When we last saw the disciples, they were staring up into the sky, marveling at the glorious ascension of Jesus into heaven. As they were marveling at this sight, two men appeared among them, who said to them, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up to heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” And then their attention returned to the earth and to each other. The verse following last week’s reading, Acts 1, verse twelve, “then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet… When they had entered the city, they went to a room upstairs where they were staying.” That is where we find them this morning. “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.”
Last week we talked about how Luke/Acts is a two-volume set. Luke tells the story of the life of Jesus Christ, while Acts recounts how the church grew after Christ ascended into heaven. So as we start into the second part of the story, it bears remembering that the first half was a pretty wild ride for the disciples. Remember they started out as fishermen, casting their nets in the Sea of Galilee, when suddenly this Jesus appeared among them and called them to follow him and fish for people. And the ministry of Jesus that had been one, became four, and then twelve, and then thirty, until crowds followed everywhere they went, until people pushed and shoved and prodded to get near to Jesus. Until he had to escape to mountaintops and across the sea to pray, and even then the crowds followed him.
And then, even faster than it had gathered, the crowds dispersed. With a word from Judas to the Romans, on a Thursday evening into Friday, the crowds dwindled to the disciples, to a handful of followers standing at the foot of the cross, to Joseph of Ariamthea, to no one. Even Peter, who promised to stand by Jesus until the end, even Peter was gone when the stone rolled across the tomb. When Jesus died, so too did the movement.
Or so it had seemed. But when the women came with spices to pay their final respects, they were met not with death but with a stone rolled away and the surprising discovery that Christ was not there, for he had been raised. Since that point, the resurrected Christ had been a whirlwind for the disciples. Christ appeared to them along the road, opening the scriptures to them, breaking bread with them. He appeared to them in the locked room, holding out his nail-pierced hands and proclaiming “Peace be with you.” He promised them the gift of the Holy Spirit and then ascended into heaven, leaving them to marvel in his wake.
And now, the day of Pentecost had come, and the disciples were all together in one place. All together in one place, because not much had changed since the ascension, or even since Christ’s death and resurrection. The disciples themselves couldn’t generate the sort of movement that Jesus in the flesh had been able to create. They couldn’t preach, couldn’t teach, couldn’t heal with his authority. It’s not to say they’d done nothing since he left. In Acts one they vote to replace Judas with Matthius, so they’re at least up to a full twelve again. But twelve was not the multitudes that had followed Jesus.
You have to wonder what the disciples were thinking, as they sat together in that room. Did they wonder about the thing that had happened? Did they reflect on the old days, when Jesus was with them and people flocked to be near him? Did they wonder what had gone wrong? Lament that things were not the same? Wish they could bring that same kind of energy and devotion to the movement again?
So the day of Pentecost had come, and the disciples were all together in one place, when suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind. And the wind filled the house where they were sitting. And at once tongues of fire appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. And they were filled with the Holy Spirit, and they began to speak in other languages as the Spirit gave them ability… And those who heard them were amazed and perplexed, saying, “what does this mean?” But others said, “they are filled with new wine.”
The Holy Spirit came, and people thought the disciples were drunk. So amazing, so overwhelming, so incredible was the power of the Holy Spirit that filled the disciples, that the only explanation the crowds could come up with was they were filled with a mind-altering substance. Which, let’s be honest, the disciples were. But the substance wasn’t alcohol, it was the glory of God that transformed their very lives, was about to transform the very world.
Then Peter, standing among them, addressed the crowd, “People of Judea, let this be known. They, we, are not drunk, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: In the last days, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams… and everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
The day of Pentecost has come and we, too, are all together in one place. And like the disciples, there are less of us than there used to be. A new study by the Pew Research Center announced that Christianity, religious faith in general, is on the decline in the United States. In just the last seven years, the number of Americans who claim to be Christian has dropped eight percent, while those who claim no religious affiliation at all has jumped almost seven percent. Even closer to home, right here at Trinity, there are not very many of us these days. And we wonder, as a community, and as a faith, what happened? How did we get here? How can we get back to the way we were?
But the day of Pentecost has come, and we are all together in one place. Which means the Holy Spirit is here among us. The Holy Spirit is here, blowing and moving through our church, through our world, and the Holy Spirit is ready to change us in ways we never thought possible. This moment in time, brothers and sisters, this moment in time that seems so foreign and unfamiliar, this moment is our Pentecost. Quite honestly, what I take from the Pew Research Study is that God is getting ready to do a new thing in this world, and that thing will not look like what went before it. The church will look different in the light of this new thing, but one thing remains constant. The church is struggling, but faith is not. Our world in changing, but God is not. We are caught up in God’s great unveiling of this new birth of God’s promise to God’s people. Like the disciples, being in the center of this change is scary, and like the disciples, to those looking in at us, it looks a little crazy, but what we know from our history, and from this Pentecost story, is that this is the way new life breaks into the world.
When Peter got up before the crowd on Pentecost, he quoted the prophet Joel, that in these days the young would see visions and the old would dream dreams. As your young pastor, I suppose then Joel would say it is my job to cast a vision for what this new future will look like. My vision for us is this, that Trinity Lutheran Church in Battle Creek, Michigan is a place where people experience the transformative power of God in their lives. That everyone who comes through these doors comes to know God, who loves us exactly as we are and for who we are, and that the experience of God’s grace drives us out again to bring that grace to others. A few weeks ago I talked about how Peter was able to open baptism to all, because he had experienced for himself God’s radical welcome in his life, that is the kind of transformative experience with the Gospel I see God bringing among us. The vision I have for us is that we, and everyone else who comes through these doors, knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that no matter what doubts they bring or questions they have or stuff they carry, that the God of the universe loves them unconditionally, and that love transforms our very lives.
That is the vision God gave me when I interviewed in this place over a year ago, and it is a vision that has only grown and deepened as I’ve lived in this place and gotten to know you. It’s not, honestly, all that inventive of a vision. Being a place where God’s transformational power changes lives is in your DNA. While this latest version of it may look different from what it was like in the past, it is who you are, it is who you have always been, the length and dedication of you all and the effects you have had on the Post neighborhood in your history proves that this new thing God is doing really isn’t so new after all. What I don’t know is the shape this is going to take as it unfolds. I have ideas, I’m wondering if more faith formation is part of it, how we might translate what we’ve come to know about God to people who don’t speak the same language of faith we do, but I don’t have any clear image. I was called here by you and by the synod to be a Redevelopment pastor, tasked with uncovering the work God is about in this place. What I wish had come with that call is a description of what this is going to look like, a checklist of how this is to unfold. Unfortunately, unless one of you knows where the checklist has been stashed, no such document exists. But here’s what I do believe. The day of Pentecost has come, this is Acts chapter two of our story together, and like Peter and the disciples, we have no idea what will unfold over the next twenty-six chapters. But the promise we have from the experience of the disciples is that the Holy Spirit keeps moving even when we cannot see the path clearly. And we do this visioning and dreaming together. Peter said that the young would see visions and the old would dream dreams. In a congregation full of ninety-year olds who can run circles around your thirty-year old pastor, I wouldn’t worry too much about the young/old distinction, whether Joel would say you are supposed to be a visioner or a dreamer. Instead, I think we are all to both dream and vision about what God is up to in this place, about where the Holy Spirit is blowing through this church, this community, and through our world.
The day of Pentecost has come and we are all together in one place. But not for long, because the Holy Spirit is here too, and the Holy Spirit never stays in one space for very long. The Holy Spirit has been poured out before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. Thanks be to God. Amen.
The extraordinary can look so ordinary
Tuesday, May 26, 2015
What Are You Looking At?: A Sermon on Acts 1:1-11
I once overheard a conversation between two park rangers at one of the national parks out west that is known for its wildlife sightings. I can’t remember exactly which national park it was, I think Yellowstone, but that’s not particularly important to the story. Anyway, one of the park rangers was complaining about their frustration in driving back to the park from a weekend off and getting caught in traffic caused by people slowing down to stare at wildlife. The other ranger replied that they’d begun to make a game of it. They would drive around the park looking for random places where there was absolutely no wildlife present. Then they would pull over to the side of the road, get out of their vehicle and stare intently into a completely empty field. The game being to see how many other people they could get to stop and stare at nothing with them.
Of course, they weren’t really staring at nothing. The meadows themselves are beautiful, full of lush grasses and sunlight dancing off the clouds. If anyone asked the park rangers what they were looking at, they would respond, “just admiring this meadow.” But what they noticed was no one ever asked what they were looking at. People would just step up beside them and stand for long periods, looking at absolutely nothing. Sometimes people would even begin to see things that weren’t there. The ranger would overhear conversations about the bear or the buffalo in the field that was actually a tree or a rock, or the shadow of a cloud. They would become so focused on looking for animals, that they would miss the striking beauty of the meadow itself.
The park rangers’ game kind of reminds me of our first reading from Acts. That is the image in my mind when I think about the first reading for this morning. Luke/Acts is actually a two-volume set, written, according to the dedication at the beginning of Luke, for the “most excellent Theophilus” so that he “may know the truth concerning these things.” So Acts starts out with a quick summary of the end of Luke, how after Jesus’ death, he showed himself alive to many of his followers, and told them not to leave Jerusalem, but instead to wait for him, “for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
This was kind of what they’d been expecting. Remember, when Jesus was alive, they fully expected him to be the one who was going to save them from the Romans and usher in a new political reign. His death was devastating because it seemed like that promise was crushed. So when he showed up alive again, their thoughts instantly went back to that same promise, that Jesus was going to come in power to overthrow the Roman empire.
So, following directions, they stayed in Jerusalem and all came together with Jesus. And the first question showed exactly where their minds were, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” Is this the time, Jesus, when you’re finally going to get around to being a king? Is this the point where you come roaring in guns blazing and kick those annoying Romans to the curb and take over as ruler? Their attention is totally focused on this one aspect of Jesus, this one image of what it means to be in power.
Jesus responded to them, “It is not for you to know the times.” And then something admittedly pretty weird happened. After he finished talking, suddenly he was lifted up, one can only assume in a way similar to the pictures, and a cloud took him out of their sight. So, there they are, standing there, staring up intently at the totally empty sky where Jesus had been. And really, who can blame them. It was a pretty strange thing that just happened. If you were talking to someone, and then all of a sudden they floated away in a cloud, you would probably be staring dumbfounded into the sky as well.
