Easter Sunday: An expansive life

Luke 24:1-12

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, Alleluia!

Blessed Easter to you! I hope you have consumed enough guilt free chocolate this morning to get you through to next Halloween, and if you need more sweets, I’m sure you can find some around here after the service today.  

Today is the last stop of our Lenten journey where we have been exploring how God’s expansive grace fills us to the brim. Knowing how much God loves us, we are free to grow.  The question is: Will we step into that expansive grace?

It has been a Holy Week to remember. A couple of days ago on Good Friday, the power unexpectedly went out after the first reading. Clearly, someone out there thought we hadn’t been on our toes enough the last couple of years and decided to keep it exciting. We tried a few things—fuse box? Nope. Flipped some switches? Nope. Then someone poked their head outside to look around and, turns out the power was out on the whole block was out. So be it. There was nothing to do but sit in it here in this sanctuary and continue, telling the story. 

When the lights first went out, it surprised us but after our eyes adjusted, it wasn’t that big of a deal.  Outside, the sun was setting and there was still enough light coming in the windows to help us get our bearings, but as the night fell outside, and the colors faded from the windows, it became harder and harder to see in here.  We fumbled with a flashlight for the readers, we struggled to speak loudly without a microphone.  As the sun set and we slowly extinguished candle after candle on the altar, the sanctuary sank into darkness.  

I can’t think of many times when I’ve sat with fifty people in a dark room. Willingly.  For an hour. As I sat there in my pew listening to the stories, I wondered, what we would do if the power didn’t come back on for the Easter Vigil.  The Saturday Easter Vigil service begins in the dark, but then the point of the service is that the light dawns.  Given that we weren’t actually planning on staying at church until dawn, that was going to be hard to simulate with no electricity. 

In the farming town where my mom is from, folks get up before the sun has risen and head to church. Then, during the service, the sun rises.  In Latin America, some churches hold an all night traditional Easter Vigil to wait for the sun to rise.  Here in Chicago, many churches celebrate the resurrection that night of the Easter Vigil and, interestingly, when that vigil finishes, it is still dark outside. 

Something about this is fitting today, because, for all the glorious music and bright flowers, and banners waving, for all the bounce houses and beautiful easter clothes, the truth is that, like those women who stood in front of the tomb that early, shadowy easter morning, we are all grappling with truth that the new life begins with death. 

This morning, the old, old story from the gospel of Luke tells us that Mary Magdalene, Joana, Mary the mother of James, and the other women go to the tomb before dawn.  But they don’t find Jesus. They don’t find his body, dead or alive. All they discover that shadowy morning is a dark and empty tomb.  It’s not what they expected.  As if the whole thing weren’t unsettling enough, two men in dazzling clothes suddenly show up next to them and ask them “why are you looking for the living among the dead? Lest I roll my eyes at the angels, it makes me want to cut into the story in defense of the women and remind the angel: "I’ll tell you why they are looking among the dead.  Because their beloved Jesus has been tortured and interrogated and killed and they had witnessed it from the foot of the cross.  They are looking among the dead because they took great care to make sure his body was buried after he died. They are looking among the dead because they didn’t sleep well last night and they’re tired and worried and upset. Their hearts are still wandering through the shadows."

Monseñor Oscar Romero,  the El Salvadorian bishop who was martyred in the 80s, once said “Hay muchas cosas que solo se pueden ver a traves de los ojos que han llorado.” “There are many things that can only be seen through eyes that have cried.” The profound grace of the Easter story is that God meets us in the shadows and in the dark nights of the soul and offers us new life.

Our reading today began with a small little word: But… But, on the first day of the week, they (still) went to where Jesus body had been laid. But…the story says again, when they should have found Jesus’ body, they discovered the empty tomb. But…when they were terrified and hid their faces, their angels asked them, why are you still locked into this mindset of death? Remember, the angels said, how Jesus told you he would rise again? 

And there, with the light dawning in the garden, Their hope was nudged. Was it still dark when they ran to tell the apostles the good news?

But…scripture says, the men didn’t believe them, they though the women’s good news was an “idle tale.” But…Peter ran to the tomb to see for himself.

With each “but,” God pokes holes in the darkness and pinpricks of light start shining in. In the other gospels, there are moments where people come face to face with Jesus there at the tomb and they instantly believe. In this story from the gospel of Luke, that’s not the case.  It takes people time to wrap their heads around it. It takes time for the news to sink in, but slowly it does. 

