A Sermon Preached at St. Stephen’s on May 4, 2008, by the Rev. Cork Tarplee

            In the year 64 A.D. the Roman emperor Nero was responsible for a great fire which almost destroyed the city.  Beset by powerful critics, he found a convenient scapegoat in the new followers of Christ who were just getting established in Rome . The historian Tacitus tells us that Nero had Christians punished by being made the subject of sport in the arenas: they were covered with animal skins and attacked by dogs and nailed to tar-soaked crosses and burned at night to illuminate Nero’s garden parties.

Many believe it was this period of persecution that led the writer of this morning’s Epistle to write to the faithful to encourage them in a time of suffering.

            While there are still those who are persecuted for their faith, in the world most of us live in suffering is something we run into in everyday life.  My friend and mentor the Rev. Churchill Gibson, former chaplain of my seminary, died last month. He lives on in my heart in many ways.  I will always treasure his way of speaking of this everyday suffering.  He called it “practical asceticism”—meaning that you don’t have to go out of your way to find suffering.  Churchill used to say that asceticism, the medieval practice of imitating the persecutions by wearing hair-shirts or beating yourself, is not something you have to go out looking for.  Instead ordinary life brings each of us enough sorrow so that we can understand what the Epistle means by “the fiery ordeal.” I think Churchill was right. 

            A friend who counsels many people in pain met me the other day for supper looking like she’d lost a fight.  “People live with so much pain,” was all she’d say about her sorrow.  “Sometimes it just gets to me.” That’s my experience, too.  We may go through times of refreshment and joy, but none of us knows when illness, or some hurt to a loved one, or the memory of something that happened to us as a child will assail us.  We never know when we’ll lose someone or when a relationship will be challenged. Add to this the horrors we encounter on the daily news, and it is easy to lose faith in a loving God, easy to lose the energy it takes to work to make the world a better place.

            In the face of sorrow, the Epistle this morning offers us an odd perspective.  If you are suffering in the name of Christ, it says, “you are blessed because the spirit of glory, which is the Spirit of God, is resting on you.” I wonder if these words were written recalling the ascension of Jesus.  The Church has turned this moment in the history of Jesus into cause for celebration: Christ rules in heaven, the event says.  But I think the day the earthly appearances of the risen Christ stopped must have been a terrible day for the early followers of Jesus.  The day began in hope with Jesus’ friends saying, “Is this the time when heaven will come on earth?”  And Jesus replies, “It is not for you to know the times and periods that the Father has set…but you will be my witnesses…to the ends of the earth.” And then he vanishes. The message is not such good news, I think. It says to me, “you’ll never know the certainty of having everything perfect, you won’t even have the resurrected Christ around, but your job is to keep on working in faith.”  When we keep on working to make the world better, the message of the Ascension says to me, then the Spirit of God enters the world in a whole new way: through us.

            Our job, it would appear, is practical asceticism: to keep the faith and to keep on working for love and justice in the face of life’s sorrows.  We do this in humble ways: we keep on praying and we keep on being present with those in pain and we keep on trying to make a difference wherever we are.  It reminds me of the reasons Anne Lamott gives for making her teenage son, Sam, go to church: “I make him go because I can… I outweigh him by nearly 75 pounds.  But that is only part of it.  The main reason is that I want to give him what I found in the world, which is to say a path and a little light to see by.  Most of the people I know who have what I want—which is to say, purpose, heart, balance, gratitude, joy—are people with a deep sense of spirituality.  They are people in community, who pray, or practice their faith—people banding together to work on themselves and for human rights.  They follow a brighter light than the glimmer of their own candle; they are part of something beautiful.”  To keep on being people of faith—to keep on working on yourself and for human rights—even in the day-to-day ordeals we face—that changes the world.

            I think there’s truth in the old apocryphal story of Jesus arriving in heaven after the Ascension.  The heavenly host ask him who was left in charge back on earth and what mechanisms he left in place to transform the world.  Jesus replies, “I left about 120 followers.”  “That’s it,” say the hosts, “120 fishermen and tax collectors are going to complete your work in the world? What’s your backup plan if they fail?” To which Jesus replies, “That’s it.  There’s no backup. I have no other plan.”  In other words: we’re it.  The presence of God, loving the world, binding up the wounds, offering hope, will be known in a powerful way through people who experience the pain of the world and have the courage to love anyway.  May we remember as we keep on keeping the faith that we are blessed.                                                                                            AMEN