As the Children, Youth and a New Kind of Christianity Conference closes today, I was asked to pray this prayer. It’s adapted from a piece written by Ina Hughes, and it’s too beautiful not to share.
It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is even beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction
of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying
that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the church’s mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
It may be incomplete,
but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference
between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.
This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted,
knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation
in realizing that. This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well.
Amen.
I wrote recently at Associated Baptist Press about my friend G. Travis Norvell and his quest to take prayer to the streets. Because of space I didn’t have time to tell some details I wanted to share, so here’s some more on the Rev. G. Travis Norvell’s prayer station at Jazz Fest in New Orleans last week.
Here’s a little background. Rev. G. Travis Norvell staked out a little station outside the front gates of New Orleans’ Jazz Fest last week. He set up where the crowds would pass by, with a sign that read: “Above Average Prayers @ Below Market Prices (Donations).” There he sat, with his manual typewriter, writing prayers for people who wanted them.
I was so curious about Travis’ experience that I asked him for more information. Here’s what I wondered and what he answered:
Where did you get the idea to do this?
A few years ago I wanted to set up a table and two chairs on St. Charles Avenue. On the table would be an urn of coffee, two coffee cups and sign that read Conversation? I would be in clerical garb. But I chickened out and never did it. I wondered if anyone would take me up on it… Then last week I heard the story on NPR about a guy who quit his job on April Fools Day a few years ago to write poetry. On any given day he sits on the side walk in San Fran with his typewriter and writes poetry for people. I thought that is great. I said, “I’m going to take my typewriter and write prayers for people as they enter Jazz Fest.”
Why the typewriter?
I love manual typewriters. But I also wanted people to have something they could physically hold in their hands or put in their pockets. People would stand around as I typed and then insist on reading them as soon as I finished. For a few people I read the prayer but even afterwards as soon as they had it in their hands they would read it aloud for their own ears.
What did you learn about people and how they think about prayer/God/the church?
A friend who grew up in the French Quarter put my experiment in an interesting perspective last night. He watched conservatives force their style of religion on people whether they wanted it or not whereas I offered prayer only if people wanted it. The amazing thing: people actually wanted it! They didn’t ask for direction or forgiveness or answers to deep questions. They asked for other kinds of help – blessings for a wife who couldn’t be there, blessings for on a class action lawsuit, continued happiness in their wedding, blessings for continued friendship. I would say it was first time I was around a group of people who were concerned with the present moment.
How did people respond to your offer of prayer?
People told me what they wanted me to write. No one would tell me at first, they would just talk. Then I would ask them what bands or music they were going to see then I would ask them what food they wanted to eat. Then I would start typing, about a sentence into it the person would then dive into a deeper level. It was like they knew I was serious and they didn’t want to lose the chance for an authentic prayer.
Why Jazz Fest?
Jazz Fest, for me, is like Christmas and Easter and Birthdays all wrapped up into one event. I’m already “at church” why not pray with and for “the congregation?”
Did this experience change the way you prayer of think about prayer?
I don’t know if the experience will change the way I pray but it will change the way I approach the blessing aspect of pastoral ministry…. As a pastor you always give of yourself but rarely either receive or let others receive. In some way I was offering at Jazz Fest for others what I need myself.
Give us an example of a Jazz Fest prayer.
Love Supreme, Help these people find life anew May the rhythms of this day fill their souls May they fill their bodies with bowls of pheasant gumbo May they let go of judgment and allow You to love this mass of humanity so that they can be the children you have called them to be. Amen.Everything Changes: From Barren to Bountiful
John 15:1-11
Christ is risen!
Christ is risen, indeed!
In the light of the resurrection we’re considering today and in these days following Easter, how life has changed. What about the message of Jesus becomes clear and compelling, finally, now that we know the tomb is empty?
As we discussed last week, our lectionary takes us back, back to before the resurrection, back to the ministry and teaching of Jesus. As you know, there was incidence after incidence in which Jesus tried to preach, heal, teach, all to demonstrate this new way of seeing the world and living in it, but all the people around him—even his disciples—didn’t quite get it. And we often don’t get it, do we?
How do we live the Gospel in this world in which we can’t often see our way clearly, when the voices of the world pull at us and confuse us, when we get stuck and turned around, not sure where our faith in Jesus Christ would have us move next?
Thank goodness that everything changes in the light of the resurrection, that we understand with new clarity that if God can bring life out of death, and if God can overcome desolation and hopelessness, then surely we can summon the courage to live the Gospel with conviction and purpose.
Today’s parable, the parable of the vine and the branches, is one that you surely learned if you ever attended Sunday School. It comes from part of the Gospel of John that we think of as Jesus’ final words to his disciples.
If we follow the timeline in John’s Gospel, this collection of teachings, of last words, happened on Maundy Thursday, the day before Good Friday and the crucifixion. The parable was part of Jesus’ last shot at instilling his teachings in the minds and hearts of his disciples.
What was the essence of what he wanted them to remember? What were his last and most important words?
Thinking about that this week, I learned that what you say at the end of your life, apparently, is often telling with regard to what you valued during this lifetime. The final words of famous people are the source of much interest. Here are some:
How were the receipts today at Madison Square Garden?
~~ P. T. Barnum, entrepreneur, d. 1891
Friends applaud, the comedy is finished.
~~ Ludwig van Beethoven, composer, d. March 26, 1827
Now comes the mystery.
~~ Henry Ward Beecher, evangelist, d. March 8, 1887
I don’t know about you, but I think I’ll start working on mine now….
In his parting discourse, his last words, found in John chapters 15-17, Jesus tells a vintner’s tale. The parable of the vine and the branches is part of several “last words” from Jesus—statements from Jesus trying to clarify who he was and who THEY were—who WE are—in relationship to God.
