Easter Changes Everything: A Sermon for Resurrection Sunday, April 16, 2006

Sermons are bit out of order.... things got whacky, and I got a bit behind on posting things, around Easter. So I'm getting things posted as I can, and not necessarily in the order in which they were preached.

Seven Stanzas at Easter by John Updike

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His Flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that “pierced” died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck's quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

When Updike writes that the Resurrection of Christ was real, and bodily, and solid, and definite, and monstrous, and inconvenient .... what he means is “Easter changes everything!”

We aren’t really sure who went first to that Tomb in that Garden that Sunday morning long ago. John seems to suggest that Mary Magdalen went there alone ... Matthew says she was accompanied by “the other Mary,” and Mark says that Salome was there also, and Luke reports that the mother of James and Joanna were there. Whoever the women may have been, what we do know is that something incredible happened to them, that is - they encountered the Risen Christ, that they were terrified by this confrontation, and for some time they said nothing to anyone about it. Mark says pointedly, “They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

Someone has suggested that these women were the first Episcopalians: They were blown away by the best news ever revealed in the history ofv he world, before and since – and they don't tell anyone! We Anglicans have remained faithful to this scripture ever since! It's been said that the only commandment we've ever obeyed is Jesus' command to secrecy, "Don't tell anyone!" Give us another 2000 years and we might start spreading the news.

We know the news today because Mary Magdalene and her friends eventually did tell someone and the news spread. But it is easy to understand why they were so afraid and why they wouldn’t have said anything right away. Consider....

They had bought the oils and spices required to prepare the dead. They planned to anoint Jesus. As they walked to burial place they were probably talking about what they would find there. The women had a specific tasks to accomplish ... they had carried them, their Franklin-Covey Day Planner or their Palm Pilot would have had the following in their “to-do list”:

1) Go to the tomb
2) Find someone to roll away the stone
3) Prepare Jesus' body

Their anticipated day, though sad, was planned and simple. They would remove the linens in which Joseph of Arimathea had wrapped Jesus. They would carefully wash their rabbi’s body anoint it with the oils and the herbs, wrap it again, and place it in the tomb in the manner prescribed by the Law. It would be a sad and painful task, but it also be a familiar and comforting one.

And then God changed everything. No wonder alarm and terror and amazement seized them. Until now the women (and all disciples, in fact) only had to mourn the loss of a great teacher and friend whose only fault may have been to mislead them into thinking he was something he obviously was not. Since he had died, he couldn't be the one for whom they had hoped. They had been wrong about him.

Until now, their feelings had been those of mourning and perhaps mingled with regret that they had followed a man whose life had ended in failure, being tried and executed as a criminal. Until now.... Now they have to deal with the very scary thought, the very real fear that maybe they have been following not the wrong guy, but the right guy. A guy more right than they had ever imagined. And if that was true, consider the implications about how they would have to live and what they would have to do. Their routines would have to be thrown away.

Faced with such a reality, I'd be terrified too. And like them, I would probably not want to say a whole lot to anyone until I sorted a few things out! Eventually, they did sort it all out, eventually they shared the news of what had happened, and the world hasn’t been the same since. The resurrection changed everything.

Through Christ’s resurrection God give us reason laugh at our death sentence by punctuating it with a living exclamation mark. On this day and in days to come may we remember that there are many times and circumstances when God restates the joyful resurrection proclamation, when resurrection continues to change everything:

* Abilities faded and forgotten are channeled toward new creativity: that's resurrection.

* Friendships once killed by frosty misunderstanding bloom again in warm reconciliation: that's resurrection.

* Hopes glimmering and gone are rekindled by expressions of caring: that's resurrection.

* Faith, dulled by lack of exercise, dances again to God's everyday rhythms: that's resurrection.

We worship the God whose resurrecting power changes everything. That’s why Easter is really a holiday for adults more than for children. Children don’t yet have those faded and forgotten abilities to be brought back to new creativity. Children haven’t yet felt the pain of a dead friendship. Children haven’t yet lost hope nor had their faith dulled by routine and neglect. Children enjoy Easter, I’m sure – there are Easter egg hunts, and the story of the Easter bunny, and lots of candy ... but Easter really isn’t a children’s holiday.

The American Orthodox writer Frederica Matthewes-Green writes:

Easter just isn't fun in the same way Christmas is, a type of fun that could be better described as styled for children. It's a commonplace to say that "Christmas is for children," but what about Easter? Is it for children, too?