In our bible, there is an old story about Pharaoh who tells the Hebrew midwives, Puah and Shiprah, to kill all the Hebrew baby boys. On the surface of things, These two midwives pretend to follow Pharaoh’s instructions—but behind the curtain, they show up in the dark, in the labor room and help bring those baby boys into the world.  One of those babies is Moses. And his mother, afraid he will be killed or taken from her, shows up later, in the dark with her baby and makes him a basket and floats him down the river where the Egyptian princess finds him.

Again and again, there are stories of people in our scriptures who show up in the dark and set something new in motion.  People who create space for something new.  Midwives who show up to the birth, parents who weave a basket, women who show up at the tomb and create space for something new in the dark.  Can we, likewise, create this space for new life?

All over the place, people stumble in the dark: Couples hit bottom in their marriages,  folks hit bottom with their addiction, people who are worn down by injustice. Can we show up in the dark and set something new in motion? 

Hope over hope against cancer and depression and the constant fast pace of life. Hope that leads us to look for joy after divorce or look for a new job that gives us life. The spark in the people who show up to the protest, who say, I am going to set something new in motion, this cloud of darkness cannot stand.  Those threads of resurrection that ran through our forebears’ lives and the ancestors’ of our faith’s lives run through our lives too.  We all have a resurrection story to tell.

And just as the women and the apostles began to tell the story, more people began to share the news of Jesus’ resurrection, so we too tell one another the story. We bear witness to the truth of God’s presence and aliveness around us.  We stare down the shadows together because Jesus our hope of the world is alive. 
We welcome this expansive new life that God offers us. For death is real, but death is not the end.

Why are you looking for the living among the dead? Do we have the courage to see through the tears and welcome this expansive life that God offers us?

As luck would have it, the electricity did come back on last Friday night.  Suddenly. But that isn’t always the case and the light doesn’t always flood back into our lives suddenly. Sometimes, the circumstances in our lives lead us to linger in the dark. And if that is you today, take heart.  “New life,” Barbara brown Taylor writes, “starts in the dark. Whether it is a seed in the ground, a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb, it starts in the dark.”

The profound grace of the Easter story is that God reaches for us in the shadows and in the dark nights of the soul and offers us new life.

It’s no accident that Easter is tied to Spring, that season of new life. It’s no accident that Easter is celebrated around the same time of Passover, that great journey to liberation. Or that today is Sunday, the first day of the week. The trumpets sound today, and the choir sings out, not because it is the end of something, not because the journey is done but because, there in the shadow, the journey has just begun. Our joy today announces the dawn, for Christ is risen, he is risen indeed, Alleluia!

Palm Sunday: Even the Stones Cry Out

Luke 19:28-40

 There are certain choruses from rock songs that seem almost timeless. They stick with us perhaps because they get at some kind of truth that really resonates. When the Beatles wrote “All you need is love…” A whole lot of us would forever be able to finish the sentence.  Aretha wrote, R-E-S-P-E-C-T, Elton sang, “someone saved my life tonight,” Journey sang “don’t stop believing.”  And then you have the Rolling Stones, “You can’t always get what you want…”

Those crowds on the outskirts of Jerusalem that ancient Palm Sunday didn’t get what they wanted. Let me explain: Everyone went wild as Jesus approached the city.  This was it: the moment they had been waiting for!  There they were, on their way to Jerusalem for the Passover feast of liberation and all the old songs and prophecies were flooding back to them. They cheered and sang and the energy pulsed through everyone as they laid their cloaks down. Other gospels tell us they waived palm branches.  The people cried out and “praised God joyfully for all the deeds of power they had seen!” It was electric! “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna!” 

It takes some chutzpa to shout out “blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord” when Pilate, the Regent himself was parading into the other side of the Jerusalem at that very same moment. He was, indeed, processing in with a mighty military parade, flanked by the cavalry, and his soldiers with enormous crowds gathering to see him in all his finery. (He and his entourage always paraded into the city with the Roman military for these religious festivals like Passover).  

Back by Jesus on the other side of the city, the people were bringing to life ancient scriptures. They were crying out words from Psalm 118, which was a part of a collection of psalms called the Hallel that was always sung during these Jewish festivals, Calling out Hosanna, Lord, save us!

