EASTER!

Isaiah 65:17-25 

Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24 

1 Corinthians 15:19-26 

Luke 24:1-12

*******

One of the greatest things about having children involved in our worship here is that, as messy and loud and unorganized kids of any age can be, they remind us what worship is about. 

They remind us how to ask questions. 

They remind us to tell stories over and over and over again. 

They know how to say when they don’t feel welcome, when they are hungry, when they are hurt, and they haven’t always learned how to hide their emotions so what they feel is made evident right away and there’s no hiding or pretending. 

They know about being in honest relationship, if they are raised with healthy expectations and nurturing surroundings. 

If they are raised in a place that gives them room to grow, then they grow and trust and learn. 

If they are raised in an environment where they are not safe, then they learn to hide and pretend and make themselves and their own needs most important as a matter of survival. 

When we tell kids Bible stories, we don’t get into the complexities of nuance and translation and generations of interpretation, we just break down the stories the best we can into the themes and hope they don’t ask for too many details. What is going to make sense to a kid about the question: “Why did Jesus have to die?” What makes sense to us? What kind of God are we introducing our kids to, our neighbors to, our own hearts to, when we tell these stories of Jesus?

This is why I love children’s Bibles. Kids might ask why things are different in Jesus’ time than they are now, and that’s historical research at its best use, but up at the altar three weeks ago one of the kids asked me how Jesus died being nailed to a cross if nails are small, or how he lived at all after they first nailed him to the cross, and of course the question of ‘why’ comes up again and again. Why did we kill him? It’s easier, it seems, to answer the question of ‘why did Jesus have to die,’ than it is to honestly answer the ‘why did we kill him’ question. It sure gets us off the hook, doesn’t it? But they really are the same question. Some would say God required a pure sacrifice. But God never started the rituals of sacrifice, Cain and Abel started it without God asking, according to our stories. Other gods in neighboring countries required blood sacrifice or ritual copulation with the temple priestess to make the crops grow or provide favorable weather, but our God didn’t demand payment for life, that was our own doing. 

So why did Jesus have to die? He preached peace to a violent world, lived peacemaking in a peacekeeping culture. 

He healed the sick in a culture where sickness was a visible sign of sinfulness. 

He upset the financial business running outside the temple, which helped the temple pay rent and lined the pockets of local moneychangers. 

He fed the hungry in a place where folks thought the suffering poor deserved what they got. 

He challenged the political authorities but did not want to take their place in the system. 

He loved as God loves, being God with skin on, and that vulnerability, that openness, that commitment to honor and love all of life in all its diversities, angered and frightened those who kept their power by feeding on fear. So, to keep their power, to keep their system, to maintain the systems of oppression, the powerful riled up the mobs and made a scapegoat of Jesus, putting all of their frustrations onto his back so they could point and jeer and vent without actually changing the way the world worked.

Or so they thought. Jesus took that anger, that frustration, that humiliation, and didn’t feed back into the system of oppression, but he offered forgiveness, mercy, and love instead. Even while dying, Jesus did not play into our hand, did not participate in our game, did not give in to the fear-mongering which hung him up to dry. Even while dying, Jesus stayed the course of compassion, remained open and vulnerable to love, wept without shame and offered his prayers and his spirit up to the God who made us all.

And here’s another marvelous thing about the love of God in Christ Jesus — while our game is a game of death, a contemporary Hunger Games of its own, Jesus has completely warped our already warped game into a game of life, making the would-be tragedy of his crucifixion into a comedy of resurrection, turning our game so far inside-out by dying our death, that we don’t even have a solid reason to play that game any more. 

Jesus has turned “Dead Man Walking" into “Live People Dancing,” turning our individual dying selves into living, breathing, growing community. Instead of fighting and biting and competing for approval and authority, we are embraced and set free for life everlasting, life without fear, life without end, life without having to prove ourselves or attain the ‘right’ and ‘proper’ status symbols to have value and worth as human beings.