It sure didn't seem so to me, back then. Compared to Christmas, Easter was boring. Chocolate bunnies: good. Scratchy new crinolines: bad. Long blah-blah-blah at church. A lot of wordy grown-up buildup leading to, it seemed, no payoff. You could always count on Christmas to change a lot of stuff, especially in the toybox. Easter didn't change anything.

***

I remember my toybox, but not much of what was in it, and I don't retain any of those thrilling Christmas toys today. When I grew up, I put away childish things. When I grew up I began to be concerned with bigger things, many of them difficult to comprehend. Like Mitch, I saw suffering and death. I saw people live through situations so crushingly unfair that it was impossible that the universe bore no witness, impossible that there was no God who could wipe tears away and effect justice on the last day. I saw people find within themselves nobility to overcome, as well, and heard them say the strength came from a source beyond their own.

These are not things children have to think about.

Easter tells us of something children can't understand, because it addresses things they don't yet have to know: the weariness of life, the pain, the profound loneliness and hovering fear of meaninglessness. Yet in the midst of this desolation we find Jesus, triumphant over death and still shockingly alive, present to us in ways we cannot understand much less explain. In him we find vibrancy of life, and a firm compassion that does not deny our suffering but transforms and illuminates it. He is life itself. As life incarnate, he could not be held back by death.

"O Death, where is your sting? O Hell, where is your victory?" wrote St. John Chrysostom, in a 4th century sermon still used in every Orthodox church on Pascha (our name for Easter).

Christ is risen, and you are overthrown.
Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen.
Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice.
Christ is risen, and life reigns.
Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in the grave.

On Pascha we will sing, over and over, dozens of times, "Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life." It is not a children's song. But grownups are taller, and can see farther, and know what hard blows life can bring. Easter may seem boring to children, and it is blessedly unencumbered by the silly fun that plagues Christmas. Yet it contains the one thing needful for every human life: the good news of Resurrection.

Easter didn't change anything? Easter changes everything.

Let me say that one more time. Easter changes everything. This makes Easter the most important Christian holy day. It’s the most important day because it’s the resurrection of Jesus that shows the world that he wasn’t just an extraordinary person, or just a wise prophet, or a great teacher. The resurrection, Jesus coming back from death, was God’s way of showing the world that he is in control of everything, life and death, the spiritual realms and the physical world.

Without Easter we wouldn’t have much. We wouldn’t celebrate Christmas! Think about it. Who would care about the birthday of a child born to a poor carpenter and his wife in a tiny backwater of village? As good a man as that child could have grown to be, if the resurrection hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t really care. If there hadn’t been a resurrection, there wouldn’t be any churches, no Christians, no ultimate meaning for life on earth, no hope of heaven. There would be a lot less peace in the world … if you can imagine that. There would be much more need, much more suffering, much more greed, much more hatred … without the resurrection. Easter changes everything!

And, without Easter all we would know about love would be it’s shadow. Without the resurrection what Jesus did on the cross wouldn’t matter. It would have been seen as just one more Jewish martyr dying for his faith. A noble act, but it would have been quickly forgotten. Jesus faithfully going to the cross may have been a great act of faithfulness, but it doesn’t mean much until Jesus comes back from death. Then we get to see that his death on cross was even more an act of love. You see, ultimately, Easter is the source of how we know that God loves us. It’s the event we can point to and say, “Because of the resurrection, I can know for sure that God is alive and well and loves me! Not only does he love me enough to die for me, he loves me enough to come back for me!”

This is why the Gospel writers report that the women left the tomb with mixed emotions. Luke says they were both perplexed and terrified; Matthew says they went away “with [both] fear and great joy;” Mark describes them as filled with “terror and amazement.”

G.K. Chesterton once wrote:

On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realised the new wonder; but even they hardly realised that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but the dawn.

So we, too, leave the empty tomb of Jesus with mixed feelings, with perplexity and terror, with amazement, with fear and great joy.

The Methodist missionary Earl Stanley Jones, in his autobiography A Song of Ascents tells of an African who changed his name to “After” immediately following his conversion. He reasoned that all things were new and different and important after he met Christ. Easter is what makes us “After” Christians. “After” Easter, nothing in life is ever the same again. Easter changes everything.

Change moves us into the unknown, but if we are truly living after Easter, propelled by a faith in a Lord who lives, then there will be times when Christ will plant our feet on solid ground, give us a solid footing on which to stand. There will be other times when he will lead us into new and unfamiliar territories. The footing there may not be so solid. But then our God, whose resurrection changes everything, will teach us to fly: that's what the prophet Isaiah promised: “They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles ....”

Easter changes everything! Most of all, Easter changes us!

Christ is risen! Alleluia!

