Easter 2009

I was once asked by a teacher what heresy I thought the United States was guilty of committing. It was a loaded question. On one level I needed to know my heresies, and I had not paid much attention to those during Seminary. On another level he was asking me to judge my country’s piety. Tricky teacher.

Heresies are not a part of my common daily examination of the world. I do not drive around looking for them or looking to excommunicate the people who commit them. If I knew them well, and found a person committing an egregious heresy, my first response might be, “Hey, stop that you Mono-phsyte! Or I shall excommunicate you this instant, Madame!” Or, “Sir, enough of you and your Modelist ways, I now excommunicate you for heresy, sir! Hah Hah!” Or worse still, “ I see you, you dirty Gnostic know it all. Excommunicate!” No, I would not be a very good grand inquisitor. I do not know my heresies well enough. I am a simple Episcopalian and heresy for me is found in the simple phrase, “We do not have a reservation under your name. Miller, is it?” So, I looked at the teacher and slurred my words grasping for the only official heresy I could find in my small mind,“prieigtlos..?”
“What?” He asked.
“Peltricuahiraism”
“Did you mean 'Plue'...”
“Yes. 'Plue'....” I mouthed with him, repeating his syllables, hoping that I would get it,
“Plue?”“plue...
pelga”“pelag?”
“pelagi”“pelagi...”
“pelagism.”“pelagism?”
“Pelagism?”“Pelagism!”
“Pelagism!”“Yes, Pelagism!”
“Pelagism?
Yes that’s the one! Pelagism!”

And after a beat he asked, “Why?”

In the fifth century, Augustine argued with a certain thinker named Pelagius and a part of their conversation revolved around the idea of earning your salvation. The heresy that my teacher felt we in the United States were guilty of is the notion that we could somehow earn our salvation. Earn it by doing something for it, like give up something for forty days and then earn your place in the eternal heavens for your piety with chocolate. My teacher felt that the protestant work ethic had been combined with a passage from James, and that together we had spun off course with the notion that faith without works is a dead faith. That you had to work to show your faith, and that you ultimately had to earn it by doing something to show Jesus and the rest of the cosmic tribunal that you were somehow worthy. Worthy to live the short life you were given, in order to pass on into the bonus round of eternal life, where you are given a white robe, a palm branch or harp, and then asked to sing forever. Go ahead, you earned it.Earning it is indeed a part of our collective psyche. You earn your grades, you earn your money, your title, your prestige. You earn your harvest by the hard work you put into it. You earn your right to stand at the head of the line, and you earn your salutation of Dr, or Judge, or Reverend, or President, or Bishop, or mom. You earned it, and therefore deserve all of the benefits and glory that come with what ever it is that you earned. Well done. And there is pride that comes with a job well done.

I am personally proud of St. Mark’s. We have had worked hard around here lately and it shows. We have a healthy church community. We have a healthy school. We have solid traditions mixed with fresh ideas. We have an energetic staff and dedicated teachers. There is much we have done, and there is much that we will do. We have earned our way through, or did we?I once heard a Christian thinker describe a Buddhist shrine he visited. The Buddha was so big you could not see it in one glance. You had to walk around it seeing only parts of it at a time. The reason they built it so big, it was recalled, was to emphasize the enormity of wisdom and that you cannot take in wisdom all at one time. You had to work your way around. There is a certain amount of work required of you when you accept your call as a Christian person and you will not ever grasp the height or depth or length or width of this faith tradition we share, you will not, not in one life time, not in ten. But you can start, and in starting you can earn your way around the cross of Christ. You can earn your way around, but you cannot earn the cross. That is not yours to earn and if you think you can, if you think that by checking off the Christian boxes of goodness, clean living and happy thoughts, that you will then earn your salvation, then you are a heretic.

