Sunday, April 27, 2014

Blessed are those who Believe

As the boy stepped out onto the steps leading from the house, he noticed some markings in the newly fallen snow.1 “What’s that?” he asked his father. The father glanced down at his watch and then looked closely at the tracks.

“Why, those are cat tracks,” he said, pointing to the four-toed prints. Walking a little farther, they noticed that one set of tracks veered away from the other. “Oh, it’s two cats,” said the boy. “See, one went into the bushes and the other near the car.”

As they walked down the driveway, the father stopped at another set of tracks. “A rabbit?” asked the boy, “but where did it go? Did it go back towards the garage to get away from the cats?”

“Perhaps,” said the father. “Look, we’re going to be late.” As they reached the car, the boy saw more prints on the hood. “Another cat,” he exclaimed.

“No,” said the father, they’re too small. I’ll bet a squirrel made those.” See, it came out on that branch, there – “ he pointed to a thick branch hanging over the car – “jumped down on the car, then ran around and jumped off.”

“Cool! Maybe he was avoiding the cats too.”

“Maybe. Now let’s get going, or we’ll be late for church.”

All the way to church, the boy talked about the tracks. When he saw his mother, he ran to her and shouted, “Mom! We had a bunch of animals running around our house this morning!”

“Really? I didn’t see any animals when I left for church.”

“Neither did we,” he said, “but we know they were there – we saw the tracks!”

“Then it’s just like God,” she said.

“What do you mean?” the boy asked.

“I mean we never really see God, but we can see what God has done in the world around us, and we can know that God has been there.

Isn’t this the reality of our faith? We have not seen the risen Jesus in the flesh, but perhaps we can see his tracks. Actually, at best only a handful of people ever saw the risen Jesus. We have a few of their stories in the gospel accounts: Mary Magdalene and the other women at the empty tomb, the eleven in the upper room, or the two men on the road to Emmaus. Paul tells us that no more than five hundred people saw Jesus before his ascension, and that he himself was not one of them.

Among those who most likely did not see Jesus in the flesh were the writers of the gospel according to John and the letter attributed to Peter. Yet both offer assurance that seeing the risen Jesus is not necessary to trusting and believing in his presence with us. John’s gospel was composed at least sixty years after Jesus’ death for a fledging Christian community that was in conflict with the religious establishment. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe,” Jesus tells them in the evangelist’s account, reassuring them that they have made the right choice in electing to follow him. In what was most likely the original ending of the gospel, the evangelist reminds them that, “Through believing you may have life in his name.”

The letter attributed to the apostle Peter was most likely written early in the second century to a Christian community that was now experiencing discrimination and persecution. Many in this community were gentile women and slaves, who were despised by the rich and powerful people around them. And so the letter as a whole consoles them, and, like the gospel, reassures them that becoming disciples of Jesus was the right choice. “Although you have not seen him,” the writer assures them, “you love him, and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy….”

Despite the assurances of the evangelist and the writer of First Peter, we may still wonder whether those who actually saw the risen Jesus in the flesh had an advantage over those who did not see him. Would our trust in the reality of Jesus’ resurrection be stronger if we could have looked into his eyes or put our finger into the nail holes? Many people who met Jesus rejected him, even some who saw him after he had risen. As the gospel of Matthew reminds us, even among the eleven, some initially doubted. Thomas seemed to have needed to actually physically see the risen Jesus. However, like the others, as soon as Thomas was actually in Jesus’ presence and heard Jesus address him, his recognition of Jesus’ true identity was immediate. Without actually even touching Jesus’ hands or side, he exclaimed, “My Lord and my God.”

What do we need to see so that we can trust in the reality of Jesus’ resurrection? We cannot see him in the flesh. And anyway, could it be that physically seeing as a way of truly understanding is over-rated? Barbara Brown Taylor tells the story of Jacques Lusseyran, a French resistance fighter during World War II, who had been accidentally blinded as a schoolboy.2 Lusseyran’s family elected to keep him in public school and teach him how to function in a seeing world. He learned to use a Braille typewriter and attend so carefully to his surroundings that his friends marveled at how much of the world around him he could describe. He could tell trees apart by their shadow and sound and the height or width of a wall by its pressure on his body. Able to see into the deeper nature of people and things, Lusseyran realized that sight directs us only to outer appearances, letting us see quickly the surface of things but little else. Slowly gliding our fingers over a person or thing, he taught, or attentively listening, or using our other senses, enables us to know people and the world more deeply and more intimately than we can through sight.

Since we cannot see Jesus physically with our eyes, how might Lusseyran help us to see Jesus in other ways? What are some of the other ways of authentically sensing Jesus’ risen presence? We might begin with the gospels. Reading the gospels attentively, even out loud, listening deeply and carefully to Jesus’ words, and imagining ourselves into the gospel stories are all ways of “seeing” him. Icons are another way to encounter the risen Lord. Icons are like gospel stories in visual form. By praying with them and meditating on what they teach us about Jesus we may more clearly “see” him. Contemplative prayer, in which we intentionally silence our own voice and mind, is another way of coming into his presence and listening to him. Mystical poetry is also an avenue into Jesus’ presence, as we let the ancient seers, the medieval mystics, and modern poets all open God to us through their deft use of language. Many of you sense God’s presence in the natural world. I have long loved Canticle 12 in the service of Morning Prayer. Listen to just one verse from it:

Let the earth glorify the Lord,
praise him and highly exalt him forever.
Glorify the Lord, O mountains and hills,
and all that grows upon the earth,
praise him and highly exalt him forever.