Here’s where it gets funny to me. So the disciples are staring into heaven, when all of a sudden they realize they aren’t standing alone. There are two men in white robes standing next to them. In my mind, it’s like a comedy act, where the disciples are all staring in the same direction, and the two men sidle like creepily close to the disciples, and begin to look in the same direction the disciples are looking.
At some point in the midst of this determined staring at nothing, the disciples realize that these two strangers have joined them. I imagine the shock, as one of them out of the corner of their eyes realizes, wait a second, who the heck are you? Then the strangers—totally nonchalantly, as if it’s the most common thing in the world to sidle up to a group and just stare aimlessly at nothing—inquire, “Men of Galilee, why are you looking up toward heaven?” Basically like, “hey guys, um, what are you looking at? I don’t know if you’ve noticed but, there’s nothing there…”
But there had been something there! Jesus had been there. Jesus, their Lord and teacher, who they have traveled with, served under, learned from. Who they had seen heal the sick, feed the hungry, comfort the afflicted, who had been put to death on the cross, but whom had been raised from the dead after three days, and had then appeared before them, in the flesh to break bread with them and show them that even death could not stop his love for them, that Jesus had just ascended into heaven right before their very eyes, and that certainly was a thing worth staring at! Jesus, who had already been taken from them once was gone again, this time in a way more magical but no less definite than death, and the disciples were reeling from yet another loss.
But the strange men inquired, “Men of Galilee, why do you want looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way that you saw him go to heaven.” And maybe, in the question, the disciples realized that just as death had not been the end, neither was the ascension the end. Because while they were staring up at Jesus’ ascension, the Holy Spirit, in the form of two strangers, appeared to point them to the new future which Christ’s ascension had made space for. A new future in which God was no longer bound by human form, but through the power of the Trinity, God was now in the world in the form of the Holy Spirit, just as Jesus had promised the disciples, and now they were being invited on a journey that was even more incredible than the one they had just taken with Jesus, because now that journey was being created by their own lives. Jesus was now present in them, and their feet would do the journeying, their hands would do the healing, their voices doing the proclaiming, not alone, but through the power of the advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus promised would come in his place to lead the disciples into a future that was bigger than they had ever imagined.
What I take from this reading on this seventh Sunday of Easter, on this day of the Ascension, is that the Holy Spirit, the advocate that Jesus promised us, is wonderfully and powerfully and playfully sneaky. Like wind, like breath, the Holy Spirit dances through our lives, calling us into a new future that is more than we saw for ourselves. While we are staring at the last beautiful thing, the Holy Spirit is already coming up beside us to enquire, “what are you looking at,” and draw us into the next great and beautiful thing that God has prepared for us.
So stare in awe and wonder and amazement at the glorious things that God has done. But as you are staring, don’t be surprised when the Holy Spirit sidles up next to you, asks, “what are you looking at?” and then takes you on a journey that was more than you ever expected. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Of course, they weren’t really staring at nothing. The meadows themselves are beautiful, full of lush grasses and sunlight dancing off the clouds. If anyone asked the park rangers what they were looking at, they would respond, “just admiring this meadow.” But what they noticed was no one ever asked what they were looking at. People would just step up beside them and stand for long periods, looking at absolutely nothing. Sometimes people would even begin to see things that weren’t there. The ranger would overhear conversations about the bear or the buffalo in the field that was actually a tree or a rock, or the shadow of a cloud. They would become so focused on looking for animals, that they would miss the striking beauty of the meadow itself.
The park rangers’ game kind of reminds me of our first reading from Acts. That is the image in my mind when I think about the first reading for this morning. Luke/Acts is actually a two-volume set, written, according to the dedication at the beginning of Luke, for the “most excellent Theophilus” so that he “may know the truth concerning these things.” So Acts starts out with a quick summary of the end of Luke, how after Jesus’ death, he showed himself alive to many of his followers, and told them not to leave Jerusalem, but instead to wait for him, “for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
This was kind of what they’d been expecting. Remember, when Jesus was alive, they fully expected him to be the one who was going to save them from the Romans and usher in a new political reign. His death was devastating because it seemed like that promise was crushed. So when he showed up alive again, their thoughts instantly went back to that same promise, that Jesus was going to come in power to overthrow the Roman empire.
So, following directions, they stayed in Jerusalem and all came together with Jesus. And the first question showed exactly where their minds were, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” Is this the time, Jesus, when you’re finally going to get around to being a king? Is this the point where you come roaring in guns blazing and kick those annoying Romans to the curb and take over as ruler? Their attention is totally focused on this one aspect of Jesus, this one image of what it means to be in power.
Jesus responded to them, “It is not for you to know the times.” And then something admittedly pretty weird happened. After he finished talking, suddenly he was lifted up, one can only assume in a way similar to the pictures, and a cloud took him out of their sight. So, there they are, standing there, staring up intently at the totally empty sky where Jesus had been. And really, who can blame them. It was a pretty strange thing that just happened. If you were talking to someone, and then all of a sudden they floated away in a cloud, you would probably be staring dumbfounded into the sky as well.
Here’s where it gets funny to me. So the disciples are staring into heaven, when all of a sudden they realize they aren’t standing alone. There are two men in white robes standing next to them. In my mind, it’s like a comedy act, where the disciples are all staring in the same direction, and the two men sidle like creepily close to the disciples, and begin to look in the same direction the disciples are looking.
At some point in the midst of this determined staring at nothing, the disciples realize that these two strangers have joined them. I imagine the shock, as one of them out of the corner of their eyes realizes, wait a second, who the heck are you? Then the strangers—totally nonchalantly, as if it’s the most common thing in the world to sidle up to a group and just stare aimlessly at nothing—inquire, “Men of Galilee, why are you looking up toward heaven?” Basically like, “hey guys, um, what are you looking at? I don’t know if you’ve noticed but, there’s nothing there…”
But there had been something there! Jesus had been there. Jesus, their Lord and teacher, who they have traveled with, served under, learned from. Who they had seen heal the sick, feed the hungry, comfort the afflicted, who had been put to death on the cross, but whom had been raised from the dead after three days, and had then appeared before them, in the flesh to break bread with them and show them that even death could not stop his love for them, that Jesus had just ascended into heaven right before their very eyes, and that certainly was a thing worth staring at! Jesus, who had already been taken from them once was gone again, this time in a way more magical but no less definite than death, and the disciples were reeling from yet another loss.
But the strange men inquired, “Men of Galilee, why do you want looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way that you saw him go to heaven.” And maybe, in the question, the disciples realized that just as death had not been the end, neither was the ascension the end. Because while they were staring up at Jesus’ ascension, the Holy Spirit, in the form of two strangers, appeared to point them to the new future which Christ’s ascension had made space for. A new future in which God was no longer bound by human form, but through the power of the Trinity, God was now in the world in the form of the Holy Spirit, just as Jesus had promised the disciples, and now they were being invited on a journey that was even more incredible than the one they had just taken with Jesus, because now that journey was being created by their own lives. Jesus was now present in them, and their feet would do the journeying, their hands would do the healing, their voices doing the proclaiming, not alone, but through the power of the advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus promised would come in his place to lead the disciples into a future that was bigger than they had ever imagined.
What I take from this reading on this seventh Sunday of Easter, on this day of the Ascension, is that the Holy Spirit, the advocate that Jesus promised us, is wonderfully and powerfully and playfully sneaky. Like wind, like breath, the Holy Spirit dances through our lives, calling us into a new future that is more than we saw for ourselves. While we are staring at the last beautiful thing, the Holy Spirit is already coming up beside us to enquire, “what are you looking at,” and draw us into the next great and beautiful thing that God has prepared for us.
So stare in awe and wonder and amazement at the glorious things that God has done. But as you are staring, don’t be surprised when the Holy Spirit sidles up next to you, asks, “what are you looking at?” and then takes you on a journey that was more than you ever expected. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Monday, May 11, 2015
I Chose You: A Sermon on Acts 10:44-48 and John 15:9-17
Before we get into the sermon today, I want to give a bit of back story on the reading from Acts. One of the big questions the Apostles wrestle with in Acts, is who is this good news of Jesus’ death and resurrection for? Is it just for the people of Israel? Or are they supposed to tell everyone about Jesus? This is actually kind of a tricky question. On one hand, we see Jesus in the Gospels practicing radical welcome; he was always eating with sinners and tax collectors, healing the sick, traveling through Samaria. Caring for everyone was pretty much his thing. But, by the same token, Christian community isn’t a free-for-all, right. Everything doesn’t go. There are still rules for how we live together. The gospel reading for this morning talks about keeping Jesus’ commandments. So, how do we bring these two things together?
Acts chapter 10 is all about Peter wrestling with that very question. In the beginning of the chapter, we are introduced to Cornelius. And Cornelius does all the sorts of actions you’d want in a follower of Jesus, the bible says “he was a devout man who feared God, he gave alms generously, he prayed constantly.” All the right actions. Except for this. Cornelius was “a centurion of the Italian cohort, as it was called.” Meaning, Cornelius was a gentile, there were things Cornelius didn’t have right. He wasn’t circumcised, he didn’t eat the right foods, he didn’t have the right parents. So the question then: is the good news of Jesus for Cornelius or not? He’s doing all the right actions, but he’s not a Jew, he’s not in the community, and there are some not insignificant things he has wrong. What would Jesus say about this guy?
Acts then cuts to Peter having this crazy dream. The kind of dream that you wake up the next morning and wonder what you ate. Peter dreamed that a giant sheet descended from heaven, and on the sheet were all the foods good Jews weren’t supposed to eat. And then this voice from heaven said, “Peter, kill and eat.” And Peter is like, no way am I going to eat that. I keep the rules, I do the things, I’m not breaking your word for shellfish. But the voice says in response, “what God has made clean, you must not call profane.” Peter’s not quite sure how to take this, but the next day Peter met Cornelius and all of a sudden it clicked. The dream wasn’t about food at all; it was about people. If God called a person clean, who was Peter to decide that person was not. The good news about Jesus and his death and resurrection was for all people because Jesus had come for all people. So then Peter started giving this amazing sermon. Acts ten, thirty-four to forty-four, check it out; it’s great. It’s so great that right in the middle of Peter’s preaching, the Holy Spirit showed up.
