Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

Isa. 65:17-25

John 20:1-18

04/17/22

Easter morning begins with a community in despair.  Those who had believed in Jesus, believed in his kingship had hoped, no, had assumed that Jesus would free them from Roman tyranny and rule.  The messiah-ship for most of the Israelites meant that God’s chosen people would no longer be oppressed.  They would come to fullness, own their own land, have their own place, be the honored, the privileged, the wealthy and full-lived people God had meant for them to be.  Instead, Jesus had not changed the political structure.  Instead, he had called the people to change themselves. Jesus had called them to stop raising themselves up as “chosen” above all other people. Jesus had called them to stop their oppression of those they would judge within their own community: Samaritans, widows, prostitutes, adulterers, tax collectors.  They had been hopeful when they heard of Jesus’ power and strength; they had been hopeful of a new life for themselves. Instead they had been called to make life better for those around them. And they had become angry. So angry that they killed him. Jesus died because of our sins, because of our sinful nature that could not stop hoping for better things for ourselves, that did not instead help

and love those less fortunate around us.

But as with all revenge, his death did not bring healing, it did not bring comfort.  They were still left without the things they had wanted.  They were still left stuck in a life that was hard and unfair.  And now they had guilt added to their disappointment and fear; guilt that they had killed this man who preached nothing but radical and all powerful love.

For those who still believed in Jesus, for those who still loved Jesus, the emptiness was even more profound.  For those in the community who had been outcasts, Jesus had brought a new way of living life, of seeing life.  Jesus had brought life for the least accepted in the community.  And for them, his death was just unfair.

Easter morning begins with this sense of despair.  And in the gospel of John, Mary Magdalene alone went to the tomb before the sun had even begun to rise.  Not a safe thing for a woman to do, even in those times.  But in her love, in her grief, in her need, she went to the tomb to do the rituals which were part of grieving in their society.  She went to remember, she went to mourn, she went to care for the body of the Lord she still loved.  But when she arrived, she found that the body was gone!  For her in that moment, the despair was deepened to a new level.  Even the body was gone.  There was nothing left for her, and nothing for her to do with her grief. 

For us too we experience these times of grief and despair when it seems like nothing could get any worse.  It is in that deepest place of sorrow that we begin Easter.

As I set about writing this sermon, I thought about how all of us here in this place have experience resurrection moments.  I don’t know a single person who has not experienced deep loss, tragedy, pain, death.  Starting from when we are young, we all go through times of loss, times of grief and tragedy, and even times of deep despair.  I was reading an article recently that said that 1/5 of every child in the United States experiences bullying in high school.  My guess is that it is a larger percentage earlier on.  The world is full of bullies.  The world is full of people who would crucify you if given the chance.  And so most of us have experienced persecution at one time or another, or loss, or just pain.  We have experienced death.  The death of our dreams, the death of our hopes, the death of our loved ones, the death of our beliefs or understandings about the world.  And I would add that most of us, then, have also experienced despair.  There have been times for all of us, I believe, when getting up in the morning to face a new day is hard, when any beauty in the world is elusive. 

And yet you persist.  You go on.  You face each day until Easter comes.  For most of us, I believe that Easter does not come suddenly like it did for Mary, for the disciples, for those who loved Jesus.  For them, Easter came a day and a half after his crucifixion.  He was killed on Friday night, and raised by Sunday morning.  For them, his resurrection was full, miraculous, amazing, and, also, overwhelming. 

For many of us, perhaps for most of us, the resurrections in our life do not happen like this.  They are a slow recovery.  They are a walk through grief that you only recognize as a resurrection when you awaken one day without the same heaviness, or when you look back and see how far you have come. 

They may come slowly, but they do come.  The message of the resurrection for us is a promise.  It is a promise that whatever we are feeling, experiencing, living through that is despair, that is an end, that is death; that there is life that will follow. It is a promise of resurrection that says no death, no death is to be feared for no death is the end.  Death does not have the last word.  As an Indian saying says, “All will be well in the end.  And if it is not well, it is not the end.”  That is the promise of the resurrection. 

The resurrection is also an invitation.  It is an invitation to hold on to hope, to hold on to that promise, no matter what you are living through at the moment.  No matter what you see that is terrible and tragic and deadly in the world, those things are not the end, that are not all there is.  God is the God of new life and it comes after every death.  That is the promise and that is the invitation to hope for all of us.

We are in a year of “hope” this year.  And so there are two things I would like us to do.  The first is that I want you to turn to your neighbor and share a resurrection story of your own.  Again, we all have them.  Share a story of a relationship that you thought was over that was resurrected and healed.  Or a divorce that ended with a new and better marriage.  Or a time of deep despair that broke into new life, into hope.  Share your own stories of resurrection, for those are the stories of hope that keep all of us going, that keep all of us remembering the truth of the resurrection.  I invite you do that now.

As Mary was weeping outside the tomb, angels appeared to her.  But she was lost in her sorrow, and could not recognize them as angels. And so Jesus himself came to her, “Why are you weeping?  Whom are you looking for?”  Still, in her grief, in the darkness of the early morning, in her despair, she did not, could not recognize him.  “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” 

He responded by calling her name.  “Mary!”  Was all he said.  By calling her name, by seeing her, by loving her, he gave her the strength, the love, the courage to see and recognize him.  And in that moment, all of her despair became joy.

That promise of new life, that promise of joy, is there for us as well.  For us too, God is alive anew around us.  And when we cannot see it, when we are blinded by our grief, when we are overwhelmed with despair, when we are trapped in Good Friday; God calls us by name, loves us, and gives us the strength to look, to see, to believe in the unbelievable, and find ultimate joy in the very midst of our deepest despair.  As the passage in Isaiah tells us, those promises are huge.  “I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind....no more shall the sound of weeping be heard.  No more shall there be in it a baby who lives only a few days or an old person who does not live out their whole life.... before they call I will answer.  The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox.”  All things will be new: this promise is for you.

