Life Eternal in a Time of War

Acts 17:22-31

1 Peter 3:13-22

John 14:15-21

Jesus promised “I will not leave you orphaned.” This Memorial Day weekend we remember too many who have been made orphans by war, too many who have felt alone in the trenches of war, too many who have returned from the front to feel orphaned by a government which can not offer housing and security to each and every veteran no matter how hard it tries. When war erupts, it leaves orphans on every side.

Memorial Day may be a formalized holiday now, but decorating the graves of the war dead has been a tradition long observed by people throughout history and across the world. Whether soldiers and civilians have willingly sacrificed their lives or had them taken by acts of violence, those of us who have so far survived spend much of our remembering trying to make sense of the loss, to make noble and honorable whatever cause our people have died for. Because war is ...divisive, to put it gently... the battles themselves can be remembered in many different ways. We’ve got all sorts of films and books about Vietnam, the World Wars, historical reenactments of the Civil and Revolutionary wars, to try and wrap our minds around what would move people to such violence, hatred, and fear, or to celebrate victories and study strategies for future engagements. We even have a whole genre of young adult novels that are hugely popular, around a future world of war and destruction, be it one where Hunger Games keep the people in line or one where social genetic experiments toward forcing people into peace create a strain of people called Divergent. 

When we fight and divide ourselves, fear and stereotype, bless the Spanish Inquisition and Crusades, lock away the Japanese Americans or shame German Americans out of their first language, beat the peaceful Sikhs because they wear turbans, we create even more orphans. Splitting people away from their roots, separating families on either side of a dividing wall like that in Berlin or Palestine, and then creating that one impenetrable barrier between us by killing one another, the whole human family is made less for our fighting. The ideals we strive for may be higher than ourselves, we may see no other way around current events but what seems a lesser of two evils, but if there ever was a clearer indication than war of how far humanity has fallen, I don’t know what it is. How can we keep doing this to each other?

I think that’s the point of Memorial Day, isn’t it? That we’ve had enough of death. That we’ve seen too many fall. That we are desperate for peace and have buried too many of our sons and daughters, aunts and uncles, fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers, friends and neighbors. Yet even on Memorial Day soldiers and civilians are being killed somewhere in some war or another. Even in those wars we have stopped talking about: the war on drugs, the war on poverty, the war on hunger. Not every war kills with guns and grenades.

And it is into the middle of all of these wars, smack dab into the heart and the hurt of all of this world, that God has come, in the flesh, to live and die and live again. And did you hear what Jesus said after he promised not to leave us orphaned? “Because I live forever, you also will live forever.” I know it doesn’t say ‘forever’ in your bulletins, just “because I live you also will live,” but it’s the Greek, trust me on this one, the Greek word “Zoe” is more than simple biological life, it’s the life-force of God which gives life to all that lives. It’s bigger than whether or not you’re breathing.

It’s the life we are promised. It’s the promise Jesus makes just after washing the disciples’ feet and hours before he is handed over to be killed. He makes these promises, of eternal life and of eternal family, knowing that his disciples are about to watch him be betrayed and killed very publicly. He makes these promises knowing his disciples will scatter in fear and take some convincing after his resurrection. He makes these promises to offer a sure and certain hope and encouragement for the days and weeks and lifetimes ahead.

He makes these promises for you and I and all of those who have lived and died in times of war. Because Jesus has not left us as orphans. There is not a child on this earth who has not been loved by Jesus. Even when orphaned or unwanted by other people, every child is loved and known by Jesus, no matter how old or how bruised by war. 

And it is this love, this security of belonging to God’s own family, which frees us up to live as Christ’s own in this world, to live reflecting his commandment to love one another, to live in a true and deep down sort of freedom that is bigger than even our love of country and the freedoms professed in the ideals of our constitution. Because the promised Advocate, the Holy Spirit, who we will be carried by and challenged by and encouraged by for all of our days, is so much bigger and reaches farther than our own limits of imagination. For when we feel stuck in a life or death situation, the Advocate takes us through death and on into life. When we feel destruction is the only option, the Advocate brings forth new growth out of the rubble, new possibility in places of despair, new hope where before there had only been fear.

This Memorial Day weekend, we grieve the dead and recommit ourselves to rebuilding a broken world in the love which has given us life eternal, which has called us God’s own children. And we do it not to make our nation greater, but to remind the world of the love of God which knows no nationality, the love of God which sings in every language of the world, the love of God which cradles every orphan and upholds every widow and unites us in a family so big there is no corner of the world it does not embrace.

