This is a re-tooling of a sermon I gave on April 25, 2010, called "The Lord (Not Wal-Mart) Is My Shepherd!" In that sermon I gave credit where it is most certainly due, to Jean Kilbourne, author of an excellent article, “Jesus is a Pair of Jeans,” and to Clinton McCann of Eden Seminary in St. Louis.
I'm still no fan of consumerism. I've seen companies use the Alabama tornado relief efforts as a sales pitch - and at the same time, I've seen companies like Jim N Nick's Barbecue very quietly do what they do best, feeding hungry people. No, I'm not advertising. I'm thanking.
Acts 2:42-47
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.
1 Peter 2:19-25
For it is a credit to you if, being aware of God, you endure pain while suffering unjustly. If you endure when you are beaten for doing wrong, what credit is that? But if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps.
“He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.”
When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.
John 10:1-10
“Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.” Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.
So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”
Psalm 23:1-6
The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.
This is the Word of the Lord.
It happens every time you turn on the television, or listen to the radio, or open a newspaper or magazine, or check your email, or look at something on the internet, drive or walk down the street, or get placed on hold while calling a company. It’s called “advertising.” It may be as complex as a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign, or as simple as a familiar logo on the side of a building. From almost the moment we wake up every morning, to the time we fall asleep at night, we are being sold.
The key to sales is not providing information which will allow you to make an informed decision; rather sales are made based on emotions. If, as a sales professional, I can transfer emotion to you about a given product or service, I will be successful.
Part of the reason for the pervasiveness of advertising is that it is an impersonal medium trying to make a personal, emotional connection. The key is simply to make you believe that you need a given product or service. When you believe that you need it, you are unsatisfied until that need is fulfilled by purchasing that product or service. That’s why the same old things are suddenly “new and improved,” why this model year car has a nicer sound system than last year’s model, why the “next generation” cell phone has more things you can do on it (besides make phone calls) than the last-generation cell phone.
According to marketing analysts, Americans see some 5,000 advertisements every day. As those numbers have risen, the need for marketing which rises above the noise and catches your attention has grown as well. Where once advertisers promised better relationships through product purchases – buy this and you will be loved – it seems they’ve crossed into a realm where there is a promise of a relationship with the product itself: buy this and it will love you. Think of it: five thousand times a day, our deepest, most heartfelt emotions are trivialized, our emotions channeled into merchandise. You love your children, don’t you? You’d like to see them be safe, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you agree that purchasing this car will be good for your children?
You love your spouse, don’t you? You would do anything to keep your spouse happy after all these years of marriage, wouldn’t you agree? Doesn’t it make sense to buy this bracelet/ring/necklace/fishing rod/whatever?
Everything – people, relationships, nature, whatever – is trivialized, turned into just so much stuff to be consumed or used to sell us something. And the problem isn't necessarily that advertising whips up artificial needs from nothing, but that it exploits our very real desires.
We are not stupid: we know that buying a certain brand of cereal won’t bring us one inch closer to love, to peace, to fulfillment. But we are surrounded by advertising that yokes our needs with products and promises us that things will deliver what in fact they never can. In the world of advertising, lovers are things and things are lovers.
The Twenty-Third Psalm is a wonderful source of comfort. Its familiar words accompany most funerals, and remind us of God’s love, providence, and protection. And when viewed in the context of our noisy, consumer-driven world, they serve as a radical call to return our hearts to the One who can, and does, truly fill our needs!
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”
To be sure, this first verse isn’t at all about never desiring stuff, but about having our needs – our real needs – met. In this verse, and in the one and a half that follow, our physical needs – food, water, peace and joy and restoration abound. When we walk with God, we walk in right paths. Even when our way leads through danger, uncertainty, loss and hardship, God is with us, taking us through. Even when we are surrounded by enemies – outside as well as inside ourselves – God is with us. When God is our Shepherd, we lack nothing.
Instead of being enslaved by what Alan Greenspan called “infectious greed,” where we have to have the next thing, the newest, the fastest, the shiniest, the best thing – In the twenty-Third Psalm, God reminds us that life is not a series of new-and-improved possessions, but a gift.
As last month ended, thousands of people were, in an instant, left without food; the water was undrinkable, and everything they owned was falling from the sky into someone’s yard a county or a state away. And as we speak, still others on the Mississippi delta are watching as their homes and livelihood are engulfed in flood waters.
Who could blame them if their cry was an echo of Psalm 22:
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish?
My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, but I find no rest.
…You brought me out of the womb; you made me trust in you, even at my mother’s breast.
From birth I was cast on you; from my mother’s womb you have been my God.
Do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is no one to help.
Instead, what do we hear from them, time and again? I’ve heard it from tornado survivors, and I heard if on NPR just yesterday, from a woman in Mississippi Delta country. In her 80’s, she was already forced out of her home by the flood, and was watching as the water line crept nearer and nearer her daughter’s back porch: “The Lord will make a way.”
So many of these people have learned that hard lesson about “things.” How, no matter what the advertisements say, there is no peace, and certainly no permanence, to what we possess. However expensive our car is, a falling tree can reduce it to scrap. No matter how nice a television we own, it can be washed away in a flood or blown into another zip code.
When we view life as a gift and not as something we earn or deserve, something that can be quantified by the size of our home or the digits in our bank account balance, the appropriate response is gratitude. Especially for those of us who have escaped the worst, knowing that the Lord is our shepherd sets us free to be infectious in our gratitude.
We are set free to share, quite literally, for God's sake – share our food, our drink, and our sources of security with those who are hurting, those who are dying, those who are forgotten, those who are lost – whether they be across the ocean or right next door. We are set free to share even with the enemies who are with us at the table God prepares!
If Psalm 22 is a foretelling of the Crucifixion, then let Psalm 23 be a joyous affirmation of the Resurrection, and let our infectious gratitude be a message to those who are hurting that, most assuredly, God has not given up. Not on them, not on us.
In times like these it’s not just comforting, it’s vital to be reminded that God has called all of us by name. In times like these it’s not just reassuring, it’s imperative to know that in life, in death, and in life beyond death we belong to God. In times like these it’s not just instructive, it’s a life-saving act to remind one another that this al fedjr, this twilight means the dawn is certainly coming. In times like these, when the skies fall and the floods rise, perhaps the greatest thing we as followers of Christ need to rediscover, and remind one another of, is the simple, yet profound truth that transcends theology, doctrine, denomination, race, or higher orthodoxy: God loves us, collectively and as individuals. God cares for us, deeply, nurturing us and protecting us as a shepherd to his sheep, as a mother hen to her chicks.
If I may paraphrase Max Lucado, “If God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it. If [God] had a wallet, your photo would be in it. [God] sends you flowers every spring and a sunrise every morning. Whenever you want to talk, [God will] listen. [God] can live anywhere in the universe, and... chose your heart. What about the Christmas gift [God] sent you in Bethlehem; not to mention that Friday at Calvary. Face it, friend. [God is] crazy about you.”
We need to remember this – more than that we need to tell it, not simply in words, because words are just advertising. Love and faith and hope are not emotions, remember? These are verbs, action words, things which are done.
Whatever we do, whether it is a donation to a relief organization, a few hours spent serving meals or making phone calls or loading boxes of relief supplies, our unrelenting message of the Kingdom of God, as children of God, as sheep of the Shepherd, is this:
At those times when we are at our darkest, lowest points, when the sirens wail, when the levees break, when God seems far away: God has not forsaken them, or us. God has not given up on them, or on us.
God has engraved them, and you, and I, on the palms of God's hands.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Our Road to Emmaus
Thanks to Kathryn Matthews Huey, "Preaching Peace," and my beloved pseudo-daughter Genevieve Turkett for inspiration and assistance in writing this week's sermon.
My prayer is that as you read it, Christ will be made known to you.
Acts 2:14a, 36-41
But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them,
“Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.”
Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?” Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.” And he testified with many other arguments and exhorted them, saying, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added.
1 Peter 1:17-23
If you invoke as Father the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds, live in reverent fear during the time of your exile. You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish. He was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake. Through him you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God.
Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart. You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God.
Luke 24:13-35
Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” He asked them, “What things?” They replied, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.” Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.
As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.
This is the Word of the Lord.
Have you ever wondered why only one of the people who Jesus joins on the road to Emmaus has a name? There’s a lot of speculation about it. Some commentators suggest that the person traveling with Cleopas was a woman. Others say it was Luke himself. Really, though, it could have been anybody… and perhaps that’s kind of the point.
These two are members of a group of people who pinned all their hopes on an itinerant Rabbi from a Galilean backwater, a man who not only spoke the oracles of God, but who could perform mighty miracles, things never before seen! Perhaps Cleopas and his friend had eaten the bread and fish when Jesus fed the five thousand. Perhaps they had gasped in amazement when lepers were cleansed. Perhaps they’d reeled in shock when Lazarus walked out of the tomb. Perhaps they’d hidden a smile when Jesus put the Pharisees in their place, and had actually read what he wrote in the dirt while the angry crowd waited to stone the woman caught in adultery.
Perhaps, but all of that was ancient history now. Because they’d stood at a distance, watching Peter and John crouched at the fire, and heard the rooster crow as Peter ran away, they’d been in the crushing crowd, terrified to speak out as everyone around them screamed “Crucify! Crucify!” They’d followed at a distance as Jesus fell under the weight of his cross, and a man was forced to carry it for him, and they’d watched from a safe distance as he breathed his last.
I doubt either one of them knew why they’d stayed in Jerusalem after that. Perhaps it was the comfort of having others around to share the grief, to try and process all that had happened, to try to make sense of their world coming apart around them. But that morning, things had started getting weird.
First, some of the women of the group woke them all up, babbling about the tomb being empty. It made no sense, but when a couple of the disciples ran down to see for themselves, sure enough, the tombstone was rolled back and the slab where the body was supposed to be laying was bare, except for the wrappings. And there was crazy talk of angels, and confusion, and it only got worse throughout the day. There had been no time to process the horror and loss of death before the insanity about angels and rising from the dead had begun, and it was at last too much to take. Cleopas and his companion had to get out of Jerusalem.
Emmaus was seven miles from Jerusalem, but it might as well have been seven million, because of what it represented. Frederick Buechner speaks of it as a place they go – a place we go – or, better put, a place to run to when we have lost hope or don't know what to do. Emmaus is a place of escape, of forgetting, of giving up, of deadening our senses and our minds and maybe our hearts, too.
Before April 27th, I might have struggled to come up with a way to convey this sense of shock, of loss, of confusion that drove them to run away to this town of warm springs. We don’t have to dig very deep to understand this, though, do we?
I imagine Cleopas and his companion walking down what was once a quiet residential street in Pleasant Grove or Pratt City, or past the remains of a strip mall in Fultondale, or the rubble of downtown Hackleburg or Cullman, or past the terribly empty spot on McFarland Boulevard in Tuscaloosa, that place where there used to be a Chinese restaurant. My family tradition was to have Christmas dinner there, after we visited our family in Tuscaloosa.
I think of what my friend Genny Turkett wrote in her blog this week. Genny was in my very first youth group, and lives in Tuscaloosa. She writes about seeing what has happened to her adopted home: “There is ache harder than relationships, than drug addicted boyfriends, than car accidents, than failing math class, than losing friends, than losing everything. There is this bigger, different hurt, of overwhelming disaster and death right down your street. There is a house a few blocks from my own with one of those wretched X's on the door. The last number is 1. That nameless storm killed someone in my neighborhood, it orphaned a dog, it destroyed a family. And dear God I am just so furious.”