And so, the second thing I want to do is to pass out stones of hope.  These are rocks that I want you to carry with you during Easter-tide to remind you, weekly and daily that death is not the end, that resurrection is the promise and that it is a promise for each of us. 

And finally, I want to end with a poem that I found written by Annie Johnson Flint:

Some of us stay at the cross,

some of us wait at the tomb,

Quickened and raised with Christ

yet lingering still in the gloom.

Some of us 'bide at the Passover feast

with Pentecost all unknown,

The triumphs of grace in the heavenly place

that our Lord has made His own.

If the Christ who died had stopped at the cross,

His work had been incomplete.

If the Christ who was buried had stayed in the tomb,

He had only known defeat,

But the way of the cross never stops at the cross

and the way of the tomb leads on

To victorious grace in the heavenly place

where the risen Lord has gone.

 

Don’t stay at the cross.  And don’t stay at the tomb.  Instead, step into the grace, and the promise of new life.  It is the promise of resurrection, here for each of us.  Thanks be to God!  Christ is Risen!  (He is Risen indeed!)  Amen.

Lord, If You Had Been Here!

 

John 11:1-44

Psalm 104:27-30

Lent 1

            The story we hear today is a complicated one.  Jesus’ life has been threatened so his disciples are not excited about going back to Judea, and so close to Jerusalem.  We hear that it was “less then two miles” from Jerusalem to where Martha, Mary and Lazarus were.  But Jesus heard that Lazarus was very ill, so after waiting a couple days, he decided he needed to go back to see him, he had to go, despite the threats against him.  The disciples were anxious, but Jesus needed to do this.  He loved Lazarus, he loved Martha and Mary and he needed to return to them to help. 

            On the way back he heard that Lazarus had died.  And Martha and Mary were both upset with Jesus, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died!”  Martha said.  Later Mary said the same thing, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died!”  We understand this.  We understand this pain, this anger, this frustration.  They are grieving the loss of their brother!  And at some level they feel it is Jesus’ fault.  “If only!”  They say.  If only!  If only Jesus had been there, Lazarus would not have died!  And while in their anger it sounds like they are being disrespectful, the truth is that these statements on their parts are strong statements of faith, of trust.  Jesus is able to see past their accusations and to understand that these angry comments are both statements of love for their brother and statements of trust in him!  They trusted that he would have been able to prevent Lazarus’ death.  They also trusted that he could still do something about it.

            Oh, that we were able to see the same in those who get angry with us!  But it’s not that easy for us, is it?  It just isn’t really that simple when we are faced with an “If only” most of the time!

            A couple months ago now my parents both were sick with COVID.  Because they had been vaccinated, they did not get it severely.  They both thought they just had colds.  But the truth was that they both had it and that my father had been to my house the first day that his symptoms showed up.  By the time we found out that it was, in fact, COVID, both David and I had symptoms similar to theirs.  And while I was not worried about myself, I was worried, very worried, about other people in my life.  I was worried about the congregation.  I was worried about my kids being exposed.  And I was deeply worried about David.  David has some fairly serious respiratory issues.  The major diagnosis for him is that he has asthma about being sick.  To say it differently, he gets an asthmatic reaction every time he is ill.  That means that once he gets sick, his allergy system kicks in and he has a hard time breathing, he coughs terribly and constantly, and it doesn’t go away.  As a result of this and other respiratory issues, he actually had to have a tracheotomy when he was only 5 years of age because he couldn’t breathe.  He has the scar from that to this day and it is a daily reminder to me that for David, being sick, especially with a respiratory illness, is not a simple or uncomplicated thing.  For David, being sick is very serious.  So, when I heard that my parents did in fact have COVID, and when I realized they had been at my house the first day that it really presented itself, I was upset.  Like Martha and Mary, I confronted my dad, “If you had not come that day, David would not be sick!”  Different words, but equally a response of grief and fear that manifested in being upset.  And, like Mary and Martha, I wasn’t calling him to just complain.  They went to Jesus seeking help.  They needed to express their grief.  They needed someone to hear their pain.  But also, they were both still hoping, still trusting that he could make it better.  I called my dad to complain just because I needed someone to hear how scared and sad I was that David was sick and that I was afraid it, too, would be COVID.  But we also know that a huge part of grieving is bargaining, or negotiating.  At some level I think it felt that if I could just say “if only you hadn’t come!” it would fix it, it would turn the hands of time back and mean he hadn’t exposed David, and that we were okay. 

In fact, it turned out neither of us did contract COVID.  But in that moment of pain, those feelings of “If Only” were the feelings that overwhelmed me. 

            “If only!”  If only Jesus had been there.  If only my parents hadn’t come over that day.  If only Brent hadn’t gone to that party where COVID went crazy through the group.  If only Suzie hadn’t sold their house at the bottom of the market.  If only, if only, if only.  These are familiar sentiments to all of us, far too often.

            And Jesus’ response?  The shortest but most packed verse in the entire Bible, “Jesus wept.”  Even though in the story he could still do something about Lazarus’ death, even though he could still bring Lazarus back, even though the story did not end here, we still have this amazing and profound verse, “Jesus wept.” 

            I remember reading a sermon once in which the pastor said that we are to be people of the resurrection, people of joy, people always trusting and delighting in the hope of tomorrow.  We are to trust that God truly can and does bring new life out of every death, and new beginnings out of every ending.  And yes, there is truth in that.  As I mentioned in my sermon on the wedding in Cana back in January, we should celebrate much more than we do.  There is so much hope, promise and joy in the resurrection story!  There is so much life and grace and abundance in what Jesus brought and shows us of who God is, that we have no excuse not to party and celebrate and live this life in great fullness!  I stand by that.  I believe it to be true.

            But these two words in this one verse give us a very different gift.  They also give us permission to grieve.  Jesus wept before moving on and bringing new life to Lazarus.  Jesus wept before even looking towards hope and new possibilities for life for Lazarus.  Jesus wept.  He didn’t just cry a few tears.  He didn’t just say “aw, that’s too bad!”  He WEPT.  And he wept for a long time: all the way to the cave where Lazarus was buried.  And in doing so, he invites us to do the same.  We are given permission to cry and to grieve and to lament the changes, the losses and the struggles that we, too, have experienced. 