No, Jesus does not leave us orphans. God is so close, that it is in him that we live and move and have our being. Thanks be to God.

Resurrection and Forgiveness

Acts 7:55-60

1 Peter 2:2-10

John 14:1-14

What else could Stephen have asked for in Jesus’ name if not to forgive those who stoned him? To act in someone’s name is to behave according to their character - in the name of the King someone would issue decrees and collect taxes, proclaim war or declare peace, so that in the age before the internet people nearby and far off could know what was on the King’s mind and how this King ruled the kingdom. So when Stephen was dying, his last request was most true to the legacy of Jesus, basically verbatim the same request Jesus made of God when he himself was being crucified: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” If you’re going to ask for anything in Jesus’ name, according to the character of Jesus and in line with his way of living, it would be to ask for forgiveness.

But it’s so hard, isn’t it? To ask forgiveness for ourselves is hard, to admit a wrong we have done or left undone. It means admitting we were less than perfect, that we have somehow still not gotten everything right. Especially to own up to another person that we have done them wrong - you know the way kids hem and haw and avoid eye contact and make up stories when they know they’ve been caught and don’t want to admit they broke something or grabbed a cookie before dinner. You know the way public leaders backpedal when they’ve said something to make people angry, or voted one way but want to get re-elected by folks who vote another way. When it comes to asking forgiveness, we have a hard time. But then when another person sins against us it’s a whole different ballgame. We tend to want our money back. We take back our trust. We tend to want revenge. It’s not like getting back at someone would actually heal our hurt or restore what has been taken from us. We can’t get back the time or energy we spend on holding a grudge or blaming other people for our misfortune.

But we are connected to other people, and when we are hurt it can be hard to remember that. So we have before us two ways of living - retribution, defensiveness, and self-righteousness, on the one hand, and forgiveness, letting go, and resurrection, on the other. 

Our ways of living, of course, depend entirely on what we believe to be true. What sort of world we think we live in. What sort of power we think we have to change or maintain this world. Who we believe ourselves to be. Now, we can look around and see all sorts of stories about ourselves - that we are too fat or too thin, too weak or not tan enough, too poor or too socially awkward. That we need to be working all of the time because we need to have all the latest gadgets so we can download all the best apps and have the most exciting social life when we’re not working. That we have to fit a certain demographic to be successful, and that people on the outside of that demographic are threatening our place in it by looking for work or getting an education or moving into the neighborhood. We have lots of stories selling us newspapers and magazines and clothes and music and stuff that we could probably live just well enough without. And somewhere deep down we have bought into that core story that somehow we’re not yet good enough, somehow we haven’t gotten it together as we should, somehow if we just had a new car, a new phone, a new romance, we’d fill that space of wanting and be successful at last. But if we take these stories to be true, we can’t get back the time or energy we spend trying to be someone else’s picture of perfect.

And with all of this time and energy spent holding grudges and making ourselves perfect, how is there any time and energy left to spend on living? Where is the freedom to live fully and joyfully as God intended if we’re always afraid of being hurt and working our tails off to be the latest version of successful?

Well, this is where the rubber hits the road, then, isn’t it? We are a resurrection people. A people who follow a crucified and risen Savior the best we can. It starts at the core of that truth. The way to freedom, the life we are given. Forgiveness, honesty, new life.

Those last words of Jesus from the cross, those words that Stephen pondered, prayed, learned from his Lord and lived by, those words of faith are the marks of new life and resurrection. To have the trust to put your life and your death into God’s hands as Jesus did - “Into your hands, I commend my spirit.” And with that comfort, with knowing that death is not the end, pain is not the end, forgiveness is possible. They are wrapped up in each other, faith and forgiveness. They are each a reflection of the old adage to ‘let go and let God.’ To take God at his word that you are forgiven is a big step, a big gift we receive without having to earn it. Remember, before Stephen spoke his famous last words, Jesus prayed for our forgiveness. It is out of that gift that Stephen was able to ask forgiveness, to have compassion for his own killers. We have been given that same gift of Jesus, that same forgiveness when we sin by what we have done and by what we have left undone. So we can live by that truth, live in that way. What kind of world would we have if we lived like that? Can you imagine a world where we forgive as we have been forgiven, where we really all understood the gift we have been given and can live in that freedom?