In this part of the passage, Jesus talks about himself as the vine, with God as the vine grower. We are the branches in this metaphor, he says. We can’t grow into the possibility of all we are created to be if we’re not connected to the vine—and not just connected, abiding, trading nutrients, giving sustenance. There are many things that can grow on a vine, of course, but those branches that are not bearing fruit, in Jesus’ metaphor, are cut off and thrown into the fire. Those that abide in me, Jesus said—who stay connected to the vine—will bear much fruit.
Vine, branches, fruit, abiding, cut off and thrown into the fire? What is Jesus talking about here??!? It all sounds so final and so violent…if you don’t do what I say, then you get cut off, burned up forever.
Believe me, there are many folks in my profession who have made good use of this passage as a tool to scare their version of Jesus into folks. But I am not so sure that scaring people was what Jesus had in mind here.
I recently attended a class taught by a master gardener. In this class I learned about carefully placing your garden beds to receive the best sunlight. I took copious notes about soil quality and mixing in compost. Water was a big topic of discussion—how much and how often to water your beds. Choice of plant was another important area he addressed. It was fascinating, I have to say, but in the end his presentation had very little to do with my yard.
See, my yard is, with all grace and kindness, a big, huge mess. I have recently moved into a house whose yard has not received the kind of tender care that Katie Harvey orPat Neighbargermight apply toward their yards. Before we got there, it had seen years and years of neglect; beds long covered under excess growth, and vines all over, well, everything. When I looked at my yard in the light of the master gardener’s class, I just had to sigh with despair. Water, sunlight, choice of plants? I don’t think so. For now the biggest task is clean up.
And so I’ve begun. Machetes, roto tillers, weed wackers, shovels, and some hired help later, I now have a yard that is bare as can be, a yard in which we can just now begin to watch for the new grass to grow and dream about what will live in the newly designated flower beds around the edges of the porch. And, as a result of all the work to clear things out, the back yard is now littered with a huge, huge pile of dead branches. Branches and vines, weeds, and undergrowth, all of the things growing in the yard that were choking out possibilities and causing me to leave the master gardener class in utter despair.
Jesus’ message about the vine and the branches sounds harsh, and it’s true that many, many preachers have used this parable to scare people into strange standards of compliance. But Jesus was using a metaphor, remember? And the life of someone who tends a vineyard as his livelihood is filled with carefully picking and choosing which vines should be nurtured and which vines are choking out new life and good fruit. Jesus is not talking about people burning in hell; he is talking about the good work of a vine grower, which involves cutting, pruning, and burning waste to make room for good growth.
It’s like my backyard. In order to even begin to think about what needs to grow, there is much that needs to come out…to be cut down and pulled out, to be thrown away and burned. It’s hard work, but it’s only when those tasks are done that we can see clearly the expansive possibilities of what might begin to grow.
As followers of this one who calls himself the vine, I wonder about the many ways in which we are called to prune and discern, to clear out and get back to basics, to abide in him…so that our lives can bear the good fruit of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Jesus knew that his disciples would hear many voices calling them away, distracting them from the task of abiding, of focusing on the essence of Gospel living, so our lives don’t become so choked with other things that we forget.
I thought about that this over the last few days, when there has been quite a bit of news coverage about the upcoming vote inNorth Carolinaover Amendment 1 to theNorth Carolinaconstitution. North Carolina’s Amendment 1 says that marriage between a man and a woman is the “only domestic legal union” that should be valid or recognized in the state.
In other words, on May 8th,North Carolinians will be voting on the issue of marriage equality when they vote on Amendment 1.
In the wake of all the conversation and controversy over Amendment 1, there has been quite a bit of religious talk, commentary by pastors, and use of Christian faith to advocate against this amendment, to use faith in Jesus Christ as an excuse to exclude people, to treat them unfairly, and to sometimes even damn them to burn in hell.
For example, Sean Harris, pastor of Berean Baptist Church in Fayettville, NC, preached a scathing diatribe last Sunday, which joined the efforts of arch-conservative Christians all over the state to scare people into voting for the amendment, a sermon in which he advocated hurting children you think might be gay, of beating the “gay” out of them. What this message has to do with equal civil rights, I am not so sure, but…
Marriage equality threatens family structures, they claim. It goes against the BIBLE, they profess. It violates the rules, they preach. Jesus wouldn’t like it.
When we Christians say things like this, I begin to suspect we were not listening very hard to the last words of Jesus. When Jesus talked about the vine and the branches, he was not advocating the imposition of more rules, the adding of layers of rigorous requirement that pile onto the simple words of the Gospel an unachievable standard that excludes people and obscures God’s hope for the world and, worst of all, dilutes that rigorous mandate Jesus gave us.
Love God, love each other.
Abide in me, Jesus said. Stick close and hold tight. The world will try to complicate your faith, to distract you from the life-altering way of Jesus. But don’t let yourself be choked out or misled by those who would try to catch your attention.
Abide.
And when you do, your life and the life of our community will begin to bear fruit, fruit that will shock the world with its courage and expansiveness, fruit that will begin to appear in places that were so cut off from the rest of the family of faith but who bloom and grow and bear fruit when they are welcomed in to the way of Jesus.
I think what Jesus was trying to say in his final words is that the life of faith is hard. It can be easily choked out by other things that pull at our attention and energy. It can even be choked out by the riotous growth of what the world might consider religion. It happens all of the time.
I think Jesus was trying to say that following the way of Christ is hard work; it takes discipline and prayerful discernment; it is not for the faint of heart.
I think that Jesus was trying to say that when we stick close…when we abide in Jesus, then we’re going to be constantly clearing out space for new growth, for more possibility, for a life of faith that is ever evolving and always becoming, and in new an unexpected ways, bearing fruit.
In the light of the resurrection, everything changes. While we thought God’s way was a way of rules and rituals, walls to hold people in and keep people out, really the way of Jesus invites us to cut back, clean out, stick close. Abide in me, he said…and you will bear much fruit. Amen.