That’s where we entered into the reading this morning. “While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. The circumcised believers were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles…[But Peter, who finally got it,] said, ‘Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who received the Holy Spirit just as we have?’ So he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.”
Peter ordered that everyone could be baptized. Even if they were a Gentile, even if they were outside the law. What Peter realized was that God’s grace was wider than Peter’s understanding, and who was Peter to try to contain God.
Now, at this point, I could give a really great lecture on radical hospitality and welcoming people who are different. And it would be, if you don’t mind me bragging a little, a really great lecture because I’ve done quite a bit of reading on the topic, and we would probably learn some interesting and helpful stuff about how to be more welcoming. But it would be a lecture, not a sermon, because I don’t think that is the point of this story. I don’t think Peter came to understand God’s expansive grace because he was more welcoming than the other believers, because he had a better understanding of hospitality. I don’t even think Peter came to understand God’s expansive grace because of the crazy dream. I think Peter came to understand God’s expansive grace because he had experienced that kind of grace himself. I think Peter came to understand because of what happened to Peter in the Gospel reading.
Our Gospel reading finds Jesus and his disciples gathered in the upper room on the day before his crucifixion. Knowing these were the last moments he would spend with his disciples, Jesus washed their feet. Which was an act of radical servitude. Washing feet was so low it wasn’t even slave work. And then, after he washed their feet, he told them about love. “As the Father has loved me, so I love you, abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you abide in my love.” So what then does it mean to abide in Christ’s love? It seems there are conditions, right, there are commandments to be kept, but what are the commandments? Just this one: “Love one another, As I Have Loved You.” Love one another, as I have loved you. It’s that second part, that’s crucial. Before you can love one another, you have to know, you have to understand, you have to experience what it is to be loved by Jesus. That, I think, is what set Peter apart from the others in Acts ten, he had experienced, he had internalized, the love Jesus had for him, and it changed everything.
So I guess what I think these readings have to say this morning is that this love that Peter showed the Gentiles, this love that Jesus had for the disciples, this love is for you. This message is for you. This grace is for you. Not when you get it, but, like Peter, before you can get it, you can know, understand, experience that Jesus loves you this much. Enough to love you before you can comprehend it. Enough to love you until you comprehend it. Abiding in Jesus love means Jesus loving you into comprehension. Loving you until this grace of God changes you. And then continuing to love you as you show that love to others.
This is hard, this is super hard. It is way easier start the other way. It is way easier to base our value on how well we love each other than it is to love ourselves, than it is to realized that Jesus loves us and to live our lives as an expression of the love that we have experienced. We are way better at loving others, way better at being welcoming, than we are at recognizing that this love and this welcome is for us too, for all of who we are. But that’s what this Gospel is about.
Jesus said to the disciples, “I no longer call you servants, but I have called you friends.” And we’re not talking Facebook friends here, we’re talking like, if you watch Grey’s Anatomy, Meredith Grey / Cristina Yang friends. The kind of friends who will go to bat for you, who will be there no matter what, who will love you enough to tell you when you are wrong, and to stick it out with you until you figure it out again. That is the kind of friendship Jesus is talking about here. That core, soul friendship that knows every little part of you, even the parts you don’t like, even the parts you try to hide, and loves those parts too.
Jesus calls us friends. And because we are Jesus friends, we can do what he commanded us, which is to be loved by Jesus. To be loved by Jesus so we can love one another. To be loved by Jesus because only in the experience of being loved, can we understand how to love.
Jesus calls us friends. Why? What did we possibly do to deserve this? It’s the question the circumcised believers are wrestling with in the Acts reading, what does it take to be in, what does it take to welcomed into the family of Jesus. What do we have to do to choose Jesus so we can be his friend? Jesus answered that question in this Gospel reading as well. “You did not choose me but I chose you.” You did not choose me but I chose you.
Brothers and sisters in Christ we are chosen by Jesus. We are chosen by Jesus, we are loved by Jesus. Who we are, exactly as we are, all of who we are. Jesus Christ, the savior of the world, who was with God from the beginning, who was God, chose you, called you friend, loves you. You are God’s chosen. Amen.
Acts chapter 10 is all about Peter wrestling with that very question. In the beginning of the chapter, we are introduced to Cornelius. And Cornelius does all the sorts of actions you’d want in a follower of Jesus, the bible says “he was a devout man who feared God, he gave alms generously, he prayed constantly.” All the right actions. Except for this. Cornelius was “a centurion of the Italian cohort, as it was called.” Meaning, Cornelius was a gentile, there were things Cornelius didn’t have right. He wasn’t circumcised, he didn’t eat the right foods, he didn’t have the right parents. So the question then: is the good news of Jesus for Cornelius or not? He’s doing all the right actions, but he’s not a Jew, he’s not in the community, and there are some not insignificant things he has wrong. What would Jesus say about this guy?
Acts then cuts to Peter having this crazy dream. The kind of dream that you wake up the next morning and wonder what you ate. Peter dreamed that a giant sheet descended from heaven, and on the sheet were all the foods good Jews weren’t supposed to eat. And then this voice from heaven said, “Peter, kill and eat.” And Peter is like, no way am I going to eat that. I keep the rules, I do the things, I’m not breaking your word for shellfish. But the voice says in response, “what God has made clean, you must not call profane.” Peter’s not quite sure how to take this, but the next day Peter met Cornelius and all of a sudden it clicked. The dream wasn’t about food at all; it was about people. If God called a person clean, who was Peter to decide that person was not. The good news about Jesus and his death and resurrection was for all people because Jesus had come for all people. So then Peter started giving this amazing sermon. Acts ten, thirty-four to forty-four, check it out; it’s great. It’s so great that right in the middle of Peter’s preaching, the Holy Spirit showed up.
That’s where we entered into the reading this morning. “While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. The circumcised believers were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles…[But Peter, who finally got it,] said, ‘Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who received the Holy Spirit just as we have?’ So he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.”
Peter ordered that everyone could be baptized. Even if they were a Gentile, even if they were outside the law. What Peter realized was that God’s grace was wider than Peter’s understanding, and who was Peter to try to contain God.
Now, at this point, I could give a really great lecture on radical hospitality and welcoming people who are different. And it would be, if you don’t mind me bragging a little, a really great lecture because I’ve done quite a bit of reading on the topic, and we would probably learn some interesting and helpful stuff about how to be more welcoming. But it would be a lecture, not a sermon, because I don’t think that is the point of this story. I don’t think Peter came to understand God’s expansive grace because he was more welcoming than the other believers, because he had a better understanding of hospitality. I don’t even think Peter came to understand God’s expansive grace because of the crazy dream. I think Peter came to understand God’s expansive grace because he had experienced that kind of grace himself. I think Peter came to understand because of what happened to Peter in the Gospel reading.
Our Gospel reading finds Jesus and his disciples gathered in the upper room on the day before his crucifixion. Knowing these were the last moments he would spend with his disciples, Jesus washed their feet. Which was an act of radical servitude. Washing feet was so low it wasn’t even slave work. And then, after he washed their feet, he told them about love. “As the Father has loved me, so I love you, abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you abide in my love.” So what then does it mean to abide in Christ’s love? It seems there are conditions, right, there are commandments to be kept, but what are the commandments? Just this one: “Love one another, As I Have Loved You.” Love one another, as I have loved you. It’s that second part, that’s crucial. Before you can love one another, you have to know, you have to understand, you have to experience what it is to be loved by Jesus. That, I think, is what set Peter apart from the others in Acts ten, he had experienced, he had internalized, the love Jesus had for him, and it changed everything.
So I guess what I think these readings have to say this morning is that this love that Peter showed the Gentiles, this love that Jesus had for the disciples, this love is for you. This message is for you. This grace is for you. Not when you get it, but, like Peter, before you can get it, you can know, understand, experience that Jesus loves you this much. Enough to love you before you can comprehend it. Enough to love you until you comprehend it. Abiding in Jesus love means Jesus loving you into comprehension. Loving you until this grace of God changes you. And then continuing to love you as you show that love to others.
This is hard, this is super hard. It is way easier start the other way. It is way easier to base our value on how well we love each other than it is to love ourselves, than it is to realized that Jesus loves us and to live our lives as an expression of the love that we have experienced. We are way better at loving others, way better at being welcoming, than we are at recognizing that this love and this welcome is for us too, for all of who we are. But that’s what this Gospel is about.
Jesus said to the disciples, “I no longer call you servants, but I have called you friends.” And we’re not talking Facebook friends here, we’re talking like, if you watch Grey’s Anatomy, Meredith Grey / Cristina Yang friends. The kind of friends who will go to bat for you, who will be there no matter what, who will love you enough to tell you when you are wrong, and to stick it out with you until you figure it out again. That is the kind of friendship Jesus is talking about here. That core, soul friendship that knows every little part of you, even the parts you don’t like, even the parts you try to hide, and loves those parts too.
Jesus calls us friends. And because we are Jesus friends, we can do what he commanded us, which is to be loved by Jesus. To be loved by Jesus so we can love one another. To be loved by Jesus because only in the experience of being loved, can we understand how to love.
Jesus calls us friends. Why? What did we possibly do to deserve this? It’s the question the circumcised believers are wrestling with in the Acts reading, what does it take to be in, what does it take to welcomed into the family of Jesus. What do we have to do to choose Jesus so we can be his friend? Jesus answered that question in this Gospel reading as well. “You did not choose me but I chose you.” You did not choose me but I chose you.
Brothers and sisters in Christ we are chosen by Jesus. We are chosen by Jesus, we are loved by Jesus. Who we are, exactly as we are, all of who we are. Jesus Christ, the savior of the world, who was with God from the beginning, who was God, chose you, called you friend, loves you. You are God’s chosen. Amen.
Wednesday, May 6, 2015
Spider Plants and the Kingdom of God: A Sermon on John 15:1-8
This morning’s Gospel text is Jesus beautiful words to his disciples about the vine and the branches. So to illustrate that passage this morning, I borrowed Rosemary’s spider plant from the office. These are called spider plants because they reproduce by sending off these little shoots that look a little bit like spiders I guess, and these shoots burrow in and make new plants wherever they land. Including, as you can see with this guy, on top of filing cabinets. They are tenacious little suckers, which make them particularly successful as office plants.
