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Second Sunday in Easter, Year A
April 3, 2005
Christ Church, Covington
“Let this be known to you, and listen to what I say” (Acts 2:14).
Go to the beach and pick up a shell, the multi-chambered kind in which it
seems you can hear the echo of the sea. Or go to a canyon or mountain
valley in which the words you repeat are echoed by the structures that are
around you. The small chambers and the large structures both act to
amplify and transmit.
Now imagine this on a much bigger scale, and on a different order. The
Church is a vast echo chamber, in which the Easter proclamation of Jesus’
death and resurrection first made centuries ago continues to rebound and
be amplified over time. Today we hear the sound of the Good News, not from
the far distance of two thousand years ago, with a tinny and preserved
quality (pre-digital, you might say), but more immediately, relayed and
echoed here and now, in this company, among these people.
Along the way, the proclamation has bounced an untold number of times, off
of places, people, and events; books, music and what have you; until it
gets to us. Parents, poems, and even Popes have transmitted this message,
amplifying and echoing along the way.
The notion of “echo”, in fact, is one of the principal ways in which the
Church has understood it’s own teaching. Teaching is “catechesis”, a word
that means “by way of echo”. There’s a “repeat after me” quality to the
Gospel, in which we reproduce and pass on the sound that we ourselves have
heard. It’s not “vain repetition” however, because what we have heard gets
“resounded” and repeated in a way that’s even bigger than when it first
began. That’s the echo chamber of the Church’s faith. When Peter in our
first reading tells the crowd, “Let this be known to you, and listen to
what I say”, he’s counting on them not simply absorbing it, but rather
echoing the Good News that Jesus has risen from the dead. He’s beginning
the process of echoing his own experience, so that it can be passed on to
others.
The News gets to us in various ways, echoed time and time again. Some of
you may have heard before one of the funny ways in which this process of
echoing worked for me. When I was a teenager, a lapsed Episcopalian not
brought up in the Christian faith, I picked up a book which I hoped would
help me dismiss the rather emotional and manipulative forms of
Christianity that I encountered as a student. Well the book was, of
course, Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis: the “mere” being not dismissive
but rather “basic” or “common” Christianity. What I read echoed within me:
nothing manipulative or emotive, but instead a deep appreciation of the
past, a reasonable appeal to the conscience, and a steady love of beauty
and order. I recognized in this particular echoing the things that
mattered most to me. I learned that these things were the echo themselves
of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The News gets to us in some strange ways indeed, with an unlikely bounce
or two. The echoing process isn’t contained by one experience, however.
Think how many bounces this News took before it found me, and you as well.
Think about the ways in which it has continued to resound and echo since
then. The Church’s faith is a vast echo chamber.
So what echoes with you today? What are the things that you know and have
heard? What about the message of new life and forgiveness resounds with
you? Does the call for faith strike a familiar chord? As it echoes, it is
not diminished but grows as we share it with others. The proclamation is
made, and we are supposed to repeat it. “Alleluia! Christ is risen. The
Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!”.
The Rev’d John Bauerschmidt is Rector of Christ Church, Covington.
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