Go outside sometime, let the wind blow over you, hear the birds make melody, and recite the whole canticle. Feel God’s presence and gifts more deeply.

Without a doubt the risen Lord is present to us in the breaking of the bread. As he promised on his last night on earth, and so we experience every time we receive his body and blood, he is present to us. Just like those who were privileged to know Jesus in first-century Palestine, we too meet him in the flesh here at the altar rail. Martin Luther tells us that,

Here in the Lord’s Supper he wants to be neither born nor seen nor heard nor touched by us but only eaten and drunk, both physically and spiritually. Accordingly, by this eating we obtain just as much and arrive at the same point as they with their bearing, seeing, hearing, etc. and he is just as near to us physically as he was to them.3

And finally, and perhaps most important, the risen Lord is present to us in the faces of those whom we serve. Remember as you fill plates or carry-out boxes for Loaves and Fishes, or as you come to the park next week to worship with our street church congregation, the Lord will be among them all. If we look carefully enough, we will surely see him.

We are always in God’s presence. It is in God that we “live and move and have our being.” The risen Lord is always among us. The risen Lord is always leaving his tracks. Open your eyes, your ears, your hands. Experience his presence now. Know that you too are among those who are blessed by their trust in his love, mercy, and grace.

1. Adapted from Keith Hewitt, “Tracks,” Lectionary Tales for Preaching and Teaching (Lima, OH: CSS, 2013), 96ff.
2. In “Light without Sight,” Christian Century, 131, 7, April 2, 2004, 22ff.
3. Quoted in Lisa Dahill, Truly Present (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2005), 85.

Monday, April 21, 2014

He has been Raised


I’m a great fan of bluegrass music. I like Bill Monroe and Ralph Stanley and Earl Scruggs, and all the old-time performers. I also like some of the current performers. I’ve actually heard Rhonda Vincent perform twice – the first time right here in the Ariel Theater. One of my favorite bluegrass recordings is a two-CD set entitled, “O Sister,” which showcases some of the great women singers: Rhonda Vincent, Hazel Dickens, Maybelle Carter, Allison Krauss, and many others. If you know these artists, you know that their music is at best bittersweet. There are always a few Gospel songs, typically at the end of a CD or concert, but most of their songs, just like those of the bluesmen and the jazz singers, are about pain and loss of all kinds. In unforgettable songs like “Mama’s Hand,” Pathway of Teardrops,” or “It Rains Everywhere I go,” we hear of leaving home, unrequited love, failed relationships, loneliness, depression, dysfunctional families, even murder and imprisonment.

Betrayal, loss, grief, execution -- isn’t that where we’ve been this week? Last Sunday, we welcomed Jesus in triumph into Jerusalem, but, as soon as the strains of “All glory, laud, and honor” died away, we felt a chill. And then we heard again the agonizing story of Jesus’ Passion. After sharing that painful last meal with Jesus on Thursday, pondering the fate of Judas, walking with Jesus to Jerusalem, and then mourning his death on the Cross, haven’t we too experienced almost unbearable pain and darkness – literally and spiritually? And isn’t the pain and darkness of Good Friday where most of us live out our lives? Pain, loss, grief, death – we know that territory well. We too leave our childhood homes, our children also grow up too fast, we see loved ones move away, we miss opportunities to do the good God calls us to do, we make mistakes, we spend time in prison, we get divorced, we lose sisters, brothers, children, and spouses to sickness and death. Perhaps that’s why bluegrass music is so powerful. It speaks to who and where we are, right now, “in the midst of life.”

But here, in this place, today, we hear a different word. Perhaps you’re here because, in your heart of hearts, you long to hear that different word. You want to hear that loss, pain, darkness, and death are not the whole story. Perhaps you are looking for a different ending to the story of your life. My friends, open you ears and hear that new word! That new word is resurrection! Hear that, contrary to what everyone expected that first Good Friday, death was not the end of the story of Jesus. Beyond the Cross, beyond Jesus’ descent into hell, beyond a stone rolled away from a tomb in the rock, stands a risen Lord. Hear again that, “He is not here, for he has been raised as he said.” Resurrection happened. And happens. The women who witnessed that first Easter, those who experienced the surge of joy when they fell down at Jesus’ feet and worshipped him, those who delivered Jesus’ message to his friends, those disciples who began to proclaim the good news to others, all of them suddenly realized that they were now living in a new reality. They were no longer living in the old reality of pain and death, but, because of what God had done in Jesus, they were now living in a new reality, a new reality of life and hope

Isn’t that the word you came to hear? My friends, we don’t always want to hear about resurrection! Lutheran theologian Karl Barth reminded us that resurrection is “a difficult, dark truth, and a word that can scarcely be tolerated by our ears.” Indeed, Barth said, we are “threatened by resurrection,” by the very thought that we need resurrection. We don’t want to admit that we are powerless, broken and sinful. We don’t want to face how short our lives are. We don’t want to admit that whatever we have comes to us not of our own efforts but by the grace of God. We don’t want to admit that we need God’s merciful rescue. But God says to us, “Rise up! You are dead, but I call you to live. I have already acted, I have triumphed!” “This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes,” shouts the psalmist. “Don’t be afraid,” says Jesus, “Go forward into new life.”

