Tag Archives: At the foot of the cross

God shows no partiality (Sermon) Easter-April 5, 2015

Posted on by

Sermon – April 5, 2015

The Rev. Rebecca S. Myers, CSW

St. John’s Episcopal Church, Corbin, KY

Easter Day

Bulletin 4-5-2015 (Easter Day)

Preached in memory of Steward R. Weaver, November 21, 1964 – April 7, 1995

I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. Acts 10:34-35

Please be seated

During our services, I’ve been using the hymn from Voices Found, “At the Foot of the Cross.”  Today, let’s sing verse 5.

At the foot of the cross, we sit with Mary and worship with love in our hearts.

For he has risen and lives with his Father.

We only love him.  He lives to carry us home.

Home….

1996 was a really hard year for me.  I was living in Kansas, 1100 miles away from my family.  My mother started the year in a coma after many medical complications from a fall out of bed.  She came out of the coma in March and started a long journey of physical and occupational therapy.  My children were navigating post-high school to adult independence, which wasn’t always an easy road.  And my husband and I separated just before Valentine’s Day, with me moving in with a friend.  He soon filed for divorce.  Midst all of this, I was finishing up my Master’s of Social Work degree.

My daughter’s college had a program where you traveled to a foreign country for three weeks.  She took a 1-credit course during her spring semester and at the end of the course, she traveled to the country.  Of course she chose Italy, since we are part Italian.

I don’t know how I did it and I’m probably still paying for it, but somehow I managed to find the money to meet her in Italy at the end of her three weeks and plan a trip with her for two additional weeks, mostly to visit places she had not visited on her trip…especially to take her to Sicily and Riposto, the town where my grandfather was born and the island of Lipari where my grandmother’s family was from.

You see, midst all of the upheaval in my life…midst all of the emotional turmoil, by “hook or by crook” I was going to Italy…I was going to Sicily…I was going to Lipari…I was going to Riposto.  I had to get there.  We arrived in Sicily and found a little hotel by the Ionian Sea just North of Riposto.  The Sicilians considered it too cold to go swimming in June, but not the many Germans visiting the area and not me.  I was drawn to the sea and soon had my bathing suit on and climbed into the water.  The water surrounded me and I felt like I had come home.  I cried and cried as I allowed the waters of my ancestors to hold me afloat.  I had come home.

Now, I cannot even speak Italian!  It was only my second trip to Sicily.  I’d been there only once before, nearly 20 years earlier.  Yet, I felt at home.

What is this place we call home and to which Jesus carries us?

We use “home” a lot to speak about our home with God after our death – our home in heaven.  But I also think we get glimpses of and are called to make “home” here on earth.  Yes I know that sometimes our human homes are not necessarily the most wonderful places.  God calls us to the best home possible.  What does that look like?

Today I think of Carl and Audrey, who celebrate 62 years of marriage!  I know it probably hasn’t always been easy, but when you talk to them, you know they understand the meaning of “home.”

In our reading today from Acts, we hear about Peter’s post-resurrection work.  Peter has been summoned by a Roman Centurion, Cornelius, to come to his home in Caesarea.  Cornelius, although a Roman Centurion, is a God-fearer, a Gentile who sympathized with the Jews.  An angel tells Cornelius to invite Peter, who is 30 miles away in Joppa, to visit him.

Peter has been working only among those who are Jewish, believing that the message and work of Jesus was only for people who were Jewish and followed Judaism.  To visit a Gentile would have been taboo and considered a defilement.

However, as the messengers sent by Cornelius are arriving, Peter has a vision from God.  He doesn’t understand it at first.  It seems to be about food and it seems to change the rules for eating that Peter had followed all of his life.  Peter hears God say, repeatedly, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” (Acts 10:15)

When Peter greets the messengers from Cornelius, it all becomes clear.  The message wasn’t about food, but was about people.  The Good News of following Jesus Christ is for all people.  When Peter arrives at the home of Cornelius, a great crowd has gathered.  During his address to them, we hear these words from today’s reading, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. Acts 10:34-35

Home…  Every one of us is welcomed.  God shows no partiality…none.  God is not partial to the wealthy, middle class or poor.  God is not partial to men or women or those who identify as gender queer.  God is not partial to whether you live your life as heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or transgender.  God is not partial to any of the labels we humans have created for each other, building hierarchies.  God accepts all those who are in awe of God, who fear God and who do what is right and acceptable to God.  PERIOD!

