Grief... interrupted with Good News

Isaiah 25:6-9

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take way from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken. It will be said on that day, “Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us. This is the Lord; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”

Psalm 23

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil’ my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

Mark 16:1-8

When the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. And they were saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?” And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back - it was very large. And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed. And he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.” And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

***

Easter is an interruption. So is death. At least we are familiar with the interruptions of death, though. When the car breaks down on the highway. When the pink slip comes from higher up and suddenly you’re out of a job. When the doctor calls. When funeral arrangements have to be made, and the estate taken care of. Death makes a terrible mess of things, shakes up our schedule and disrupts our routine. 

But then… but then resurrection. The resurrection of Jesus was foretold, he talked of it as openly as he talked of his upcoming crucifixion. But we didn’t want to hear him talk about suffering and death, so we missed completely the ‘after,’ the continuation of the story.

Unless you’re stuck in the middle of a death experience, this language of freedom from death may sound a bit metaphorical, so let me put it another way. Fairy tales tend to end ‘happily ever after,’ right? Think of the complete opposite of that. If Snow White’s prince never showed up. If the sorceress from the Emperor’s New Groove had gotten it right the first time and poisoned Kuzco instead of turning him into a llama. If Cinderella had choked to death on the ash heap without ever going to the ball. That kind of death. Or, rather, how about the language of ‘worst case scenario’? We tend to run and hide from those. Even allowing ourselves to sit with the possibility of a worst case scenario can be terrifying. We have gotten really good at covering up those options with distractions like food and shopping and sex and social time, but when it comes down to it, the things we spend our energy avoiding - the confrontations, the conflicts, the losses, the griefs - when we spend our energy running away from our fears, we give them power over how we spend our time and attention.

So when the confirmation students are talking about sin and death, by way of learning the ten commandments, remembering how impossible they are to keep, we’re talking about the real life fears and experiences of today: Telling a little white lie to cover up an insecurity; Getting something shiny and new on the cheap so we look good even though it keeps somebody else in poverty; Feeling left out of a relationship and finding other people and things to make us feel good about ourselves.  “I wish that I could be like the cool kids, ‘cause all the cool kids, they seem to fit in,” goes the song on the radio.

But today all of the ‘cool’ goes out the window. Today we are fighting against the darkness, running away from our fear, expecting and hating the inevitability of every worst case scenario we can imagine, and it has caught up with us. All of it has come crashing down around us, and there is absolutely no escape from it. Death has found us.

Thanks be to God that Jesus has found Death. Jesus has found Death and carried it and gone through it, just like we do and just like we will, and Jesus has turned it on its head. Because, now that Christ has died, Christ IS risen, Christ will come again, lo, and behold, Death is not the end of the story any more or ever again. The final enemy. The last great terror. The absolute worst case scenario to end all scenarios. It’s not the end. It’s not the great terror we expect it to be. Death has lost its sting, because Jesus has been there, done that, and lives to tell the tale.

There is an article I read lately about Christians and Muslims being persecuted in Myanmar. The Christians are seeing their crosses, once displayed on clock towers, hillsides, and churches, being taken down and destroyed. Sacred symbols being attacked. But just what is so powerful about those crosses? In the States they’re decorated and turned into jewelry for just about anybody. We’ve made them pretty. To consider what they stand for, though, we might as well make jewelry out of AK-47s, lynching nooses, or the electric chair. The ugliness of mass oppression and fear, right there in our artwork and on our children’s foreheads marked at Baptism. What’s the power? The power is that, in hanging these crosses up as signs of faith and triumph we are effectively announcing to the world that we are not afraid of dying. We are not frightened by the threat of death. The last great enemy, the biggest threat anyone can hold over us, the thing that is the last straw when it comes to threats and punishments, is now empty. There is no symbol more evocative of that freedom than a Christian carrying their own cross. It’s as if we say to the powers ‘go ahead and try to disempower me, but even if you kill me, that is not the end.’ 

This is the symbol that emboldened millions of Christians to become martyrs for the faith, knowing that the kingdom of heaven is worth far more than we can measure, and that, if we die in service to God, we are not dead forever. Oscar Romero was shot while celebrating the Eucharist, because he preached liberation in a time of persecution. His faith led him in his work, and his death was not the end of that greater work, and he was not afraid to die. Martin Luther King, Jr., preached a freedom taught to him by faith, continuing the challenge to Christian community to be fully realized in this world, and that work continues, because his death was not the end. 