A Transformative Process: Sermon for the Second Sunday of Easter ("Thomas Sunday"), April 23, 2006

Any change, at any time, for any reason, is to be deplored.” A Duke of Cambridge is reputed to have said that sometime in the late 1800s. “Any change, at any time, for any reason, is to be deplored.”

But....

change is inevitable, irresistible, unstoppable, and yet human beings resist change, try to stop change and react very badly to change. That is, I suppose, understandable.

Several years ago, medical doctor Elisabeth Kubler-Ross wrote a little book entitled On Death & Dying in which she outlined a model of five stages in the grieving process, both the pre-death psychology of a person passing away from a terminal illness and in the experience of the survivors. Some of you may have studied these: they are denial, anger, bargaining, despair and, finally, acceptance. As her model was studied by doctors and psychologists, many began to note that these stages were experienced not only in the context of death but in regard to any loss. Then, a further step was taken when we began to notice that dealing with any change followed a similar course and, in turn, we started to recognize that all change entails loss, even change for the better. “The devil you know is always better than the devil you don't know,” and we must go through the human process of losing that known devil, even when we don't like it and don't want it.

The wonderful thing about the story of our Lord’s Crucifixion and Resurrection is that it is a fully human story -- the stages of grief, both in Christ’s preparation for death at the hands of the authorities, and in the Apostles’ handling of Jesus’ execution during and after the events of Holy Week and Good Friday. All of the stages of grief, of handling change are there to be seen.

They are surely there as Jesus prepares to die; they are surely here in the story of Thomas, the doubting Apostle. Denial, anger, despair, bargaining and acceptance are all here.... neither Jesus nor his followers are spared the human experience of change.

Friday evening Evelyn and I attended the annual dinner fundraiser for Hospice of Medina and as part of that event there was an auction. Each couple was given a butterfly with a number on it to make our auction bids. The butterfly is the corporate logo of the hospice agency. It’s a great choice because butterflies are a symbol of change and have been adopted by the church as a symbol of the Resurrection for obvious reasons. Think about it.... a caterpillar lives a certain sort of live, munching away on leaves, and then has to “die” ... it enters what’s called the “pupal stage” when it forms a chrysalis or cocoon and lies there entombed for days, weeks or even months, but eventually that little tomb breaks open and the insect emerges completely changed! It is the same bug – the genes are the same, the species is the same, but the individual is gloriously changed.

Apparently this is what happened in the Resurrection of Jesus. Many times in the stories of his post-Resurrection appearances, including today’s Gospel lesson, he is not recognized until some trigger is struck – he shows the scars of the Crucifixion, he breaks bread, he says a name – in some way, this Resurrected Jesus is different but recognizable.

The Apostles, because of this, become different but recognizable, too.

Kubler-Ross’s five-stage model has been expanded by several different researchers, one of whom is cardiologist Stephen Yarnell. In Yarnell’s book Unpleasant Changes - What to Do he expands the model to ten steps, leaving out “bargaining” and adding some new understandings.

Yarnell’s first stage, like Kubler-Ross’s, is denial – “It can’t be,” “This can’t be happening to me,” “It’s not true”.... The first stage of reaction to any sudden, unexpected event tends to be denial. During and after our Lord’s trial and execution, this was the reaction of the Apostles. “I don’t know him.” “I won’t believe it.”

Yarnell follow’s Kubler-Ross in naming the second stage “anger” or “blaming” – “Whose fault is it?” “This makes me mad,” “This isn’t fair,” “Why me?” The second stage of reaction looks backward in hopes of finding the cause and someone or something to point the finger at, to blame it on. The Apostles certainly went through a stage like this is – Judas, the “Jews” (by which they meant the temple authorities), the governor.....

The third stage in both models is despair. This stage is characterized by feelings of hopelessness and helplessness, and the grieving person tends to become withdrawn, to isolate him- or herself from others. The Apostles locked themselves in the upper room; Thomas withdrew even from his brothers and sisters amongst Jesus’s followers – we don’t know where he went off too.

Yarnell now differs from Kubler-Ross in adding a stage called “perspective.” In this stage, the individual begins accepting the change and is no longer caught up in denial, anger, blame, or despair. The loss is seen in its proper perspective. Although the sense of loss may be significant, the individual does not feel that all is lost.

Stage 5 in Yarnell’s model is called “relationships,” and this is where Yarnell’s ten-stage description of handling change, of dealing with grief begins to parallel the experience of the grieving Christian, of the believer who knows that all suffering can be redemptive. Coming out of the withdrawal and isolation that is inherent in the previous stages, the individual is able to talk and relate to other people and participate in normal activities. Thomas comes back to the other Apostles, ready to be with them and to share the experience.