And in the midst of this unfocused rage, this anger that drives them to run away, go somewhere, go anywhere, but do it now, the stranger draws near, asking what they’re talking about. The two travelers are dumbstruck: is he stupid? Is he blind? They are aghast! Why, can’t he see what has happened to our lives, to our world?
Cleopas and his companion had the common Jewish view of a view of Messiah who was a political redeemer who would achieve victory through the use of force or exercise of absolute power. Now, they were not wrong to have such high expectations of Jesus. Where he disappointed them was precisely in his inability or unwillingness to defend himself, his refusal to achieve victory with shock and awe.
So they reasoned that Jesus was not the Messiah. He was just a fool, and they were the greater fools for having put everything behind him. He let himself get killed, and God’s emissary would never let that happen! God is all powerful, so the Messiah would absolutely exhibit similar traits.
But gently, as the miles tick off underfoot, this soft-spoken stranger speaks of God’s love and grace, bringing clarity and comfort from the Scriptures. Slowly, they see that Jesus’ vulnerability is the veil behind which God hides. Jesus’ openness to love and forgive is the camouflage of the heart of God.
Their cold hearts were warmed by the growing understanding that God judges in order to forgive. God loves, and does so without shadow of turning, without reservation, even to the point of embracing that thing we all fear most, death, and thus conquering it.
And then, as they rest from their journey and take a meal, this nameless traveler takes bread and breaks it, and they see him at last for who he is.
We are those travelers on the road to Emmaus. All too often we face fears, uncertainties, grief and loss. We seek escape, we go down our own road to Emmaus, and God finds us in that place, on that road, and speaks peace to us, and our cold hearts burst into flame.
We are the travelers, but we Christians are something more, aren’t we? Our hearts are warmed for a purpose! Sometimes, you see, we are the vessel that God uses to reach out to someone else on their Emmaus road. It wasn’t much, that breaking of the bread, but was what Cleopas and his friend needed. Sometimes that kind word, that late-night phone call, that cup of coffee in the Waffle House just off the interstate is all we need. And sometimes it’s all someone else needs from us.
Sometimes we’re the travelers on that road to Emmaus. But sometimes we are Jesus.
There’s a story told from World War two, and it’s never meant more than it does right now. In Italy, an American soldier came across a statue of Jesus which had been damaged in a bombing raid. The statue’s hands were missing, and nowhere to be found. The soldier took a piece of paper, wrote a quick note, and left it at the base of the statue. The note read, “Christ has no hands but yours.”
Christ has no hands but yours.
Right now, in Cullman or in Hackleburg or Sawyerville or Cordova or Henager or so many other communities, someone’s walked a long way from where their home once was, where they’ve been searching through a pile of sticks, looking for family heirlooms, throwing busted glass into the back of a pickup truck, shoveling shingles into a pile, maybe struggling to not think of their lifelong friend or close relative who didn’t make it through the storm. Right now, they are walking into an open-sided tent where a few tables are set up. Right now someone they don’t know hands the weary, soul-sick travelers a sandwich and a bottle of water.
And they sit down at last, open the water and unwrap that sandwich. It isn’t much, no. But it’s what they need. And in that moment Jesus is made known to them in the breaking of bread.
Let us pray.
My prayer is that as you read it, Christ will be made known to you.
Acts 2:14a, 36-41
But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them,
“Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.”
Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?” Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.” And he testified with many other arguments and exhorted them, saying, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added.
1 Peter 1:17-23
If you invoke as Father the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds, live in reverent fear during the time of your exile. You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish. He was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake. Through him you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God.
Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart. You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God.
Luke 24:13-35
Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” He asked them, “What things?” They replied, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.” Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.
As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.
This is the Word of the Lord.
Have you ever wondered why only one of the people who Jesus joins on the road to Emmaus has a name? There’s a lot of speculation about it. Some commentators suggest that the person traveling with Cleopas was a woman. Others say it was Luke himself. Really, though, it could have been anybody… and perhaps that’s kind of the point.
These two are members of a group of people who pinned all their hopes on an itinerant Rabbi from a Galilean backwater, a man who not only spoke the oracles of God, but who could perform mighty miracles, things never before seen! Perhaps Cleopas and his friend had eaten the bread and fish when Jesus fed the five thousand. Perhaps they had gasped in amazement when lepers were cleansed. Perhaps they’d reeled in shock when Lazarus walked out of the tomb. Perhaps they’d hidden a smile when Jesus put the Pharisees in their place, and had actually read what he wrote in the dirt while the angry crowd waited to stone the woman caught in adultery.
Perhaps, but all of that was ancient history now. Because they’d stood at a distance, watching Peter and John crouched at the fire, and heard the rooster crow as Peter ran away, they’d been in the crushing crowd, terrified to speak out as everyone around them screamed “Crucify! Crucify!” They’d followed at a distance as Jesus fell under the weight of his cross, and a man was forced to carry it for him, and they’d watched from a safe distance as he breathed his last.
I doubt either one of them knew why they’d stayed in Jerusalem after that. Perhaps it was the comfort of having others around to share the grief, to try and process all that had happened, to try to make sense of their world coming apart around them. But that morning, things had started getting weird.
First, some of the women of the group woke them all up, babbling about the tomb being empty. It made no sense, but when a couple of the disciples ran down to see for themselves, sure enough, the tombstone was rolled back and the slab where the body was supposed to be laying was bare, except for the wrappings. And there was crazy talk of angels, and confusion, and it only got worse throughout the day. There had been no time to process the horror and loss of death before the insanity about angels and rising from the dead had begun, and it was at last too much to take. Cleopas and his companion had to get out of Jerusalem.
Emmaus was seven miles from Jerusalem, but it might as well have been seven million, because of what it represented. Frederick Buechner speaks of it as a place they go – a place we go – or, better put, a place to run to when we have lost hope or don't know what to do. Emmaus is a place of escape, of forgetting, of giving up, of deadening our senses and our minds and maybe our hearts, too.
Before April 27th, I might have struggled to come up with a way to convey this sense of shock, of loss, of confusion that drove them to run away to this town of warm springs. We don’t have to dig very deep to understand this, though, do we?
I imagine Cleopas and his companion walking down what was once a quiet residential street in Pleasant Grove or Pratt City, or past the remains of a strip mall in Fultondale, or the rubble of downtown Hackleburg or Cullman, or past the terribly empty spot on McFarland Boulevard in Tuscaloosa, that place where there used to be a Chinese restaurant. My family tradition was to have Christmas dinner there, after we visited our family in Tuscaloosa.
I think of what my friend Genny Turkett wrote in her blog this week. Genny was in my very first youth group, and lives in Tuscaloosa. She writes about seeing what has happened to her adopted home: “There is ache harder than relationships, than drug addicted boyfriends, than car accidents, than failing math class, than losing friends, than losing everything. There is this bigger, different hurt, of overwhelming disaster and death right down your street. There is a house a few blocks from my own with one of those wretched X's on the door. The last number is 1. That nameless storm killed someone in my neighborhood, it orphaned a dog, it destroyed a family. And dear God I am just so furious.”
And in the midst of this unfocused rage, this anger that drives them to run away, go somewhere, go anywhere, but do it now, the stranger draws near, asking what they’re talking about. The two travelers are dumbstruck: is he stupid? Is he blind? They are aghast! Why, can’t he see what has happened to our lives, to our world?
Cleopas and his companion had the common Jewish view of a view of Messiah who was a political redeemer who would achieve victory through the use of force or exercise of absolute power. Now, they were not wrong to have such high expectations of Jesus. Where he disappointed them was precisely in his inability or unwillingness to defend himself, his refusal to achieve victory with shock and awe.
So they reasoned that Jesus was not the Messiah. He was just a fool, and they were the greater fools for having put everything behind him. He let himself get killed, and God’s emissary would never let that happen! God is all powerful, so the Messiah would absolutely exhibit similar traits.
But gently, as the miles tick off underfoot, this soft-spoken stranger speaks of God’s love and grace, bringing clarity and comfort from the Scriptures. Slowly, they see that Jesus’ vulnerability is the veil behind which God hides. Jesus’ openness to love and forgive is the camouflage of the heart of God.
Their cold hearts were warmed by the growing understanding that God judges in order to forgive. God loves, and does so without shadow of turning, without reservation, even to the point of embracing that thing we all fear most, death, and thus conquering it.
And then, as they rest from their journey and take a meal, this nameless traveler takes bread and breaks it, and they see him at last for who he is.
We are those travelers on the road to Emmaus. All too often we face fears, uncertainties, grief and loss. We seek escape, we go down our own road to Emmaus, and God finds us in that place, on that road, and speaks peace to us, and our cold hearts burst into flame.
We are the travelers, but we Christians are something more, aren’t we? Our hearts are warmed for a purpose! Sometimes, you see, we are the vessel that God uses to reach out to someone else on their Emmaus road. It wasn’t much, that breaking of the bread, but was what Cleopas and his friend needed. Sometimes that kind word, that late-night phone call, that cup of coffee in the Waffle House just off the interstate is all we need. And sometimes it’s all someone else needs from us.
Sometimes we’re the travelers on that road to Emmaus. But sometimes we are Jesus.
There’s a story told from World War two, and it’s never meant more than it does right now. In Italy, an American soldier came across a statue of Jesus which had been damaged in a bombing raid. The statue’s hands were missing, and nowhere to be found. The soldier took a piece of paper, wrote a quick note, and left it at the base of the statue. The note read, “Christ has no hands but yours.”
Christ has no hands but yours.
Right now, in Cullman or in Hackleburg or Sawyerville or Cordova or Henager or so many other communities, someone’s walked a long way from where their home once was, where they’ve been searching through a pile of sticks, looking for family heirlooms, throwing busted glass into the back of a pickup truck, shoveling shingles into a pile, maybe struggling to not think of their lifelong friend or close relative who didn’t make it through the storm. Right now, they are walking into an open-sided tent where a few tables are set up. Right now someone they don’t know hands the weary, soul-sick travelers a sandwich and a bottle of water.
And they sit down at last, open the water and unwrap that sandwich. It isn’t much, no. But it’s what they need. And in that moment Jesus is made known to them in the breaking of bread.
Let us pray.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Disaster Strikes: Asking "Why?" and "Where?"
I am indebted to Richard Schwedes, pastor of Portland Heywood Lutheran Church, and for one of the RevGalBlogPals, whose name is listed only as "Katherine," for their instructive guidance in crafting a sermon which addresses natural disasters.
The radio station I mention in the sermon is WAPI, and the telethon was put on by ABC 33/40. Please consider giving to the Red Cross, Salvation Army, and/or Presbyterian Disaster Assistance as efforts continue in providing relief from this week's deadly tornadoes.
Don't "give until it hurts." Give until it finally gets better.
Acts 2:14a, 22-32
But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them,
“You that are Israelites, listen to what I have to say: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did through him among you, as you yourselves know — this man, handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law. But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power. For David says concerning him, ‘I saw the Lord always before me, for he is at my right hand so that I will not be shaken; therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced; moreover my flesh will live in hope. For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One experience corruption. You have made known to me the ways of life; you will make me full of gladness with your presence.’
“Fellow Israelites, I may say to you confidently of our ancestor David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Since he was a prophet, he knew that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would put one of his descendants on his throne. Foreseeing this, David spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, saying, ‘He was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh experience corruption.’ This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses.
John 20:19-31
When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
1 Peter 1:3-9
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith — being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire — may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
This is the Word of the Lord.
