Sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter (May 18, 2025)
Sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter (May 18, 2025) at St. James’ Episcopal Church in Hyde Park, NY. View the scripture readings and the Collect of the Day.
Sisley, Alfred, 1839-1899. Orchard in Spring, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56934 [retrieved May 20, 2025].
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Transcript
May only truth be spoken here and only truth be heard. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Please be seated.
Very early this morning, I got a message from one of our members who is sailing. She left on Thursday, sailed down the Hudson River and is on her way to Norfolk, Virginia, and she's sailing down along the eastern coastline of the United States. And she sent me a text probably about 4:30 in the morning and said, “I am on a perfectly clear sea with the perfect amount of breeze, and there's a moon over the water and I can't believe how beautiful it is. And I know that the prayers for safe travel are working.”
And what a picture, just those few words. And I think we can, whether we're sailors or not, we can all imagine it just the peace that we do in our lives. We get these perfect moments where what's around us is so beautiful that we know, whatever the mess and the trials that we go through, we know that this world was made with love, that it is full of beauty and holiness. And when she painted this picture for me of the moon over the water and one woman watching over the boat while the others sleep, I thought of this psalm. The Psalm says, sing praise sun and moon and all you shining stars. It starts with this image of hallelujah. Praise God from the heavens. Sing praise way up high, the sun and the moon and the stars and all the angels, the invisible beings, the saints of God and glory. Let them all praise the name of God, it says.
And then it comes here to earth for our sailors. It says sing praise. I always love this line. Sing praise you sea monsters and ocean deeps, mountains and hills, fruit, trees and cedars, wild beasts and cattle. Those fruit trees, right? Those of us who are gardening right now planting seeds, we know this beauty and this holiness and this rejoicing.
So all of creation, the heavens, the earth, the creatures on the earth, the creatures in the deep the sea and the solid ground in the mountains and the hills and the trees, and then the people, us, the young men and young women, old and young together, judges and leaders and all the regular ones too. Let us all praise God together. The psalm paints this picture of this world that is created this world that we sometimes glimpse the winged creatures.
How often when I'm walking here from one end of the church property to the other, do I see an eagle soaring overhead like a shadow? And I look up and I see these wings, or sometimes it's something smaller like a little bluebird when we walk, and I know so many of us find that we connect so deeply to God when we're walking here, when we go and walk across the street or at Mills mansion, we look out over the river valley. This is such a holy and beautiful place. I think that so many of us were drawn here to live because of the beauty of holiness that we find here, or we find that we have been bound here by the beauty of this place and the people in it.
And I'm just struck today by how important it is to be deeply rooted in the truth of this beauty, this holiness, the reality that all of this was created out of love and created for love. I never quite noticed in this psalm before, and I must have chanted it hundreds of times in my life. This line, all of this, the heavens and the earth, the seas and all of us creatures who live on it, all of this God made us to stand fast for and ever, he gave us a law which shall not pass away, he gave us a law that shall not pass away.
In the gospel today we have Jesus and he has just had supper with his friends in the gospel of John. He's just washed their feet. The same gospel reading we read on Mondy Thursday when we remember, we remember Jesus instituting this communion for us, something we are called to share, to do in His name. And after they have shared this meal, Jesus says to them, I give you a new commandment. I give you a new commandment. What is it? What are we to do? I see some mouths moving. Love one another. We know this. We've heard this so many times. A new commandment I give to you, love one another as I have loved you. A new commandment I give you that you would love one another as I have loved you.
You guys know how much I love our Bible study that we do every Wednesday. And if you've never come, maybe this week you will. You're always welcome. This week someone very astute in the Bible study said, is this really a new commandment? I said, oh, interesting. That's what had me catch this in my eye, gave them a law which shall not pass away. She said, is it really a new commandment, isn't it in the original law given by God to the people? And it is. It's in Leviticus 19. Love thy neighbor as thyself.
In another place in the gospels, when Jesus is asked, which of the commandments are most important teacher, he says, love God and love your neighbor as yourself. On this hang all the law and the prophets. So when he says to the disciples after the last supper, a new commandment I give you that you ought to love one another. What's different? What's new?