Their tenacity also makes them good plants for the gardening-challenged like myself. When I moved into a new place in DC, my friend Julie gave me a spider plant as a house-warming gift. My housemate and I named it Sprout, and we put it in the windowsill, pretty pleased with our new addition. But for a long time, Sprout didn’t seem to be doing very well. It got plenty of sunlight, and we were very careful with the watering, so that we didn’t overwater or underwater it, but still it did not grow. Finally, one afternoon while my housemate was home from work, she discovered the problem. Sprout had become the favorite snack of our cat. Anytime Sprout sent up any new shoots, Shadow the cat was quick to hop up on the windowsill and eat them. Shadow also liked to chew on the more mature leaves, leaving our poor plant spindly and mangled. Once we discovered the problem, we moved Sprout to the top of the television where Shadow couldn’t reach him. That was all it took. Today, Sprout lives happily in Iowa, where he has totally taken over the alcove above the shower where he lives. He also has offspring across the country. I was gifted one of Sprout’s babies as a graduation present from seminary. We named him Junior, and Junior currently lives with my parents, where it is all my father can do to keep Junior from reproducing himself in every other potted plant on my parents’ patio.
I think the spider plant’s tenacity is a good description of our Gospel reading for this morning. Jesus told his disciples, “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit.” And it seems like the kingdom of God works a lot like a spider plant. We’re connected to the Kingdom through this seemingly spindly little vine of faith. It seems insignificant, like the spindly vine of the spider plant. It seems weak, it seems like not enough to sustain life. But what it lacks in outward appearance, it makes up for in sheer determination. See faith, the faith of God poured out on us in baptism, is a tough faith, it is a persistent faith, it is a determined faith, and it will bloom in the most unlikely of places. And, more than that, it will continue again and again, to find new places to bloom and flourish and expand. And if you cut it off, if you snip off the shoots, that only encourages it further, that only challenges it to reach out more, to reach deeper, to reach stronger, to bring about new life in any tiny patch of soil it can come across. Forcing, with sheer grit and determination, new life in a place where life seemed impossible.
It’s been a week of impossible things. I don’t know about you, but I have felt beaten down this week. With the riots in Baltimore and the devastating earthquake in Nepal, there have been a lot of places where life has seemed impossible, where the kingdom of God has seemed far away.
And yet, in the midst of all this darkness, with the quiet tenacity of the spider plant, the kingdom of God has proven, yet again, that in the midst of the impossible is exactly the sort of places where the kingdom of God is most likely to show up. A friend of mine is a pastor in Baltimore, and from him I have seen the stories that do not make the paper. Stories like the man who stood between the police and the rioters, protecting the police from those who had come only to cause trouble, stories of men from rival gangs coming together to find a new way forward together, stories of protests of prayer and song, where thousands gathered to sing Amazing Grace, to pray, and to proclaim that the kingdom of God is not violence, but neither is it the systemic injustice that has kept Baltimore and its people as prisoners in one of the most impoverished cities in the nation for decades. But the kingdom of God is in fact a third way forward, a way that values the life and the worth of all people. These are stories that do not make the news, but they are the kingdom of God rising up in the most unlikely of places to proclaim that even here, God cannot, God will not, be silenced. That even here is God.
And in Nepal, the Lutheran World Federation, of which our denomination, the ELCA, is a member, is already on the ground in Kathmandu, working through partners to support those who need it the most. What’s more, Lutheran Disaster Relief is committed to long-term disaster relief, which means that long after the news has stopped covering Nepal, we, through our partnership with Lutheran World Relief, will be with our brothers and sisters in Nepal, helping them through every stage of the rebuilding process. From amidst the devastation of the earthquake, shoots of the kingdom of God are already visible among the rubble, promising that even here, even when the world shakes, the kingdom of God cannot, will not be shaken. Even when all around is nothing but broken concrete and shattered hope, the tenacious vine of Jesus Christ is breaking through the rubble, growing new hope, shining new light, transforming what was broken into glorious new life.
And we are the branches of this vine, we are the ones sent by Jesus to bring that light and life and hope to the world. It may feel like this work is too big for us, like we cannot make changes that matter. But we are branches off the vine of Christ, so it is not us alone, but Christ through us that makes the difference.
With the quiet tenacity of a spider plant, the kingdom of God is growing in our world, in our community, in our own lives, bringing into being the nearness of Christ. In the tiniest crack, the vine of Christ roots itself in, pushing aside all that holds captive, until the rich fruit of the kingdom of God shows forth. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Their tenacity also makes them good plants for the gardening-challenged like myself. When I moved into a new place in DC, my friend Julie gave me a spider plant as a house-warming gift. My housemate and I named it Sprout, and we put it in the windowsill, pretty pleased with our new addition. But for a long time, Sprout didn’t seem to be doing very well. It got plenty of sunlight, and we were very careful with the watering, so that we didn’t overwater or underwater it, but still it did not grow. Finally, one afternoon while my housemate was home from work, she discovered the problem. Sprout had become the favorite snack of our cat. Anytime Sprout sent up any new shoots, Shadow the cat was quick to hop up on the windowsill and eat them. Shadow also liked to chew on the more mature leaves, leaving our poor plant spindly and mangled. Once we discovered the problem, we moved Sprout to the top of the television where Shadow couldn’t reach him. That was all it took. Today, Sprout lives happily in Iowa, where he has totally taken over the alcove above the shower where he lives. He also has offspring across the country. I was gifted one of Sprout’s babies as a graduation present from seminary. We named him Junior, and Junior currently lives with my parents, where it is all my father can do to keep Junior from reproducing himself in every other potted plant on my parents’ patio.
I think the spider plant’s tenacity is a good description of our Gospel reading for this morning. Jesus told his disciples, “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit.” And it seems like the kingdom of God works a lot like a spider plant. We’re connected to the Kingdom through this seemingly spindly little vine of faith. It seems insignificant, like the spindly vine of the spider plant. It seems weak, it seems like not enough to sustain life. But what it lacks in outward appearance, it makes up for in sheer determination. See faith, the faith of God poured out on us in baptism, is a tough faith, it is a persistent faith, it is a determined faith, and it will bloom in the most unlikely of places. And, more than that, it will continue again and again, to find new places to bloom and flourish and expand. And if you cut it off, if you snip off the shoots, that only encourages it further, that only challenges it to reach out more, to reach deeper, to reach stronger, to bring about new life in any tiny patch of soil it can come across. Forcing, with sheer grit and determination, new life in a place where life seemed impossible.
It’s been a week of impossible things. I don’t know about you, but I have felt beaten down this week. With the riots in Baltimore and the devastating earthquake in Nepal, there have been a lot of places where life has seemed impossible, where the kingdom of God has seemed far away.
And yet, in the midst of all this darkness, with the quiet tenacity of the spider plant, the kingdom of God has proven, yet again, that in the midst of the impossible is exactly the sort of places where the kingdom of God is most likely to show up. A friend of mine is a pastor in Baltimore, and from him I have seen the stories that do not make the paper. Stories like the man who stood between the police and the rioters, protecting the police from those who had come only to cause trouble, stories of men from rival gangs coming together to find a new way forward together, stories of protests of prayer and song, where thousands gathered to sing Amazing Grace, to pray, and to proclaim that the kingdom of God is not violence, but neither is it the systemic injustice that has kept Baltimore and its people as prisoners in one of the most impoverished cities in the nation for decades. But the kingdom of God is in fact a third way forward, a way that values the life and the worth of all people. These are stories that do not make the news, but they are the kingdom of God rising up in the most unlikely of places to proclaim that even here, God cannot, God will not, be silenced. That even here is God.
And in Nepal, the Lutheran World Federation, of which our denomination, the ELCA, is a member, is already on the ground in Kathmandu, working through partners to support those who need it the most. What’s more, Lutheran Disaster Relief is committed to long-term disaster relief, which means that long after the news has stopped covering Nepal, we, through our partnership with Lutheran World Relief, will be with our brothers and sisters in Nepal, helping them through every stage of the rebuilding process. From amidst the devastation of the earthquake, shoots of the kingdom of God are already visible among the rubble, promising that even here, even when the world shakes, the kingdom of God cannot, will not be shaken. Even when all around is nothing but broken concrete and shattered hope, the tenacious vine of Jesus Christ is breaking through the rubble, growing new hope, shining new light, transforming what was broken into glorious new life.
And we are the branches of this vine, we are the ones sent by Jesus to bring that light and life and hope to the world. It may feel like this work is too big for us, like we cannot make changes that matter. But we are branches off the vine of Christ, so it is not us alone, but Christ through us that makes the difference.
With the quiet tenacity of a spider plant, the kingdom of God is growing in our world, in our community, in our own lives, bringing into being the nearness of Christ. In the tiniest crack, the vine of Christ roots itself in, pushing aside all that holds captive, until the rich fruit of the kingdom of God shows forth. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Thursday, April 30, 2015
Abundance: A Sermon on John 10:11-18
Right now, my home state of California is in its fourth year of a historically devastating drought. One recent study of tree rings indicates this may be the driest period in the last twelve-hundred years. The good news, says Felicia Marcus, chairwoman of California’s State Water Control Board, is that no one denies the problem anymore. In fact, on April 1st, governor Jerry Brown instituted California’s first ever mandatory water restrictions, requiring cities and towns to cut back water usage by twenty-five percent. It’s a start, but experts agree California still has a long way to go.
What’s amazing about this is not the scope of the current problem, but that the problem had never been addressed before. We have this image of California, California has this image of itself, as a lush paradise where anything is possible, where oranges flourish in the warm Pacific sun and the mild Mediterranean climate means a year-round harvest season. The problem with this vision is it’s simply not true. Here’s the thing about California, it’s an arid state. The San Joaquin Valley, the heart of our entire nation’s agricultural production, is high desert. The food that we eat travels hundreds of miles to reach us, nourished by water that traveled hundreds of miles to reach those crops, through a vast system of canals and reservoirs. In addition to agriculture, the megalopolis of southern California, depending on how you define it, is home to between eight and ten percent of the entire US population. That’s a lot of people and produce to support in a desert.
Lest you think I am picking unfairly on my home state, or that problems like this are huge and far away, we in Michigan are not immune to our own issues of consumption and environmental destruction. Last summer the city of Toledo was without water for several days after the buildup of algae in Lake Erie, fed by the runoff of phosphorus from farms and cattle feedlots, contaminated the city’s drinking water. Even closer to home, Enbridge only just finished clean-up of the oil spill in the Kalamazoo River, an incident which left questions about the state of the rest of the pipelines that run through the state, including under Lake Michigan.