That new way of living, that new plane of life, that gift that God offers us through Jesus is truly ours. “So if you have been raised with Christ,” Paul writes to the Christians at Colossae, “seek the things that are above.” Actually, the first part of that command is declarative. And the word “above” doesn’t mean “up in the sky.” It means “beyond this world of pain and death.” What Paul declares to the Colossians is, “Since you have been raised with Christ, fix your minds on where Christ is now, i.e., beyond this world of pain and death.” And why can the Colossians do this? Because they have been baptized into Christ’s death. Since they have been raised with Christ in baptism, the Colossian Christians are now empowered by Christ to live in a way that is already “beyond” death. They are now an “Easter people,” and they can live knowing that loss, pain, and death are not the end of their story. They don’t have to live as if this life were all there were, they don’t have to numb their pain with addiction, they don’t have to be bound by outmoded traditions, and they don’t have to despair. Because their lives are now “hidden with Christ,” because they partake of Christ’s own risen life, they can live knowing that their identity is not bound up with this perishable world, and that earthly things do not demand their ultimate loyalty. They can live with hope, rejoicing in the knowledge that God in Christ has triumphed over all that would defeat them, and that they are now safe from the powers of darkness and death.

We too can live like the Colossians. As baptized people, we too are heirs to the hope that was born that Easter morning. Reverse your own descent into hell. Experience the shocking turn of events that occurred in that long ago dawn, and embrace that life-giving hope. Say, with the Colossians, “Yes, there is more to life than this earthly life.” We have been to Cross and the grave this week. Perhaps some of us are still carrying heavy crosses, or are still grieving painful losses. Two days ago, it was Friday. But now it is Sunday, it is Easter, and, once again we experience the miracle. We may not know how it happened, but we can still say with the women, “Yes, there is hope, and there is resurrection.” Our lives are now hidden with Christ in God. We no longer have to depend on our own efforts. We can trust in God’s saving power for the rest of our lives and beyond. We can sing “alleluia” with true joy.

And our Easter joy doesn’t end on the other side of the red doors. It doesn’t end with this day. We can celebrate the gift of our new life in Christ for fifty days: from today, through our celebration of Jesus’ Ascension, to his gift of the Holy Spirit in Pentecost. But we can also celebrate Jesus’ gift of new life every day. In a sense, every day is a gift of God, and every day gives us an opportunity to praise God for all that God has done for us. Every day gives us a chance to live with the certainty that life has conquered death.

e.e. cummings is one of my favorite poets. I began reading cummings’s poetry as a teenager – even before I knew anything about bluegrass music. I’ve liked his poem “i thank You God for most this amazing” for a long time, but I realized only recently that it is really about seeing Easter as a daily experience, about understanding that resurrection isn’t something we experience once a year in church but is ultimately part of all of God’s creation. Hear cummings’s reminder that God is “everything that is yes:”

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any -- lifted from the no
of all nothing -- human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

What could be more joyful news than God’s “yes” to us? This Easter day, may the ears of your ears awake to God’s promise, and may the eyes of your eyes see God at work in your life. Shout with me once again, “Alleluia, Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!”

Sunday, April 20, 2014

An Unforgivable Sin?


“When [Judas] had gone out, Jesus said, ‘Now the Son of Man has been glorified’….” Lest we forget, Judas was present at Jesus’ last meal with his friends. What was he thinking and experiencing at that meal?

Peter Rollins invites us to hazard a guess.1 Imagine, he says, that you are gathered with Jesus and the rest of his friends. As the evening darkens, Jesus bids the group gather round the table. They quiet down and look at him intently.

“My friends,” Jesus says, “take this bread, for it is my very body, broken for you.” Neither you nor the others know quite what Jesus means, but you can tell he is serious. Then he carefully pours wine into each one’s cup. “Take this wine and drink of it, for it is my very blood shed for you.” A chill descends on the gathering, as Jesus says, “As you do this, remember me.” Most of Jesus’ friends slowly begin to eat the bread and drink the wine, but you can’t lift your hand. His words have pierced your heart.