Of course, I could leave it at that, with the question, with the challenge to live like Stephen, to make the world better. And it certainly is a challenge. Real forgiveness is hard, and it’s not the same thing as letting others abuse you or walk all over you. It takes work and change, it means naming the wrong and deciding together that the relationship is too important to let it die.

But it’s also a promise. Jesus has told us he is the way and the truth and the life. And we have seen what happens when we respond with ‘my way or the highway,’ with our own versions of the truth, and with clinging to life so tightly we suffocate and die. We resurrection people have seen what happens in places of pain and death. What happens is that Jesus breaks through our mess, and our muck, and our world of competition and striving. What happens is Jesus shatters our false and fragile systems of oppression to bring new life, to bring resurrection, to pave a new way, and shine the light of truth into our darkness of fear, and make us alive again. When we are able to forgive and be forgiven, when we are part of making the world a reflection of the resurrection, it is because Jesus is present and alive here among us. It is because God is working for us, repairing, restoring, re-creating us. One might even say it is God who is building us, like living stones, into the church this world so desperately needs.

Mother church's Day

Acts 2:42-47   They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved. 

1 Peter 2:19-25   For it is a credit to you if, being aware of God, you endure pain while suffering unjustly. If you endure when you are beaten for doing wrong, what credit is that? But if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps. “He committed no sin, and no deceit what found in his mouth.” When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.

John 10:1-10   Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.” Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them. So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly."

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I love the last verse of this Gospel reading. I rely on it for times of joy and sorrow, discernment and encouragement. Abundant life. The mission of Jesus summed up, right there. Jesus did not come that we might feel guilty for killing him with our sin. He did not come so that we might all look and sound the same. He did not come that we might be able to tell the difference between ‘the saved’ and ‘the heathen.’ He came that we might have life, and have it abundantly. As scripture says in Matthew’s Gospel “you shall know them by their fruit” - if abundant life isn’t there, maybe the tree isn’t rightly rooted in Christ. Maybe if abundant life isn’t the fruit of our labor we’re listening to the thief and the bandit and not to the shepherd.

I’ve just come from a week of abundant life among friends old and new at a conference bookended by two days in Chicago on my old campus. It was a very life-giving gathering, a holy enriching time, full to overflowing with both memory and possibility. We shared Eucharist, remembered our baptism, prayed with one another, sang and studied and walked the road together for a short while, all of us in different places before we had gathered. Some of our conference have been in parish ministry since before the ELCA policies allowed for full inclusion, and have had to struggle for the denomination to allow them to pastor the people who called them knowing who they are. Others are still in seminary, looking forward with hope and excitement to get to where I’ve gotten, and after being in that category of people for so long it still feels surreal that I’ve finally landed here among you all, so blessed to be here and learn together with you how we do this ministry thing. We all shared at that conference abundant life - both the joy and the sorrow, the excitement and the disappointment, the comfort and the discomfort.

Because abundant life is not simply joy and celebration. To be open to joy is to be open to sorrow. To be alive to excitement is to be vulnerable to pain. Abundant life is in that way a bit like today’s secular holiday - Mother’s Day. It is set aside to be a day of joy and celebration for all. For many it is a very happy holiday. But for many it is a day of shame and struggle and sadness. Infertility, abuse, mourning the death of a mother, loss of children to early death or to runaways, all these conflicting pains come up today, too. What must Nigerian mothers be feeling these days, I wonder, as their daughters have been kidnapped from school and still remain lost, maybe sold into forced marriages, maybe into prostitution.

But the life of Jesus holds all of our lives together - the comfort and the pain, the security and the confusion. When we are all called to the same flock by the same shepherd, we share all things in common. No matter how distance separates us. We carry each other in our prayers, in the Psalms and the liturgy and the lectionary and our daily living. One flock, one body, one community. As the people in the first church gathering shared together everything they had, that means they carried each other. It wasn’t just that they gave away what money they made selling their possessions for the sake of the community, they shared resurrection life, which meant being honest about where they had died. With glad and generous hearts they found a welcome in the shepherd’s flock and fold, and God added to their number every day those who were being saved.