A heretic because you think you can earn this cross, and you cannot, you did not, Jesus earned that cross for you.Our church of St. Mark’s is a great church because of the dedication of her volunteers. Our school is a great school because of the dedication of her faculty and staff, but not one of them, not one of us, earned anything without first stopping to pay respects to the cross of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. That sounds pretty preachy, and it is supposed to.You and me, we, didn’t do anything to earn the right to call ourselves Christians, much less St. Mark’s church members, we didn’t do a thing. We did not earn anything. And we do not deserve anything. If we think we did, we need to rethink why we are gathered in this sanctuary today. Jesus earned it for you. Jesus climbed up on that cross. Jesus had the nails in his arms, not yours, not mine. Jesus was the one who was mocked and ridiculed and cast out, whose own mother had to watch and whose friends ran away. It was Jesus, not you or me, who was laid into that tomb. It was Jesus who went down into Hades, not you, not me. It was Jesus who looked at death and took the keys of eternity and led the way out of the tomb. It was Jesus who appeared to the women, it was Jesus who breathed the gift of the Holy Spirit onto those first disciples. It was Jesus who ascended into Heaven, it was Jesus whom people proclaimed. It was for Jesus who people martyred their lives, it was for Jesus who people built those Cathedrals. It was for Jesus who Guttenberg printed that bible. It was Jesus who Luther wanted the church to remember. It was Jesus who Cramner wanted people to hear in the liturgy. It was Jesus who inspired Harriet Tubman and her underground railroad. It was Jesus who Martin Luther King proclaimed. It was Jesus who inspired those first worshippers to gather under the name of St. Mark’s in West University. It was Jesus who started this school. It was Jesus that inspired that priest in your home church to go to seminary, and then pour water on your precious head and call you “you.” It was Jesus who whispered into your ear, “Do Justice, Do Mercy, Do Humility.” It was Jesus and it is Jesus whom we proclaim on this morning, and the fact of the matter is we didn’t do anything to earn it or deserve it, all we can do is try and live it.

Live out a life you did not ask for, into a death that you will surely face, live out your life as a new creation, as a new thing, as Christian person called by God through the life, death, resurrection and ascension of this Jesus this Messiah, this Christ, this Holy One of God. You didn’t earn it. Jesus did. And on this Easter we celebrate our belief that after he earned it, he gave it to you and me, looked us square in the eyes and said, “It is yours. Now proclaim it.”

Proclaim the Good News of God. Proclaim it in all that you do and say. Proclaim it to your friends and neighbors. Proclaim it in how you are with your wife or your husband. Proclaim it in how you are with your children or those you teach. Proclaim it in how you do your job. Proclaim it in how you manage your fears. Proclaim it in how you face your diseases. Proclaim it in how you use your time. Proclaim it in how you spend your money. Proclaim it in how you handle your grief. Proclaim it in how you treat the poor. Proclaim it in every part of your life, proclaim this good news, that the cross has been shattered, that the victory is won, that God has done a new thing, in a new way, proclaim with the other two thousand years of voices ever since that first voice, that looked at the women and said, “He is not here, he is risen.” Proclaim that which you did not earn but that which you have been given freely and which you find new salvation, a new safety, a new safe place, a new heart.Salvation in Jesus Christ means you are safe. You are reminded on this day that God carries you like an eagle carries her young on the wing, safe, away from the arrows, up high, safe. Salvation is not then, later, in the future, no, salvation is now. You are safe now.

You are safe even though you die. You are safe, held close, even though you do not deserve it. You are safe, surrounded by a cloud of witnesses who have all accepted the call, proclaimed it in their lives, lived, loved, and died in the hope of the resurrection. You are safe in the middle of the danger, you are safe in the middle of the war. You are safe, and your salvation requires that you seek to make others safe. Seek to make others assured. You and I are not heretics. You and I are not ashamed. The resurrection that we proclaim is one has God shown us, no matter what, be it a crucifixion, or be it an unknown disease, be it addiction, or sin against God, we have been made safe, redeemed, made whole. We didn’t earn it. There is no way we could. It was Jesus’ to do, and it was done, and it is now our turn.Bless you all, God is good. Bless you all, we are safe. Bless you all. Without Jesus, I would not have met you, or my wife, or these kids I have to raise. Without Jesus and this Easter day, we would not have been blessed by each other. It was Jesus who earned this day for us and I am very glad he did. Amen