Easter
April 16, 1995
One of the activities I thoroughly enjoy is greeting people at the end of the Easter service. Usually people come out with a real high, saying things like: “The Lord is Risen,” or, “Alleluia,” or, “Rejoice.” At other times, they will remark on the beauty of the music, or the architecture, or maybe be kind enough to say something about the sermon. Last Easter, I had a strange occurrence. Near the end of the line, a young man came up to me, shaking his head and saying: “I don’t know -I just don’t know.”
That young man has stuck with me all year. His words have left me wondering what really goes through our minds as we leave the church. Just as there is more than one door out of the church, so too is there more than one thought that goes through people’s heads as they leave the service. Following this line of reasoning, we could also say that there probably were many different thoughts that went through people’s heads on that first Easter, just as there were many paths leading from the empty tomb.
If you look at Matthew, Mark, and Luke’s accounts, you will find that they all agree that the women were the only ones who discovered the empty tomb. But there is a wide difference as to what happened after the discovery. Matthew and Luke go on to tell different stories of the women and further Resurrection appearances. But Mark tells the story in another way. His account ends abruptly with his saying: ‘The women fled, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they were afraid.” That’s all- they all left – fled in terror.
In the Second Century, some helpful people added 12 more lines to Mark’s Gospel – tidying up the ending and telling us where the women went. You might check your Bibles at home to see if your translation contains those later words.
But scholars agree that the real Mark ends his account with the words: “They were afraid.” There are no further appearances, no supper at Emmaus, no breakfast on the beach. There is nothing but the silent, precipitous, fearful conclusion. It’s as if Mark were telling us that the only words that the women were able to utter were: “I don’t know. I just don’t know what has happened.”
For me, this feels right. When something truly unusual happens, when something out of the ordinary occurs, there is nothing that can be said or done. We can only shake our heads and say: “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
Have you come here to get it all nailed down? To be given the last word about the Resurrection? To have it all explained? Spelled out for you in living Technicolor? What are you expecting? As I’ve said many times, what you expect often colors what you hear. If you’re looking for facts, you won’t find them. If you’re looking for truth, that’s something else.
I’m sticking with Mark, who tells us that the Risen Christ does his business in ways we least expect. He’s interested in truth. He doesn’t offer us certainty. We are given a mystery. The Resurrection account does not increase our knowledge. It simply adds to our sense of wonder. For you see, Easter is not about a ritual appearance in the Springtime. It’s about ecstasy at any time.
So Mark never got around to putting the finishing touches on his Gospel. But maybe that’s the whole point of the Easter story. It’s meant to be open-ended. It is what you decide to do with it. All we’re told is that Jesus is somewhere out in front of us. He’s gone on before us.
And that’s the truth of Easter.
Now this is scary business. No wonder Mark’s Gospel ends with the statement: ‘They were afraid.” Monday, the next day, is much more of a frightening topic when talking about the victory on Sunday. The future is more frightening than the past. There are no guarantees, no set answers, no path that leads to Monday. But that’s really what Mark’s Gospel is all about – the future, the day after. When the flowers fade and the music dies down, is when the rubber hits the road for most of us. Easter is about living a new life in the future, not escaping death in the past. Easter is the beginning of a journey, not an answer to your questions about God. Not a fact that allows you to sit back and feel comfortable about your religion. The Resurrection is a truth to challenge us in our living.
So, what are you going to do with Mark’s Gospel? How are you going to use his description to celebrate this magnificent day?
Well, that’s our problem. After all, we all came here looking for Jesus. But Mark tells us: “He’s not here. You just missed Him. By this time of the morning, He’s already in Galilee. He’s gone out before us. . .. AMEN.
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Maundy Thursday
April 9, 1998
What is a birthday without a cake? What is the Fourth of July without fireworks? Without the outward trappings, it is hard to celebrate the occasion. Yet gazing past the trappings, we often find the meaning beyond the symbol. Birthdays are really about the gift of life, not simply time. The Fourth of July is about freedom, not the birth of a nation. So beyond cakes and fireworks, beyond the surface manifest& Lions, there is always something more.
Tonight, we have communion without a lot of the outward trimmings. At the end of the service, we completely strip the altar, which symbolizes that we’re down to rock bottom, down to the bare bones, down to the simplest of meanings. Tonight we are invited to participate in a meal without any of the usual additions, without the frills. We are being asked to go back to the basics. Go back to what the meal originally meant.
This is no ordinary meal, and we have no ordinary host, nor is this an ordinary table. This table, this meal, doesn’t belong to us. Someone else calls you to it. You don’t deserve to be here. You don’t have a reserved seat.
Many of you have come with the thought that you have chosen to be here. That you have made the choice among other choices. (You could be home right now with your feet up, watching TV, or a video.) But let me dissuade you of these thoughts. If the truth were known, you didn’t choose.
You were chosen to be here. “You did not choose me,” said Jesus, “but I chose you. I called you to my table, I made a place for you.”
One further note about the table. It is expandable. There is no limit to its size. We often try to confine it, to fence it in – make it open to only people who believe. But the host said, “Come unto me, all you who are hungry and thirsty.”
