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SERMONS

Sixth Sunday of Easter
May 21, 2006

Use your imagination: there was a group of women gathered together in the countryside of Europe on a spring day, a day perhaps not unlike this one, a beautiful day. They were not gathered to enjoy the weather; they were not gathered to enjoy one another's company. They were being arranged in lines by soldiers, and living in a place called Ravensbruck, a concentration camp for women and children about sixty miles north of Berlin, and the Allies are coming and WWII is coming to a close. Believe it or not, believe it or not, it is Good Friday.

Standing in one line means getting to live another day. Standing in the other line means having to walk down a few steps into a building that no one walks out of again. One of the women chosen to walk down those steps into the gas chamber falls apart into fear, hysteria, and weeping, worried for her children. It is the end, there will be no turning back, and she is not prepared for this.

From somewhere in the confusion and terror of this moment, from somewhere in the midst of this tragedy, comes another voice, a voice that is not a soldier's voice, who says, "All will be well. It's all right. I will take your place." Her name was Mother Maria, she was a Russian nun. She came from wealthy, land-owning family, had grown up with all the bells and whistles of privilege, she loved the arts and was a magnificent student.

She was named Elizabeth Pilenko.

She lived in Paris following the Russian Revolution, fleeing the Bolsheviks, and worked among the poor Russian exiles there. This lead her to hide and protect Jews running from the Nazis during the Vichy regime of the German occupation of France, some twenty-fiver years later; she was eventually arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Ravensbruck.

Before becoming a nun, Mother Maria lived a life that anyone of us might consider normal and appropriate for a child of the bourgeoisie, the wealthier, society of Europe. She could have been any young woman in this room, or any young woman that we might know. She was very interested in the arts, in politics, and the general expansion of her interests in life. The death of one of her children lead her to reconsider everything, and finally turn to religious faith, and a specific call to serve the poorest of the poor. The people that society literally leave behind. She used to say, and you will love this, "They have no need of sermons, they need the most basic thing of all -- compassion."

In John's Gospel, our Lord is giving what scholars call his farewell discourse on the eve of his own act of substitution and execution. Jesus is preparing his friends for the days ahead, when He will no longer be with them. Jesus does not want his friends to be without hope, and without love, in a world that they will find is angry and violent and turned against them; that is why they must turn to one another.

In loving one another and others they will become like Jesus. In keeping, in holding fast and cherishing, this call to love, they will be like Jesus cherishing his own love for God, and God's love for him. In loving one another, the circle will be unbroken.

It is sometimes an astonishing thing to discover what human beings can actually do to one another when we break the circle of love; how much we can hurt and harm one another, with or without gas chambers. There is the frustration, the irritation, the disappointment which leads to gossip, and pulling down our brothers and sisters behind their backs.

There are the deep, deep wounds of marriage; where, in hiding from ourselves, and hiding from another, we become defensive, aloof, starving the prisoner so that we might avoid intimacy, and the mutual obligations of friendship. Sometimes it seems so hard to give, that it is actually easier to carry on the old monologue with ourselves, that we know so well, rather than discover a new language of love that might keep the circle unbroken.

It is sometimes astonishing how quickly we can pass by another human face on the street, in our lives, who is so obviously in pain and uncertainty and fear. Their circle has been broken by addiction, homelessness, simply being born on the wrong side of town, and in the wrong place and time.

As Christians we gather each week to be fed with the food of a journey that is taken within the circle of love. Our Lord has opened the doorway onto a path of life where we have a place to stand in the circle of God's love. God loves each of us so very much; and God invites us to bring others within that very circle of love. It is not an impossible thing when we ride upon the shoulders of the giants in our midst, when we learn from them, when we begin to love a world that is so unlovable. In fact, it is an astonishing thing to awaken to the fact that the circle is at times unbroken.

Mother Maria used to say in prayer "I am your message Lord; I am your message."

Use your imagination: there was a group of people leaving church from an old, hillside chapel in Mississippi, going out into world saying "We are your message Lord; we are your message."