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The
Rev. Christopher Brdlik
May 6, 2007 - Fifth Sunday of Easter
Sometime during the
last year I passed a personal milestone, having now lived in Summit
longer than any other place in my life. However, I have spent more years
of my life in total living within the borders of Virginia, the Old
Dominion. That’s a matter of some pride this week as the nation
celebrates the 400th anniversary of the founding of the
Jamestown colony, the first permanent English settlement in North
America. One thing I share with most Virginians is a love of history,
and we could certainly indulge our passion recently. For Virginians know
well the history of Jamestown, and believe it should occupy as important
place in the national consciousness as the landing at Plymouth Rock in
Massachusetts.
Because Jamestown was
first. And it was different from Massachusetts. Most of us are aware
that the Virginians came as a commercial enterprise, with the discovery
of gold and a passage to China as twin early dreams, though quickly
unfulfilled. They, too, had mixed relations with the native residents —
the Powhatan tribe, in this case, who at times befriended them and
showed them local ways, and at other times resisted their incursion into
native territory. The Virginians were not religious pilgrims, but loyal
subjects of the English throne who named their colony after their
beloved Virgin queen, Elizabeth, recently departed, and their town after
her successor, James. They were not religious pilgrims, but they were
religious, loyal Anglicans, who brought along a chaplain aboard the
Susan Constant, the Rev. Robert Hunt, an Anglican priest. Some days
soon after landing, with circumstances still primitive, Rev. Hunt
instructed that an old triangular sail be raised between three trees.
Underneath it he celebrated the Holy Communion as a thanksgiving for
safe passage to the New World, using an altar of planks and barrels. It
was the first use of the Book of Common Prayer on North American soil,
400 years ago this week. Centuries later I served as rector of a
Virginia parish where my predecessor had been a lineal descendant of
that original Anglican priest, also named Robert Hunt. So even though
the Hunt family made it, many others did not. The colony struggled with
death for many years, though it never gave up.
It did give up,
however, on the site of Jamestown — too swampy and buggy by the shores
of the James River. Soon the colony moved on to higher ground at
Williamsburg, a few miles inland. And the Virginians moved on, too: up
the James and Rappahannock and Potomac rivers; over the Blue Ridge and
Allegheny mountains; and eventually, with other Americans, across the
entire continent. That first small colony in Jamestown was only one
first small step of the movement of a new people, the American people,
who have made restlessness and movement their cultural norms. Americans
keep moving on to new horizons, new possibilities. And when the land ran
out, Americans have moved on to novelty and innovation. What are they
seeking? A new home, I suppose, maybe heaven on earth. But in their
restlessness they leave rootedness behind. More on that, later.
Now, each in its own
way, the four gospels in the Bible depict Jesus as having something of a
restless spirit. Mark, in its rapid-fire pace, uses the phrase “and
immediately” or “and straightaway” as a transition in his narrative
something like thirty times. Matthew and Luke describe Jesus’ baptism as
the start of an itinerant ministry, three years of traveling around
Galilee, and the Transfiguration as the decisive point leading to the
final journey to Jerusalem. John’s gospel moves at a deliberate pace
back and forth from Jerusalem toward the inevitable fatal controversy.
“The Son of Man,” said Jesus himself on more than one occasion, “has
nowhere to lay his head.” And in today’s gospel reading (John 13:31-35)
he tells the disciples, pointedly, “Where I am going, you cannot come.”
He meant going to the
Cross, of course. Jesus alone could save the world through the Cross and
Resurrection. But he went on to instruct the disciples that they were to
observe a new commandment, a new mandate: “Love one another, as I have
loved you.” In acting out that mandate the disciples, as apostles, were
sent forth into the world to cover it with the message of love, of God’s
love for humanity, and humanity’s love for one’s neighbor. They, too,
possessed a restless spirit, traveling to Rome in the West, to Egypt and
Libya in the South, maybe as far as India to the East. Moving on,
everyone moving on. All this restlessness leads to the vision of the
final book of the Bible, the Book of Revelation, or the Apocalypse.
Among the last words of the Bible is today’s lesson from Revelation
(21:22-22:5): “I saw a new heaven and a new earth; the holy city, a new
Jerusalem.” And a loud voice proclaimed, “Behold, the home of God is
among mortals. He will dwell with them, and they will be his peoples.”
The whole point of the Bible, therefore, the climax of it, the dramatic
ending, is that God is with us all as we journey through life.
God dwells in our restlessness, and eventually brings us home. It is as
if our home travels with us, for God has already prepared a new heaven
and a new earth and takes us there in person. The home of God is with
mortals, no matter where they roam.
Queen Elizabeth II, on
her recent visit to both Virginia and Kentucky, might have picked up on
this restless spirit among her former colonials if she paid close
attention to the words of the state songs: “Carry me back to old
Virginia.” In other words, the singer has already moved on, but was
still restless, this time for home. “My old Kentucky home, far, far
away.” Once again, the singer has moved on, still restless. I could list
other state songs with the same theme: “Why, O why, O why, O, Did I ever
leave Ohio?” And other traditional American songs: “O Shenandoah, I long
to see you, away, I’m bound away, across the wide Missouri.” The Queen
might well ask what keeps Americans moving on, and I’m not sure there’s
a satisfactory answer: They just do. But when that lonesomeness, that
longing for place, that homeward instinct becomes overwhelming, remember
God’s promise: “The home of God is among us mortals. God dwells with us,
and we are God’s people.”
God is the Alpha and
Omega, the beginning and the end of our life. God is the journey as well
as the destination. Our hearts are restless, until they rest in God.
© copyright 2007, Christopher Brdlik
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