March 14, 2021: May God’s words be spoken, may God’s words be heard.  Amen.

One year ago.

One year ago today, we celebrated the life of Pearl Anderson, a beloved parishioner, and then…we closed our doors. 

We did not, however, close our church.  Far from it.  We walked this journey through the desert together.  We stood together in the shadow of death in this long Good Friday year.

One year ago.

One year ago, we could not have imagined that over half a million would lose their lives, that our nation’s leaders would turn a health crisis into a political game, that many would lose their jobs, and that the bread lines of the Great Depression would again be a sight in this country as thousands upon thousands lined up to get much needed food.

One year ago. 

One year ago, Ahmad Aubrey and Breonna Taylor were dead, George Floyd was still alive, and our nation was about to get the wake up call so very long over due to rise up from our slumber of indifference to our collective sin of racism all within 8 min. and 46 sec. 

One year ago.

One year ago the thought that our services would be livestreamed, with cameras and computers in the nave was just a far fetched dream, and the idea of attending a church other than our own, much less one halfway around the world, seemed ridiculous… until it was not.  

One year ago.

One year ago, we would never have thought it possible that our democratic republic would be in danger of collapsing, or that a group of terrorists from our own country would attack our capitol seeking to harm the elected representatives of our government.

One year ago.

One year ago our church was celebrating the good news that our financial strength had grown as had our numbers of people calling this church their spiritual home – our parish and nursery school had a bright future.  After a year without our school, we have lost a tremendous amount of our endowments, and our financial outlook is nearly where it was back in 2014.

One year ago.

And now – here we are.

Here we are after a year of Good Fridays – after the long and arduous journey across the wilderness toward the Promised Land. We are tired, grief stricken, and worn to the bone.

Here we are. 

And as Pearl Anderson would say…We are blessed.

How could that be? 

How could we say we are blessed after all that has happened?  The same way, and for the same reason, she always offered those “pearls of wisdom.”  She knew, as a woman of deep and abiding faith, that no matter how dark it may be, the light will always come – the light of Christ cannot be defeated by darkness, life is stronger than death.

As I say at every funeral – we are resurrection people, and even while we stand at the foot of the cross, we know that the empty tomb is within our grasp.  And now, here we are making the turn from Good Friday to the wee hours of Easter morning before the sun had risen.  We can sense the empty tomb, the new life that grows out of death – it is near us, and hope abounds.  We have walked the desert of this pandemic, and scaled the final mountain.  We can see now the promised land stretched out before us – the land of health, wholeness, and healing after this long and hard journey.

We may not have had a serpent on a pole, but we do know the Christ lifted up for us on the cross, and like those in our Hebrew scripture and Gospel lessons today – we know that God does not abandon us, but loves us.  God so loved the world.

So loved the world. 

Yet, even with that love, even choosing to become incarnate and dwell with us, even with that measure of love, Good Friday still happened then and now.  The darkness of death still covered the land. The pain was still humanity’s to bear.  And the cross is never forgotten, even as we near the empty tomb.

We will not forget the scars of this pandemic.  They will remain for a long time – people we loved who have died, jobs we needed to support our families lost, and the impact to our funds placing the church in a precarious position.  Yet we will also remember those moments of new life – marches for Black Lives Matter, people donating homemade masks, those who checked in on others, shouts and singing in support of healthcare workers coming off their shifts, reconnecting with one another in new and different ways, exploring new activities, and celebrating the cleaner air from our reduced carbon generating activity.

So, as we turn the corner toward new life, the empty tomb, the resurrection that is ours, we have been transformed as only those who have made the journey we have, who have stood at the foot of the cross, can claim.  We have learned something about ourselves, and about our God.

We have learned that we are, by God’s grace, stronger than we may have ever thought.

We have come to know that we can face the unimaginable, and together with Christ, not only overcome, but emerge into new life.

We have seen that the cross is never without the empty tomb to come.

And now, now, we turn toward that resurrection.

For we see hugs, family gatherings, in-person worship, and fellowship with others on the horizon.

We are planning for the re-opening of our school, and welcoming back our children.

We know we will re-grow our parish financial resources because we have done it before.

Death has been with us for a long while now…but resurrection will soon be ours.

It therefore seems fitting that on this Sunday two things are happening…

Today we begin Daylight Savings Time, which I absolutely love.  It is a return of the light.  Okay science nerds – we all know it doesn’t really add any light to our 24 hour day, but it does extend the light in the evening, when many are best able to step outside of our work or school activities and give over our time to things that delight our heart like play, walks, and sunset watching.  And that it falls on this Sunday – the one year anniversary of all that has happened in this pandemic – is poignant.  The darkness of this time is passing…and light will be ours once more.