Nor is our death our end, brothers and sisters. No matter when death comes and interrupts our lives, whatever sort of death it may be, we can sit with the pain, and the grief, and the fear, we can even be overwhelmed by doubt and despair, and it will not be the end of all things. For every death there is a resurrection. This is why we celebrate today. This is what we celebrate today. This is the truth of today, the truth that is bigger and deeper than all of our worst case scenarios.

And it’s bigger, and deeper, and more lasting than any ‘happily ever afters,’ too. It is so much more than comfort or the end of illness. Those things are passing. It’s more than happiness, that’s too fleeting. This resurrection which claims us is much more solid and real than any of our fears, because Jesus Christ himself has been to all of those darkest of dark places, and has emerged again alive. Jesus Christ himself has been through the worst case scenario, and has died, and has begun to decompose, and has been re-invigorated. Jesus Christ himself has seen death and hell, has walked those roads of weariness and has risen victorious - for your sake.

It can be downright annoying at best, terrifying at best, to have death interrupted by life. Over and over again, when we gather around the Word and the Sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist, life interrupts death and we rehearse what vision we have been given, of the coming kingdom present among us. No wonder the women were amazed and fled from the tomb speechless - this sort of thing just didn’t happen. Just doesn’t happen. Does it? Can it? Did God really just carry death and life and all of our pain and anger and fear, and come forth with forgiveness and love and life eternal for the whole of the world?

Christ is risen! Alleluia! Alleluia!

Christ is risen, indeed. Alleluia! Alleluia!

Gospel of John, chapters 18-19

The Gospel reading for Good Friday comes from John's account, chapters 18 and 19. This is not the end of the Story, though it may look like it. But we sit with it today, and bring to it all of our own sorrow and sinfulness, the complacency and intentional hurt we bear and cause. We pray a bidding prayer. We venerate the cross ("behold the life-giving cross, on which was hung the savior of the world, o come, let us worship") and hear the solemn reproaches. We watch, and we wait, and we hold this space. Holy God, holy and mighty, holy and immortal, have mercy on us.

Maundy Thursday 2015

Exodus 12:1-14

The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, “This month shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you. Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers’ houses, a lamb for a household. And if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons; according to what each can eat you shall make your count for the lamb. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats, and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight. Then 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 flesh that night, roasted on the fire; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted, its head with its legs and its inner parts. And you shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. In this manner you shall eat it: with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste. It is the LORD’s Passover. For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and 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 are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt. This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the LORD; throughout your generations, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast.

Psalm 116

I love the LORD because he has heard my voice and my pleas for mercy. Because he inclined his ear to me, therefore I will call on him as long as I live. The snares of death encompassed me; the lands of Sheol laid hold on me; I suffered distress and anguish. Then I called on the name of the LORD: “O LORD, I pray, deliver my soul!” Gracious is the LORD, and righteous; our God is merciful. The LORD preserves the simple; when I was brought low, he saved me. Return, O my soul, to your rest; for the LORD has dealt bountifully with you. For you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling; I will walk before the LORD in the land of the living. I believed, even when I spoke: “I am greatly afflicted”; I said in my alarm, “All mankind are liars.” What shall I render to the LORD for all his benefits to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the LORD, I will pay my vows to the LORD in the presence of all his people. Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints. O LORD, I am your servant; I am your servant, the son of your maidservant. You have loosed my bonds. I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving and call on the name of the LORD. I will pay my vows to the LORD in the presence of all his people, in the courts of the house of the LORD, in your midst, O Jerusalem. Praise the LORD!

1 Corinthians 11:23-26

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also he took the cup, 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, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

John 13:1-17; 31b-35

Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, do you wash my feet?” Jesus answered him, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.” Peter said to him, “You shall never wash my feet.” Jesus answered him, “If I do not 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, “The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not every one of you.” For he knew who was to betray him; that was why he said, “Not all of you are clean.” When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, “Do you understand what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should so just as I have done to you. Truly, truly I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.”… When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and glorify him at once. Little children, yet a little while I am with you. You will seek me, and just as I said to the Jews, so now I also say to you, ‘Where I am going you cannot come.’ A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Reflection:

“On the night when he was betrayed…” This phrase is familiar to us, but how often do we stop to think about what it means? Did he know he was going to be betrayed and feed and wash and love anyhow? Or is this line here because, even after all that he did, and gave, and taught, he was still betrayed, and we just can’t wrap our heads around that? As with any good story, we can tell from the way Jesus has been portrayed that, even if he had known this betrayal was coming, he would have fed, and washed, and loved all of those gathered with him, anyhow. He knew these people gathered at the table with him. He had gathered them as his disciples in the first place, from all sorts of lifestyles and preoccupations. He had walked with them, gotten frustrated with them, shared confidences with them, laughed with them, and “having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” This is the tie-in, the connecting point, the key to the Meal and the movement we call Christianity: “Having loved his own who were in the world, Jesus loves us to the end.” This is a story of love strong enough to die. Stronger than death, but strong enough to die in the first place, to give and feed and wash and pray and love up to the last breath and on through the next first breath.