The fact of the matter is we as a species are not living within our means on this planet. I try not to bring my own politics into the pulpit, but this is not a political statement, is a categorical fact. And a fact that has profound implications for how we understand God.
Our Gospel reading for today is Jesus familiar words about how he is the good shepherd. The good shepherd, says Jesus, lays down his life for his sheep. This is in contrast to the hired hand, who does not own the sheep, who has no loyalty to the sheep, the hired hand will run away when the sheep are in danger. This is because the hired hand does not care for the sheep. But the good shepherd stays with the sheep, cares for the sheep. And the sheep, in return, know the good shepherd, follow the good shepherd for the sheep know his voice.
This in and of itself is good news for us, is comforting news for us, that Jesus, unlike all the powers of this world that do not love us, that do not care for us, that are invested in nothing but their own gain, unlike those powers, Jesus will never leave us. Jesus is with us, and for us, and is constantly working to bring us deeper into relationship with him. But more than that, this good shepherd discourse talks about what life with the good shepherd is like. The verses before this morning’s passage talk about the difference between the good shepherd and thieves. In John chapter ten, verse ten Jesus said, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy, I came so that they might have life, and have it abundantly.”
I came so that they might have life, and have it abundantly. Abundance, that’s what Jesus wants for us, that’s what Jesus lived and died and rose again to give us. Abundant life, full life, a life free of the powers of those who think only of themselves, only of their own gain, those who seek to steal or kill or destroy, or those not invested enough in our well-being that they run away and hide when such trouble comes calling. But abundance is not excess. In fact, abundance is in some ways the opposite of excess. Excess, living beyond our means, living in a way that is not sustainable, robs us of the abundant life which Jesus wants for us. When we do not live within the constrains of this good earth, when we take advantage of our planet and take more than our share, when we become the thieves who steal and kill and destroy, when we entrust ourselves to hired hands who do not truly care for us, we entrap ourselves in a system of dependence that is not freeing, it is not life-giving, and it is not abundance.
But, Jesus says, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd cares for the sheep. The good shepherd never leaves the sheep, even when they wander off. We have story after story, parable after parable, of how Jesus goes after the sheep, brings the sheep back in the fold, returns the sheep to the safety of the flock. The good news is no matter how far we stray, Jesus the good shepherd urges us home.
More than that, Jesus said in this reading this morning, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.” Jesus here is talking about those outside the people of Israel, outside of those who heard the teaching he was giving, but I think it tells us something important about the message Jesus had. It says that this message is one) bigger than we can imagine, and two) constantly expanding and finding new ways to be in the world so that, as Jesus promised, “There will be one flock, one shepherd” and all will be drawn into God’s cosmic embrace.
If we apply the creativity of Jesus message to the problems facing our planet, we discover that Jesus’ constantly expanding message of salvation is also true for how we live together well on this good creation which we have been given. To jump back to where this sermon started, the conversations about how to respond to California’s water crisis are coming up with surprising and life-giving solutions. A project in Orange County has come up with a way of recycling wastewater. By running it through a series of filters and processes the end product is actually cleaner than most tap water, for a fraction of the cost of importing it from other parts of the country. There are also discussion of the creation of large-scale desalination plants to render water from the Pacific Ocean potable for drinking and agricultural usage. Such projects have always been unworkable in the past due to the large amount of energy they require. But modern technology has learned to harness what is one of California’s greatest natural resources, it’s sunshine, into a steady and reliable clean energy, that could power new ways of supplying one of it’s least, fresh water.
These are big scale solutions, but there are also smaller scale solutions that we can be a part of, that we are already a part of. At Trinity we’ve already switched some of our light bulbs to low-energy usage bulbs. We use paper cups at coffee hour instead of Styrofoam. We support a garden so that more food is produced right here in our community and doesn’t have to travel from California or elsewhere. These are small steps, but they are steps, ways in which we, right here, right now, in this place, are living into God’s vision of abundance.
The earth has enough, enough water, enough food, enough fresh air and natural wonder, for us to live in abundance. And we have been gifted with incredible abilities to think and to ponder, to learn and to create. That too is a gift from our creator. Things that were once not possible, to gain energy from the sun, to drink from the ocean, to grow plants in ways that are not only sustainable for our environment but that produce yields more than ever before, enough to feed all who hunger, all of that is proof of the ways in which God is working in a new way through us, is bringing the world closer into God’s heart through our hands, through our minds. The hard part, the part that takes courage, is letting go of the old ways of fear and our need for independence, so that we can live into the interdependence which God has created us for. But the promise we have is that Jesus, our Good Shepherd, came so that we may have life, and have it abundantly. And Jesus our Good Shepherd will not stop coming until we, all of us, put aside our ways of thieving and running and fear and are drawn into the promise of abundance.
This morning during our prayers we will have the opportunity to reflect on the ways in which we are living into God’s dream of abundance for our world. If you have not gotten a chance to already, when we sing our prayer refrain, I invite you to bring forward and place in our baptismal waterfall something that represents how you care for creation, how you live into God’s abundance. There is also paper and pens available near the waterfall if you want to write or drawn something to add to the display. We have placed the display in the current of the waterfall to remind us that God’s grace is abundant, and in flows through our lives, bringing newness of life and abundance. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Information about California’s drought came from “Drying Up: The Race to Save California from Drought” by Elijah Wolfson. Newsweek, April 23, 2015.. Accessed April 24, 2015.
What’s amazing about this is not the scope of the current problem, but that the problem had never been addressed before. We have this image of California, California has this image of itself, as a lush paradise where anything is possible, where oranges flourish in the warm Pacific sun and the mild Mediterranean climate means a year-round harvest season. The problem with this vision is it’s simply not true. Here’s the thing about California, it’s an arid state. The San Joaquin Valley, the heart of our entire nation’s agricultural production, is high desert. The food that we eat travels hundreds of miles to reach us, nourished by water that traveled hundreds of miles to reach those crops, through a vast system of canals and reservoirs. In addition to agriculture, the megalopolis of southern California, depending on how you define it, is home to between eight and ten percent of the entire US population. That’s a lot of people and produce to support in a desert.
Lest you think I am picking unfairly on my home state, or that problems like this are huge and far away, we in Michigan are not immune to our own issues of consumption and environmental destruction. Last summer the city of Toledo was without water for several days after the buildup of algae in Lake Erie, fed by the runoff of phosphorus from farms and cattle feedlots, contaminated the city’s drinking water. Even closer to home, Enbridge only just finished clean-up of the oil spill in the Kalamazoo River, an incident which left questions about the state of the rest of the pipelines that run through the state, including under Lake Michigan.
The fact of the matter is we as a species are not living within our means on this planet. I try not to bring my own politics into the pulpit, but this is not a political statement, is a categorical fact. And a fact that has profound implications for how we understand God.
Our Gospel reading for today is Jesus familiar words about how he is the good shepherd. The good shepherd, says Jesus, lays down his life for his sheep. This is in contrast to the hired hand, who does not own the sheep, who has no loyalty to the sheep, the hired hand will run away when the sheep are in danger. This is because the hired hand does not care for the sheep. But the good shepherd stays with the sheep, cares for the sheep. And the sheep, in return, know the good shepherd, follow the good shepherd for the sheep know his voice.
This in and of itself is good news for us, is comforting news for us, that Jesus, unlike all the powers of this world that do not love us, that do not care for us, that are invested in nothing but their own gain, unlike those powers, Jesus will never leave us. Jesus is with us, and for us, and is constantly working to bring us deeper into relationship with him. But more than that, this good shepherd discourse talks about what life with the good shepherd is like. The verses before this morning’s passage talk about the difference between the good shepherd and thieves. In John chapter ten, verse ten Jesus said, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy, I came so that they might have life, and have it abundantly.”
I came so that they might have life, and have it abundantly. Abundance, that’s what Jesus wants for us, that’s what Jesus lived and died and rose again to give us. Abundant life, full life, a life free of the powers of those who think only of themselves, only of their own gain, those who seek to steal or kill or destroy, or those not invested enough in our well-being that they run away and hide when such trouble comes calling. But abundance is not excess. In fact, abundance is in some ways the opposite of excess. Excess, living beyond our means, living in a way that is not sustainable, robs us of the abundant life which Jesus wants for us. When we do not live within the constrains of this good earth, when we take advantage of our planet and take more than our share, when we become the thieves who steal and kill and destroy, when we entrust ourselves to hired hands who do not truly care for us, we entrap ourselves in a system of dependence that is not freeing, it is not life-giving, and it is not abundance.
But, Jesus says, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd cares for the sheep. The good shepherd never leaves the sheep, even when they wander off. We have story after story, parable after parable, of how Jesus goes after the sheep, brings the sheep back in the fold, returns the sheep to the safety of the flock. The good news is no matter how far we stray, Jesus the good shepherd urges us home.
More than that, Jesus said in this reading this morning, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.” Jesus here is talking about those outside the people of Israel, outside of those who heard the teaching he was giving, but I think it tells us something important about the message Jesus had. It says that this message is one) bigger than we can imagine, and two) constantly expanding and finding new ways to be in the world so that, as Jesus promised, “There will be one flock, one shepherd” and all will be drawn into God’s cosmic embrace.
If we apply the creativity of Jesus message to the problems facing our planet, we discover that Jesus’ constantly expanding message of salvation is also true for how we live together well on this good creation which we have been given. To jump back to where this sermon started, the conversations about how to respond to California’s water crisis are coming up with surprising and life-giving solutions. A project in Orange County has come up with a way of recycling wastewater. By running it through a series of filters and processes the end product is actually cleaner than most tap water, for a fraction of the cost of importing it from other parts of the country. There are also discussion of the creation of large-scale desalination plants to render water from the Pacific Ocean potable for drinking and agricultural usage. Such projects have always been unworkable in the past due to the large amount of energy they require. But modern technology has learned to harness what is one of California’s greatest natural resources, it’s sunshine, into a steady and reliable clean energy, that could power new ways of supplying one of it’s least, fresh water.