Your hesitation hasn’t escaped Jesus’ notice. He comes over and looks into your eyes. As he gazes at you, you see the loneliness and the pain, the nails and the blood. You hear the jeers of the soldiers and the passersby. You know that he will slowly and painfully suffocate to death on the cross. You don’t want to see what you see, though anyone who dared to look in Jesus’ eyes would see it. You want to escape, but Jesus looks at you and smiles compassionately. He embraces you. He seems to already know the painful guilt and deep regret that you will feel. Then he releases you and offers you the cup. “Dear friend,” he says, “take this cup and drink it all. It is truly my blood, and it is shed for you.” You are profoundly shaken and uncomfortable as Jesus finally moves away from you. You fumble in your pocket, feeling the heavy pieces of silver lying there. Then you slowly get up and slip out.

We may not identify so closely with Judas, but he is an integral part of this story. We don’t talk much about him, perhaps because for us who try so hard to return to Jesus a tiny fraction of his love for us, Jesus’ betrayer is a puzzle for us. Perhaps he was a puzzle for the early church too. Although the name “Judas” is virtually a curse word for us, Judas or Judah is name of which one could have been proud. In the ancient world the name Judas was borne by a descendant of the tribe of Judah, one of the twelve tribes descended from the patriarch Jacob, and the tribe of King David. Judas here was surnamed Iscariot, suggesting that he came from Kerioth in Judea. He was most likely the only Judean amongst all the Galileans, whom Jesus called first. As treasurer of the band of disciples, he was probably skilled with money. He might also have had good political connections, especially among those who opposed Rome’s rule.

Why did Judas betray Jesus? Did he feel like too much of an outsider among the northerners? Did he trust too much in his business acumen and political skills? Did he hope that Jesus’ arrest would be the flash point that would finally ignite rebellion against the Romans? Despite scholars’ best efforts, the puzzle remains.

John’s account of that fateful night tells us that, after Judas left, Jesus began to speak again, giving his friends the “new” commandment, from which this day takes its name. But we are still left with questions. Frederick Niedner asks whether we ever wonder, on hearing Jesus’ new commandment, on hearing Jesus tell the disciples how to love each other, if any of them went out into the night looking for Judas. Did they wonder where he had gone? Did any of them want to extend love to him? “Did anyone fear for him, miss him, or try, even after he brought soldiers to Gethsemane, to bring Judas back to talk him out of his shame, his anger, his rapidly deepening hell?”2 Did anyone try to keep him from snuffing out his proud life, as Jesus’ own life was ebbing away?

Niedner guesses that no one found him. Perhaps no one has found him to this day. Perhaps “[h]e is still out there … wandering somewhere in the night, forsaken by every generation of disciples since that ancient Thursday, the night of the new commandment.” Even as we gather around the sacred table, we remember what Judas did, but we refuse to name him, and his place remains empty. Even as we give thanks this night for Jesus’ self-offering of his body and blood, and for Jesus’ modeling of new way of loving each other, dare we ask ourselves, who in our own lives is Judas? Isn’t there for each of us at least one Judas who “wanders about in the night unforgiven?” Perhaps we can even dare to ponder Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s question. Who is this Judas? Who is the betrayer? Can we say confidently, “Surely not I, Lord?” Or, in some ways, isn’t each of us Judas, “slipping about in the shadows, unforgiven, unloved, utterly alone…?”

Are there any unforgivable sins? Was Judas forgiven for his betrayal of Jesus? In the Inferno Dante pictures Judas as eternally frozen in the lowest circle of hell. On the other hand, Rollins’s telling of the story suggests that Jesus had forgiven Judas even before Judas slipped out. Many theologians believe that God’s infinite desire to include all of us in God’s loving embrace will eventually bring even the most hard-hearted, including the Judases among us, to accept God’s forgiveness and mercy. If we seek to follow Jesus’ example and “love one another as I have loved you,” must we not also forgive ourselves for our own sinfulness and weakness? Must we not also forgive those who have wronged and betrayed us?

This Lent a group of us has been pondering the work of forgiveness in our lives. On Tuesday we saw the film, “The Power of Forgiveness.” I found the film incredibly moving, partly because I have been to Belfast in Northern Ireland, Auschwitz, and Ground Zero in New York, all of which figure in the film. But for me, the most deeply moving segment of the film was the last segment.

In January, 1995, Azim Khamisa’s twenty-year old son Tariq was murdered in Lo Jolla, California, while delivering pizza. The shot that killed Tariq was fired by Tony Hicks, a fourteen-year old gang member. In the wake of the tragedy, out of unspeakable grief and despair, Khamisa vowed to transform his loss through the miraculous power of forgiveness. Believing that there were “victims at both ends of the gun,” Azim forgave Tony and founded the Tariq Khamisa Foundation to break the cycle of youth violence by saving lives, teaching peace, and planting seeds of hope in their future. A month after establishing the foundation, Azim invited Ples Felix, Tony’s grandfather and guardian, to join him. “It was a God-inspired meeting,” said Ples. “I saw a God-spirited person who was devastated. I shook his hand and expressed my deepest sympathy. I committed to do anything to help his family.” Together, since November 1995, the two men have delivered their message about the realities of violence, forgiveness, gangs, and the importance of making positive choices to over one million students. The foundation has established community service and youth mentoring programs. Khamisa has also written several books about his decision to forgive, while Felix has received numerous awards for his work in mediation and peace-making.3 Although Khamisa is a Muslim, both men model Jesus’ new commandment for us. Both men remind us that loving one another as Jesus loves us includes reaching out to those who have hurt us, and not letting anyone slip away unforgiven into the shadows of the night.