So comes the next question from Jesus, after he has washed the dirty feet of those who have walked with him: “Do you know what I have done to you?” We hear the questions about ‘what has Jesus done for you,’ or ‘what have you done for Jesus, lately?’ But this is a different question: “Do you know what I have done to you?’ What has Jesus done to us? What does a stream do to the rocks it flows over? What does the sun do to the earth? What does love do to us when it is unceasing, never ending, loving all the way to and through the end?

Never Forget

Mark 14:1-15:47

Isaiah 50:4-9a

Psalm 31:9-16

Philippians 2:5-11

We’re continuing our theme of “PRAYING” today, with the second to last letter, “N,” reminding us this morning to “Never forget.” When the theme was being put together, this seemed to be an obvious phrase to fit the day. What do you think of when you hear it? “Never forget.” After just over a year living here, marching in the Memorial Day parade and going to the firefighter’s dinner, praying only a month ago at the funeral of a veteran of war where the national flag was offered in thanks for the man’s sacrifice for this country, I know that “never forget” is a phrase which brings to my mind images of the Wounded Warrior Project, or that Prisoners of War flag, black and white and solemn. Sad eyed children left orphaned by war. Wreckage of towns and villages after bombs have been dropped. Shadows of people left burned on the walls in Hiroshima. Amputees, suicidal soldiers, violent spasms of PTSD, which we used to call ‘shell shock’ and ‘battle fatigue.’ Well, I can tell you I am fatigued by the battle, and I’ve never put on a soldier’s uniform. But in High School I played taps for the funeral of a Marine who died while in training, and the both of us were just kids. And, yes, living on the south side of Chicago as long as I did felt a bit like a warzone at times, the stories of kids shot on their way to or from school just as collateral damage to someone else’s anger or anxiety or hysteria or fear. Those stories don’t reach very far, aren’t told very often, not if there isn’t a personal connection to them. They’re too common. They happen almost every day. Soldiers and children dying and killing, parents weeping… never forget.

We’ve had a long and arduous journey in today’s reading, so I’ll keep this short and to the point: we’ve made an entire day to glorify and celebrate this one particular death among hundreds of thousands, only because it is God who is on this cross. The way Jesus died was nothing special, hardly out of the ordinary. Loads of people are publicly and privately thrown away like so much garbage every day. It can be overwhelming to think about it all, and draining, too. There’s this thing called ‘compassion fatigue’ that happens when folks get pulled in too many directions, trying to help too many causes, and just run out of steam. Why try and do anything about it? The cycle of violence has been spinning since Cain killed his brother Abel. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” he asked God. I imagine God weeping, “Yes.” Of course you are. If you’re not, who is? The creation story tells us that from the beginning, the very first thing God said was *not* good was that it was not good for a person to be alone, and so, from the rib of Adam, God created Eve to be a helper. And it was *very* good, until their first children lost themselves to the system of sacrifices and earning favor from a God who already loved them.

See, we’ve gotten to the point where we think ‘sin’ is something we choose to do, willfully. Should I steal that DVD? No. But even if I buy it, will the person at Wal*Mart who sold it to me profit enough to eat a decent meal tonight? Should I feed every hungry person who comes to my door? Sure, why not? But even if I have the resources to do that, what about the world we have made keeps people hungry in the first place? We’ve been talking in Confirmation class about the ten commandments, and how hard, no, how impossible, it is to truly keep them. Even if we’re just talking about the letter of the law, and not even the spirit behind it, we can not by our own strength or will keep the law of God. We can not by our own strength or will make the world better. We can not fix the world by stopping one crime or another, by making more laws. It’s been a lifetime since the Civil Rights Act, and we know you can not legislate a change of heart. Sin is not a choice, it is a hereditary virus, and we all suffer from it, because we are all one humanity.