So to this meal come all sorts and conditions. The woman taken in adultery, the thief on the cross, the prodigal son, Judas, as well as Peter, Mary the mother, as well as the one called the Magdalene, Vestry people, as well as nonmembers. The pompous and the guilty and the gutsy, the simple and the sincere, the faithful and the foolish, the helpless and the hopeful. This is no ordinary table. This is no common meal we are having.
If the truth were known, we would wish our host were more important. A person of substance, with a grand title like Messiah, or King, or doctor, showing power or influence. My Judas mind suffers with a sense of outrage. The host is an underachiever (using Woody Allen’s metaphor). Jesus appears not in glory, but in weakness. Not as the gracious host, but as a servant; a waiter if you will. Not even as the matre’de, but more. like a busboy, and I am shocked.
At the conclusion of this sermon, we are going to act out in symbolic form what Jesus did to dramatize his role. He washed the feet of the disciples. It’s a strange ceremony. One that I would like to avoid, but it’s been repeated for 2000 years on this night to remind us that we who follow in the footsteps of Jesus are called to be servants.
The problem of the church today is that many of us think we are entitled to enter the main entrance. We expect to be ushered into the living room or the dining room. But the meaning of this night suggests that we understand that Jesus comes in by the servant’s entrance. If we are to follow, we too must come as servants. We, too, must wear a towel, and not a title.
Here we are in a simple meal, with a simple message. Our Savior has said, “You call me teacher and Lord. If I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet.” So come to the table and come as servants, not hosts.
Amen -
Palm Sunday
April 12, 1992
I have great sympathy for the secular humanists in Indiana. They want to place a note next to those Gideon Bibles in motels, which would start out saying, Be careful, this book can be hazardous to your health.
Perhaps all books should carry warning labels like cigarette packets. Watch out, dangerous if taken to heart, may be injurious to your well-being.
The story of Jesus is like that. It’s a scandal to our ears. The person of Jesus defies our categories and acts differently than we would suppose. And, if we follow in Jesus’ footsteps, there is little doubt we will end up in trouble.
The Crow Indians have an expression for people who act the way Jesus did. They call them crazy dogs. Crazy dogs do not do ordinary things. Although they might invite strangers to eat with them, they will be found playing with pots and pans, Symphony with the neighborhood children. Or they might be wearing something other than their Sunday best at church on a Palm Sunday. Being the crazy dog for the Crow Indians meant going against the grain green questioning the conventional wisdom, or daring to be seen as foolish, weak, strange, or unorthodox. Crazy dogs usually end up in lots of trouble, where they seem to have an upside-down or inside-out approach to life. If you listen to those kinds of people, you’re bound to end up in hot water.
The Kingdom of God, Jesus insisted, would be filled with crazy dogs. People who believe the first are last, the greatest are the least, the strong are the weak, and the meek will win it all. So when you pick up Jesus’ story in the Bible, be prepared to be shaken, to be disturbed, for it is a story of a crazy dog person. Incidentally, I recently saw a fantastic T-shirt, it said, it will be a great day when the schools have all the money they need and the Air Force has to have a bake sale to buy a new fighter plane I don’t think you can run for president on that platform but Charles handy would encourage us to push our imaginations and begin to say why not? Why not think about that idea? Why not act upon it you will never know what will happen to you. Let something new stretch you, change your thinking, nudge you into a new way of being.
The Jesus we meet in the gospels is always saying Why not, Why not associate with tax collectors, why not heal a Phoenician woman’s daughter, why not ride into Jerusalem on the back of a scrawny mule instead of a magnificent War Horse? Why not allow yourself to be vulnerable, lead with weakness instead of strength, why not be a crazy dog?
Years ago, a movie was presented at the New York World’s Fair. It was made by the National Council of churches and was called the parable. The movie shocked and disturbed many conventional church people. Jesus was portrayed as a second-grade carnival clown. The clown kept sticking his head in these booths where people throw baseballs at some luckless character’s head or this clown took the place of someone who was getting dunked in a barrel of water. The movie was destabilized and subversive, like a hand grenade thrown into our very neat, conventional picture of Jesus.
A lot of Christians weren’t ready to accept Jesus as a clown. It undermined their expectations, and it played havoc with their image of a successful savior.
But that is Palm Sunday for you. A day where Jesus not only says Why not? He acts it out. In a crazy dog manner. A new way of seeing and living life is presented to us. Palm Sunday is a day of prophetic confrontation that can change your life. The story of Palm Sunday is not that of a traditional ticker tape parade; instead, it is the beginning of the passion narrative that ends up with the crucifixion. If we take this story seriously, it will turn us upside down and inside out.
After reading the biblical story, can we no longer live life with the conventional hope that all will work out in the end? The good guys don’t always win. Jesus ends up on the cross, no longer can we simply hope the world will come to its senses. All we have left are crowds shouting Crucify him, and the loser for a savior, who says why not? Why not be a crazy dog? Why not risk crucifixion? And sometimes when I read that story it causes me to tremble tremble.
Amen -
Easter
Luke 24:1-10
April 12, 1998
“Sir, could you say a word or two about the resurrection of the dead?” Some bright college students put this seemingly simple question to Caryle Manley, one of the great Protestant preachers.
