Fourth Sunday of Easter,Year C
April 29, 2007 Acts 9:36-43, Psalm 23, Revelation 7:9-17, John 10:22-30

Resurrection Song
A sermon by Deborah Pender Hutchison, Lay Pastoral Associate
Saint David's Episcopal Church, Bean Blossom, Indiana

Just after dawn last Thursday morning I was slogging doggedly alongside the creek that winds its way through our property. And I do mean “doggedly”. It was pouring, and the only reason I was out there in the deluge was because Lily, our canine, depends on me for her morning walk.

My world right then was very small. Head down, my jacket hood limiting my field of vision, I trudged along with the sounds of rasping gore-tex and pelting raindrops filling my ears. If I hadn’t stopped to stow my drippingly useless glasses in a coat pocket, I would most likely have remained hunched over and oblivious until Lily and I made it back home.

But, I did stop, and that’s when I heard it – the unmistakable voice of a wood thrush. I’ve never heard a nightingale, but by my lights, the wood thrush song is the most enchantingly beautiful in all bird-dom.

It’s a rare thing to actually see one of these very shy and secretive birds. But hearing one is more than enough. Every spring I await the arrival of that voice in our woods. It has become a sign to me that, despite multiple unravelings, somewhere, underneath it all, lies a deep and abiding peace.

There really is no way to adequately capture the song in words. It is most commonly described as “flute-like”. But no flute on earth could produce such auditory calm. It’s a sound so unique, so without parallel, that the heart leaps and tears rise unbidden. It’s like receiving a message from home during a long exile.

Here’s how a naturalist in the 1930’s expressed the experience of hearing a wood thrush sing. "As we listen we lose the sense of time -- it links us with eternity... Its tones... seem like the vocal expression of the mystery of the universe, clothed in a melody so pure and ethereal that the soul, still bound to its earthly tenement, can neither imitate nor describe it."

When the pure and liquid song of the wood thrush captured my attention the other day, my world went from claustrophobic to cosmic in a heart beat. I became aware of the dome of weeping clouds above me, the voice of the rain-swollen creek, the great depth and complexity of the forest across the water where the hidden singer perched. I felt connected to something vast and ancient and ever-young; something that hides in every molecule of the created universe while at the same time holding and encompassing within itself the whole of that universe.

As you can see, I’m straining for adjectives and images. It’s the same problem one runs into when attempting to talk about the resurrection life which is our focus during these fifty days of Easter; and is our gift and goal as followers of Christ. Whatever Jesus entered into in the dark mystery of the tomb, whatever he embodied in his several appearances after climbing out of that tomb, it’s something that transcends not only death, but life as we know it. Like the thrush’s song, it is a doorway into another realm, a message from our true home.

In our first reading, the Tabitha brought back to life by Peter is the same Tabitha whose body was laid out and being mourned a few moments earlier in the story. But it appears that Jesus, post-resurrection, was qualitatively different from the Jesus who taught and healed and suffered and died -- the devoted disciple, Mary Magdalene, did not know him in the garden outside the tomb; a heavy stone could not keep him in; locked doors could not keep him out; two of his disciples walked and talked with him without recognizing him, until he did something inexplicable that let them see who he was; and, one day, surrounded by his followers, he disappeared in plain sight.

As some like to say, we’re talking “resurrection” here, not “resuscitation”. Whatever it is, it’s not something of this world. And so we, whose minds and languages are of this world, are hard-pressed to find ways to describe it.

And, I might add, we are hard-pressed to live it. Jesus, in our gospel, says, “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish.” I suspect each of us hopes we are members of that blessed flock. We hope for the eternal life that Jesus promises, even though no one is really sure what that eternal life is. Some believe it awaits us at death. But, Jesus, I think, showed in his post-resurrection appearances that resurrection living is meant for this life, as well.

This encourages me to believe that the realm that is neither life nor death but something else entirely is available to us here and now. I believe it is revealed to us (as the resurrected Jesus was revealed to his astounded disciples in the breaking of the bread) in moments of spiritual clarity, when we are able to sense the presence of that which, although not of this world, is still able to be in it.

Many of you know our first child was born three months early. Some of you may have already heard this story, but for those who haven’t, something very strange and, for me, life-changing, happened at the moment of Patrick’s birth. Perhaps it happened because, after hours of labor with no detectable fetal heart beat, I had been reduced to a place of pretty much total surrender. Perhaps it happened because the members of our spiritual community were gathered in prayer on our behalf. Whatever the reason, for just a moment that world that is not of this world became tangible.

The delivery room had been a whirlwind of activity as nurses prepared for the remote possibility that this baby might actually be viable. Then our small town GP, who was presiding for the first time over a premature birth, held up Patrick’s tiny body draped over one hand. And everything stopped. I don’t mean that people stood still for a moment, thunderstruck by the astonishing smallness of this fledgling human being. I mean everything stopped. Time stopped.

There is no other way to describe it. Some other reality, one where chronological linear time is meaningless, inserted itself into our little drama. And all the actors, except Patrick, faded, as two….beings became visible, one on either side of our child.

I call them beings because they were certainly sentient, but there was nothing recognizably form-like about them. The best I can say is that they were like two great shafts of light that passed through the room but where not confined to the room.

I had the distinct impression that they didn’t come from anywhere in particular. In fact, it seemed as though they had always been there, just not in a way I could perceive until then. And they were real, more real than anything I have ever experienced, before or since.

A voice in my head said, “One is Life and One is Death.” And I marveled that they were both so beautiful. They were both bringing something inexpressibly joyous and tender into the room. And they were both representatives of something far greater than they.

I realized that they were waiting for our child to decide. And decide he did. He moved. His tiny hand opened and closed. His bird-like chest expanded to receive the first breath of life in this world. Time rushed back in to fill the room with movement and with sound. And with Time’s resumption, Life and Death receded into the background, invisible.

I sense them though, when this world is not too much with me. They are there in all beauty, transient and timeless, as in the wood thrush’s song. They are there in all beginnings and all endings, large and small, representing the greater love from which they come and to which, through them, we go.

Just before he went to the cross and the resurrection, Jesus said to his followers, “In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going."

We do know the way. Jesus incarnated it, by entering into the “either” of life and the “or” of death with such compassionate commitment and trust that he united the dualities of this world into a way of being that knows no division, no beginning and no end. He sang both songs, life’s and death’s, without reservation, and so must we. He wove them into a melody which we too can learn. It will sing us out of our divided selves. It will sing us home.

Recently, I learned something quite amazing about the wood thrush, something that ornithologists believe helps explain why its song is so compelling. This marvelous bird has the equivalent of two sets of "vocal cords ". So, it is singing, in two voices, a duet with itself. Two different but overlapping melodies sounded simultaneously unite to create its ethereal song. No wonder when we hear it, our hearts turn toward home. AMEN.