The Senior Sermon of Donald Smith, Class of 2007 from the Diocese of West Tennessee, given on October 27, 2006 in Christ Chapel

Feast Day of St. Simon and St. Jude

John 15:17-27

Ephesians 2:13 – 2:22

Deuteronomy 32:1-5

Give ear, O heavens, and we will speak; let the earth hear the words of our mouths. May our teaching drop like the rain, our speech condense like the dew; like gentle rain on grass and like showers on new growth. For we will proclaim the name of the LORD; and ascribe greatness to our God!

When I first received the preaching assignments for this semester I laughed when I realized that not only was I scheduled to preach in the same week as two of my Bible professors but I was also scheduled to preach on the joint feast day of Simon the Zealot and Saint Jude, the patron saint of lost causes. Whether my placement on the rota is evidence of a divine sense of humor or more aptly, it is evidence of some sort of cosmic judgment upon me has yet to be determined.

On a particular Sunday evening in the spring of 1979, I sat quietly taunting my younger sister in front of the television. Taunting my sister was, and according to her, still is, a favorite hobby of mine. This particular evening remains fresh in my memory because of the program that my family watched and the aftermath of that program. It was a National Geographic special being shown on PBS about the Grand Canyon. The sound of the narrator’s monotonous voice and the indignant wails of my sister filled the room as we sat and watched the console television. “For God’s sake will you leave her alone,” my father said, barely raising his voice or his eyes from the book that he was reading. And I did stop my brotherly torment, if only temporarily.

Taking advantage in the lull in the cacophony, my mother turned to my father and said, “You know we really should take a trip out west. My parents took my brother and me out west when we were children and it was incredible.” My father buried his nose a little deeper in the book that he was reading.

All thoughts of torment left my mind and my sister ceased planning her next over-reaction to my minor persecution. We listened intently to our parents.

“We could drive through Texas through New Mexico to the Grand Canyon and then California.”

With each new waypoint mentioned, my father slid further and further into his chair.

“Exactly how long were you planning on us being gone,” my father cautiously half whispered.

“At least three weeks, but four would be more practical, won’t this be fun!” my mother cried gleefully.

She then saw the ashen look upon my father’s face. The incredulous expression of horror and dismay that weighed his feature down, and she paused. She then did the unimaginable. From my own experience as a parent, I now know the gravity of what she said next. My mother played the parental trump card of all trump cards….

“our children are not going to be this age forever…”

The die was set and my father excused himself with the explanation that he needed to be alone for a little while. We left our little town in North Mississippi in late June and did not return until the entire summer had worn away and August had almost arrived. We drove to New Orleans, Houston, San Antonio, both Laredo’s, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Taos, through Arizona, Nevada and finally ended up in Monterrey, California.

The trip was a cross between the movie Vacation with Chevy Chase and a Faulkner novel. During the long stretches of desert highway, I would read. I would read and read in this time before portable DVD players and iPods. When I tired of reading, I would tease my sister who welcomed it from the prolonged boredom, since she was not yet old enough to read. I would start subtly, perhaps tapping the seat next to her in an incessant and arrhythmic way or staring without moving at her until she noticed. I always stopped short of drawing the ire of my parents or doing anything truly malicious or at least that was my goal. The fire in her eyes during our childish combat caused me to be even more creative in my devilment. Although we were combatants on the field of battle we were then and remain now friends.

Somewhere around Flagstaff our competition went dreadfully wrong. I had seized and was holding hostage a new Barbie doll which she had received from Santa Claus the previous Christmas. I held Barbie, which she had renamed Katie, by her head and one of her arms and I was quietly threatening dismemberment unless certain conditions were met. Of course I had absolutely no intentions of hurting her doll; it would have been outside the unwritten rules of the game. It would have been cruel. Barbie/ Katie suffered a tragic accident that afternoon in mid-July. As I grasped her head and arm in my hands, our huge, Detroit built Chrysler hit a huge nature built pothole in the middle of the Arizona desert. My sister and I both looked with horror at the arm and head that I held in my hands. The rest of Barbie/Katie was now entombed somewhere underneath the front driver’s seat. Tears flooded my sister’s eyes and quietly trickled down her cheeks. I tried to explain that I had not meant to hurt Barbie/Katie and that it was an accident. I expected her to raise the alarm to my parents that all was not well in the land of the backseat. But she didn’t. She was biding her time.

My guilt soon faded as I picked up my book and began to read. The afternoon heat and the sound of the tires on the highway began to lull me to sleep and I lay my head down on the armrest. I awoke with the distinct feeling that I was on fire. It was actually more than a feeling that I was on fire, I was on fire. My parent’s car had lap belts in the backseat which almost without exception car owners stuffed in the crack between the bottom and back seat cushions. As best as I could reconstruct, my sister retrieved the seat belt from the crack. She might have been searching for something to strangle me with when she discovered that when the metal part of the seat belt buckle is left in the back deck of the car in the blazing desert summer sun it becomes something very much like a branding iron.

