Sermon for Easter Sunday 2015

Readings:

Acts 10:34-43 
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
John 20:1-18 

I once heard an archeologist use an expression in an interview that has since become one of my favorites: The way to keep a trail alive is to walk on it

As someone who had a great deal of experience in digging up the past, he was well aware that the difference between a living tradition and a dead tradition is practice. The moment that people stop practicing a tradition, stop teaching its history or stop holding its rituals it dies. And just like a path that no one walks on, the weeds and the grass creep in, and eventually it fades away, disappears and is forgotten.

When our youth group was travelling the Way of Saint James to the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela a couple years ago, we were travelling along a path that had been used by pilgrims for over a thousand years, but despite the fact that this trail was so old, most of the time you didn’t have to worry about getting lost or wonder where you were going, because not only is the path well worn from ancient use, but people are still using it. People are still walking that way and using that trail. It is a living tradition and it is alive because people still experience God along the way. The experience still has something to teach modern people, it still has something to offer to our lives, something which all of the modern technology in the world just can’t replace. There at the tomb of one of Jesus’s first followers, or in the cathedral itself, or in the incense, or maybe just in the faces of the people you meet along the way, God is there and people are still walking that trail to seek him.

This past week we have been walking a different kind of path. We have been walking, figuratively at least, the way of the cross with Christ. We have been telling his story and the story of his disciples, we have been observing ancient traditions that speak to the last things that he said and did, and we have done these things for much the same reason that people still walk the Camino in Spain. This path, this trail of Holy Week is still walked because people still find God there.

Our journey of Holy Week ends this morning with taking a short walk with Mary Magdalene to the tomb. She is walking there to clean and to anoint the body of her dear friend, her leader and her teacher. She is walking there with the expectation of performing the gut wrenching task of unwrapping him from the linen shroud and having to again witness the lifeless body of someone she loves laying before her. We are traveling that way with Mary this morning. Year after year we walk this same path to the tomb with Mary and we retell the story of what she found.

We continue to walk this way and to tell this story because at the end of the road we find something which gives our life meaning. We find out that the world which we thought we knew and understood might be a little more complex and a little more mysterious than we had previously imagined. We find out that miracles do happen, that God really is in control. We find out that the path which we thought led to the grave and no further actually leads to new life.

Mary didn’t find a dead body that morning as she was expecting. What she found was the Resurrected Christ, transformed, but more alive than ever.

I will venture to say that the Easter story isn’t new to most of you. You have heard the gospel witnesses, you have heard preachers and priests talk about it before, you might have even seen the movie…there are lots. You are not here this morning to find out how this story ends, you are here because you know the ending and you find there in that story of Christ’s resurrection something which changes your life and gives it deeper meaning. You are here because deep down you know or feel that the story the secular world tells us, the story that only looks to the material world and not beyond is simply not good enough. You are here because Christ’s story challenges you to imagine a world that is bigger and more miraculous. You are walking this path with us because this trail, this tradition has been kept alive by generations of individuals who have continued throughout the years to find God here and you are walking this path because you have probably found God here too.

Ours is a living tradition. A living trail that continues to lead travelers to a deeper knowledge and love of God. If we have found God along the way, if we have walked to that tomb with Mary and found it empty, if we have experienced God in this place or in the proclamation of the gospel or in the sacraments and rituals of the church that teach us and draw us deeper into the life of Christ, if this path has led us closer to God then we must keep it alive. We must continue to walk on it. We must continue to proclaim and live out these stories which we believe to be true so that future generations will not learn about who Christians were and what we believed between the covers of a textbook. This way, this path, this trail must be kept alive for them.

Our tradition is a living tradition and it will remain so as long as we continue to live it out. This trail will stay alive as long as we continue to walk on it. If we want our children to have faith we must continue to live it out ourselves, not just today, but every day. We need to be living sign posts along the way, arrows that constantly redirect people to the empty tomb and the resurrected Christ.

Walking this way has forever changed my life. I have been and continue to be amazed at the many ways I have encountered God along this journey. It has given me immeasurable hope, not just for what my resurrected life might be like in the next world, but for what my forgiven life can be in this one. If you share this hope of mine, if you have experienced God here in this place or in our tradition and if you want to keep this trail alive: keep walking on it.

Sermon preached at the memorial mass of Alice Mary Roggenkamp. February 22nd, 2015

Alice Mary Roggenkamp liked to hold on to things.