Everything Changes: From Indifference to Interdependence
Published April 29, 2012 Uncategorized Leave a CommentEverything Changes: From Indifference to Interdependence
John 10:11-18
Christ is risen!
Christ is risen, indeed!
For the past few weeks, since Easter to be exact, we’ve been reading Gospel accounts of Jesus’ post resurrection appearances. Today is different. As you may have noticed, there’s no story of Jesus appearing suddenly in a locked room, joining in on the disciples’ potluck.
Today we go back a little in the gospel of John to hear some words of Jesus describing himself as the “good shepherd”.
Well, that’s very nice. We all like to imagine Jesus the gentle shepherd, his long, wavy brown hair blowing in the afternoon breeze, his blue eyes twinkling with mischief, his robes swaying as he picks up a little fluffy white lamb and puts it gently on his shoulders.
Yes, that’s all very nice, but it doesn’t help all that much with this post resurrection situation, in which we find ourselves shaking our heads, wondering what just happened, trying to get our minds around resurrection. What really did happen, and how does life change for us in the light of the unbelievable?
Today the lectionary leads us back to a story about Jesus’ ministry, and part of our work today is to try to figure out why. It could be an oversight by the planners of the lectionary, right? Or we could be reading this for a reason.
It was St. Ignatius, founder of the Jesuit order and Spanish knight who lived in the mid 1500s who reminded us to, “think with the church,” and so today we will trust that the planners of the lectionary had a reason for leading us today to the good shepherd passage in John’s gospel.
Maybe we misunderstood the first…or second or third time, or, like most in the crowd, shook our heads in disbelief when we heard Jesus’ teachings.
But now, now everything changes. In the light of the resurrection, how can we think with the church, as Ignatius said, to understand a little more clearly what Jesus really meant?
And so today we follow the rest of the Christian church (like sheep…) to the words of Jesus long before he was crucified and resurrected, in John chapter 10.
If there’s anything I learned growing up as one of five children, it was a fool-proof strategy for Easter egg hunt dominance. Since I am the oldest I had a natural advantage, but that didn’t stop me from discovering and perfecting some tried and true strategies.
For example, to dominate at Easter egg hunting, preparation is key. Clear advantage number one: take off those shiny, pinching church shoes and put on sneakers. You can get around the yard much more quickly and effectively in sneakers!
Make sure you have a big basket with lots of room—it won’t help anything if the eggs you find fall out of the basket.
Scout out the search site ahead of time. Offer to help your Mom water the plants…or take out the garbage…or feed the dog. It’s worth your parents’ suspicion to gain a few advanced minutes in the yard.
Plan your strategy ahead of time. Will you dominate by quickly appropriating the easiest eggs, or will you leave the most obvious ones for the amateurs and go instead for those second tier eggs—the ones everyone can find with just a little effort? Will you grab the colorful ones first, and hope the green ones blend in until you can get back to them?
Point your opponents in strategic directions. That is, “helpfully suggest” to the littler kids that you saw an egg “over there”—away from the mother lode.
Run faster, look harder, grab quicker…whatever it takes.
And best strategy ever: offer to help your parents hide the eggs.
It took me very little time this week to remember some of these genius strategies I perfected in the dog eat dog Easter egg hunts of my childhood. That fact in itself is rather troubling, as I now am pretty sure that, in the light of resurrection, dominance and exploitation of those who are weaker might not have been the true message of Easter.
And maybe something like that is key to why the church reads passages like the good shepherd passage during the weeks following Easter. In case we missed the point…in case we thought Easter was all about us…in case we thought of resurrection as a get out of jail free card, in case we sit back relieved that we’re finally and totally off the hook…we hear again Jesus’ words about being the good shepherd, and they remind us one more time that resurrection is a reality that changes all of us in the here and now, that moves us from indifference to the fate and wellbeing of others, to an interdependence that reminds us our lives are tied together…that we belong to each other…and that all of us belong to God.
Faith is not a competition to see who gets to the end first.
Who wins is of no consequence to God, even in Easter egg hunts.
Dog eat dog is nowhere to be found in our life together.
In the light of the resurrection, everything changes, and we are moved from indifference to interdependence, a reality in which my wellbeing and yours are critically intertwined.
If we go back to look closely at Jesus’ words we must read them within the context in which they were preached to hear the deeper message. Turn with me in your Bibles to our Gospel passage today, John 10:11-18, on page 872 of your black pew Bibles.
The parable of the good shepherd comes after repeated, frustrating attempts at conversation between Jesus and the Pharisees. The Pharisees were some of the ruling religious party in the temple, remember. They were the pious ones, in charge of making sure everyone followed the rules. They were the overachievers, the ones who had worked for years to perfect the best strategy for getting to the front of the line, the top of the pile, when it came to relationship with God.
Right before the parable of the good shepherd, Jesus had been teaching in the temple, as was his custom. He and the Pharisees got into discussion after discussion about who Jesus was, exactly, and conversation got so heated—the misunderstandings so intense—that Jesus had to run and hide—they had picked up stones to throw at him they were so frustrated with what they were experiencing.
Outside the temple, things got even more confused. As Jesus was passing along the road he ran into a man who had been blind from birth. Jesus healed the man, but the day happened to be the Sabbath, and in the eyes of the Pharisees Jesus had broken the law. Arguments ensued—Jesus was accused of violating religious rules; the Pharisees just couldn’t understand why Jesus would break the law. Jesus just couldn’t understand why the Pharisees didn’t put the wellbeing of one of their weaker members above everything else.
And so, it was into that context that Jesus told the parable of the good shepherd. When he did, you could hear that he was presenting a completely different paradigm than the standard by which all of them were living by up until that point. It was radical. It was different. It invited them to change…everything.