It is this one, terribly fallen, reality, that God has stepped into, has taken on, has come to redeem. You know the word ‘redeem,’ yes? When you get a code on those little cards at Starbucks you can redeem them for a free song online. Or redeem points from your Discover card to get cheaper plane tickets. Or redeem an entire life traded for another entire life. Trade over one’s position and power and riches to enter the depravity and bloody mess of the day-to-day lives of those very people who would thoughtlessly steal your life from you if you hadn’t already gladly and willingly laid it down. That’s one way to look at it, anyway. Jesus could have argued his way out of this very ordinary sort of death, died a hero in the midst of battle, even, but he didn’t do that. There was no worldly glory in just another systematic murder of an innocent person to make a political point. These sorts of things happen every day, never make the news unless we suddenly care about the one or two famous people who spoke up in a sound bite and then disappeared again.

Today is about Jesus. Today is also about us. Our world. Our habits of destruction and how stuck we are taking care of our own without knowing or caring that we are all one anothers’ keepers. We would not have cared about any other crucifixion, lynching, or gas chamber, if it did not involve someone who promised to give us something. Granted, Jesus came riding in on that donkey with a great kingly procession, seeming to promise a new way of living, but it wasn’t what we thought we needed, so we threw him to the dogs, not realizing we ourselves were the dogs.

Because, and I can’t stress this enough, we are not separate one from another. We can not claim to be so different that we would never get depressed and fly a plane into a mountain, or get angry and desperate and destroy property or another person, or so prideful that we would shun those who have been living with less housing or hygiene than we find acceptable. This is the great sin, after all, the great rending of the world that Jesus comes to heal. We are not alone by ourselves in our suffering, nor is anyone else’s suffering separate from us. Not even on the level of cause and effect, but on the level of basic humanity. Black or white, male or female or transgender, rich or poor, Republican or Democrat or Independent, American or Iranian or Palestinian or Australian… Who is welcome at God’s table? Everyone. Hunger knows no distinction. Thirst is basic to survival.

Today is about Jesus, giving himself into the mundane violence of our world, bleeding his life back into our weariness, restoring us from the depths of life and death, his own life and death, so that for every one of our deaths there is now the promise of resurrection. The sure and certain promise of it. No need to prove our losses are more worthy, no need to show the higher value of our needs over anyone else’s, no need to offer sacrifices any more to win God’s favor. God’s love and justice rain down upon us in the very moment that we are rejecting it. God’s peace and grace walks among us even while we clamor for saving. God’s forgiveness and mercy are broken open upon us on the cross, which Jesus took up willingly and out of love for us. That’s what we’re about today. It’s about Jesus, and it’s about us, because at the root it’s about the love Jesus has for us, and the lengths to which that love goes to reclaim and restore us.

We can not turn away from the suffering of the world, because it is our world. God never turns away from our suffering, because it is God’s own good creation. Never forget, it is God’s world, God’s love, God’s perfect gift, given and shed for you.

Intercede

Jeremiah 31:31-34 (JPS translation)

The days are surely coming, declares I AM, when I will cut a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt - a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. But such is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says I AM: I will give my Torah into their innermost being, and I will inscribe it upon their hearts. Then I will be their Elohim, and they shall be my people. No longer will they need to teach one another, or say to each other, “Heed I AM,” for all of them, from the least of them to the greatest, shall heed me, declares I AM; for I will forgive their iniquities, and remember their sins no more.

Hebrews 5:5-10 (ESV - with some additional Greek work)

So also Christ did not exalt himself to be made a high priest, but was appointed by the one who said to him, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you”; as he says also in another place, “You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.” In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up urgent prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through his passionate suffering; and having been perfected, he became the author of eternal salvation for all who obey him, having been called by God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.

John 12:20-33 (ESV - with some additional Greek work)

Now there were some Greeks among those who went up to worship at the festival. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and inquired of him, saying, “Sir, we wish to discover Jesus.” Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of humanity to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a solitary grain; but if it dies, it brings forth much fruit. Those who long to embrace their soul lose it, and those who are indifferent to their soul in this world will keep it for eternal fullness of life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor. Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say - ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. Now is the crisis of this cosmos; now the ruler of this cosmos will be thrown out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.

*****

Intercessory prayer. It’s what we call asking on behalf of someone else. There are all sorts of fancy church words we use for prayer. A petition is asking for something in general. Thanksgiving is self-explanatory. So is prayer of praise. Eucharistic prayer is another fancy word for thanksgiving. Confession is a type of prayer. Contemplation is a prayer which can be without words or centering on just one word of phrase, as we listened a couple of weeks ago for a word from the text to pray with in the ‘lectio divina’-style listening prayer. But intercession is one of those mediation-type words. “Inter”- as in “between.” “Cede” - as in yield or surrender. Together they make the word “Intercede.” To stand between one here and one here and surrender one’s self to better the communication between the two. At least, that’s the image I get with it. I just saw an old Star Trek episode to this effect, actually, with a deaf mediator who was famous for brokering cease-fires between fighting peoples. He had different ways of paying attention and the people he helped to communicate had to learn to communicate differently to work their problems out. It was a beautiful episode, one of the JeanLuc Picard ones.

