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SERMONS

Third Sunday of Easter
April 22, 2007

By The Rev. Sylvia Czarnetzky

I was watching Good Morning, America the other morning, And they flashed a graphic on the screen that showed the top jobs in America, in terms of job satisfaction. The University of Chicago conducted a 20-year study “of job satisfaction and general happiness” among American workers, and the results of the study were released this week.

The group with the highest job satisfaction rate: Clergy! According to this study, “87 percent of clergy polled Said they were very satisfied with their job”, and 67 percent said they were “very happy.”

Guess what the #2 job, behind clergy, was? Firefighter. #3 was Physical Therapist. And the job that got the lowest ranking. Roofers.

The author of the report called the clergy’s rankings “the study’s single strongest finding.” He said, “the most satisfying professions are those that involve helping others,…”

And in fact, one of the reasons clergy are satisfied with their jobs Is that they usually go into ministry because they feel called to it. They feel a sense of vocation about their work, and Are deeply committed to living out their call As pastors, preachers, teachers, And ministers of the sacraments.

In the article, several people who work with clergy expressed some surprise that clergy came out on top of this survey. And I have to say I was a little surprised myself. When I went to my first clergy conference nine years ago, I remember being kind of shocked at how much complaining I heard.

It struck me as unseemly to complain about the ministry! Of course, I had just been ordained and was thrilled to be a member of the clergy, so that’s probably why I was kind of taken aback at the whining.

That week, one of my favorite lines from Garrison Keillor kept running through my head: If you didn’t want to go to Minneapolis, why did you get on the train? I mean, if you want to make oodles of cash, Drive a fancy car, and travel every weekend, you probably shouldn’t become a priest!!

But seriously, for priests as for most people, There are good things about what we do, and hard things. The good things? Baptizing babies; *leading worship on Sundays, *preaching and teaching, *marrying and burying *being entrusted with the sacraments.

We do all these things in the name of the Christ, In the hope of helping people be fed and nourished for their walk of faith, and helping people make those connections between the stories in the Bible and their own stories, so that the Bible becomes God’s living word for their lives, Instead of a document of mere Historical interest.

But in addition to the wonderful things about being a priest, There are some hard things. For example, I preached at the funeral of a 14 year old girl who died of cancer. It was perhaps the hardest thing I’ve had to do as a priest, but perhaps the most important -- To speak a word of hope, to a congregation of heartbroken people.

The Sunday after September 11th was not an easy day to preach. And I have to say that today is not an easy day to preach, after the shootings at Virginia Tech this past Monday. I was tempted not to mention it in the sermon today – To take the path of least resistance. To preach on Paul’s dramatic conversion on the road to Damascus, Or the story of Jesus’s breakfast cookout on the beach.

But I think I have to talk about it. Because that’s what we’ve all been watching and hearing about. That’s what we’ve been thinking about all week. The images from the television are seared into our brains – the wounded young man being carried by several people out of the building. The ambulances lining up on campus to carry away the wounded. All week long we’ve been bombarded with images Of those students and teachers killed or wounded, and those students and teachers who survived, but whose lives are changed forever. And that student who did the killing.

We may not be directly connected with the people at Virginia Tech. We may not know them personally. They may be no more to us than photographs on the evening news Or profiles in the newspaper. But God knows them. And to us they were fellow human beings, whose lives were cut short violently, tragically, senselessly.

And we look at what happened through “the eyes of faith.” We, as Christian people, feel deep sympathy for those who have lost family members. We feel compassion for the suffering. We feel outrage at the senseless taking of innocent human lives.

We may also have some feelings of frustration, at the privacy rules that kept important information about the killer from those who needed it. We may feel anger at the ease with which a young man with a long history of mental instability was able to get his hands on guns.

Something like this also shatters our sense of safety. Some of you have family members who live or work Or go to school on college campuses – I do – And we thought our loved ones Were working in one of the safest places In America! But we’ve had To rethink that.

But for me, perhaps the most difficult part of all Was the fact that most of the victims were students, College students and graduate students On the brink of adulthood and On the threshold of promising futures. That’s probably the saddest part for me. The fact that young lives so full of promise Were cut short by violence.

Yet, even as all these thoughts and feelings swirl through our heads, we gather in church as we do every Sunday. We come together in this church, To hear God’s word, To lift our voices in song, To say our prayers To take communion together.

And the hearts we bring into this fellowship of faith are Hearts that are heavy with sadness. We bring those emotions with us to God’s table, And we acknowledge together the reality of evil in our midst. For, make no mistake -- this was evil. And we remember the hard lesson that, when God created the world, He gave human beings free will. And free will means that you can choose the good, Or you can choose evil.

I guess there are several things I want to say today. First, I think it’s important to name evil where it is found. And what this man did at Virginia Tech was evil. It was murder. It was the violent taking Of innocent human life. Second, as we give voice to our anguish at the suffering That is going on among the victims and families, We also give voice to hope, To our belief that God is stronger than evil, And that Christ freed us from death.

We can’t change the past. We can’t somehow wave our magic wands and Have the world rewind about one week, So we can undo the damage that was done.

But there are things we can do. Like being here today, Coming together in the name of Christ, And lifting up our voices in lamentation Over the suffering of our companions on This human journey.

We can come to the altar for communion, Bringing with us our hopes and fears Ad the jumble of emotions that most of us feel, Asking God to be with us in our bewilderment and confusion, As well as our compassion.

And we can pray. We can pray for the families of those who died and were wounded, And we can pray that God will be present with them in their present darkness.

We can affirm our faith in the Lord who created us, And who sent his only Son to redeem us. We can affirm our belief in the gospel of Jesus Christ, Which tells us in no uncertain terms That the power of God is stronger Than the power of evil.

And we can comfort one another in our grief for what The Virginia Tech community is going through. The bitter cup which they are now partaking of.

We can pitch in where we live, to help make life better for others Who aren’t as blessed as we are with material things. And we can reach out and hug our children and those close to us, Maybe saying to them things we need to say, Like, I love you. And You’re important.

All is not lost. After all, remember that in the days immediately following The crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, Things looked pretty hopeless. The disciples in the gospel are hanging around Galilee, Where it all started. They’ve fled Jerusalem And have returned to Galilee.

There were seven of them, John says, which means that the disciples “were coming apart at the seams, some of them going one direction while the others went another. These seven decided to go fishing,...”

At first, nothing happens. “They fish all night long” and catch nothing. But just as the sun is coming up, just as the sky is lightening, they see this stranger on the shore, standing on the beach, and this mysterious stranger tells them to toss their nets over the right side of the boat, where they will find fish.

And the disciples take this mysterious stranger’s fishing advice, And it works. The net is suddenly teeming with fish. Maybe that’s the story that we can take with us into the week. The story of the resurrected Jesus turning A failed fishing expedition Into a miraculous catch of fish.

Maybe God’s word to us today is to not give up. To stay in the boat together and Keep casting our nets into the sea. Let us pray that evil will not be the last word Amen.