The next stage is called “spiritual changes.” The individual’s relationship with the spiritual side of life is strengthened as a result of having lived through (and survived) the experience. The Apostles have new hope; they have seen Jesus. Thomas, still caught up somewhat in his feelings of denial, doesn’t believe them: he’s no longer despairing; he’s developed some perspective; he’s willing to be back in relationship with them; but he’s not quite willing to believe that something good can have come from this suffering... yet.

Yarnell’s seventh stage in dealing with change is “acceptance,” which is Kubler-Ross’s fifth and final stage. This stage involves the restoration of self-esteem, and the acceptance of the consequences and boundaries of the new reality. The Apostles, having seen Jesus, are approaching this stage; they are beginning to understand the boundaries of their new reality; Thomas, until he sees the Risen Lord, isn’t there yet.... but when he does see Jesus, when he does get there! Boy howdy! Does he get there! “My Lord and my God!” Thomas is the first to voice the new understanding.

Yarnell adds stages beyond mere acceptance; this accords with our Christian understanding of loss and grief, of suffering and its redemptive potential, of change and empowerment. One does not merely accept the loss or change and then continue on as if nothing happened. The world is changed and, therefore, we must be changed.

“Humor” is the eighth level in Yarnell’s model of handling grief. Smiles, laughter, and a sense of humor return to the individual and help in the healing process. There’s a renewed sense of joy in life. You can almost hear the humor in Jesus’s voice as he speaks to Thomas: “Do you believe because you have seen? Blessed are those who believe and have not seen.” (Interestingly, in some modern scholarship, the word translated here as “blessed” is also translated as “happy.” Those who believe reach the eighth stage quickly!)

Near the end of the process, at stage 9, there is “activity and action.” Where once the individual had been restricted or immobilized by the change, he or she now returns to activity, action, and improved productivity. Travel and group activities become more interesting. This is what will happen to the Apostles.... some of them are already traveling; Cleopus and his companion are on the road and will meet the Risen Jesus as the travel to Emmaus. The others will soon burst out of this upper room into the streets and alleys of Jerusalem, speaking all manner of foreign languages, preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ, crucified, died and risen from the dead.

In Yarnell’s model, the final stage of the process is the setting of “new goals.” In this final stage, the individual is able to focus on the positive aspects of whatever change occurred, and on new goals and activities. He or she takes comfort in cartoonist Ashley Brilliant’s line, “I may not be totally perfect, but parts of me are excellent!”

This model is fuller and more closely resembles the experience of the Apostles and the experience of other Christians who have dealt with death, loss and change with the help and model of the Risen Lord. We really don’t move, as Kubler-Ross suggested, from “despair” directly to “acceptance” ... and the process doesn’t end with mere “acceptance.” There is a need to gain new perspectives, to enter into new relationships, to experience spiritual growth, to see things through the eyes of humor and joy, and, finally, to return to activities with new goals. The butterfly does these things in it’s metamorphosis ... it doesn’t go back to the life of a caterpillar; the Risen Jesus did these things in his Resurrection ... he didn’t just come back to life and return to his work as an itinerant rabbi; the Apostles went through this transformative process ... they didn’t go back to their prior lives as tax collectors, farmers and fishermen.

This is the Christian reality. The earliest Christians called the religion of Jesus Christ “The Way” because the understood that becoming Christian was not a destination, but a journey. Today, four young lives are to be started here on that Way, on the path of the Christian journey. Throughout their lives, change will be the one constant – they will always be undergoing some part of the transformative process that is the Christian reality.

“Any change, at any time, for any reason, is NOT to be deplored.” Not at all. Every change, at every time, for every reason, is to be celebrated. Every change, at every time, for every reason, holds within it the possibility of new relationships, of spiritual change, of humor, of action and of new goals. We prayed at the beginning of our Mass this morning for this to be so in our lives. In the Collect before the Lessons, we asked God for the Grace that we “may show forth in [our] lives what [we] profess by [our] faith.” In a word, we prayed that every loss, every change might hold what these baptisms hold today for these children, the promise of Resurrection. Because of the Resurrection of our Lord, we have the power to claim a relationship with the living God; this is what John wrote in his First Epistle, part of which we heard this morning: “our [true] fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ” Every change holds in it the possibility ... the potential ... the PROMISE of Resurrection in fellowship with God!

Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Remember: A Sermon for Maundy Thursday, April 13, 2006

At the end one of the Star Trek movies, Number 2 I think, Mr. Spock sacrifices himself to save the Enterprise and her crew. As he is dying from radiation exposure, he reaches up and touches Dr. McCoy’s face and in a variation of what Trekkies know as “the vulcan mind meld” he links his consciousness with McCoy’s and utters a single word, “Remember,” as he dies. It turns out that he has implanted into McCoy’s spirit a kernel of his own. It also turns out that because of something called “the Genesis device” he isn’t really dead and the next movie is all about recovering his body and getting that bid of his soul out of McCoy and back where it belongs.

That scene with Leonard Nimoy’s deep gravelly voice saying, “Remember” always comes back to me when I think about Maundy Thursday because all of our rituals and actions tonight are about exactly that, remembering. They are done because God instructs us to remember.

In our lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures, from Exodus 12, God tells Moses and Aaron, and through them all the People of Israel, how they are to remember and celebrate the feast of the Passover. For the Jews the Passover is a celebration of God's salvation. The name "Passover" came from a description of the events of that fateful night. A destroying angel literally passed over the Hebrews but brought judgment upon the Egyptians. God had sent nine plagues on Egypt to convince Pharaoh to let Israel go.

The tenth and last plague was on all the firstborn in the land. But before the plague, God instructed each Israelite families to sacrifice a lamb and place it's blood on the door posts as a sign on their faith in God. They were instructed to roast the lamb and eat it all by morning and also to eat unleavened bread and bitter herbs. And that night an angel came and slew the firstborn of the Egyptians but it passed over the houses of the Hebrews.

Each part of this holy meal had a special meaning. The bitter herbs were to remind them of the bitterness of slavery. The unleavened bread was to remind them that they had to leave Egypt so quickly that they didn't have time to leaven their bread. They were to eat this meal in their traveling clothes to remind them of the journey out of slavery. The lamb reminded them of the sacrifice that protected the people from the destroying angel.

Each year afterwards the Hebrews were to remember the Passover and to celebrate it in this meal. It became their major celebration of God's salvation. God had spared those who were under the blood of the Passover lamb. God had defeated the mighty Egyptian masters and proven that the Egyptian god's were powerless. And God had brought the Children of Israel out of slavery.

It's no accident that the Lord's Supper took place during the Passover festival. After all Passover was celebrated to remember that God had saved in the past and to affirm the belief that God continues to save in the present. When the disciples gathered for that Last Supper with Jesus before his death, the Passover was in their minds. It was in this context that Jesus took bread and blessed it and broke it and said, "This is my body." And the disciples must have had in mind the blood of Passover lamb when he took the cup and said, "This is my blood." And it was during the slaughter of the Passover lambs the next day that Jesus was sacrificed on the cross.

Like Passover, the Holy Eucharist is a celebration of God's salvation. It reminds us how God has saved us through the blood of the Lamb, Jesus Christ. Each part of this meal reminds us of that salvation. The bread that is broken reminds us that Christ's body was broken because of human sinfulness. The cup reminds of Jesus' blood shed for humankind..

This celebration and remembrance of God's saving act is not that different from the Passover. The Passover reminds us how God saved Israel from slavery to the Egyptians. The Lord's Supper reminds us how God has saved us from slavery to sin and death. At Passover those who put their faith in God were under the blood of the Passover lamb sprinkled on their door posts. Today those who believe in the Lord are under the blood of the lamb of God that washes away our sins.

But the Lord's Supper is more than a memorial of what God did in the past. It is a reminder that God still saves and that God will continue to save. When we celebrate this meal it is more than a reminder of the past. In this meal Christ is present in the here and now. Different churches have different ways of expressing that, but we Anglicans call it “real presence”. Christ is present with, blesses, and dwells in those who celebrate this meal in faith.

This is because God is saving people today. God is still leading people out of slavery. The blood of Christ is still washing the stain of sins from people's lives. Today God is leading people out of slavery to sin and out of slavery to addictions. God is leading people out of slavery to abusive relationships.

God will continue to deliver people from slavery. In fact the promise that God gives us is that Christ will come again. And when Christ comes again he will do away with every form of evil that oppresses the human being. And there will be a feast. A feast of victory to celebrate God's victory over evil.

Come! Celebrate the victory of our Lord. Remember how God led the children of Israel out of Egypt. Remember the bitterness of their slavery and the suddenness of their freedom. Remember how God protected those who in faith put the blood of the lamb on their door posts. And remember that God continues to free people from slavery to wicked masters.

