[Episcopal Church Office of Public Affairs press release] Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori preached the following sermon at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Suffolk, Virginia. 

St. Mark’s, Suffolk, VA
Centennial celebration
April 19, 2015

The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori
Presiding Bishop and Primate
The Episcopal Church

Beloved, you are the apple of God’s eye. That’s what John is trying to communicate in his letter, over and over and over again. “Beloved, we are God’s children now” – already! And even though we aren’t yet complete, we know that we will be like the child of God we have known in Jesus. We will be like him, and we will be risen with him.[1] Living clean and right and true is part of the journey of transformation toward that risen life. We have glimpses of it in this life, even if we haven’t yet fully arrived!

Toni Morrison has had glimpses of it as well, and her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Beloved[2] is a haunting and piercing search for transformation toward a risen life. How do we discover resurrection in our midst; how do we participate in what God is doing all around us, all the time? For starters, risen life isn’t believable without witness to the scars the risen Jesus bears and shows his beloved friends. None of us will rise without walking through the work of re-membering what has been broken and dismembered. People and peoples must acknowledge the scars that evil leaves and do it in the full light of day in order to become whole, healed, and ultimately holy.

The church has usually talked about that work of re-membering as forgiveness of sin, but for many people the words and concepts often seem dry or opaque. Re-membering, putting things back together in a new and healed body, isn’t so much about letting go of the effects of evil; it’s almost the reverse. It’s about finding the courage to walk through the pain, abandonment, and despair to find the sparks of love in the ashes of what has died or been lost.

What would you have to tell about ashes and sparks of love at St. Mark’s?            The centennial you are celebrating coincides with the Armenian genocide that also began in April of 1915. The two stories have a lot in common – denial about what caused the events of 1915, and the continuing pain of seeing one group of people as other. When the American ambassador to Turkey wrote home about what was happening in the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, he talked about “race murders.”[3]

I haven’t been able to find very much written about the history of this parish, but I can see that it was founded by St. Paul’s, Suffolk, only 20 years after they built the large gothic building they still use today. I doubt that St. Mark’s began because there wasn’t enough room in the inn or because it was too far to walk. I can also see that this congregation has endured and flourished with a long series of leaders, even if most of the clergy didn’t stay very long. When they did, this congregation bloomed. Fr. Walker, may you live long and prosper with the people of St. Mark’s and St. James[4]! The world’s standards of success are not God’s. Faithfulness, endurance, truth-telling, and thanksgiving for risen life are the essentials for the gospel journey of transformation.

What the world intends for evil, God can turn to good. St. Mark’s has flourished by focusing on the gospel truth that we are all beloved, in spite of other sinful human opinions. You have been a community that reminds all its members they are beloved children of God, and you keep going into the world to share that good news with all who will listen.

The beloved child of God we call messiah suffered and died, and rose again. Jesus told his disciples what was going to happen but they shrank from the news, and they slunk away during his last hours. Jesus kept telling truth in all his resurrection appearances. ‘See the wounds and scars – put your fingers here – they’re real.’ If he is God’s beloved, then so are we, and we, too, will rise again, beloved.

And so is every sorry, suffering son and daughter of God beloved. Where have you met the beloved?… Who is hungry? There he is, beloved. Who’s been beaten? There she is, beloved. Who has no place to call home? There, in all the immigrants some of us love to hate. The word is that Jesus and his family were refugees in Egypt after Herod got scared. Your rector and his family came here as refugees – beloved. A million and a half murdered Armenians – beloved, too. Twelve million Africans displaced and dead at the hands of the slave trade – beloved. Six million Jews, and 5 million Gypsies, Poles, disabled, gay and lesbian people, murdered by the Nazi regime – beloved. We have to tell the truth, and confront the pain and rejection, the brutality and inhumanity, the death and enduring scars, and when we do, like Mary returning to the tomb, hope finds a foothold.

There is hope all around us – right here, through a century of faithfully loving others as you love yourselves. I saw hope yesterday at the Province V synod that had spent an afternoon in good, hard, anti-racism work. I see it in the urgency about policing and mass incarceration. The risen one is here and all around us, when we look.

In that gospel account, Jesus is insistent – ‘I’m not a ghost, and these flesh and bones are hungry! What have you got to eat?’[5] We are the witnesses, the ones who are supposed to see. Who is hungry? That is the risen one, in the flesh. There is God with skin on.

The image of God with skin on, the resurrected one, is at work all around us if we will only look. Sometimes it takes a long time, and our awareness often begins to grow in the midst of thanksgiving. As part of its 175^th anniversary celebration, St. John’s in City Point Hopewell is re-membering the body by telling the story of Mrs. Paulina Eppes, born a slave in 1848. Her father, too, was a slave, who served as the church’s sexton most of his adult life. When he died in 1876, he was the first black man to be buried in the church’s cemetery. Paulina’s husband became the next sexton, but when died in 1889, the congregation wouldn’t permit his burial there. Paulina Eppes lived almost a century, long enough to become a beloved matriarch in that congregation, and when she died in 1946, she was buried next to her father, in an unmarked plot. Today the parish is telling the truth, giving thanks for her witness, and marking her grave. They’re all rising a little more into life as beloved children of God.[6]

Where and how are you going to keep on rising from the dead? Beloved, you are the apple of God’s eye, and it’s not a zero-sum game. I met a fellow once with a sweatshirt that said, “Jesus loves you.” On the back it said, “but I’m his favorite.” We are all his favored ones, all beloved, and as we keep on learning that, taking it into the depths of our hearts and being, we move along that journey toward fully risen life.

I wonder if St. Mark’s and St. Paul’s have ever had a story-telling session. What kind of rising might happen if you challenged each other to tell the truth you know about your common history, and ask about where each of you sees the risen one today? Beloved, we must keep telling the truth of that love, and tell about what gets in the way, and keep on rising from the dead, giving thanks for every hint of more abundant life.

Alleluia, Christ is risen! Keep on rising from the dead!

[1] 1 John 3:2

[2] 1987, Alfred Knopf

[3] http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-armenia-genocide-turks-20150416-story.html

[4] The two congregations have in recent months agreed to work together and share a priest

[5] Luke 24:39-41

[6] http://www.progress-index.com/article/20150414/NEWS/150419849