“I will not discuss that with people like you,” he replied.
“Why not?” they asked.
“I don’t discuss such matters with anyone under thirty.”
“Why?”
“Look at you, ” he said. “Prime of your life, potent, never have known honest-to-God tragedy, failure, heartsick, defeat. So what in God’s name can you know of a terrible world that only makes sense if Christ is risen?”
The story of Easter begins with tragedy. Three women come to anoint the dead body of Jesus. They approach the tomb, which symbolically represents the end of all their hopes and dreams. And when they arrive, they discover something beyond their dead ends.
In light of this story, I would like to talk to you about dead ends and what can happen to your own dead ends.
Unlike Manley, I really believe there is no one who hasn’t experienced a dead end – a marriage coming to an end, a child that has died, a job being terminated, a dream abandoned, a relationship severed. Dead ends, we’ve been there. And for most of us, my guess is that when we hit a dead end, there is rarely any light at the end of the tunnel. It’s as if the dead end represents an unalterable wall.
And so it was with the three women. They trudged to the tomb believing that the light had gone out of their hopes and dreams. Their teacher, their leader, their friend, had been killed. And when they reached the tomb, they discovered a young man who said, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? Do you remember what He told you? Can you recall that audacious, fanciful assumption – the message that love will conquer everything – even death?” Do you remember? And more importantly, do you believe? Do you believe that dead ends are not necessarily terminal?
The Easter story is about something that God does with dead ends. Jesus died, was crucified, buried, and then He came back. This is what we celebrate today. But it is not all that we celebrate. We also celebrate that we, too can come back. Not always in the way we might choose. But today we are asked to remember that God does great things with dead ends. From barren wombs, God can bring forth a child. From dry bones, God can form a people. From the dead, God can bring about Resurrection.
In his autobiography, Frederick Buechner recounts how he learned this lesson. For some fifty years, he had been haunted by his father/s suicide. For Buechner, the weeping had never stopped. It was as if the day his father died, he also died.
Many years later, under the guidance of a Jungian therapist, he began an exploration of important people in his life. The therapist has him write dialogues with figures in his past. Listen to how Buechner found new life in the dead end of the relationship with his father.
(He wrote):
Child: How are you?”
Father: “I’m fine.”
Child: “Long time no see.”
Father: “It’s been a long time.”
Child: “Were you sad, Daddy? Did you know what you were going to do when you took your life?”
Father: “I had to do it. Things were so bad. It didn’t seem as if there was a way out.”
Child: “Could I have stopped you, Daddy? What if I had told you I loved you, I needed you?”Father: “No. Nobody could. I was lost so badly. It felt like I had come to a dead end.”
Child: “I’ve been so worried, so scared ever since.”Father: “Don’t be. There is nothing to worry about. That’s the secret I never knew. But I know it now.”
Child: “What do you know, Daddy?”
Father: “I know plenty. And it’s all good. I will see you again, for remember, there are no dead ends.”
Buechner says he does not know where that dialogue came from. Who can say whether it was real or made up? But in some mysterious way, it sounds like the message delivered at the tomb: “Why do you seek the living among the dead? On the third day, He shall rise.”
If we can only remember. If we can only keep our ears open to this message. Life doesn’t end. Death is not the last word. Do you hear? Do you believe? Dare we say, “Alleluia?” Amen. -
Palm Sunday
April 16, 2000
For years, on this Sunday, we have portrayed dramatically the Passion story. Several of us have taken parts, and each time we ask the congregation to assume the role of the crowd. There are only two words that are spoken, but they are repeated several times. “Crucify him” are those lines. We usually ask the congregation to shout them out with gusto.
At the end of the service, inevitably, people come up to me and say, “I felt strange saying, ‘Crucify him.’ If I had been there, I never would have said such terrible words.”
Maybe so and maybe not. If we look closely at the biblical drama, we can usually find ourselves portrayed in most of the characters. So, let’s mingle this morning with the people of Jerusalem, and see if we might find ourselves in the crowd.
Let me set the stage. Jesus of Nazareth recently had a gala entrance into the city. The crowds shouted Hosannas to a king they knew nothing about. And when he went up to the temple and upset the tables of the moneychangers, they wanted to take back their cheers and substitute a cry like, “Jesus, go home. Go back to Nazareth.”
In the scene in front of us, we are in the midst of an angry crowd. Jesus is standing alone off to our left, and Pontius Pilate is in the center stage. He has just delivered the line, “What shall I do with this man?” The crowd yells back, “Crucify him, crucify him.”
As we jostle our way through the crowd, let us imagine we are reporters for the Jerusalem Daily. Our assignment is to find out just what has happened. On our right stands a well-dressed, prosperous type – the kind of person you might find on the vestry of an Episcopal church.
“You, sir,” we say, “Who are you, and why are you shouting ‘Crucify’?”
“I am Jonathan, a Sadducee,” he says, “and I come from a prominent family that has been in this city for generations. I usually don’t attend these kinds of public demonstrations, but today I am making an exception.”