Pilate’s informants were everywhere.  And this move of hailing Jesus as “King” was not exactly going to go over smoothly with the Roman authorities. The people with their palms and cloaks were cheering because Jesus made them think of those monarchs of old of ancient Israel: the glory days, the ones who sat on thrones,  the ones who ruled with wisdom and justice, the ones who could make things right.

But Jesus had a deeper, more enduring kind of liberation in mind when he rode into the city. He doesn’t ride in on a warhorse, but a donkey. His liberation is not one of vengeance or domination but of peace. Jesus spent his life as a healer and teacher who welcomed tax collectors, outcasts and those who were banished. He was not the kind of warrior or king the people might expected.

Many of the people there surrounding Jesus would have wanted to topple roman rule, they would have wanted victory and glory but Jesus’s kingdom, as he would later tell Pilate, was not of this world. His power is not in that of tanks and fighter planes, landmines, and supersonic missals.  All we have to do is check the news about Ukraine or Yemen or Somalia these days to see where the grip of that kind of earthly power can take us. Jesus power was a different kind of power and glory. The kingdom wasn’t coming in the aggressive way the crowds may have wanted or imagined or in the way anyone predicted. But as Jesus said, “I tell you, if these people were silent, even the stones would cry out” and as some of the—ah--Stones themselves suggested, the crowds didn’t get what they wanted, but as it turns out, they got what they needed.  

What those crowds needed then and what we need now is a savior. That earthly power of sin and death are ancient and poisonous enemies.  This kind of evil makes us believe that some people are more valuable than others. It teaches that certain people are exploitable and expendable because they don’t have a lot of money or because of the color of their skin. It teaches us that money and might are more powerful than mercy and grace. That the self is more important than the neighbor. This kind of sin and evil works hard to break folks and squeezes the life from people.  And, by the power of God, this is the enemy that is defeated through Jesus’ death on the cross.

Today on this final Sunday of Lent we step into Holy Week.  Today, we are invited to join Jesus on the via dolorosa, on the way of suffering, as he rides into Jerusalem.  Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a big one for dwelling in suffering.  I don’t think I’m alone in this.  A lot of us run from suffering. In some cases where we are longing from healing from sickness or something like that, this is understandable. In other cases, We’ll do anything but have the hard conversation. We avoid painful things.  We hold up our comfort as something desirable and something to protect.  And while, there is nothing wrong with being comfortable, at some level, today, we are invited to be willing to be uncomfortable as we head into Holy Week.  

As you walk with Jesus into Holy Week today, I ask you: what are the things you’d be willing to suffer for?  What are the things you’d be willing to protest? Or endure public humiliation for?  Or be uncomfortable for? I ask you this not suggesting that we must suffer in order to be saved.  Some folks in society, like brown or black folks, sometimes women, sometimes others are wedged into a spots in the world where they suffer on behalf of others. But, Holy Week is an invitation to all of us to look around and identify where would we stand?  What would we be willing to suffer for? What are the values we cherish? And how is that reflected in how we live? In lent there is a call for growth and even change. 

I mentioned on Ash Wednesday and I’ll mention again that James Baldwin said, “not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” And facing the heartache, pain, sin and evil of the world is not comfortable. But there is no resurrection without the tomb.

The crowds that hailed Jesus as he rode into Jerusalem said, wanted glory and triumph.  Those same crowds would see the hope and life of the world, arrive, rise and then fall. But he would rise again, for the way of servanthood and love will not be defeated.  “You can’t always get what you want but if you try sometimes you just might find you get what you need.”

Brazen Acts of Beauty (A sermon about believing the right things--or not--and friendships that go down in history)

A sermon from the 5th Sunday of Lent based on John 12:1-8

Most of our readings over the course of this year are from the gospel of Luke but this morning, we have a reading from the gospel of John. The gospel of John starts showing up in our readings a lot around Holy Week and Easter. John was probably one of the later or even the last gospel to be written and was a little like the youngest child that goes kind of rogue. Could be that John was written in a different region, than the other gospels.  It kind of marches to its’ own beat.  I once heard that by the time John was written, any of the children or babies that might have been blessed by Jesus would have been great-great grandparents if they were still living at all. That would be about the distance between my children’s grandchildren and JFK.  

