The World Is Beautiful
A Sermon by the Reverend Mother Crystal J. Hardin on The Seventh Sunday of Easter (A), May 21, 2023, Youth Sunday.
Acts 1:6-14; 1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11; John 17:1-11
This is the last Sunday in the Easter Season. We have come to that point in the Book of Acts where our Lord is lifted up and out of sight, leaving the apostles standing, necks craned back, and eyes trained on the heavens. We have come to that point in First Peter where final words are offered. And, we have come to that point in Saint John’s Gospel where Jesus, speaking to the Father, reflects, that the hour has come.
Next Sunday is Pentecost, a new liturgical season, and yet we remain aware that something significant is happening now –a changing landscape, tender farewells, and a sense of the unknown waiting for us right around the corner.
We are also at that point together, as a society and as a parish community, where our lives reflect the patterns of our lectionary and our liturgical calendar. Spring is still springing, but summer quickly approaches. Baby birds are leaving their nests. School is wrapping up. Graduations are celebrated. And here, within our parish community, we mark the last Sunday of Sunday school, celebrate our high school graduates, and approach the end of our program year.
Unlike other notable Spring happenings, like graduations, the Feast of the Ascension of Our Lord can often pass without much notice since it falls on a Thursday. In fact, it just happened.
For forty days after his resurrection, Jesus continued to teach his disciples and carried on his work here on earth. And then, one day, he was done, and he returned to the Father.
Jesus leaves his disciples to continue his work, to embody and proclaim the Gospel without Jesus in the flesh. They have been guided and they have been taught. Now, the disciples are apostles. They must guide. They must teach. In the words of Dr. Suess, “Today is their day, they are off and away.”
But, for a minute, they weren’t. They just stood there, looking up into the heavens, frozen.
Maybe it’s the parent in me that imagines they were gripped by that certain kind of panic that comes with feeling alone and out of your depth. Like when it’s time to leave the hospital with your new baby, this precious thing, and you realize that you’re on your own now. I remember thinking, “What am I supposed to do with this thing?”
Or maybe like when it’s time to drop that same new baby off at college, and you are left wondering how all this happened so fast and what even are you meant to do now, just drive away, and live your life?
It doesn’t take being a parent, of course, to know this feeling of being completely out of your depth, unfamiliar with life’s landscape and yet called to move forward anyway. I imagine that many people have felt this kind of panic. So, we can sympathize with the apostles at this moment. Their lives have changed. The world as they once knew it has ended. And yet, we know that an end is nothing more than a new beginning, particularly for those who follow the Risen Lord.
As some of you know, I am an avid reader of commencement addresses. I guess I’m curious as to what people want and need to hear at these times in their lives. Commencement ceremonies are, of course, the culmination of a journey. And yet, commencement literally means, “to begin.” Good commencement addresses speak into this robust middle space –looking back and honoring an accomplishment, while also offering forward-looking advice and words of wisdom.
The best of them seem to grasp that these transitional moments require speaking the truth – speaking to what is and what will always be. They remind us of who we are and who we can be; what the world can be with us in it. These, truly, bless us. They don’t hesitate to speak of what may befall us. They don’t ring of platitudes. They don’t promise us fame, or fortune, or other trappings of worldly success. Instead, they gather the human experience into their hands and bestow upon it a blessing.
Margaret Renkl, an author of the Southern persuasion and a fellow Alabamian, recently delivered such an address at the University of the South, which was adapted and shared as an essay in the New York Times this week.
She begins by speaking of her own graduation and her attempts to skip it, which her grandmother, a retired schoolteacher, refused to allow. She writes:
What my grandmother knew, and I did not, is that it’s right to celebrate a hard-won achievement. It’s right to drink in the pride of family and friends. It is always right to give yourself over to joy every single time joy is on offer.
[Renkl continues] It is also right in this liminal moment, this time of looking both before and beyond, to ponder what it all means. What did the year of study and camaraderie really add up to? What new challenges will you be obliged to face in the years to come?
I can’t tell you what it all meant, [she goes on] but I think I understand some of the difficulties that lie ahead [1].
She then acknowledges the various ills that plague us and, frankly, that we ourselves perpetuate –climate change, the isolating impact of social media, political polarization, attacks on civil rights, economic instability, gun violence, and the like. Things that we’d love to shield our children from, and yet things that our children must face head-on. Things that are, unfortunately, the legacy left to them by former generations, mine included.
Renkl writes:
I wouldn’t blame you if you’re wondering how somebody of my generation, which wrecked so much that is precious, could dare to offer you advice. My only response is that age has exactly one advantage over the energy and brilliance of youth: Age teaches a person how to survive despair.
The years have shown me that hardship is only one part of life, not remotely the largest part. Hardship always lives side by side with happiness. Pain always finds its fullest partner in joy. Love takes many forms, some of them surprising, and people are almost always kinder than we expect. The world is beautiful. And most people are good [2].
Her words are not just for graduates of course, but for us all. Because we are always presented with the chance to begin again; to shed our skin, to go a new way, or to re-commit to our present path. And what we choose, or do not choose, has everything to do with how we move through the trials and tribulations of this life.
Last week I preached on hope. How do we claim a certain hope, defend a sure hope, when things are so very wrong in the world? The answer has a lot to do with perspective, sure. We can look at things with more optimism, put on rosier glasses. Or we can look the world straight in the eye, see rightly all the beauty and all the ugliness, so that we might claim what is good and fall in love with it, while rejecting what is not. And, because we have fallen in love with what is good, we can then work with our whole hearts to make change where it is needed –knowing always that our Lord, Jesus Christ, goes ahead of us. And that where he goes, redemption follows.
The world is beautiful. Most people are good.
Remembering this is not only an antidote to despair, but also fuel for the journey. Very little comes from despair; everything comes from good people, in love with the world, banding together to create change where change is needed and to preserve beauty where it should be preserved [3].
Jesus, in his last act before his ascension and with his last words on the eve of his passion, bestowed a blessing and said a prayer. It was, if you will, the culmination of his commencement speech.
You have everything you need in this moment, he seems to say. And what you don’t have but will need in the future will be provided. You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, he promises. So, keep your eyes open. Keep your heads up. Keep your hearts faithful. And don’t be fooled into thinking you are any less than this: my beloved.
That’s the thing to remember, isn’t it? That’s worth a bit of a pause. That’s where, as Christians, our own commencement must always begin and end and begin again.
Beloved child of God, this is the only grace I know to be true, a grace that cannot be taken from us: that we, each and every one of us, sit in the very palm of God, born for a time such as this.
We can accomplish much or little by this world’s standards. We can graduate or not from reputable institutions. We may be loved or rejected by friends and family. But we are, now and forevermore, God’s own.
The world is beautiful. Most people are good.
On this the last Sunday of Easter, the Sunday between the Ascension of our Lord and Pentecost, let us pause and make room for the Holy Spirit, taking stock of who we are, and whose we are, before we begin again.
Amen.
[1 -3] Margaret Renal, “Graduates, My Generation Wrecked So Much That’s Precious. How Can I Offer You Advice?,” New York Times, 15 May 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/15/opinion/letter-to-graduates-hope-despair.html?searchResultPosition=1.