“You asked why I shout Crucify, why I am here? Let me tell you. A few days ago, this man waltzed into the temple and closed down the family business. He is a disturber of the peace, a zealot who is completely out of control. As long as he said such things as, ‘Consider the lilies of the field – see how they grow,’ he was fun to have around. But when he said, ‘Consider the thieves in the temple – see how they steal,’ that was going too far. He was messing with our economic system, and everybody knows that rabbis shouldn’t talk about money. He wanted to change the status quo, and that was just too much. So I gladly shout, ‘Crucify him, crucify him.’”
Elbowing our way through the crowd, we approach another man. “Who are you, sir? And why are you shouting so loudly?”
“Are you addressing me?” he replies. “It’s not my custom to speak to reporters, but today I shall make an exception.”
“I am Samuel, a Pharisee, one of the religious leaders of the temple. It’s our job to decide who’s in and who’s out. My friends and I have been interpreting what’s right and what’s wrong for years.”
“You have asked me why I shout ‘Crucify!’ with such vehemence. The answer is obvious. The man is clearly a phony. He claims to have been called by God, yet he eats and drinks with addicts, thieves, prostitutes, and other low-lifes. And then says that these sinners will get into heaven before good, honest, God-fearing people like us. Can you imagine? Why, he even healed on the Sabbath, which everybody knows is a day of rest commanded by God.”
“I know, you’re no doubt thinking that, as a religious person, I ought to be more merciful. Well, let me tell you – he has broken innumerable Roman laws, and the government is going to make it hard on everyone because of what he’s done. Isn’t it better that one homeless rabbi, who seems quite irrational, suffer, than for everyone to suffer? We don’t need more troublemakers stirring up the people. So by all means, I will continue to shout, ‘Crucify, crucify’”
Now the crowd is beginning to disperse. The verdict has been given. The people have had their way and as they began to leave, we stop one ordinary-looking woman and asked, “You, madam, what is your name and why are you here?” “I am Sarah. Just one of the many housewives of the city. I wasn’t planning on being here. I was doing some shopping and saw the crowd, so I drifted over.”
“Why did I shout ‘Crucify’? I guess I just got swept up in the emotions of everyone else. On the other hand, if so many people, and influential people at that, were saying he’s bad, there must be something here. You know, where there’s smoke, there must be fire.”
“Yes, it’s true. I was part of the crowd shouting hosannas a few days before. Everybody else was doing the same thing. He should have left right then. It’s become apparent that he doesn’t fit. I’ve heard he says outrageous things like, ‘God is more concerned with people who are not our kind.’ Ridiculous! Everyone knows WE are God’s special people. And furthermore, we don’t need religious fanatics who have very questionable morals, telling us to change our priorities.
These are the faces of the crucifiers. I wonder if they are much different from us. Although 2000 years separate us from those who were gathered in Pilate’s courtyard, I wonder what response we might make to the question, “What shall I do with this man?”
Let’s be honest. We are uncomfortable with change, and people who advocate change are rarely made to feel welcome in our lives. Somehow, in the unconscious part of our brain, the message comes to us. If these people really want to change our system, our world may fly apart. Either people have to at in, go along, adjust, or they ought to leave.
Do you recall the slogan of the ’60s? In the height of the Cold War, people used to say, “America – love it or leave it.” And that’s what the people of Jerusalem were saying – either love the system or leave it.
Jesus refused to leave. So they ended up crucifying him. That was then, and this is now, and still Pilate asks us the question, “What shall I do with this man?” -
4 Lent
March 26, 1995
Lent is a time to be shocked. It’s a time when our relationship to God is tested, when our religious understandings need to be re-examined, and re-ordered. Lent is a time when we meet a radical Christ, a Jesus that we have never seen before, never met, mostly because we haven’t wished to look at those parts of ourselves that are common. And therefore, we fail to recognize those parts in the Son of God.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start with you and what you have brought here to church – your attitude, your feelings, your mindset. For let me say at the very beginning, what you bring often colors what you hear. When I say, as I usually do at the start of church: “Prepare yourselves to meet the Lord,” what is it that goes on inside your head? Do you begin to think: ‘I’ve got to feel religious now. I’ve got to put away or censor some of my feelings?” If so, what emotions have you brought to the table this morning?
Most of us, if we were to be perfectly honest, expect that we can generate or bring good feelings-feelings of joy, happiness, togetherness, to the table. And for some, this is so. But what about our other feelings? Have any of you brought what we often think are negative emotions – anger, sadness, resentment, rage? Yes, rage. How many of you have brought rage here this morning?
I’ll wager not many of you would raise your hands. I’d also wager it’s because most of us have been taught that anger and rage are not Christian feelings. Let’s face it, most of us have been taught, carefully taught, that if one is a Christian – if one is Christ-like – one must be nice with good feelings, at least on Sunday, toward the world in general.
Stanley Haurwise, a theologian from Duke, once told a group of us (in a tongue-in-cheek way) that after 2000 years of theological reflection and passionate probing, his own Methodist church has come to the conclusion that God is nice. And that we were meant to be nice, too.
But let’s not put the heat on our Methodist brothers and sisters. Most mainline pulpits have given subliminal messages that God is nice and therefore, we ought to be nice, too. Is it any wonder that we come into church and try to think nice thoughts as we prepare to meet God?
