"Knowing resurrection: God's redemption in our own lives"

March 29, 2013 At 64 years old, I’m still figuring out the living words of our liturgy and scripture. It speaks something different to me at 64 than it did at 32.

Last Saturday, the diocese hosted Spirituality Day in Newaygo, and I had the opportunity to go deeper into my own understanding of the resurrection as I listened to Marilee Roth’s presentation on the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. She asked us to ponder the meaning of the Memorial Acclamation “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.” She asked, “Why do we say Christ will come again?”

The new insight that I found was that Christ comes in the bread and wine, and in the community gathered, again and again.  Whenever we gather as Christian community we are the Body of Christ.  As the Body of Christ we are part of that Memorial Acclamation.

  People are often afraid to ask questions about resurrection. They shouldn’t be. I believe the most important question is how do we see resurrection in our own lives, in what ways have we suffered, in what ways have we died, and in what ways have we been raised to new life?

As a priest, I’ve had the sacred privilege of being with dying people who see their relatives. My own grandmother said to me on her deathbed, “There’s Grandpap by the window.” My grandfather – her husband – had been dead for years.

I stupidly said to her, “Where?” And she looked at me like are you nuts, he’s right there! She said, “There he is by the window.”

John Shea, one of my favorite theologians, says death is the way that we join those who have gone before us and resurrection is the ability to be present everywhere at all times.

I love the resurrection because it means Jesus is present everywhere, for all people, at all times.

I say often that the only thing we have to preach is death and resurrection, and God’s redeeming power. We all experience resurrection when we’re able to connect our story with THE STORY, and we’re able to see God’s redemption at work in our own lives. We begin to understand that God has turned something disastrous into something that provides new life.  That is THE STORY of the gospels and OUR STORY as well.

Understanding the ways in which OUR STORY can be overlaid on THE STORY and how THE STORY can be overlaid on OUR STORY, we are able to become gospel witnesses. We can then talk about how we use our experiences, and our knowledge of what God has done for us in our darkest hours, to bring hope to others who have yet to know God’s redeeming power.
At Spirituality Day last Saturday, we talked a lot about connecting OUR STORY to THE STORY.

When you’re older, you think more about your life because you’re closer to your death. When I look back on my life, I see how I was prepared for just about everything. I recalled my own experience at the Spirituality Retreat when I told the students that being the oldest and only boy in my family, with five years distance between me and my oldest sister, actually prepared me for the task of being a single dad to girls, even though I remembered my mother telling me “a man can’t raise children.”

Things happen in life, and later we can see how life prepared us, however uncomfortably.

I have also known people who bleed their whole lives, unable to accept the gifts of healing and new life, perhaps because no one has witnessed to them that new life follows suffering and death – perhaps no one has taken the time to help them connect their story to THE STORY.

In Holy Week, we get to see the courage and the serenity of Jesus, as an example for our Christian life. When we exhibit courage and serenity, it’s infectious.

Again, I ask how do you see resurrection in your own life, in what ways have you suffered, in what ways have you died, and in what ways have you been resurrected to new life?

When we connect OUR STORY with THE STORY, our faith is strengthened.  And it’s so much easier to move on in life, after experiencing difficulty and despair, knowing that new life awaits and will unfold for us.

On the Sunday of the Resurrection we celebrate that Jesus joined those who had gone before, – that Jesus is risen and present to all at all times and in all places, -  and that Jesus will be present with you as you gather with Christian community.  We celebrate all this with the hope that it is the same for you and me.  Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.  And to that we add a joyful, Alleluia, Alleluia!

Below are some comments from students at the Bishop’s Spirituality Day:
“I was impacted by the discussion as well as the comfort of being around fellow Episcopalian people.  Since I am being received, I was able to be surrounded with my new spiritual family and to participate in conversation with them.  I felt blessed to be there with them.  In addition, I was impacted by the Stations of the Cross activity as well as the new knowledge of resources for daily prayer.  I think one of the most lovely experiences for me, however, was the Lighting Ceremony.  It was very peaceful and full of meaning.  It was wonderful to watch others light their candles and to light my own candle as well.  What a wonderful day!” Angie Leuchtmann
“I have been Episcopalian from birth - baptized and confirmed - and am now a candidate for reaffirmation. If I had to pick one thing I came away with, it is the information given to us about Daily Office. We learned many different ways to access Daily Office, as well as how to navigate it. The reason this is significant to me is because the tradition in which worship is accessible everyday now. Devotions and contemplative prayer are now the supplements as opposed to the daily prayer for me.” – Scott Leuchtmann