            I have talked before about the importance of reframing our tragedies.  And of seeing God in them, through them, and in the resurrection aftermath of them.  But we cannot jump there too quickly.  It is immensely important for us to live through the feelings of loss, and of grief. 

            I’m reminded of a movie I saw (Joan of Arcadia episode) in which one of the main characters had been in a car accident and had become a paraplegic as a result.  The person who caused the accident was the driver of the car who had been drunk when he drove.  While Kevin had finally come to terms with the loss of his legs, the loss of the life he had envisioned for himself, the family of the one who had driven the car sued him because he had allowed his drunk friend to drive.  Kevin’s parents tried to shield him from that.  They said to him, “Kevin, you should not have to go through this again!”  But his response, his profound, wise, deep response was, “But I have to.  Don’t take this away from me.”  Don’t take this away from me.  Jesus got that.  He got that there is a need to go through grief, through the pain, in order to truly heal, and, I would say, in order to see the new life on the other side. 

            When the kids were little, we had, for a while, two pets: a cat, Sabbath, and a Beta fish named Jeriah.  At night when I would tuck them into bed, I usually sang to the kids and my song would include a part where I would list everyone in our family: “With Mama and Daddy and (eldest) and (middle) and (youngest) and Grandma and Grandpa and Nana and ….” Etc.  I would name everyone who was part of my kids’ closest circle in the song each night.  Grandparents, aunts and uncles, friends, and, yes, the pets.  I would end each one with “And Sabbath and Jeriah” Well, as you know, fish don’t live long.  One day when we came out we found Jeriah at the top of the fish tank, floating on his side.  It was sad but we made it important: did a little service before flushing the fish down the toilet, sending him to his watery grave.  No one cried at that point.  I think everyone, even the littlest of the kids, understood that death was a part of life and that fish just don’t live very long.  That night when I sang our goodnight song, though, Middle was adamant, even before I started singing, “Don’t forget Jeriah!  You still need to include Jeriah!”  And it was at that point, when I was singing our goodnight song and naming the fish, that the tears came. 

            There is a wonderful Washington Irving poem that I would like to share with you:

There is a sacredness in tears.

They are not the mark of weakness, but of power.

They speak more eloquently than 10,000 tongues.

They are the messengers of overwhelming grief,

of deep contrition and of unspeakable love.

            We are in a time when there is much to weep about.  Our world is not what we would want it to be.  We are frightened and scared about the violence happening in the Ukraine, about the decision to deal with things through violence at all, with the greed and the claiming of power that this represents.  We feel helpless in the face of such wrong behavior.  And on top of that we continue to struggle with COVID.  We see people almost always through masks, we distance from people we would like to be spending time with, we all have lost people and lost a sense of “normalcy”.  And this has been going on now a LONG time.  Next week we will have been under the tyranny of the pandemic for two years.  Two long years.  Do we see a light at the end of this tunnel?  We think we do and then that light moves to being farther off.  And the reality is we will never return to what was.  Times have changed.  We have changed.  There is sadness to be felt, there is grief to go through.  This is our truth.  This is the reality of the times.  And while we trust and look to a God of resurrection, a God of new life, a God of hope and joy, we aren’t there yet.

            This is the first week in lent: and in this first week of lent, we are walking towards the cross, not yet towards the resurrection.  And we are called to look, to see, to be honest about where we are and how we are and where we are going.  And we are called, finally, to do what Jesus did.  To grieve, to struggle, to acknowledge the pain, to go through the pain.  To weep.  We know that God knows what this is, that God understands what this feels like.  And we know that tears are a deep gift: the ability to weep, to release our pain, to express our pain: this is a gift from God.  Often, it is only once we have allowed ourselves to grieve, to feel, that we can see what actions we can take to change things, to make the world better.  We are invited into the grief so that we can move through the grief to a new place, a place of hope, of resurrection, of new life.  It will come: that is the promise.  But we must go through the death, through the grief first.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Resurrection Then and Now

 Luke 24: 1-12

               Happy Easter!  And it is a happy day!  For the first time in a year some folk will be coming back into the sanctuary today to celebrate Easter, the day of resurrection, the day of new life.  Others will be at home, waiting for it to be safer, waiting a little longer but still celebrating this glorious day with us!  Some came in for the Easter sunrise service, worshiping outside at the break of dawn as the sun peeked over the horizon and day came.  It is a day of new beginnings.  And it is a day when the life that we knew resurrects in this place.

               And yet, as you look around, you know that it is different.  So many of us are still at home.  The choir is not here singing with us for the in-person service.  And we will have no singing in the in-person service at all!  Those who sang for the pre-recorded service were fewer.  People are still wearing their masks.  Some of us have not been able to get vaccinated yet, and a few are choosing not to.  We are divided: some watching from home, some in person.  Our coffee hour is still mostly through Zoom.  People are not hugging, not even shaking hands.  Things remain different.  Things are not what they were.  The glorious entry back has not come to pass in the way we might have envisioned it a year ago!    Things are different.  And we may be wondering if they will ever “return to normal”. 

               But the truth is that there is no “normal”.  As we’ve talked about many times before, the only thing we can absolutely count on is change.  And while we may hope that change comes more slowly than it certainly has this year, that is often not how life presents.  Change is inevitable.  And all we have is to decide what we will do with the time that we are given.