I want to introduce you this morning to a different kind of Savior. I want you to meet a Jesus who is not particularly nice and who doesn’t advocate good feelings. As a matter of fact, I want you to come into contact with an angry Jesus.
I’ve been re-reading the Gospels this Lent, and I’ve been simply amazed at how many times we encountered an angry Jesus The religious leaders made him angry, the politicians angered him, the Pharisees, the Sadducess, the hypocrites, the preachers, and even his disciples were constantly the objects of his anger. But let’s be specific. Take our Gospel this morning. If anyone has illusions about Jesus being meek and mild, being nice and long-suffering, a reading of the Gospel should dispel those thoughts. Here we are presented with a furious Jesus cleansing the temple, tossing out those who had been buying and selling. He does not reprimand or simply scold them. He drives them out. If you have a picture of Jesus as being gentle, tranquil, and even-handed, consider what he does to the money changers. He overturns their tables.
It’s like an old Western with the sheriff coming in, reaching over and knocking the poker table to one side, with the money, cards, and players rolling all over the floor. And then saying: “Get out of town before I drag you out by your boots.”
You can say all you want about the rightness and wrongness of the act, but don’t tell me that Jesus was not very angry and that he didn’t let it be known. I challenge you to re-read the Gospels and to keep count of how many times Jesus is depicted as being angry. I think you will find that a number of teachings grow out of angry confrontations.
So what can we learn from an angry Savior? The first and very obvious point is that Jesus was not hesitant to be angry and to reveal it. Most of us instinctively know that if you stuff your anger, it’s going to destroy you. Denial is a more devastating emotion than expressing something. I have a friend who is always telling me, however crudely: “Roger, it’s better to spit than to swallow.” But let’s go a step deeper in understanding the importance of an angry Jesus as a role model.
One of the most effective insights from psychology in the past half century is the theory of co-dependency. Co-dependency means that some of us relate to people in such a way as to give into and encourage people in their problems. We stuff our own feelings in order to receive the other person’s approval. We deny our emotions in order to have peace at any price.
The classic example you’re all familiar with is of the married couple where one partner has a chronic drinking problem and the other is forced into being nice in an effort to make their home life run smoothly. We’ve learned (some of us the hard way) that this rarely works. It simply maintains the addiction.
One thing we can say about Jesus is that he was able to tell it the way it was. He was never a co-dependent. He reveals his fury against the religious establishment; he makes it clear that he is the enemy of the religious leaders. His anger shows us his deep despair and utter frustration over a people who have lost their sense of compassion and humanity. He never put up with the addictions of his day.
Good people, the world about us does not lack for things to be angry at – only for lack of anger. Jesus was mad a great deal of the time, and for a good reason. He never tolerated the intolerable. Jesus never felt that ignoring the injustice was the better part of discretion. Jesus never turned his back on a problem because strategically it was more important to keep peace. What we are being introduced to this Lent is a Savior who was mad as heck about the conditions of his day.
The second thing we might learn as we focus on an angry Jesus is that he used his anger as a springboard in his relationship to God. Let me be more specific, Jesus finds that God becomes more intimate with his God when he expresses emotions like disappointment, frustration, and rage. And so the Lenten questions for each one of us today are: “Does your God allow you to have forbidden emotions, and can you use them as a way to come closer to your heavenly Creator?”
I learned this lesson a number of years ago in Connecticut from a lovely woman named Carla. Carla was a faithful churchgoer, a former Vestry person, and a former head of the women’s organization. I was visiting Carla in the hospital. She had just had a radical mastectomy. Carla had gone into surgery with the understanding that she would only have a small lump removed. She had come out with this total mastectomy, and she was devastated. After a while, I asked her if she wanted to pray. She said, ‘No.” She was so angry with God that she didn’t feel it was any time to come in contact with God. Somehow, I was led by the spirit to say: “Good, let’s be angry with God together, and you speak to God, and I’ll be with you and listen in.” Well, she did pray. A short and very angry prayer. She told God just what she thought of the whole situation. After a while, we just sat there, not saying a word. And finally, she said: ‘You’re not going to believe this. You know I’ve been going to Church since I was an infant. I’ve worked in the church as long as I can remember, but that’s the first time I’ve felt that I truly spoke to God and that I was listened to. . .:’
So what about yourselves? What do you bring to the table this Lent? What emotions, what attitudes, what feelings do you have about yourself, and about Jesus? What kind of God are you prepared to meet? Maybe, just maybe, this Lent we can begin to be truthful about ourselves and about God.
Years ago, clergy had a custom of leaving a printed card at the door when they called on someone who was not home at the time. The card read: “The Rector called today and was sorry to find you out.” I like that. We come to church to be found, but we don’t want to be found out. That’s why Lent is such a challenge. Come, be prepared to meet the Lord with all your emotions. Come be found and found out. AMEN. -
The Future as a Friend
Mark 16: 1-8
March 31, 1991
Kierkegaard, the great Danish philosopher, was once asked to define anxiety. Like a guard put it very simply, anxiety is the next day.
For Kierkegaard, the future was the great unknown; the next day was the scary part of existence. The past was over, the present could be managed, but the future, the next day, was the source of our greatest anxieties. Here is where our nightmares and our malignant fantasies begin. Here is where I’ve desperately held on to whatever seems good in the present and become paralyzed when we contemplate the future.