The scream which issued from my mouth was of such monumental proportions that it is shocking that my mother who was driving at the time did not veer into oncoming traffic. She did however, pull over and both my parents turned around in their seats to face my sister and me. My father’s gaze met mine and he said “For God’s sake, will you leave her alone.” Much to my dismay, he thought that my sister had been the one who screamed. “What is wrong with the two of you?” I began to explain that I was the injured party, but I stopped. I stopped dead in my tracks. I saw my sister and while her face wore a penitent expression, her eyes were gleaming with victory. They were gleaming with victory, because in her little hand, hidden so that only I could see, was the head of Barbie/Katie. I knew that she had me cold. If I told, she would immediately display the head to my parents and my unintentional cruelty would be unmasked. I can not say that the drama that unfolded was the way that she had planned it to happen. Such strategy is seemingly beyond a six year old.

My father again repeated his question, “What in the world is wrong with the two of you? It is ruining the trip for everyone. Why do both of you do this?” My dear sister, in the honesty that only a child can speak replied, “Because we are bored.”

My father wisely ignored her response. “From now on, there is an invisible wall between you, like in Star Wars; it runs down the center of the armrest. There will be no hands, feet or other body parts or objects that can cross that wall. You will not speak to each other. You will not look at each other. You will stay on your side for the remainder of the trip.” And we did. We could have played peacefully all of the wonderful car games that children used to play. I could have read to my sister. But we chose not too and we were poorer for it.

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14 For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.

Although Christ has removed the walls between the people of God are we truly comfortable without them? We constantly work to rebuild the barriers by our actions and our inaction. Fences do, after all make good neighbors. With the security of a fence following the borders of our yard we don’t have to worry about a messy intrusion of outsiders with their strange ideas and ways. We can sleep, work and play in safety. Our children will be safe. Our homes won’t be robbed, and we will be happy. We build these fences gleefully at worst and at best we stand aside and allow the construction materials to pass by us freely. We even have a neighborly fence being built about two hundred mile south of here. While it is tempting to speak of actual physical barriers such as the fence which separates the United States from Mexico or Israel from Palestine, the passage in Ephesians is not about a physical wall. It is about the hostility which separates the Church.

Today in the Episcopal Church we act in much the same way as my sister and I did as we crossed the desert with my parents so long ago.

As we sit here today in a safe place. We are sheltered in seminary if only briefly from the controversies swirling within our Church today. That is as it should be. If we were not buffered somewhat, our formation and education would suffer and we too, would become ensnared in factional disputes that threaten the existence of the Episcopal Church as we know it. Our safe position above the fray gives us a unique perspective, but our safety comes at a price. From our position we can look out over the landscape of the Church and survey the changes taking place we can see the invisible walls which are being built that separate brothers and sisters. These walls are being constructed in and around our diocese while we are absent. The walls are being built and the battlements are being armed for warfare.

The battles cries have begun to sound…..from both sides we hear “I HAVE NO NEED OF YOU” screamed in strident voices shaking with anger, and as the sound reaches its fever pitch a lull in the screaming begins and we can faintly hear the echoes reverberating on the newly erected battlements…… “Crucify Him, Crucify Him……”

In the first semester of my junior year after a particularly heated discussion in theology, as the class began to disperse one of my class mates, Chris Miller turned to me and asked, “Why didn’t you say anything? I know that you have definite opinions.”

“I didn’t feel comfortable.” I replied.

Chris then looked at me square in the eye and said, “There is something wrong in this Church when I feel like I can say what I want to and you don’t feel comfortable. When you don’t join in a debate because you don’t feel comfortable, you not only dishonor yourself, but you dishonor God who brought you here.” Chris and I are very different. That might not come as a surprise to those of you who know us both. That one statement from my friend, Chris, changed me. It changed me because he was right. It changed me because it was said in genuine love and concern.

Those of us who are here today as students will eventually leave this place. Without regard to our individual discernment, none of us were called by God to be perpetual seminarians. We are called by God to proclaim His love to his people and to the World. When we return to our individual diocese, or wherever our ministries may lie, will we return and allow ourselves to be pounded into the mold from which we were formed or will we refuse? Will we carry the bricks and mortar for those who are now and have been erecting the barriers within our church or will we try to remember the way we were here.

If we have enmity between us, between ourselves and our brothers and sisters in Christ, we are bound by the shear audacity of our Baptism to move nearer to them rather than push them away. I want to make perfectly clear that I do not mean that we should not debate the issues which affect our Church. I am not saying that because we are one in Christ that the current issues in the Church are insignificant, because they are not. What I am saying is that for any human to claim definitively that they know the will of God is to recreate the sin of the original fall … it is to reach up in full knowledge and grasp the fruit that is not ours to eat.

How can we do the work of God and not become entrapped in the virulent politics that surround us? The answer is simple: We opt out. We opt out of the rhetoric. We decline to participate. We listen instead of anticipating our reply. We listen to the prayers that we say. We reach out to those whom we have hurt. We love each other with the radical love that Christ shows for us. We remember who we are and who we are supposed to be.

Thomas Merton writes in Seven Storey Mountain:

Whoever you are, the land to which God has brought you is not like the land of Egypt from which you came out. You can no longer live here as you lived there. Your old life and your former ways are crucified now, and you must not seek to live anymore for your own gratification, but give up your own judgment into the hands of a wise director, and sacrifice your pleasures and comforts for the love of God …” Thomas Merton, Seven Storey Mountain p. 254