As we ponder the mystery of sin, forgiveness, and love, we remember thankfully all that God has done for us. We remember that God delivers us from bondage – of all kinds. We remember that Jesus helped us to see love in action. We remember that Jesus’ love for us and for the world took him to the cross. We remember that Jesus promised to be present to us whenever we eat bread and drink wine in his name. As we come again into his presence this night, we especially remember that Jesus overcame all divisions and on the cross triumphed over all evil. United with him, nourished by him, we forgive ourselves and others, and we look forward to that heavenly banquet when all will be finally and irrevocably united with Christ.

1. The Orthodox Heretic: And Other Impossible Tales (Paraclete, 2009), quoted in Synthesis, April 5, 2012.
2. Proclaiming a Crucified Eschaton” (Institute for Liturgical Studies, Valparaiso University, 1998), 10ff, quoted in Synthesis, April 17, 2014.
3. http://www.tkf.org/

Monday, April 14, 2014

Truly this Man was God's Son

“Truly this man was God’s son!” How could the centurion and the others keeping watch over Jesus make this declaration after he died? What had they seen or heard that prepared them to say, “Truly this man was God’s son?” In the gospel according to Mark, the centurion, who stood facing Jesus, saw how he died and made the same declaration, “Truly this man was God’s son.” In Luke’s gospel, at Jesus’ death, a lone centurion praised God and declared, “Certainly, this man was innocent.” Obviously, something in Jesus’ death had deeply moved the centurion and his fellow soldiers, but what enabled them to make such a vehement declaration of faith: “Truly this man was God’s son?”

You’ve just heard the long, tragic story. So place yourself back there in Jerusalem for a moment and consider what happened. The religious leaders handed Jesus over to the hated Roman authorities. The charges were vague at best: that Jesus claimed to be able to destroy the temple, and that Jesus had given a confusing answer to the high priest’s question as to whether or not he was the messiah. Pilate, a cynical and brutal political leader, questioned Jesus. Perhaps he had heard about the crowds that Jesus had attracted and had guessed that the religious establishment had condemned Jesus out of jealousy. Even so, he could not act decisively and instead heeded the shouts of the crowds pressing for the release of another criminal. The Roman soldiers, who considered Jerusalem to be a hardship post, saw the Jews as rebellious and ungovernable. In their treatment of Jesus, as they tortured and mocked him following Pilate’s release of Barabbas, they reflected the “Pax Romana” at its most brutal. They then marched him to the cross, to undergo the most painful possible form of execution, a way of dying invented by Rome to deter, through terror and humiliation, any who might challenge Rome’s rule. As Jesus hung inches off the ground bleeding to death, his former friends were nowhere to be seen. The women who had bankrolled his ministry were standing off at a distance, and scribes, elders, and passersby, probably even the soldiers standing guard, continued to mock him.

And then, the evangelist tells us, when Jesus finally died, the centurion and those standing with him, did a complete one-eighty. The evangelist doesn’t give us anyone else’s reactions to Jesus’ death. When the curtain of the temple was torn in two, did the priests regret having condemned Jesus? Did Pilate think that perhaps he should have followed his wife’s advice and had “nothing to do with that innocent man?” Did the scribes and elders wish they hadn’t been so quick to mock Jesus? Did the women trudging back to their lodgings wonder how their charismatic teacher had gone so wrong? All we learn is that the centurion and those with him were “terrified and said, ‘Truly, this man was God’s son.’”

Do we know anything about this centurion? Could he have been the one who invited Jesus to his house to cure a sick servant, and before Jesus actually got there said humbly, “Lord, I am not worthy for you to come into my house, but speak the word only and my servant will be healed?” Could he have been Cornelius, who, after Pentecost, sent for Peter and was baptized along with all the members of his household? We will never know. All we know about this centurion was that he was a company commander and that, depending on his seniority, he was responsible for eighty to one hundred men.

What then could have made these hardened gentile soldiers burst out with “Truly, this man is God’s son?” Surely, as soldiers, they had seen many die in this way. Surely, when it was all over, they had turned their backs, collected their pay, and gone out carousing with their fellows. Was it only the terrifying earthquake that changed their minds? Did that convince them that they had had it all wrong about Jesus? Did they begin to wonder whether indeed “this man was innocent?” What else they might they have glimpsed? Were they astonished that the powerless Jesus had somehow eluded them and triumphed over their brutal power? Was it possible that they suddenly saw God in the depths of Jesus’ suffering? Did they somehow see in Jesus, silently and patiently hanging on the cross, a glimpse of the God who tenaciously endures the worst that the world can inflict? Did they suddenly see that the story of Jesus was not yet finished? Could they have guessed that something fundamental had shifted in the world?

What do you see when you look at the cross? I don’t mean the lovely flowering crosses that circle our necks or adorn our sanctuaries. Nor do I mean the sanitized crucifixion scenes that we see in most paintings. What do you see when you contemplate the broken, tortured body of Jesus? What is in your heart when you let yourself feel his loneliness and agony? Is there good news in this part of the story? Can we let ourselves hear it?