Saved from what, I wonder? Saved from eternal damnation? I don’t think so. I think they were being actively saved from the constraints of their guilt and anxiety. Saved from the fears of not having anywhere to call home. Saved from the shame of not living up to expectations. Saved from the pressures to look and behave according to class and race and gender. All the people shared what they had, the rich and the poor, which meant that everyone was valued, everyone mattered, everyone had something to share. How many times have you felt not good enough to contribute to something? How many times have you convinced yourself your idea wasn’t good enough, or you didn’t have the skill to sing or paint or dance or follow your dream or even dream in the first place? But we have such amazing gifts among us that Christ alive has freed us to share. Evan played saxophone for us at Easter and it was the first time he’d ever played in front of anyone! Hank is working on fixing up a broken car. Doris is helping me learn how to pick hymns we can actually sing since we like so much to sing - and it seems that might be an uphill battle, but I’m learning with your help. We may have been taught to place different value judgments on different gifts, but they are all gifts for the whole, just as your very selves are all gifts for this whole community. Your sorrow and your joy. Your struggle and your celebration. 

This is where abundant life is found among us, when we are able to be fully alive together, in trust and faith that God’s love is big enough for all. This is why we have historically talked about the church as “Mother church.” In the perfect ideal sense of the word, the Spirit gives birth to faith in this community, nurtures and protects, challenges and grows us, all of us in the same family but just as diverse and differently skilled as siblings. For example, I have no idea how my kid sister and I are related. She is so much awesomer. But somehow we have the same parents. The same genetic line. And we drive our parents crazy in different ways, too. The thing that most connected us, though, was our dinners. Every night until we kids got jobs, the four of us, Mom and Dad and Margaret and I, sometimes a friend or two from school, sat down together at the supper table to share a meal and talk about our day.

It feels very weird not to have that now, especially as I am the same age my mother was when I was born. It feels very weird, but at the same time it hasn’t really changed, because this Table hasn’t changed. Mother church is fed by the Body of Christ when we gather for worship, sort of like my growing-up family supper grounded us each night. Just like we’ve been fed and nourished in the faith since the first days, when “they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”

People of God, Jesus came that we may have life, and have it abundantly. It is why he lived the way he lived. It is why he restored communities, welcoming the outcast, giving sight to the blind, embracing the leper, calling all of us our of isolation and into a deeper sharing of our selves. It is why he let us kill him and still came back to us to carry us into a life more wide open than we could yet imagine. It is why the Spirit lives and moves among us in these days. We will not always be comfortable in the flock of Mother church, following the voice of our shepherd, traveling through the gate into open pastures not so clearly defined, but as 1 Peter reminds us, “he himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.”

Emmaus reflection from the road

I'm having a lot of fun thinking about today's story on the road to Emmaus while I'm traveling by plane, train, and automobile to Wisconsin for a retreat called "Dreams and Visions." It all fits the Gospel story like baby bear's porridge: just right. I'm seeing people I haven't sat down with in years, we are sharing stories and meals and while it's not just like old times, it comes pretty close. Riding the train from Midway airport in Chicago, the automatic voice of the announcer saying 'in the direction of travel, doors open on the left,' very nearly got me choked up. Four good years I spent in this 'second city,' and while I don't know it like the back of my hand, there are quirks about it, certain streets and neighborhoods, full of memories, of good times, times spent with people who are now so very dear to me I can't imagine what life was like before I knew them, which makes living so far from them, though all of us are scattered, bittersweet. We've most of us gotten where we were aiming to go, but that means we are no longer with each other.
When Cleopas and his companion were leaving the Passover festivities in Jerusalem to head back home to Emmaus, was it a road they had traveled every year, or had this been their first visit, out of excitement to see this new Rabbi? Had they first walked that road as younger men, off to do their religious duty and worship at the central temple, growing up a little more each year as they traveled, to remember with the whole community the great works of God who had brought them forth out of slavery in Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm? Had they celebrated that story while under Roman occupation for their whole lives, praying and hoping God would send another miracle of freedom so they would no longer have to live under suspicion from the great military force which threatened and mocked their every tradition and holy place? What were their joys and hopes on that road between the great city and their hometown?
They tell their fellow traveler, though a stranger to them, that they had hoped for the redemption of Israel, some kind of freedom, to be bought back from their oppressors, maybe even reunited again into one kingdom. They had set their hearts on this one man and then seen him tortured and killed by their own religious leaders, in cahoots with the Roman authorities. So much for separation of church and state. What betrayal! What tragedy! What a mess! What did they have any more to trust in and hope for if their own chief priests and scribes had handed their hope over to the government for crucifixion?
No wonder they were looking sad when Jesus caught up with them.  No wonder they could not recognize their shepherd walking with them through the valley of the shadow of death. So Jesus has to take them by baby steps through the story they just celebrated, that great Exodus from slavery into freedom, the way we might tell stories at the Easter Vigil, huddled up in the dark of Good Friday waiting for our own resurrection. Beginning with Moses and the prophets, he opened to them the scriptures, reminding them of God's promises, God's faithfulness, God's history with God's own chosen people through generations of wandering and fighting and wandering some more. God's people are always a bit unsettled, it seems. We walk the margins between here and there, between life and death, between belonging to each other and bearing witness as a light to the nations who do not know God as intimately. We have been brought into this story as a gift, and now the story is also ours, so we tell it over and over again to remind us of the God to whom we belong.
We tell this story on the road, between here and there, between life and life, and Jesus himself is in the story, in the telling of it, in the space between us as we are drawn together by it. We may not recognize him on the road. We may be caught up in memories of days gone by, in hopes we have not seen realized, in whatever fears and distractions that keep us awake at night, but Jesus is there walking along the road with us, reminding us of the resurrection which is more true than anything we could have hoped for. It may not look or feel like anything fancy, for Cleopas and his companion it was simply the prayer of thanksgiving and the breaking of bread together, which we share, too, every time we gather at the table for communion. But whether we are on a road we have traveled many times before, or starting off for someplace new, Jesus walks with us, hidden in plain sight, sharing with us God's faithfulness to the promise of freedom.