Early this past Wednesday morning, many of us were awakened by tornado warning sirens. Some communities were hit by either a small tornado or straight-line winds (Tim’s property had some trees down, and they lost power), and at least one person was killed while clearing downed trees. It was bad, make no mistake. But it’s Alabama in the springtime, and to one degree or another, we’re used to it.
But nothing could have prepared us for what was coming that afternoon.
Before 3 that afternoon, a tornado slammed into the downtown area of Cullman. This one, as well as the massive EF-5 tornado that would devastate much of Tuscaloosa at a little after five, was caught on live television. That same tornado then set its sights on Birmingham. For awhile, it looked like the downtown area of Birmingham would be hit. The weather service even specifically mentioned my own community of Tarrant as a target.
In the end, the media was calling it the deadliest outbreak of tornadoes since 1932. Pleasant Grove was destroyed, as well as Pratt City, and Forestdale suffered extensive damage as well. It is safe to say that, even now, we do not know the extent of damage to homes and businesses in the Tuscaloosa or Birmingham area. Whole neighborhoods are not simply destroyed, they are missing altogether. And lest we forget, Huntsville, Hackleburg, Phil Campbell, Rainsville, Argo, Margaret, Odenville, Sawyerville, and many, many more communities were damaged or destroyed as well. At last count, 250 people are dead in Alabama alone, over two thousand, two hundred injured, and many hundreds are unaccounted for.
All of our families have been touched, to one degree or another, by damage or death from this tragedy.
As Christians, of course, our first thought is to pray: to pray for the victims and their families, to be thankful that we were not killed, our homes not destroyed.
But if you’re like me, after the prayers are said, a question hangs in the air, unanswered: Why?
Why did this happen?
This question has its sibling, of course: where? Where is God in all of this?
Why do some people suffer, and not others? Were the tornadoes really an act of God? Was God angrier with Pleasant Grove than with Tarrant? Or did God favor Hoover over Tuscaloosa? Does Montgomery hold a dearer place in God’s heart than Henager?
Oh, there are those who are more than ready to point out supernatural causes for natural disasters, folks like Pat Robertson, who was more than happy to blame Hurricane Katrina and the earthquake in Haiti on the sins and shortcomings of the victims themselves (or their ancestors!). These folks are quick to grab hold of a text like Micah 5, which concludes with “I will take vengeance in anger and wrath upon the nations that have not obeyed me.” They’ll jump to Psalm 106: “Fire blazed among their followers; a flame consumed the wicked,” and then there’s always selected readings from the Book of Revelation!
I’ve shared my views about this kind of “preaching” before. I have no patience for it. It paints God as a malevolent force, bent on exacting retribution for real and imagined wrongs, not caring if innocents are destroyed in the process. What’s more, such a view blatantly ignores huge, well, slabs of Scripture, for example 1 Thessalonians 5:9 – “For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Yet this kind of view, this idea that God causes tornadoes and earthquakes and hurricanes and tsunamis speaks to the natural tendency of human beings to invent explanations for the unexplainable, to place blame where none is deserved, all in an effort to make natural disasters on a scale like we’ve experienced this past week make sense to us.
Perhaps blaming God does, on some level, make sense psychologically… however, it makes absolutely no sense theologically, because the idea that tornadoes or earthquakes or hurricanes or tsunamis are instruments of God’s judgment and wrath ignores one very important, blatantly obvious, person: Jesus Christ.
In the Gospels, Jesus, God-With-Us, does not incite the storm on the Lake of Galilee; he calms the storm. He soothes the fears of his disciples. If we believe that Jesus truly reflects the nature of his Heavenly Father, then what we see in Jesus is a loving and merciful God who would not cause tornadoes to come, lives to shatter, and human beings to go missing.
Indeed, the Gospel of John tells us that "This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn't go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again.” (That’s John 3:16-17 from “The Message” version)
Make no mistake, God does judge us, but most of the time that judgment comes through the Word.
We are judged when we look to Scripture and discover therein that we are living far from what God expects.
That judgment isn’t intended to destroy us, but to compel us toward relationship with Christ, understanding that only in Jesus can we truly live God’s life.
But the question remains: If God did not cause these events, why did they occur?
The short answer is sin.
Now, we often view sin as an action, something we commit, but sin is more than just an act, it is the nature of this world. This world has been infected and affected by sin, and Scripture teaches us that it is because of sin that we have trouble in the world. Natural disasters are not a product of a wrathful God, they happen because it is the nature of the world we inhabit, period. It is a sad truth that, as long as we live in this world, our life can never be truly peaceful. Yet we have hope, because we serve a God that, in Christ, has conquered this world of sin! Hear the Word of God, from John 16:33 – “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
God wants to save us, not judge us!
God wants to give us hope, not despair!
But knowing that, what does it mean, in this specific context, when in our Epistle reading today Peter speaks about suffering trials, about having our faith tested by fire?
Were those who lost homes, families, and their very lives being tested? Is the natural disaster itself a trial by fire?
I want to suggest… no, that’s not so. I want to proclaim to you this morning that where we who follow Christ are tested – where we who call ourselves “Christian” are tried – is not in the event, but in our response to the event. In this world of sin, things happen, and very often these things are horrible beyond words. How we respond to these very bad things as Ambassadors for Christ either brings praise and glory to Jesus Christ, or proves that we do not believe what we claim to believe.
The tragedy that this state has endured this week begs description. The response continues to be so overwhelming that it leaves me gape-mouthed in wonder.
I have held hands and prayed with a first responder, a battle-hardened veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan as he wept openly, mourning the fact that his team, searching for survivors in one twisted pile of rubble after another, found no one alive.
And I have watched as a graduating nursing student, someone who was in my youth group not too many years ago, gave her time and energy to the victims of the storm.
And I have seen car after car after car line up as armies of volunteers descended on them to unload donations – so much water that the local Wal-Mart sold out, so much food and soap and diapers and batteries that they broke a trailer! And I’ve seen these trailers, seven so far, hauled off directly to the hardest hit communities.
I’ve seen churches open their doors wide, offering meals to whoever wants them, and teams of volunteers with chain saws going door to door to remove trees from roofs.
I’ve seen a local radio station suspend their regular programming, giving up day after day of revenue from national programs in order to provide people a venue to call in, ask for assistance, and offer assistance. I’ve seen a television station organize an almost impromptu telethon and raise over half a million dollars. I’ve seen our own Presbyterian Disaster Assistance commit to being in the area, and helping wherever possible, for the long haul.
And I’ve fielded offer after offer of assistance from Twitter and FaceBook, arranging for donations to be sent to shelters and relief organizations from as far away as Chicago and Texas.
People have been offering help where they can, with the resources they have.
Disasters will happen – some will be huge, affecting many thousands of people; others will be much more localized, affecting a family. In times of need, will we point fingers, will we turn inward, or will we respond like Matthew 25 Christians? “I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me… Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
Let us pray:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Where there is despair, hope.
Where there is darkness, light.
Where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive.
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
The radio station I mention in the sermon is WAPI, and the telethon was put on by ABC 33/40. Please consider giving to the Red Cross, Salvation Army, and/or Presbyterian Disaster Assistance as efforts continue in providing relief from this week's deadly tornadoes.
Don't "give until it hurts." Give until it finally gets better.
Acts 2:14a, 22-32
But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them,
“You that are Israelites, listen to what I have to say: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did through him among you, as you yourselves know — this man, handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law. But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power. For David says concerning him, ‘I saw the Lord always before me, for he is at my right hand so that I will not be shaken; therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced; moreover my flesh will live in hope. For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One experience corruption. You have made known to me the ways of life; you will make me full of gladness with your presence.’
“Fellow Israelites, I may say to you confidently of our ancestor David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Since he was a prophet, he knew that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would put one of his descendants on his throne. Foreseeing this, David spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, saying, ‘He was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh experience corruption.’ This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses.
John 20:19-31
When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
1 Peter 1:3-9
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith — being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire — may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
This is the Word of the Lord.
Early this past Wednesday morning, many of us were awakened by tornado warning sirens. Some communities were hit by either a small tornado or straight-line winds (Tim’s property had some trees down, and they lost power), and at least one person was killed while clearing downed trees. It was bad, make no mistake. But it’s Alabama in the springtime, and to one degree or another, we’re used to it.
But nothing could have prepared us for what was coming that afternoon.
Before 3 that afternoon, a tornado slammed into the downtown area of Cullman. This one, as well as the massive EF-5 tornado that would devastate much of Tuscaloosa at a little after five, was caught on live television. That same tornado then set its sights on Birmingham. For awhile, it looked like the downtown area of Birmingham would be hit. The weather service even specifically mentioned my own community of Tarrant as a target.
In the end, the media was calling it the deadliest outbreak of tornadoes since 1932. Pleasant Grove was destroyed, as well as Pratt City, and Forestdale suffered extensive damage as well. It is safe to say that, even now, we do not know the extent of damage to homes and businesses in the Tuscaloosa or Birmingham area. Whole neighborhoods are not simply destroyed, they are missing altogether. And lest we forget, Huntsville, Hackleburg, Phil Campbell, Rainsville, Argo, Margaret, Odenville, Sawyerville, and many, many more communities were damaged or destroyed as well. At last count, 250 people are dead in Alabama alone, over two thousand, two hundred injured, and many hundreds are unaccounted for.
All of our families have been touched, to one degree or another, by damage or death from this tragedy.
As Christians, of course, our first thought is to pray: to pray for the victims and their families, to be thankful that we were not killed, our homes not destroyed.
But if you’re like me, after the prayers are said, a question hangs in the air, unanswered: Why?
Why did this happen?
This question has its sibling, of course: where? Where is God in all of this?
Why do some people suffer, and not others? Were the tornadoes really an act of God? Was God angrier with Pleasant Grove than with Tarrant? Or did God favor Hoover over Tuscaloosa? Does Montgomery hold a dearer place in God’s heart than Henager?
Oh, there are those who are more than ready to point out supernatural causes for natural disasters, folks like Pat Robertson, who was more than happy to blame Hurricane Katrina and the earthquake in Haiti on the sins and shortcomings of the victims themselves (or their ancestors!). These folks are quick to grab hold of a text like Micah 5, which concludes with “I will take vengeance in anger and wrath upon the nations that have not obeyed me.” They’ll jump to Psalm 106: “Fire blazed among their followers; a flame consumed the wicked,” and then there’s always selected readings from the Book of Revelation!
I’ve shared my views about this kind of “preaching” before. I have no patience for it. It paints God as a malevolent force, bent on exacting retribution for real and imagined wrongs, not caring if innocents are destroyed in the process. What’s more, such a view blatantly ignores huge, well, slabs of Scripture, for example 1 Thessalonians 5:9 – “For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Yet this kind of view, this idea that God causes tornadoes and earthquakes and hurricanes and tsunamis speaks to the natural tendency of human beings to invent explanations for the unexplainable, to place blame where none is deserved, all in an effort to make natural disasters on a scale like we’ve experienced this past week make sense to us.
Perhaps blaming God does, on some level, make sense psychologically… however, it makes absolutely no sense theologically, because the idea that tornadoes or earthquakes or hurricanes or tsunamis are instruments of God’s judgment and wrath ignores one very important, blatantly obvious, person: Jesus Christ.
In the Gospels, Jesus, God-With-Us, does not incite the storm on the Lake of Galilee; he calms the storm. He soothes the fears of his disciples. If we believe that Jesus truly reflects the nature of his Heavenly Father, then what we see in Jesus is a loving and merciful God who would not cause tornadoes to come, lives to shatter, and human beings to go missing.