And let me say, for the record here, that this doesn’t mean you suddenly have to prove you ‘get it’ and are a ‘good Christian’ by coming for worship every single week. Because that just sets us all up for failure and guilt when we miss a week or two or three. That also ignores that faith is in itself a gift of the Holy Spirit, among many other gifts. And it ignores the resurrection’s power in every other day of the week. It is a good a helpful thing for us to live in community together, to struggle together, to learn how to forgive one another, but that isn’t just one hour a week. The point of Christ’s Resurrection is that it has an impact on the whole of our lives, the everything of our days, the mundane and the surprising and the disappointing and the giddy and the horrific and the EVERYTHING. We grow more deeply in it when rooted in community where we share the Story over and over again, but God isn’t going to stop at the church door when it comes to our death and resurrection. 

God didn’t stop at death’s door. 

The tomb had no power on resurrection day, and has no power any more, because Jesus has eradicated the reason to fear death by destroying death itself. 

Death is no longer the last word, the last thing, the last chance, because death is now the last enemy to be crushed under God’s foot. 

That means that tomorrow when you go wherever you go, be it to school or to work or even back to bed, resurrection is still True for you and for me and for the people you love and for the people who annoy you to pieces. Death is no longer a threat over our heads, nor is it a threat we can hold over anyone else. The final word of Life is now the great equalizer. It may not look like we expect it to, but it’s never over. Love wins, life wins, because Christ is Risen! Alleluia!

The Story we are

Exodus 12:1-14

The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt: This month shall mark for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you. Tell the whole congregation of Israel that on the tenth of this month they are to take a lamb for each family, a lamb for each household. If a household is too small for a whole lamb, it shall join its closest neighbor in obtaining one; the lamb shall be divided in proportion to the number of people who eat of it. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a year-old male; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats. You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month; then the whole assembled congregation of Israel shall slaughter it at twilight. They shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. They shall eat the lamb that same night; they shall eat it roasted over the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted over the fire, with its head, legs, and inner organs. You shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until morning you shall burn. This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly. It is the passover of the Lord. For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, both human beings and animals; on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance.

Psalm 116: 1-2, 12-19

I love the LORD, who has heard my voice, and listened to my supplication, for the LORD has given ear to me whenever I called. How shall I repay the Lord for all the good things God has done for me? I will lift the cup of salvation and call on the name of the LORD. I will fulfill my vows to the LORD in the presence of all God’s people. Precious in your sight, O LORD, is the death of your servants. O LORD, truly I am your servant; I am your servant, the child of your handmaid; you have freed me from my bonds. I will offer you the sacrifice of thanksgiving and call upon the name of the LORD. I will fulfill my vows to the LORD in the presence of all God’s people, in the courts of the LORD’s house, in the midst of you, O Jerusalem.

1 Corinthians 11:23-26

For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, yo proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

John 13:1-17, 31b-35

Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” Jesus said to him, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.” For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, “Not all of you are clean.” After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord - and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.” Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I saw to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

*********

Every time I read the Gospel lesson for tonight, which is the same every year on Maundy Thursday, I have a hard time not adding in the line: “and he wiped them with his hair.” You know where I mean? When Jesus washes his disciples’ feet and wipes them, with the towel he is wearing, I cannot help but hear the story of Mary anointing Jesus’ feet, either with her tears or with oil. I hear that story often enough that I always conflate it with this Gospel telling. The love is unmistakeable. It’s an intimate thing for Mary to have done, and for sure it was completely inappropriate for a woman to be that close with a man in public, yet here is a man with his friends offering the same gift, so intimate, so caring, so passionate and vulnerable, both for them and for him. 

I can not help but remember the anointing of love that Jesus received when I read this story of the love that he gave his disciples just before things got really ugly for all of them.

And we know about ugly, don’t we? Ugliness in the news, ugliness in our relationships, ugliness in our own worst moments. Ugly from the muck we throw, the muck thrown at us, the muck around every corner that just seems to be the way things are sometimes. Another mass shooting. Another racist hate crime. Another heroin-related death. What are we to do with all of this ugliness, all of this pain and fear when it threatens to swallow us down into the pits of hell?

