The Liminal: a sermon for Year B, Easter 7

Preached on Sunday, May 17, 2015 at the Church of the Holy Trinity on the Upper East Side. The Scripture readings that today's sermon is based on can be found by clicking here.

Forty days after his Easter resurrection, Jesus is taken up into the heavens as his disciples watch. Jesus has promised that another is to come to them, an Advocate, to anoint them for the ministry they will take upon themselves in his name. But the Advocate is not here yet. So what to do now? What to do with this in-between time?

Social scientists call this in-between time ‘liminal time’. Anthropologist first coined the term when looking at non-Western societies and their rituals, especially the rituals that marked the passage to adulthood. These rituals and practices usually involved three stages, the preliminary stage (do you hear that, in the middle of that word: pre-limin-ary, literally the time before the liminal time), which is followed by the liminal time itself, the time of change, and then the post-liminal stage, when the newly transformed person is reintegrated into society bearing a new status, that of adult quite often.

When we look at our first reading today, we see the apostles in a liminal time. Jesus has ascended. They remain in Jerusalem as instructed, to await the coming of the Holy Spirit.

Liturgists look at Christian worship, especially our sacramental worship, as liminal time. We leave the world behind as we enter the church on Sunday mornings. This space doesn’t look like your home or your office. It doesn’t look like a museum or a Broadway theater or any other public space. It’s not supposed to.

In fact, it’s supposed to be different because it’s meant to take you out of the world for a time. You hear and see different things when you’re here. That is, unless you’re the type to go home this afternoon and put on a CD of the world’s greatest organ tunes. Probably not, eh? And I dare say, you probably won’t reach a point on Monday when you’ll rise from you desk to sing a hymn about the memo your working on, or the sales call you’re about to make. No, this is supposed to sound different, feel different.

We do different things in this space and during this time.

\In this space and this time, we are fed with word and sacrament, and then we are sent back out to serve this broken world, and to witness to the salvation we have found in Christ Jesus. In this space and time, we are fed upon the body of Christ so that we may become the body of Christ in the world. Hands that feed the poor, feet that march for justice, hearts that forgive, eyes that see the truth, and voices that give witness to that truth, witness to both the sin of the world, and its salvation.

So, Sunday worship is a liminal space and time, in which we step apart, are fed and transformed, made ready for our share in the ministry of the apostles.

The problem with liminal times, though, is that they are the time between two settled states; and therefore, they can be anxiety provoking. They can bring up all sorts of doubts about who we are, and what our purpose is. Of course they do. We’re unsure of who we are because we are no longer one thing, and are not yet another. We’re not sure what our future purpose will be because our present purpose is to wait, to make ready for something else, to prepare for something else to come.

To look at the apostles in our reading today, these women and men that follow Jesus will go out into the world to preach and teach the gospel of Jesus Christ. They will exemplify a new way of life. They will tread into dangerous waters, some of them. And some of them will be martyred in the process. But all that is yet to come. All of that is to come after the anointing of the Holy Spirit. Now, they’re just hanging out in the upper room -- and waiting… waiting for they know not what, waiting for whatever is to come, whatever what will be.

It’s tough to wait, it’s tough to sit still and be acted upon by the Spirit. It’s hard to wait upon the Lord, as the psalms tell us to do. We want to do something, be something. We want to quell the anxiety, quash our nerves. We want to make something happen so that we can be sure that what happens is what we want to happen; we want some control in this anxious, uncontrollable situation.

But sometimes waiting, waiting upon the Lord, is just what is called for, just what is needed. A time of anxiety, perhaps, but also a time of contemplation, listening, taking in, preparing. A time before the new, exciting, demanding, compelling time that will surely come. A time to wait for the time when the waiting will be over.

If you need help navigating these in-between times, then come here. Every Sunday, we’ll practice being patient, we’ll rehearse waiting upon the Lord. We’ll devote about an hour a week to it. We’ll put aside all the other tasks of our lives, duties as well as joys. We’ll take ourselves out of the world for a time. We’ll hear words that we don’t hear out in the world. We’ll contemplate in a way we rarely have time to in our day-to-day lives. We’ll hear some things and do some things that are rare if not downright odd. We’ll sing, for God’s sake, whether we sound like Renata Tebaldi or Jimmy Durante. And we’ll be fed on a tiniest of portions, a morsel of bread and a sip of wine. But in so doing, we shall be changed.

I promise you, you will. I know, because I see it every week. Sunday mornings, you come rushing in, some of you. A bit frantic, sometimes; worried, struggling. And then when you leave here, you’re different somehow. You’re calmer, clearer, more joyful, most of you.

Or you could be, if you show up for this liminal time in this liminal space between this world and the next; and allow yourself to be acted upon by the Spirit of God, to be transformed. If you let go of what you’re clinging to, in the world or in your own nature, and you let God in, let God transform you from within, by the word of God that you hear, and the holy food on which God feeds you.

If you’ll really allow yourself to be in this strange time and space that is in-between, if you will just be here, just be… here, in-between, you’ll be made ready for the time to come, made ready for the kingdom come. +Amen.

© The Rev. Mark R. Collins