It wasn’t because she had an unhappy or an impoverished childhood, because she didn’t. Alice Mary was raised by loving parents on the upper east side of Manhattan. Her childhood was a happy one growing up around her father’s confectionary shop, and although she was an only child, she had friends and family and pets and much joy. Alice Mary held onto things because it was a part of who she was. As a woman who spent her life working as a librarian, perhaps it was her stock-in-trade, or perhaps Alice just valued things differently than we do.

For so many of us, life has a way of taking from us the things we fight so hard to hold on to. Our vocations, our possessions, our independence, even our loved ones; life has a way of stripping these things from us as we grow older. So it was with Alice Mary as well.

After losing most members of her family, retiring from her career, having to let go of her possessions and her independence, Alice Mary could seem to most of us, as a person that lost everything, but she wasn’t. The thing that Alice Mary treasured the most, then thing that gave her life the greatest joy and meaning, was the one thing that she never had to let go of; it was the thing she held onto until the end: her faith.

You see, this service that we are having here today; many of the details of this service were planned by Alice Mary herself. She was a woman who had lots of opinions, particularly about her faith, which was most important to her, so this service wouldn’t be just left to chance. As a woman who spent so much of her life working in and around the Episcopal Church, she naturally thought that her funeral should be presided over by a bishop…and a priest…and a deacon…and a monk.

 

Sadly, we were unable to fulfill some of those requests. But I am happy to say that we were able to include all of the music that Alice requested:

 

Alice wanted “I sing a song of the saints of god”, a song which for many conjures up images of Sunday School (which of course Alice Mary taught), but for her the last verse was important:

 

They lived not only in ages past, there are hundreds of thousands still, the world is bright with the joyous saints who love to do Jesus’s will. You can meet them at school, or in lanes, or at sea, in church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea, for the saints of God are just folk like me, and I mean to be one too.

 

Alice Mary meant to be a saint. She dedicated her life to cultivating holiness in herself and in others. She loved to sing about her faith, so she asked to have the hymn “Holy, Holy, Holy” sung because it begins with the line:

 

Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God almighty, early in the morning our song shall rise to thee.

 

Alice Mary’s song of faith did rise to God. Continually. And Alice Mary’s faith was a very traditional one. She was a member of the Guild of All Souls, an organization centered on saying requiem masses and keeping departed loved ones in prayer, which is why the color of our vestments today is the traditional black for requiem masses. Alice Mary was also associated with a number of monastic communities, specifically, the Sisters of the Holy Nativity, which is why we will be singing “Silent Night” in a few moments, and the Order of the Holy Cross, which is why we will be singing “Onward Christian Soldiers, marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus, going on before.” Despite what some people often think about this song, it has nothing to do with going out into the world and fighting non-Christians. It is about fighting the spiritual fight against evil, which we are all called by our baptism to fight. It is about treading where the saints have trod; it is about knowing that we are a part of the church, over which the gates of hell cannot prevail. That was Alice Mary’s faith. She was absolutely a soldier in God’s army. She always had the cross of Jesus before her.

I was warned, by more than one person when I arrived at Ascension, that Alice Mary liked for the entire Eucharistic prayer to be said for her when you visited her. She didn’t just want a quick communion service. She wanted it all. As a member of the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament, communion was very important to Alice Mary. For her it was truly the body and blood of Jesus and it meant the world to her. Most of you know that just a few days ago on Ash Wednesday, Ruth and I went to visit Alice Mary, to impose the ashes on her and to giver her communion. She received the ashes, she prayed the Our Father with us, she received absolution and communion, and then a short while after we left, she passed away quietly in her sleep. Alice Mary had to let go of a lot of things in her life, but the one thing she held onto until the end, the thing she never had to let go of, was the thing that was most important to her: her faith. The one hymn that Alice Mary didn’t request, but that I included was the one we just sang: Faith of our Fathers. “Faith of our Fathers, Holy Faith, we will be true to thee till death.”

Alice Mary was true to her faith until death. So at the end of a life lived in faith and devotion, what can one say? In the commendation we say the words that “All we go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.” The last request that Alice Mary had was that we include Handel’s Halleluia Chorus in her service, so our postlude will be just that. Alice Mary had to let go of a lot in this life, but in the end she held onto the thing that mattered the most. To that what more can be said than Halleluia.