In Jesus’ parable, he talks about a herd of sheep. I don’t know about you, but I don’t often interact with sheep. The closest I have ever come was a year that I lived inNew Zealand and worked for a few weeks on a sheep farm during the season of shearing. That experience was enough to teach me that it takes a real calling to be in charge of a group of sheep. Their care and upkeep is not for the faint of heart (or nose).
You and I don’t know much about sheep, but everyone listening to Jesus talk that day surely knew what it took to manage a herd of sheep. While those listening would certainly have been a mixture of tradespeople, they lived in a society in which sheep were very important. Their milk, their wool, their meat, their use as sacrifices in the temple, their presence on the hillsides of Galilee…everyone was acquainted with the reality of sheep, and so they surely caught the differentiation Jesus was making when he talked about the good shepherd and the hired hand.
The good shepherd, Jesus pointed out, lays down his life for the sheep. He is not like a hired hand—someone who is hired to care for a flock. Oh, no, no! The good shepherd would do anything for the sheep—it is his duty to insure their well-being and good health, safety and nourishment. Why? Well, because, the good shepherd owns the sheep. He invests everything he has in those sheep because he and the sheep depend on each other. The hired hand, by contrast, does not. And since the hired hand has no investment in the sheep, the last thing he’d be willing to do is to lay down his life for them. The hired hand is there to make a buck; he is there to do a job and nothing more. The shepherd and the sheep belong to each other. Do you see the difference?
“I am the Good Shepherd,” Jesus said. In the new reality of God’s kingdom, we belong to each other…we depend on each other.
I wondered this week about how mutual investment changes relationships. By coincidence, I’ve been wondering for awhile about the Capital Bikeshare program, especially since a new rack of bicycles was installed last year right across the street from Calvary’s front door. You know those red bikes that are all over the city?
So I called John Lisle, head of media relations for the DC Department of Transportation. He proudly let me know that DC was the first city in theUSto launch a bikeshare system in 2010. The collaborative qualities of the program, he bragged, are countless. Not only is the entire idea built on the idea that people pay into a system and share responsibility for and use of the bikes, but now the system is shared with Arlington and soon with the cities of Alexandria and Rockville.
I tell you, John Lisle is the perfect person to be doing media relations for the DoT, because when he talks about Capital Bikeshare he’s almost giddy. He calls the program “genius” and claims that when people pay an annual membership they seem to have some ownership over the bikes—so much so that incidences of vandalism or neglect are very, very low. People like the convenience of having a bike where and when they need it, and so they take care of the bikes. And with mutual investment, the city can afford bikes all over—enough for everyone who wants to ride.
It’s striking to me that we followers of Christ, people who live in the light of the resurrection, have a powerful metaphor for how our lives now change…right across the street from the sanctuary. The Capital Bikeshare models a little bit of exactly what Jesus was talking about when he explained the difference between the good shepherd and the hired hand.
Because, don’t forget, in the light of resurrection, everything changes. We are not followers of the one who rose to overcome death just so we can get what we want or climb to the top of the pile at the expense of others. No, in the light of resurrection we see that we follow the one who models a relationship in which he cares so deeply for us he would even give up his very life for us.
He is wholly invested in who we can become; he will act ever and always in our best interests and for our highest good.
And in the light of the resurrection, so may it be with us, among one another. We are followers of the one who would lay down his life for us, and as such we claim ownership for each other. We must care for each other as we’d care for ourselves. We must nurture and love each other as if we had a stake in each other’s wellbeing…because we do.
There is no more independence and walled off indifference. We belong to each other, just as we belong to God. We rise and fall together; our lives are predicated on the investment we make in the success of the other.
Indifference to interdependence. This can be a hard word to hear, especially in our society of fierce, independent, private individualism.
But in the light of resurrection, everything changes.
When we experience again the one who would lay down his very life for us, we begin to hear even more distinctly the radical call to live our lives for others.
In the light of resurrection, we belong to God; and we belong to each other. May it be so. Amen.
Everything Changes: From Fear to Faith
John 20:19-31
Christ is risen!
Christ is risen, indeed!
Well, everything changed for us last week, didn’t it?
For one thing, we got the alleluias back in worship, something over which Harold Robinson is clearly extraordinarily relieved. We heard the most beautiful music and we worshipped with the scent of the lilies wafting through the sanctuary. Brunch was amazing and, at least based on what I could see from my vantage point near the dessert table, folks were really celebrating.
And for good reason! Last Sunday was Easter, we were marking the resurrection of Jesus…and in a world where death is inevitable, that is no small thing to celebrate for sure.
This week we realize, however, that someone forgot to send a memo about the celebration to Jesus’ first disciples, whose lives we are able to shadow through the written memories of the gospel writers. All of the Gospels talk about what happened to the disciples and Jesus’ other followers and friends on the day of resurrection and into the week following Jesus’ resurrection, and I think it’s safe to say that what they were doing was not celebrating.
No, I think the word for it is more: cowering.
On the day that the women ran to the tomb in the early hours of the morning to tend to Jesus’ body, that day they discovered, much to their shock and amazement, that his body was not there in the tomb and, in fact, he was no longer dead at all. Depending on which account you read, the women either ran into an angel who told them the news or into Jesus himself, disguised as the gardener. Either way their world was shaken to its very core and they tried to make sense of this new set of circumstances. As you recall from Mark’s account last week, the overall news about the women was: they were afraid.
Cut to the male disciples, who did not go with the women to the tomb but instead were sequestered away, hiding behind locked doors, scared for their lives.
And, even more than the women, the men had good reason to be scared. After the events of the past few days, the entire city was up in arms. The temple leadership had done everything in its power to get rid of Jesus, stirring up the crowds and orchestrating a PR campaign for the record books.
Still, so much dissention reigned that the Roman government had had to get involved and Roman governor Pontius Pilate placed guards at the sealed tomb to make sure the rebellion was squelched, once and for all.
