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SERMONS

The Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany
February 15, 2004

I am what they call a cradle Episcopalian. I was baptized in St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Meridian, where I was born. Some of my earliest memories growing up are living in cramped seminary housing on the mountain at Sewanee. I spent most of my childhood, along with my brother David, as the regular acolytes in the three Mississippi Delta churches my father served in this Diocese before moving to Tuscaloosa and the Diocese of Alabama. I went to seminary at the age of 25, which is young for a church where the average age of a seminarian is around 42. I didn't come from or run from some other faith tradition to the Episcopal Church. I've been here all along. I remember vaguely the zebra book and all those other trial services for the new prayer book as well as the first time I saw a female in front of the altar. I love this church-its history, its liturgy, its theology, its diversity, its brokenness. And now this church I love so deeply, this church that has been my life in so many ways-is grieving.

I've always had great difficulty with faith traditions that portray the spiritual life as all sunshine and warm fuzzies. The truth is that loss is just as much a part of the journey as love. Loss is real, it's powerful. Loss comes obviously in the literal deaths of those we love but it also comes in the form of a thousand other deaths or losses: the loss that comes with breakdown of a marriage; the loss that comes naturally when our children grow up, move away and start their own lives; the gradual loss of those physical skills that we take for granted. We lose jobs, we lose ballgames.. Life is full of the accumulation of losses large and small. We lose over and over again and on occasion we weep. We weep over those losses because in a way they signal that our lives will never be the same. And now many are weeping for our church.

In this morning's Gospel, Jesus says to his disciples, to a multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem, the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon, and to us that weeping does not have the last word. And I believe Jesus' life to be a prime example of that truth. Just 2 weeks ago in the Gospel Jesus is drug from his hometown by his own people and taken to the brow of a hill outside town where they planned to throw him to his death. Talk about loss. The loss of what were once considered friends, the realization that you're not even welcome in your hometown. Jesus must have wept and grieved over a loss that would seem too much for anyone to bear, and who would blame him for throwing up his hands and walking away. "They just don't get it, they don't understand me or the message. I've had enough. I'm outta here. I'll put up a shingle, do some light carpentry work and live out my days.." certainly seemed an option for Jesus after that episode, just as it is for us when we face similar losses in our lives. But in many ways, it's the easy way out.

What Jesus chose to do was go right back into the fray, doing the work, the ministry, to which he was called. His actions shout from the rooftops that; yes, there will be loss in life, all kinds, there will be grief, there will be weeping, but weeping does not have the last word. Blessed are you that weep now, the Gospel for this morning says, for you shall laugh. I've always preferred another translation that puts it this way. Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall dance!

There's a story told about a nursery school that had the children making handmade gifts for their parents. One boy decided to make an ashtray for his father, who smoked a pipe. His teacher helped him form the clay with his little fingers. They fired the clay in the kiln and the next day they painted. The boy painted his ashtray his dad's favorite color, blue. The last day of school before Christmas came and there was the obligatory school pageant, but all the little boy could think about was the present for his dad. The pageant ended and the boy grabbed his coat, his supplies and his ashtray as he ran out of the room to his dad. As he rounded the hallway corner he slipped, the ashtray flew out of his hand and broke into a thousand pieces on the hard school floor. The boy sat down in the midst of the pieces, and as young children are particularly skilled at doing, he wept. His father came over, patted him on the head, and in a typical male response, told the boy it was all right, it didn't really matter. But Mom, being much more wise and sensitive than Dad, sat down beside the boy in the midst of the pieces and said, "I know it does matter. It matters very much." And together they wept. After a few minutes passed and the tears had begun to dry up, the mother picked up the box, handed it to the boy and said, "Now let's pick up all the pieces and take them home and see what we can make of what's left."

I am well aware that many of you are grieving, many of you are weeping for this church of ours. I wish it weren't so, but that's not possible, and it does matter. It is important. What I can, what we can offer to each other is to walk down this path together, to grieve where necessary, to weep when needed. But like that mother and her little boy, we too must pick up the pieces of this broken church of ours and see what can be made with what remains. I love this church just as much now, if not more, than I ever have; and though at this time in our common life we may weep and mourn, I promise you this--the day is coming when we will once again laugh and dance.

The Rev. Paul Pradat
The Chapel of the Cross
Madison, Mississippi