Easter 7C

The Very Rev. Melanie Dickson Lemburg The 7th Sunday of Easter-Year C June 1, 2025 Liturgically, we find ourselves in a strange, in between time today. Today is the 7th Sunday after Easter-The Sunday after the Ascension-where we find ourselves dwelling in a liturgical “already-not yet.” Jesus has already ascended to be with God, (we commemorated the feast of the ascension this past Thursday), and the gift of the Holy Spirit has not yet been given to his disciples. (That will happen for us next week on the Feast of Pentecost.) So, we’re in a sort of spiritual in-between or liminal sort of place. It’s no wonder that the collect for today seems to plead: “Do not leave us comfortless!” This week at the healing service, we talked about liminal spaces, and about how or where we have found comfort in those in between times and places and seasons. I shared that I had recently read the book How to Walk into a Room by Emily Freeman, and she uses the image of how our lives are like different rooms in a house, how we spend different seasons of life in different rooms, and sometimes we are forced out of a particular room, and sometimes we choose to walk out of our own accord. There are even liminal, in-between times when we find ourselves hanging out in the hallway of our life, in between rooms. That’s where we find ourselves today; in the liturgical hallway between Jesus’s ascension and the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. None of us is a stranger to this hanging out in the hallway. These liminal spaces are a part of our human condition. The shift from babyhood to toddler-hood, from childhood to adolescence and adolescence to adulthood. There are transitions between being engaged and getting married, from leaving one job and starting another. The transition from this life into the next is another liminal space which we will all dwell in eventually, and often accompany loved ones through. Some of us find comfort in these hallways, these transitions. These liminal spaces can give us a break, a time-out for a reset, or even be a place of safety, a refuge where we build a nest of blankets and hunker down when the tornado sirens are going off. For others, the hallway is a place of risk, where we relinquish any sense of control over our goals or our destiny, a place of waiting and watching, and of discomfort. For many of us, these hallways are the portal between life before and life after—life before the diagnosis, the loss of our spouse, the job loss, a new relationship, a new job, or the birth of a child and the life after this transition that we sometimes choose and sometimes don’t. These liminal spaces, these hallways, are opportunities for reflection on our life and our call, and they are spaces where God invites us to be open to uncertainty, the unknown, to mystery. Can you take a moment to think about when you have experienced one of these liminal spaces or stood in the hallway of your life? Was it a place of discomfort or comfort for you? What did you learn about yourself, about your life, your relationship with God? Where or how did you find comfort in the liminal space, in the hallway of your life? How did courage take shape in your life the last time you were hanging out in the hallway? The Irish priest, theologian, and poet John O’Donohue writes about these liminal spaces, these hallways that he calls thresholds in his book To Bless the Space Between Us. Here is what he writes, “ At any time you can ask yourself: At which threshold am I now standing? At this time in my life, what am I leaving? Where am I about to enter? What is preventing me from crossing my next threshold? What gift would enable me to do it? A threshold is not a simple boundary; it is a frontier that divides two different territories, rhythms and atmospheres. Indeed, it is a lovely testimony to the fullness and integrity of an experience or a stage of life that it intensifies toward the end into a real frontier that cannot be crossed without the heart being passionately engaged and woken up. At this threshold a great complexity of emotions comes alive: confusion, fear, excitement, sadness, hope. This is one of the reasons such vital crossings were always clothed in ritual. It is wise in your own life to be able to recognize and acknowledge the key thresholds; to take your time; to feel all the varieties of presence that accrue there; to listen inward with complete attention until you hear the inner voice calling you forward. The time has come to cross.” i In our gospel reading for today, we get a glimpse of Jesus’s farewell discourse to his disciples from John’s gospel, where he is trying to impart to them the truths he wants to leave with them. He invites them to stay grounded in God’s love and to stay connected with each other, even as things are about to change dramatically. In her reflection on the feast of the Asension, the pastor, poet, and artist Jan Richardson had this to say about how Jesus takes leave us his disciples and how he encourages them to dwell in the liminal space for a time. She writes, “Before he is gone from the physical presence of his beloved followers and friends—precisely while he is leaving them, in fact—Jesus offers them a blessing. It’s this moment that really knocks me out. Jesus is not trying to put a silver lining on his leaving. He is not giving them a blessing as a consolation prize for having come through these wild years with him, only to see him leave—though consolation is surely part of his intent. Instead, with the blessing that he gives them in the very moment of his leaving, Jesus is acknowledging that the substance of grief is also the substance of love. They are made of the same stuff, and if we can be present to this—if we can stay with both the grief and the love that lives at the heart of it, the love will become more and more clear, and more clarifying, and it will, in time, show us the way to go.” In conclusion, I’ll offer you Richardson’s blessing that accompanies her reflection. It is titled STAY I know how your mind rushes ahead, trying to fathom what could follow this. What will you do, where will you go, how will you live? You will want to outrun the grief. You will want to keep turning toward the horizon, watching for what was lost to come back, to return to you and never leave again. For now, hear me when I say all you need to do is to still yourself, is to turn toward one another, is to stay. Wait and see what comes to fill the gaping hole in your chest. Wait with your hands open to receive what could never come except to what is empty and hollow. You cannot know it now, cannot even imagine what lies ahead, but I tell you the day is coming when breath will fill your lungs as it never has before, and with your own ears you will hear words coming to you new and startling. You will dream dreams and you will see the world ablaze with blessing. Wait for it. Still yourself. Stay. ii i. O’Donohue, John. To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings. Doubleday: New York, 2008, p48-49. ii. Jan Richardson from The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief

Easter 5C

The Very Rev Melanie Dickson Lemburg The Fifth Sunday of Easter-Year C May 18, 2025 How many times in our lives have we said, “I just can’t wait to be home!” We say it when we are away on trips of various sizes. We say it when we have a stay in the hospital. We say it sometimes even mid-way through a long day at work. Even in the midst of adventures, this longing for home may steal upon us. I’ve talked to a number of different people this week about what makes a place home for them. Home seems to indicate a place of familiarity, of comfort, of peace, of refuge. It’s a place where we feel like we belong in our truest selves, and it is often a safe place where we can mourn. Many folks associate home with family and friends, and for some, home encompasses a multitude of generations who figure out how to get along in ways that sometimes stretch us. I wonder what makes a place home for you? When you say “I just can’t wait to be home!” for what are you longing or looking for? In our reading from Revelation for today, we’ve got the very end of the book of Revelation. Now, we’ve had readings from Revelation for the last four Sundays and surprisingly, none of our preachers have chosen to engage them, myself included!. So, here’s a bit of context on Revelation from the scholar Diana Butler Bass. She writes, “We often forget that the Revelation of John is exactly what it claims: a revelation, a vision. It isn’t predictive, it isn’t fortune telling, and it certainly isn’t writing the future. Above all, it isn’t literal. Like all visions, it reveals truth of things through symbols, poetry, visual and auditory suggestions, and dream sequences. The writer wasn’t a soothsayer. The author was certainly intuitive. And by the text’s own admission, the writer was a contemplative visionary. This person heard voices, paid attention to dreams, and prayed through images. And then, whoever this was wrote down what had been seen. Sort of like an ancient dream journal. A record of visionary experiences…” She continues, “Revelation was written many years after Jesus’ execution. Most scholars, even conservative ones, think it was composed some six or seven decades later. The popular predictive interpretation of the end times isn’t accepted by serious academics, even if it is the familiar view held by casual Bible readers and fundamentalist Christians. [Instead] modern interpreters have emphasized that Revelation was a message of comfort to a persecuted church. Some suggest that it emerged in the midst of internal Christian conflict, others think it was a warning aimed at Christians who had become collaborators with the Roman Empire. She concludes, “Catholic biblical scholar Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza insisted that Revelation be read ‘from the margins’ and is best understood as a kind of Christian version of the Jewish story of the Exodus. As such, the book stands in the tradition of scriptural liberation, reveals the struggle of early believers with Rome, and proposes a hoped for future of justice for all.” i Our reading for today gives us a glimpse into this vision, this dream for God’s church in the midst of conflict or persecution or collaboration with Empire. In the vision, God is making God’s home among mortals, and it is clear that in that home, we all belong together with God. And the main thing that this passage shows us that God does in making God’s home among mortals is to offer comfort for those who mourn, to take away all sadness and suffering. And in that home together with us, God makes all things new. It’s a compelling image of God, if we really think about it; That God chooses to not only make God’s home with us but also, that one of the ways that God makes home is by comforting those who mourn and by even removing the sources of that grief or mourning. Perhaps that is why this passage is one of the suggested passages for our Burial liturgy—to remind us of this image, this promise of God. And I can’t help wonder what this means for us as the Church? If we the church are the body of Christ, God’s way of making home among mortals, how are we called to further this work of God? How are we called to create a space of home or belonging for others, both inside our walls and outside? How are we called to care for those who mourn, both inside our walls and outside? How are we called to make things new in partnership with God? Because it’s not enough to create a space where we and others feel comfortable. There’s an aspect of home that nourishes us, cares for us, even as we get called outward to make our way in the world. Poet David Whyte captures this tension beautifully in a portion of his poem WHAT I MUST TELL MYSELF. I’ll share it with you in closing, and invite you to consider this week, how we are called to make home for others. WHAT I MUST TELL MYSELF I know this house so well, and this horizon, and this world I have made. from my thoughts. I know this quiet and the particular treasures and terrors of my own silence but I do not know the world to which I am going. I have only this breath and this presence for my wings and they carry me in my body whatever I do from one hushed moment to another. I know my innocence and I know my unknowing but for all my successes I go through life like a blind child who cannot see, arms outstretched trying to put together a world. And the world seems to work on my behalf catching me in its arms when I go too far. I don’t know what I could have done to have earned such faith. Watching the geese go south I find that even in silence and even in stillness and even in my home alone without a thought or a movement I am forever part of a great migration that will take me to another place. And though all the things I love may pass away and all the great family of things and people I have made around me will see me go, I feel they will always live in me like a great gathering ready to reach a greater home. When one thing dies all things die together, and must learn to live again in a different way, when one thing is missing everything is missing, and must be found again in a new whole and everything wants to be complete, everything wants to go home and the geese traveling south are like the shadow of my breath flying into darkness on great heart-beats to an unknown land where I belong. This morning they have found me, full of faith, like a blind child, nestled in their feathers, following the great coast to a home I cannot see. ii i. From Diana Butler Bass’s Substack page The Cottage. Sunday Musings for Easter 4C-The prophetic shepherd. https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/sunday-musings-a22?utm_source=substack&publication_id=47400&post_id=162973184&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&utm_campaign=email-share&triggerShare=true&isFreemail=true&r=l4l89&triedRedirect=true ii.From WHAT I MUST TELL MYSELF In The House of Belonging © David Whyte and Many Rivers Press. Share on David Whyte’s Facebook page on May 7, 2020.

