Easter 7A - 2026
NOTE: Savannah King's Senior Reflection follows the sermon in the audio recording. Also, I included avideo about Miyazaki's use of Ma at the bottom of the page.
Sermon for the Seventh Sunday of Easter
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
The Rev. Andrew McLarty
There is a concept in Japanese art and storytelling called Ma. It is the meaningful space or pause between things — not emptiness, but charged stillness. In art, music, film, and even conversation, Ma is the breath that gives shape and meaning to what surrounds it. In a film by Akira Kurosawa, it may be the long moment of wind moving through a field before a battle begins. In the work of Hayao Miyazaki, it is the quiet scene of a child watching rain fall, or a train gliding smoothly on its course. In music, it is the rest between notes that creates tension and beauty. Ma teaches that silence is not absence; the pause itself is part of the story.
Today’s Gospel selection from John is full of Ma.
Jesus has already washed the disciples’ feet. Judas has already gone out into the night. The cross is now unavoidable. And yet, before the soldiers arrive, before the nails, before the tomb, Jesus pauses to pray.
Not hurriedly. Not desperately. He lingers. He lifts his eyes to heaven and speaks not only for himself, but for his disciples, and for us.
This is the Ma before the Cross.
It is far too easy to move quickly from Palm Sunday to Easter morning. We want resurrection without silence. Triumph without waiting. Our own Holy Week schedule is full of solemn observances filled with contemplation, but it can be a lot. The Gospel, I’m happily reminded, refuses to let us skip the pause.
Three days where heaven seems quiet. The quiet of holy Ma. The space of the deep inhale before God breathes again into the world in a new way.
And Jesus seems to be praying ahead of the upcoming pause. He knows the disciples are about to enter a terrifying silence before the great next act.
Jesus prays because he trusts that even in absence, God is still at work. Even in silence, love is still moving. Even in the tomb, resurrection is already beginning to breathe beneath the surface of the earth.
The disciples could not yet imagine Pentecost. They could not yet imagine the Spirit descending like fire, or frightened people becoming courageous apostles, or the Gospel moving beyond Jerusalem into the ends of the earth.
But all of that was born in the pause. The Ma mattered.
And I wonder how the Church can recover that wisdom.
We are so conditioned to fill every silence. Every moment must be productive. Efficient. Loud. Explained. We fear pauses because pauses force us to confront our dependence on God. In silence, we cannot save ourselves with noise.
But our faith was born from holy waiting.
Perhaps that is why Jesus prays not that the disciples escape the world, but that they remain in it. “I am not asking you to take them out of the world,” he says.
Because the Spirit is coming for the world.
And so maybe faithfulness can look, at times, less like having all the answers and more like learning to dwell in the Ma.
To sit in prayer without rushing.
To let grief speak without immediately trying to fix it.
To trust that God can work in quiet places.
To believe that the pauses in our lives may not be empty interruptions, but sacred spaces where the Spirit is preparing something new.
The Ma matters.
Amen.