"Doubting Thomas"?

Acts 2:14a, 22-32

1 Peter 1:3-9

John 20:19-31

Confession of St. Thomas. 

Why do we give Thomas the nickname of 'doubting' when he's just one in a whole line of people trying to figure out who Jesus is? 

John's gospel is full of characters who are trying to make sense of this prophet from Nazareth. Even John the Baptist proclaimed him coming in a way folks couldn't quite wrap their heads around. The light, the truth, the word, the one who ranks ahead of John because he was ahead of him even though he's coming after him.  Lamb of God was the title that got folks at first to ask Jesus where he was staying, and just maybe he was also ‘the anointed one.’ 

John's Gospel is full of signs and speeches of trying to figure out who Jesus is, and from beginning to end it becomes clear that to believe in Jesus means to wrestle with who he is. Or, rather, to wrestle with him. Not an idea of him or a theory or a concept, but he himself. Faith in John’s gospel is built on relationship, lived experience, hearing about this guy and then trying him on for size. 

So I guess it kind of makes sense that Thomas would be considered without faith when he thinks Jesus is dead and gone and that’s the end of it. He’d lost heart, the relationship was over. I don't know why he wasn't there hiding with the other disciples that first Easter. Part of me wonders of he just didn't care if the Judeans caught up with him, wasn't afraid to be killed because his heart was so broken at the death of his Rabbi. What would be the point of hiding from those who handed Jesus over if everything he was was wrapped up in walking with Jesus, learning from Jesus, following Jesus, who was no longer there? 

Remember, when Lazarus was dead and Jesus went back into that community of folks who had tried to stone him, it was Thomas who said 'let us go also that we may die with him.' Thomas seems to have thrown in his entire lot with Jesus, hook, line, sinker, and boat. Makes me wonder if Thomas didn't have some amount of survivor’s guilt after the events of what we now call Good Friday. 

 And to make matters worse folks use his grief to say we can't have doubt if we're going to have faith - but that's exactly why Thomas has faith and is able to recognize Jesus as his Lord and God; because he wrestled and wondered and walked with this man, the rabbi, the lamb of God, the anointed one. When we talk about faith, about the creed we profess and teach, that our confirmation kids are studying in class, we tend to think it needs to be this solid unchanging thing we never question, this list of theories we agree to and can't ever really talk about. 

But as traditional as Easter has become, it is still plain weird! As much as some of us may have gotten used to the idea of being Christian, it’s very strange. 

Whether we’re here out of habit, or because we’ve had a living encounter with Jesus, or because in the middle of our habit Jesus stepped in and we’re trying to make sense of it, being a resurrection people (who pray first, walk together, and change lives) doesn’t make a whole lot of sense in a world so polarized and frightened that entire faith communities, whole families, are turned in against themselves. That’s what those first disciples were facing, fighting their own people, arguing about this man Jesus to the point that they were ready to cut one another off. 