Ironically, we hear the good news from the mouth of the centurion. All the other witnesses and bystanders seem to have missed it – as we might easily do. In the centurion’s astonished reaction to what he has just witnessed at Golgotha – whatever the reason for it – we hear again the evangelist’s bold claim: that God is most present in the place where we think God is most absent, i.e., in the brutal, lonely death of Jesus. We hear again that God is made real even – or especially – in a crucified man.

As people committed to walking behind that crucified man, we may have our fears and doubts – as he did on that fateful night in the garden of Gethsemane. Even so, if we truly hear the centurion’s declaration, we can find light in all the myriad dark places in our own lives, including places of torture and death. If we truly believe the evangelist’s proclamation, we can see the surprising power of God at work everywhere. We can pray with conviction and with hope that God will indeed “lighten our darkness” and “defend us from all the perils and dangers” of our lives.

And then, we too can go into places of death and darkness, knowing that God will go with us. We are free to watch with a loved one who is dying, or to be Jesus’ hands and feet among the poor, the sick, the needy, and those who wait to hear good news. Jesus will already be out there ahead of us, in all the places in the world where people are dying, grieving, lonely, and afraid. We can go with him, knowing that we are never alone.

“Truly, this man was God’s son!” Thanks be to God that we hear the good news even at the foot of the cross.

Thursday, April 10, 2014

Who is the Greatest?


“Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”

“Hey, Maryam, Jesus wants your little Ya’acov for a minute. Bring him in here, wouldya?” What do you suppose that mother was thinking as she picked up her little son and walked into the room where Jesus and his friends were sitting? Why would the rabbi want her son in with them? They weren’t going to do anything strange to him, were they?

Of course the young mother didn’t know how the rabbi’s twelve followers were struggling to understand what Jesus was teaching them. Three of them had had an overpowering vision of him up on the mountain, which they would not understand until much later. The young mother didn’t know that the disciples didn’t understand how John the Baptist really had been Elijah, or that they were afraid to ask Jesus what he meant when he talked about dying on a cross and rising again. She didn’t know that they still thought he was going to throw out the Romans and establish a new political order. She didn’t know that some of them – John maybe, who might have thought he played second fiddle to Peter, or Judas perhaps, who was starting to doubt that Jesus would do anything worthwhile – wondered what their status would be in the new community he was creating. She probably thought they were just hangers-on of the miracle-working rabbi, following him around as if they had nothing better to do. Reluctantly, she handed over her child.

Perhaps Maryam shouldn’t have been too hard on the Twelve. We wouldn’t have done much better, because Jesus was preaching and practicing a radically world-changing message. Jesus was “turning the world upside down.”1 Jesus interpreted the Law of Moses differently from other rabbis, and he helped people to see the proclamations of the prophets in fresh ways. Jesus taught his disciples that peoples’ needs supersede even the demands of the Law, and that it is OK, for example, to heal on the Sabbath. Jesus taught them to love their enemies and to pray for those who persecute them. Jesus taught them that God loves and cares for all people – Gentiles, women, the disabled, the poor, the hungry, those in prison – all people. Jesus taught them that if they truly wanted to see God they must look among those on the margins of society: they must invite in the homeless, the destitute, prostitutes, and even the hated tax collectors. Jesus taught them that those who wanted to be his disciples were expected to lead by serving everyone.

Did the disciples understand his teaching? Out of nowhere, it seems, came a question – and a way for Jesus to teach them what communities of people committed to him might look like. One of them asked, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” Jesus didn’t directly answer the question. Nor did he launch into a long discourse or cite chapter and verse of the Hebrew Scriptures. Instead, he called for Maryam’s child. Maryam had been right to wonder why, since children were treated almost like property in their society, and their status was little better than that of a slave. As the adult disciples began to squirm seeing a child in their midst, who could surely not be a model of anything, Jesus pointed to Maryam’s child. And then he flung a challenge at them: “change and become like this child! Give up your sense of self-importance, your sense of entitlement, your craving for status, and your desire for self-preservation. Then put your conversion into action: turn around and create communities in my name where you welcome all the status-less people. And when you welcome them after I’m gone, you’ll be welcoming me again.”

The Twelve may have had trouble understanding Jesus’ teachings, at least until after Jesus’ resurrection, but down through the centuries many of his followers did understand what he was getting at. Many of them tried hard, risking – and even losing – their lives to welcome in Jesus’ name those whom polite society disdained. St. Brigid, St. Francis, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Elizabeth of Hungary, Prudence Crandell, who taught black children to read in colonial New England, Anglican Bishop John Coleridge Patteson, who was martyred in Melanesia in1871, Constance and her companions, who died nursing Yellow Fever victims in Memphis in 1878, and C.F. Andrews, who lived out Jesus’ example in India in the early 20th century, to mention just a few. All of them understood Jesus’ teaching. All of them were “the greatest in the kingdom of heaven,” because they gave up any sense of rank or self-importance for themselves, and because they created Christian communities that actively served those whom others looked down on.