What does Star Trek - The Next Generation - have to do with today’s texts? And with this morning’s theme “Intercede”? Well, let’s go way back to the First Testament, to the character of Melchizedek. It’s a Hebrew name meaning king of righteousness. And this king was not a king, but a priest. One who’s primary function was to intercede between God and the people. Like Moses did in the wilderness when the people got scared of that great fiery mountain where God got close and bright and set forth those ten commandments we’re learning about in Confirmation class. Again, for tips on understanding those, please feel free to strike up a conversation with our confirmand, or find Liz at the Bagel Cafe and ask her, since she’s one of our mentors. We Protestants have a long standing argument, inaccurate though it may be, that we don’t need a priest to speak to God for us, since we can approach God ourselves just fine, thanks. Not that we do so on a very regular basis, typically. It tends to be times of extreme grief or anger or want, primarily, when we come to God asking for help or a miracle or an explanation. Which might be why Holy Week is one of my favorite weeks for prayer, since I’m always asking for strength to figure out all of those additional worship services, which I adore. Being in those tight spots, for me, anyway, is where my prayer tends to be most fervent. Well, almost. Typically I try to do the bootstraps thing as long as I can, which isn’t very faithful. When I really get into prayer is when I know someone is hurting or in need and there isn’t a single other thing I can do about it. I know and love quite a few people with mental illness, for example, and when they hit their lows, with anxiety or depression, I hit my knees. Praying with and for people is one of the best parts of my calling as a Pastor, and yet it isn’t specific to being a pastor, it’s open to everyone. Every type of prayer is open to us. Confession, praise, thanksgiving, intercession, contemplation, are all simply expressions of our thoughts and feelings, fears and hopes, recognitions and regrets.

But this isn’t a primer on how to pray. What I want to get at is the reason we pray for each other. Though if there is anyone you care about like a child or a parent or a best friend, you know what it is like to pray for them when they are in need. The love and anguish that’s there when the only thing you can do is to pray. Imagine spending a lifetime in that kind of prayer for everyone you meet! Spending a lifetime in that kind of prayer for the whole of the world.

Melchizedek, as a priest, got to do something very like that. Making sacrifices from the people to the God they sought to understand, and speaking to the people on behalf of the God who sought to understand why in God’s name they kept hurting themselves and one another? Melchizedek was the first in a long line of priests. Remembering that role of the priests to intercede, to be the go-between for a holy God and a confused and wandering people, the author of the letter to the Hebrews reminds us that Jesus came to do that, too. To intercede for us. To be the go-between, except he did so by being both God and Human. Not quite sure how that works, exactly, but there are lots of theories and theologies built up around it, that I won’t go into now. We just trust that Jesus is both truly human and God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God.

So this is how the rest of that Gospel from today works: Jesus, who shows God to us and shows us to God, in that he intercedes for us, mediates between us, is reaching out to his own people, teaching them through the lens of their shared faith (because, yes, Jesus is a Jew), and suddenly these Greeks show up, these outsiders. It may not seem like a big thing, but the fact that word has spread as the people of God continue as a light to the nations, this cinches the deal for Jesus and he knows it is time to fully embody his glory. To glorify the name of the God who he is, to prove his reputation for healing and teaching and welcoming is not just idle tales, to really go the distance and give it his all. The ultimate intercession, Jesus is betrayed, beaten, and crucified, all the while praying through, and lifting up our pain in, his passion. Constantly connected God to Humanity, Jesus speaks of us to God and speaks of God to us in his healings, his teachings, his hospitality, and even in his brutal experience of betrayal and death, which is common to all of life. Life is so beautiful, so fragile, so temperamental, that it seems we only just get used to it, figure out how to do it, if we are so lucky, when it is depleted and gone. What betrayal of our bodies to give out on us just when we’ve started to enjoy living in them.

What betrayal of our hearts, to be broken open by the pain and suffering just when we’ve walled them off so they cannot be touched by hurt and loss any more.

But Jesus intercedes for us. Jesus puts the broken pieces of our relationship with God, and with ourselves, back together. Jesus prays us through his passion, prays God through his suffering, prays healing and new life and resurrection through his death.

