April 8, 2007
(The Sunday of the Resurrection, or Easter Day)
Moving the Ladder
By The Very Rev. Terry White, Dean
Acts 10:34-43 • Psalm 118:1-2,
14-24 • 1 Corinthians 15:19-26
• John 20:1-18
(From
The Lectionary Page)
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!
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Click on the image to see a larger version |
In Jerusalem stands the ancient Church of the Holy Sepulchre, also known as the Church of the Resurrection, containing what is revered as the empty tomb described in the Gospels.
Bishop Leo Frade of Southeast Florida describes a ladder that can be found at the Church of the Sepulchre. If you look at any photo or drawing of the front of the Church as far back as 1840 (such as these from Wikipedia), you will notice a ladder on the window ledge a little bit to the right of the door to the church.
 The ladder in the 1890s |
 Detail from the above photo. |
It is said that the ladder is part of the “Status Quo” that was established by an edict of the Ottoman Sultan, first issued in 1757. That edict defined the rights of the different Christian groups that share oversight of the Church. The ladder is specially mentioned in the Status Quo.
Some say it was first introduced during the Turkish Ottoman Empire when Christian clergy were taxed every time they left and entered the Holy Sepulchre. Thus, the clergy who served the church went out as rarely as possible. [Perhaps this is how clergy became especially connected to maintaining the Status Quo.]
The window, ladder and ledge all belong to the Armenian Orthodox Church (read more about the Armenian role). In 1937 after an earthquake in Jerusalem an Armenian monk came down the ladder and began to clean the debris that had fallen on the ledge. In order to move the rubble he had to move the ladder, and by doing so he violated the Status Quo.
The consequences of moving the ladder were that major turmoil took place, the monk was attacked, and since then no one has dared to move the ladder at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
It must remain there. And when it rots it has to be replaced with an identical wooden ladder. Nothing can be changed, even though there is no need for a ladder anymore. (Bishop Frade’s address, http://www.endowedparishes.org)
Thank heavens we Episcopalians do not have such immoveable ladders! Thank heavens we Anglicans do not get into disputes about ladders being moved!
On Easter Day, when God destroyed the power of death by the Resurrection of his Son, God opened Heaven to us all. But woe to us if we confine the Resurrection to the sweet bye and bye. Easter Day is about living each day in the power of the Resurrection.
Today’s Gospel reading comes from the Gospel according to John. Of the four Evangelists, John makes the strongest case that the Church must live into the Resurrection NOW. On Good Friday, our scholar-in-residence, Father Michael – not to be confused with the one who prayed over the septic tank – challenged us to see our Christian journey not as a long Lent, with Easter coming only at our death. Rather, Easter is now. We are to be agents of new life, creating new life, moving ladders so that rubble can be cleared away and new life sprout, and grow, and bear fruit. Fruit that the world can see, touch, and taste.
On the Cathedral’s website you will find a statement from Bishop Howe following the March meeting of the House of Bishops. In his statement our bishop joins his sisters and brothers in strongly supporting this Church’s commitment to mission work throughout the world. The Episcopal Church belongs to a mission-driven alliance, the Anglican Communion, under the spiritual leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
When this Church moves the ladder, it must always be because we are seeking to follow the Holy Spirit in furthering our mission. And while pressures are mounting from overseas prelates that we live differently, the Episcopal Church’s mission will not be curtailed by threats or a call to submit to a neo-fundamentalism that is seeking to redefine Anglicanism. No Episcopalian should have to choose between belonging to the Anglican Communion or being an Inclusive Church. All are welcome at this Table where Christ is host.
Throughout our history as Episcopalians we have moved the ladder to recognize the gifts of men and women, lay and ordained, baptized people of all ethnicities, and right now, the ladder is moving again to embrace both gay and straight servants of Christ in building up the Kingdom of God. And by doing so, we take another step toward becoming more fully the Body of Christ – the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.
When move the ladder, it must be because we believe the Holy Spirit is leading us to embrace all that God embraces. Moving the ladder means to reject the Status Quo. And it means to repent for past wrongs.
Throughout the British Empire over the past months, the 200th anniversary of the end of slavery has been marked by worship, celebrations of how far society has come to date, repentance for how long it took to come this far to end slavery, and solemn promises to end all forms of slavery and institutional prejudice.