Indeed, the Gospel of John tells us that "This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn't go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again.” (That’s John 3:16-17 from “The Message” version)
Make no mistake, God does judge us, but most of the time that judgment comes through the Word.
We are judged when we look to Scripture and discover therein that we are living far from what God expects.
That judgment isn’t intended to destroy us, but to compel us toward relationship with Christ, understanding that only in Jesus can we truly live God’s life.
But the question remains: If God did not cause these events, why did they occur?
The short answer is sin.
Now, we often view sin as an action, something we commit, but sin is more than just an act, it is the nature of this world. This world has been infected and affected by sin, and Scripture teaches us that it is because of sin that we have trouble in the world. Natural disasters are not a product of a wrathful God, they happen because it is the nature of the world we inhabit, period. It is a sad truth that, as long as we live in this world, our life can never be truly peaceful. Yet we have hope, because we serve a God that, in Christ, has conquered this world of sin! Hear the Word of God, from John 16:33 – “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
God wants to save us, not judge us!
God wants to give us hope, not despair!
But knowing that, what does it mean, in this specific context, when in our Epistle reading today Peter speaks about suffering trials, about having our faith tested by fire?
Were those who lost homes, families, and their very lives being tested? Is the natural disaster itself a trial by fire?
I want to suggest… no, that’s not so. I want to proclaim to you this morning that where we who follow Christ are tested – where we who call ourselves “Christian” are tried – is not in the event, but in our response to the event. In this world of sin, things happen, and very often these things are horrible beyond words. How we respond to these very bad things as Ambassadors for Christ either brings praise and glory to Jesus Christ, or proves that we do not believe what we claim to believe.
The tragedy that this state has endured this week begs description. The response continues to be so overwhelming that it leaves me gape-mouthed in wonder.
I have held hands and prayed with a first responder, a battle-hardened veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan as he wept openly, mourning the fact that his team, searching for survivors in one twisted pile of rubble after another, found no one alive.
And I have watched as a graduating nursing student, someone who was in my youth group not too many years ago, gave her time and energy to the victims of the storm.
And I have seen car after car after car line up as armies of volunteers descended on them to unload donations – so much water that the local Wal-Mart sold out, so much food and soap and diapers and batteries that they broke a trailer! And I’ve seen these trailers, seven so far, hauled off directly to the hardest hit communities.
I’ve seen churches open their doors wide, offering meals to whoever wants them, and teams of volunteers with chain saws going door to door to remove trees from roofs.
I’ve seen a local radio station suspend their regular programming, giving up day after day of revenue from national programs in order to provide people a venue to call in, ask for assistance, and offer assistance. I’ve seen a television station organize an almost impromptu telethon and raise over half a million dollars. I’ve seen our own Presbyterian Disaster Assistance commit to being in the area, and helping wherever possible, for the long haul.
And I’ve fielded offer after offer of assistance from Twitter and FaceBook, arranging for donations to be sent to shelters and relief organizations from as far away as Chicago and Texas.
People have been offering help where they can, with the resources they have.
Disasters will happen – some will be huge, affecting many thousands of people; others will be much more localized, affecting a family. In times of need, will we point fingers, will we turn inward, or will we respond like Matthew 25 Christians? “I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me… Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
Let us pray:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Where there is despair, hope.
Where there is darkness, light.
Where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive.
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Easter - We Are Resurrection People!
That's a recurring theme in my sermons, that and the al-fedjr, the twilight before dawn. Fitting touch-points on this Easter, wouldn't you say?
Jeremiah 31:1-6
At that time, says the LORD, I will be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall be my people.
Thus says the LORD: The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness;
when Israel sought for rest, the LORD appeared to him from far away.
I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.
Again I will build you, and you shall be built, O virgin Israel!
Again you shall take your tambourines, and go forth in the dance of the merrymakers.
Again you shall plant vineyards on the mountains of Samaria;
the planters shall plant, and shall enjoy the fruit.
For there shall be a day when sentinels will call in the hill country of Ephraim:
“Come, let us go up to Zion, to the LORD our God.”
Colossians 3:1-4
So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.
John 20:1-18
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.
But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” When she had said this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.‘” Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.
This is the Word of the Lord.
How easily we say the words, “Christ is risen.” How simple it is to acknowledge that the tomb is empty, that the Lord has conquered death, hell, and the grave, that we serve a risen Lord. Easy, because, all too often, it’s just words, isn’t it? We are Resurrection people, after all. We live in this reality, the reality that says Jesus “is,” not Jesus “was.” We are Resurrection people. We associate springtime with resurrection because it’s an integral part of our vocabulary.
We forget, all too easily, that there was a time when, as Barbara Brown Taylor puts it, “only place springtime happen[ed]… [was] on the graves, not in them.”
Mary Magdalene wasn’t going to the tomb that morning to check the status of the body. She was going to the tomb because she was grieving. This was the place where she could get closest to the one person who had looked on her as if she were human, as if she were valuable, as if she, a woman, were equal. At least there, in the twilight before dawn, she could be close to him again, just on the other side of a stone, close enough to touch, really. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
Do you see how it was? No one was thinking about Resurrection, not because of a lack of faith or because Jesus hadn’t told them again and again, but because it made no sense, it was dancing to architecture, it was painting with math, completely beyond comprehension.
Jesus was dead. End of story. All those years, all those miles traveled, the stories and parables and healings and dangers and triumphs and evenings in a group around a fire, everything, all of it, gone.
So Mary Magdalene walked toward the tomb in the darkness. But it wouldn’t be dark for long.
Oh, it wasn’t like someone turned on the floodlights and everyone instantly understood it, of course not. No one got it, not completely, for a long time. In Matthew’s Gospel, right before the verses we call the “Great Commission,” the disciples are in Galilee, on a mountain, and Jesus appears to them, right there, as real and present as this pulpit or that pew, and still we read, “When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.” This is very likely long after all of the events the other Gospels fill in for us between the Resurrection and the Ascension. Well after they’d broken bread with Jesus. Long after Thomas had been invited to touch the wounds in Christ’s hands and side.
Is it any surprise that, when Mary Magdalene topped that hill and saw, as the sky slowly began its metamorphosis from darkness to dawn, that the stone was rolled away, that her first thought was not Resurrection but robbery?
Sure, Peter and John ran to the tomb, but it wasn’t to confirm that Christ had risen, was it? It was to try and figure out who had stolen the body and where they’d taken it. We’re told that John believed, but we don’t know what, exactly, he believed.
How easily we say the words, “Christ is risen.” How simple it is to acknowledge that the tomb is empty, that the Lord has conquered death, hell, and the grave, that we serve a risen Lord.
John and Peter have gone, “returned to their homes,” whatever that means, and Mary Magdalene is left alone, weeping, so brokenhearted at the double loss, not only of her beloved teacher’s life, but even of his body, that the appearance of angels at the tomb doesn’t even faze her! Of course she doesn’t recognize Jesus at first, standing right there in front of her! Jesus is dead, and someone has stolen his body. Someone has taken everything, literally everything, away from her!
What does it really mean to be Resurrection people?
Could it be that one instant – that moment when Jesus says, “Mary,” and she realizes – she knows – she finally understands? That burst of joy, that rush of raw, jaw-dropping excitement that drives her to embrace Jesus, even when such a thing is unheard of, that consummation of a hope she didn’t even realize she harbored?
I think it’s odd that the last time we hear from, or about, Mary Magdalene is when she goes to the disciples and tells them that she has seen Jesus, and relays what He told her to say. The disciples have their own Resurrection experience, of course, and their lives are changed by the inflowing Holy Spirit. The great Good News of God-With-Us, risen and triumphant, bursts upon the scene and never stops sprinting. But it is Peter, James and John, the other Apostles, and later Paul, who spur the horses, not Mary.
I don’t know the answer, but I have suspicions.
We are Resurrection people, but we live in a place that, all too often, feels much more like that dark path through the cemetery than anything else.
How easily we say the words, “Christ is risen.” How simple it is to acknowledge that the tomb is empty, that the Lord has conquered death, hell, and the grave, that we serve a risen Lord. And how hard it is to make those words more than just that – words.
We celebrate the Lord’s Supper this morning, in part because it serves as a point of reference, a reminder of the fact that, and I am quoting Romans 5:8, “…God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Perhaps the purpose of us leaving Mary Magdalene there, bursting with excitement, stumbling over her words with joy as she tells the disciples that Christ really is alive, is that, in a way, she serves as another point of reference: a reminder that we live in what the Arabic-speaking people call “al-fedjr,” the twilight that is just before the dawn.
Mary Magdalene is perhaps a reminder that we really are Resurrection people, and someday the dawn will break. Someday we, too, will turn in awestruck excitement, and see the Risen Lord, and he will call us, too, by name.
Jeremiah 31:1-6
At that time, says the LORD, I will be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall be my people.
Thus says the LORD: The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness;
when Israel sought for rest, the LORD appeared to him from far away.
I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.
Again I will build you, and you shall be built, O virgin Israel!
Again you shall take your tambourines, and go forth in the dance of the merrymakers.
Again you shall plant vineyards on the mountains of Samaria;
the planters shall plant, and shall enjoy the fruit.
For there shall be a day when sentinels will call in the hill country of Ephraim:
“Come, let us go up to Zion, to the LORD our God.”
Colossians 3:1-4
So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.
John 20:1-18
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.
But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” When she had said this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.‘” Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.
This is the Word of the Lord.
How easily we say the words, “Christ is risen.” How simple it is to acknowledge that the tomb is empty, that the Lord has conquered death, hell, and the grave, that we serve a risen Lord. Easy, because, all too often, it’s just words, isn’t it? We are Resurrection people, after all. We live in this reality, the reality that says Jesus “is,” not Jesus “was.” We are Resurrection people. We associate springtime with resurrection because it’s an integral part of our vocabulary.
We forget, all too easily, that there was a time when, as Barbara Brown Taylor puts it, “only place springtime happen[ed]… [was] on the graves, not in them.”
Mary Magdalene wasn’t going to the tomb that morning to check the status of the body. She was going to the tomb because she was grieving. This was the place where she could get closest to the one person who had looked on her as if she were human, as if she were valuable, as if she, a woman, were equal. At least there, in the twilight before dawn, she could be close to him again, just on the other side of a stone, close enough to touch, really. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
Do you see how it was? No one was thinking about Resurrection, not because of a lack of faith or because Jesus hadn’t told them again and again, but because it made no sense, it was dancing to architecture, it was painting with math, completely beyond comprehension.
Jesus was dead. End of story. All those years, all those miles traveled, the stories and parables and healings and dangers and triumphs and evenings in a group around a fire, everything, all of it, gone.
So Mary Magdalene walked toward the tomb in the darkness. But it wouldn’t be dark for long.
Oh, it wasn’t like someone turned on the floodlights and everyone instantly understood it, of course not. No one got it, not completely, for a long time. In Matthew’s Gospel, right before the verses we call the “Great Commission,” the disciples are in Galilee, on a mountain, and Jesus appears to them, right there, as real and present as this pulpit or that pew, and still we read, “When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.” This is very likely long after all of the events the other Gospels fill in for us between the Resurrection and the Ascension. Well after they’d broken bread with Jesus. Long after Thomas had been invited to touch the wounds in Christ’s hands and side.
Is it any surprise that, when Mary Magdalene topped that hill and saw, as the sky slowly began its metamorphosis from darkness to dawn, that the stone was rolled away, that her first thought was not Resurrection but robbery?
Sure, Peter and John ran to the tomb, but it wasn’t to confirm that Christ had risen, was it? It was to try and figure out who had stolen the body and where they’d taken it. We’re told that John believed, but we don’t know what, exactly, he believed.
