Easter 6B, May 6, 2018
Acts 10:44-48, Psalm 98
1 John 5:1-6, John 15:9-17
St. Thomas the Apostle
The Rev’d Joy A. Daley
They were as different as people could be, different in color, age, class. The fact that they found themselves in the same location was about the only real similarity and they even got there for different reasons. Red truly was a paying for a crime he had committed and Andy had been framed for a murder he didn’t commit. Red had already been there a while and was much older than Andy who was a successful banker before he came to Shawshank Prison. Somehow these two men became friends. Now we know that there are many kinds and levels of friendship. There’s the kind that is based on doing things together common interest that might be casual with no real responsibility or expectations. Some friendships start off that way and go no further really but in some cases that’s just the beginning the entry point that over time grows into something deeper the connection grows and as people learn from each other there is a mutual expectation and responsibility. Friendship gives a sense of hope for the future that might not be nurtured otherwise. This is what happened for these two men in prison over a period of years in the story of the Shawshank Redemption. Red shows Andy the way things are and how to survive in his new living space which is way more like hell than a home. Red tells Andy. “They send you here for life and that’s exactly what they take.” The crooked warden and those who worked for him did try their darndest to take that life from Andy as it was taken from so many others but they never succeeded because Andy was so stubbornly hopeful, first finding ways to survive the environment as best he could and then eventually finding a way toward physical freedom. Perhaps, though, his greatest achievement was giving the gift of hope to his friend Red. Red had been in prison so long and seen so many bad things that for him hope was just a pipe dream, a delusion, a refusal to accept reality. But Andy shows him a different way, sacrificing himself to provide for his friends, once gladly accepting two weeks of solitary confinement for broadcasting opera over the prison loudspeakers. By dying to himself, Andy shows Red what it means to have an interior freedom that brings hope alive. Sometimes a familiar, predictable routine, the way things are – knowing what to expect, can seem more valuable than freedom and hope which involve risk and courage. In fact, at Shawshank many of the prisoners were so institutionalized that they dreaded freedom because it meant they would be empty and alone. One man who was paroled actually killed himself because when he was paroled he had no friends and did not know how to order his life. Freedom and doing things in a different way involves risk. Living hopefully we must as a line in the movie says “Get busy living or get busy dying.” Red actually learns this through Andy’s friendship and his willingness to provide the tools necessary for him to live in hope despite the risks.
“Get busy living or get busy dying.” Death was in the air when Jesus had the conversation we hear in today’s gospel which is part of the farewell discourse. Jesus knows his fate and he is trying to pass on his message of hope to his friends. “I call you friends because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my father.” As his friends listened to Jesus they too were on the brink between living and dying from moving forward with him and running away. And we know that it only got worse after he died and even after the Resurrection when for a time the disciples were afraid and paralyzed imprisoned not only by their fear of the authorities, but by their own shame and disappointment in themselves. Jesus is telling them that he has plans for them that he has hope in them that they are with him on a level of friendship, now chosen to go out and bear fruit, fruit that will last. They had no idea if or how it would happen. They had to die to their desire to just go back to fishing or whatever comfortable thing they had done before and risk living into the promise of new life.
“Get busy living or get busy dying” that’s a good theme for any group, especially a church. A little later today we will have a class that focuses on this, “Why I want St. Thomas to be here for the next generation” and that requires dying to self and our own comfort, reaching out in friendship to people we don’t know and communicating a sense of hope. During the class we will review in a slide presentation some of the history of St. Thomas and focus on some of the highlights of our core values of compassion and inclusivity. We do this not to live in the past but to connect in a deeper way to who we are as God’s people and remind ourselves why we are here and how important it is that our vision, our message continues for the next generation and generations to come. Jesus’ conversation with his friends was all about this – he was preparing them to be sent out to befriend others to spread the hope of Christ to the next generation and the next and the next. So here we are the next link in that chain of inclusivity and compassion. Jesus calls us his friends he appoints us as he did his disciples to go out and bear fruit, fruit that will last, to share the story, to give others hope. That’s what this parish has always been about, we all have an opportunity this day to be a part of the conversation during the final session of a Christian Legacy of caring “Why I want St. Thomas to be here for the next generation” followed by a lunch at Café Express to help new members and visitors to find their place in this chain of hope.
As we discern what it means to go forward as Christ’s friends and what it means to bear fruit that will last I want to leave you with a quote from the very first rector of St. Thomas that is still true for us today:
“We have entered upon a vast undertaking
We need have no fear for the future
It is not a question of need or resources
It is simply a question of our willingness to be
Obedient to the Spirit of God which dwells within us”
– Guy Usher