The men should have been afraid.
If they were publicly recognized as followers of Jesus, not only were they in danger from the rulers of the temple, now the Roman occupation leaders were involved, too. And if the women were right…if somehow the stone had been rolled away and Jesus’ body was missing…then they surely would be recipients of the wrath of both the temple leaders and the Roman rulers; people would think they’d stolen the body to continue the rebellion.
I don’t quite know to what kind of resolution the men thought hiding in a locked room would eventually lead, but they were scared, and their fear kept them hidden, unsure what would happen next. Jesus had died—they’d seen it with their own eyes. They’d given up everything to follow; they’d put their families at risk. They had given up their professions; they’d thought he was the one to overthrowRomeonce and for all. But as they sat there huddled in fear, listening with disbelief to the reports of the women, all they could see flashing before their fear-filled eyes were those images of his crucifixion, images burned onto their brains, images that totally changed the vantage point from which they each saw the world. When death and tragedy are the lenses through which you see the world, see your own life, well then fear is a reasonable response, don’t you think?
I recently had to have my eyes examined.
I explained to the eye doctor at my appointment that I thought something was probably wrong with my glasses. I have been having a hard time seeing things clearly, especially at night. Sometimes I can’t focus well, and as of late preaching has been a little more challenging (thank goodness for easy font size changes!). I thought perhaps it’s the type of glasses I’ve been wearing or maybe I needed a slight adjustment in prescription.
The doctor was so kind to me.
Choosing his words very carefully he explained that sometimes, as we age, the lenses in our eyes lose their elasticity. This means they do not focus as quickly or as accurately as they used to. It’s not really a problem that can be solved with an adjustment to the prescription, he told me. Instead, it’s time to start thinking about: bifocals.
Yes.
A minor adjustment to the eye’s normal focusing power is not going to cut it anymore. Instead, I will need two separate lenses, one for work like, say, preaching, and one for tasks like driving at night.
The exam proceeded then to the part when the doctor makes you look through the lenses and starts all this flipping action. Is it better with 1 or 2? 1 or 2?
As an aside, I hate this experience more than anything, as I am one who worries constantly about getting the right answer. I’ll get so nervous that I won’t be able to tell, really, which lens is clearer. 1? I’ll say hesitantly. If all I hear from the doctor is silence then I’ll say, “Okay, maybe not. 2?”
After a lot of lens-flipping, the doctor finally settled on the right two lenses. One would help me see far away and one would help me see close up, for tasks like preaching. And it will take awhile, he explained, for me to learn how to navigate the double prescription. One lens will help see the world more clearly in some instances; the other lens will work under different circumstances.
Think about this metaphor of lenses when you think about the disciples huddled in that locked upper room for that week following the Jesus’ death. They were seeing their world through the lens of the crucifixion, which understandably left them filled with fear. And when you’re filled with fear, a very normal response is to stop…to stop and to cower, to become incapacitated because the fear with which you see the world is so intense.
It’s into this kind of situation, one where the disciples were frantically thinking about what their lives would look like now that Jesus was dead, that Jesus showed up.
John’s account tells of two of Jesus’ appearances, one to the group of ten disciples minus Thomas, and then again a few days later to the whole group. Poor Thomas gets a bad rap here, known throughout all of Christendom as the fateful doubter, but we know from reading the other Gospel accounts that the same was true for all the disciples. The women had run to tell them, but all of the disciples were so afraid, they were viewing the world through the lens of fear, that they adamantly insisted they would not believe the women until they saw for themselves. All of them, not just Thomas!
I’d like to point out here that you’ll notice how everything changes. It doesn’t change from doubt to faith, it changes from fear to faith. Of course the disciples had doubts—wouldn’t you? All of them had to see for themselves and even after they did you have to know they sat around in that room, rubbed their blood shot eyes, and stared at each other incredulously. Was that really Jesus? You mean he really meant what he said about spreading the Gospel message in the world? You mean this is more than just a political campaign? You mean he’s really (gulp!) the son of God?
Are you sure?
And you know they were having a hard time, because when Jesus appears the first thing he says is: “Peace be with you.” Can you imagine? All those disciples, crowded into that upper room, scared to death? The physical affects of fear are real and very intense. Although I am fairly sure I could have come up with these myself, I actually looked them up:
Difficulty breathing
Racing or pounding heart
Chest pain or tightness
Trembling or shaking
Feeling dizzy or lightheaded
A churning stomach
Hot or cold flashes; tingling sensations
Sweating
Fear…it was real and it was palpable, and, understandably, they couldn’t seem to figure out what came next.
Jesus must have known that a group of fear-filled disciples who could only see the world through the limited lens of their own fear would never, ever change the world.
The lens needed to change; resurrection needed to become real for the disciples to embrace the promise of what was ahead—a whole world that would be changed by the Gospel message.
So Jesus shows up. And when they see him—both the 10 disciples the first time and Thomas the second time—a little click occurs. Like seeing the illuminated letters on the wall in the darkness of my eye doctor’s office, it was like the correct lens was finally put into place and the disciples could see again. Jesus was alive, and so fear—heart-stopping, life-crippling fear—was miraculously transformed into faith.
And so faith was born. It may have been small at first…tentative and weak. But faith is what fear became when everything changed, when the truth of the resurrection became real in the lives of the first disciples. With the perspective of resurrection to change the way they looked at the world, the disciples were incapacitated no more. They were miraculously able to move from fear—utter, disabling fear—to faith.
And that faith was just enough faith to lead them to unlock the door to that upper room and head out intoJerusalem.
It was just enough faith to turn insecure, unsophisticated fishermen into bold proclaimers of Jesus’ Gospel.
It was just enough faith that they gave up their very lives, so convicted that this Jesus, this resurrected one, had the words of eternal life.