And he continues this work, this Interceding, to the point that soon we won’t require reminders of God’s faithfulness because it will be written on our hearts, it will be his blood mingled in with our blood, just as we will ingest his Body and Blood at this Table today. For everything that separates us from our Beloved, all that seeks to get between God and we who God calls Beloved, is utterly dissolved in the power of the suffering passion of the God/Man on the cross. All those sins and shames which we carry in our hearts will have to give way to the love and forgiveness and perfect wholeness of our Creator who created us in the beginning and called us good. All of the hurt we hurt others with will be seen in the light of that love, and the work of reconciliation and forgiveness will be completed so fully that we will know in our deepest depths, to the glory of God, with what love God has loved us, so high and deep and wide and broad. 

Intercession is sort of like the work of piecing together two pieces of cloth. Sewing, or knitting, until there isn’t even a seam any more, but only one piece, one cloth, in that expert way only the original weaver can make it whole again. The intercession of our Lord, Jesus Christ, has brought us together like that, with God, and it is for this hour that Christ has come into the world, to be God’s name written our our hearts, as God already has our name written on God’s own heart.

Mid-week Lenten series on Parables: Receive Grace

"Receive Grace" Matthew 20:1-16

For the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And going out about the third hour he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and to them he said, ‘You go into the vineyard too, and whatever is right I will give you.’ So they went. Going out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour, he did the same. And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing. And he said to them, ‘Why do you stand here idle/barren (αργος)  all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You go into the vineyard too.’ And when evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last, up to the first.’ And when those hired about the eleventh hour came, each of them received a denarius. Now when those hired first came, they though they would receive more, but each of them also received a denarius. And on receiving it they grumbled at the master of the house, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, ‘Dude, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you have an evil eye toward my generosity?’ So the last will be first, and the first last.”

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Receive grace.

This morning, about 5:30 am, I was grumbling to myself in the walk-in freezer of the back room at Target. I love my second job, and the chance to have my feet, my mind, my time, in two rather different kinds of work, but there are days when my second job is just downright annoying. Any day I have to spend more than four minutes in that ridiculous freezer, for example. Those are moments when I just get angry at the world! My fingers hurt from the cold, it is a very rare day when the floor is not full of boxes of backstock that hasn’t been put away properly, and I know, I know, one of my co-workers has mastered the art of avoiding the morning work in the freezer. Sure, sometimes he works in there, but he’s really good at standing around and looking at his hand-held computer or moving on to the next task so that somebody else gets stuck pulling on the extra coat and hat and gloves to stand around in the cold and scan boxes of frozen pizza and pints of ice cream for twenty minutes.

Ok, I’ve gotten pretty good at avoiding this particular job, too. In much the same way that he has. I’ll admit it’s become sort of a competition for who can do everything else except the freezer, albeit an unspoken competition. And there I was, in the freezer this morning, thinking about tonight’s Gospel reading. They should really pay us more if we’re going to get stuck in that freezer. At least it would encourage us to feel a bit better about going in there. But, nooooo. Stay nice and warm or freeze your face off, you still get the same $9.25 an hour.

So I can understand where these first comers are coming from when they moan and complain that the workers who came at the eleventh hour got just the same pay for what looked like easier work.

Then again, there are many ways in which I am the latecomer. In my particular Lutheran church, which has been a denomination historically for just a little longer than I have been alive, women have only been Ordained for just over thirty years. It’s only been since 2009 that my particular Lutheran denomination has been Ordaining members of the LGBTQ community without requiring celibacy. There were a LOT of conversations and arguments and Scriptural references thrown back and forth and families and parishes split over each of these decisions. Even the split in the Missouri-Synod Lutheran Church which laid the groundwork for the ELCA, back in the 1970’s, which was a huge movement, a few of whose eyewitnesses I’ve been able to meet, seems like a lifetime ago and an entirely different reality. I’ve not had to bear the brunt of that battle. Someone else fought that fight for me before I ever showed up on the scene. Not that they actually fought it for me, per se. They fought it for what it stood for, for the sake of the work itself, the right-ness of making the changes they saw they had to make to be faithful to the Gospel as they knew it.

Like most of us, then, probably all of us, I’ve worked harder than some and benefited from the hard work of many, many others. And what stands out to me most often isn’t the great gift I’ve received, no, it’s the fact that my face and fingers were freezing this morning for a good ten minutes before it was even six o’clock in the morning.

Why is it so much easier to see where we feel we have been slighted? To want the world to be fair when it most benefits us, and not worry about fairness when we’re doing just fine? Granted, if the world were fair it would be a far different place. And if God were fair, we’d all be doomed.

Seriously. If God held us to the standard of Jesus, made us accountable to every time we fail to live up to those two most basic laws of loving God and loving each other, there is no way on earth we’d have the slightest hope of heaven.

