Easter 6, 2005
April 30, May 1

The Rev. Barbara Schlachter

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings; and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any—lifted from the no
of all nothing—human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

For six weeks now we have been proclaiming what ee cummings proclaimed in the poem I just quoted:  Alelluia!  Christ is Risen, the Lord is Risen Indeed, Alleluia!

Today we add a new line:  May Day May Day

The first of May. How many of you know what you were doing 25 years ago today?

It is easy for me to remember; I was having a baby. A week before he was born I led a parish retreat where we danced across a beautiful green lawn at a gorgeous country site being the leaping greenly spirits, accompanied by these words from ee cummings. 

And so the son’s birthday came a week earlier than his due date.

I hope you will indulge in my telling a bit of the story. It has to do with what we do for each other in the body of Christ. 

It was a Thursday, Mel’s and my day off. Only we had made arrangements to take a woman from the parish where I served to the airport. That sounds easy enough until you hear some of the details. She was in a wheelchair. She was leaving an abusive relationship. Her husband did not know she was leaving. It would all happen while he was at work, for fear that he would physically harm her if he knew of her plans. Her son was in Alaska waiting for her. All the arrangements with all the airlines had been set up, from New York to Alaska .

I woke up in the morning with a sense of Oh, oh. Having missed the signs of labor for a good long while with my first child, I was tuned in this time. I called the awaiting woman and said, “May Day, May Day.”  This is the universal cry of distress, of course, appropriate even on days other than the first of May.

I then called my labor coach who assured me that I could get to the airport and back before this baby was born. I was not so sure. 

My third call was to the Rector of the parish. I told him something none of his five previous male assistants before me had ever told him:  I was going to have a baby that morning! Could he take Harriet to the airport?  He and the sexton used our car, a station wagon with the roof rack already on, and according to later reports, got her there, just barely.

Meanwhile, I was packing my things for what I would need in the hospital; and my husband was out shopping for things he thought he would need for the birth—film, champagne, etc. It took him so long that I thought I would have to have someone else take me to the hospital. 

So, about the same time the Rector and Sexton were pushing Harriet’s wheelchair through the airport, I was pushing Jacob Thomas Hartley Schlachter into the world. It was a good thing I didn’t go to the airport!

I think it’s a good story and a good story for May Day. Last Saturday was Mary Day and the women of the parish shared powerful stories based on the life of Mary with each other and with our guests from out of town. The gift of sharing our stories was quite powerful. We made connections to Mary’s story and to each other that had not been made before. We became more of a community of the Holy Spirit through the courage of telling the truth of our lives.

In the Gospel for today Jesus says that the Father will send an Advocate who can be with the disciples forever, unlike Jesus. It will be the Spirit of Truth; Jesus’ own spirit. We know it of course as the Holy Spirit. What a wonderful gift for those who felt orphaned by Jesus’ death and departure. The disciples had known his presence through the Resurrection. They who had known him had his Spirit. We are told in the Gospel of John that he breathed on them and gave him his spirit. But what was so wonderful is that those who had never known Jesus in the flesh could also know him through his Spirit. 

Jesus could be just as real and present for those of us who would come generations later. So we who never knew the Jesus of Nazareth can sing Christ is alive.

This Spirit would not be an individual experience, although individuals would know and receive the Spirit. It would be a community experience of Christ’s presence that individuals would experience first in community and then take out into the world with them, in their hearts and in the actions of their lives. Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”  We will in other words love God with all our being and ourselves as God’s beloved, and our neighbors as ourselves, God’s other beloved.

So that gets us back to the community of the Church. St. Bartholomew’s White Plains , NY  moved a disabled and abused woman out of harm’s way and to safety. The Church baptized my son and everyone in the parish came to our house for quiche, salad and cake, the continuation of the celebration. The godparents came for the weekend and cooked the quiche and cut the fruit, and one of them wrote the sermon. He called Jacob “a divine disruption,” which turned out to be quite prophetic. 

And that parish and subsequent parishes helped us raise him and his sister, just as this parish and its two prior incarnations have helped to raise so many other children. Today we celebrate the way that some of these young people have responded to this call to love.

Our youth stunned the Swaziland Companions by saying that they would take $1230 of their own money to fund the tuition for four double orphans in Swaziland ’s poorest archdeaconry. We adults were wondering about how to do this, and they saw clearly how to do it. They would use their own money, and in the faith that they had in the community of Christ Church that had raised them up, their fund raising efforts to restore their money would be successful. And so the May Day basket project was born. If you have looked at these baskets, you know that more than what they contributed has been pledged. Their faith in the power of the Holy Spirit in this community has been realized. And, then the question was put to them, what if you make more money than you need to repay your treasury. What will you do with the extra money?  They could have kept it. They could have split it between their treasury and Swaziland . They were told these options would be fine. But they have chosen to put all the extra funds toward the mission trip to Swaziland in 2006 to build a school. These young people are showing us what it means to love Jesus and to keep his commandments. We thank them for their witness and example.

For most of the rest of the world May Day is a day to celebrate the labor of our lives. Many of us can remember earlier May Days with flower baskets and Maypole dancing. These traditions were carried over from our Celtic ancestors who celebrated May Day as the first day of the season of Beltaine, or summer. They would have bon-fires in the night and wash their faces in the dew of the grass in the morning, and drive their herds to the hills for their summer pastures. It was a day of feasting and celebrating.

  It is the beginning of the merry month of May—a time of joy. We will celebrate Mother’s Day and then Pentecost, and then that favorite and well understood Trinity Sunday (that’s a joke), graduation and Memorial Day this month and we will see the promise of spring develop into full blown summer.

We are starting this month out properly—with lunch together, with May Day baskets that represent our Swaziland partnership and the faith of our youth, and then with a choir fest—the song of joyful voices reflecting the joy of our hearts. The Spirit of Christ is alive and present, and it is an awesome thing to be part of.

I would like to end with part of a blessing for Beltane from the Western Hebrides .
“Sheiling” is Scottish for homestead.

Bless, O Threefold true and bountiful,
Myself, my spouse, and my children,
My tender children and their beloved mother at their head.
On the fragrant plain, on the gay mountain sheiling,
            On the fragrant plain, on the gay mountain sheiling. 

Everything within my dwelling or in my possession,
All kine and crops, all flocks and corn,
From Hallow Eve to Beltane Eve,
With goodly progress and gentle blessing,
From sea to sea, and every river mouth,
            From wave to wave, and base of waterfall.

Be the Three Persons taking possession of all to me belonging,
Be the sure Trinity protecting me in truth;
O! satisfy my soul in the words of Paul,
And shield my loved ones beneath the wing of Thy glory,
            And shield my loved ones beneath the wing of Thy glory.

Amen