It took a little while, but when the truth of the resurrection had sunk in, finally, everything changed. The disciples saw the world in a whole new way; their perspectives radically shifted; they moved from fear…to faith…and everything changed.
In the light of resurrection, what has changed for you? Is fear still nipping at your heels, keeping you from stepping out in faith to whatever is next for you?
Well, I have to tell you that Christ is risen…and because Christ is risen, everything changes.
Unlock the door, come out of hiding, embrace the promise of the Gospel in your life, move from fear to faith. Look around, through the lens of Jesus’ resurrection, will you?
When you do you will see that everything has changed.
He must have been tired. So tired.
You know it has to be exhausting, all that suffering and dying and rising again.
I’m tired this morning after resurrection…
and I wasn’t even the one who died.
Every year it’s the same…Easter wears me out.
But even in the craze of dyed eggs and chocolate bunnies, Easter lilies and overworked choir members, there’s something about resurrection.
Resurrection gives you courage to step into what’s new, even though it doesn’t seem plausible.
Resurrection means possibility, even when yesterday you seemed totally out of ideas.
Resurrection hints at life even where death has already declared a victory.
It’s hard to keep believing in resurrection.
But it’s harder to envision a world without it.
And so we keep at it, even on those mornings after resurrection.
A Promise Kept
Mark 16:1-8
Christ is risen! Christ is risen, indeed!
Today it’s Easter, everyone dressed in finery, the sanctuary decorated unlike any other time of the year. The music is bigger, the program is bigger, everything is ramped up to celebrate. It’s the biggest day of the year, and I don’t know about you…but I need it. I need a reminder that life comes in the face of death, that God wins in the end, that even the most unbelievable thing can happen—has happened—and has changed the whole world.
Some of you know my friend Stan Hastey. Stan remembers a sermon he heard just a few days after Easter in 1968. He was a student at Southern Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. Martin Luther King, Jr., had been assassinated two weeks before. Race riots had broken out in Memphis, and in this city, and in others. A dark shadow had fallen across the American landscape. The students who gathered for chapel on that April day needed to hear an encouraging word. They looked up hopefully as the Reverend Charles Boddie, an African-American preacher from Nashville, Tennessee, made his way to the pulpit. They shifted in their pews and then waited, expectantly, for Boddie to speak. When he did, his voice was little more than a whisper. Pointing back to the Sunday before he said, “Easter, this year, came just in the nick of time.” (Thanks to Jim Somerville for this recounting.)
It came just in the nick of time…when darkness still covered the city and the disciples were huddled in hiding in fear and the women were making their way toward the tomb…something happened. God kept a promise. God kept a promise that God would not leave, that death was not the end, that there would be something more. Just in the nick of time.
We may not be sure it happened, if we’d only had the Mark passage from this morning to go by. Mark leaves us hanging a little bit this morning. You’ll recall that our Gospel reading ends rather abruptly in Mark chapter 16, verse 8. The verse reads: “they (meaning the women) went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”
Honestly, if I had a few minutes to chat with Mark I would like to tell him that this not a very nice way to end his story of Jesus. All the other Gospel writers put in some nice post-resurrection appearances of Jesus that help to tie everything up as neatly as a bow on an Easter bonnet. But Mark ends here, almost as if he’s been interrupted and the story is not quite done.
In fact, this ending of Mark is so troubling that those who came after Mark amended his memoirs by adding on the remaining verses we find in our modern texts. The language of verses 9-20, commonly known as “the longer ending of Mark” is so very different from grammar and tone of Mark’s Gospel that most would place their addition to the text some 200 years after Mark finished writing.
And, we can understand why! We didn’t work so hard to dye those Easter eggs, slave over favorite recipes or dress up extra nice to be left hanging! We’ve just been through some of the darkest days of the Christian year, days where we pondered over and over again the pain and sorrow of our sin and the horror of Jesus’ death on a cross. We came to church this morning for resolution—for a nice, tidy wrap-up of the story so we can get on with our lives, thank you very much.
We’ve been talking during this season of Lent about God’s promises to us. Story after story after story shows God making promises and keeping promises to people who could never seem to keep their promises to God. Today we celebrate the best promise of all, life in the face of death, and the only thing we can think to do is to join the women, who saw once and for all God’s conquering work…and were afraid.
We need all the help we can get to believe that this man Jesus died . . . dead and crucified, spirit given up and gone, dead, dead, dead, just like we die, and then defied the grave and rose again. But the way Mark leaves things, well, it’s not that easy, is it?
On this, the most triumphant day of our faith, the day in which we embrace what we believe to be a divine conquest over death and pain, I think it might be worth it to consider that perhaps Mark intended to end there.
Perhaps a trailing, open end, with what we know was certainly true—that Jesus’ followers were so desperately afraid for their lives, so confused and so bewildered by this turn of events that they ran away—is really the BEST way to end the story.
Why?
Because that wasn’t the end.
If that early morning 2000 years ago was the end, what we would have here is a very nice story about a great man who challenged a political system, loved and healed people and rose from the dead in a way that defied the laws of nature as we know them. What we would have would be a nice fairytale to tell our children at bedtime, a lovely little folktale to use when teaching culture and tradition. What we would have would be a static, encapsulated piece of historical lore that could be pulled out once a year, dusted off and read one more time, then carefully tucked away until next time.
Mark knew that this was not the end of the story. In fact, in order for it to be believable at all, this better had be . . . just the beginning.
The only way those fearful followers believed . . . the only way they came to finally understand that their friend Jesus was, in actual fact, who he said he was, the only way the unbelievable became real to them was . . . by keeping their promises to follow…to keep following…until the story could reach its way into their lives and changed them, until they could summon the courage to believe. That empty tomb was their wake up call—it was what compelled them to get up and finish the story with their very lives.
And today, this Easter, that empty tomb better jar us into awareness, too. The invitation to you and me is clear: we’re going to have to finish the story of resurrection ourselves.