There is a sense in which the call to love one another, to love my neighbor as myself. It endures. It was instituted in this psalm. It shall not pass away. It's an eternal law. It begins with the creation of the world. When God creates the world, the heights and the depths and the sea creatures and then us. God creates humankind from the beginning. There's not one of us. There has to be two created to love one another and in loving one another to love creation and in loving creation to love God. From the beginning it was God's love that poured out into the world and God's love for which this whole creation was intended to sing and for which we're all intended to glorify. But then the new commandment, the new commandment, very much like the old, adds the piece, because we seem to have missed it, as I have loved you, as I have loved you, so you ought to love one another.
In our Episcopal 101 class this past Thursday, we talked about the Bible. We talked about how it's not always easy to know how to interpret a scripture. You can pull a verse out here to justify this. You can pull a verse out here to justify excluding this group. You can argue almost anything that you want out of scripture. So we talked about how important it is when we come to scripture to remember that there is a big story.
There is a big story. There's a story arc in light of which we interpret everything that we encounter in our sacred scriptures, in our sacred stories, and we talked about how we hear that big story every Sunday in the midst of our Eucharistic prayers. At the very beginning of our prayers we all sing this song and we sing it in different ways, but you know it. Holy, holy, holy, Lord God, heaven and earth are full of your glory, Hosanna and Messiah and the Highest. And after that, we hear the story of how Jesus institutes the Last Supper, how He says, take this bread, this is my body. Drink this cup. This is my blood poured out for you. But in between those two, between the singing of the holy, holy, holy and the retelling of the institution of the Last Supper, we have the story of God's redemption of the people. And that I suggest is the big story. That's the big story. The big story is that God created all of this out of love and for love.
And then we struggle to fully reflect that love to one another. God created this creation so that we would enjoy it and through enjoying it, praise God. But again and again, the creatures of God found their way to degrade the creation, to cause harm. And God created us human beings to love one another. But again and again, we found new and innovated ways to harm one another, to dehumanize one another, to turn against and even to kill one another. And our eucharistic prayers say that God again and again called us to return, and said this is given out of love. Come back to my love. Our prayers tell us that God sent prophets. God sent judges. God sent leaders again and again, God tried to bring us back to that love. And we do. And when we hear this big story, we know it in our own lives. We know that we have moments where we really see and feel our connection, where we glory in the love that we were made for where we feel the love from another human being or we see something beautiful and we have a moment where everything seems to fall away and we know that peace of God which passes all understanding.
And then not long after we wander away again. And so again and again, God is calling us to return and the prayer tells us that there is this pattern of God reaching us, being with God, and then us going away again. And so there's a continual pull, and ultimately God said, I will come and be among them, sending the prophets doing these things. I myself will come and God sends Jesus Christ and comes into the world to share our life, to be with us in our grief and in our suffering, in our loneliness, in our violence, and to show us that there is no place we can go where God will not be seeking us.
But there is no distance that we can stray from God's intention, that we love one another, that God will not be constantly trying to call us back to that love and that God is willing to go and to be in the midst of us and to share our life. The home of God is among mortals. The home of God is our home. And God will dwell with us. We will be God's people and God will be our God. God came to show us like God's home is here. God's love is here. God's glory is here.
Like God is at home with us whenever we love one another and that God's home is with us even when we struggle to do that coming among us, God says, I will wipe every tear from your eye. I will dwell with you. My home is in you and you are at home in me. And the difference that Jesus makes is that Jesus is the complete and full and perfect presence of God showing us exactly what it looks like to love one another and showing us that there is no place God won't go to show us what that love looks like. The home of God is among mortals.
There are so many tears in so many eyes right now. This week I want to invite you if your heart is breaking to hold this week, this psalm in your heart to ask God to help you keep those eyes open for those places where God and God's love are being praised and glorified, because the deeper our grief gets, maybe the harder it is to see. Yet the mountains are still praising God and the seas and the moon and the stars. They are God's love. They're a sign of God's love for you and around you. There are people, young and old together who are praising God, who are committed to returning again and again to this commandment that doesn't pass away that we love one another. See, the home of God is among mortals. God is here at home with you, and I want you to take the psalm into your heart and to carry it wherever you go this week to remind yourself to look, to ask God, to help you see where God is being praised, where God is being loved, and where God's love is at home. Amen.