Because that's where Jesus is going once dinner is over tonight. He’s been walking that thin line, balancing on that edge where one wrong word might just convince somebody with power to end him, one wrong move might just push a crowd a little too much, and finally tonight we meet the tipping point. He knows it, too. He knows he will be betrayed, already has been betrayed, will be betrayed again, left alone to suffer and die, and he is hurting for his friends who will run away, who will fail to stand up, who will hide in fear and then in guilt and shame.

So, then, knowing that everything’s about to go to hell, Jesus breaks himself open in front of his disciples, lays his heart bare before them, wraps himself in a towel, and washes their feet with his tears to wipe them with his hair —

but, no, I’m getting my stories mixed up again. Or am I? What is the cultural equivalent between the loving act of his dinner gift to the disciples and hers to him? Not everyone expresses love in the same way, or receives it. Peter sure had a hard time receiving Jesus’ love tonight, refusing at first to have his feet washed and then jumping into the deep end and wanting a full bath. Just like Mary, though, Jesus is making himself as publicly emotionally vulnerable as can be. No wonder Peter got all embarrassed. 

Then again, it’s been the way of Jesus all along to be vulnerable, open, deeply loving. Consider how most people think of God far away and untouchable in the highest heavens with thunderbolts and better things to think about than our little lives. But this is God in our midst, God walking amongst us, God in the flesh washing our flesh.

It’s a reversal we need lifetimes to contemplate. But we’ve got generations to contemplate it, because that’s the sort of thing God keeps doing, over and over again, coming to us in these fragile moments, tumbling our expectations end over end, like semi-precious stones having our sharp edges rubbed smooth until we shine. Turning the Passover meal into a wider welcome for even us who are not Jewish, Jesus feeds us for the journey ahead, when he will be publicly killed at our hands and then buried in a borrowed tomb because there was no room at the inn…

Nope, there I go again, mixing up my stories. It’s barely three months since Christmas, though, how couldn’t we get these celebrations mixed up? Maybe these, too, are the same story. The Passover tells of God making a way through the oppression and the Red Sea on into the promised land, and here we have the story of God making a way not only for us but to us, reaching through all of our oppression and fear to get to our hearts. First he came to us as a baby, whose birth of another Mary’s body and blood we will celebrate again in only nine months, but tonight we remember how we offered his disciples his own body and blood as a free gift for their encouragement and comfort. The meal of Passover promise became a wider welcome, became the prelude to his passing through hell and living to tell about it. First, of course, he died. But knowing that was coming, loving us, he broke himself open to his disciples, broke his heart open to them so they might be held gently and firmly as he held their feet to wash them.

I think this is why the Gospel has Jesus ask the question: “Do you know what I have done to you?” Rather than “do you know what I have done for you?” This goes deeper, even still, than any atonement theology of Jesus taking on the death we deserve by our own rules. This is that tumbling of precious stones again, the wiping away of every tear, the holding that heals, and in healing, it changes us. We may walk through the muck, will no doubt encounter much ugliness in the world, but it will not consume us, because God has made us, and recreated us anew, of beautiful stuff, of deep and abiding love, of feet washed for the journey, so that we may walk through the muck on behalf of others, and do so unthreatened, unafraid, made bold with the love with which we are loved.

Mary hoped for that love when she said yes to the angel Gabriel. Another Mary had seen some of that love when Jesus brought her brother Lazarus back from the dead, and so she washed his feet and dried them with her hair. Jesus was that love. Jesus is that love. Tonight Jesus makes that love known in us and through us, because what Jesus has done to us by what Jesus has done for us, not just extending the welcome, but bearing his heart to us when he doesn’t even have to. He could have remained stoic, he could have had a servant come wash everyone’s feet, could have stuck to the ritual of the social norms around a meal, kept his composure and not told them how much he loved them. In John’s telling of the crucifixion, even in extreme pain it seems Jesus is in control of how things are going. But this opening of himself to wash the disciples’ feet is another freely chosen vulnerability, another risk of rejection, another strange freedom to love, which will infect his disciples of that day, and of generations to come, with the same freedom to love and to be loved.

