Sermon: 3rd Sunday of Easter

We just want things to return to normal…
-it happened after 9/11
-it happened after the tragedy at VA Tech
-even in the midst of mourning, there is a need to return to some type of normalcy in our lives…
-the disciples experienced that after the death of Jesus, they went fishing, they returned to what they had always done, how they made a living…

Jesus shakes all that up in the resurrection…
-giving them an abundance of fish
-and they recognize him
-and again they share a meal with Jesus

Others didn’t recognize him until they had a conversion experience…
-think of Paul -> Saul, persecutor of Christians
-he did not know Jesus when he was alive.
-he only saw the threat of his followers, those who believed in Jesus.
-he was determined to stamp it out! A violent man…
-conversion on the road to Damascus…
-risen Christ who calls him.
-he is made blind, like the blindness he had to Jesus before his conversion
-Annanias: is sent, he protests, but God assures him, and he ministered to him, in Jesus name, and his sight returned, he was baptized and ate and regained his strength. He became a changed man because of his experience…

Sadly, Seung-Hui Cho, the VA Tech gunman will never have such an experience as Saul, and turn away from the violence and evil that overtook him…

But as one author put it about Saul, “The light on the road and the voice that spoke out of the light stopped Saul cold, but his transformation is taken the next step by the ministrations of Ananias as a representative of the believing community in Damascus. The insight that Saul claims in the last verse of the passage, that Jesus is the Son of God, is not a private matter between him and Jesus: "It took a community." And a man of violence is then transformed into a missionary for God..” (Mary Schertz)

And this does happen today, good is brought out of evil and people are transformed by their encounters with God, even in prison…

James Tramel was 17 years old in 1985 and was part of a so-called thrill killing of a homeless man in SF. He was sentenced to 15 years to life for second-degree murder, even though he did not actually commit the murder. During his years in prison, Tramel would earn an undergraduate business degree in prison before applying in 1997 to study for a master's degree in theology from the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley…

I remember his application coming into the registrar’s office, as I was helping there before graduation from CDSP. He was ordained while in prison, having finished his studies and he has shown deep remorse and proved his faith and was paroled last year… One person couldn’t imagine a clergyman who had a role in committing murder, "I cannot imagine any church having him," she said. "As Christians, we have to welcome him, but I can't see him in a leadership role."
And yet, Jesus is not done with him or any of us yet, and like Paul being transformed from his violent self into a man of God, James Trammel has likewise been transformed from his old self, touched by God in prison, reformed his life into a priest and now is preaching the Good News, of one who was saved by the grace of God…one who was lost but now is found, was blind but now sees…

And on this earth day, as we consider God’s creation and our part in it, I am reminded that God still moves things from evil to good, from useless to useful…

A drug that was introduced in the 1950s to help pregnant women with morning sickness which was not properly tested for safety among pregnant women called Thalidomide, caused over 10,000 birth defects worldwide and the drug was shelved. But Thalidomide is back because it has been found useful in some specific treatments with a certain cancer and with a painful skin infection associated with Leprosy and is being investigated to see if it can help with certain diseases associated with AIDS.

And God brings life out of death, good out of evil and through the resurrection of Jesus, God has given to us new life… We gather, we share a meal here at communion, and our eyes are opened to see God at work about us, even in the midst of tragedy and violence, God is at work in you and me, transforming what is dead, what is evil, into what is life and what is good for us and for our neighbors…

Let us celebrate that in our midst, in our Eastertide Jesus walks with us still. That wherever we find ourselves, Jesus will be with us and he asks us to do his ministry in the world now, a world full of hurt looking for that new life. Let us pray using the words of the Collect of the Day...

O God, whose blessed Son made himself known to his disciples in the breaking of bread: Open the eyes of our faith, that we may behold him in all his redeeming work; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.