We've gotten used to this Easter story, tamed it even, at this point put it on clearance to make way for the next big holiday. But for us, as for Thomas, it may take awhile to sink in. Remember how dismayed and incredulous the first witnesses were. And it’s no small event, either. We have an embarrassing history of infighting and warmongering, presuming to fight in the name of this Jesus. This man’s very existence has changed the world. We know the way history repeats itself when we see communities divided, when people get so polarized that honest and open conversation doesn’t even seem possible.

This is part of that resurrection miracle. The doors where the disciples had met were locked for fear of their own people, and Jesus didn’t stand outside and knock politely like we see in the old painting, surrounded with flowers and all polite and gentle about it. You know this painting? It looks like early Thomas Kincaid, if he ever drew people. But Jesus didn’t wait for those disciples to open the door to him, he just showed up in the midst of their fear and anxiety and gave them a commission. They were afraid and in hiding and Jesus broke up their pity party to send them out into the world, back into the crowds that at once crucified him and desperately needed him. 

Even Peter, in today’s Acts reading, faced up to the people who had scared him into denying Jesus, that well-intentioned man who wouldn’t let Jesus wash his feet at first, Peter stands up in front of all those Judeans and testifies to the hope that is in him now that Jesus has appeared to give him peace and power.

So the disciples started by going outside of their locked doors to get Thomas. He was not left on his own to struggle with his faith. The disciples announced to him that Jesus had returned, and they brought him with them until the next time Jesus appeared again, in the same way, for Thomas as he needed. 

After that community was restored, Jesus continued to show up to people uninvited and unexpected. As the gospel author says, ‘Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book.’ But as the author also says, ‘blessed are those who have not seen and have yet believed.’ That would be you and me. In this story here. Right here on whatever page of the bulletin or Bible you find this text. How quickly Jesus has already expanded the community.

And we are freed and inspired by Thomas to question, to look for proof, to ask of the community where Jesus might be found, and to be surprised to find him already among us. We are inspired by Thomas, and more than that, by Jesus himself, who breathes on the disciples the gift of the Holy Spirit. It’s a Pentecost moment before the great big international Pentecost event, where that same Spirit which drove Jesus’ ministry is sent upon us to drive our ministries. “As the Father has sent me,” Jesus says, “so I am sending you.”

This is not a spirit of such certainty that we will never need question or wonder again. But it is a spirit of wisdom and understanding. This is not a spirit of pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps, but it is a spirit of counsel and might. This is not a spirit of having all the answers and programs and never again having to wonder if we’re doing the right thing, but it is a spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord. This is not a spirit of perfection, but it is a spirit of joy in God’s presence. 

We’re still trying to figure out who this Jesus is among us, who shows up and walks through locked doors and heals and feeds and teaches and comforts, and we’ve been wrestling with this Jesus for over two thousand years. 

But that’s faith. That’s what it means to believe, to put our trust in God, to name Jesus as our Lord and God. 

We are sent with the Spirit of the living Christ, not to fix everything that is broken in the world, but to find God living and active in places we might otherwise fear to tread. We cannot know the whole of who Christ is, because his life has not ended, he is still working, and showing up - as promised - in our Sacraments of Eucharist and Baptism, in Confession and forgiveness, but also showing up when and where we least expect it, with peace and power to set us free from our fear, restore our community, and send us into the world with the mysterious and joyful message that “alleluia, Christ is risen!”

Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

Matthew 28:1-10

Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

He is risen indeed, alleluia!

I love today. Today is my favorite day. After forty days of hiding the alleluia, we finally get to break it out again, in all its glory, and spend a whopping fifty days celebrating this season of Easter. That’s ten more days than we spent on Lent. So there, season of repentance, Easter trumps guilt every time.

Or does it? I wonder...

When the women go to see the tomb, there is a great earthquake as the angel rolls away the stone and just plops down on it like a golf chair. “Hey, ladies, what’s up? Looking for a body? Yeah, you just missed him. Headed to Galilee, didn’t he tell you? Might want to remind his disciples, then.”

Whoops. The disciples. The faithful twelve who were nowhere to be found while Jesus was put on trial, abused, beaten, and strung up to die. The men who had followed him and seen his miracles and been so excited about him, who turned tail and ran when the going got tough. Poor guys. Scared and scattered, what in the world will they make of this announcement from the women? Worried Jesus might call them on their abandonment? Frightened he’ll find another group of followers who’ll do better this time, leaving the twelve to grieve and wander alone?

