SERMON PREACHED BY THE REVEREND DR. HAROLD T. LEWIS, RECTOR
CALVARY EPISCOPAL CHURCH, PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA
ON THE FEAST OF THE RESURRECTION OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST, 2009

 

"Jesus said [to Mary Magdalene] 'Whom do you seek?'" (John 20:15)

 

 

About twice a year, predictably around Christmas and Easter, the major news magazines become theological journals. Publications that normally maintain an official disinterest in religion (unless, of course, a Pope is elected or a Presidential candidate's pastor preaches shocking sermons) find the need to issue statements about religion in America. In previous years, these magazines have attempted to challenge our traditional attitudes towards such famous Biblical personages as Mary or Judas. This year's tack, however, is broader. An article in the current Newsweek trumpets the following headline: "The End of Christian America." The tantalizing sub-title, or B-head, as they say in the journalistic trade, reads: "The percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 points in the past two decades. How that statistic explains who we are now --- and what, as a nation, we are about to become." (Such language is intended to make us quake in our boots, and more important, to convince us to buy the magazine.)

 

Statistics bandied about in the article claim that those who identify themselves as Christians have decreased from 86 to 76 percent of the American public, while those who claim no religious affiliation have doubled to 15 percent. But, according to one Southern Baptist, the most disturbing statistic is a demographic one. While the Northwest has been written off as godless for decades, now it seems the Northeast, the cradle of American religion (see above under Puritan settlers) is beginning to show cracks in its religious armor.

 

I would like to put forward a possible explanation for the fact that there is a decrease in the number of those who are willing to identify themselves as Christians --- and that is that many people have a gross misunderstanding about what Christianity is. A twenty-something woman in California was interviewed on television to elicit her response to the Newsweek article. She said that when asked about her religious affiliation, she tells people that she belongs to the Church of the Pacific. "Where is that?" asked the reporter. "The beach," responded the young lady. "God made the beach, and I can go there and commune with him. I don't need to sit in a pew; I don't need other people. I don't need organized religion." For the record, God did make the beach, and people are certainly free to commune with God there or any place else. But having a spiritual pipeline to the Almighty has never been the sole, or even the primary purpose for the church's existence. The church is a community of the faithful who minister to each other in Christ's name.

 

Today is Easter. There seem to be more people in church than usual. Why? Because people have made a conscious decision to celebrate our Lord's resurrection in a community that affirms that central tenet of its faith. I don't know about you, but I have never met anyone who decided to celebrate Easter by going to the beach by himself yelling "Christ is risen" over the roar of the waves. But wait, there's more! We are here for another reason, a reason that seems to have eluded the Newsweek pollsters. We are here, in community, because we are willing to admit that we have a lot questions, and not necessarily all the answers.

 

Mary Magdalene had questions on that first Easter morning. Her first was that she didn't know where they had taken her Lord. But her questions did not cease to be when Jesus appeared to her. In fact, seeing into her soul, Jesus had a question for her: "Whom do you seek?" She had to admit to herself and to her Lord that her problem was that she was seeking a corpse, and not a Risen Savior. Likewise, we make the mistake, or perhaps Newsweek has, of looking for church that is a hide-bound moribund institution, steeped in and defined by tradition, and not a living organism. While it's fine to sing "The Church's one foundation," with its metric cadences, but we must sometimes let loose enough to sing "I serve a risen Savior, he's in the world today/I know that he is living, whatever others say."

 

Whom do you seek?" Mary learned, as have we, something that Newsweek cannot possibly understand. For all her seeking, it was Jesus who found her. If the Gospels teach us anything at all, it is that Jesus constantly reaches out to us. The shepherd goes after the hundredth sheep; the father runs to embrace the prodigal son, even when he was "afar off." Jesus chooses the paralytic at the pool, the blind beggar, and good ol' Zacchaeus, who like many of us, found himself out on a limb. The message is simple. If we are open to him, open to his message, Jesus will meet us halfway.

 

Whom do you seek? Lastly, Mary learned to seek her Resurrected Lord in the face of her fellow human beings. When she finally caught on, when she received the news of the Resurrection, she didn't go to the beach, make a sandcastle and say to herself, "This sure is great news that Jesus shared with me." No, she went to the disciples and told them, "I have seen the Lord."

 

Half a millennium ago, Martin Luther preached a sermon in which he showed a deep understanding of the church as community. As if speaking directly to the Newsweek folk and the hapless spiritualist on the California beach, he says:

Anyone who is to find Christ must first find the church. For how can one know where Christ is, and where faith in him is, unless he knows where his believers are? Whoever wishes to know something about Christ must not trust to himself, nor by the help of his own reason build a bridge of his own to heaven, but must go to the church, must visit it, and make inquiry. Now the church is not wood and stone, but the company of people who believe in Christ; he must keep in company with them, and see how they believe, and teach and live.*

 

So in my annual Easter greeting to all who have assembled in this magnificent house of worship this morning, redolent with the scent of lilies, reverberating to the beat of timpani and the blast of organ pipes and trumpets, I greet bashful Baptists, covenanted Congregationalists, predestined Presbyterians, latitudinarian Lutherans, catechetical Catholics, --- and yes, even home-grown epistemological Episcopalians. I greet those who sit in what used to be their family's reserved pew, as well as to those here for the first time, who saw our add in the Post-Gazette. I greet those steeped in the faith, those grappling with their faith, and even those who think they may have lost their faith. Our response to the Resurrection is to seek out one another, to build community, and so build up the Body of Christ, his Body, that glorious Body now risen from the dead.

 

AMEN. ALLEUIA.

 

_________

*This idea did not originate with Luther. At least two early church fathers from North Africa espoused a similar theology. Tertullian (ca. 160-220) wrote "Unus Christianus nullus Christianus" ("one Christian is no Christian"). Cyprian, bishop of Carthage (ob. 248) wrote "You cannot have God as your Father unless you first have the church as your mother."