Joy

Back in the 60’s there was a long-running musical on Broadway by Stephen Sondheim called A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. The forum in question was the Roman forum, of course, and I can see Zero Mostel in my mind’s eye waltzing around in a Roman toga. I don’t really know the story, but I think Mostel’s character has all sorts of life changing experiences in the midst of what should have been mundane and routine activities. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. The title came to my mind as I contemplated this first sermon back after vacation. A funny thing happened in the church while I was on vacation in New Mexico. General Convention wasn’t funny, of course, but my experience of it was odd. Not only was I on vacation, my brother and his wife don’t have TV or get a daily paper. Which means I missed all of the sound bites, CNN analysis, and secular press. I don’t know, overall, if that’s good or bad, although it certainly made for a better vacation not to be seduced into watching all of it on TV. But it’s odd… Odd to think about how much our modern participation in significant events is controlled by the media. I did not participate in General Convention the same way that most of you did. But I do know what happened.

One of the interesting things that is going on now in these weeks post-General Convention is the circulation of different reactions and interpretations, on General Convention as a whole, and particularly on the consent to the election of Gene Robinson to be the next Bishop of New Hampshire. It is not unusual for bishops throughout the church to report back to the people of their dioceses on the business of any General Convention; it is part of their pastoral responsibility. Some of those letters this year make very interesting reading. There are approximately 100 dioceses in the Episcopal Church. I have read only a handful of the various bishops’ pastoral letters. Some of the more interesting ones are going the rounds on the Internet. All of them, I expect, are or will be posted on diocesan web sites if you are interested. Based upon the ones I’ve read, I have a few observations, especially with respect to the consent to the election of Canon Robinson to be Bishop of our neighbor diocese.

Some bishops’ letters stress the very limited nature of the action of General Convention on this issue. General Convention was charged only to assess whether or not the election in New Hampshire had taken place in accordance with church law. Specifically speaking, whether Canon Robinson should have been elected was not the issue before General Convention. The only question was whether or not the election met the legally prescribed criteria for the election of a bishop. Almost everyone agrees that it did.  The scope of General Convention’s responsibility was very limited. One bishop in his letter stressed, "Let me assure you that the decision regarding New Hampshire’s election has no direct impact on the life and ministry in [this diocese]… I reiterate that not one canon, policy, or practice at either the diocesan or congregational level has been affected by the election in New Hampshire."

Other bishops, of course, on both sides of the issue stressed, not the limits, but the deep significance of General Convention’s action with respect to the church’s perspective on homosexuality. These bishops emphasized that the action of General Convention was a very significant piece of the church’s ongoing effort to understand God’s hope for us in the realm of human sexuality. So was the action of General Convention limited or very significant? Both, of course. It was, at the same time, both limited and also very significant. We should not overlook either its limits or its significance.

For us here at St. Patrick’s the action of General Convention on this one particular issue could have a limited and/or a significant effect. It is true that no canon or policy was changed. In general, our life and worship and ministry as a parish will be completely unaffected by this very limited action. When I returned from vacation I had almost 150 e-mails awaiting me on my computer. About a third of them were just a week’s worth of the usual jokes and stories forwarded by friends… pictures of cute puppies…  blonde jokes.  Most of the rest were official news releases from the Episcopal News Service relating to all of the business of General Convention. That’s normal during any General Convention. I am a bit sad to say that only one was from a parishioner, and it made only an oblique reference to General Convention. As I say, it is certainly possible for this to have very limited impact on our Christian lives.

Or we can acknowledge the significance of General Convention’s deliberations and action. We can acknowledge that questions about human sexual expression, questions about standards for ordained ministry, about the authority of the church gathered together in council, questions about justice and human dignity, questions about the interpretation and authority of Scripture… We can acknowledge that these questions are all very significant, and that God is calling us to grow in our understanding of these issues through study and prayer and conversation with one another. These issues are important to me. I have opinions on them. I will not preach those opinions at you now, from this place of proclamation. But I hope that if these issues are important to you, you will come to me in conversation, prayerful, thoughtful conversation so that we may faithfully seek God’s wisdom together.

I hope those conversations will take place. But as I stand in this pulpit today my responsibility is to proclaim the Gospel, as best I am able. Today’s Gospel is an interesting one. Jesus says to his disciples, "I am the living bread which came down from heaven." We are so used to John’s metaphorical language, it is easy to miss how radical Jesus’ statement was to the disciples. He told them that he embodied God’s very presence. And, Jesus said, there’s more. "Does this offend you?" he said. "Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?" John says that after Jesus spoke, many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. Because Jesus was not saying what they thought God’s Messiah should be saying, they left.

When Jesus asked the twelve if they wished to leave also, Peter—good ol’ Peter—said he thought they’d stay because, after all, they really couldn’t think of anyplace better to go. Hardly a ringing conviction of faith. One writer has noted that it is certainly a minimalist expression of faith to stay with Jesus simply because the other options seem worse. And yet, this writer continues, it is also the maximum expression faith (Gerard Sloyan, Interpretation: John). There truly is nothing better. There is no better place to be than in the presence of Jesus. There is absolutely nothing in our lives that can begin to compare with being in the presence of Jesus. There is, very literally, no place better that we could be than right here. Here in the presence of Jesus.

You have the words of eternal life, Peter says to Jesus. In one of his sermons, Frederick Buechner talks about how inadequate words are to convey what it is that Jesus offers to us. But finally Buechner settles on the word "joy." It is a word that Jesus uses earlier in John’s gospel. Jesus has come to be among us, he says, so that his joy may be in us, and that our joy may be complete (John 15:11). So, Buechner says, "joy is the experience Jesus points to as the outermost limit and goal of all he came in God’s name and with God’s power to give us."

"There is not one of us whose life has not already been touched somewhere with joy, so that in order to make it real to us, to show it forth, it should be enough for Jesus simply to remind us of it, to make us remember the joyous moments of our own lives… But we need to be reminded that at its heart Christianity is joy and that laughter and freedom and the reaching out of arms are the essence of it. And we need to be reminded too that joy is not the same as happiness. Happiness is man-made—a happy home, a happy marriage, a happy relationship with our friends and within our jobs. We work for these things, and if we are careful and wise and lucky, we can usually achieve them. Happiness is one of the highest achievements of which we are capable, and when it is ours, we take credit for it, and properly so. But we never take credit for our moments of joy because we know that they are not man-made and that we are never really responsible for them. They come when they come. They are always sudden and quick and unrepeatable. The unspeakable joy sometimes of just being alive. The miracle sometimes of being just who we are with the blue sky and the green grass, the faces of our friends and the waves of the ocean, being just what they are. The joy of release… of being forgiven when before we were ashamed and afraid, of finding ourselves loved when we were lost and alone. The joy of love…

"Just two more things… One is that joy is always all-encompassing; there is nothing of us left over to hate with or to be afraid with, to feel guilty with or to be selfish about. Joy is where the whole being is pointed in one direction, and it is something that by its nature a person never hoards but always wants to share. The second thing is that joy is a mystery because it can happen anywhere, anytime, even under the most unpromising circumstances, even in the midst of suffering, with tears in its eyes. Even nailed to a tree." (From "The Monkey God" in The Hungering Dark)

As Peter says, where else could we possibly want to be except with the source of such joy? Joy. The starting point and the ending point of everything we are about. Joy. It is to be found right here. In the Body of Christ assembled. In the Body of Christ broken and shared at the Lord’s own table. In Jesus’ words and presence with us today.

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