Throughout the observances, the challenge has been made that the Church not wait another 200 years to recognize that in Christ all are made free. Christ rose from the dead not for a few, but for all. Canon Sue preached last Sunday that the Kingdom Jesus preached was at distinct odds with the prevailing worldview. Our preaching should also confront slavery, greed, indifference, and violence.
Bishop Howe ends his recent statement with these words: “In all things we [make] the affirmation that our attention [will] be focused on the essence of Christ’s own mission in the world.”
That is the essence of Resurrection. To be driven by the mission of Jesus Christ. To be the Servant Church. Deacon Bryan on Maundy Thursday said he once was asked: “What are you here for?” His best answer: “To wash your feet.” To serve. To get down on our knees and roll up our sleeves and make the Resurrection real.
If Christ is raised then you and I must do more to widen the circle of fellowship, to open the Church to all by clearing away the trash and rubble, the negativity and fear that makes us timid, that diverts energy and money from mission. Let us bury once-and-for-all all that sucks life from the Body of Christ.
We shake our heads when Christians do violence to one another. But violence takes many forms, including self-righteousness. Respecting the freedom and dignity of every human being is at the heart of the Baptismal Covenant, as is seeking and serving Christ in all people, loving our neighbors as ourselves. If we can live out, seriously live out these two promises more faithfully, imagine the multitude of ladders that will be moved.
My final point. Mary of Magdala is a central figure in this Gospel account. (It is only a matter of time before someone writes a best selling novel about Mary Magdalene and Jesus.)
But it is not fiction to say that Mary’s life was changed because of Jesus. He saw in her qualities everyone else ignored. He respected her God-given dignity, and sought to be in relationship with her. Mary becomes converted, and by that I mean that Jesus’ vision of the Kingdom of God became her vision, her mission. A world where love guides decisions, not a hunger for power or control. She was moved by Jesus’ vision that the poor were everyone’s responsibility, and that the greatest calling—to be a servant—rang true for her. Forgiving those who mistreat you, and knowing that you are a beloved child of God as you endure the darkest times enabled her to experience a peace that literally changed her life and gave her purpose, a vocation to live out daily.
Of all the disciples, Mary may have been most attuned to what Resurrection life would be like, because of all the Lord’s followers, she had already died to her old self and was a living a new, resurrected life.
Mary Magdalene represents all of us who are tired of life’s repetition, weary of our dependence on violence as the way to settle differences between nations and between people. We are tired of the misuse of freedom that fuels greed and ignores the poor. We yearn for the justice heralded by prophets, and for peace that is built on truth, integrity, and commitment to the common good.
One of our Prayer Book’s most powerful prayers, recited on Good Friday and at last night’s vigil prays: “O God of unchangeable power and eternal light. . .let the whole world see that things which were cast down are being raise up, and things which had grown old are being made new.”
Mary Magdalene was cast down and Jesus raised her up, her old life was made new. You and I can be raised up, and we can be made new, by making Jesus’ vision our own. All it takes is for each of us to say yes and take up our Lord’s mission to love and serve others.
My sisters and brothers, beloved in Christ: On this Easter Day let us affirm that this cathedral church will stay focused on our mission to be a servant Church. Let us solemnly promise that we will:
•
seek new ways to serve more,
• get on our knees and roll up our sleeves more,
• open our doors to those the Church has rejected,
• allow our hearts – our undefended hearts – to feel the pain of
this city so that we will become motivated to share the burdens of
our sisters and brothers who live in fear of violence and in the
fear of want.
This is surely but a portion of the mission the Risen Christ calls us to in the heart of the city.
But that mission will not grow simply because the Bishop says so, nor because the Dean says so. Resurrection life will flow from this place and our mission will grow when we, together, as the baptized people of God, say it will be so. And let us remember that the world is weary of talk alone. Together let us raise up all those who have been cast down, and make new the tired and old.
Let this Easter Day be a new
beginning.
May Resurrection life restore you.
May New Life be breathed into this Cathedral.
May the Church be consumed by mission.
Let us challenge the Status Quo.
Alleluia – Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Now go move some ladders!
Missing the Resurrection
by The Rev. Canon Susan Sommer
They're called dreams of anxiety. We all have them. You're peacefully asleep until your dream catapults you back to junior high where you discover that you've forgotten your locker combination. Or your dream puts you at the office giving a presentation to clients -- only of course you’re naked. Not surprisingly, my dreams of anxiety typically are set in church. In a recurring anxiety dream for me, I miss the Easter Vigil and Easter Day services. In my dream, I'm stuck somewhere and despite my frantic efforts, I cannot get to church.