Easter 3C_with 3A's gospel

The Very Rev Melanie Dickson Lemburg Easter 3C_2025 (with 3A’s gospel) May 4, 2025 Based on Luke 24:13-35 There are four words from the story of the Road to Emmaus that echo in my life from time to time. Is it the same for you? Do you hear them, too? “But we had hoped…” The two travelers encounter the stranger on the road after a harrowing time. And the weight of their disappointment is conveyed in those four simple words: “But we had hoped..” Luke tells us that this disappointment-sadness-anger-regret stops them in their tracks in the middle of the road on their journey somewhere else, as if they can outrun or escape it. In that moment, Hope stands resurrected, manifest, right in front of them. But their disappointment-sadness-anger-regret blinds them so they cannot see him, cannot recognize him. How many times have I, too, been blinded by my own disappointment-sadness-anger-regret? But we had hoped… That things would turn out differently. But we had hoped… That they would finally hear us. But we had hoped… That the healing would come, the relationship be reconciled. But we had hoped.. That new life, resurrection would conform to our expectations. How many times have I been blinded by my disappointment-anger-sadness-regret when Hope, himself, stands right in front of me, gazing upon me with the look of Love? If there is nothing else we remember this Easter-tide, it is the good news that Our Lord of all Hopefulness does not leave us standing still on the road to Emmaus, blinded by our own disappointment-anger-sadness-regret. He journeys with us, coaxing us, inviting us onward down the road, accompanying us on the journey, always teaching, even when our ears don’t fully hear, even when our hearts don’t fully recognize. And on that road, Hope slowly steals past our blinding disappointment-anger-sadness-regret, and lightens and softens our vision, our hearts, until gradually-all at once, we see the Resurrected Lord, Hope Incarnate, breaking the bread there in our midst: in the face of the weary one kneeling at the altar rail, in one in the hospital bed, in the person at the table across from us, the one in line ahead of us, in the stranger asking for help or offering a word of encouragement. In those glorious moments, we know that Hope has never failed us. Disappointment-anger-sadness-regret cannot blind us forever. And we can see Love everywhere we look: on the road beside us, at the table across from us, and especially, going before us, smoothing the path that we may follow. But we had hoped… It is both an ending and a new beginning. Because Hope never leaves us stuck in disappointment-anger-sadness-regret.