How easily we say the words, “Christ is risen.” How simple it is to acknowledge that the tomb is empty, that the Lord has conquered death, hell, and the grave, that we serve a risen Lord.
John and Peter have gone, “returned to their homes,” whatever that means, and Mary Magdalene is left alone, weeping, so brokenhearted at the double loss, not only of her beloved teacher’s life, but even of his body, that the appearance of angels at the tomb doesn’t even faze her! Of course she doesn’t recognize Jesus at first, standing right there in front of her! Jesus is dead, and someone has stolen his body. Someone has taken everything, literally everything, away from her!
What does it really mean to be Resurrection people?
Could it be that one instant – that moment when Jesus says, “Mary,” and she realizes – she knows – she finally understands? That burst of joy, that rush of raw, jaw-dropping excitement that drives her to embrace Jesus, even when such a thing is unheard of, that consummation of a hope she didn’t even realize she harbored?
I think it’s odd that the last time we hear from, or about, Mary Magdalene is when she goes to the disciples and tells them that she has seen Jesus, and relays what He told her to say. The disciples have their own Resurrection experience, of course, and their lives are changed by the inflowing Holy Spirit. The great Good News of God-With-Us, risen and triumphant, bursts upon the scene and never stops sprinting. But it is Peter, James and John, the other Apostles, and later Paul, who spur the horses, not Mary.
I don’t know the answer, but I have suspicions.
We are Resurrection people, but we live in a place that, all too often, feels much more like that dark path through the cemetery than anything else.
How easily we say the words, “Christ is risen.” How simple it is to acknowledge that the tomb is empty, that the Lord has conquered death, hell, and the grave, that we serve a risen Lord. And how hard it is to make those words more than just that – words.
We celebrate the Lord’s Supper this morning, in part because it serves as a point of reference, a reminder of the fact that, and I am quoting Romans 5:8, “…God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Perhaps the purpose of us leaving Mary Magdalene there, bursting with excitement, stumbling over her words with joy as she tells the disciples that Christ really is alive, is that, in a way, she serves as another point of reference: a reminder that we live in what the Arabic-speaking people call “al-fedjr,” the twilight that is just before the dawn.
Mary Magdalene is perhaps a reminder that we really are Resurrection people, and someday the dawn will break. Someday we, too, will turn in awestruck excitement, and see the Risen Lord, and he will call us, too, by name.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Palm Sunday: The Agenda
Thanks to Kathryn Matthews Huey for her guidance and the especially helpful quote from Marcus Borg.
Matthew 21:1-11
When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, just say this, ‘The Lord needs them.’ And he will send them immediately.” This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying,
“Tell the daughter of Zion,
Look, your king is coming to you,
humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”
The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting,
“Hosanna to the Son of David!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!”
When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?” The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”
Isaiah 50:4-9a
The Lord GOD has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word.
Morning by morning he wakens — wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught.
The Lord GOD has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backward.
I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard;
I did not hide my face from insult and spitting.
The Lord GOD helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; he who vindicates me is near.
Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together.
Who are my adversaries? Let them confront me.
It is the Lord GOD who helps me; who will declare me guilty?
Philippians 2:5-11
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross.
Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
This is the Word of the Lord.
I don’t think you could have fit another person into Jerusalem with a shoehorn that day. Passover was in full swing, after all, and people had come from all over the known word to bring their sacrifices to the Temple, to eat the Seder meal together, to remember the night, fifteen hundred years ago, when the angel of death passed over the Children of Israel, striking terror into the very souls of the Egyptians, clearing the way for their freedom.
Freedom was very much on everybody’s mind, make no mistake. For seven hundred years, one foreign power or another had controlled Judea. Not since Zedekiah had Israel had its own ruler, and many felt it was high time to overthrow the Romans and take back their country.
So when the rumors started flying around, saying that Jesus of Nazareth was on his way to Jerusalem, you remember, he was that prophet who had opened the tomb of a man dead for four days, and had raised him? Well, naturally they went to get a glimpse of him, to perhaps be witness to the next King of Israel coming in to claim his throne.
Now, they weren’t the only ones craning their necks to watch for Jesus to top the hill from Bethany. Plenty of people had heard about Lazarus, and had heard about how this Jesus fellow had opened the eyes of a man born blind, and had heard about how he fed thousands and thousands of people with just a few barley loaves and fish. Maybe they’d see him do something interesting, maybe he’d say something entertaining.
I guess it all started like these things usually do. Someone in the crowd started waving a palm branch and shouting “Hosanna to the Son of David!” as Jesus and his band of disciples crested the hill.
Now, what they expected to see, I can’t tell you. Perhaps the people looking for entertainment expected him to come prancing over the hill, turning water into wine, and passing out sandwiches. Perhaps the people hoping to overthrow Roman rule once and for all were looking for a rider on an armored steed, bloody sword drawn, leading a mighty army into the city to take his throne by force.
What they saw was a man, on a saddle of cloaks, riding a donkey, its colt not far behind.
Some were let down, no doubt. But many remembered the words of the prophet Zecheriah: “Rejoice, O people of Zion! Shout in triumph, O people of Jerusalem! Look, your king is coming to you. He is righteous and victorious, yet he is humble, riding on a donkey—riding on a donkey’s colt.”
And shout they did! The “Hosannas” grew to a crescendo, and people began cutting palm branches off of trees, throwing them on the road in Jesus’ path. Others even put their cloaks down, so the royal donkey’s feet wouldn’t touch the dirt. It was amazing to see, a joy to be in the midst of!
But how soon the words that crowd shouted would change!
We’ve been talking for a few weeks now about the ways in which different people misunderstood Jesus. Nicodemus misunderstood Jesus when he spoke of being born from above. The woman at the well misunderstood Jesus when he spoke of living water. The people who followed Jesus for the free food and entertainment value, as well as those who expected Jesus to overthrow the Roman government and establish an eternal earthly kingdom misunderstood Jesus as well.
And it’s a misunderstanding which persists to this day.
Today, one week before Easter, we celebrate Palm Sunday in the life of the church. Many churches, including, in the past, ours, combine this day into Palm/Passion Sunday, taking care to balance the celebration of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem with the horror of the Crucifixion. The thought behind this move was that, unless people were careful to attend Holy Week services like Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, they would go from the triumph of Palm Sunday to the triumph of Easter without experiencing the darkness and pain in between.
It’s a valid argument. Especially for Western Christianity, we seem to spend far too much time acting like those people outside of Jerusalem, hoping for free food or entertainment from Jesus. All too often we treat God like a loving but slightly forgetful grandfather, or a heavenly vending machine. We pray most attentively when we need something, and judge our faith and the faith of others by how prosperous we are.
And especially for Western Christianity, we seem to spend far too much time acting like those people outside of Jerusalem, hoping to see Jesus riding on a war horse, hip deep in blood, slaughtering the oppressive Romans and claiming his rightful throne. We think that God agrees with our politics, supports our country over any other, and especially likes the same football team we do.
But Jesus’ triumphal entry wasn’t prancing before the crowds, providing bread and circuses. He was silent as he rode in.
And Jesus didn’t ride a warhorse. He rode a donkey, a symbol of peace.
The thing about Jesus was that he was so in love with the Father, so committed to being completely invested in the will of God and about the work of God, and that made him so radically different from any other person who had ever walked the planet, that, invariably, Jesus did the unexpected.
He didn’t waste his time on an earthly kingdom, because that would have been nothing more than regime change. His agenda, God’s agenda, was justice – both that the poor, the sick, the forgotten and the despised would be recognized, healed, and brought in to community, and that God’s ultimate justice, the reconciliation of humankind to God, would be accomplished through the cross.
Perhaps we do run a risk with going from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday without including a Maundy Thursday or a Good Friday. By the same token, without Maundy Thursday or Good Friday, there would be no Easter in the first place, would there?
You know, with the words Jesus was saying, the miracles he was doing, the attention he was drawing, well, even if his agenda hadn’t included being the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,” his execution was inevitable. And make no mistake, Jesus did not merely die for us, he was executed, killed by a ruthless society using the most horrifying of methods. You see, this king who enters Jerusalem riding a donkey represents something more frightening to the Roman authorities than a thousand legions of enemy soldiers: He represents hope. And because the Temple elite served (and prospered) at the whim of the local Roman leadership, Jesus represented to them something more horrifying than a pig on the altar: the dissolution of the status quo.
It’s no secret that Jesus turned the tables on the halls of power and upset the status quo. Marcus Borg says that by laying down his own life, Jesus denied “the temple's claim to have a monopoly on forgiveness and access to God....God in Jesus has already provided the sacrifice and has thus taken care of whatever you think separates you from God.”
Borg concludes that the death of Jesus, then, is “a metaphor of radical grace.”
This radical grace that God gives, this wildly extravagant love that God has, this egregious infatuation with mankind that God shows is sealed and made sure by the Resurrection.
Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed for us. How, then, shall we respond?
The only possible response is to, as the Apostle Paul writes in the Letter to the Philippians, “Let the same mind be in [us] as was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, emptied himself…” – the NIV translates that phrase as, “…he made himself nothing…” Our agendas, our enrollment of God into our own passions and ideals, our co-opting of God into our plans and as a member of our particular political party, all of this must be laid aside in the stark light of God’s abundant, unfathomable love.
Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed for us. Will we respond?
Matthew 21:1-11
When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, just say this, ‘The Lord needs them.’ And he will send them immediately.” This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying,
“Tell the daughter of Zion,
Look, your king is coming to you,
humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”
The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting,
“Hosanna to the Son of David!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!”
When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?” The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”
Isaiah 50:4-9a
The Lord GOD has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word.
Morning by morning he wakens — wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught.
The Lord GOD has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backward.
I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard;
I did not hide my face from insult and spitting.
The Lord GOD helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; he who vindicates me is near.
Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together.
Who are my adversaries? Let them confront me.
It is the Lord GOD who helps me; who will declare me guilty?
Philippians 2:5-11
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross.
Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
This is the Word of the Lord.
I don’t think you could have fit another person into Jerusalem with a shoehorn that day. Passover was in full swing, after all, and people had come from all over the known word to bring their sacrifices to the Temple, to eat the Seder meal together, to remember the night, fifteen hundred years ago, when the angel of death passed over the Children of Israel, striking terror into the very souls of the Egyptians, clearing the way for their freedom.
Freedom was very much on everybody’s mind, make no mistake. For seven hundred years, one foreign power or another had controlled Judea. Not since Zedekiah had Israel had its own ruler, and many felt it was high time to overthrow the Romans and take back their country.
So when the rumors started flying around, saying that Jesus of Nazareth was on his way to Jerusalem, you remember, he was that prophet who had opened the tomb of a man dead for four days, and had raised him? Well, naturally they went to get a glimpse of him, to perhaps be witness to the next King of Israel coming in to claim his throne.
Now, they weren’t the only ones craning their necks to watch for Jesus to top the hill from Bethany. Plenty of people had heard about Lazarus, and had heard about how this Jesus fellow had opened the eyes of a man born blind, and had heard about how he fed thousands and thousands of people with just a few barley loaves and fish. Maybe they’d see him do something interesting, maybe he’d say something entertaining.
I guess it all started like these things usually do. Someone in the crowd started waving a palm branch and shouting “Hosanna to the Son of David!” as Jesus and his band of disciples crested the hill.