But the kingdom of heaven, Jesus reminds us, is not fair. It is not about checks and balances and making us pay for every wrong we have ever committed or ever right we have failed to do. It is, rather, about grace.

I gather two main things about God from this parable, about God: God gives what is right. When God gives what is right, we are all valued equally.

Then of course is the obvious thing about people: We want to earn reward and be recognized as better than our peers.

These things are in a bit of conflict, wouldn’t you say? 

Go figure, there is conflict between God and God’s people.

But conflict is where we grow. Conflict is how we learn. Conflict is not the end of the relationship. When we conflict with God, when God rubs us the wrong way, it is an investment in the relationship. If there was no conflict, there would be no engagement, no chance to deepen the ties that bind us together.

The master of the house speaks directly with the one who disagrees with him.

Thus, conflict with God is how we receive mercy. A lesser God would smite us all. Or dismiss us all. Or smite us all. This God is in relationship with us, searching us out in the marketplace throughout the day, granting us our daily bread regardless of our ideas of deserving, and engaging with us even when we pray only to complain or make demands.

The big complaint that the first workers make about the way those who came to the vineyard at the eleventh hour were paid, was that by the payment received, the master of the house had made them all equal, regardless of the work that had been done. They should have seen it coming when the master of the house told that second shift they would be paid whatever was right. Because in the kingdom of heaven, what is right is that all are welcome, all are valued, all receive grace and mercy and forgiveness, no matter when they showed up or where they came from.

It is a sad day when someone has a deathbed conversion, and the cradle Christians complain about having grown up following the rules, while the late convert got to have some fun at least before they died. As though the life of a Christian is all drudgery and so little joy. Or as though there is no real meaning to the hard work we are called to do.

The kingdom of heaven is where all are invited to bring forth life from the earth, to gather in the harvest, and where all are given enough resources for each day. Give us this day our daily bread, we are taught to pray. Not give us this day the bread according to how many hours we spend pounding the pavement and blistering under the sun. Not give us this day bread to eat in front of the hungry poor because they didn’t earn it the way we did. Give us all this day the bread we need for the day, because the bread comes of the free gift of God’s good earth and rain and rich soil. Give us this day our daily bread because everyone is mortal and everyone relies on life outside of ourselves to live.

If there are some who have not yet joined the work in the vineyard, the master of the house returns to market, hour after hour, to gather in more who can be part of this kingdom. Hour after hour seeking those who thus far have been unable to produce a harvest on their own. Hour after hour, God comes after us, with the gifts of grace and mercy and forgiveness, that we might not only be part of God’s harvesting labor in the vineyard, but that we might all know the same dignity regardless of the hours we put in. Regardless of what others think we are worth, God alone knows our true worth, and God who has called us to the vineyard, who has brought us in by the witness of the saints and the Scriptures and the Spirit, keeps coming after us, hour after hour, to give us what we need, regardless of what we say we deserve.

So we work. We work and we pray. We work and we pray and we give freely even as life has freely been given to us. And no matter who we are or where we came from or how long it takes us to get into those vineyards, God does not withhold the love and the grace that we need. Because the master of the house is fair and righteous according to the law of grace, by which we have been saved.

Why are we in this wilderness?

Numbers 21:4-9

They set out from Mount Hor by way of the Sea of Reeds to skirt the land of Edom. But the people grew restive on the journey, and the people spoke against Elohim and against Moses, “Why did you make us leave Egypt to die in the wilderness? There is no bread and no water, and we have come to loathe this miserable food.” And I AM sent firey serpents against the people. They bit the people and many of the Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, “We sinned by speaking against I AM and against you. Intercede with I AM to take away the serpents from us!” And Moses interceded for the people. Then I AM said to Moses, “Make a firey serpent figure and mount it on a pole. And if anyone who is bitten looks at it, they shall recover.” Moses made a bronze serpent and mounted it on a pole; and when anyone was bitten by a serpent, they would look at the bronze serpent and recover.

Ephesians 2:1-10

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the children of disobedience - among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of humanity. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which God loves us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved - and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

John 3:14-21

“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Humanity be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the cosmos that God gave the only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the cosmos to damn the cosmos, but in order that the cosmos might be made whole through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe in condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest their works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their works have been carried out in God.”

Why are we here? Why are we in the wilderness? Why are we in Chatham? Why are we in Lent? Why do we exist!?

Maybe a lot of questions for early in the morning. Or a lot of questions for any time of day. And it’s a big question, generally speaking. So perhaps we can take it in small bites, no pun intended. I mean, ‘small bites,’ and the first reading was about people getting bitten by snakes. See? Puns. They can be useful. 

