Sermon

St. Philip's Episcopal Church, Durham, NC

4/23/06 - 2 Easter

The Rev. Harriette H. Sturges

Golden Gate, Gates of Hell, Pearly Gates, Gateway Arches and cities, Bill Gates, gates are all over the place and with each is an image.  If I mention a gate here at St. Philip's, most of us would imagine the gates to our courtyard or side door.  Garden gate should bring up another memory.  A nursery gate another. Death is often described as the gate into eternal life. I want us to muse about the gates in our lives, our culture, our literature, the Bible, both literal gates and symbolic ones.

Gates open and close, decorate, protect, exclude, mark boundaries. Our portion of Psalm 18 this morning begins with the request, "Open for me the gates of righteousness."  Immediately my imagination hits a blank wall. How would I draw the gates of righteousness?  Would they have to be abstract?  What colors would they be?  This gate is shut and must be opened by someone else.

Pilgrims in procession on their way to Jerusalem would call out for the gates to be opened for them.  Our commentary on the psalms says the gates could be the following:

• The gates in a city wall where the judges traditionally sat, where people would come with grievances, and justice would be dispensed.

• The gates of a city where righteous people dwell.

• The gates of victory where the victors, those blessed by God, would enter.

One would shout and ask that the gates be opened so that one could enter and give thanks to God in God's city, in God's Temple.

Our task during the Easter season is to open these gates with praise and thanksgiving so that when we are empowered at Pentecost we can go forth from the gates of  the city into the world.  Praise and thanksgiving are prayers and I find for most of us thanksgiving is easier than praise.  Our prayer book doesn't really define praise except to say it is a form of prayer.  It does say, however, that we are to praise God, not to obtain anything, but because God's being draws praise from us. I recommend reading and praying the psalms for help and an example of how to praise. Our new post-Easter relationship should elicit praise from us.

Fortunately, there are gatekeepers who agree to open the gates.  Who point out. "This is the Gate of the Lord,"  the one you want, the one that God would use, that will lead to the Temple, the dwelling place of God.

We have ended out Lenten pilgrimages and through the death and resurrection of Jesus have had the gate of eternal life opened to us.  Now what?  Are there other gates to go through?

I don't know how many of you suffer from the Post-Easter Syndrome.  It has many symptoms.  For one thing we call the Sunday after Easter, Low Sunday.  The scholars say this name probably came about because after the high level of liturgical observances on Easter, all the flowers, extra instruments, smells and bells, this Sunday is subdued or seems lower liturgically.  However, the name has become popularized by the observance that usually the Sunday after Easter has a lower attendance.   Congregations who have gone from Palm Sunday to Mauday Thursday services and vigil, Good Friday Stations of the Cross and observances, The Great Vigil of Easter, and Sunday morning services and brunch and all the family obligations sleep in the next week. The choir is sung out; most of us are wrung out. Lenten practices and all the range of emotions from the Hosanas of Palm Sunday to the shouts of crucify him and then the grief and utter shock are exhausting.  We may feel empty, drained and this is a good thing. 

When we are empty, we can be filled anew.  Lent is the emptying. Easter is both the re-filling and the stretching of muscles for the power of Pentecost. Resurrection isn't the end, only the beginning, the still point where we gather strength to move to another place, to go through the gate that has been opened for us.

We observe this phenomenon of stillness before growth or change in creation and the development of human beings.  The cocoon of the caterpillar seems dead before the butterfly emerges.  The stillness of the night before the breaking of the dawn.  The baby drops into place and is quieter before labor begins. But this emptiness, stillness, resting place, tomb isn't a regression, a relief only from activity, an invitation to going back to life as usual, the same patterns of understanding and living we had before.  Instead it is a time of refreshment, of revelation, of realignment.

Life is not the same.  Once again or for the first time, we have experienced Easter, the death and resurrection of our Lord bringing us into a new relationship.  And this is where the gate comes in. Our Easter work is to find and recognize our gate into new life, the new life of now.  Jesus calls himself the gate in the familiar passage of the Good Shepherd.  He is sacrificial lamb, shepherd and gate to new pasture, new ministry, new life.

Gates are not always obvious, are not always well-oiled. The hinges can be rusty from disuse or abuse.  They may be hidden in a wall or covered with ivy. Our passages are not all the same.  Peter, true to form, bursts out of the gate of the locked room like a race horse leaving the starting gate.  He runs out into the streets, enthusiastically babbling about what has happened and what should happen.  The pilgrims go in prayerful and orderly procession and call out for the gates to open.  First John gives us the image of the gate of obedience, the freedom from burdens and the victory of faith.  Jesus appears to the disciples through locked doors and opens for them the gates of peace, power, and forgiveness.  For Thomas, the gateway is through his doubts. When I was in Panama, I felt a gate opening in my life. A gate into a place where God seemed very active and present and working and where I wanted to go. Your particular gate may not be described today but John has written these so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name. Do not be afraid. "On this day the Lord has acted; we will rejoice and be glad in it. "

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