Now, what they expected to see, I can’t tell you. Perhaps the people looking for entertainment expected him to come prancing over the hill, turning water into wine, and passing out sandwiches. Perhaps the people hoping to overthrow Roman rule once and for all were looking for a rider on an armored steed, bloody sword drawn, leading a mighty army into the city to take his throne by force.
What they saw was a man, on a saddle of cloaks, riding a donkey, its colt not far behind.
Some were let down, no doubt. But many remembered the words of the prophet Zecheriah: “Rejoice, O people of Zion! Shout in triumph, O people of Jerusalem! Look, your king is coming to you. He is righteous and victorious, yet he is humble, riding on a donkey—riding on a donkey’s colt.”
And shout they did! The “Hosannas” grew to a crescendo, and people began cutting palm branches off of trees, throwing them on the road in Jesus’ path. Others even put their cloaks down, so the royal donkey’s feet wouldn’t touch the dirt. It was amazing to see, a joy to be in the midst of!
But how soon the words that crowd shouted would change!
We’ve been talking for a few weeks now about the ways in which different people misunderstood Jesus. Nicodemus misunderstood Jesus when he spoke of being born from above. The woman at the well misunderstood Jesus when he spoke of living water. The people who followed Jesus for the free food and entertainment value, as well as those who expected Jesus to overthrow the Roman government and establish an eternal earthly kingdom misunderstood Jesus as well.
And it’s a misunderstanding which persists to this day.
Today, one week before Easter, we celebrate Palm Sunday in the life of the church. Many churches, including, in the past, ours, combine this day into Palm/Passion Sunday, taking care to balance the celebration of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem with the horror of the Crucifixion. The thought behind this move was that, unless people were careful to attend Holy Week services like Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, they would go from the triumph of Palm Sunday to the triumph of Easter without experiencing the darkness and pain in between.
It’s a valid argument. Especially for Western Christianity, we seem to spend far too much time acting like those people outside of Jerusalem, hoping for free food or entertainment from Jesus. All too often we treat God like a loving but slightly forgetful grandfather, or a heavenly vending machine. We pray most attentively when we need something, and judge our faith and the faith of others by how prosperous we are.
And especially for Western Christianity, we seem to spend far too much time acting like those people outside of Jerusalem, hoping to see Jesus riding on a war horse, hip deep in blood, slaughtering the oppressive Romans and claiming his rightful throne. We think that God agrees with our politics, supports our country over any other, and especially likes the same football team we do.
But Jesus’ triumphal entry wasn’t prancing before the crowds, providing bread and circuses. He was silent as he rode in.
And Jesus didn’t ride a warhorse. He rode a donkey, a symbol of peace.
The thing about Jesus was that he was so in love with the Father, so committed to being completely invested in the will of God and about the work of God, and that made him so radically different from any other person who had ever walked the planet, that, invariably, Jesus did the unexpected.
He didn’t waste his time on an earthly kingdom, because that would have been nothing more than regime change. His agenda, God’s agenda, was justice – both that the poor, the sick, the forgotten and the despised would be recognized, healed, and brought in to community, and that God’s ultimate justice, the reconciliation of humankind to God, would be accomplished through the cross.
Perhaps we do run a risk with going from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday without including a Maundy Thursday or a Good Friday. By the same token, without Maundy Thursday or Good Friday, there would be no Easter in the first place, would there?
You know, with the words Jesus was saying, the miracles he was doing, the attention he was drawing, well, even if his agenda hadn’t included being the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,” his execution was inevitable. And make no mistake, Jesus did not merely die for us, he was executed, killed by a ruthless society using the most horrifying of methods. You see, this king who enters Jerusalem riding a donkey represents something more frightening to the Roman authorities than a thousand legions of enemy soldiers: He represents hope. And because the Temple elite served (and prospered) at the whim of the local Roman leadership, Jesus represented to them something more horrifying than a pig on the altar: the dissolution of the status quo.
It’s no secret that Jesus turned the tables on the halls of power and upset the status quo. Marcus Borg says that by laying down his own life, Jesus denied “the temple's claim to have a monopoly on forgiveness and access to God....God in Jesus has already provided the sacrifice and has thus taken care of whatever you think separates you from God.”
Borg concludes that the death of Jesus, then, is “a metaphor of radical grace.”
This radical grace that God gives, this wildly extravagant love that God has, this egregious infatuation with mankind that God shows is sealed and made sure by the Resurrection.
Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed for us. How, then, shall we respond?
The only possible response is to, as the Apostle Paul writes in the Letter to the Philippians, “Let the same mind be in [us] as was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, emptied himself…” – the NIV translates that phrase as, “…he made himself nothing…” Our agendas, our enrollment of God into our own passions and ideals, our co-opting of God into our plans and as a member of our particular political party, all of this must be laid aside in the stark light of God’s abundant, unfathomable love.
Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed for us. Will we respond?
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Lazarus, come out!
It's kind of frustrating, being given such a wonderful smorgasbord of readings all on one Sunday. I could feast for weeks on the Gospel reading alone.
Truth be told, my friend the Rev. Daniel Hayward, a minister in the United Church of Canada, let me read his sermon, and gifted me with the lynchpin for the sermon. Like Rev. Gene Anderson says, "Borrowing for a sermon is like playing the blues, it ain't stealing if can play the lick well." It also helps to have permission...
Ezekiel 37:1-14
The hand of the LORD came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O Lord GOD, you know.” Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD. Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the LORD.”
So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord GOD: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.
Then he said to me, “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’ Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken and will act,” says the LORD.
Romans 8:6-11
To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law — indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.
John 11:1-45
Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” But when Jesus heard it, he said, “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.
Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.” The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.” After saying this, he told them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.” The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.” Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep.
Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”
When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out.
They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”
Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”
Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.
This is the Word of the Lord.
Misunderstanding. It was part of the conversation that Jesus had with Nicodemus, who mistook being “born from above” with being “born again” from his mother’s womb. Misunderstanding was part of the conversation with the woman at the well, who mistook “living water” for naturally flowing water. And misunderstanding is a feature of today’s reading as well – not just that the disciples misunderstood Jesus when he spoke of Lazarus being asleep; not just that Martha misunderstood Jesus when he spoke of Lazarus rising again, but our own misunderstanding of what these verses really mean to Christians, and to the world in general, today. Because, make no mistake: what Jesus says here, and what Jesus does here, changes everything.
First, some background: in the verses preceding today’s reading, Jesus has been in Jerusalem during Hanukah, and the Jewish leaders who opposed him demanded that he tell them, once and for all, whether or not he was the Messiah.
When he said to them, “I and the Father are one,” they tried to stone him! Kill him! Right there in the Temple courts!
Jesus had been causing trouble, you see. Causing trouble simply by talking. Simply by healing. Simply by being alive. So he retreated, with his disciples, across the Jordan, out of sight and, hopefully, out of mind of those who would see him dead.
And now, with mortal danger like storm clouds hanging over Jerusalem, he went to Bethany, just two miles away. Why? Couldn’t Jesus have healed Lazarus days ago, from right where he was, with a word? He’d done it before! Why wait until he’s dead, and four days dead at that? Why put himself, and his disciples, in peril now, when Lazarus is in the tomb, when the mourners are gathered, when nothing more can be done?
I don’t presume to know all the answers about this passage. It is even more complex than the passage about the woman at the well, and I’ve already said that I could make a sermon series out of that one.
But I want to suggest that part of the answer, maybe a glimpse at the “why” of Jesus coming to such a dangerous place, at a time when it seemed like all hope was lost, is found in what he says to Martha when she misunderstands him.
The two of them are standing there, outside the village gates. The disciples are standing a respectful distance away, yet watchful - eyes darting nervously around, remembering the terror of the angry mob, stones in hand, struggling to lay their hands on Jesus in the temple.
Jesus says Martha, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha, traditionally the more practical, rational of the two sisters, nods, raising her head, daring to look directly at Jesus through tearstained eyes. “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”
While that’s true, there’s something more Jesus wants her to understand. They lock eyes, and for a long moment the only sound is the blowing breeze. Then Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live! And everyone who lives and believes in me will never die!”
Silence, again. The rustling breeze, the nervous shuffle of disciples' feet.
Martha absorbs these words, and Jesus begins to see the glimmer of comprehension in Martha’s eyes, the look of grief giving way to confusion, then wonder, then understanding… Finally, he asks: “Do you believe this?”
Notice how Martha responds. She doesn’t say “Yes, I believe you can raise my brother from the dead.” No, her response is more a statement of faith, an acknowledgement of a truth she can’t even begin to comprehend. “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”
Jesus spoke, and Martha heard.
For time's sake this morning we must fast-forward, to that hillside cave, that tomb sealed with a boulder.
Martha had said, "...you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world."
It’s not just some itinerant Rabbi who stands there in the graveyard, surrounded by perplexed mourners. It’s not some two-bit magician who calls for the stone to be rolled away. That’s no mere prophet who raises his voice in prayer as the crowd covers their noses and steps back in revulsion as the tomb is laid open.
It is the Christ, the Messiah of God, who calls out to Lazarus. God’s only Son speaks those words! God made flesh, God-With-Us, Jesus cries in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”
Jesus spoke, and Lazarus heard!
From this point forward, there was no denying who Jesus really was. Healing the sick? Impressive, but prophets had done that kind of thing on occasion. Hadn’t Elijah raised a boy from the dead? But Elijah’s guy was pretty recently deceased, and everyone believed in those days that the soul stayed near the body for three days after dying, so maybe it wasn’t resurrection as much as resuscitation.
But this? These mourners had seen the cold, lifeless body of Lazarus, wrapped tightly in burial linens, placed in the tomb. They had seen the door sealed. They had sat with Mary and Martha, mourning in the proper way, and each and every one of them knew that this was no sleight-of-hand, no mistake, no embarrassing miscalculation on the part of some doctor.
Jesus spoke, and Lazarus heard. Lazarus, who was dead, was alive.
Some believed. Others ran the two miles to the Temple and reported what they’d seen, and the push to wipe Jesus off the face of the earth once and for all went in to high gear.
Because as much as Jesus had spoken to the Temple rulers and the Pharisees, as many proofs as he had offered… as many times as he had called them to come out of their tombs of privilege and power and wealth and fame, as often as he had implored them to be loosed from their graveclothes of religious superiority and doctrinal self-righteousness… they had not heard.
When I spoke at the outset about how we tend to misunderstand what Jesus is really saying in this passage, what I mean is that we tend to stop short of the whole message. This is a passage we hear a lot of times at funerals, for good reason. Jesus is the resurrection and the life. Christ, though he died, arose triumphant from the grave and lives forevermore, and in the words of the Apostle Paul, “will come down from heaven, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise…”
This is true, make no mistake. But there’s so much more. You see, when Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life,” he isn’t just talking about the Final Resurrection and eternal life, the glorious dawn that awaits us when this twilight ends, as wonderful as that is.
I submit to you that when Jesus said to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life,” he was, in effect, echoing God's words through the prophet Ezekiel: "I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people!"
Jesus meant resurrection and life in the here and now! Not just a glorious, assured resurrection from physical death, but a resurrection from living as if we are dead. Living in sin, lost to all that is worth calling “life.”
When we live selfishly, as if we are dead to the needs of others, Jesus calls to us, “come out.”
Will we hear?
When we live with insensitivity, as if we are dead to the feelings of others, Jesus calls to us, “come out.”
Will we hear?
When we live with hopelessness, spiritually dead, Jesus calls to us, “come out.”
Will we hear?
Jesus calls us to come out and be loosed from our own graveclothes of selfishness and insensitivity and greed and despair, to be set free to live true lives here and now.
Will we hear?
Jesus, who is the resurrection, and who is the life, calls on us today: “come out!”
