Sermon 5/1/21: "Mayday...May Day" Pr. Ben Adams

Pr. Ben Adams

Fifth Sunday of Easter

May 1, 2021

Mayday…May Day

Mayday has been on my mind lately, and not just because today is the first day of May, but because the first episodes of season four of Hulu series The Handmaid’s Tale were just released this week. In that dystopian show, mayday is the name of the network of women and allies rebelling against Gilead - the patriarchal, totalitarian, neo-Puritanical regime that has taken over most of the United States.

The show is definitely not for the faint of heart and it can be hard to stomach when it portrays the violence endured by the women who are still trapped in Gilead, but what always captures my heart and keeps me coming back to the show is the way in which it depicts the strong bonds of connection between these women within this mayday resistance network who are seeking to take down Gilead from the inside. These women are, pardon my language, so badass! They display such strength and grit, but also such tenderness and grace. They are truly each other's keeper, and they look out for each other and sacrifice for each other. And because their bonds of sisterhood capture my heart so completely, the most heart wrenching scenes of the show for me are when one of these women are killed or recaptured by the Gilead regime.

The mayday name for this resistance network comes from the distress signal that was originally used when a plane was going down and it comes from the French “m’aidez,” which means, “help me.” Fun fact, in 1927 the International Radiotelegraph Convention adopted mayday as the radiotelephone distress call in place of SOS. So in essence, this term mayday is a confession of our need for the help of another and it is a declaration of our interconnectedness and our reliance on one another for survival.

So there’s lots of layers to this term mayday and when it comes to today, and this theme of connection to each other continues through the various ways May day is celebrated. May Day brings people together around their common connections. Catholics might celebrate Mary on this day and Pagans might celebrate Flora the Roman Goddess of flowers, even Hawaiians celebrate May Day as Lei Day. Who woulda thought?

Here in Chicago the May Day celebrations revolve around labor rights and working conditions since it’s history dates back to the late nineteenth century when Chicago became the center of the national movement for an eight-hour work day.

On that Saturday, May 1st 1886, 135 years ago to the day, 35,000 workers walked off their jobs. Crowds traveled from workplace to workplace urging fellow workers to strike. Police clashed with strikers at least a dozen times, until the tension erupted on the evening of May 4th on Des Plaines Street, just north of Randolph. What began as a peaceful assembly intensified after Police moved in and ordered it to disperse. It was then that someone hurled a bomb at the police, killing one officer instantly. In turn, Police drew their guns, firing wildly. Sixty officers were injured, and eight died; an undetermined number of the crowd were killed or wounded.

Since that fateful moment the Haymarket tragedy has inspired generations of labour leaders, leftist activists, and artists. It is remembered each May Day as we celebrate the solidarity that workers have displayed over the years resisting the long, brutal, and unsafe working conditions they are subjected to. It’s the connection and solidarity of workers today that still gives me hope that a better world is possible when we connect with each other in solidarity and regard each other with mutuality and equity.

In today’s Gospel Jesus gives us an image of a vine and branches to illustrate what a relationship of true connection and solidarity can look like. Jesus says, “Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. 5I am the vine, you are the branches.”

Us branches cannot bear fruit by ourselves. We need connection to the source of life and that vine Christ is talking about runs to and through each of us connecting us to each other. In our reading from Acts, the disciple Philip understood this vine of connection that runs between us all. As he is traveling he comes across an Ethiopian Eunuch who had come to Jerusalem to worship and he is in his chariot leaving Jerusalem to return home and he is reading from the book of Isaiah. Then the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over to this chariot and join it.” So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” He replied, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him.

This impromptu bible study eventually leads to the Ethiopian to say “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?” So he commands the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the Ethiopian, go down into the water, and Philip baptizes him. So much good fruit is borne from this story because neither Phillip, nor the Ethiopian let their differences prevent them from connecting deeply and abiding together in the vine of Jesus. They might be different branches with various identities that would exclude them from certain privileges in the world whether it be on the basis of their class, their gender identity, or the color of their skin, yet with the Holy Spirit leading them and with their focus on the one who connects them, no social norm can prevent them from sharing a profound and transformative experience together.

Brené Brown defines connection as “the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued” Given the story of Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch that’s also a good definition of the Holy Spirit. The energy that brought Phillip together with this Ethiopian traveler and then the energy that was created between the two as they truly saw each other, heard each other, and valued each other is the Holy Spirit. Phillip and the Ethiopian Eunuch were different in so many ways from their race to their gender and sexual identities, yet the Holy Spirit connects these two and they understand intimately that they abide in one another just as they abide in Christ.

This energy that exists between Phillip and the Ethiopian, in its most distilled form, is love. As our reading in First John elaborates, “Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit...God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.”

So, this May Day we celebrate this love that abides in us, that pulses through the vine of Christ that connects us not just to other Christians, but to all creation. This Cosmic Christ connects us to all things on earth and beyond the earth. No distance, no difference can separate us from this love and in fact we are told that Christ’s perfect love casts out all fear.

There’s still a lot that brings us fear, I know personally that what is happening in India right now has grieved me and given me great fear that while many people close to us are being vaccinated, the Global South has been left out of the vaccine distribution, and I fear that if we cannot see our interconnectedness with less developed countries, and see the health of our own branches as connected to theirs, this pandemic will not end, but continue to ravage our vine.

So this May day, whether it is a cry for help from this pandemic, the name of a fictional network of female resistors, or a day of celebration of solidarity of workers in the face of exploitation, we are reminded on this day that our help and life comes from the vine of the Cosmic Christ that connects, sustains, and redeems all of our branches. It’s the Spirit of love, that energy that pulses through the vine that brings us together when we abide in Christ and in one another. That connection in the Holy Spirit is stronger than any label society puts on us to divide us, any physical distance between us, and beyond any force of sin or death that would attempt to destroy us. On this May Day we cry to the Lord to help us and knowing the vine from where our help comes from we are sent into the world to help one another. With the Holy Spirit and the perfect love of Christ pulsing through our branches, I leave you with this question, what is to prevent us? Amen.