We, too, are now wrapped up in this story. Bearing in our own bodies the Body and Blood of Jesus, from this table out into the world, getting all mixed up with the love of Christ for this beautiful mess of people who are our neighbors, enemies, friends, family, and strangers. Because this love of Christ is for you, this washing is for you, this gift is what Jesus does to you, setting you free tonight for all the life to come.

Smells like death like life

Isaiah 43:16-21

Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings out chariot and horse, army and warrior; they lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick: Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The wild animals will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches; for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise.

Psalm 126

When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion, then were we like those who dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongues with shouts of joy. then they said among the nations, “The LORD has done great things for them.” The LORD has done great things for us, and we are glad indeed. Restore our fortunes, O LORD, like the watercourses of the Negev. Those who sowed with tears will reap with songs of joy. Those who go out weeping, carrying the seed, will come again with joy, shouldering their sheaves.

Philippians 3:4b-14

Paul writes: If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

John 12:1-8

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Mary served, and Lazarus was one of those at table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him) said, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

********

It may be said that our relationship with the past is… complicated. At best, we long for the ‘good old days,’ at worst, we refuse to let go of grudges, and somewhere in the middle, we hope never again to repeat the mistakes we have made. In the present moment of joy or celebration, the past might be what got us to where we are, but we are just moving on up all the time. In the present moment of suffering, the past might be where lie all the mistakes and hurts that built up to the present tragedy, or the better days we don’t understand losing. Often in times of joy or suffering we can become so inwardly focused that we forget the past, ignore our history, bury our heads in the sand about bad habits that have gotten worse, or imagine that any help we have relied on before might be sick and tired of supporting us any longer. We return to our past with class reunions, and make a break with the past when we move away to a new job…

sort of. When I started seminary, it was really hard to form new community because so many of us were stuck in the past, relying heavily on college friendships via Facebook rather than putting down our technology and meeting one another in person where we were. And now, of course, we all stay connected despite having been called to the far corners of the church, swapping stories of first baptisms and first weddings, supporting one another in online text study and worship brainstorming, and occasionally retreating into our well-loved and hard-won community of classmate-colleagues when the stress of life seems too much to face head-on. The past can be a place of refuge at times, knowing where we belong and what patterns of behavior to follow brings with it a certain comfort, but in that sense of safety is no small degree of danger. Remaining in the past, dreaming of days gone by, is a sure way to miss the present moment and make even the near future into something hollow rather than allowing it to be something holy.

When Israel was living in Babylonian captivity, all they had was stories of the past, hopes and dreams of a return to what they had once known, but it just wouldn’t be possible to find those old glory days again. Too much was changing, too much time gone by, too much of culture was adapting to the situations at hand. One thing which they had kept with them, however, was the story of their Exodus from slavery into freedom. Now that they were back in a sort of slavery again, only more of a scattered occupation, they were looking for another Moses, another deliverer, another rescue like the one they looked to as a reminder of their roots. The story is still told in the first person plural: “When God led us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm…” they say. As they should. We are all, after all, together part of God’s great salvation history. But that isn’t all God can -or will- do. It isn’t only that God can make dry ground appear in the middle of great waters, but God can make waters appear in the middle of the desert. God can do all things as suits the restoration of the world and the arrival of the Kingdom.

Take Paul for example. Hebrew born of Hebrews, a Pharisee in religious training, a zealot for the faith, good family pedigree, all the things a man would need to be considered a success in his day and age. But he looks on his past, good training as it was, as worth about as much as a baggie of dog poo when comparing it all with knowing Christ and the power of his resurrection. I might have a Master’s Degree, that will take another forty years to pay for, but it’s not worth anything compared with actually knowing the God who we studied academically for three years. No amount of book learning, no number of academic honors, no first call parish size or sudden growth of a community can compare even on the same scale as that relationship with the God whose heart is most clearly revealed to us in the person of Jesus Christ.