Recommended Reading:
The Dishonest Church by Jack Good

A very happy Easter to you from the Bishop’s staff at the Episcopal Center!
The Rt. Rev. Robert R. Gepert, VIII, Western Michigan
The Rev. Canon William J. Spaid
Mary McGuire
Molly Ettwein
Genevieve Callard
Tammy Mazure
Cathy Rhodes
The Rev. Karen McDonald
Karmel Puzzuoli

Understanding the Church's Dark Night: A Reflection on Owens and Robinson

At the last Province V Bishop’s Meeting, the Rt. Rev. Todd Ousley, Bishop of Eastern Michigan, shared an article he obtained from the ecumenical magazine The Christian Century. The article, titled “Dark Night of the Church,” by L. Roger Owens and Anthony B. Robinson, expressed my own beliefs so well that it became the inspiration for my presentation for Leadership Days in Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids and Traverse City.

Owens and Robinson compare the message of the poem “The Dark Night of the Soul,” written by the monk St. John of the Cross in the 16th century, with the current declines in the church. They ask, “Is there a dark night of the church? Are we experiencing it? Is God at work wrenching our alluring memories of social prominence and significance from our minds, ripping dreams of fame and fortune from our imaginations?”

The Episcopal Church was once characterized as a church of status, with a disproportionate number of members with wealth or political position. Even President Gerald Ford was a member of Grace Church in Grand Rapids.  The elaborate buildings and stained glass windows in our churches point to a time of past affluence. Prominent figures, such as Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Thurgood Marshall were Episcopalians. But the question that Owens and Robinson ask, however, is whether the trappings of prominence, significance and affluence have separated us from God and the mission of the Church? 

In my travels around the diocese, I’ve been to churches in which I’m the youngest person there. That doesn’t bode well for the community of faith! High numbers of aging members is one piece of the “lexicon of decline” identified by Owens and Robinson, in addition to an absence of young adults, financial crises and a rise in conflict in our congregations – all of which I have seen myself.

But St. John of the Cross said in “Dark Night of the Soul” that we should rejoice, even as he sat locked in the monastery basement for accusing his brothers of not honoring their promises to the Benedictine rule of life.

St. John of the Cross identified the Dark Night we experience in our lives as the journey our soul takes from its bodily home to its union with God in love.

Think about your own dark night, a time in your life when you were confused, scared, and there was chaos all around you.  You wondered how you would make it through.

But at the end of your dark night, you got a new life. That new life may not have been better or worse, but it was different. You now think differently than you did before that dark night.

Jesus too had a dark night. First there was a betrayal, then the passion, crucifixion and death. But after, there was new life. Telling that good news is, if anything, our primary responsibility – to help people understand that suffering and death happen, but the end result is new life. It happens over and over again in the journey toward the end of our own mortal lives.

Because we are an individualistic society, we often mistake the purpose of the church to be for our comfort. I once asked the junior warden of one of our downtown churches where she envisioned their church in five years’ time.

Her response? “Everything has changed,” she said. “I want things back the way they were.”

A leader in another church asked me what they could do about their decline. He said, “We need more members because we need seven more pledging units to make our budget.”

Further, churches have conflict over detaching from buildings, music programs, altars, the Prayer Book – things external to Christian community. But I agree with Owens and Robinson; God is doing something in the midst of that anxiety.

“The church is relearning that its essence lies not in its programs and accomplishments, its activities and accolades,” write Owens and Robinson, “but in the truth that ‘she on earth hath union with God the Three in One,’ and that God is enough.”

Most of you know Anne and I will move to Lancaster, Pennsylvania upon my retirement this summer. Lancaster is known for its Amish community, so I’ve become somewhat enamored of the Amish and have been reading a book called The Amish Way.

I’ve learned that the Amish worship for up to three hours every other Sunday. They own no church buildings, but instead worship at each other’s homes where they gather as many as 200 people at a time to hear the Gospel, pray and sing. While some people do join the Amish faith, their goal is not to convert people to the Amish way, but to live into the teachings of Jesus, particularly those set forth in the Sermon on the Mount.

Our church cannot remain the same because God’s mission is not being accomplished. There are way more important things than the building, the bell, or the $3 million organ.

On page 855 of the Book of Common Prayer, we are told: “The mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.”

Our denomination is getting smaller, and I don’t think it’s a bad thing. God is speaking to us through the decline, and if the result of that is a deeper commitment to the mission of God, that is a cause to rejoice.

After his dark night, locked in the basement of the monastery, St. John of the Cross reformed the Carmelite order. After his dark  night, Jesus rose from the tomb. What will the church be after its own dark night?

It will rise to new life, become more committed and live into its promise to reconcile people to each other and to God.


– The Rt. Rev. Robert R. Gepert, VIII, Western Michigan.

Bishop's Presentation on the Dark Night of the Church