               But today on Easter, I find, just as I found last year, that there is more similarity in our strange Easter with that first Easter than most Easters we have celebrated together.  For while we love to celebrate easter with trumpet and singing and large groups of gatherings, with eating and praise and beautiful clothing and decorations, we are reminded by today’s scripture readings that this is not what happened that first Easter.  A group had come to the tomb.  But it was not a joyful, loud, big group.  Instead, it was a group of a few, very sad, very disappointed, very scared, but faithful women who came to the tomb.  They were told by “two men in clothes that gleamed like lighting” that Jesus had risen.  But this did not lead to praise and singing.  This did not lead to great celebration and gathering and feasting.  No.  They heard the news, and then they ran away and told the disciples.  And this, too, then, did not spur or inspire the disciples to gather in a large joyous crowd either.  They, too, did not respond by gathering their families for worship, or gathering their families for a celebration feast or Easter Egg Hunt.  They did not begin to praise God, or preach the word, or celebrate Eucharist (thanksgiving).  They did not sing.  Instead we are told, “they did not believe the women because their words seemed like nonsense.  Peter even left them.  He went back to the tomb by himself, saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and, we are told, he ”went away, wondering to himself what had happened.”  This is the original Easter: chaos, confusion, separation.  Questions, hiding, running.  Distance, retreat, disappointment, disbelief.  This is the original Easter.  This is the day we celebrate: a day of not knowing, a day of not understanding, a day of disbelief and retreat. 

               And so perhaps it is deeply appropriate that we, too, as we gather in our separate places and yet our together places, that we, too, are separate, are not knowing what tomorrow or next week or next year will look like, that we spend a day in having our set ideas of what Easter is, and what Church is, and what WE are supposed to be on this day: that we have all of this broken open. 

               In the transitional ministry class that I’ve been taking, it has been reinforced for me once again that because people so fear real, true, deep change, the only thing that pushes us to truly grow, truly deepen in our faith, in our communities, and in our work for God is some kind of “catalytic event”.  That the only thing that really moves us to be better, be stronger, be more faithful, deeper, more loving and connected to God and each other is chaos, is change, is crisis.  So, I would like to invite you to consider that this time is an opportunity.  And that this new stepping back in a different way, in a non-usual way, in a slightly chaotic and definitely different way is a GIFT to us.  It is a gift of being able to remember and reconsider what is important to us about church, what is the meaning for us in our faith, what is the true and deep and beautiful message of Easter.

               I shared this story on Good Friday, but I want to share it here again because I think it is so relevant and important:  When St. Paul’s Cathedral in London was being built, the architect was walking among the stonecutters.  He wanted to know how people were feeling about what they were doing.  So he asked one of the cutters, “What are you doing?”  And the cutter answered, “I’m hammering this stupid rock!”  Wren moved onto ask a second cutter, “What are you doing?”  This one answered, “I’m shaping this rock to be a cornice over a doorway.”  Finally he asked a third, “What are you doing?”  To which this stonecutter instantly replied, “I’m building a cathedral!” 

               Do we focus on the fact that it may feel like hard work to rebuild our congregation and our community?  Do we focus on the need to make everything the same ASAP so that we can “go back to normal”?  Or do we take this opportunity to really look at the amazing gift of resurrection.  Jesus was not resurrected in the way we expected.  And in fact, he was not resurrected the same.  We hear that Philip put his hands in Jesus’ side. His body was not the same.  He was resurrected with his scars.  And as we resurrect as a church, our body will not be the same either: some have moved away, for example.  And others have joined us: we had six new members join and I’ve been contacted by others who have been “participating” in our church whom we’ve never met. 

Jesus’ interaction with the disciples and his community was also different.  We read in scripture that the disciples didn’t recognize him on the walk to Emmaus.  We also hear, “When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them.  Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight.”  He came and went in a very different way and he was not the same person going around healing and teaching.  He spoke to few, and he inspired those few to be the risen Christ in the world: to go into the  world teaching and healing as he had done.  So, too, our church community will not be the same, will not look the same.  We will continue to do some teaching through zoom so that those who cannot come in and do not live close can continue to be part of us.  We will continue to offer multiple ways of seeing services: in person or from home.  Resurrection looks different than what we were before. 

But we have a choice.  We can see the hard work of the stone-cutter, or we can see the new church that we are building with wonder and with awe.  We can grieve what has changed, and indeed that is part of moving through and into something new.  But we can choose to become stuck there, and stuck in a process of trying to recreate exactly what was, or we can rejoice at the changes, and look for the ways in which God is re-creating us, re-inviting us into new life, new vision, new hope, a new church community. 

The good news of the resurrection is for each and every one of us.  We, too, get to be resurrected anew.  We are invited to start this day and every day with hope, with joy, with new vision into what could be, what might be, and to see into what WILL be. 

I want to share a little story that Rev. Michael Piazza wrote about and which Lyle shared with me about the amazing creative, life-giving work of God.  Rev. Michael Piazza wrote this: “Slaves would cook huge meals for the masters’ families, while they often were forced to make do with the leftovers. One staple often left to the slaves was what my mother used to call "pot liquor." Now, for those of you who didn't grow up poor, pot liquor is the liquid left after the food has been cooked.  My grandmother used to boil collards or turnip greens. When they were done, she would remove them and then drop globs of dough into the still boiling water to make dumplings. That often was all the slaves had to eat.  It wasn't until about 100 years later that nutritionists discovered [that] almost all the nutritional value of the food was left in the pot liquor. The slave owners would stuff themselves on the best life had to offer, but the slaves were the ones who were made stronger and healthier by the pot liquor.  Perhaps that is how it is with pain. The good times may make your life feel full, but the struggles can make you healthy and strong. You must decide which it will be; perhaps, though, there is not as much to fear from pain as you once thought.”

               And so, we learn that when we go through the pain of our crises, of our challenges, of the struggles, that when we can forgive, and when we can go through the work of dealing with the losses and the grief, when we can breathe into each day, we can emerge on the other side resurrected.  We will not look the same.  But those scars we carry are usually places of greater strength.  When the broken bones heal, the places they heal are stronger.  When we have scars, that scar tissue is tougher.  It does not look the same, but in it is life; new life, God-given life, resurrected life.

               This is the day we remember that Jesus has risen!  Not in the ways expected or even hoped for: but in the ways God has caused new life to be: fuller, deeper, spread out among and through and beyond the disciples and the community.  And we are a part of that resurrection, too.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.

When the Struggles are Overwhelming

           This is a difficult time for all of us.  For some it is manageable, but for many, especially as the time goes on, it can start to feel overwhelming.  The number of people who are expressing different levels of anxiety and depression is really high right now and that is understandable.