Yet the value of stuff from the past seems to increase as it gets older, doesn't it? Stories of the good old days leave out trials and tribulations more often than not. Antiques go for a pretty penny here and in Hudson. But our faith stories aren’t antiques, they bear witness to a living and active God who is still working among us today. Our problem comes when those stories become boxes to keep God in, parameters we set up for where and how God is allowed to act. The Bible in many ways serves to prove the point that God is faithful - but we keep getting caught up in the details of how exactly that happened, so that we can prove the spiritual validity, or invalidity, of life experience. 

Mary knew that isn’t how this life of faith works. She saved an entire year’s worth of pay, we don’t know how, in order to give it all away in one night to the man who had restored her brother back to life. It just wasn’t done, this kind of generosity, this kind of open intimacy. God was too big for any but the high priest to get this close to Him, but here God was, in her house, at her family table, after having opened a door on death that was supposed to have stayed sealed forever. So she did not hold back on her thanksgiving, she did not hold back financially or emotionally or even according to the rules of social interaction. And this was too weird on too many levels for Judas to just let it happen. It sounds to me like he never really understood the parable of the prodigal son, to be so offended by the wastefulness of Mary’s gift to Jesus. It sounds to me, also, like this might have been the first time Judas said anything about caring for the poor, though he gets painted badly from the start in John’s Gospel because he was the betrayer.

“What waste!” he says. I wonder if he would have said the same thing to his daughter bringing him a macaroni necklace she made in preschool. Or to his brother spending a year’s wages on an engagement ring. Or to all that extra wine showing up at the wedding at Cana. But Mary’s brother was literally dead, sealed in the tomb for four days, smelling like it, too, and then Jesus came and opened that tomb and here was her brother again at the family table. What else could she do but pour out that oil and fill the house with the smell of her love and gratitude?

God was indeed doing another new thing, after all. Raising the dead and walking among us, sitting at table with us, going to the cross for us. It wasn’t kicking the Romans out like the Canaanites were destroyed to make room for the Israelites when they came to the promised land. It wasn’t the ground opening up to swallow those blasphemers. It wasn’t fire from heaven, but God’s own blood from the cross this time, that would lead more than just the Israelites, more than just the men, more than just the wealthy priests and Pharisees, into the coming Kingdom of God. This was a new thing, the way God walked among us and reached out physically with compassion and healing. It was too new for the many who mobbed together to kill him, but then God did another new thing and returned alive again in three days to forgive his tormentors.

So now even the old smell of death, from the recomposing body of Lazarus, from the oil poured out on Jesus’ feet to anoint his body for burial, from the flowers brought to place on a casket, these old smells that trigger memories of funerals and morgues and black suits and red eyes, these smells are carried to the cross and remade into the smells that promise new life. How weird is that? Easter lilies that smell on any other day like a funeral home will in two weeks smell like resurrection. The oil Mary spilled over Jesus’ feet, which made the entire house smell the way it had only just days before smelled when Lazarus’ dead body had been wrapped in it for burial, would cling to the feet of Jesus through trials and beatings and on to his own tomb, but it would also cling to Mary’s hair while she watched and wept and waited. Did his feet still smell like her hair when he met her in the garden, I wonder? After those long nights of waiting, did she smell him on her hair and long for his return the way he had brought her brother back to their family?

So then, I wonder, what new thing God may be doing in the here and now, what new thing God might be doing in your life, what new thing have we missed because it did not fit our expectations of how God works? Where have we come to expect only death, that God has brought new life, not only for us but for entire communities of strangers and outcasts? We certainly saw a new thing Wednesday night here in this space with over a hundred people in worship together from half a dozen or more different faith backgrounds. Where else might God surprise us with a new thing in the days ahead? Remember the faith stories that tell of the faithfulness of God, the commitment of God to liberation and renewal, and then look ahead for what’s next.