Come! Celebrate how God, through the death and resurrection of his only-begotten Son, defeated death. Remember how Jesus handed over his body to be broken. Remember how his blood was shed. And remember that God continues to save and protect those who in faith have accepted the blood of the lamb to cleans their hearts.

Come! Celebrate the promise of the victory feast to come. Christ the Lamb of God will come again. And by the authority of his Father he will cleans creation of all wickedness and evil. Christ will destroy all wickedness but he will Passover those who have put themselves under his seal. And the faithful will sit at a table and share in the ultimate victory life and love.

A Meditation for Palm Sunday, April 9, 2006

I usually don't read other people's writings in full from the pulpit (although I do quote other folks in sermons). In fact, on Palm Sunday I usually don't preach at all. But this Palm Sunday, April 9, 2006, I'm going to do both. I am going to offer the following meditation entitled "Good Friday" from Flesh and Bones: Sermons by the Rev. Dr. A. K. M. Adam (Page 82; copyright A. K. M. Adam 2001; printed by Wipf and Stock Publishers)

The book has been published on line at the website of Seabury-Western Theological Serminary, where AKMA is a professor. It can be found at:

http://www.seabury.edu/faculty/akma/FleshBones.pdf

---------------------------------

Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.

In the Name of God Almighty, the Blessed Trinity on High— Amen.

I know a whole lot. I know the sweet kiss of a drowsy child, the scintillating misty hush of a summer sunrise. I know uses of the Greek participle, I know the forlorn plaints from the trampled heart of a student, a friend, a lonely visitor to my office. I know the psalms, I know the working of a well-practiced basketball team, I know contents of the heaps of paper on my desktop. I know fear and doubt, I know pain and desperation, I know joy and pride and satisfaction. In the age of expertise, I am an expert; in the age of “just do it,” I’ve been there and I’ve done that. I know what I am doing.

I know that we gather here this afternoon to recollect the trial of God, the day we put our Savior on trial — and executed him. Our trial of God is not in any way a presumption on our part; though we may want to demur, Jesus demands that we participate. Jesus came to Jerusalem, came here to the center of the world, and looked us in the eyes; and he asks, “Are my claims on you, on your life, on your whole being — are my claims on you just?” Today’s trial comes at Jesus’ own initiative, according to God’s own will; however much we’d rather recuse ourselves, we may not. Oyez, oyez, oyez.

The accused is charged with bringing God’s uncompromising word into human life. He stands before us, alone at the defense table, under indictment for making us feel awkward, for asking too much of us, for calling us to a way of life that puts us out of step with our more comfortable neighbors. He confesses as much; he offers no resistance to this trial. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I ask you to pronounce sentence: this disturbing deity must be put out of our way. For our own sake, he must be crucified.

In the book of the Wisdom of Solomon, it is written that the people said,

“Let us lie in wait for the righteous man, because he is inconvenient to us and opposes our actions; he reproaches us for sins against the law, and accuses us of sins against our training. He professes to have knowledge of God, and calls himself a child of the Lord. He became to us a reproof of our thoughts; the very sight of him is a burden to us, because his manner of life is unlike that of others, and his ways are strange. Let us see if his words are true, and let us test what will happen at the end of his life; for if the righteous man is God’s child, he will help him, and will deliver him from the hand of his adversaries. Let us test him with insult and torture, so that we may find out how gentle he is, and make trial of his forbearance. Let us condemn him to a shameful death, for, according to what he says, he will be protected.” Thus they reasoned, but they were led astray, for their wickedness blinded them, and they did not know the secret purposes of God, nor hoped for the wages of holiness, nor discerned the prize for blameless souls.

This is what the Book of Wisdom says of people who find discipleship too inconvenient, of people who don’t want God butting into their lives with unrealistic expectations or awkward obligations, who are embarrassed to be seen with a God who keeps company with a lower class of people. Now, in so fair and reverent a church as Trinity Parish, we should feel aggrieved that the Book of Wisdom moves so rapidly from being inconvenienced by the Righteous One to plotting his torture and murder. We are well-intentioned people who would never have such a person executed, even if he did make our lives more complicated and more awkward. Wisdom rushes us along too far, too fast. We’re not that bad.

But it seems as though we don’t have that intermediate choice. All we want is some peace in which to do our daily work, to enjoy ourselves on weekends; all we want is some time when we don’t have to think about whether what we’re doing is right. But this inconvenient Righteous One keeps walking to his cross, because our God asks us not just for an hour on Sundays, not just to avoid high-handed felony, but this God asks of us our every breath, our every thought. Our God is a zealous God, who desires our all, and who does not willingly settle for the bits and pieces that we grudgingly concede. Certainly we don’t want to crucify Jesus; but if we will not invite this Righteous One into every moment of our lives, then we take our part among his judges who put him out of the way once and for all.