These dreams of anxiety look a bit absurd the morning after, particularly when you try to recount them to your spouse or friends. The notion of me actually missing the Feast of the Resurrection seems, well, ludicrous. And yet, the resurrection is what was very nearly missed in our gospel reading for today. John tells of Mary Magdalene's discovery: the stone sealing the tomb had been rolled away. When Simon Peter and the Beloved Disciple come to investigate, they find the tomb empty, the grave clothes left behind. They believe Mary's conjecture: that someone has taken away the body of their teacher. "It's over," we can imagine them thinking. "He's dead, and now his grave has been robbed. What's the point? We may as well go home and try to pick up the pieces of our lives." The resurrection has happened, only they've missed it.
Mary doesn't leave. Maybe she has no home, or maybe the power of her grief compels her to find out the whereabouts of the body. With her eyes blurred with tears, she looks again into the tomb, only this time she sees two angels there. And still she doesn't get it. Then the risen Jesus appears to her, and she -- who was as close to him as any of the 12 disciples were -- doesn't recognize him. She, too, misses the resurrection.
The story is so familiar to us, that it seems absurd that Mary and the other disciples didn't catch on immediately. And yet, if we think about the nature of grief and of loss, we can perhaps understand their obtuseness. Your doctor diagnoses a life-threatening condition. You lose your job to a corporate merger. Your marriage sours and one day your spouse asks you for a divorce. Your child hangs out with a bad crowd and gets entangled in a web of dangerous behavior. Your parents die and you're left with a wealth of unclosed issues. When we experience these deaths of self, our first response is shock. We want it to be a bad dream, one from which we will awaken and laugh about over our morning coffee. We desperately want our old lives back: our health and vigor intact, our marriages sound, our jobs secure, our families safe. When we suffer these deaths of self, we want resuscitation. It doesn't occur to us to expect resurrection.
And yet resurrection is what Jesus gave us out of death. Not his old life patched up and glued back together again, but resurrected, transformed life -- transformed enough that Mary didn't recognize him at first. And when she does recognize him, she still does not recognize resurrection. She moves to embrace her teacher, to feel the warmth of his breath, to press her ear against his chest and hear the beat of his heart. But Jesus will not let her hold on to what was. What was has truly died. His death was no pious fraud. He wasn't playing divine possum there in the tomb. Jesus of Nazareth died. Jesus Christ was resurrected. That moment of recognition for Mary was a moment of profound joy, but one also tinged with bittersweetness. To behold the resurrected Lord was for Mary, no less than for the disciples in hiding, no less than for us, a call to let go of the old death, so that the new and resurrected life can be received.
It takes some getting used to, this business of resurrection. In spite of the joy, the hope, and the promise that resurrection brings us, we're still prone to cling to what we know rather than risk letting go and embracing the radically new. It is, perhaps, why the Church blesses us not simply with one day of Easter, but with 50 days. We know that it takes time to let go of death, be it the literal death of a loved one, or the deaths of self that come our way. It takes time to uncurl our fingers, to relax our grip on what was in order to embrace and be transformed by newness.
We are a resurrection people. The gospel we have heard proclaimed throughout Holy Week and culminating in today's proclamation is our defining story. Death holds not the final word for Easter people -- and not just the physical death that awaits us all in the future, but those deaths we live with daily in the here and now. Easter invites us to lay aside a lifetime of hurt, our carefully catalogued grievances, our inventory of those diminishments of selfhood we all suffer from time to time. We lay all that aside not because it isn't important, but because it is dead. And in order to be given new life, we have to let go of the old.
The three people closest to Jesus -- Simon Peter, the Beloved Disciple, and Mary Magdalene -- all missed the resurrection, at least at first. The good news is that Christ comes to us in our places of death, even if we don't recognize him at the time, and calls us by name. And when we behold him, however long it takes for us to recognize him, there is but one thing that we can do.
Run and tell our friends, Alleluia, Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia.
*The contrast of resuscitation and resurrection, and of our need to let go of the past, owes a debt to Ronald Rolheiser's book, The Holy Longing, particularly his chapter on a spirituality of the Paschal Mystery.