What difference does the risen Christ make in your life? This is not about new clothes for Easter or ham or Easter eggs. This is not about lilies or candles or even beautiful music. This is about the fact that life is hard, that death and pain and uncertainty and fear, injustice and war are tangibly here. Right here, part of our lives all the time. What good is it to go around once a year retelling a fairytale if it doesn’t mean anything?
Well, let me tell you. We’re not here because we want to recount every post-resurrection appearance of Jesus, to try to bring back to life the accounts of those first disciples. We’re not here to try to image a Galilean man in rough burlap robes and rustic sandals making his way into our sanctuary. We’re not here to uncover archeological evidence of resurrection.
We’re here because we’re human and we hurt; because we want hope for our lives; because we believe, we know, that to finish this story means to keep our promises to God, to wake up to possibilities and hope we never imagined before.
We’re here because in our humanity we have turned from the tomb in utter defeat and crippling fear and, despite that, have the end of this story to tell.
We’re here because we have seen the living power of the resurrected Christ in our lives and in our world, and what was once so strangely unbelievable has now become an urgent proclamation, not of a dusty ancient text, but of our immediate, 21st century lives.
Something happened after that morning at the tomb. The women left, the text says, too scared to say anything to anyone. But in less than 50 years the entire world had been transformed by the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus. His radical mandate to love each other, his offer of direct connection to God, the healing grace of his death and resurrection changed the women at the tomb . . . and changed the world, because those women had the courage to keep their promises to follow, the courage to finish the story.
And it didn’t stop. No, the story continues. The story of new life and relationship with God is a story that is lived out over and over again in my life, in your life, in the lives of people all over this world who will follow the one who proclaimed that death is not the end, that there is more to this story, and that it is our job to gather our wits about us, our hopes and dreams, our fears, failures and grief, and turn from this incredible sight to live out the ending . . . that death is not the final word and that we have new life in Christ.
“He is not here; he is risen,” the man at the tomb said, but that was only the beginning of the story.
Can we keep our promise to God? Can we gather the courage to turn from the empty tomb, maybe fearful and maybe unsure, and allow the power of the resurrected Christ to enter our lives and transform them, until we are absolutely, positively compelled to finish the story . . . starting right here, in our own hearts?
We can. And, by the grace of God, we will. Because God has kept God’s promise…because resurrection is here…and it has come just in the nick of time. Amen.
Promises, Promises: Whoever Believes
Numbers 21:4-9
Lena Paahlsson’s wedding ring was designed especially for her. It was a white-gold band, set with seven small diamonds, and, as most wedding rings are, full of sentimental value in addition to being very pretty.
Paahlsson lost her ring, though, in 1995, one day when she and her daughters were doing some Christmas baking in the kitchen. It seems she took the ring off her hand and put it somewhere on the work surface, but it disappeared. No matter how hard she looked, she couldn’t find the ring. She and her family did everything they could think of—even pulled up flooring—to try to find it. No luck.
It was not until 16 years later when Mrs. Paahlsson was pulling up carrots in her garden that she noticed a carrot growing with the gold band fastened tightly around it. You guessed it. It was her wedding ring.
She doesn’t know exactly what happened, but she thinks maybe the ring fell into a sink back in 1995 and was lost in vegetable peelings that were turned into compost or fed to their sheep. When asked if she was surprised to find the ring, Paahlsson said: “I had given up hope,”
Stories like these make the news because all of us know what it’s like to wait and wait and hope and wait some more, then finally surrender hope. We do it all the time. And so it was with the Israelites. While they’d believed God’s promise and followed Yahweh out of Egypt, forty years had passed—forty years—and they had given up hope. Despite the evidence of God’s provision all around them, they were tired and they didn’t believe anymore that the promise would come.
Today we read another covenant story, another chapter in the long tale of the relationship between God and the Israelites. This story of the covenant between God and God’s people comes after times when they were desperately thirsty, lost in the desert and sure they would die, only to be saved by God’s provision of water…and that the time that they got tired of waiting for God and pooled their jewelry to manufacture a golden calf, a new god for themselves. Remember those?
Covenant, the making and keeping of promises, is predicated upon, of course, relationship—that mutual sharing of life and trust with another, the belief, even in times of discouragement and pain, that a promise has been made and that promise would be kept, and the practice of living believing in the promise even when all evidence points to the contrary. God was in covenant with the Israelite people. They had made promises to each other. And in today’s passage they are, once again, living through a testing of those promises.
I often say that it’s tricky for us to read the Bible as we do—one passage here, one passage there, all carefully selected and organized according to theme. When we do that, it’s like sitting in a little café, out on the sidewalk, listening to someone talk on a telephone. By listening to the conversation we certainly can get some sense of what’s going on. However, we can never get the whole picture, the full details, if we only hear part of the conversation.
And so it is with reading the Bible—particularly the passages we’ve been reading lately, the Hebrew text telling of God’s relationship with the people, of all the dramatic incidents that made up their life together. One commentator calls it the story ofIsrael’s long, hazardous journey to understand God. Each week as we hear parts of the story, little pieces of the whole, we have some sense of what’s going on but not the whole picture—not by a long shot. And that’s certainly true of today’s story. You recall what happened.
It seems the people are headed back toward theRed Seain this part of the story. The text says they had grown impatient with Moses and angry at God—again. They complained by asking why God had taken them out of Egypt in the first place…just so they could die out in the desert—they said all that, again. For there was no food and no water, they complained, and, they said, “We detest this miserable food!”
Do they sound like unhappy children to you? Me, too. The Israelites have been complaining bitterly for the past few weeks in every narrative we’ve read. It seems that getting used to desert living was proving hard for them, we might think…except for the fact that when we read this passage out of context we are not getting the full picture of what’s going on.