Can we bring ourselves to admit that when we ask for a God who permits us a little self-indulgence on the weekend that we do not know what we are asking for? Can we acknowledge that when we ask for a God who will not judge us at all, that we are rejecting the God who longs to forgive us? Can I, a modern person, a capable person, a person who knows what he’s doing, confess that perhaps I don’t know so much after all?

We still have time to throw ourselves on the mercy of the court, and admit we choose the sumptuous wages of exploitation instead of the wages of holiness; we grasp for the glorious prizes of our savoir-faire rather than the prize for blameless souls; we did not know the secret purposes of God.

Almighty God, maker of all, judge of us all: remember the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, who did not hold our waywardness against us, but prayed for us: “Forgive them; they do not know what they are doing.” Amen.

Creative Transformation: Sermon for 5 Lent, April 2, 2004

Last week, we read from the Gospel according to St. John a portion of Jesus’s conversation with Nicodemus, the member of the Jewish Sanhedrin who came to see him late at night. In that conversation, Jesus said to Nicodemus, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up....” In today’s Gospel lesson John again quotes Jesus saying similar words, “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” After quoting this, the Gospeler, John, adds this commentary, “He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.” Now this may be, but keep in mind it is only John’s interpretation. Might it not be that Jesus had another “lifting up” in mind? Are there not two other “liftings up” to come: the Resurrection and the Ascension?

Dominican preacher, Jude Siciliano has suggested as much in his comment:

It isn’t just Jesus’ offering on the cross that John invites us to gaze on with eyes of faith. This being "lifted up" also points us to Jesus’ resurrection. After all, if he just died what value would that have been for us? Death would have had the final word. Jesus would have been just one more victim of one-more repressive regime...one more dead martyr for a cause. Instead, God raised Jesus from the dead; he was "lifted up" for us. Now we look upon him and believe in our own future resurrection. But not just in the future. John writes in the present tense; he is speaking of something that is true for us now.

Episcopal priest and process theologian Paul Nancarrow offers a similar insight:

John conceives of Jesus’ death and resurrection as a creative transformation of earthly life into eternal life that animates the whole of Jesus’ ministry. To be crucified and to be glorified are, for John’s Jesus, not two separate things, but two simultaneous aspects of one single reality. Jesus’ whole mission is to reveal that reality and call others to share in that reality. Death-and-resurrection is a mystery not unique to Jesus, although to be sure he is the first of the human family to experience its fullness; but it is a reality of new life in which all are invited to share. Jesus underlines the universality of the invitation to resurrection with a very down-to-earth agricultural metaphor: “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” To die is prerequisite to bearing fruit. That is why, for Jesus, to be “lifted up” on the cross in death is also to be “lifted up” to God in new life. That is why being “lifted up” is, as we saw in last week’s Gospel, the sign that will draw all people to new life in Christ. The Gospel passage thus serves to sum up the themes of Jesus’ ministry given to us in Lent, and to turn our attention ahead to the Passion and Resurrection stories of Palm Sunday and Easter.

“Death and resurrection [is] a creative transformation of earthly life into eternal life.” That’s a great way to summarize “liftings up” to which Jesus must be referring in this Gospel reading today.

Creative transformation is what God, through the Prophet Jeremiah, was offering to his people when he said, “I will make a new covenant with [them] ... I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.” It is our appropriation of that transformation, our claiming it as our own, that happens when we gather in worship each week.

Richard Norris, an Episcopal priest and theologian, wrote a book entitled Understanding the Faith of the Church. In it, he wrote this about the Creeds:

The creeds ... speak of the way in which the promise of creation and the Word of redemption take root in creaturely existence ... and transform it from the inside. This is the process customarily referred to as sanctification. That term ... means "making holy," and the same Latin root can be seen in the word saint, which signifies a holy person ....

When Paul calls his Corinthian friends "sanctified," he means that they are "called to be holy" and so belong to God (1 Cor. 1:22), not that they always do or think the right thing. People who are holy, then, are in the first instance people claimed by God. This means, though, that they are also made open and available to God. God has, as it were, tapped them on the shoulder to get their attention. A conversation has started, and it will be a holy conversation because God has begun it. To be sanctified is to be called to answer God consciously and explicitly, and so to be set apart for God's purposes and (God's) company.