Do you agree with Kierkegaard? Does this not yet, old fears for you? Would you define anxiety as the next day?
The disciples of Jesus certainly found this to be true. Since Friday, their anxiety had risen 100%. They had invested their dreams in a young man called Jesus of Nazareth. Expectations of every sort had been attached to the Carpenter of Galilee, but their illusions had been shattered on Friday. Their master, their teacher, their inspiration had been snatched away on that fateful day.
If any of them could have written a line at the foot of the cross, it would have been the words, life isn’t fair! It isn’t fair that someone should die abruptly and unjustly. It isn’t fair that goodness is on the scaffold and evil sits on the throne. And its life isn’t fair. in the present, you can just imagine what they thought the next day would hold. You know about those feelings, don’t you?
Well, that’s how the first Easter morning started. Despair, sadness, and aching loss, a feeling that tomorrow will probably be worse than today. A sense that life isn’t fair and never will be.
But then some friends of Jesus arrived at the tomb, and things were not the way they had expected. Someone was standing in the tomb and told them, guess what, if you’re looking for Jesus, he is not here. He is risen. He is back at work in the world. Go tell his disciples that Jesus will be with them in the next day.
Now that’s quite a message. What the women learned, that Easter morning, was that the love of God continues, and that it isn’t fair are not the last words. The future can be friendly. The next day need not be an enemy. The great not yet can be filled with hope and promise.
Could it be true? Is it really true that God’s love, God’s presence, and God’s goodness will continue? Is it really true that I can trust my future to God? I find it hard to believe, but that’s the message of Easter. That God goes before us into the next day and the future can be friendly.
It is precisely that message which allows us to sit loose on life, good to put aside our anxiety over the next day period, to be able to lose some battles and not yet get bogged down in despair. Life isn’t fair, but the love of God continues, and this enables us to laugh, even through our tears. The future is friendly with the presence of the risen Lord.
At Easter, I usually look for some resurrection experience that illuminates this cataclysmic message. Several years ago, a friend shared a small incident that was an acted-out parable of the Easter message.
My friend was walking along the street in front of a Community Center. The circus had just finished, and there were a bunch of children waiting for the light to change. Each child was clutching tightly a gaily colored balloon. As my friend watched, the string of a red balloon slipped through the fingers of a four-year-old and drifted towards the clouds. The little boy’s face curled up in despair, and he began to cry as if his heart were broken and would never be healed.
But then, my friend said, the Easter message got acted out. It didn’t happen inside an empty tomb. You’ve occurred downtown, outside the Community Center. A girl standing about 3 feet away from the dejected little boy caught his eye and opened her small fist and released her own balloon as if to say it’s all right. The future can be bright even without a balloon. And here’s where there was a small Easter miracle. Within seconds, four or five more balloons were soaring upward, the little boy, tears still glistening on his cheek, stood tall amongst those other children and laughed and laughed and lived.
Through our tears, we can laugh. The miracle of Easter is that the future is friendly. And nothing we can do, nothing that has been done, will separate us from God. Jesus is risen and goes before us into the next day.
Amen -
Easter
March 30, 1997
It has been slightly over a month since the news about cloning was made public. Fm not letting you in on anything new, when I say that it has caused quite a stir. (I’ve even had people ask if I would preach about it.) We’ve been told, “A line has been crossed and reproductive biology will never be the same for people, or for sheep.”
In an article on cloning in Time magazine, I read that “we have moved from the zone of safety into the zone of danger. It is downright frightening to open oneself to the thought of reproducing oneself.” And so it is. In a survey, people were asked, “If you had a chance, would you clone yourself?” In other words, would you allow a new you to come about? Ninety-one percent of the people surveyed said, “Definitely No!”
It is scary. A new you. A new future. Who wants it? Who can ever imagine it?
Well, we have come together this morning to announce that over 1900 years ago, a line was crossed, and the human race has never been the same. In the Resurrection of Jesus, we have been given some news from God. News that human nature can come back; that a new you is a possibility. I often wonder on an Easter day, how many people, if offered this possibility, would say, “Thank you very much, but definitely no!”
As long as we’re on the subject of wondering, I often wonder why we’re so anxious over subjects like cloning and not equally anxious over the Resurrection. I once heard a wise person say, “I can’t understand why people are frightened by new ideas. I’m frightened by the old ones.”
We heard in our Gospel reading that it was some women who first discovered the empty tomb. Could it be that women are more receptive to new ideas? (I don’t think I’d better touch that one today.) In Mark’s testimony, which incidentally is the oldest record, we read that some women who were dejected, defeated, and despairing came to the tomb to anoint the body. They were given this message: Jesus isn’t here. He has come back. And the one emotion that they all seem to feel at this announcement is Fear.
Mark tells the story of Jesus fairly well, but the narrative ends abruptly and awkwardly as compared to the other Gospel accounts. If you want the Resurrection done in Technicolor, including other disciples, ending on a triumphant note, don’t use Mark’s account. Mark just ends with three women who suddenly become fearful at the unexpected news.
