wound up in the hospital with what started out as mild pains in the side. Just before I was admitted for treatment, a nurse asked the routine question, “Who is your next of kin?” It reminded me of another time, some fourteen years ago toward the end of Holy Week when something similar happened to me. I had risen early, recited Morning Prayer, celebrated Mass, rehearsed some of the Good Friday ceremonies with my assistant priest and acolytes, and then gone to my study to do some paper work. I began to feel a funny pressure in my chest, pains, then numbness in my arm, but I tried to ignore it because I had “important things to do!” After an hour or so, the pain had intensified to the point where my oldest son and daughter told me in no uncertain terms to call my doctor. I couldn’t reach him by phone, so I drove to the hospital and told them my symptoms. Almost before I knew it, I was hooked up to a machine for an EKG, my blood pressure was being taken and an oxygen mask was put over my nose. The staff went about their tasks swiftly and efficiently, checking this and that, poking here and there. I was totally on the receiving end of their help and there was nothing I could do – except lie there. It all happened so quickly that I was in a daze until a nurse asked that same, polite question: “Who is your next of kin?” At that point, as it did last January, the list of things I “simply had to do” lost its urgency and I was face to face with the issue of my life – or death. My resistance to truly confronting that question faded to a great extent, but I also remember some rather foolish thoughts which came to me at that moment. One was that it was all so inconvenient! After all, I was a Priest and it was Holy Week! I had services to conduct, sermons to preach, parishioners to see! And God should know that! Yet instead of doing all those things, there I was, stripped to the waist, wires hooking me up to machines, and feeling so very helpless! But alongside those thoughts was an awareness that thinking about the Christian belief in life after death had to move from the pile of “things I have to think more about – someday “ to an honest consideration right then and there. It’s not that I had rejected, or even doubted the teaching of the Church, but that my acceptance of it was more of an intellectual agreement with an abstract concept. And now, it was no longer “abstract.” Like many other people, I had lived my life day by day, trying to do the things I was supposed to do as a Priest, and to do them as best I could, but really facing the question of life after death, well, you know which list that was on! In the years which followed, I have sometimes wondered whether our Easter liturgies should not only call our attention to the affirmation of the reality of Our Lord’s resurrection and his promise of eternal life to all of us, but perhaps also the nurse’s question: “who is your next of kin?” That question brought me up short, confronting me with a reality I had avoided. Might it do the same for others? [While I seriously doubt that the next revision of the Book of Common Prayer will include that question in our Easter liturgy, still, it did make its way into this sermon, didn’t it?]

At any time, but especially at Easter, we do well to ponder the paradox of what we might call “the already” which is that, as the acclamation after Eucharistic Prayer A so clearly puts it, “Christ has died! Christ is risen!” But those truths are combined with “the not yet” which is that “Christ will come again!” Although you and I live in the “not yet” category, we know that the Christ who died is nonetheless with us now. He walks with us in our lives, he feeds us with himself in the Blessed Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. We remember that he is called “Emmanuel” – meaning God is with us! We remember the last verse of St. Matthew’s Gospel and the promise of Jesus “I am with you always, even to the end of the ages.” So, this Easter, even as we consider anew what will happen in the words of the acclamation “Christ will come again” may we also stop to consider his presence among us now. Let me ask you, where do you find and recognize Him? In the Eucharist? In the Bible? In other people? For the One we recognize is the Risen Lord!

As we share in this Queen of Feasts, the celebration of the most important event in the history of the world, (that is, what happened – Christ’s resurrection) – and as we rejoice in His promise of everlasting life to us, may we also celebrate His loving presence with us now, day by day. The Risen Christ is with us. He did rise from the dead! So will you and so will I! Therefore, with great love and thankful hearts, may we join in the ancient proclamation: Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Because it is true! Because it is true!

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

The Reverend Alfred T. K. Zadig, Sr.

This page last modified on Friday, April 11, 2008 09:40 PM