In reaction to the challenges life throws us, I write about thriving through adversity and I believe we are called to do that. I write about the joy and support that God gives us in the midst of pain, and I know that this is real. I write about the fact that it is through crisis that my vision and understanding of life has deepened and changed.  I now believe with every fiber of my being that life is about growing - growing in love, understanding, and in our ability to forgive, growing in our relationships to God, growing in our compassion, empathy and relationships to others, growing in our relationships to ourselves.  I believe all of this.  I believe it, I feel it, I hear that it is true, I experience it.  I write about being thankful and being more able than ever before to see the gifts and blessings that surround me every day - including the challenges.  This, too, is a truth, deep and powerful, that keeps me connected with God, with Good, with amazing and loving people.
     BUT...
     But...
     We know that the saying "God never gives you more than you can handle" is just about as bogus a statement as there is, for a number of reasons.  First of all, I do not believe that all of the junk we go through in this life was "given" to us by God.  People are born with free will and as a result, people hurt each other, they mess up, we create pain and problems for each other that God does not wish anyone to suffer.  Where is God when we are in pain?  On the cross as well, suffering too.
    Second of all, we all know that there are things that people can't or don't recover from.  We know this. Sometimes people do experience "too much" and they have break downs, or they commit suicide, or they lose their minds.  To a lesser degree, some people become bitter, cranky, jaded...they fail to live full lives because they've been "broken" by their experiences.  We try to support each other and care for each other enough so that this does not happen.  We encourage a faith that is life-giving and meaningful so that people experience the love and insight that they need.  We do what we can to help one another and ourselves grow through pain and develop scars that are places of strength rather than open wounds that are places which get picked at and continue to bleed.  Still, I think that everyone has moments when they just have to say "enough!"  "No more!"  "Done!"

Where is the good news in this?  Where is the message of hope when what we are given seems to be over the top, over the limit, of what we can endure?
    There still is Good News.  The Good News is that "this, too, shall pass."  Having a larger vision - a vision that says that while today is hard, tomorrow is a new day - I think that vision is essential.  Annie's trite, cute song "The sun'll come out tomorrow" may seem Pollyanna-ish, but it is a truth.  If we can hang on for another day, another month, another year, things will change.  There's no choice in that.  Tomorrow will be different.  And while at times that may fill us with fear, mostly I think that is a great message of hope.  To put it in Christian terms, God does bring the resurrection out of death.  Yes, Jesus died.  Jesus died.  He suffered as we suffer and it was "too much" for him as well.  It overcame him and he died.  Unlike some of the Old Testament stories (like Daniel in the Lion's den and the story of Shadrach, Meshach, & Abednego who are saved from the fiery furnace), death does claim Jesus.  For three days evil does win.  But I find this much more hopeful than the stories of Daniel, et al, because we know this is real.  We usually aren't rescued from the furnace.  We usually aren't saved from the lion's jaws.  We have to go through it.  We do go through it.  The hope is not that we can avoid the pain.  The hope, the promise, is that there is life on the other side of it.  And while the three days that Jesus experienced in the tomb may seem unfairly short in comparison to the three weeks, three months, three years or even three decades that we sometimes experience, none the less, we need to keep our eyes open for that day of resurrection.  Our faith promises us that it will come.  And that is the Good News that can pull us through.  Hope.  Hope for tomorrow.  Hope for the sun to come out.  Hope for a new day.

A Reassurance of Life

Revelation 1:4-8

John 20:19-31

            The story of Thomas is a wonderful story about God’s coming to be in relationship with us where we are.  I have preached before on what an amazing gift it is that when Thomas doubts, Jesus does not leave him or abandon him there, but goes to him, brings to Thomas his very self for Thomas to touch, reconnect with and believe in.  But today I want to focus on the other disciples, on what they were doing, what their lives were like following this revelation of Jesus’ resurrection. 

Today’s story from John immediately follows the announcement from Mary to the disciples that Jesus is alive, that she has seen him, that Jesus has sent her to them.  And yet, despite this announcement, where are the disciples?  They are hiding, we are told, from the Jewish authorities.  They are behind locked or closed doors (the Greek word is actually “closed” but I think many of the translators use the word “locked” to indicate that it was a way of shutting others out) out of fear.  Jesus has arisen, which tells us that there is nothing more to fear – everything can be overcome, even death itself.  And yet, even though the disciples have heard this news, they remain terrified to the point of hiding.  It isn’t just Thomas who is doubting because he hasn’t seen.  As a matter of fact, Thomas is an interesting contrast to these other disciples who are hiding.  Because Thomas, we are told, was not hiding with the other disciples.  He was out and about, not in the locked room!  He is the one who has reentered the world, continued living, refused to be trapped behind in fear, while the others, though they have all heard the news, remain in hiding.

            So, Jesus comes and shows himself to the hiding disciples, those who cannot yet believe, those who have heard the good news but remain afraid.  He shows himself and they believe….maybe.  Except that then we are told that eight days later they are still, or maybe again, in the same house, again with the doors closed or locked.  In other words, now after having seen Jesus, they are still hiding!!  And this time Thomas is with them.  Jesus comes again.  And this time when Jesus comes to them, he says something very interesting.  He says, “Do you believe because you see me?”  I think most of us have always heard this phrase to mean – “oh, so now you, Thomas, believe in the resurrection because you see me?”  But I heard this differently this week.  This time, I heard the phrase this way, “Do you actually believe? - because you have seen me.”  And I don’t think it was just aimed at Thomas.  The disciples are not behaving as people who believe.  They are not LIVING into the good news!  They are not so excited about the Good News that Jesus is alive that they are out preaching the word and sharing it!  They are not living as a people filled with joy and released from fear.  So he is asking them, “now that you have seen, NOW do you believe?”  He has come to see them a second time, and yet, they still have not understood the message.  And then he continues, speaking, again, to ALL of the disciples – “Happy are those who have not seen, and yet have come to believe.”