These are big scale solutions, but there are also smaller scale solutions that we can be a part of, that we are already a part of. At Trinity we’ve already switched some of our light bulbs to low-energy usage bulbs. We use paper cups at coffee hour instead of Styrofoam. We support a garden so that more food is produced right here in our community and doesn’t have to travel from California or elsewhere. These are small steps, but they are steps, ways in which we, right here, right now, in this place, are living into God’s vision of abundance.
The earth has enough, enough water, enough food, enough fresh air and natural wonder, for us to live in abundance. And we have been gifted with incredible abilities to think and to ponder, to learn and to create. That too is a gift from our creator. Things that were once not possible, to gain energy from the sun, to drink from the ocean, to grow plants in ways that are not only sustainable for our environment but that produce yields more than ever before, enough to feed all who hunger, all of that is proof of the ways in which God is working in a new way through us, is bringing the world closer into God’s heart through our hands, through our minds. The hard part, the part that takes courage, is letting go of the old ways of fear and our need for independence, so that we can live into the interdependence which God has created us for. But the promise we have is that Jesus, our Good Shepherd, came so that we may have life, and have it abundantly. And Jesus our Good Shepherd will not stop coming until we, all of us, put aside our ways of thieving and running and fear and are drawn into the promise of abundance.
This morning during our prayers we will have the opportunity to reflect on the ways in which we are living into God’s dream of abundance for our world. If you have not gotten a chance to already, when we sing our prayer refrain, I invite you to bring forward and place in our baptismal waterfall something that represents how you care for creation, how you live into God’s abundance. There is also paper and pens available near the waterfall if you want to write or drawn something to add to the display. We have placed the display in the current of the waterfall to remind us that God’s grace is abundant, and in flows through our lives, bringing newness of life and abundance. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Information about California’s drought came from “Drying Up: The Race to Save California from Drought” by Elijah Wolfson. Newsweek, April 23, 2015.
Monday, April 20, 2015
"While in Their Joy": A Sermon on Luke 24:36b-48
Many of you know I was gone last Sunday so that I could be present at the baptism of my godson Karl. Now, I may be a little bit biased, but I’m pretty sure Karl is the funniest little guy around. One funny thing about Karl is he is in a bit of a no phase right now. This is pretty common, he’s fourteen months old so “no” is one of the few words he can say with any degree of reliability. He says no a lot, in the place of whatever word he means to say. For example, “Hi Karl,” “no.” Or, “Do you want a snack?” “No” with hands extended to receive said snack. My favorite is when he goes up to something he knows he’s not supposed to be doing, then turns to you and says, “no?” With a question in his voice, like he’s checking in, is this still a no? Playing with your computer, still a no? Jumping off the couch, still a no? Pulling the cat’s tale, still a no? I find it a super adorable trait, but I am not his parents. I’m guessing the constant chorus of no does get a bit old for them.
Karl’s preference for the word no did lead to a humorous moment in the baptism though. If you remember, there’s a part in the service of baptism where the sponsors, parents, and congregation are asked to renounce, to turn away from, a series of things. Do we renounce the powers of this world that rebel against God, do we renounce the ways of sin that draw us from God. The very first question we are asked is if we renounce the devil and all the forces that defy God. So the pastor asked the question, do you renounce the devil, but before the congregation could respond, Karl shouted “nooooooo” at the top of his lungs, much to the delight of the congregation and embarrassment of his parents.
Now in all fairness, Karl’s proclamation really had less to do with the addressed question and more to do with the fact that he was done being held and wanted to be allowed to run in circles around the church. But I, as a proud godparent, thought there was really something profoundly honest about Karl’s answer to the question. Because as Lutherans we believe that baptism is a thing that God does to us, not a thing that we do for God. Yes we bring our children, or ourselves, to be baptized, but the act of baptism is all God. Whether you were baptized as a child or an adult, whether you came to the font willingly or someone brought you, regardless of any doubts or hesitations you may have carried, may still carry, when the waters of promise washed over you, you were claimed as God’s precious child, marked as God’s own. The questions posed before a baptism, the confession of faith are not conditions of baptism; we say those to remind us of what it looks like to live as baptized children. In fact, the confession and forgiveness we often start our worship with is linked to baptism, it is a reminder of baptism. We say the confession and receive forgiveness every Sunday to give us opportunity after opportunity to try again, to start anew, to hear again the words that God said to us at baptism, that we are forgiven, that we are loved. The power of God’s claim on us remains true even as we fall short, when we fail to renounce evil, turn from sin, when our faith waivers. In fact, the power of baptism is that when we sin, when we screw up, when we do all the things that we do as humans, we can come back to the font and remember that there is nothing that God cannot forgive, no place that we can go where God does not follow, because we have been claimed by God in baptism. We come to the font with our brokenness, knowing that God meets us here and through the power of water and promise, binds us back together.
Through the simple act of water and word, God claims us as God’s own. We are baptized once, and it remains true for our entire lives, no matter what happens, that we are God’s child. That is a pretty bold claim we make, maybe even a little unbelievable at times. Which is why we come again and again to gather as a community of the faithful to remind each other of what we may struggle to remember ourselves, that we are God’s chosen people, that we are precious, that we are loved, that we are forgiven, that we are whole, in God’s eyes.
Going to a baptism during the Easter season got me thinking about some of the bold claims of faith we make as Christians. The entire Easter season itself is really a bold claim. Think about it, on the first Sunday of Easter we celebrate that the tomb is empty, and Jesus has risen. We proclaim this promise of resurrection with confidence, and then we spend the rest of the season trying to figure out what this bold claim of resurrection could possibly mean.
The strange boldness of this claim of resurrection is reflected in these first readings of the Easter season. Every Easter season follows this pattern, Easter Sunday, disciples discover the empty tomb, Second Sunday of Easter, disciples gather in upper room, because they are scared and cannot believe the resurrection slash do not recognize Jesus when he appears in their midst. Third Sunday of Easter, Jesus again appears to disciples who, again, do not recognize him. These are the disciples, who had traveled with Jesus, who had known his teachings better than anyone, yet these Easter season readings remind us that this claim of resurrection is so bold, so unexpected, that even Jesus closest followers missed it when it showed up in their midst.
And yet, even though the disciples didn’t recognize Jesus, didn’t understand resurrection, their failure to understand did not stop Jesus from coming among them and bringing them peace. In fact, I think that it was precisely because they did not recognize him that Jesus kept coming among them and kept bringing them peace, until they could recognize him, until they could know that the promises he’d made to them were true.
What these Easter season texts tell us is that missing Jesus’ presence in our lives, that doubting Jesus has—or will—show up, is not antithetical to faith. In fact, doubt is a part of faith. Frederick Buechner called doubt the “ants in the pants of faith. [It is what keeps] it awake and moving.”* Jesus came to the disciples in their doubts, in their fears, and he just kept coming and showing them his hands and his side, and bringing them his peace, until their hearts knew what their minds could not, that Jesus Christ had risen from the dead, and had gone on ahead of them, and would always, from that moment on, be with them and among them. Not always bodily as he had traveled with them before his death, but now, after his resurrection, truly with them. And Jesus just keeps showing up in our lives too. In the water and word of baptism, in the bread and wine of communion, in the gathered community who come together to confess the ways we fall short and hear again the promise that God forgives us, who pray for each other, support one another, and listen together for who God is calling us to be. Faith, fueled by our doubt, by our curiosity and by our desire for understanding, is in the end a journey, not a destination. The resurrected Christ holds out pierced hands to us, inviting us into the dance of relationship with the God whom we cannot see, so that in the journeying we can come to believe.
So when we come together in this place, when we come together as a community of the faithful, we come together, like the disciples, not as a community of people who have all the answers or have it all together, but as a community who is committed to the experience of journeying together. We come together as a community who are fueled by our doubts, by our questions, by the things we know and the things we cannot believe, a community who trusts in the promises God made to us, and a community who holds that trust for each other when our doubts, our fears, our humanity, cause us to miss the risen Christ in our midst.
There’s a line in today’s Gospel reading that I love. After Jesus had appeared to the disciples and said, “Peace be with you,” he showed them his hands and his feet. Then verse forty-one reads, “While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering.” I think part of being a person of faith is walking in the strange tension of joy and disbelief, of wonder and longing, of hope and assurance. So in this Easter season, the question this text leaves me with is what would it mean for us to enter into our questions with joy? How would we live differently if joy was the framework on which we built our faith? If we brought our questions, our fears, the things we cannot know, the paths we wished were clear, to God with joy, trusting that questions and uncertainty are God’s bread and butter, the places where our wonderfully surprising God always chooses to show up.
Since Easter, the back wall of our sanctuary has featured a nine-foot tall waterfall, flowing from behind the raredas, over the place where the torn purple banner of Lent hung, covering the scars with the promise of new life. That water flows through our baptismal font, and then out into the world, reminding us that in these waters we are made new, and from these waters we take this bold claim that has been made to us in the resurrection of Jesus Christ into a world that so desperately needs to know the love made manifest here. The promise that Jesus Christ loves us enough to show up to us again and again, until in our disbelieving, we have joy and peace in his name. Alleluia, Christ is risen. He is risen, indeed. Alleluia, Alleluia. Amen.
*Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC, (Harper & Row, Publishers: New York, NY, 1973), 20
Karl’s preference for the word no did lead to a humorous moment in the baptism though. If you remember, there’s a part in the service of baptism where the sponsors, parents, and congregation are asked to renounce, to turn away from, a series of things. Do we renounce the powers of this world that rebel against God, do we renounce the ways of sin that draw us from God. The very first question we are asked is if we renounce the devil and all the forces that defy God. So the pastor asked the question, do you renounce the devil, but before the congregation could respond, Karl shouted “nooooooo” at the top of his lungs, much to the delight of the congregation and embarrassment of his parents.