All the worry about food and sweet drinking water, all the concerns over the rule of law and the order of their society, their uncertainty about where to go and how to worship God…well, that was kind of understandable last week, when we were reading out of the book of Exodus about the state of the Israelite people in the months immediately following their dramatic rescue from Egypt.
But if you read about today’s incidence of complaint, you might not immediately realize that the people are complaining bitterly about God and Moses, but now almost 40 years have passed. When we read today’s passage in the context in which it was written—after years of waiting for the promise—we can see that the Israelites were still having trouble faithfully following Yahweh. They’d had trouble at the beginning of their journey, but it seems the hard lessons of life as followers of Yahweh had yet to sink into their hard heads…either that, or they were tired, so tired, of waiting for the promise to come.
The book of Numbers comes fourth in the Bible, three books behind Genesis and the story of God’s covenant with Abraham and Sarah, and two books behind Exodus, the story of the Israelites’ delivery fromEgypt. Scholars agree that Numbers has two distinct sections, and these sections are divided by the reports of two censuses of the Hebrew people. The first census is in chapter one of Numbers, where everybody in the current band of Israelites was named and counted. The second census, in chapter 26, names the generation that will be poised on the edge ofCanaanwhen the book reaches its end. The names are different. It took a long, long time, many, many years of wandering and waiting and hoping for the promise, the people still hadn’t learned that God was with them in the middle of their waiting, that God was perpetually inviting them to believe…to believe that the promise was on its way.
One of my favorite things to do when I was in Texas in college was to go water tubing. Those of you who hail from that part of this great country know that theGuadalupeRivercuts right through the middle ofNew Braunfels, Texas—just north of San Antonio. The river is the perfect size and speed for tubing, and theTexasweather makes it an utter relief most summer days. In the oppressive heat of aTexassummer it’s pure heaven to jump into an inner tube and meander your way down the river, surrounded by that refreshing water.
Those of you who have done some tubing or rafting in the past will know that the whole experience is an exercise in trust. You get dropped off at the edge of the river; you leave behind everything you brought with you; you enter the water with only the inner tube to support you. And there you are, several miles up river from the point at which your guides have promised to pick you up, floating in the cold darkness of a powerful body of water. You lean back on your inner tube and you float, trusting the integrity of the tube, the buoyancy of the water, and the word of your guide. And with those three assurances you set out to float down the river.
Living in covenant with God is filled with waiting but it’s also filled with trusting like that sometimes—during the waiting. We don’t always see the promise laid out in front of us, neatly packaged and on a mutually agreeable timeframe. No, instead, living in covenant with eternal God means often being tempted to give healing and hope up for lost. And, on the days that you don’t throw in the towel altogether, you can manage somehow to lean back in a trust that defies logic, to rest with the tenacious assurance that God will not leave, that the covenant promise will come to be.
Forty years had passed. Forty years since they’d set out with a certain degree of terror and uncertainty, toward the incomprehensible situation they faced, straight through the middle of the fear that surrounded them, with nothing to hang onto, nothing to buoy them in the middle of the dessert, nothing to keep them going except the promise—God’s promise that he would be their God, that they would have what they needed to survive, that God would create a future for their people.
But it was taking so long. Too long. They’d leaned into the promise that God had made them when they were slaves inEgypt; they’d hung on for dear life through all sorts of situations. But they got tired. The promise wasn’t coming to be fast enough. They were getting worried and sometimes they didn’t believe anymore.
It was too hard to believe when what they’d envisioned was not coming to be, when life was hard and hope was absent, and signs of God’s presence were coming too few and too far between for anybody’s preference. They gave up hope. They forgot to believe. In the middle of the long, long journey they questioned their initial belief that God would show up, that God would hold them safe and cared for, that God would come through on God’s promise to save them.
But he did. Again. Forty years and countless experiences later, God showed up again to heal them. They were in desperate circumstances yet again, unsure of the promise of God altogether, doubting their own logic and wondering when, if ever, they would see the promise come to be. And God showed up.
It was shortly after today’s Hebrew text that the Israelites made their way into Canaan, into the Promised Land, home. For so many years they had wandered the desert, and in those years of darkness, misdirection, and pain, they had begun to see only the difficult circumstances that surrounded them. They did not remember the promise. They forgot they were living in covenant. They did not have the courage to believe.
And who can blame them? We know a little of what they must have been feeling.
None of us has been delivered from slavery, but all of us have been delivered from something.
None of us has ever been lost in the desert for forty years, but all of us have waited for a promise to come to fruition.
And none of us has ever been named a special nation chosen by God, but all of us have been invited into covenant with God through Jesus Christ.
Our challenge today is to consider, in the face of all of this, whether we will believe that the promise will come to be.
Thousands of years after the Hebrews had these problems with snakes, Jesus Christ came to earth. He talked about life lived in relationship with God. He taught about God’s relentless concern for our salvation. He told stories about God as a great shepherd who cared tenderly for his flock. He said that God the shepherd would carefully count all of his sheep and, upon finding one was missing, he would go out and search and search and search until he found that one lost sheep. And when he did, he would hoist it up on his shoulders and carry it home.
Ever wonder how it felt to be the sheep? Out there in the cold, all alone, separated from the rest of your flock, alert to any and every noise that broke the night air. All alone, vulnerable, in danger…wondering where the shepherd was, if the shepherd would ever come to save you. It must have felt something like the life of a Hebrew slave inEgyptwho gave up everything to follow this god Yahweh through harrowing circumstances in the hope of finding a way home. The longer that precarious insecurity remained, the harder it was to believe that the promise was true…that God would, in fact, lead them home. It was so hard to believe.
Today the story of the Hebrews and the Gospel of John remind us that it is in just these most desperate circumstances that God does, finally, show up. The God of the covenant will not leave us, no matter how bleak our circumstances. We are not left on our own, and we are not left to our own devices. God will save us, if only we believe: the promise is on its way.
Amen.