            As we know, and as we see through all of this, belief is not as simple, even, as seeing.  Even seeing does not guarantee belief, not real belief, in the meaning behind what is being seen.  Many believe who have not seen, and many see who do not believe.  No, it is not seeing that causes belief.  So, what does create belief in us?

I’ve shared with you before what Frederick Buechner has to say about faith.

“…Faith is better understood as a verb than as a noun, as a process than as a possession.  It is on-again-off-again rather than once-and-for-all.  Faith is not being sure where you’re going but going anyway.  A journey without maps.”

            He goes on to say that we can’t test what we believe, like, for example, we can’t test the friendships of our friends, without damaging those very relationships.  But we trust our friendships because we are engaged in them.        

And what this says to me is, again, that faith does not come about through seeing.  Faith, real faith, comes about through our relationships.  We believe in our friends when they ACT like friends.  And we believe in God when we experience a relationship with God. 

            We are called to live in the faith of the Good news.  The Good News, Jesus’ resurrection, tells us that even death will be overcome, that the last enemy has been defeated, and that because of that, we have nothing to fear, and can really live and can be free to work for life for all people, too, without fear of the consequences.  But, I repeat what I said, many who have seen do not yet believe, whereas many who have not seen, do believe and live out their faith.

            I think about the story in Mitch Albom’s book Have a Little Faith, in which we learn that the Rabbi lost his young daughter to illness.  When he returned to the pulpit he shared with the congregation that he’d yelled at God, screamed for an answer.  There was nothing in being a Rabbi that had kept him from the tears and misery of never connecting with his young daughter again.  But he also said that his faith was the only thing that soothed him.  It was a reminder that we are all part of something bigger.  And he believed that he would see her again.  But I also believe from what I read that it was the relationship he had with God that got him through the crisis.  It was a relationship that was strong enough that it allowed him to express his anger at God, and held him in the belief that God’s love was big enough to be able to handle that anger.

The thing is, belief, faith, is an act of will, and not a feeling.  And as much as we would want it to, seeing does not guarantee that belief.  I think about the movie, The Polar Express.  One of my favorite scenes in that movie is when the main character, a young boy who is struggling with faith in Santa Claus, is walking across the top of the moving Polar Express Train, looking for a friend of his whom he believes had also walked across the top of the train.  He finds on the top of the train a man who appears to be a Hobo, playing music next to a fire while he heats coffee and dries his socks over the fire.  And he has an interaction with the man where the man says, “You want to believe but you don’t want to be hoodwinked, bamboozled, scammed!”  We, the viewers of the movie, know that the man, the hobo is a spirit, or a ghost. But what is most interesting to me is that he says to the boy, “you want to believe, but seeing is believing, right?  So just one more question…do you believe in ghosts?”  The kid shakes his head “no” to which the ghost responds, “interesting,” and we are left, again, to ponder the reality that seeing is not always believing.  Even in the Polar Express we experience that the child’s faith (in Santa Clause in this case) comes about through his relationships and his experiences, and not through his seeing.  And we understand that child’s faith, we come to understand his faith change when his relationships with others change. 

            There is another part of Mitch Album’s book Have a Little Faith (p.47) that I want to share with you:

Mitch asks his Rabbi, “How do you not get cynical?” And from the book:

            “There is no room for cynicism in this line of work.”

            But people are so flawed.  They ignore ritual, they ignore faith – they even ignore you.  Don’t you get tired of trying?

            … “let me answer with a story,” he said.  “There’s this salesman, see?  And he knocks on a door. The man who answers says, ‘I don’t need anything today.’

            “The next day the salesman returns.

            “ ‘Stay away,’ he is told.

            “The next day, the salesman is back.

            “The man yells, ‘you again!  I warned you!’ He gets so angry, he spits in the salesman’s face.

            “The salesman smiles, wipes the spit with a handkerchief, then looks to the sky and says, ‘Must be raining.’

            “Mitch, that’s what faith is.  If they spit in your face, you say it must be raining.  But you still come back tomorrow.”

            To me, this story is talking more about what really makes faith happen: and that is, again, relationships.  You stay engaged, just as God will stay engaged with you every single time.  You also step out of your fear and choose to be in the world, no matter what the world is handing back to you.  That is faith.  Choosing to act “as if” even when we can’t feel it.  Faith is a choice.  It is a decision.  It is a way to be in the world that says, “I will not act on my fear.  But I will act on my faith, even when I don’t feel it.  I will choose to believe into seeing even when I cannot believe because of what I see.”

It is easy to be like the disciples, like Albom in his tendency towards cynicism, - seeing and still not believing.  The good news for us is that Jesus keeps coming, again and again, until we really do believe.  That doesn’t mean there aren’t times for all of us of struggle with faith, of doubt about who God is, that the love is really there, that it is enough.  I think about the book Life of Pi.  One of my favorite quotes: “Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love – but sometimes it was so hard to love.  Sometimes my heart was sinking so fast with anger, desolation and weariness, I was afraid it would sink to the very bottom of the Pacific and I would not be able to lift it back up….Despair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out.  It was a hell beyond expression.  I thank God it always passed…The blackness would stir and eventually go away, and God would remain, a shining point of light in my heart.  I would go on loving.” (p209) 

Jesus didn’t leave the disciples alone.  He didn’t leave Thomas alone.  He showed up again and again and by doing so he rebuilt his relationship with them until their faith was strong enough that he could leave and trust them to live in the Good News.  God does the same for us.  God will show up again and again for us as well, until we, too, finally find that, because of our relationship with God, not because of what we have heard, and not even because of what we have seen, but because of our relationship with God, we, too can have the faith that moves into true belief and therefore into action. Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Humor Sunday sermon - The Reversal of All Things

Acts 5:27-32,

Revelation 1:4-8,

John 20:19-23

A mother listening to her son praying said to him, “Honey, that’s no way to say your prayers!”

The girl responded, “But mom, I thought that God was probably tired of hearing the same old stuff every night.  So I told him the story of the Three Bears instead!”



Pastor, “So, your parents say your prayers with you every night?  What do they say?”

The boy responded, “Thank God, he’s in bed!”

