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Sermon for Easter 5A                                                                                April 28, 2002

Jesus said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places... and I go ahead of you to prepare a place for you, so that where I am, there you may be also.”

These words from our Gospel lesson today have been a source of comfort and strength to countless generations of Christians. We often use this passage as a reading at funerals, because the image of God’s house that has many rooms seems to many of us to speak of the afterlife and the promise of dwelling in God’s presence for all eternity. But this passage is not only about the afterlife—it is also about the present life—more particularly, it is about the new life that is given to us as members of the Risen Christ, the resurrection life that begins in us now as we follow Jesus, and that will be made complete in us in the world to come when we see Jesus face-to-face. The image of dwelling in a house with many rooms is a promise that our own lives—our own actions, our own decisions, our own feelings, our own gifts and skills and talents, our own selves right here and now—are part of the larger life and ministry of God in Christ through the Holy Spirit. Jesus tells us today that we have a place in God; and we can be faithful, and not let our hearts be troubled, because that place in God can never be taken away.

Our Epistle lesson this morning gives us the same message, and it uses the same image of a house to do it—but Peter uses the image a little differently from the way John shows Jesus using it. Peter doesn’t speak of us having rooms within God’s house; Peter speaks of us being God’s house. “Come to Jesus, the living stone,” Peter says, “and like living stones yourselves, be built up into a spiritual house, a living temple for the living God.” That image of the house tells us that we aren’t just tenants or residents or renters in God’s house, God’s church; but we are God’s house, we are the fabric and substance of the church, we ourselves, our souls and bodies, are the solid stuff God’s church is made of. Peter’s image of the house tells us that we have a place to dwell in God, because we are God’s chosen and precious place to dwell in the world.

And that image of us as a house of living stones tells us not only about who we are called to be in Christ, but also about what we are called to do in Christ. Peter goes on: “let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” Our place in the Temple of God’s Spirit is to be priests, to be ministers, to offer spiritual sacrifices, to make things holy by offering them to God. That’s the root meaning of “sacrifice,” you know: not “to give something up” or “to let something go,” but “to make something holy,” “to make something consecrated” by offering it to God.

And in our tradition, in our Episcopal way of being Christian, we believe that we consecrate things by treating them as sacraments, by recognizing them as outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace, by seeing in them the coming-together of worldly action and divine action to accomplish God’s purposes of peace and justice, well-being and right relationships, holy and compassionate love. The work of the priest is to open up the sacramental dimension of things—all sorts and conditions of things—to consecrate the ordinary things of life by seeing and responding to the extraordinary grace of God that is in them. In church we do that with bread and wine in Eucharist, with water and oil in Baptism, with prayer and song and each other in liturgy; and in church we have one member of the assembly who is designated to lead us all in the sacramental action. But sacramental actions happen outside of church, too, and with more varied things than bread and wine and water and oil; and there isn’t just one of us designated to help those actions happen, but we are all called to a sacramental awareness, we are all called to name the grace of God that comes to us in the midst of everyday life, we are all called to pronounce God’s blessing—and to act out God’s blessing in concrete acts of service and caring and compassion and love, where our action and God’s action come together to make a sacrament. That is what it means for us to be “a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” That is how we continue to live out the Easter news of new life in Christ.

And we can be priests of the sacrament of Christ’s love in so many different ways.

We are priests of the sacrament of Christ’s love when we pray for each other in Jesus’ name. One time, in one of the churches I served in Tennessee, there was a young couple whose baby was born with a tumor on her liver. And the night before surgery to remove that tumor, the couple asked me to come to the hospital room to do the sacrament of anointing and laying-on-of-hands for healing. When I got there, there were a lot of other people from the parish there as well; and we all gathered around, and all laid hands on the mother and father and baby, and we all prayed. And I used the words from the Prayer Book, and I used the consecrated oil; but it was all of us together, all of us speaking our prayers and giving our support, all of us offering our love to God for God to do with us whatever God would do—it was all of us together that made the made the moment holy. And the parents, who had been really terrified of the surgery up to that moment, said they spent the rest of the night in the hospital room with a deeper calm; and the next day they watched their daughter be taken into the operating room, and the tumor was removed, and their daughter lived. And that also was a sacrament of Christ’s love.

We are priests of the sacrament of Christ’s love when we serve others in Jesus’ name. I was talking once with someone who volunteers for a feeding program a lot like our Loaves and Fishes, and she was telling me that, for her, this feeding program was more than just a social good work or a contribution to philanthropy—for her it was a way to touch people’s lives with at least a little of the love of Christ that she felt had nourished her life and had filled her hunger. It wasn’t just a physical good deed, it was a spiritual ministry. “You know,” she said, “everytime I hand a plate of food to someone on that serving line, I feel like I ought to be saying, ‘The Body of Christ given for you; the Body of Christ to nourish you.’ That is like communion for me,” she said. And that also is a sacrament of Christ’s love.

We are priests of the sacrament of Christ’s love when we are willing to listen to people’s stories and help them know God’s grace in their own experience. Howard Hanchey, an Episcopal priest and author on evangelism, tells the story of a young family that began to attend a certain church because of the playground. They had just moved into town, and were church-shopping, and lived only a few blocks away from St Patrick’s—and one day the mother brought her young son to play on the church’s playground. They’d noticed the swingset, and they hadn’t had time yet to set up the swingset in their own backyard, and since nobody seemed to be using the playground just then, the mother thought it would be okay to come by and swing. But after a few minutes she began to be afraid that someone in the church would be upset that they were using the playground without permission, so she began to gather her son up to go—and just then someone stuck their head out of the church kitchen door and said, “Have fun. Make yourself at home.” Well, they came to St Patrick’s the very next Sunday, and people greeted them, and people asked them asked them how they were getting along in their new home, and people listened to their story, and people helped them feel they had a place to belong—and they’ve been going to St Patrick’s ever since. And that also was a sacrament of Christ’s love.

In all these ways, and in many more ways besides, we are priests, offering spiritual sacrifices, making outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace, being God’s dwelling place in the world, celebrating sacraments as our actions are taken up into God’s action to bring about blessing and compassion and love. That is how we realize in our lives the promise that Jesus makes to his disciples: “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.” Jesus, risen in the Father's love, lives also now in us, as we do the works that Jesus does, as we love the way that Jesus loves, as we dwell in God’s house where Jesus dwells—and as we carry on Jesus’ priesthood, celebrating the sacraments of God's grace in the midst of our own down-to-earth lives.

That is the Good News for us today; that is the Good News we show forth in this Eucharist; that is the Good News we live as God's priestly people today and every day.

In the Name of God: Yahweh, Jesus, and Holy Spirit. Amen.