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Sermon April 16, 2006 |
A Sermon Preached at
by the Rev. Cork Tarplee
Back about thirty years ago when I was teaching High School English, my classroom was in a wing of the school called the New Wing, for though it was about forty years old it was newer than the rest of the building. The New Wing looked out on the faculty parking lot and beyond that was a grassy lawn where the crabapple trees were really quite lovely in the spring. I liked the crabapples and I liked the convenience of the New Wing because the door to the parking lot was near my classroom. I didn’t like the evacuation route the classes in the New Wing were assigned. To take the students out for a fire drill you had to march them down to the main hall of the school and all the way out to a rear exit, then back along the grassy lawn to a spot just across the parking lot from my classroom. It was a long way to go for a fire drill and nobody who taught in the New Wing liked the trip.
In my third year of teaching in the New Wing a new young math teacher joined the faculty. In our start-of-the-year orientation, she looked at the New Wing evacuation route with amazement. “Why,” she asked the Principal, “Why do we have to go all this way? Why not just march the kids across the parking lot and straight to the grassy lawn? In a real fire that would be a lot safer.” “Now, Miss Jones,” said the Principal, “That exit plan was drawn up by the Winchester Fire Department.” “Besides,” said a senior teacher, “in your suggestion the children would have to use the faculty door and they’re not allowed to do that.” But of course, the Assistant Principal gave the real reason when he added, “We have always done it this way.”
Miss Jones did not put up with nonsense easily, so she did some research. At the next faculty meeting we were handed a new evacuation plan—out the faculty door and straight across the parking lot to the grassy lawn. The older faculty were shocked. “Why are we changing the fire exit plan? We’ve done it the other way as long as anyone can remember.” “Well,” explained the Principal, “It seems the old route dates back to when the New Wing really was new. On the first day of school, the classrooms were finished but they were still paving the parking lot. So they drew up a plan that would take the students around the construction. When the parking lot was finished, nobody bothered to change the evacuation plan. Before long, we had always done it this way.”
A friend of mine says those are the last seven words of the Church: “We have always done it this way.” They are deadly words for any organization, any household, any one of us. I know that sameness is comforting, but it is change that breathes new life into us. Especially when it comes to self-destructive old habits, debilitating relationship tangles, and all the dreadful and depressing things we tolerate in life because we just can’t see that there’s any other option. “We have always done it this way,” is not just an excuse to avoid change, it is an excuse to avoid life. God has another plan.
About two thousand years ago God revealed the plan in a striking way. Jesus of Nazareth, an itinerant preacher with a particular grace and power about him was executed for treason. His death left behind a group of followers whose grief was shot through with disillusionment because not only had they loved him, they thought perhaps he might have been the Chosen One of God. But they were used to disappointment and loss and willing to accept his death as the way things have always been. They did, however, want to treat his body with the respect demanded by tradition, so as soon as the religious customs allowed them to, some of his followers went to his tomb to prepare the body. When they got there, they found an empty tomb and a young stranger with a message: “You seek Jesus of Nazareth…He has been raised…he is not here…he is going ahead of you to Galilee…There you will see him…go tell his friends.” Far from carrying out these instructions, the women ran away in “terror and amazement…and said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”
Now, I know that all the other
Gospels end with stories of the disciples meeting the risen Christ—breakfast on
the beach, sudden appearances behind locked doors, and the like. Those are wonderful and comforting in their
own way, but this one—the earliest account of the Resurrection ever written
down—has all the flavor of a personal confession. “He told us to go back home, where all the
painful memories are. He said we’d see
him there, just as he promised. He told
us to go home to
Besides, we have always done it this way, they might have added. Why go home and look for the risen savior there? Nothing ever changes. But of course we know that those courageous women did not stay frightened for ever. They did go home. And everything changed.
From that time to this, the task of each follower of Jesus has been the same: to go home and look for him there. Go home expecting to see evidence of the Resurrection. Go home expecting to see the new thing God is doing. Whatever the dead ends and roadblocks are in our lives, God wills new life into them. “We have always done it this way” is simply not good enough. A new evacuation plan—a more sensible and a safer one-- really was possible for the New Wing. Those of us plagued with addictions don’t have to live that way forever—new life may be as close as a dedicated AA sponsor. Those of us in destructive relationships or in a tangle of internal conflicts are not sentenced to living life that way—change may be as close as a trusted counselor. The task for all of us is to go home to look for what God is up to in our lives, and to embrace the changes God is calling us to make—to embrace them as if our lives depended on it, because sometimes they do. “We have always done it this way” will not do. “Nothing ever changes” will not do. God’s plan is this: “he is going ahead of you back home; there you will see him, just as he told you.” Expect to meet him there. And tell his friends. AMEN