Rev. Nancy S. Taylor

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Comedy: a drama in which the central motif is the triumph over adversity, leading to a successful conclusion.

In the literary sense, Easter is comedy: a drama in which the central motif is the triumph over adversity, leading to a successful conclusion.

However, since the earliest days of the Church, Easter has been understood as more than a comedy … it has also been regarded as a joke. A supreme joke. The best joke in all the world and the last and best laugh ever.

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If this is your first Boston Marathon, ever, raise your hand. If this is your second Boston Marathon. Third. Fourth. Fifth. If you have run six or more Boston Marathons please stand. How many?

By any measure, the Boston Marathon is special. It is not the fastest marathon. It is not the most difficult marathon. But it is special … one of a kind.

The Boston Marathon is the world’s oldest, peaceful international competition.

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We are gathered today in the presence of God to celebrate Phillis Wheatley, an early member of this church on this day near the anniversary of her birthday.

She was in her day the most famous African on the face of the earth. Voltaire wrote about her while Thomas Jefferson owned a copy of her published book of poems. She conversed with the likes of Benjamin Franklin and George Washington. While on a trip abroad, she was sponsored by royalty and hailed and feted as a literary celebrity.

She is the mother of African American literature.

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In an ancient Buddhist text, Buddha tells this story:

Once upon a time, a man gathered together in one place all the men of a single village who were born blind and he brought to them an elephant.

One blind man was presented the side. When asked what an elephant was like, he exclaimed with conviction, Why, an elephant is like a wall!

Another, feeling the tusk disagreed. He shouted his truth: An elephant is round and hard and smooth and sharp. An elephant is, therefore, like a spear.

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I dedicate this sermon to my father,
David S. Taylor of blessed memory,
a sometime fisherman. (NST)

We have arrived at the final chapter in John’s Gospel. Jesus is dead and gone. He was recently and ignominiously executed by the state. With his death, the world of his followers is in shambles. For three years they had followed him. They had abandoned their boats and their nets, their livelihoods and their personal lives—and devoted themselves to exclusively him, to Jesus.

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“If the Atlantic were to dry up, it would reveal a scattered pathway of human bones, African bones, marking the various routes of the Middle Passage.” - John Henrik Clark, Historian

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PART ONE Invitation to the Realm of Legend

This day, allow yourself to enter, to step inside the world of legend … a world of stories larger than life and sweeter, even than honey.

Once upon a time, in the misty and distant past there lived a man so special that legends attached to him like barnacles to a ship.

The man’s name: Francis…

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In my role as Senior Minister of Old South Church in Boston—a role I have held for almost 11 years—I confess to some of those matters that keep me up at night.

I am kept up at night worrying over the possibility of an electrical fire in the roof of the great sanctuary … or somewhere deep in these old walls.

I worry about Cyber-attacks and computer viruses … about being shut down and off-line.