               Today we celebrate humor Sunday, the day when we remember that God had the last laugh over evil, and frankly, over all of us as well, by reversing what all of us know to be the only truth we can absolutely count on: that life ends with death.  Instead, death was the beginning: the beginning of the resurrection, the beginning of new life, the beginning of Christianity, the beginning of the faith that we have come to know and follow for the last 2000 years. 

               This should be an amazing and wondrous thing to celebrate and yet we often “celebrate” the resurrection with solemnity and ritual.  It is as if we cannot really accept the irony, the ridiculousness, the JOY of death being overcome, being destroyed, being reversed.  But that reversal of all we know should do exactly that: it should confuse us, it should turn our lives upside down, it should force us to question everything that we have ever known to be true, and to celebrate again with laughter, with humor, with music, with delight that God loves us so much that even death is no longer a solid steadfast rule; that everything we know is up for grabs, but that we need not fear because the God of love has promised to carry us through it all.

On humor Sunday this year we are literally practicing the reversal by reversing the worship service.  I hope that as we go through the service, you will find meaning in doing this.  First of all, it is often only those things which are different and unexpected which catch our attention enough to bring about genuine change.  Since we have not experienced physical resurrection first hand, sometimes we need a little help to remember the scandal of that day and of that experience for the disciples.  Reversing what we know invites us to experience both the confusion but also the possibilities inherent in life being other than what we expect.  That confusion can help us to see differently, to put ourselves in a place to hear in a different way.  The possibilities that open up for us, then, from a place of not knowing, but of seeing anew, can be amazing.

Secondly, I hope that today especially will be a reminder that church is not the goal.  Going to church is not what gives you stars in your crowns.  It is not what pleases God most.  As you may remember from my Amos sermon during lent, God said to Amos, “I hate, I despise your solemn festivals.  But let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” What pleases God most is when we follow Christ and do what he has called us to do: be the hands and feet of God, healing, loving, uplifting, feeding, visiting, making the world better for everyone; be the mind of Christ – wise as serpents and gentle as doves; be the heart of Christ, loving those we would call “sinners” because we have hearts of compassion that can do nothing less than treat even our enemies with love and grace.   The point of church is to ground us in the love of God, to center us in the reason for all we do, to remind us of our call and the support we have from God and this community for doing the call, and to feed us so that we can then do the work of the world with energy and passion. 

When seen this way, it is therefore more than appropriate that our “welcome and announcements” lead us into being the church in the world out there; that they come at the end of the service, inviting us into the work of Christ.  It is appropriate that we enter this place with the benediction, and the reminder that it is a temporary leaving of our work for Christ that we do when we come into this place to be fed so that we can go back into the world again at the end of the hour.  It is appropriate that we hear the words of scripture AFTER the sermon so that we can hear whether or not our thoughts and our reflections actually have anything to do with what God is saying to us through the books of the Bible.  It is appropriate that we give of our best gifts in our offering before we have been fed in this place so that it is not somehow a measurement of what the hour has provided us, but instead a pledge to give our best to God no matter how we are feeling or what we face in this moment.  It is appropriate that we greet one another with the peace of Christ: coming into this place as forgiven people forgiving each other before we can hear what God would say to us in this hour. 

And finally, it is very appropriate that we celebrate Christ’s resurrection with laughter, with a recognition of the absurdity of life that ends for most of us in death; and the delight in death that ends with the scandal of life.  We will hear today from the book of John that Jesus’ message to the disciples was peace, was one of sending forth, and was one of forgiveness.  That continues to be Christ’s message for all of us who would follow: to find peace so that we may go forth loving, forgiving and doing the work that God calls us to do in the world.  Christ is the one who was, who is and who will be.  It is in that wake, in that understanding, in that deep and undeniably powerful call that we are told to go and do what he did: healing, loving, freeing, raising up the valleys and bringing the mountains low.  And so we will, as we step forward into our lives from this place.  But before we do that, it is appropriate that we boost ourselves with a bit of laughter, with joy, with celebration.

So towards that end, we begin with the jokes that you have to share.  These two come from Scott Lewis who could not be here today:

Muldoon lived alone in the Irish countryside with only a pet dog for company.  One day the dog died, and Muldoon went to the parish priest and asked, 'Father, my dog is dead. Could ya' be saying' a mass for the poor creature?'

Father Patrick replied, 'I'm afraid not; we cannot have services for an animal in the church. But there are some Baptists down the lane, and there's no tellin' what they believe. Maybe they'll do something for the creature.'

Muldoon said, 'I'll go right away Father. Do ya' think $5,000 is enough to donate to them for the service?'

Father Patrick exclaimed, 'Sweet Mary, Mother of Jesus! Why didn't ya tell me the dog was Catholic?”

Father O'Malley answers the phone. 'Hello, is this Father O'Malley?'

'It is!'

'This is the IRS. Can you help us?'

'I can!'  

'Do you know a Ted Houlihan?'

 'I do!'

 'Is he a member of your congregation?'

 'He is!'

 'Did he donate $10,000 to the church?'

 'He will.'

Easter Sermon: Believing without seeing

Mark 16:1-8

Believing without Seeing.CV

4/21/19

Imagine a family of mice who lived all their lives in a large piano.  To them in their piano-world came the music of the instrument, filling all the dark spaces with sound and harmony.  At first the mice were impressed by it.  They drew comfort and wonder from the thought that there was Someone who made the music - though invisible to them - above, yet close to them.  They loved to think of the Great Player whom they could not see.  Then one day a daring mouse climbed up part of the piano and returned very thoughtful.  He had found out how the music was made.  Wires were the secret; tightly stretched wires of graduated lengths which trembled and vibrated.  They must revise all their old beliefs; none but the most conservative could any longer believe in the Unseen Player.  Later, another explorer carried the explanation further.  Hammers were now the secret, numbers of hammers dancing and leaping on the wires.  This was a more complicated theory, but it all went to show that they lived in a purely mechanical and mathematical world.  The Unseen Player came to be thought of as a myth...But the pianist continued to play. -----------------------