But I wonder, too, what the women made of it? That angel scared the Roman guards into passing out, but the women stayed alert, payed attention, took it all in

And while their buzzing brains were trying to make sense of it all, as they are on their way to tell the men about this curious and terrifying thing that just happened

“Rejoice!” says Jesus. I know it says ‘greetings’ in your bulletin, but the Greek word is less formal than that, more of a ‘peace and blessings’ or ‘shalom y’all’ or ... well, really, we don’t need to get picky about it. He could have said ‘asparagus soup’ and it still would have been wonderful. Because

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

Christ is risen, indeed, alleluia!

I mean, the women, the men, the followers and rulers, barely had time to get used to the idea of his death, had only just gotten started into grieving, and here he is again, standing right in front of them,

and I can only imagine the terror and energy that grabbed those women as they saw him, fell down before him, and took hold of his feet. My guess is they would have embraced him upright, but their knees probably gave out. All of their energy for so long had been put on this Rabbi, their lives had been absorbed in the ministry of teaching, feeding, healing, and then, when they spoke too much truth to power, the one who loved all was taken from them and slaughtered like a sacrificial lamb. And if you’ve ever loved somebody, you know what pain it can be to see that one in pain. They could do nothing to stop his execution. They could do nothing to hasten his death so he wouldn’t suffer so much. They couldn’t even bury him properly because of the holiday.

I know Jesus knew the women’s pain, because he’s been walking with us while we’ve been hurting, loving us while we’ve hated ourselves and each other. So he comes as one among us, living in the pain with us, and though he loves us more completely and honestly than anyone else can, we let him be crucified, we clamored for it last week, every time we deny him or live like he’s just another excuse to either give up chocolate or buy multiple pounds of the stuff, we’ve forgotten what his life is like.

So while we can be ridiculously happy that he’s not ever going to die again, what do we do with the guilt at how we’ve killed him? What do the men do when they find out he’s been resurrected?

Well, we don’t get that part of the story today. We’ve got fifty days, remember, to live into this story. But what we do get, I think, is a little bit better.

Remember, the angel appeared, rolled back the stone, and told the women to let the other disciples know Jesus was on the way to Galilee. They were on their way to do just that, no more convincing required, when Jesus himself, in the flesh, stopped on by just to say hello.

It seems to me that Jesus was also a bit excited to be back. Maybe I’m projecting here, because I absolutely love to say 

Alleluia, Christ is risen!

Christ is risen, indeed, alleluia!

but I think Jesus was just as eager to see those women as they were to see him, if not more so. Just as glad to be on the other side of death as to know in his skin and bones that we’re right there with him because of what he gave us.

We can live in guilt, sure. There’s always going to be more we can’t and don’t do than what we can and do. But Jesus himself walks with us. Jesus in the flesh greets us on the road and restores us.

The women grabbed at his feet, maybe because that was all they could bear. Maybe because it was a sign of service and intimacy - remember how Jesus washed his disciples’ feet before he handed himself over. But for all of our things done and left undone, things said and left unsaid, good intentions that never got anywhere, promises broken, injustices ignored, so on and so forth, in the light of the resurrection these things, like us, are just dust. Unlike us, they will not last. Our guilt and sin, our failures and misdeeds, they have power, they have consequence, but they are not the end-all, be-all definition of who we are.

Something more solid is here, friends. Something more lasting, more permanent, more true.

So grab hold. Grab hold of his feet, though they still bear the marks of the nails. Grab hold of his presence on the road with you, whatever face he seems to wear today. Grab hold of his body and blood given and shed for you at this table, and be nourished for the resurrection life ahead of you because it is already living inside of you. And taste and see, if Christ lives in you, and he does, then you also shall live, because after all

Christ is risen, alleluia!

He is risen indeed, alleluia!

Maundy Thursday

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 gong 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.” ... Jesus said,  “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 Judeans so now I say 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.”

Sermon:

Jesus and his disciples are in their prime. Three years of good ministry together, established and well-known, ready and able to take over the world, it seems. They’ve got a following, they’ve got converts, they’ve got it all, and national attention, too. Which isn’t the best kind of attention, but, hey, you’ve got to step on a few toes if you’re going to have a strong message. Yep, Jesus and his dirty dozen are primed for their takeover... and in the middle of preparing for the annual emancipation celebration, no less. What a perfect time for an uprising, since the Roman government doesn’t believe in their God it would certainly take them by surprise when the masses rise up, following their fearless leader, Jesus, on to victory against the colonizers.