Such people and such communities don’t exist only in history books or on church calendars. A young man named Byron McMillan discovered such people and such a community when he visited Rutba House in Durham, North Carolina. In 2003 North Carolina native Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove and his wife Leah moved into an old house in Walltown, an inner-city neighborhood in Durham. There they founded Rutba House, an intentional community that serves as a “house of hospitality where the formerly homeless are welcomed into a community that eats, prays, and shares life together.” Jonathan directs the School for Conversion, a nonprofit organization that has grown out of the life of Rutba House to pursue beloved community with kids in their neighborhood, through classes in North Carolina prisons, and in community-based education around the country. Jonathan, who is white, is also an associate minister at the historically black St. Johns Missionary Baptist Church.

When Byron McMillan visited Rutba House, he was bored with conventional church. Although he had been faithful in worship and had been on several mission trips, he had not been able to make the connection between Sundays, or mission weeks, and the rest of his life. At Rutba House, he discovered real ministry among people in need, and an authentic community of people who respected and cared for each other. For the first time in his life, he found a group of people who really took Jesus’ commands seriously. More important, as he lived with Jonathan and his family, he discovered people who “didn’t think they knew everything. They weren’t powerful people trying to create a program, or build a church, they were just humble people that loved people and wanted to eat together, laugh together, cry together, and just hang out with each other the way Jesus did.”3

“Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” Can you hear the challenge in Jesus’ affirmation? Do we understand that in following Jesus we leave ourselves open to the possibility that Jesus might want to change our expectations? Do we understand that Jesus is challenging us to look beyond our individual relationship with God to partner with God in creating Christian communities that truly reflect our commitment to the one who emptied himself for our sakes? Are there ways to welcome strangers and those on the margins that we have yet to see? Can we see that we are called to “get out of the way” and follow Jesus in becoming people for others?

Might Jesus challenge us also to wonder if we are doing all that we can to effectively minister to those in need? Are we serving the homeless, the hungry, and those without adequate health, dental, and vision care right in this community? How are we serving children in need in this community? Do we need to consider how our churches can work together to mentor, tutor, and perhaps even feed local children? Where are the holes in our social safety net? And is there a community in another county – or country – whose needs touch our hearts? And if we ask ourselves why we might do any of these things, rest assured it is not so that we may feel good about ourselves, or because we have found what one writer called a “human key to heaven.” We undertake any of these ministries, because we see the face of Christ, in the faces of those to whom we minister. We undertake these ministries, because we have become people for others, because we have pledged ourselves to be the Body of Christ in the world, and we try as best we can to do what Jesus did in the flesh, including welcoming children of all communities, orphans, widows, and all those on the margins of society.

“Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”

“C’mon in, Maryam. Jesus is winding up. He’s just about done with talking about your son.” Maryam tentatively stood in the doorway of the front room. She saw the rabbi’s friends seated at his feet. She saw her son Ya’acov nestled in Jesus’ arms and Jesus looking down at him lovingly. Then Jesus gently lifted the boy up and placed him back in her arms. He looked at her and smiled. She saw the love in his eyes. And she knew that, from that moment on, her own life would never be the same.

1. Albert Nolan, Jesus Today (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2008), 50
2. http://jonathanwilsonhartgrove.com/bio/
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5jUjiwuF-g

Sunday, April 6, 2014

Can These Bones Live?

“Mortal, can these bones live?” Six centuries before Christ, the prophet Ezekiel was preaching to a despairing people. Their holy city had been destroyed. Their richly ornamented temple, built by the great king Solomon, was no more. They had been forced into exile, and they were now living in an alien culture. They struggled to remember the God whom they had once so fervently worshipped. Surely all that had once given meaning to their lives was gone, and they were living in a darkness that was almost worse than death. And then God called Ezekiel to give the people a different vision. God called Ezekiel to remind the people – just as we need to be reminded – that God not only creates life but also restores it, and that exile, darkness, and death are not God’s last word to them, even when they could not see how or where new life might be possible.

What could be more lifeless than the huge mass of “very dry” bones God commanded Ezekiel to walk around? “Mortal, can these bones live?” Ezekiel is dumbfounded by God’s question. Surely, the answer is “No!” Surely there will never be life again in these absolutely lifeless skeletons. Ezekiel gives the only possible answer: “O Lord, God, you know.” Indeed, God does know. For the God addressing Ezekiel is the God of promise, the God who fulfilled God’s promises by creating a nation out of the elderly and childless Abraham and Sarah, by delivering that nation from slavery in Egypt, by bringing that nation into a land of milk and honey, by entering into covenant with them, and by raising up judges, kings, and prophets. Who else but that God brought the people back to life – again and again?

And so yet again, through Ezekiel, God promises life to the Israelites. “Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you and you shall live.” With God’s command come muscles, sinews, and skin, until the bones are all knit together and standing upright. Then comes the most important part: God commands the breath to come from the four winds and breathe upon these slain. And so it does. And what is this breath? This is the life-giving spirit of God, the ruach, the same Spirit that God breathed into the masses of dust in the creation story of Genesis, the dust that became human beings. And one more promise: God promises that, with God’s breath animating them as they come alive, the people will recognize and celebrate their dependence on God’s breath, they will “know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act.”

