Sermons from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
Farewell to Easter
Deacon Richard Buhrer
The Sabbath in an observant Jewish home is always a special occasion. During the day on Friday, the house is cleaned and all the food needed for the next twenty-four hours is prepared. There are always two candles to remind the family of the two Sabbath commandments: Zachor, to remember; and Shamor, to observe. At the end of the day, no less than eighteen minutes before sundown, the Sabbath candles are lit and blessed by the woman of the house. Then as the sun is setting, the family sits down to dinner together, first breaking the challah or Sabbath bread and at the end sharing the Kiddush cup, the cup of blessing. The next morning, they walk to the synagogue for the Sabbath service and then return home to spend the remainder of the day peacefully together. After sundown on Saturday, the final ritual of the Sabbath occurs: the Havdalah (which means boundary in Hebrew) where the family bids farewell to the Sabbath rest and prepares to return to the workaday world of the week to come. In the Havdalah, a special candle made of two candles braided together is lit (it is now permissible to kindle a fire, since the Sabbath is ended), a cup of wine is shared, and a box of spices is passed around for each person to smell and recall the sweet fragrance of the Sabbath rest. Then the candle is extinguished in the dregs of the wine and with some restrained melancholy the family returns to the week and the world.
Easter is the great Sabbath of the church. The fifty days of Easter is equivalent to one seventh of the year. In the church, we begin Easter with a blessing of light that the deacon, like the woman in a Jewish home brings to the table and blesses with a song, as I did (however ill) at the Easter Vigil. I think of today as the Havdalah, the closing ceremony of this great fifty days.
I always find the Ascension a rather sad occasion. I know that the Lord Jesus taught us that he needed to ascend to the Father to bring the birth of the church to its fulfillment. In the Gospel of John, Jesus teaches his disciples: “Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send her to you. [1]” And when Mary greets the Lord at the resurrection he tells her:
Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”[2]
Though I know that the Ascension is needful with my mind, in my heart, I miss the presence of Christ among his people, a presence that could be touched and held and loved in the flesh.
So what do today’s scriptures have to teach us about this leave-taking that we face?
In the story we read today from the Acts of the Apostles, the nascent church waiting in faith for the gift of the Holy Spirit, feel the need to make up the number of apostles to the twelve originally appointed by Jesus. First, I want to emphasize the Church, even before the gift of the Holy Spirit, innovates to meet the needs of the time. In order to fulfill the mission that the Lord had given them, to be the New Israel, it was needful to have twelve apostles, not just eleven. Lots were usually cast to decide which animal would be the sacrificial victim. Here they are used to choose the apostle. Since most of the apostles met their deaths as martyrs, it is probably not inappropriate that they use the means of identifying the sacrificial victim to complete their numbers. Joseph Barsabbas may have won the election in a very real sense.
One of the persistent themes in the first Letter of John is that of knowledge and certainty: “We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another.[3]” Phrases like this are repeated throughout the epistle. Today’s reading ends “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life. [4]”
The prayer of Jesus in John from which we read today is John’s version of Christ’s prayer in Gethsemane as it is portrayed in the other Gospels. Here Jesus does not pray to be delivered from the suffering that is impending. Instead he prays for his disciples and for us: “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.[5]”
So here we stand poised at the end of our Great Sabbath, waiting breathless for the gift of the Breath of God, the Holy Spirit, to send us on our way into our work in the world. Like the apostles in the Acts, we are called to prepare ourselves to be a most apt instrument for our mission in the world, to complete our number, to be the twelve pillars of God’s new Kingdom, of God’s new culture. Like the early church we stand in need of reassurance and reaffirmation. We need to be reminded that we know everything we need to know to fulfill our mission and to come to Christ. And we do this all bolstered by the continuing prayers of Our Living Lord on our behalf.
The longest season of the Church year lies looming before us: It is sometimes called Kingdom-tide (I prefer that to the more prosaic “time after Pentecost”): It begins with Trinity Sunday and ends with the Feast of Christ the King. It will last for twenty-five weeks this year. This coming season is our workaday world: the time in which we focus on living out the Gospel in our lives and bringing its light to our world.
This is our Havdalah, our farewell to the Great Easter Sabbath. Our spice box is the thurible. At the offertory, Melissa will cense the gifts, the altar and the cross. Then she will give the thurible to me and I, in my turn will cense the Easter Candle, the ministers at the altar and the people gathered. I challenge us to let the sweet fragrance of the incense remind us of the sweet fragrance of Easter and the great beauty of the Risen Lord.
You see, despite my melancholic approach to the Ascension, the Lord Jesus is not absent from us, we are not bereft of his presence, he is here to be touched and loved and held—and served and comforted and fed and clothed and healed and set free. He is here in the people here and in the poor, the lonely, the sick and the bereft of this world. So let us enjoy what is left for us of this Great Easter Feast and embrace the mission we will receive at Pentecost to change the world one heart at a time.