Now in all fairness, Karl’s proclamation really had less to do with the addressed question and more to do with the fact that he was done being held and wanted to be allowed to run in circles around the church. But I, as a proud godparent, thought there was really something profoundly honest about Karl’s answer to the question. Because as Lutherans we believe that baptism is a thing that God does to us, not a thing that we do for God. Yes we bring our children, or ourselves, to be baptized, but the act of baptism is all God. Whether you were baptized as a child or an adult, whether you came to the font willingly or someone brought you, regardless of any doubts or hesitations you may have carried, may still carry, when the waters of promise washed over you, you were claimed as God’s precious child, marked as God’s own. The questions posed before a baptism, the confession of faith are not conditions of baptism; we say those to remind us of what it looks like to live as baptized children. In fact, the confession and forgiveness we often start our worship with is linked to baptism, it is a reminder of baptism. We say the confession and receive forgiveness every Sunday to give us opportunity after opportunity to try again, to start anew, to hear again the words that God said to us at baptism, that we are forgiven, that we are loved. The power of God’s claim on us remains true even as we fall short, when we fail to renounce evil, turn from sin, when our faith waivers. In fact, the power of baptism is that when we sin, when we screw up, when we do all the things that we do as humans, we can come back to the font and remember that there is nothing that God cannot forgive, no place that we can go where God does not follow, because we have been claimed by God in baptism. We come to the font with our brokenness, knowing that God meets us here and through the power of water and promise, binds us back together.
Through the simple act of water and word, God claims us as God’s own. We are baptized once, and it remains true for our entire lives, no matter what happens, that we are God’s child. That is a pretty bold claim we make, maybe even a little unbelievable at times. Which is why we come again and again to gather as a community of the faithful to remind each other of what we may struggle to remember ourselves, that we are God’s chosen people, that we are precious, that we are loved, that we are forgiven, that we are whole, in God’s eyes.
Going to a baptism during the Easter season got me thinking about some of the bold claims of faith we make as Christians. The entire Easter season itself is really a bold claim. Think about it, on the first Sunday of Easter we celebrate that the tomb is empty, and Jesus has risen. We proclaim this promise of resurrection with confidence, and then we spend the rest of the season trying to figure out what this bold claim of resurrection could possibly mean.
The strange boldness of this claim of resurrection is reflected in these first readings of the Easter season. Every Easter season follows this pattern, Easter Sunday, disciples discover the empty tomb, Second Sunday of Easter, disciples gather in upper room, because they are scared and cannot believe the resurrection slash do not recognize Jesus when he appears in their midst. Third Sunday of Easter, Jesus again appears to disciples who, again, do not recognize him. These are the disciples, who had traveled with Jesus, who had known his teachings better than anyone, yet these Easter season readings remind us that this claim of resurrection is so bold, so unexpected, that even Jesus closest followers missed it when it showed up in their midst.
And yet, even though the disciples didn’t recognize Jesus, didn’t understand resurrection, their failure to understand did not stop Jesus from coming among them and bringing them peace. In fact, I think that it was precisely because they did not recognize him that Jesus kept coming among them and kept bringing them peace, until they could recognize him, until they could know that the promises he’d made to them were true.
What these Easter season texts tell us is that missing Jesus’ presence in our lives, that doubting Jesus has—or will—show up, is not antithetical to faith. In fact, doubt is a part of faith. Frederick Buechner called doubt the “ants in the pants of faith. [It is what keeps] it awake and moving.”* Jesus came to the disciples in their doubts, in their fears, and he just kept coming and showing them his hands and his side, and bringing them his peace, until their hearts knew what their minds could not, that Jesus Christ had risen from the dead, and had gone on ahead of them, and would always, from that moment on, be with them and among them. Not always bodily as he had traveled with them before his death, but now, after his resurrection, truly with them. And Jesus just keeps showing up in our lives too. In the water and word of baptism, in the bread and wine of communion, in the gathered community who come together to confess the ways we fall short and hear again the promise that God forgives us, who pray for each other, support one another, and listen together for who God is calling us to be. Faith, fueled by our doubt, by our curiosity and by our desire for understanding, is in the end a journey, not a destination. The resurrected Christ holds out pierced hands to us, inviting us into the dance of relationship with the God whom we cannot see, so that in the journeying we can come to believe.
So when we come together in this place, when we come together as a community of the faithful, we come together, like the disciples, not as a community of people who have all the answers or have it all together, but as a community who is committed to the experience of journeying together. We come together as a community who are fueled by our doubts, by our questions, by the things we know and the things we cannot believe, a community who trusts in the promises God made to us, and a community who holds that trust for each other when our doubts, our fears, our humanity, cause us to miss the risen Christ in our midst.
There’s a line in today’s Gospel reading that I love. After Jesus had appeared to the disciples and said, “Peace be with you,” he showed them his hands and his feet. Then verse forty-one reads, “While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering.” I think part of being a person of faith is walking in the strange tension of joy and disbelief, of wonder and longing, of hope and assurance. So in this Easter season, the question this text leaves me with is what would it mean for us to enter into our questions with joy? How would we live differently if joy was the framework on which we built our faith? If we brought our questions, our fears, the things we cannot know, the paths we wished were clear, to God with joy, trusting that questions and uncertainty are God’s bread and butter, the places where our wonderfully surprising God always chooses to show up.
Since Easter, the back wall of our sanctuary has featured a nine-foot tall waterfall, flowing from behind the raredas, over the place where the torn purple banner of Lent hung, covering the scars with the promise of new life. That water flows through our baptismal font, and then out into the world, reminding us that in these waters we are made new, and from these waters we take this bold claim that has been made to us in the resurrection of Jesus Christ into a world that so desperately needs to know the love made manifest here. The promise that Jesus Christ loves us enough to show up to us again and again, until in our disbelieving, we have joy and peace in his name. Alleluia, Christ is risen. He is risen, indeed. Alleluia, Alleluia. Amen.
*Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC, (Harper & Row, Publishers: New York, NY, 1973), 20
Wednesday, April 8, 2015
Bearing Witness: A Sermon on Mark 16:1-8a
I learned an interesting fact this week about the movie Dodgeball. Dodgeball, if you aren’t familiar with it, is a Ben Stiller movie about a scrappy dodgeball team that wins the championship. Now, before you rush out and watch it I will add this disclaimer that 1) I’m not really a Ben Stiller fan, 2) Dodgeball is not the type of movie that really justifies mention in a sermon, and 3) I’m about to tell you how it ends. So, you know, go with that. But, here’s what I learned about Dodgeball. The original ended had the team loosing. As sort of a poke in the face of all traditional underdog movies, the original script ended with Ben Stiller, leader of the bad guy team hitting Vince Vaughn, captain of the good guy team, in the face with the ball, the film cuts to a scene of Stiller and his teammates celebrating joyfully, and roll credits. Now this, probably expectedly, did not really go over well with movie-goers, so the producers changed the ending so the movie would tie up in the sort of feel-good way that we want movies to end. Because we don’t like movies to end with a lot of questions. Especially not scrappy underdog tales about hard-fighting sports teams.
So, why am I talking about a Ben Stiller film I’m not actually recommending you see at the beginning of an Easter Sermon. Because someone did to Mark what the producers did to Dodgeball. So we stopped reading this morning at verse 8. If you look in your Bible you’ll see that the Gospel goes on a bit from there, but the verses might sound a little funny, like they don’t really match the writing style of the rest of the Gospel. They’re probably also set apart from the writing by brackets and your Bible may even have a notice that these were not the original ending.
So here’s your fun Bible history lesson for the morning. In the days before the printing press, copies of the Bible were made by hand. These hand-written copies are a testimony to the faithfulness of the writers. Think how quickly a game of telephone can go awry, but we have thousands of copies of Bibles, some thousands of years old, all written by a scribe or a monk painstakingly working away for hours that tell these same stories over and over again in incredible precision and detail. But there are quirks here and there, words dropped or added, letters left out, details switched slightly. The kind of mistakes you’d expect given the incredible labor of love creating copies by hand would entail. The Bible we read today is a compilation of these copies. Scholars look through all the versions trying to pick out the oldest and most common occurrences to try to find the heart of the scripture, the ones most true to the original writing.
It is this rich history that makes the Bible real for me, that gives the Bible authority. That there are quirks and twists show the care for which our ancestors in the faith have treasured this sacred text. It is a book that has been wrestled with for centuries, for millennia, and still it offers us more to ponder.
So here’s where Mark is interesting. Those shorter and longer endings of Mark that are in our Bible. They’re set apart by brackets because they’re not in the oldest copies of Mark’s Gospel. So, in fact most Bibles will tell you, scholars are pretty universally in agreement that some monk at some point added those endings, because he wasn’t really satisfied with the ending Mark came up with. Some monk at some point didn’t like the fact that the women came to the tomb, saw nothing, and then ran away in fear and told no one, so he just sort of added a little ending on, added the women telling Peter, added Jesus appearing a couple more times, added something to make this ending make sense.
And I have to tell you, I’m in agreement with the monk that the story didn’t end this way. Maybe not enough in agreement to write my own ending to the Bible, but I agree that the resurrection appearance at the tomb did not end with the women running away and telling no one because they were afraid. I know the story didn’t end this way, because we are here this morning. Think about it. It the story had ended like this, if the women had ran and told no one, no one would know that Jesus had risen from the dead. We would not know that Jesus had risen from the dead. We are here this morning singing hymns and shouting alleluia and breaking bread together because someone told someone and that someone told someone else and on and on until someone told us. We know Mark’s ending is not the right ending because we are here giving witness to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The women didn’t say nothing, someone told.
In fact I think, no, I know Mark knew the story didn’t end the way he wrote it. After all, Mark is not listed as one of the people at the tomb. The story doesn’t read, “Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, and Mark.” Somebody told Mark so he could write it down, so clearly the story didn’t end here.
But I think Mark ended it here to make a couple larger truths known. We’ve been talking in Bible study throughout Lent about how the stories in the Bible are Capital T true because they tell us larger Truths about God and the world and humanity than any great theology textbook could ever hope to. And using a short story to tell us a huge truth is pretty much the thing that Mark is ace at. So here are three truths that I think Mark is getting at in this weird ending to our Gospel for this morning.
Truth number one: Experiencing resurrection requires the courage to bear witness to death. Experiencing resurrection requires the courage to bear witness to death. There is a temptation to judge these women, who came to the tomb, saw the stone rolled away, and then ran away and hid in fear. The monk does. They should have told someone, right, they shouldn’t have been afraid. But that’s projecting our own knowledge into this story. Because these women are the heroes of Mark’s Gospel. They are the ones who stayed, they are the ones who showed up. Think about it. Where’s Peter, the rock on whom Christ will build the church? Where are James and John, witnesses to the transfiguration? Where’s the centurion who recognized Christ on the cross? Where’s Joseph of Arametheia who tended to the body of Christ? They’re gone, they’re not here. Peter, James, and John slunk away at the cross, the centurion proclaimed and left, Joseph of Aramethia did his job and departed. No one stayed to bear witness to the body of Jesus, no one stayed to proclaim his death, no one, but these three women. They came with oil not to experience resurrection but to bear witness to death. These three women had the faith and the strength and the courage to show up and bear witness to his death, to bear witness to his pain, to bear witness to their loss. Showing up and bearing witness to death is the hardest thing we can ever face. Letting someone or something die and trusting that beloved thing to God, that is an impossibly painful and hard thing. And these women did that. Experiencing resurrection requires first the courage to bear witness to death.