Why we are in the wilderness has a lot to do with why we are in the season of Lent. That’s an easy one. The calendar takes us through this season every year. Old habits die hard. Even when those old habits are unhealthy. I’m not saying Lent isn’t healthy. Lent, in fact, is incredibly healthy, and we follow this calendar in the church year after year to form us into a more whole people. I’m saying that the wilderness people, in this morning's reading, were stuck in their old habits and wanted them back, even though those old habits included being owned and abused as slaves. In that first reading this morning, the first testament, first recorded history of God’s relationship with God’s people, we were led out of slavery into freedom, for the first time of many, on the road to the great promised land - and even though we had spent lifetimes dreaming and hoping for freedom it was pretty scary to get there. Habits are like that, when they’re broken. This far into Lent, if you’ve been trying to give up something like chocolate or dirty jokes or having that one extra drink after work, it’s probably getting pretty rough, especially if those were things you just sort of did without thinking. Habits. 

But Lent is about breaking habits - out of thoughtlessness and into awareness of who we are and how we are who we are - so it takes us out of our comfort zone, so we have to confront what we have been taking for granted. It’s great. It’s like sending the kids to camp so they can try new things and learn about their strengths and fears, and it’s for everybody, because we’re always in the process of learning more about our own strengths and fears, no matter what age we happen to be at the moment. Moses takes the people out of their abusive environment and on into a healthier freedom, and while it’s the best thing for them all they still crave that familiar pain and agony and bondage. They still crave the thing that was killing them, because, as the saying goes, ‘better the devil you know than the devil you don’t,’ right?

When I was a kid, my mother used to smoke. I don’t know how much or how often, really. By the time I was four or five I had gone through so many ear infections, from all of that second-hand smoke, that my mom quit smoking, cold turkey. She had picked it up in college, so it was easier to give up than if she’d started as a teen. Mom knew it was terrible for her own health, even though it fed her craving and kept her skinny, which helped her feel sexy. You know how it is. In any case, she ought to have quit for her own health, but she didn’t quit that habit for the sake of her own heart and lungs. She quit smoking because her firstborn was in pain. All of that to say that sometimes we end up in a wilderness of learning new ways to live because of other people in our lives. Sometimes it’s because we see and know in ourselves that we have to change something for our own sake. 

We are in the wilderness of Lent because it’s good to look at where we are, and where we are going, and where we would like to go, and where God might be leading us, and where we are cooperating with or fighting against God. Are we trying to grow our church? Are we trying to grow our faith? Are we impatient and discontented and wondering what we should be doing with our time that might give us joy? Are we angry, frightened, sick, tired, and unable to say why? Are we on auto-pilot and missing the view entirely? Are we even a ‘we,’ or are we just a collection of individuals all isolated one from another?

This is why we are in the wilderness. God is calling us, leading us, carrying us out of slavery into freedom, over and over again as we make slow progress in our faith journeys. Like the kids at camp, we are in Lent to discover what God can do with us and where we might face our fears together. There are healthy, good gifts we have been given to carry forward, and there are less-than-healthy practices which need to be set down and left behind. What are they? Only time with God will tell. And sometimes God forces out those things we need to drop, and often we whine and complain and want them back even if they were killing us. So God makes us look at them. God puts them up on a billboard in our midst and shows them to us as they are, shows us our sin as it is, shows us our pain in a way we cannot hide from, by carrying it in his own body and telling us the story again and again, year after year, of love come among us and murdered by us, only to come again to love us beyond death.

For love did not come into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. This being saved, this being made whole, is not an easy process, but it is completed in Christ, it is begun in Christ, it is shown in the love of Christ living and dying and rising among us. We may not know what it is like to be loved as deeply and as completely as God loves us. We may fight being known that completely, being loved that completely. We may try to hide behind works and words and rebellions and making ourselves important, but in the wilderness there is no place to hide. In the wilderness there is sand and sun and there are other travelers and there is the journey itself. We are in Lent to strip away all those things by which we would save ourselves, to look honestly at the things by which we are destroying ourselves, and to be met, time and again, by God walking among us to make the whole of us whole. This love leaves no one out, none of the whole infinite cosmos.

This is why we are here. To be loved. From this love we love others with the love with which God loves us, which is why we are here in Chatham. But first and foremost, primarily, most importantly, we are here to be loved. Openly, honestly, in all of our naked beauty and struggle, we are loved. You are loved. Look upon our failure to love and know that even then, even when we nail love to a tree to die, that love continues to love us all and for always.