Next week we will begin our celebration of the main thing, the new thing that blows all new things out of the water, the triumphal entry that was supposed to mean one very particular new thing but spiraled into disappointment and tragedy and the old story of power and fear and violence leading to death. But even in death God is doing a new thing. Our past does not hold us, neither regrets nor shining victories, for God is bringing new life now, here, and tomorrow, too. Mary poured out her heart in that costly gift of pure nard. Paul despised his own lofty reputation. Israel learned again and again to depend on the gifts and guidance of God. And all because God has poured out life, given us a new reputation, remained faithful to the promise of resurrection, time after time. Eternal love is doing a new thing…

<we sing “What Wondrous Love is This?”>

Prodigal like a puppy...

Joshua 5:9-12

Psalm 32

2 Corinthians 5:16-21

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

*******

Wouldn't you know it, we are still in the season of Lent and today we talk about death and resurrection. That’s what Lent is for, after all, looking death in the face and finding resurrection, and that is what we get today.

To look at the news lately, be it local or global, we’re always looking at death somehow. Why else would we be so easily angry if we were not afraid of death? Why else would we be looking for somebody to blame for our bad luck if we weren’t trying to avoid looking at death? Why else would we worship a crucified God if we didn’t know that death is a reality faced by all that lives?

Maybe you’ve heard it lately in the news, or at home, or at work. Heartbreak. Violence. Injustice. Debates that disintegrate into bullying. Or maybe you’re reading The New Jim Crow in preparation for our Synod Assembly this June, and finding those statistics - about incarceration for profit and children being tried as adults and first time minor offenders unable to find work or housing or even vote - are all a bit much to swallow. We don’t have to look far to find death, do we? As I was filling out our statistics paperwork for the church-wide records this week, I thought of all of the death we’ve experienced over the last handful of years - not only the death of people dear to us, like Flossie and Al and Malcolm, but the death of selling the chapter of our life in Ghent, the death of letting Bob and Bev retire, the death of calling a new pastor into an uncertain three-year term call, while at the same time our area prepares for the death of another pastoral retirement in Valatie… every major change in our lives is a death.

The Israelites in today’s First Testament reading experienced a pretty major death. They had spent a lifetime wandering in the wilderness and relying on God to provide manna, and now that chapter of their history was coming to a close and they ate from the produce of the land of Canaan, which meant the manna stopped coming. Even if they had grown sick of its flavor and texture, it was a certain thing, had become a pattern in their lives, and now was making way for the new life in their promised land. Even reaching the homeland for which they had long waited, even this was a sort of death, for where would their dreams lie now that they had gotten this far?

Admitting to sin is another kind of death. It is the death of a pretended perfect life. Letting go of an image of self which is innocent of wrong means letting go of certainty that we must always be right. Admitting to mistakes, willful and accidental, admitting to our need for restoration, means admitting that we are broken, which means we admit to being breakable.

Being breakable, however, means we must trust the hands that hold us, that we rely on the hands that hold us to also catch us when we fall.

For most of his growing-up and early adult life, Martin Luther was afraid of the hands which held him. He was terrified that he was far too sinful for God to forgive, want, or love him. Everything he thought, everything he did or didn’t do, reminded him of how far from God’s perfection he had fallen. When he confessed for hours and then scrubbed the floors for penance, he found himself grow proud of how those floors shone, and then had to go to confession again, he thought, for the sin of pride. He was depressed, he was anxious, he was despairing. You know the experience of a great day being ruined by one negative comment? His days were full of such ruin, he berated himself and found no mercy in a holy God who demanded perfection.

This is the man from whom our denomination takes its name. Because he was so completely broken, so entirely breakable, because of his constant experience of death, his resurrection was clear and mighty and shook history. He was, for a very long time, the older son in today’s parable. He followed all the rules as well as he could, and never found acceptance or freedom in the home of his Father. He worked himself sick with worry over being acceptable to God, and never could feel enough. He could have become very bitter over this, but he wanted his Father’s approval and love so badly that he just kept on working, not as a son of the household, but more as a terrified slave waiting for punishment.