The other thing happening this day is that many across the Episcopal Church are offering remembrances of the Rt. Rev. Barbara Clementine Harris, who died on March 13, 2020, and like our Pearl Anderson, it was somewhat fitting that our church doors would close upon her death as well, for she was a powerful force for the gospel and she blazed a path no others had walked.

Bishop Harris was the first woman elected bishop in the worldwide Anglican Communion.  Her election as suffragan bishop in the Diocese of Massachusetts caused an uproar, and she endured the slings and arrows of prophets before and since.  In an article by Monique Parsons in “Religion & Politics,” the backlash was described like this, “Some of Harris’s fellow church members were openly hostile after she was elected to serve as an assisting bishop. “One diocesan newspaper ran my picture on the front page with a black slash across my face like a no smoking ad,” [Bishop Harris] recalled, with a dry chuckle, during the 2013 interview with the National Visionary Leadership Project. She received hate mail and death threats (“Nobody can hate like Christians,” she once remarked), and opponents interrupted her consecration ceremony to protest the vote. Some 8,500 people attended her consecration in Hynes Auditorium in Boston. The crowd, including 62 bishops and several armed police officers, was too large to fit in a church. One police officer sat behind her near the altar. “The Boston police department offered me a bulletproof vest to wear that day, which I declined,” Harris said in a 2009 interview. “I thought, if some idiot is going to shoot me, what better place to go than at an altar.”[1]

While we know that misogyny, sexism, and racism in society and in our very church were at the root of the hate she encountered then, it sadly is still present, though we have made great strides.  Still, we will not let her life be remembered in the words of bigots, but in her prophetic witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

In Bishop Harris, the church and the world was given the gift of a courageous voice for justice, a powerful advocate on behalf of the oppressed, and faithful example of God’s grace at work. And having met her on a number of occasions, I will add a woman with a great sense of humor.  Her legacy will be with us for many years to come, as we begin to commemorate her life and ministry locally, that one day she may be remembered churchwide as part of our liturgical calendar.

Yet I remember her today, not only as a part of this larger effort, but because her life is a reminder that no matter what obstacles stand in your way, no matter how difficult the journey, God will give you the courage to persevere and the vision to do things we can hardly imagine possible.  That no matter how dark it may seem, the light of God’s love found in those around us who help us along the way, found in the love of Christ, found in the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit, carries us though to places we have not even begun to dream of yet.

In a collection of interviews published in a book about her in 2018, Bishop Harris put it this way: “With the help of so many people, we’ve done a lot, and now the time has come for me to get some rest (not that anyone really believes I’ll do that).  As I look back over all that’s happened, the victories and defeats, the moving ahead two steps and back down one, I’m satisfied that with the grace of God we’ve persevered and been as faithful as we could, which is all that God asked us to be…And I think I fulfilled my responsibilities well and I know that God has been faithful and graceful to me, so I can say to God and to you, Hallelujah anyhow!”[2]

I just love that, “Hallelujah anyhow,” and it is a message for us all right now too.  In fact, both Bishop Harris and Pearl Anderson have words of wisdom that we need to hold on to as we walk toward the end of this pandemic, as we turn from Good Friday toward the Easter we have so longed for.  These two women of color – powerhouses of courage and faith – offer us a mantra for our time.

For you see, every single one of you have walked this difficult journey the best way you knew how, fulfilling your responsibilities well, as by God’s grace you took each difficult step forward. This has been one crazy year, truly it has, yet you were able to move one day at a time through the desert to the promised land.  When the insanity of all that has happened knocked you down, or set you back, the strength of the Holy Spirit lifted you up.  By the knowledge of Christ’s resurrection, you were able to stand in the shadow of the cross.

And so today, I think we can, and we should, bend slightly our Lenten fast on the use of the A-word, and robustly embrace its Hebrew equivalent.  Because after this crazy year we need to be Pearl Anderson and see the blessings that we have, however small, and despite the difficult journey we have walked shout with the passion of Bishop Harris for God and all the world to hear:

“Hallelujah anyhow!”

Amen.

For the audio from the 10:30am service, click below, or subscribe to our iTunes Sermon Podcast by clicking here:

Sermon Podcast

[1] https://religionandpolitics.org/2020/12/01/remembering-the-right-rev-barbara-harris-the-first-female-bishop-in-the-anglican-communion/

[2] Harris, Barbara C. Hallelujah, Anyhow!: a Memoir. Church Publishing Incorporated, 2018.

The Rev. Diana L. Wilcox
Christ Church in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge
March 14, 2021
Fourth Sunday In Lent
1st Reading – Numbers 21:4-9
Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22
2nd Reading –  Ephesians 2:1-10
Gospel – John 3:14-21