EASTER 3A - Acts 2:14a, 36-51; Psalm 116:1-3, 10-17; 1 Peter 1:17-23; Luke 24:13-35 -

6 April 2008 - A sermon given by The Rev. Peter A. Munson for St. Ambrose Episcopal Church, Boulder, Colorado

Being Present to the Moment

INTRODUCTION - Does it feel like Easter to you?

It’s Easter - still. And one of the things I think about during Easter is celebration. There are things to celebrate, right? First of all, and maybe last of all, too, there is Jesus’ resurrection. God raised him up. Victory over death! New life, never to die again, and that reality and promise being extended to all those who believe. That’s something to celebrate!

But what if there is something going on in your life right now, and you don’t feel like celebrating? What if, despite what it says on the Church calendar, you are going through something difficult, and it feels more like... oh, let’s say... Lent?

On Monday of this past week, I realized I had some cleaning up to do. You can tell something about how my Lent and Holy Week have been by what my desk looks like, whether at work or at home. Papers piled up here, there, everywhere - sermons, messages, magazines, other things people have given me to read, mail from the Diocese - it’s all over the place. And sometimes the best thing you can do is just start cleaning things up. It frees up your mind, your energy - when you have things in their proper place again. Kristy helped me some with that on Monday morning. I was feeling good about that. Ooh, I can breathe a little better. To top it off, an old friend of mine, Don Hickman, was in town on Monday night, and Don and I got together, and that was a very nice ending to my Monday

But then, by the time Tuesday rolled around, I was dealing with some of the stuff I don’t exactly relish as a priest - management stuff, things that aren’t going the way they should, conflicts and potential conflicts. It’s not at all unique to being a priest, by the way. It’s the stuff of life, and sometimes I find it quite challenging, and truth be told, sometimes I hit a place where I just wish I didn’t have to deal with it.

I had looked over today’s lessons on Tuesday, and I thought I was going to go a certain direction with the sermon. But by the time I woke up on Thursday morning, and looked at them again, I was feeling so overwhelmed with the administrative aspects of my job, that I was not only totally uninspired to write a sermon, but I was also in a place of desolation. Have you ever tried to preach a sermon when you’re not inspired? I have. I tried it last week, in fact, and it was a total disaster - so much so that I didn’t even preach the sermon I had written at the second service.

What did we say together a few moments ago... in the Psalm?

“The cords of death entangled me; the grip of the grave took hold of me;

I came to grief and sorrow.

Then I called upon the name of the Lord; ‘O, Lord, I pray you, save my life!”

(Psalm 116:2-3)

I was in a place like that. It’s Easter on the calendar. But it wasn’t feeling a bit like Easter to me on Thursday morning. The kids left for school. I went upstairs. Julia had been up for a little while. I crawled on to the bed. I told her I was having a hard morning, and it was only 7:45! I only managed to get out those few words, and I was overcome, and was crying my eyes out. I talked to Julia some more, almost always a wonderful thing. She helped me sort through some things. The biggest one was this: you can’t make yourself be in Easter, just because it says Easter on the calendar. All you can do is try to be present to what is going on in the moment. And if it is not Easter for you right now, so be it.

GOD OF THE PRESENT

I believe God is a God of the past. We need to know how others experienced God in the past, and what God has done in the past, for the same reasons that we need to know something about world history. I believe, too, that God is a God of the future. In fact, I believe that what ultimately happens in the future is in God’s hands. But having said those two things, when it comes to time, maybe the thing I can say about God that is most true is that God is a God of the present moment. God is the God of now.

When Moses, in the encounter at the burning bush, said to God, “If I come to the Israelites [in Egypt] and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors [there is God in the past, by the way] has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” (Exodus 3:13) This, it seems to me, was the round-about way that Moses asked God to reveal his name. And what did God say? He said, “I AM WHO I AM.” He added, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.”... ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.” (Exodus 3:14-15)

What was new here? God revealed himself as the great “I AM”. And if I understand anything about English grammar and tenses, that means that God chose to reveal himself - in his essence - as the God of the present moment.

YOU AND I IN THE PRESENT WITH GOD

And what that means to me is that God cares immensely about what is going on in the present moment for you and for me. Why do I say that? Because that is where God always meets us - in the present. God does not sit around on some heavenly throne and say, “Peter Munson is in a hard place today, and that isn’t where he should be, because, according to my heavenly calendar right here on my heavenly wall in my heavenly kitchen, it says ‘Easter’. And he shouldn’t be feeling that way during Easter, so sorry, he’s out of luck - he’s on his own.”