[T]he conversation which God has started with us becomes one which flows more easily and calls up deeper and deeper levels of our selves. In the presence of (God's) Word to us we experience the disturbance of joy, and we reach out to God by agreeing with (God's) Word, by making it our own Word back to (God). Then two things happen. The way we live begins to be shaped from the inside by this internalized Word of God; and the promise of our nature is fulfilled in a sharing fo God's life.

This is the creative transformation promised in God’s commitment to write his law in our hearts, a commitment with which we are called to cooperate.

Another story from the Hebrew Scriptures also speaks of creative and cooperative transformation.

In the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, we read the story of God taking Ezekiel to a valley filled with bones. “[T]hese bones,” God says to Ezekiel, “are the whole house of Israel.” (37:11) In God's eyes, his People had become (as the Mayor of Munchkin city describe the Wicked Witch of the West after Dorothy’s house fell one her) “morally, ethically, spiritually, physically, absolutely, positively, undeniably, and reliably dead!” So dead, were they, that their bones were completely dried up.

God tells Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones and that is what Ezekiel does: in the words of that great old Negro spiritual, “Ezekiel cried them dry bones, 'Now hear the word of the Lord.'” So toe bone connected to foot bone, foot bone to ankle bone, ankle bone to leg bone, and so on. Then God told Ezekiel to prophesy to the air, to the breath, to the Spirit, to that irritable and changeable wind that blows where it will. Ezekiel did so “and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.” (37:10) And this was not just a rattling of the bones, but a resurrection of the House of Israel for the dry bones did not merely become walking skeletons: they received flesh - muscles and sinews and skin and everything else that goes along with being a living entity.

What we should note about this story is that God doesn't just do this on his own. He has Ezekiel engage in the spiritual practice of prophecy. God and Ezekiel accomplish this movement of air, of breath, of spirit, of life, of resurrection, together.

Charles le Roux, a professor of religious studies at the University of South Africa, has drawn on the Buddhist tradition to offer some insight into this cooperative activity of humans with God to accomplish the creative transformation. He writes:

Casting oneself into the house of God, one is activated by God (in the Spirit) for the Christ-life of resurrected existence – an existence marked by a radical self-giving love which reaches every place in total healing intimacy. With “reaches every place” we make a hermeneutical switchback to Buddhist enlightenment .. and a ... metaphor ... seen in the following story told by Dogen.

Ch'an Teacher Pao-ch'e of Mt. Ma-ku was fanning himself one day when a monk came and asked: “The nature of the wind is always abiding; there is no place to which it does not extend. Why do you still use a fan?”

The master replied: “Although you know only that the nature of the wind is always abiding, you do not yet know the truth that there is no place to which it does not extend.”

The monk said: “What is the meaning of 'there is no place to which it does not extend?'”

The master just kept fanning himself. The monk saluted him.

Now, “the nature of wind is always abiding/constancy,” that is, the Buddha nature cannot be consummated without the act of using a fan (practice). Practice, intrinsic practice is the “fan” that makes the wind of enlightenment eternal and existing everywhere.

Professor le Roux then returns to the Christian understanding:

[B]eing cast into the house of God means that one is activated by God's Spirit (wind) for the Christ-life that reaches every place - the wind of enlightenment existing everywhere. The Christ-event and the Spirit of God/Christ, are the God made known in every place of our life - saving and fulfilling it.

Thus, it is only with our cooperation, our involvement, our practice, our fanning, our giving voice to the prophetic spirit within us that God’s Spirit is truly activated, that God’s Word is written in our hearts, and that we are fully drawn to the lifted-up Christ. Salvation and fulfilment is offered by God, but we must appropriate it through our active cooperation with God. We must set our minds on the Spirit, as Paul suggested to the Romans, or as he put it somewhat differently when he wrote to the Philippians, we must work out our own salvation. God offers creative transformation, we appropriate it through our cooperation.

This is what our gradual psalm today is all about. Listen again to the Psalmist’s words:

How shall a young man cleanse his way? *
By keeping to your words.
With my whole heart I seek you; *
let me not stray from your commandments.
I treasure your promise in my heart, *
that I may not sin against you.
Blessed are you, O Lord; *
instruct me in your statutes.
With my lips will I recite *
all the judgments of your mouth.
I have taken greater delight in the way of your decrees *
than in all manner of riches.
I will meditate on your commandments *
and give attention to your ways.
My delight is in your statutes; *
I will not forget your word. (Ps. 119:9-16)

As we continue our Lenten preparations to celebrate Christ’s glorious Resurrection, let us continue our efforts to keep God’s words, to treasure God’s promise in our heart, to delight in God’s statues, to cooperate in God’s creative transformation of our lives. Amen.