Bruton Parish, Williamsburg, VA
300^th anniversary
12 April 2015

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

What was your most memorable Easter like? What made it memorable? We’re meant to bring our whole selves to the encounter with new life, with a full menu of sensory experience about the bodily reality of resurrection.

Last Sunday I joined an Easter celebration that began outside in the dark of very early morning. A small spark set off a huge bonfire, from which the Paschal candle was lit. We processed into a dark church, proclaiming the light of Christ, and the congregation’s candles soon became a forest of small points lighting up the darkness. Even the ancient tombs in that space were radiant!

Incense was thrown into the bonfire, and a great sweet-smelling copper cauldron of smoke was carried into the church. In a place where its perfume had been absent for months, it was a pungent reminder that death was conquered and Lent was over.

The great noise of bells and organ and voices raising “Glory to God in the highest” gave notice enough to raise the dead that Christ is risen and the world changed forever.

We gathered around a still and enormous font of water that began to flow once again, we baptized infants and adults, then lavished abundant oil on their foreheads to mark them as Christ’s own forever.

And then we gathered around an altar in the midst of a blooming garden to make the feast with bread and wine that Jesus taught us. As the last hymn was sung, we marched out of the church and around the courtyard to glasses of champagne and breakfast – there was even smoked fish to echo another resurrection appearance!

Sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch – all senses joined to awaken our awareness of the risen one. It was a powerful bodily experience.

Thomas missed all that sensory input. Like us, he wants to encounter the reality of resurrection if he’s going to give his heart to the Risen One. For that is what it means to believe – to be-love another, to give your heart, the whole of who you are and what you have. And in the midst of that we discover that we ourselves are beloved.

Think about the marriage liturgy – the partners give rings “as a symbol of my vow, and with all that I am, and all that I have, I honor you.” In other versions the couple say, “with my body I honor you.” Those who are part of the risen body of Christ have plighted our troth, have made our vows to honor God and God’s risen body with all that we are and all that we have. The collect we prayed calls it “the new covenant of reconciliation,” with the hope that we will give evidence of it in word and deed.[1]

Bruton Parish has been loving the members of God’s body for more than 300 years, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until we are parted by death. Even then, we hope for resurrection in a new body. We trust that while God’s beloved will die, through the ages the body will continue to rise and transform the world toward the fullness of God’s vision – the kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.

That’s what the community in Acts is trying to do: they were “of one heart… what they owned was held in common, they gave witness to the resurrection, no needy person among them… what they had was distributed as each had need.” Years ago in Nevada, a high school group at summer camp was talking about the challenges of living together in community, and we’d read this part of Acts. One kid piped up, “they sound like a bunch of communists!” Well not exactly, I said, but why do you think Jesus was executed? His disciples had clearly heard the dream of God’s kingdom that there will no longer be suffering or need, that everyone will have enough to eat, shelter and healing, and freedom to live the dignified life for which God created us all.

Even a small taste of that risen life, where there is abundance and feasting so unmistakable that even fools can’t miss it, is enough to give people hope for the long haul. The world despairs when it has no hope for that kind of abundance. The world resorts to violence when it has no hope, or when it fears that what it has will be taken away.

It’s true in the church – think of the conflicts we’ve lived through recently, or during the Revolution, or the Civil War.

The struggles in Congress are mostly lodged in scarcity, and not just financially – it’s as though collaborating for the greater good costs too much – of self-identity, position, privilege, learning, and change… That’s certainly part of the internal struggle for dominance in global Islam right now – one religious faction is using brutality and horrific violence to try to impose its view on the rest. Americans are beginning to pay close attention to how police use force on suspects of different races, and how the legal system as a whole treats people based on their race or their poverty. Justice doesn’t seem to be distributed according to need.

The climatic changes already confronting us are the result of wanton use of the earth’s abundance without considering the needs of all members of the system – the body of God’s creation. Most of the world’s suffering has something to do with an absence of that kingdom vision of plenty. It is often the result of human selfishness or self-centeredness. We don’t give great evidence of living as a resurrected community.

And still we cry, “Christ is risen!” How do we put together what we see around us with the claim that the resurrection has changed the nature of human sinfulness? Perhaps we start with that small group of believers, who gave their hearts to a resurrected life. It’s never easy, for it always requires some kind of dying. But oh, Lord, what a glory it is when we see it and live it!

Thomas is absolutely right to ask for evidence – he ought to be able to see and hear, touch and smell and taste the reality of God’s resurrected life in the community around him, in those who have met the risen Lord.

Real abundance is part of the nature of creation, and it’s meant for all – for Jesus said, “I came that you might have life, and have it abundantly.” When the abundance of creation is not shared, some suffer and die, “when one part of the body suffers, all suffer together; when one part is honored, all rejoice.”[2]

That must have been in Dr. Goodwin’s heart when he persuaded John D. Rockefeller to underwrite the restoration of this community.[3] He saw a dying town, without employment, losing people and hope. He also saw a vision of a community risen to new life, giving itself away to the world, opening its homes and heart to those who might learn something about endurance and struggle, and about sin and imperfection, particularly in the use of some human beings for the purposes of others.

The willingness of this community to give itself away has meant more abundant life for generations. This congregation’s sharing – of alms and loving ministry and music three nights a week, as well as the warts and blessings of history – has shown millions of visitors how good news works. God loves us all, equally, and God dreams that the abundance of creation will be available to all, as each one has need. Keep sharing that, and you will indeed be alive here 300 years from now.

Let the world see and hear and taste and feel and smell the love of God in this place. Alleluia, Christ is risen!

[1] Collect for the Second Sunday of Easter: 1979 BCP p 224

[2] 1 Corinthians 12:26

[3] http://www.history.org/Foundation/general/introhis.cfm