No. In some way or another - through my wife, through one of you, through prayer, through the reading of scripture, through my other reading, through my time in nature, but always through the Holy Spirit - God shows up to me in the moment, in the very same way that the risen Jesus was suddenly walking with Cleopas and his friend on the road to Emmaus.

THE ROAD TO EMMAUS

You’ll recall that it was the first Easter Sunday, and they weren’t exactly in a celebratory mood, either. They went for a seven-mile walk because, to both of them, it was the best idea they could come up with at the time. The women had come back and told the disciples that they had found the tomb empty and that angels had told them that Jesus was alive. Cleopas and his buddy didn’t know what to make of all this. They still felt devastated that Jesus had been crucified, and now they were just astonished and confused and sad. Where was Jesus’ body?

I bet you’ve gone on a walk once or twice when you’ve been confused or devastated and needed to clear your head. I’m guessing there have also been times when you invited a family member or close friend to go with you, so that you could talk things out. That’s what these two did. More than that, they stayed in the moment. Besides talking with each other about all that had happened over the last few days, they allowed a stranger to join them on their walk. Well, in their confusion, they thought he was a stranger at the time. So he was. In their “now”, in their present, he was a stranger, and though they were in a hard place, or maybe because they were in a hard place, they welcomed his company.

They didn’t hide how incredulous they were when he didn’t seem to know what things had been happening in Jerusalem over the past few days. And when they sensed that he knew a thing or two about the scriptures, they listened. They were open to learning from him, and from the scriptures.

Their hospitality to a stranger was extended some more when they reached Emmaus. Boy, hadn’t that walk gone quickly, somehow? And they invited him to stay with them. He accepted their invitation. And when they sat down to dinner, and he took the bread and blessed it and broke it and gave it to them, it all came together, and they knew instantly who this stranger was. It wasn’t a stranger! It was Jesus! And just like that, he was gone.

BE WHEREVER YOU ARE - GOD WILL SHOW UP

I’m here today to remind you to be wherever you are. Stay grounded, stay present with whatever is going on for you. Don’t try to run away from it, even if you find yourself in a hard place.

Are you angry at someone else, or angry at yourself? Stay there and ask God to help you figure out what is going on, what you need to learn, and what you need to do.

Are you in pain, whether that be physical or emotion pain - or both? Acknowledge it. Sit with it. Try to figure out what your body is really trying to tell you. In my experience, there is usually something much deeper going on, beneath that pain.

Are you lonely? Are you sad about something in a relationship? Are you very confused, like Cleopas and his buddy? Are you feeling lost like they were? Or, are you feeling guilty about something you did or which you think you should have done, but didn’t?

Don’t try to run from it. That strategy doesn’t work. Try to be curious. Try to ask God, “Lord, where are you, and what do you want me to learn right now?” Admit the truth, whatever it is. “Lord, I feel totally lost, totally confused. I don’t understand why I am feeling this way. I’m not sure what is going on for me, but this is where I am right now. I am overwhelmed.”

And you know what? I don’t mean to skew things in only one direction here. If you are in a really good place - a place of joy and celebration and gratitude - then, by all means, admit the truth of that, too, and share that with God. For our Lord does enjoy praise; he does enjoy thank you letters.

In my experience, when I do this... when I am honest and present to the moment, the God of the present - the God of now, the great I AM - appears, just as He did to me last Thursday morning, and just as he did to Cleopas and his friend. It doesn’t mean that I don’t still have to deal with the administrative things in my job. No, I do. But something shifts when the Lord shows up. We are moved to a new place. We are a given a new perspective. Or we just rest easier in our bones, remembering that He is with us, and that somehow, He’s going to lead us through the darkness and back out to the light, and give us new life - once again.

CONCLUSION

As I finish this sermon, I have a request. I wonder... in our prayer time today - in the Prayers of the People - if we could really try to be present to the moment. I wonder if we could just tell God where we are, in ten seconds or less. If you are able, say what’s on your heart - in the moment - loud enough so that the rest of us can share in your prayer, and add our prayers to yours. You may be in a place of joy. You may be in a place of pain and heartache and tears. It doesn’t matter where you find yourself, ultimately, because the God of love wants to be with you - no matter what - even if the Church calendar doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the reality of your own life.

Lord, through the power of your Spirit, be present with us this day. Help us to be honest and acknowledge the reality of our lives to you. Help us to be present with whatever is going on for us, and help us to be present to You, and to each other. We pray in your holy name, in the name of the great I AM. Amen.