Fourth Sunday of Easter
April 26, 2015
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
Christ is risen, indeed! Alleluia!
When I was a teenager I took private viola lessons from a local teacher. On one visit I noticed that she had hung a new sign in her music studio. I don’t ever remember her mentioning it or referencing it, but I can still see it hanging there, more or less in my line of sight every time I looked up from my music stand. It read: “Practice doesn’t make perfect. Practice makes permanent.”
True confession: I hated that sign. I hated that sign because even though I was there of my own choosing I didn’t always love to practice. Mostly because I knew the sign was right – I wasn’t always practicing well ingraining some bad habits I never did fully break. And partly because it reminded me that I didn’t always get it right.
And it seems to me there’s no better time than Easter for the church to be practicing. Resurrection is brand new to the early disciples and in a way new to us every time we come around again to the Easter season. When we focus on resurrection again, we come to it with a whole new year’s worth of experiences. We come having walked through the valley of the shadow of death, having sat at the table in the presence of our enemies, having thirsted and hungered for still waters and green pastures. We need to practice resurrection again together, not to perfect it, but to make its reality stick with us.
Today, the fourth Sunday of Easter we always practice the 23rd psalm paired with a portion of the “I am the good shepherd…” discourse from John. I often come to this particular Sunday tired of the clichés that accompany our religious sheep and shepherd art and storytelling. I come to it reluctant to practice the power of these words. Often when it comes up in worship on the regular lectionary cycle, it lacks for me the same power that it seems to have in the dark moments – when we read that psalm together at funerals or beside the bed of those who are sick and with those who are dying. It may call those moments to mind, but it rarely carries the same power in the moment for me. But we come back around faithfully every year because we need to practice it.
I carried the 23rd psalm around on a card in my wallet as a teenager because someone gave it to me and someone told me I should memorize it. I always liked it but it took a few years before there was a point when I really deeply needed its power. By then it was there, permanently.
We need to practice the words that will bring us some measure of comfort in our darkest moments. We need to practice together being lead, even forced, to eat and drink in the green pastures and quiet waters. We need to practice being anointed with oil, feasting at the table in front of our enemies. We need to practice joining together as one flock under one shepherd with people we may not always want to be joined together with.
We need to practice because someday we’re going to need it. Maybe it will be this week and maybe it won’t. Maybe it will be this year or next. Maybe it won’t come for a long time. But what we do today is practice for the moments when death comes knocking, the moments when despair and sadness overwhelm, the moments when we simply cannot take another step.
Every Sunday we practice forgiveness because sooner or later we are going to have to face a really difficult hurt that requires deeper forgiveness. We practice our singing because there will be a time when we need the songs of the church to carry us through or to ring out for justice. We practice the creed so that when moments of doubt come the words permanently engrained in us carry us through. We practice prayer because we need it now, but also because we know there will come a point of stress or anxiety or fear when we will need it even more. We practice sharing the peace because there will come a moment when sharing the peace with others in the congregation or in the world will be more difficult because of divisions. We practice generosity because we need that generosity to live freely in the world. We practice eating together because we need a model for giving thanks and sitting down to table with a diverse body of people. And we practice going out again to the world because over and over again we have to make new beginnings as we serve God and neighbor.
And there are all kinds of other ways that we practice as the church. We practice community together in the parish hall. We practice describing our faith in adult forum so that we are more attuned to it in daily life. Lutheran Disaster Response practices so that when an earthquake devastates Nepal, they are on the ground the same day helping the local communities put themselves back together.
And in this context, that sign that hung on the wall in my teacher’s music studio takes on a wholly different connotation. Practice doesn’t make perfect. It does not solve all the problems. It does not mean that when the next piece of music comes we don’t stumble around to find our place in it. It doesn’t mean that the church after centuries of practice is in any way, shape, or form perfect. It does mean that we ingrain in ourselves the stories and rituals that lead us to God’s permanent and enduring love and mercy.
We practice because God comes to join us in the practicing, not so much that we might be perfect, but that by practicing in human skin and with human frailty God might make permanent God’s presence among us. We practice not because we’ll get it right in the end, but because God already has. So with old, trusted language and with new words that emerge from our modern lives, let us join together this Easter season in practicing resurrection until it becomes our way of life, until God shapes us into the permanent Easter people we were made to be.
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
Christ is risen, indeed! Alleluia!
-Pastor Steven Wilco
Stewarding the Word 