“Mortal, can these bones live?” The same breath that God breathed into the very dry bones of the House of Israel, Jesus breathed into the son of the widow of Nain and the daughter of Jairus. Jesus breathed that same breath into an equally lifeless Lazarus. In the last sign of his identity as the Messiah, Jesus gave the clearest possible demonstration of God’s power over death and the grave. God breathed that same breath into the crucified and lifeless Jesus, raising him to resurrection life. The same breath, “the Spirit of him who raised Christ from the dead” came into our bodies when the waters of baptism flowed over us. That same breath moves in the world today, raising people, communities, and nations to new life – against all odds.

“Do you believe this,” Jesus asked Martha. Do we believe in God’s promises of restored life? Easter is two weeks from today. What do we really believe about death and restored life? On hearing of someone’s death, many of us say, “May her soul and the souls of all the faithful departed rest in peace.” Do we really believe that the souls of the dead are now with God, in a place of perfect peace, perfect joy, and perfect health? Isn’t the continued life of our lost loved ones, to say nothing of all those dead in wars and genocides, too much to hope for?

“Mortal, can these bones live?” Isn’t it easier to see all the dark places in our lives? Who could forget Auschwitz and the horrors that occurred there and at all the other concentration camps? Have we so easily forgotten the many descendants of forcibly exiled Africans who perished under a cruel system of slavery or were lynched during the Jim Crow era? We remember those lost in Rwanda, on September 11th, and in Darfur. We remember those lost when a tsunami struck Southeast Asia, or when a wall of mud came down in Washington on those living in houses that should probably never have been built.

And how about the dark places in our own lives? In our study of forgiveness this past week, we took the brave step of looking at those places in our lives where we need to repent, to change course, to get a new mind. We even considered the people to whom we might need to apologize, in order to truly reverse course. Where are the places of darkness and death in our communities? Can we forget those lost in fires in old ramshackle houses or murdered on the streets of our cities and towns? Stephanie Jaeger, a Lutheran pastor in Chicago tells of hearing Ezekiel’s prophecy at a service honoring the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. The congregation hearing that prophecy “came alive” when the Baptist preacher called for changes in the mandatory sentencing laws in Illinois. “On any given day,” Jaeger tells us, “more than 10,000 men are housed in Cook County Jail in Chicago. Most of them are poor; almost all are men of color. One fifth of the men suffer from mental illness.”1 Where are the places where war and death still hold sway? Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq, Syria? Where are the places where modern-day slaves are forced into prostitution or sweatshops?

“Mortal, can these bones live?” You know all this. You have only to open your newspaper or your favorite news app. Even though our culture avoids dealing directly with death – people don’t “die” anymore, they “pass” – you don’t need me to remind you that we will all die, and that we live in a world of darkness, sin, and death. If you are here, it must be because you need to hear a different message. The congregation in Chicago needed to hear a different message. They needed to hear that God breathes new life into us when we are addicted, hopeless, guilty, depressed, and in pain.

And the church has a different message for us. We can’t help but hear it if we have “ears to hear.” We hear that different message not only in Scripture. We hear in the baptismal liturgy when the priest prays over the water: “We thank you, Father, for the water of Baptism. In it we are buried with Christ in his death. By it we share in his resurrection. Through it we are reborn by the Holy Spirit.” We hear it sermons. Didn’t Ezekiel show us that good preaching can even raise the dead? In the Nicene Creed, we reaffirm our trust in “the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come.” We hear it in the priest’s declaration of forgiveness, when I ask God to “strengthen you in all goodness, and by the Holy Spirit keep you in eternal life.” We hear it in the exchange of peace: “The peace of the Lord be always with you.” We hear it as we receive Christ’s Body and Blood: “The body of Christ, the blood of Christ, keep you in everlasting life.” We hear it in our hymns. Even if you don’t like to sing, pay attention to the words of the hymns. In a few minutes we will sing, “They who eat of this bread” – i.e., the Eucharist – “they shall live forever.” Our last hymn will remind us that Jesus is, “enthroned in glory,” and, more important, “There for sinners thou art pleading: there thou dost our place prepare; ever for us interceding, till in glory we appear.”

Though we must travel with Jesus through the darkest places, though we must cry with the psalmist “out of the depths,” if we have ears to hear, we cannot miss the message that the church delivers to us at every turn: that God not only enlivens our natural life but also promises us life other than and beyond this world, a new creation, a new way of living that will come into being when this created existence ceases.

“Mortal, can these bones live?” The three great days of Holy Week are almost upon us. What will we say on Good Friday? Can the bones of the crucified man live? They did. Can our bones live? They will, because the “Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead” dwells in us, has been poured into us, because we live in him, with him, through him, and for him. We have God’s promise. All we have to do is trust in that promise.

1. Christian Century, Vol. 131, 7, April 2, 2014, p. 20.