That is, of course, until he began to regard Christ from more than a human point of view, as the Epistle reminds us today. Once Luther discovered the reconciling work of Christ already completed on the cross, then he discovered the grace that had already long ago restored him to the family of God. It was this discovery that shook him to the core and granted him the freedom to stand boldly before the authorities to declare the power of Grace in the midst of a world that was dying from plagues and fears and terrible abuses of power. I don’t know that we understand enough the culture of the days when Jesus told this parable, not to really grasp how extreme the welcome of the Father was when his weary son returned home for his first decent meal in ages. But the rejoicing of the Father over the return of that younger son was undignified, wasteful, prodigal. Who in their right mind would welcome back a child who had wished them dead and then spent their inheritance and only come back for the possibility of a full belly?

As I ask the question, it seems we might know some of these people, actually, these parents and friends who would welcome back a wandering child with open arms and a tearfully joyful heart if an abusive relationship could be ended or an addiction overcome. I think perhaps parents might understand this parable better than children yet do. Losing a child, for a night, for a year, for any number of days, is like a death, not knowing where they are or if they are safe. Sometimes the kid runs away from home, sometimes they are taken, sometimes they are just thoughtless and wander away in the shopping mall and there’s a moment of panic. This is what sin does to our relationship with God, it pulls us away, it puts time and space and other things between us, it distracts us until we forget our home address and don’t even know who to trust to ask for help any more.

But whatever our reason for turning back - remember, the younger son only wanted a job so he wouldn’t go hungry - even if we only return to God for the good feeling of childhood memories or the possibility of feeling less guilty for something, God welcomes us as the Father welcomes his child long dead come back to life again. Because God rejoices in our resurrection even more than we do. Whether that is a resurrection as the younger son returning home, or a resurrection of the older son being restored to his younger brother once again, it is God’s free gift to all of us to be restored to community, be reconciled to new life.

The image of the Father hiking up his robes and running, completely undignified and unbecoming a man of his age and status, might seem only a little excited in our culture where people of all ages are on stage or screen being excited about football games and winning the lottery and the like. So allow me to indulge in another image which might connect more to the feel of the moment:

I don’t know if you’ve seen these videos going around Facebook every so often, which probably also play on cable news, but the picture I have of the prodigal Father welcoming home his child is expressed in those videos of soldiers returning home after a long deployment. Not only the surprise on the faces of their own children and spouses, but especially the videos of a soldier coming in the front door and their dog welcoming them home. Rolling on the floor, licking his or her face, tail wagging almost enough to spin the poor animal in circles. The prodigal Father welcoming us home in reconciliation and resurrection is the dog so happy to see a soldier home that she pees on the floor and jumps and yips and shakes and almost weeps. This is uncontainable joy, unbounded, unrestricted, timeless and heart-out-of-your-chest love.

When God goes about the work of bringing us to new life after every death we die, God claims us with this kind of joy. When God reconciled us in Christ, it was with this sort of love. When God welcomes us home, restores us to each other as the Father begged the older son to return to his younger brother, it is with the face-licking, tail-wagging, sort of hopeful longing for our rebirth into new life. And God brings us this life again and again, after every anxious time, after every major and minor change we have to readjust to, after -and even during- all of the struggles of fear and uncertainty which bear down on us, personally and communally.

Yes, we are broken, we are breakable, but the hands that hold us are trustworthy and true. The heart that holds us is strong and hopeful. The Christ who claims us, who fed us with manna and led us through the wilderness, is faithful.  We know the world is not as it ought to be, and when we are fearful that we cannot change, cannot effect change around us, cannot bear anything else changing, God holds us in all of our brokenness and puts us back together anew, over and over again, with the love and the joy and the glad excitement of a soldier’s labrador retriever welcoming that soldier home after a long time of war. The prodigal Father lavishes love on us, time after time, without end, just to have us back in his arms, just to have us all together at the Table of mercy again, just to reconcile us and make us whole and new, no matter how many times we get lost on the way. God will always find us, as we sing in our confession this season, ‘with calf and robe and ring.’ We who were lost have been found, we who were dead are alive. We who were estranged, far off, angry and anxious and resentful, are being brought near, made new, restored, not with fiery brimstone but with abounding love and much rejoicing.