Will we hear?
Will we live?
Truth be told, my friend the Rev. Daniel Hayward, a minister in the United Church of Canada, let me read his sermon, and gifted me with the lynchpin for the sermon. Like Rev. Gene Anderson says, "Borrowing for a sermon is like playing the blues, it ain't stealing if can play the lick well." It also helps to have permission...
Ezekiel 37:1-14
The hand of the LORD came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O Lord GOD, you know.” Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD. Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the LORD.”
So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord GOD: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.
Then he said to me, “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’ Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken and will act,” says the LORD.
Romans 8:6-11
To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law — indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.
John 11:1-45
Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” But when Jesus heard it, he said, “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.
Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.” The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.” After saying this, he told them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.” The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.” Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep.
Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”
When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out.
They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”
Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”
Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.
This is the Word of the Lord.
Misunderstanding. It was part of the conversation that Jesus had with Nicodemus, who mistook being “born from above” with being “born again” from his mother’s womb. Misunderstanding was part of the conversation with the woman at the well, who mistook “living water” for naturally flowing water. And misunderstanding is a feature of today’s reading as well – not just that the disciples misunderstood Jesus when he spoke of Lazarus being asleep; not just that Martha misunderstood Jesus when he spoke of Lazarus rising again, but our own misunderstanding of what these verses really mean to Christians, and to the world in general, today. Because, make no mistake: what Jesus says here, and what Jesus does here, changes everything.
First, some background: in the verses preceding today’s reading, Jesus has been in Jerusalem during Hanukah, and the Jewish leaders who opposed him demanded that he tell them, once and for all, whether or not he was the Messiah.
When he said to them, “I and the Father are one,” they tried to stone him! Kill him! Right there in the Temple courts!
Jesus had been causing trouble, you see. Causing trouble simply by talking. Simply by healing. Simply by being alive. So he retreated, with his disciples, across the Jordan, out of sight and, hopefully, out of mind of those who would see him dead.
And now, with mortal danger like storm clouds hanging over Jerusalem, he went to Bethany, just two miles away. Why? Couldn’t Jesus have healed Lazarus days ago, from right where he was, with a word? He’d done it before! Why wait until he’s dead, and four days dead at that? Why put himself, and his disciples, in peril now, when Lazarus is in the tomb, when the mourners are gathered, when nothing more can be done?
I don’t presume to know all the answers about this passage. It is even more complex than the passage about the woman at the well, and I’ve already said that I could make a sermon series out of that one.
But I want to suggest that part of the answer, maybe a glimpse at the “why” of Jesus coming to such a dangerous place, at a time when it seemed like all hope was lost, is found in what he says to Martha when she misunderstands him.
The two of them are standing there, outside the village gates. The disciples are standing a respectful distance away, yet watchful - eyes darting nervously around, remembering the terror of the angry mob, stones in hand, struggling to lay their hands on Jesus in the temple.
Jesus says Martha, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha, traditionally the more practical, rational of the two sisters, nods, raising her head, daring to look directly at Jesus through tearstained eyes. “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”
While that’s true, there’s something more Jesus wants her to understand. They lock eyes, and for a long moment the only sound is the blowing breeze. Then Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live! And everyone who lives and believes in me will never die!”
Silence, again. The rustling breeze, the nervous shuffle of disciples' feet.
Martha absorbs these words, and Jesus begins to see the glimmer of comprehension in Martha’s eyes, the look of grief giving way to confusion, then wonder, then understanding… Finally, he asks: “Do you believe this?”
Notice how Martha responds. She doesn’t say “Yes, I believe you can raise my brother from the dead.” No, her response is more a statement of faith, an acknowledgement of a truth she can’t even begin to comprehend. “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”
Jesus spoke, and Martha heard.
For time's sake this morning we must fast-forward, to that hillside cave, that tomb sealed with a boulder.
Martha had said, "...you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world."
It’s not just some itinerant Rabbi who stands there in the graveyard, surrounded by perplexed mourners. It’s not some two-bit magician who calls for the stone to be rolled away. That’s no mere prophet who raises his voice in prayer as the crowd covers their noses and steps back in revulsion as the tomb is laid open.
It is the Christ, the Messiah of God, who calls out to Lazarus. God’s only Son speaks those words! God made flesh, God-With-Us, Jesus cries in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”
Jesus spoke, and Lazarus heard!
From this point forward, there was no denying who Jesus really was. Healing the sick? Impressive, but prophets had done that kind of thing on occasion. Hadn’t Elijah raised a boy from the dead? But Elijah’s guy was pretty recently deceased, and everyone believed in those days that the soul stayed near the body for three days after dying, so maybe it wasn’t resurrection as much as resuscitation.
But this? These mourners had seen the cold, lifeless body of Lazarus, wrapped tightly in burial linens, placed in the tomb. They had seen the door sealed. They had sat with Mary and Martha, mourning in the proper way, and each and every one of them knew that this was no sleight-of-hand, no mistake, no embarrassing miscalculation on the part of some doctor.
Jesus spoke, and Lazarus heard. Lazarus, who was dead, was alive.
Some believed. Others ran the two miles to the Temple and reported what they’d seen, and the push to wipe Jesus off the face of the earth once and for all went in to high gear.
Because as much as Jesus had spoken to the Temple rulers and the Pharisees, as many proofs as he had offered… as many times as he had called them to come out of their tombs of privilege and power and wealth and fame, as often as he had implored them to be loosed from their graveclothes of religious superiority and doctrinal self-righteousness… they had not heard.
When I spoke at the outset about how we tend to misunderstand what Jesus is really saying in this passage, what I mean is that we tend to stop short of the whole message. This is a passage we hear a lot of times at funerals, for good reason. Jesus is the resurrection and the life. Christ, though he died, arose triumphant from the grave and lives forevermore, and in the words of the Apostle Paul, “will come down from heaven, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise…”
This is true, make no mistake. But there’s so much more. You see, when Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life,” he isn’t just talking about the Final Resurrection and eternal life, the glorious dawn that awaits us when this twilight ends, as wonderful as that is.
I submit to you that when Jesus said to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life,” he was, in effect, echoing God's words through the prophet Ezekiel: "I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people!"
Jesus meant resurrection and life in the here and now! Not just a glorious, assured resurrection from physical death, but a resurrection from living as if we are dead. Living in sin, lost to all that is worth calling “life.”
When we live selfishly, as if we are dead to the needs of others, Jesus calls to us, “come out.”
Will we hear?
When we live with insensitivity, as if we are dead to the feelings of others, Jesus calls to us, “come out.”
Will we hear?
When we live with hopelessness, spiritually dead, Jesus calls to us, “come out.”
Will we hear?
Jesus calls us to come out and be loosed from our own graveclothes of selfishness and insensitivity and greed and despair, to be set free to live true lives here and now.
Will we hear?
Jesus, who is the resurrection, and who is the life, calls on us today: “come out!”
Will we hear?
Will we live?
Monday, April 4, 2011
Guest Sermon: This is MY Story!
This past Sunday, the congregation at Fairfield Highlands Presbyterian Church was blessed by the ministry and preaching of the Reverend Doctor Margaret Aymer.
Rev. Dr. Aymer is Associate Professor of New Testament at Interdenominational Theological Seminary, and has a special interest in biblical hermeneutics, particularly how African diasporic communities signify the Bible as “scripture.” Some of her most significant publications are “Teaching Christians to ‘Read’: Theological Education and the Church”; “Empire, Alter-empire and the Twenty-first Century”; First Pure, Then Peaceable: Frederick Douglass Reads James; and the 2010 Horizons Magazine Bible study, Confessing the Beatitudes (Presbyterian Women, Inc., 2011)
More than that, Margaret is a dear friend whose life is a witness for Christ. I hope you enjoy the sermon as much as we all did!
Jesus was a sinner. Let’s just start there. Oh, I know you modern people believe he was the Son of God, eternal begotten of the Father and all that. Hey, so do I. But this is my story, and if you want to understand my story, you first have to get this. To an observant, holy, religious, Bible-believing person—and you gotta remember, everyone in this story is supposed to be an observant, holy, religious, Bible-believing person—to a holy roller like that, Jesus was a sinner.
This is my story. I’m the one they used to call “the one who sits and begs.” No one ever knew my name...and I guess that’s all right. It’s not important anyway. Besides, I wasn’t important enough to have a name, not a blind beggar like me. Blindness! What a burden in a society where there was no Braille, no guide-dogs, and very little work that didn’t demand the use of your eyes. My parents took me to doctor after doctor, but who had ever heard of curing a kid that was born blind. Blind, I tell you. So what was I supposed to do? I had no job. I had no rich in-laws. Who’s going to marry off their daughter to a blind man with no prospects? I had no future. None. So I became the one who sits and begs...no name, no status, no-body. Okay, okay—I know God never made a “nobody,” but this is my story.
So this guy comes along, and next thing I know he’s smearing something warm and sticky over my eyelids and telling me to go wash myself in Siloam. Hey. What else have I got to do today? I’m a beggar. At least it’ll break the monotony and I’ll have a story to tell Bartimaeus the next time I see him... I mean the next time I BUMP INTO him. Literally. So, I go, I wash, and it’s the strangest thing. It’s like... how do I describe it... it’s like the first time you know, really know, who you are and that God loves you exactly that way; it’s like the first time you hold the hand of the one you love, the first time you kiss; it’s like the first time a baby sees a bubble, or the first cardinal of spring. I COULD SEE. See! And the strangest words kept echoing in my ears: I am, I am, I am...
Anyway, let me go on. As you can imagine, the neighbors were confused. They didn’t recognize me, because I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to be doing—sitting and begging. People don’t like change; it upsets their little universes. Oh, I’m sure you love change, don’t you? I mean it doesn’t upset you at all, and you deal with it gracefully. Well, you are saints, the lot of you. But this is my story. My neighbors? Not so graceful. Poking at me, looking me up and down, and talking about me as if I wasn’t even there. “Nah, that ain’t him.” “Of course it’s him.” “Couldn’t be. He’s been blind since he was born.” “I’m telling you, it’s the same guy.” On and on. And the I am, I am, I am, bubbled up from inside myself until I was saying it out loud. “What was I saying?” I wondered, and forced myself to stop. But the echo persisted inside me like a heartbeat: I am, I am, I am.
Well, I caused an Oprah Winfrey-sized media frenzy in my little town, let me tell you. They took me for a Sabbath-approved short walk to a house where some Pharisees stayed. Pharisees. Got to love ‘em. They really, really, really want to be right. They really, really, really want to be holy. They really, really, really want God to love them best. So they try really, really, really hard to be super holy, religious, Bible-believing, observant people! In fact, they try really, really, really hard to make EVERYBODY super holy, religious, Bible-believing, observant people!
See, you Christians, you’re lucky. Now that you know that you can’t earn grace, or forgiveness or the mercy of God, now that you have stopped sacrificing lambs because you gave only eight percent of your oregano to the priest, instead of a full 10 percent, I’m sure you don’t have any really, really, really super holy, religious Bible-believing, observant Christians, right?
Anyway, they took me to the Pharisees. And the Pharisees were...well...disturbed. I mean, they were happy for me, all right. The healing thing was PHENOMENAL. And they were thrilled that I would now become a sacrificing, tithing full-member of the believing community. But the problem was the timing. I mean, it was Sabbath after all.
Look, I don’t think you get it, so I looked it up in one of your modern English translations. Sex, sexual and intercourse—three words you modern folk use an AWFUL LOT—only occur 30 times in the New Revised Standard Version. Sabbath? Try ONE HUNDRED NINETY TIMES! Sabbath is over six times more important than who lies with whom.
