Sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter, April 18, 2010
Solemn Mass
By the Reverend Stephen Gerth
Year C: Acts 9:1-19a; Psalm 33:1-11; Revelation 5:6-14; John 21:1-14

Many of you know Friday night I preached at the celebration of a new ministry for Matt Mead as rector in his new parish. The gospel lesson for the service was from John’s account of the supper before the Passover. Because of its devotional value, I pulled out Dom Gregory Dix’s famous and infamous 1945 book The Shape of the Liturgy.[1] I’ve known this book now I think for over 34 years. I tried to quote briefly from its richest writing, but found I still can’t do so out loud without emotion. I’m not going to try to it this morning.

But The Shape of the Liturgy is not a devotional book. It was written as a scholarly work. And in that regard, Dix made some fundamental mistakes in the way he approached the data, in this case, how he approached the manuscripts that have survived which were used for worship or describe early Christian worship. He thought “the ritual pattern”[2] he knew for the Eucharist had “come down as unchanged in christian practice from before the crucifixion.”[3] What we call the Liturgy of the Word was the practice used by Jesus’ from the pattern of worship in the synagogues of his time. What we call the Liturgy of the Eucharist was from the evening meals of Jesus and his disciples, especially the last one.

When his book was published it captivated several generations of scholars, not to mention faithful Christians. But as one of the leading scholars of our own time Paul Bradshaw would write in 2004, “We do not possess one scrap of direct testimony that the earliest Christian Eucharist ever conformed itself to the model of the Last Supper, with a bread ritual before the meal and a cup ritual afterwards.”[4] How could that be?

One might answer that it’s easier, safer, less anxious, to credit what we know and do, to what was, or what we pretend was, the practice of the past, than to engage the reality of the present.

“Homeostasis” is a word used in many fields, but especially human biology, to describe how everything inside of human beings organizes itself to stay the same – constant temperature being an easy example of this. One Christian version of this is to do what Dix did, to think essentially that the work of God among human beings is done and that all you and I have to do is to buy into it, conform to it, surrender to it. Much Christian tradition sees this as the work of the Holy Spirit among us. But I don’t think the Holy Spirit is among us to take us back to the Upper Room. He’s here to help us meet the Risen Lord.

Apart from the finding of the empty tomb in the four gospels, there are only six mostly short accounts of the disciples meeting the Risen Lord. Two are in Luke – the Road to Emmaus and one in Jerusalem where he invites his disciples to touch him and eats with him. There are four in John – two in Jerusalem, one with and one without Thomas who doubted – and two by the Sea of Tiberias. Today’s gospel is one of these two – the other is the follow-up dialogue between Jesus and Peter – the three questions about whether loves him and Jesus’ instruction to Peter for him to feed Jesus’ sheep.

There are lots of wonderful things in today’s gospel story, but perhaps the most important happens right at the beginning. The risen Jesus speaks to his disciples and they do not know who he is. The sheep are hearing his voice; and they aren’t recognizing him. I’m not sure what to make of that.

I believe the resurrection is an event outside of everything normal in human experience. But it seems so strange that this resurrection brings in the gospels confusion and fear. Faith just comes very slowly to those who were first called to follow him, who knew him best.

Again, the gospels record little of the risen Lord; they also record nothing really about what the disciples thought and felt as they found their way – except, I think, for the remark made by the disciples in Luke on the road to Emmaus – “Did not our hearts burn within us when he talked to us on the road . . . and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread.”[5]

As the first Christian communities grew I think they that as they told the stories of Jesus eating with his disciples, with the five thousand and with tax collectors sinners, they were able to recognize Christ’s presence among them at their own table.

And when they heard the story of fishing, of bringing in great catches, the first Christians found themselves being described, since they were the ones bringing in the catch.

What I’m trying to say is that just as the Eucharist is not something done for God’s people but by God’s people, so the catching of people for the Gospel, is not done for God’s people but by God’s people.

We often have visitors at Mass here at Saint Mary’s who aren’t used to receiving Communion the way we Episcopalians ordinarily receive the Eucharist. Some aren’t used to receiving the cup at all. Some aren’t used to drinking wine. Some aren’t used to sharing the common cup.  Sometimes it’s hard, but I work to learn to trust where people are on their journey. But the ordinary life of a Christian community is not going to leave any of us stuck someplace in the past.

If the risen Lord is present today, he is present in all, each other, and in ourselves, in our past and in our future.

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Copyright © 2010 The Society of the Free Church of St. Mary the Virgin, New York, New York.

All rights reserved.