It could have happened that way, too, if Jesus was that sort of leader. It could have been a bloodbath of a rebellion with just a word from their Rabbi. But Jesus had a bigger takeover in mind. A greater emancipation to accomplish. And he knows that whatever brave faces the disciples put on now, they will soon be scared silly, scattered, and denying any association with him. It’s the way of the world, saving yourself when it seems the ship is sinking. The Romans have been ruling by force, and the religious leaders have fallen into a fear deep enough they will send an innocent man to death in order to prevent the possibility of rebellion.

Jesus knows what is in our hearts, what fear and hope and uncertainty. He also knows what sort of mess he’s about to be carried off into and what the confusion of the events of Good Friday will do to his students. He could give them a battle plan, a strategy to stick together and hit the Romans while they’re looking the other way. He could give them a secret message, hidden keys to unlock a massive arsenal once he’s been carried off. 

Well, I mean, he could, and might, if he were anybody else but Jesus. Uprisings only recreate the cycle of oppression from the underside. Turning the oppressed into the new leaders just means more frightened, entitled leaders will be in command. No, the whole system has to be wiped out. The Passover freed the Israelites from slavery but left the Egyptians to drown and suffer, and that’s just not enough of a liberation for God. No, God’s liberation is bigger than that, and Jesus knows it’s going to shake the world to its core because nobody has been able to accomplish an across-the-board salvation for oppressed and oppressor alike. There’s always a bad guy and a good guy, always has been.

Until tonight. Tonight there’s no ‘bad guy’ and ‘good guy.’ Tonight there’s only ‘little children.’ We are not set against each other when Jesus comes to wash our feet, we are set together in the love and care of a savior who is willing and able to carry our weariness, our past and our future, who love us into wholeness, no matter what dirt we’re dragging around on our stumbling feet.

Jesus and his disciples are in their prime, and it seems they are poised for a takeover, but the strong and the silent, the zealous and the traitor, all are put in their place - not as powerful leaders but as beloved children. Children with dirty feet and empty bellies, who long for importance and influence and are embraced for who they are in spite of what they have done and left undone. They are loved with a love that only God can express, and then, somehow, Jesus calls them to love one another with that same love. It is as if they have been anointed so abundantly in love that it will pour forth from them as it pours forth from Jesus.

I was blessed to be at the annual Chrism Mass in Albany the night of the snowstorm this week.  It’s the worship service where oil is blessed and set aside for anointing of the sick, of the students, of the ordained, and others. The Bishop spoke at that Mass of God’s abundance being like the oil that is poured out over prophets, priests, and kings. Like the love of God, poured forth upon God’s people and overflowing into the world.

When I was in Seattle for a class on Baptismal remembrance, we had a service of anointing where anyone who wanted to affirm their baptism was invited forward and anointed in blessing. Abundantly anointed in blessing. I mean, all over our faces so we smelled of it for days. One woman afterward said how she wanted to go forward but thought the line was too long and she didn’t want to make the service go longer even though she really desperately wanted that blessing. She mentioned how, not long after in the worship service, we shared the peace, and when she was embraced by her neighbors, their faces still covered with oil, greeted cheek to cheek, she received the anointing she had wanted so very badly. God’s abundant love poured out on us and overflowing into the world.

This new commandment Jesus gives his students before he hands himself over to be crucified, this commandment to love as we have been loved, this is not optional. Neither is it something of our own doing. Of course, we have the rites and the rituals to practice the commandment in our liturgy, to prepare and be refreshed for the rest of our daily living, but it is as much a gift to love as it is to be loved. This commandment is equally a promise, a reality taking shape and form among us as we share our life together around this table.

Tonight we celebrate the life of Jesus given and shed for us all, the commandment to love in a way that only God can love. A love which lives in and among us now by the spirit of the risen Christ among us. We will enter two days’ reflection on the suffering and death he faced for our salvation, not with fear of judgment but renewed by this meal to face Jesus on the cross and know we are loved.

Children of God, Jesus knows the paths our feet have trod, he has held our sin and sorrow in his hands with care, even when our cracked souls ache with dryness. And knowing what life can bring, how we will run away and long to be found even as we fear it, Jesus holds our feet, feet that have followed and feet that will run, and he washes them and claims them, claims us, that we may have life with him. Whether you feel you are in your prime, just getting started, or starting to wind down, Jesus holds all, knows all, loves all of you. No matter where your feet may take you. 

For now, our feet take us to the table, then to the cross and on to Sunday.