Seriously, if Jesus had broken the “sex” laws, come on. Who cares? Abraham, Job’s daughters, David, Ruth, I hear even world leaders like the sex laws. But Jesus broke Shabbat! Not even a marginally holy, religious, Bible-believing, observant person broke Shabbat in THOSE day. OY! So, can you blame them for being a little upset? I mean, in their world, Jesus was a sinner.
But, you see, this is my story; so when they asked me, I told them. I told them and their friends from Judea. Look, I’m not a theologian. I’m not a biblical scholar. I’ve been blind all of my life, so NO I can’t read the Torah. I’ll take your word for it about this Shabbat thing and all, But I gotta tell you—I think this guy’s a prophet or something. Look, don’t get your knickers in a knot. I’m not challenging your authority and I don’t want your job. I don’t have to go to your synagogue—you never let me in there before. But, you gotta admit: only God could have done what was done to me. So you see, I don’t know if he’s a sinner, and I don’t really care. Because this is my story. This morning, like every morning for the last 25 years, I woke up on the street, reached for my beggars’ bowl, and started to beg for alms just like every other day. Then this guy smeared some stuff on my eyes and told me to wash. And I got to tell you, I was blind, but now I see. I was blind, but now I see. I was blind but NOW...
And they kicked me out. Super holy, religious, Bible-believing, observant folks don’t like it when you tell them your experience is more important than their Bible. Of course you Presbyterians know that, don’t you; that why your leaders take vows to uphold scripture as an authoritative witness—along with revelation, and not as some perfect book without any mistakes at all written by the holy hand of Moses direct from haShem, blessed be.
So, anyway, they kicked me out. And he comes along. And that “I am, I am, I am..” started getting louder and louder. And he looks at me, and I see him—I don’t just see him, I see him—I get it. He’s I am. He’s the way. He’s the truth. He’s the life. He’s the vine. He’s the bread. He’s the one who opens the door to whosoever believes. I get it. So he asks me: do you believe in the son of Man. And I say, yes, I believe. I believe because when I’m with him I see, not only the real, mundane things that I used to bump into before. When I’m with him, I see the God who loves me. When I’m with him I see the Spirit that gives me the power to do love and justice in the world. When I’m with him I see the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep.
I bet you know what I mean, don’t you? I bet when you’re with him, you feel a love greater than the love in this room on a Sunday morning. I bet that when you’re ordained by him as elders and deacons and baptized members of the household God, sent to do his ministry in this world, you get, you really, really, really get that God so loves you. I bet, when you worship him you see his face in those who lay down their lives for each other, for this church, for this community every single day. You do, don’t you?
So I bet it wouldn’t matter to you if other people called you sinners, would it? I mean, some people could call you sinners just for having me up in your pulpit, couldn’t they? Some people could call you sinners for mixing the races, or ordaining women. Some people could even call you sinners for using the “wrong” translation of the Bible. Well, it could happen. Like I said, it probably won’t now that most of you are Christians in this country. You see, you Christians have got it made, what with all of that grace, mercy, and forgiveness that you preach about.
But, here’s a tip, from one who knows. In case someone should ever call you a sinner—someone who really, really, really wants God to love them best—you just tell them this. I don’t know if I’m a sinner or if I’m not. But I know this much. They used to call Jesus a sinner, cause he didn’t always do what the Bible said do. And you know what, once I was blind, once I was afraid, once I hated myself, once I was lonely, once I was scared, once I was the one who used to sit and beg, but now, through amazing grace, now I see. This is my story.
Amen.
Rev. Dr. Aymer is Associate Professor of New Testament at Interdenominational Theological Seminary, and has a special interest in biblical hermeneutics, particularly how African diasporic communities signify the Bible as “scripture.” Some of her most significant publications are “Teaching Christians to ‘Read’: Theological Education and the Church”; “Empire, Alter-empire and the Twenty-first Century”; First Pure, Then Peaceable: Frederick Douglass Reads James; and the 2010 Horizons Magazine Bible study, Confessing the Beatitudes (Presbyterian Women, Inc., 2011)
More than that, Margaret is a dear friend whose life is a witness for Christ. I hope you enjoy the sermon as much as we all did!
Jesus was a sinner. Let’s just start there. Oh, I know you modern people believe he was the Son of God, eternal begotten of the Father and all that. Hey, so do I. But this is my story, and if you want to understand my story, you first have to get this. To an observant, holy, religious, Bible-believing person—and you gotta remember, everyone in this story is supposed to be an observant, holy, religious, Bible-believing person—to a holy roller like that, Jesus was a sinner.
This is my story. I’m the one they used to call “the one who sits and begs.” No one ever knew my name...and I guess that’s all right. It’s not important anyway. Besides, I wasn’t important enough to have a name, not a blind beggar like me. Blindness! What a burden in a society where there was no Braille, no guide-dogs, and very little work that didn’t demand the use of your eyes. My parents took me to doctor after doctor, but who had ever heard of curing a kid that was born blind. Blind, I tell you. So what was I supposed to do? I had no job. I had no rich in-laws. Who’s going to marry off their daughter to a blind man with no prospects? I had no future. None. So I became the one who sits and begs...no name, no status, no-body. Okay, okay—I know God never made a “nobody,” but this is my story.
So this guy comes along, and next thing I know he’s smearing something warm and sticky over my eyelids and telling me to go wash myself in Siloam. Hey. What else have I got to do today? I’m a beggar. At least it’ll break the monotony and I’ll have a story to tell Bartimaeus the next time I see him... I mean the next time I BUMP INTO him. Literally. So, I go, I wash, and it’s the strangest thing. It’s like... how do I describe it... it’s like the first time you know, really know, who you are and that God loves you exactly that way; it’s like the first time you hold the hand of the one you love, the first time you kiss; it’s like the first time a baby sees a bubble, or the first cardinal of spring. I COULD SEE. See! And the strangest words kept echoing in my ears: I am, I am, I am...
Anyway, let me go on. As you can imagine, the neighbors were confused. They didn’t recognize me, because I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to be doing—sitting and begging. People don’t like change; it upsets their little universes. Oh, I’m sure you love change, don’t you? I mean it doesn’t upset you at all, and you deal with it gracefully. Well, you are saints, the lot of you. But this is my story. My neighbors? Not so graceful. Poking at me, looking me up and down, and talking about me as if I wasn’t even there. “Nah, that ain’t him.” “Of course it’s him.” “Couldn’t be. He’s been blind since he was born.” “I’m telling you, it’s the same guy.” On and on. And the I am, I am, I am, bubbled up from inside myself until I was saying it out loud. “What was I saying?” I wondered, and forced myself to stop. But the echo persisted inside me like a heartbeat: I am, I am, I am.
Well, I caused an Oprah Winfrey-sized media frenzy in my little town, let me tell you. They took me for a Sabbath-approved short walk to a house where some Pharisees stayed. Pharisees. Got to love ‘em. They really, really, really want to be right. They really, really, really want to be holy. They really, really, really want God to love them best. So they try really, really, really hard to be super holy, religious, Bible-believing, observant people! In fact, they try really, really, really hard to make EVERYBODY super holy, religious, Bible-believing, observant people!
See, you Christians, you’re lucky. Now that you know that you can’t earn grace, or forgiveness or the mercy of God, now that you have stopped sacrificing lambs because you gave only eight percent of your oregano to the priest, instead of a full 10 percent, I’m sure you don’t have any really, really, really super holy, religious Bible-believing, observant Christians, right?
Anyway, they took me to the Pharisees. And the Pharisees were...well...disturbed. I mean, they were happy for me, all right. The healing thing was PHENOMENAL. And they were thrilled that I would now become a sacrificing, tithing full-member of the believing community. But the problem was the timing. I mean, it was Sabbath after all.
Look, I don’t think you get it, so I looked it up in one of your modern English translations. Sex, sexual and intercourse—three words you modern folk use an AWFUL LOT—only occur 30 times in the New Revised Standard Version. Sabbath? Try ONE HUNDRED NINETY TIMES! Sabbath is over six times more important than who lies with whom.
Seriously, if Jesus had broken the “sex” laws, come on. Who cares? Abraham, Job’s daughters, David, Ruth, I hear even world leaders like the sex laws. But Jesus broke Shabbat! Not even a marginally holy, religious, Bible-believing, observant person broke Shabbat in THOSE day. OY! So, can you blame them for being a little upset? I mean, in their world, Jesus was a sinner.
But, you see, this is my story; so when they asked me, I told them. I told them and their friends from Judea. Look, I’m not a theologian. I’m not a biblical scholar. I’ve been blind all of my life, so NO I can’t read the Torah. I’ll take your word for it about this Shabbat thing and all, But I gotta tell you—I think this guy’s a prophet or something. Look, don’t get your knickers in a knot. I’m not challenging your authority and I don’t want your job. I don’t have to go to your synagogue—you never let me in there before. But, you gotta admit: only God could have done what was done to me. So you see, I don’t know if he’s a sinner, and I don’t really care. Because this is my story. This morning, like every morning for the last 25 years, I woke up on the street, reached for my beggars’ bowl, and started to beg for alms just like every other day. Then this guy smeared some stuff on my eyes and told me to wash. And I got to tell you, I was blind, but now I see. I was blind, but now I see. I was blind but NOW...
And they kicked me out. Super holy, religious, Bible-believing, observant folks don’t like it when you tell them your experience is more important than their Bible. Of course you Presbyterians know that, don’t you; that why your leaders take vows to uphold scripture as an authoritative witness—along with revelation, and not as some perfect book without any mistakes at all written by the holy hand of Moses direct from haShem, blessed be.
So, anyway, they kicked me out. And he comes along. And that “I am, I am, I am..” started getting louder and louder. And he looks at me, and I see him—I don’t just see him, I see him—I get it. He’s I am. He’s the way. He’s the truth. He’s the life. He’s the vine. He’s the bread. He’s the one who opens the door to whosoever believes. I get it. So he asks me: do you believe in the son of Man. And I say, yes, I believe. I believe because when I’m with him I see, not only the real, mundane things that I used to bump into before. When I’m with him, I see the God who loves me. When I’m with him I see the Spirit that gives me the power to do love and justice in the world. When I’m with him I see the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep.
I bet you know what I mean, don’t you? I bet when you’re with him, you feel a love greater than the love in this room on a Sunday morning. I bet that when you’re ordained by him as elders and deacons and baptized members of the household God, sent to do his ministry in this world, you get, you really, really, really get that God so loves you. I bet, when you worship him you see his face in those who lay down their lives for each other, for this church, for this community every single day. You do, don’t you?
So I bet it wouldn’t matter to you if other people called you sinners, would it? I mean, some people could call you sinners just for having me up in your pulpit, couldn’t they? Some people could call you sinners for mixing the races, or ordaining women. Some people could even call you sinners for using the “wrong” translation of the Bible. Well, it could happen. Like I said, it probably won’t now that most of you are Christians in this country. You see, you Christians have got it made, what with all of that grace, mercy, and forgiveness that you preach about.
But, here’s a tip, from one who knows. In case someone should ever call you a sinner—someone who really, really, really wants God to love them best—you just tell them this. I don’t know if I’m a sinner or if I’m not. But I know this much. They used to call Jesus a sinner, cause he didn’t always do what the Bible said do. And you know what, once I was blind, once I was afraid, once I hated myself, once I was lonely, once I was scared, once I was the one who used to sit and beg, but now, through amazing grace, now I see. This is my story.
Amen.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)