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Acts 9:1-20) • Ps 30 • Rev 5:11-14 • John 21:1-19

Today my theme is liminality – which Bishop Anna spoke so eloquently about last Sunday. But first a few technology jokes or cartoons from Facebook: the first shows one dog pointing to a cell phone and speaking to another dog, saying: “I used to bring in the newspaper, but now, I just forward links.” The second shows a company meeting including three children so small that their noses barely reach the tabletop; and the speaker says this about the kids: “… Also I’d like to introduce our new team of technology and social media consultants.” And the third cartoon shows a boy saying to his father: “I have to do a report about a prehistoric tool. [So] I want to use your flip phone.” I think many of us can resonate with these three scenarios at times. Today is also Beltane – the first day of summer on the Celtic calendar – a sort of liminal time between Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice.

Both our first reading and gospel deal with liminality – which refers to an in-between place or space – between what or where we’ve been, and what lies ahead. The transition that Saul of Tarsus undergoes, for example, to become St Paul is quite dramatic. Saul thought he knew it all when he spent years pursuing and persecuting the early Christians. He was a highly regarded Pharisee and keeper of the ancient laws of the prehistoric Hebrew religion – prehistoric as in having roots buried deep in prehistory. Our Acts reading today tells the story of Paul changing from a know-it-all arrogant persecutor of Christians … to a much humbler man. He meets Jesus on his week of walking to Damascus, and Jesus asks him ‘why do you persecute me?’ Saul is knocked to the ground both literally and in terms of his long-held understanding of what was good and true about God’s actions in our world. He thought he knew the supreme truth about God, but instead he’d been blind about Jesus. So now he became physically blind. After Ananias reluctantly heals him of blindness and he’s baptized as Paul, he enters a long liminal stage of rethinking his old ideas and setting them aside to make room for the new things that God was doing in him, through Jesus. This liminal or in-between place of preparing for his new ministry in Christ, called the silent years of Paul, was anything from 3 to 14 years according to various scripture passages. He took all the time he needed, and perhaps all the time that the early Christians needed to be assured that he was no longer a persecutor of Christians. God often chooses the most surprising people to carry the gospel message forward to new generations and cultures.

When Bishop Anna spoke to us last week, you may recall her strong focus on us being in a long liminal phase as Christian churches. At one point she drew two intersecting circles, like a Venn diagram, and spoke of the intersecting area of the two circles as that liminal place. The term liminal comes from the idea of a threshold, or border between two areas. There are many scriptures that speak of God as doing a new thing, and that we need to make room for God’s new activity or creativity by moving past the old things. However, it’s not usually an instant change like flipping a switch. The Wikipedia article on Liminality says, for example, that “In anthropology, liminality is the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of passage, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold … [later]”. Bishop Anna spoke of various biblical examples of liminality, like the Exodus journey of 40 years into the promised land, although the distance was actually not that far. Perhaps God knew that the Israelites needed a long time of liminality in order to truly leave behind slavery; and to embrace their new freedoms and the corresponding responsibilities.

This reminds me somewhat of Hermione in Harry Potter who kept knitting elf hats since clothing meant freedom for an elf. But did the elves want to be free? I’m on Book Five, and so far, Dobby is the only elf who wants to be free, and even he seems to have some regrets. He knows that most of the house elves are terrified of freedom, so he picks up all of Hermione’s elf hats and piles them all on his head … or else the elves are afraid to do their cleaning jobs around Hogwarts for fear of finding those scary hats and falling into freedom by accident. Seems like a silly Harry Potter side story, and yet, aren’t we also often afraid to put on the fuller freedom of who we are in Christ – perhaps because of the responsibilities that come with many kinds of freedom?

In our long gospel today, Jesus too is in a time of liminality – that in-between place or space between his human life and his full ascension into God’s own divinity. According to Acts 1 Jesus spent 40 days in that liminal place between resurrection and ascension. 40 days in which he appeared to various people at different times and places. In today’s main story Jesus is cooking fish and bread for breakfast on a charcoal fire on the beach -- to feed his weary fishermen disciples. Think of that when you eat a tuna or salmon sandwich – it’s resurrection food! Then he goes on to the famous three times of asking Peter – do you love me? When Jesus asks if Peter loves him more than these others (v 15) I’m reminded of poor old King Lear trying to find out which of his three daughters loves him most. That did not go well. And I’m also reminded of a priest I once heard suggesting that Peter’s frustration by the third time he’s asked -- could have led him into this kind of response to Jesus: ‘What, are you deaf? Read my lips! Of course, I love you!’. Jesus is working to redeem many things during his liminal time between resurrection and ascension.

We too are asked to be patient, humble and open to new things during these liminal times when the church as we’ve known it for so long … is being transformed to serve a future that looks so different from what our church structures were built to serve in the past. It’s confusing and scary at times, but the Creator created a world that’s in constant flux – things and people must grow and change, in order to stay alive and thrive. As Jesus says so often: Be Not Afraid! May we walk gently with God, in humility and confidence, through this liminal place … into wherever God’s grace may lead us, Amen.