It would be difficult to write an Easter hymn on the basis of Mark/s final words. You couldn’t inscribe those words over the door of a church or carve them on a tomb. It is also difficult to preach on these words. Most clergy use the words from Luke or Matthew. And yet, if the truth be told, most of us can identify more readily with those three women in Mark’s Gospel… when he tells us, “They were afraid.”
Do you realize, in Scripture, there is no account of the Resurrection? No explanation given of this momentous event? The only thing we are told is that three women discovered it to be so. And then we read that terror and amazement seized them. Somehow, in the deep recesses of their unconscious, they understood that a line had been crossed. It would never be the same. “And they were afraid.”
Sometimes fear is good for us. It keeps us from stepping off into madness. It keeps us from pushing the envelope too far. But it can also keep us from raising the difficult questions. Questions like: What does it mean? What does it say about our past and our futures?
Now let me stop preaching and start meddling. And let me ask you: if it were demonstrated that you could be a new you, would you want it? if God were to give you the gift of a new future, would you take it? Or would your response be, “Thank you, God, very much, but no thanks.”
The message from the tomb is that a new world has started. God says, “I will make you a new you.”
Good people, the Resurrection story is not about a Jewish Rabbi who was found AWOL from his tomb. The Resurrection is about you and the fact that you can have a new future. New life can come out of the old.
Could this message be true? is it really so? Do I matter that much to God? Would God allow me to begin again? You see, Easter is not about a return. Easter is about a dramatic step forward. A step forward into a new future.
Good people, fear doesn’t have to be the last word. Isn’t it time you accepted the gift of new life? Isn’t it time you said “Yes to the Future?” For Christ’s sake, say “Yes.”
Amen. -
The Plan B of God
Luke 23: 26-41
March 27, 1999
There is a passage in Saint Luke’s gospel where the friends of John the Baptist ask who Jesus is. Jesus responds to them, the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the dead are raised, and the poor rejoice. Quite a list of accomplishments. And then Jesus adds one more. This is the one who is not scandalized by me. This could be translated, lucky you are if you are not upset by my actions.
Well, on this Palm Sunday, I for one and very upset. I’m scandalized that we would be presented with such a story. Couldn’t we present something that would make more sense on a beautiful morning like this? What we just read about is too upsetting for my religious sensibilities. Let me state my case.
The far better story is about the Camelot experience. The triumphant entry in this story, we were beginning to feel what a real Camelot could have been like. Jesus was going to be King Arthur. The crowds were anticipating a new reign of God. The disciples were to be Knights at the Round Table, shining in their armor, battling evil. As the song from the show goes, the rain would never fall after sundown. By 8:00, the sun would disappear. There is a legal limit to the snow. July and August would never be too hot. It was going to be Camelot.
The time was ripe for Camelot. Jerusalem was poised for change. The bands had been practicing tunes like Happy Days Are Here Again and so when Jesus decided to ride like a king, tourists from all over Israel lined the streets and cheered wildly. The crowd shouted Hosanna and cheered until they were hoarse. They laughed, danced, and sang. It was a great festive day, a day worth remembering and celebrating. A day in which I could really immerse myself.
Here we are presented with the Golgotha experience. A real downer. Everything goes wrong. Jesus loses control. we are shown him branded as a criminal. The crowd, that you and I, the bystanders. The crowd becomes mean and surly. Suddenly, they change from a holiday mood to a lynch mob, from cheering a potential king to booing and looking for a scapegoat.
And furthermore, the Golgotha experience focuses on the power structure. Everyone knows that the power structure will opt for the status quo. Peace at any price, as long as someone else pays the price. And then the story portrays the disciples, Peter and his friends, not as Knights of the Round Table, instead, they were shown as cowards at the bar of justice.
In the Golgothan story there was no laughing, dancing, or singing. Just a slow March. A March to the Killing Field. And, the principal seemed to this place in all places a garbage heap.
Well, there you have it. My case for choosing Camelot over Golgotha.
Let’s be honest. If you or I were God, which experience would you choose for the defining moment of your ministry, Camelot or Golgotha? Which makes the most sense to you?
I want to shout, if God be God, all powerful, all knowing, why not choose a parade? I’m not into crucifixions, I don’t even approve of the death penalty, Golgotha offends me. 2 violent, 2 bloody, too embarrassing. And yet, if we were to stop with Camelot, we might never understand how God works.
Thinking about Golgotha, do you honestly think it was part of God’s plan? Do you think Jesus came to die on a cross, to be rejected, to suffer, to be executed? I don’t. As I read the gospels, I see Jesus calling people to live the new life of openness, of trust, of knowledge, of healing, of faith in God. I really think God would have preferred everyone to cheer his son, to accept Jesus’ teachings, to get on the bandwagon, to join in the parade. I don’t believe it was God’s will to allow Jesus to be put to death. I think plan A was for Camelot. But God doesn’t always work through plan A’s. When Plan A didn’t work, God switched to Plan B. Plan B is working in a limited, broken, sinful world, and bringing good out of the most tragic events. Plan B is where God uses Golgotha to produce something wonderful. From the garbage sheet, God can make a rare flower to bloom
Simone Wiel, one of the great martyrs of the Second World War, once wrote, The extreme greatness of Christianity lies in the fact that it does not seek a supernatural remedy for suffering, or a way to avoid tragedy. Instead, it offers a supernatural use of suffering.