We love Jesus and when we follow Jesus, we are carried home to a place where we are loved and accepted…to a place where we are encouraged to live as Jesus did…to follow God’s commands…to do those things that are right and acceptable.

I hope the places you go every day are homes of love, acceptance, and growth for you.  And I hope that this place – this St. John’s Episcopal Church – is a place of love, acceptance and growth for you.

At the foot of the cross, we sit with Mary and worship with love in our hearts.

For he has risen and lives with his Father.

We only love him.  He lives to carry us home.

Amen.

The Baton Passes (Sermon) April 4, 2015 (The Great Vigil of Easter)

Posted on by

Sermon – April 4, 2015

The Rev. Rebecca S. Myers, CSW

St. John’s Episcopal Church, Corbin, KY

The Great Vigil of Easter   Bulletin 4-4-2015 (Easter Vigil)

Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel!

Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem!  Zeph. 3:14

 Forty-Seven years ago at 7:05 our time, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, TN.  I always remember this date and if it weren’t for Easter Week, the Episcopal Church would remember Dr. King as a saint on this day…the day of his death.

For some reason I really can’t explain, I have always remembered this date.  I was too young to have remembered many of Dr. King’s speeches and I was only 7 when the March on Washington occurred, but much of my adult life, I have been on a kind of pilgrimage to the places important in Dr. King’s life and work – his birthplace and grave in Atlanta; the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis; his church in Montgomery; the Birmingham jail.

So when I lived in New York City and heard about a play by Katori Hall, who grew up in Memphis, about the last night of Dr. King’s life, I had to go.  Especially since Samuel Jackson and Angela Bassett were the performers in this 2-person play.  The play is called The Mountaintop and takes place in Dr. King’s room at the Lorraine Hotel after Dr. King had given his last speech at a church in Memphis.

A woman, who he thinks is the hotel maid, comes to his room that night.  Much of the play is the back and forth of their conversation.  We learn much about the facts of Dr. King’s life, but also get some idea of the interior of this life.  But there is a surprise and I’m spoiling the play for you now.  The maid is really an angel sent from God to take Dr. King home to heaven!

Eventually the maid, Camae, discloses who she is and that Dr. King will die the next evening.  Like most of us, the playwright has Dr. King begging to live just a little longer… to see his children again…to hold his wife again…to finish his work.  Dr. King gets Camae to call God, who is a woman, so he can plead for more time.  God hangs up on Dr. King.

Watching this part of the play, I nearly started to sob, because I realized what the character of Dr. King was saying, were my words and pleas to God too.  Why didn’t you let Dr. King live longer, God?  Why didn’t you protect him?  I felt that as a young child of 11 ½ on the night he died and I had carried that sadness and upset with me all of my life….

Well, tonight we begin our service in darkness.  You see, we left the church last night with Jesus securely in the tomb…horribly tortured and dead.  Buried in a tomb, hurriedly before the Sabbath.  Most of us know that silence of death, don’t we?  The person we love, our companion, our dearest friend no longer speaks to us…is no longer there to touch us or laugh with us or chide us.  That awful silence of the absence.  That’s where we are.  That’s where I was on that April 4, 1968, and for so many years after.

Yet, our lessons tonight are all about God’s saving grace.  Even when Jesus is silent…even when Jesus is in the tomb…even when there is so little light…even when there is so much grief…we are told to hope!  We are told that what is happening right now in this moment is not the last word!

Last night we sang some verses of a hymn, At the foot of the cross.  The verse for tonight is:

When it was finished, Jesus was laid in a tomb wrapped in grave clothes of death.
Three long night after, he left the grave clothes.
She did not help him.  She did not carry him home.

Our grief…our clinging to life can blind us to the fact that God is God and is still working.  That we don’t know what the end will be.  Jesus rises from the tomb regardless of what his beloved mother could or could not do about his death.

In The Mountaintop, Dr. King finally says he can face his death, if he is allowed to see the future.  Scenes begin flashing rapidly on the stage.  All of the years since 1968… event after event after event, good and bad.  Faster and faster they come.  Each event is named and throughout there is a mantra “the baton passes.”  Watching all of those events, I was finally at peace with Dr. King’s death.

The baton passes…God is still at work…God continues to save us…And Jesus Christ left his grave clothes.

Amen