In many ways the questions that arise for us in light of the announcement that Jesus is

risen might be the same.  What an amazing story!  It was an incredible experience to hear that  Jesus is risen.  And yet, this story in Mark only leaves us with the concrete observation that the tomb was empty and that a man wearing white said that Jesus was risen.  The gospel of Mark, especially, leaves us with questions and wonder.  Mark’s gospel originally ended with the passage that we just read.  In most of our Bibles we will find an additional passage that was added to Mark’s gospel about 200 years later (and in your Bible you will find that it will confirm this to be a later addition) because Mark’s original gospel with this ending in which Jesus does not appear for the reader left too many questions, left too much unsatisfied and unanswered for the readers.  Our church forefathers were uncomfortable with only the evidence of an empty tomb and the words of a man in white.  So, they added additional stories to the gospel of Mark.  But if we go back to the original Mark, we are only told that Jesus was risen just as the women in Mark were told.  We read that he had gone on ahead, that the women would see Jesus.  But we don’t find an actual story in Mark in which we see Jesus, hear Jesus, or see how he is upon his return.  Mark was the first gospel written.  So, if we put aside what we have heard from the other gospels and just look at this gospel and this story as the ending to the gospel, we are left with many questions.  And we are possibly left with many doubts.  Who was this man in white?  What gives him the authority to say that Jesus was risen?  What does it mean that Jesus was risen?  Is that simply a way of saying his body was stolen from the tomb but the man caught there didn’t want to get into trouble for stealing it?  Would the women be accused of taking the body and what would happen to them?  And then, what if it really was true that he was resurrected?  What would that look like?  How would he come again?  How would he be when he is met again?  Would he be angry that they allowed the crucifixion to happen?  Would he be gentle and loving?  Would he charge his disciples to go and do as he had done in his life and in his death?  Or would he simply comfort them with the promise of life after death and a God who overcomes every evil, even death itself?  In this his return, would he in fact be the military messiah that the Jews expected, turning over the oppressive Roman rule and freeing the people in his immortal and therefore undefeatable state?  Or would he continue to be the Jesus of the gospel, one who ruled by love and truth instead?  The gospel of Mark doesn’t answer these questions for us.  And because of this it is my favorite gospel, and this is my favorite Easter story. 

It is my favorite Easter story because the women and the disciples in the gospel of Mark were brought to the same place that we are brought every Easter.  We, too, do not meet Jesus in the flesh and blood this Easter.  We are told by these stories, just as the women in Mark are told by the man in the white robe that Jesus is risen.  We believe it because for us the Bible carries the same authority and promise that this man in the white robe carried for the women in Mark.  But we cannot prove it and we do not know what that will mean for us this time, this year.  How can we stand by our belief?  How can we live if all that we do and are is based on a belief that has no concrete evidence?  What does this resurrection and our faith in it mean for our lives?

For the women in Mark, the news that their beloved Jesus has not died for eternity but instead was risen, alive, walked among them and would meet them, TERRIFIED them and we read  that they fled from the tomb and said nothing to anyone.  I imagine that this is pretty realistic.  If you were told that someone you deeply loved, trusted, worshiped even, who had been brutally murdered was alive and walking around, how would you feel about it?  Would images of “return of the ghouls” and of revenge scenes from murdered corpses echo in your mind?  Knowing who Jesus was, that he was about love and about God, I might instead find myself recounting everything I ever did and fearing that in a time as miraculous as this, I would be called to account for my choices.  Were they good?  Were they good enough?  And as a follower of Jesus, knowing who he was and what he did, to learn that he really was the messiah, the risen one, what does that mean for our future lives?   Honestly, it is a scary thought.  For if Jesus is truly risen, we will have to live our lives differently, just like he said we would.  We will have to be serious in taking care of each other and our world.  We will have to learn to really love our neighbors, and even those we hate or fear, as ourselves.  We will have to live as a people that have been given a new chance at life, and who are called in all we do to care for others as God’s children.

Is it terrifying to hear that Jesus is risen?  Maybe.  But it is also amazing, awesome and glorious.  That is what our faith does for us.  It enters us into a realm of feelings, both terrible and wonderful that propel us forward into life.  As Frederick Buechner says, “Faith is better understood as a verb than as a noun, as a process than as a possession.  It is on-again-off-again rather than once-and-for-all.  Faith is not being sure where you’re going but going anyway.  A journey without maps. ...

“ I have faith that my friend is my friend.  It is possible that all his motives are ulterior.  It is possible that what he is secretly drawn to is not me but my wife or my money.  But there’s something about the way I feel when he’s around, about the way he looks me in the eye, about the way we can talk to each other without pretense and be silent together without embarrassment, that makes me willing to put my life in his hands as I do each time I call him friend. 

“I can’t prove the friendship of my friend.  When I experience it, I don’t need to prove it. When I don’t experience it, no proof will do.  If I tried to put his friendship to the test somehow, the test itself would queer the friendship I was testing.  So it is with the Godness of God....”  ----

Just like the women in today’s story, we have not yet seen the risen Christ, but we believe he is risen.  We believe death has been overcome.  We believe in resurrection.  So how do we enter this faithful future, a future that has a risen Jesus in it, without knowing exactly what it will look like?  We have the whole gospel to tell us - Jesus is about love and our call from him is to love the least of these God’s children, God’s people, God’s creation.  It rests on our faith from that point on.  We have faith that living in the resurrection means we are called to give out of compassion fully, and trust that God will bring new and glorious life out of our gifts of compassion.  Once it is out of our hands, we are no longer in charge of it.  But we have faith that God brings life out of death and resurrection out of endings.  We have faith that Jesus walks among the rejected and outcast. We believe Jesus is present in those we would reject and exclude and condemn: the least of these.  We have faith that God’s coming will catch us by surprise and be glorious and wonderful.  And in the end, we have faith that we too will find the Christ walking on ahead of us, waiting to meet us.  We walk by faith, we walk as a people about to meet and see the risen Christ.  For while sometimes it can be hard to believe without seeing, the most important things in life must be believed in order to be seen.