Plan B is the supernatural use of suffering. In a sense, God is passive, allowing humanity to choose the time and place. And yet, we learn through Golgotha that God can turn even the worst of moments into the most shining hour.
To the casual observer, the Palm Sunday passion story may be a gruesome way of perishing, but to me, Palm Sunday is following a God who brings new life from dead things and resurrections from Golgathas. So, be upset with the scandal of the requiem story. But be thankful that God has a Plan B. Amen -
What Kind of God Do You Believe In
March 27, 1994
I seem to be into Rabbi stories this year. They often combine the wit and wisdom of the ages. You may have heard this one: “There once was a Rabbi who complained to his tailor about the inordinate amount of time (six weeks) that he was taking to make a pair of pants. ‘After all,’ the Rabbi said, ‘it only took God six days to make the world.’ ‘Yes, Rabbi,’ answered the tailor, but just look – in taking only six days – what a mess he made of it.”
Well, the world is a mess. It’s difficult to deny. And much of our lives – if we’re to be honest – are a mixed bag of messes with maybe a few bright spots. We’re up – we’re down. We lead a parade – and the next moment we’re rejected. The same people who are cheering you on, saying: “Atta boy – you tell them” – are quick to say: ‘Who needs him?!”
Life seems to be one darn thing after another. The good and the bad are all mixed up. Sometimes, when I am feeling particularly cynical, a voice within me says: ‘History, our own as well as the world’s, seems to be merely a record of our deepening psychosis. Everything first appears to be under control, and then everything goes haywire.”
If we allow ourselves to speculate upon the state of affairs, we often raise the question of “why.” What kind of perverse creator allows us to be lifted up to the heights and dropped down to the depths the next moment? What kind of God makes a world where crucifixion follows a triumphant entry? Maybe the Almighty should have taken more than six days.
We used to hear the question: “Do you believe in God?” One doesn’t hear that much anymore. The question now is: ‘What kind of God do you believe in? A God that interferes, protects, helps, rescues?
Or one that allows his son to be killed after leading a jubilant parade?” I sometimes picture a group of people sitting around a table saying: “Should we or should we not mention it? The world is a mess. Things are out of control. Is our God really in charge?”
C.S. Lewis was one of the great Christian thinkers of our day. He started out pretty much as an atheist, but became a champion apologist for the Christian faith. Later in life, he met and married a most beautiful and talented woman. Soon after, his wife took sick and died. In his agony over the death of his wife, Lewis began to seriously question: “In a world where a Beethoven goes deaf,” he writes in his pain, “if there is a God, he must be a spiteful imbecile.” Lewis finally concludes: ‘In a world that is such a mess, God must be a cosmic sadist.”
What kind of God do you believe in? One that is not really in charge – or one that is a cosmic sadist? Neither alternative seems terribly attractive. What kind of God does the Christian religion offer?
So here we are – on the week before Easter, struggling to maintain some kind of cherished beliefs about God. And we have thrown in our face a crucifixion – an early illustration of when bad things happen to good people. What are we to make of this? Is God a sadist? Should we simply give in to despair? The world is a mess. Evil is on the throne, and Goodness is on the scaffold. There is no supernatural intervention in the downers of life. The passion story is about a world gone crazy.
Possibly, the challenge of this day lies in the disintegration of our notions of God. Possibly, we are being asked to look at the world through different eyes
Let me suggest that suffering is one of the ways that God uses to enter into our lives. Simone Weil, the Christian mystic, once said: “The supreme greatness of the Christian Faith’s understanding of God and the world lies in the fact that it doesn’t seek a supernatural remedy for evil, pain, and suffering. Instead, it tells us that there is a supernatural use of suffering.” The God we believe in does not stop a crucifix-
ion. But this we do know – God uses the crucifixion to show the world his love.
Several months ago, Mother Teresa came to the United States. While she was here, she told a story about a woman who was suffering and in a great deal of pain, both emotionally and physically. She had been rejected by most of her family for having AIDS. The woman asked Mother Teresa to explain how this could happen to her. How could God allow this? Mother Teresa said, “Your AIDS is the kiss of God.” When I first heard this, frankly, I was shocked. That doesn’t sound like the God I know. ‘Your bad fortune, your suffering is the kiss of God?” Incidentally, the story doesn’t end there. The suffering woman responded: ‘Please, Mother, tell God to stop kissing me.”
Well, what do we make of all this? Jesus, the Son of God, the Messiah, reveals the very nature of God by starting out leading a parade and ending up on a cross. The kiss of God is not always an invitation to success. It can also be an invitation to crucifixion. And “sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble. . !’ A thought in conclusion: I must often believe in my life that the hard times, the pain, the messes – are somehow an intrusion, something to be surmounted or avoided – not part of God’s plan. But Palm Sunday reminds me that a crucifixion may be the kiss of God – the way God enters our life.
And remember – as you walk the way of the cross this week – remember that for we Christians, our belief in God is in the one who uses suffering and defeat. And then remember: “It’s not over ’til it’s over.” See you next Sunday. AMEN
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