Truth number two: Resurrection is hard to recognize in the moment. So these women showed up at the tomb, with oil in their hands to anoint the body of their Lord, and instead a young man in a white robe said “Do not be alarmed, Jesus of Nazareth is not here because he has been raised; he is not here. Go, tell his disciples that he has gone ahead of you to Galilee.” And they ran out and did just that! No, right, they said nothing because they were afraid. But not just because they were afraid, I think, but also because they could not comprehend the words the young many was saying, they could not understand the experience they were having. It was too much it, it was too far from their expectation, it was too unbelievable. They had believed that Jesus in life was their savior, but they had not expected salvation to look like this, had not expected salvation to take this form. So when they came across salvation, in an empty tomb and a surprising young man, they did not recognize it for what it was. They could not see it, even though it was right in front of them, because they didn’t know what they were looking for.
This is because resurrection is hard to see when you are in the midst of it. We know the women were experiencing resurrection because we see it from the future, and resurrection looks clearer when we look back on it. But when we are standing in the midst of the tomb of death, then even the brightest light can just be blinding. We think of resurrection like transfiguration moments, like suddenly resurrection swoops in and everything’s different, and we get it somehow. But sometimes resurrection is a gradual awakening, so subtle that only with the precious wisdom of the future can we look back and say, yes, there it was, there was the moment that life began again.
Which leads to the third, and possibly most important truth Mark has for us in this Gospel. In order to see resurrection, we need someone to show it to us. In order to see resurrection, we need someone to point it out. The women couldn’t see resurrection in the tomb, but later, afterwards, somehow, they figured it out and they told someone, and someone told someone else, and the story was passed on that Jesus had gone on ahead to Galilee, and we are here today because someone told. So this Gospel reading leaves us with the promise that when we cannot see resurrection. When new life does not look like we expect, when promises are shrouded in darkness, this Gospel promises us that even when we cannot see a way through, there is a way through, and someone will show us the light. What Mark does in this Gospel then is promise us each other. Mark promises us that resurrection is lived out in community. It is lived out in the people of God coming together again and again and telling these stories of faith. Telling of the empty tomb and the strange young man and the brave women who ran away, telling these stories until we can believe them, until we can bear witness to them, until we can see them lived out in our own lives.
And then, Mark’s Gospel challenges us to be those story tellers for each other. It challenges us to speak truth for each other when we cannot believe it. It challenges us to bear witness to resurrection in each other’s lives, to hold up for each other these words of promise, to assure one another that Christ is not here, for he has been raised, and he has gone on ahead of us, to Galilee, to freedom, to life. And so we bear witness to this miracle of the resurrection, we tell this story, again and again, year after year, because resurrection happens in the midst of us. Amen.
So, why am I talking about a Ben Stiller film I’m not actually recommending you see at the beginning of an Easter Sermon. Because someone did to Mark what the producers did to Dodgeball. So we stopped reading this morning at verse 8. If you look in your Bible you’ll see that the Gospel goes on a bit from there, but the verses might sound a little funny, like they don’t really match the writing style of the rest of the Gospel. They’re probably also set apart from the writing by brackets and your Bible may even have a notice that these were not the original ending.
So here’s your fun Bible history lesson for the morning. In the days before the printing press, copies of the Bible were made by hand. These hand-written copies are a testimony to the faithfulness of the writers. Think how quickly a game of telephone can go awry, but we have thousands of copies of Bibles, some thousands of years old, all written by a scribe or a monk painstakingly working away for hours that tell these same stories over and over again in incredible precision and detail. But there are quirks here and there, words dropped or added, letters left out, details switched slightly. The kind of mistakes you’d expect given the incredible labor of love creating copies by hand would entail. The Bible we read today is a compilation of these copies. Scholars look through all the versions trying to pick out the oldest and most common occurrences to try to find the heart of the scripture, the ones most true to the original writing.
It is this rich history that makes the Bible real for me, that gives the Bible authority. That there are quirks and twists show the care for which our ancestors in the faith have treasured this sacred text. It is a book that has been wrestled with for centuries, for millennia, and still it offers us more to ponder.
So here’s where Mark is interesting. Those shorter and longer endings of Mark that are in our Bible. They’re set apart by brackets because they’re not in the oldest copies of Mark’s Gospel. So, in fact most Bibles will tell you, scholars are pretty universally in agreement that some monk at some point added those endings, because he wasn’t really satisfied with the ending Mark came up with. Some monk at some point didn’t like the fact that the women came to the tomb, saw nothing, and then ran away in fear and told no one, so he just sort of added a little ending on, added the women telling Peter, added Jesus appearing a couple more times, added something to make this ending make sense.
And I have to tell you, I’m in agreement with the monk that the story didn’t end this way. Maybe not enough in agreement to write my own ending to the Bible, but I agree that the resurrection appearance at the tomb did not end with the women running away and telling no one because they were afraid. I know the story didn’t end this way, because we are here this morning. Think about it. It the story had ended like this, if the women had ran and told no one, no one would know that Jesus had risen from the dead. We would not know that Jesus had risen from the dead. We are here this morning singing hymns and shouting alleluia and breaking bread together because someone told someone and that someone told someone else and on and on until someone told us. We know Mark’s ending is not the right ending because we are here giving witness to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The women didn’t say nothing, someone told.
In fact I think, no, I know Mark knew the story didn’t end the way he wrote it. After all, Mark is not listed as one of the people at the tomb. The story doesn’t read, “Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, and Mark.” Somebody told Mark so he could write it down, so clearly the story didn’t end here.
But I think Mark ended it here to make a couple larger truths known. We’ve been talking in Bible study throughout Lent about how the stories in the Bible are Capital T true because they tell us larger Truths about God and the world and humanity than any great theology textbook could ever hope to. And using a short story to tell us a huge truth is pretty much the thing that Mark is ace at. So here are three truths that I think Mark is getting at in this weird ending to our Gospel for this morning.
Truth number one: Experiencing resurrection requires the courage to bear witness to death. Experiencing resurrection requires the courage to bear witness to death. There is a temptation to judge these women, who came to the tomb, saw the stone rolled away, and then ran away and hid in fear. The monk does. They should have told someone, right, they shouldn’t have been afraid. But that’s projecting our own knowledge into this story. Because these women are the heroes of Mark’s Gospel. They are the ones who stayed, they are the ones who showed up. Think about it. Where’s Peter, the rock on whom Christ will build the church? Where are James and John, witnesses to the transfiguration? Where’s the centurion who recognized Christ on the cross? Where’s Joseph of Arametheia who tended to the body of Christ? They’re gone, they’re not here. Peter, James, and John slunk away at the cross, the centurion proclaimed and left, Joseph of Aramethia did his job and departed. No one stayed to bear witness to the body of Jesus, no one stayed to proclaim his death, no one, but these three women. They came with oil not to experience resurrection but to bear witness to death. These three women had the faith and the strength and the courage to show up and bear witness to his death, to bear witness to his pain, to bear witness to their loss. Showing up and bearing witness to death is the hardest thing we can ever face. Letting someone or something die and trusting that beloved thing to God, that is an impossibly painful and hard thing. And these women did that. Experiencing resurrection requires first the courage to bear witness to death.
Truth number two: Resurrection is hard to recognize in the moment. So these women showed up at the tomb, with oil in their hands to anoint the body of their Lord, and instead a young man in a white robe said “Do not be alarmed, Jesus of Nazareth is not here because he has been raised; he is not here. Go, tell his disciples that he has gone ahead of you to Galilee.” And they ran out and did just that! No, right, they said nothing because they were afraid. But not just because they were afraid, I think, but also because they could not comprehend the words the young many was saying, they could not understand the experience they were having. It was too much it, it was too far from their expectation, it was too unbelievable. They had believed that Jesus in life was their savior, but they had not expected salvation to look like this, had not expected salvation to take this form. So when they came across salvation, in an empty tomb and a surprising young man, they did not recognize it for what it was. They could not see it, even though it was right in front of them, because they didn’t know what they were looking for.
This is because resurrection is hard to see when you are in the midst of it. We know the women were experiencing resurrection because we see it from the future, and resurrection looks clearer when we look back on it. But when we are standing in the midst of the tomb of death, then even the brightest light can just be blinding. We think of resurrection like transfiguration moments, like suddenly resurrection swoops in and everything’s different, and we get it somehow. But sometimes resurrection is a gradual awakening, so subtle that only with the precious wisdom of the future can we look back and say, yes, there it was, there was the moment that life began again.
Which leads to the third, and possibly most important truth Mark has for us in this Gospel. In order to see resurrection, we need someone to show it to us. In order to see resurrection, we need someone to point it out. The women couldn’t see resurrection in the tomb, but later, afterwards, somehow, they figured it out and they told someone, and someone told someone else, and the story was passed on that Jesus had gone on ahead to Galilee, and we are here today because someone told. So this Gospel reading leaves us with the promise that when we cannot see resurrection. When new life does not look like we expect, when promises are shrouded in darkness, this Gospel promises us that even when we cannot see a way through, there is a way through, and someone will show us the light. What Mark does in this Gospel then is promise us each other. Mark promises us that resurrection is lived out in community. It is lived out in the people of God coming together again and again and telling these stories of faith. Telling of the empty tomb and the strange young man and the brave women who ran away, telling these stories until we can believe them, until we can bear witness to them, until we can see them lived out in our own lives.
And then, Mark’s Gospel challenges us to be those story tellers for each other. It challenges us to speak truth for each other when we cannot believe it. It challenges us to bear witness to resurrection in each other’s lives, to hold up for each other these words of promise, to assure one another that Christ is not here, for he has been raised, and he has gone on ahead of us, to Galilee, to freedom, to life. And so we bear witness to this miracle of the resurrection, we tell this story, again and again, year after year, because resurrection happens in the midst of us. Amen.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)