The Easter transformation

Sermon preached on April 7, 2013 at St. David’s Episcopal Church, Washington, DC

Second Sunday of Easter: Acts 5:27-32, Psalm 118:14-29, Revelation 1:4-8, John 20:19-31

Today is one of few Sundays in the Church year when, despite our three year cycle of readings, we have exactly the same gospel reading every year: the one about Thomas and his doubts. And in what is, I’m certain, a complete coincidence, I preached on this Sunday last year. So, if I have the same gospel, can I preach the same sermon? Well I won’t, because even if I were to take the same text we are different, we have changed and so we would need a different message. Anyway, as the other readings did change I have some other options …. So instead I will focus on the Psalm and on the Psalms generally. 

During my Clinical Pastoral Education training last year, my time as a hospital chaplain, patients would often ask me for spiritual advice. What part of the Bible could they read or what could they say in prayer when they were worried or fearful or angry or doubtful and just couldn’t find any words of their own. Was it all right to be worried, or even be angry with God? Yes it was I said and I often pointed to the Psalms as the ideal resource and source for readings and prayers. They show that God’s people have always struggled with these issues and that doubt, anger, and fear are perfectly acceptable emotions for the faithful. The Psalms really do contain prayers for all occasions and circumstances.

Let’s take a moment and look at a couple of them together. So pick up your prayer books please and turn first to:

-        Page 600 and Psalm 17 for a prayer for help in time of trouble: “Hear my plea of innocence, O Lord; give heed to my cry; listen to my prayer…” (17:1)

-        Page 610 and Psalm 22 for a prayer for and from someone in great doubt and fear: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me and are so far from my cry and from the words of my distress?” (22:1)  In Mark’s Gospel Jesus’ last words on the cross  (Mark 15:34)

-        Page 656 and Psalm 51 for a prayer for forgiveness: “Have mercy on me O God, according to your loving kindness; in your great compassion blot out my offenses.” (51:1) and

-        Page 675 and Psalm 67 for a prayer of praise “Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you.”  (67:3) There are many more – you have 150 Psalms to choose from!

Our Anglican worship would be very impoverished without the Psalms: not only are they read or sung at most services; they are also the source of many of our responses, collects and prayers, and hymns and songs. We will sing one based on today’s Psalm at the later services. Morning and Evening Prayer would be very short services without them and we would notice their absence at the Eucharist too. And Jesus, Paul, and other New Testament authors used them extensively in their teaching and preaching, often applying them to events in Jesus’ life and ministry. 

Is it all right for us to ‘appropriate’ the Hebrew Psalms in Christian Scripture, worship, prayer, and in our theology? Of course it is: we worship the same God as the Jews who wrote these songs and prayers. It’s only our understanding of God has changed, as has that of contemporary Judaism. And the disciples and all the earliest Christians were Jews so it was natural for them to use the Psalms and to pass them on to us, they are part of the common heritage of faith we share today with our Jewish sisters and brothers.

Let’s look now more closely at Psalm 118, a section of which is the Psalm appointed for today. This Psalm plays a prominent role in the New Testament and in our worship. The verses (25-27) that we read this morning should ring a bell: “Hosanna, Lord, hosanna …. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord …. Form a procession with branches up to the horns of the altar.” That is what the crowds do, and say, when Jesus enters Jerusalem in seeming triumph on Palm Sunday, for example in Mark (11:9-10): “Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting, ‘Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!’” Of course that triumph was only very short lived, we had to pass through Good Friday and wait for Easter Day for the final triumph of the resurrection.

Psalm 118 is a prayer of thanksgiving, a thanksgiving for the transformation of defeat into victory, a thanksgiving for a complete change of fortune as described in the verse: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.” (118:22) Jesus uses this phrase in the gospels - Mark, Matthew, and Luke - when he explains a parable and as a reference to his own ministry: “Jesus said to them, ‘Have you never read in the scriptures: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes”?” (Matthew 21:42) Peter also quotes from this Psalm in Acts (4:11): “This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders; it has become the cornerstone,” as does Paul both in his First Letter to the Corinthians (3:11) and to the Ephesians (2:20). 

Finally we find a reference to it in the First Letter of Peter (2:7).  It’s not surprising that this line gets used so much, it’s a very poetic summary of a foundational element of our Christian faith:

That God turns bad into good, defeat into victory, rejection to reinstatement, doubt into faith, and death into life.

This is the transformation of Easter. We celebrate this transformation every week in the Eucharist.  Week for week when we sing “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest” we cite this Psalm. Week for week bread and wine are transformed at the altar into the “holy food and drink of unending life in him.” Week for week we proclaim the mystery of the Paschal transformation, “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.” Week for week we come to be made whole again. Week for week we present ourselves to be transformed by eating the bread of heaven and drinking the cup of salvation, week for week we come here to allow God to strengthen us and to transform our defeats, rejection, fears, and doubts so that we can go back into the world as agents of transformation. 

In the words of the Psalmist:

This is the Lord’s doing;

It is marvelous in our eyes.

This is the day that the Lord has made;

Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Amen