John is particular for a lot of reasons.  One of them is that he emphasizes different stories that the other evangelists didn’t tell.  In John, we hear about the time that Jesus turned water to wine in the wedding of Cana.  We hear that story of Nicodemus, the man who came to find Jesus and ask him questions in the middle of the night. We hear about how Jesus washed his disciple’s feet in the upper room.  We also hear the story of his friendship that he had with the three siblings, Lazarus, Mary and Martha. The story of their friendship is cast into the spotlight a couple of times, but there is one time in particular, about a week before Jesus rode through the palms into Jerusalem on the donkey that was pretty moving. 

In this story, Jesus had received word that his friend Lazarus was growing sicker by the day, but he didn’t get there in time to save him.  When he finally arrived at his friends’ house in Bethany, he found the sisters, Mary and Martha in tears, and he too broke down and started crying with them when he realized that Lazarus had died. Martha tried to hold him back, but Jesus, went anyway to the tomb where Lazarus was buried. And then with all the emotions maxxed, he called Lazarus out of that cave, and somehow, Lazarus stumbled out still smelling of the spices they used to anoint him.  It was stunning.  

Honestly, it’s a little hard to believe. It was probably hard to believe then just like it’s a little hard to believe now.  Which is, itself, a major point with the gospel of John: Belief. John talks about “belief” all the time. “don’t let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God as you believe in me” Or, Jesus said to the Samaritan woman “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me shall not perish but have eternal life.” Belief is also kind of a sticking point with Christians today.  Mention you’re a Christian and folks start wondering what you believe or they assume they know. Mention you’re a pastor and it really gets interesting... 

Belief. Do you believe? What do you believe?  Do you believe the right things?  Belief is a big word in Christianity.  

I have a friend who grew up in the church but in recent years has wistfully told me, “I just don’t believe the same things as you…”  I’m not totally sure that is true, but we’ve never really delved into doctrines.  

“Belief” as a noun doesn’t exist in the gospel of John.  It is not a thing that you can have.  It’s not a list of principles to adhere to. Jesus of Nazareth does not give us an abstract theory of social justice or spell out a theology of the cross for us.  Jesus didn’t publish a set of 15 volumes which we must read in all of their fine print and then sign on the dotted line that we accept it. “To believe,” in the gospel of John, means to trust in and abide with God—to reach for God and draw close to God through the highs and lows of life. Although you won’t find the noun “believe” in the gospel of John, you will find the verb “believing.” Believing is something that we do.  And Jesus, in John’s gospel--well in all the gospels—is intensely practical and consistently directing us to concrete actions of things to do. 

Barbara Brown Taylor makes this connection when she explains how Jesus instructs the disciples to do concrete things like “feed my sheep,” “keep my commandments,” “wash one another’s feet,” or “love one another.” But what, she then asks, does that love look like?

The story of Jesus’ friends, Martha, Lazarus and Mary picks up again a few days after that very dramatic moment with Lazarus.  The three siblings are hosting a meal. It’s a dinner party at their house.  Martha is in charge of the logistics. She is the one who always makes the evening sparkle.  She is the one who wants to make sure her guests are at ease and taken care of. She has prepared the right amount of food and set out the wine for the evening.  Martha is serving the people, specifically, the word for “serve” that’s used is “deacon.”  (if I pastor people, she is deacon-ing her guests). This is the first display of love that we see that night.  

Then, just as everyone is starting to enjoy the delicious meal, Mary comes in holding a small jar.  Without saying a word to anyone, she uncorks it and pours the contents over Jesus feet. If folks didn’t realize what she was doing a minute ago, they sure do now because they are flooded with the smell of pure nard. 

It is a tender scene but Mary is really out there on the edge of what is acceptable. And as she begins to wipe Jesus’ feet with her hair, there may have been more than one person who raised an eyebrow or reached awkwardly for the water jug.  A love so lavish, it was difficult to watch…

It’s Judas who breaks the silence:  “Mary, what are you doing! He says to her. You’ve lost your way! with a glance at Jesus, he goes on carefully: this movement that we are a part of is about caring for the poor. Do you know how much we could have sold this oil for?” (you could hear the shame in his voice). “Do you know how many people we could have helped?”

Sounds like his words weren’t entirely honest because in the following verse St. John make a special note of how Judas is, not only the one who manages the community money but is also the one that conveniently skims a little off the top while he’s at it. 

Mary’s is there, kneeling at Jesus’ feet and pouring this oil over him which is just how kings were anointed and everyone would have known that.  Jesus responded to Judas: “leave her alone.  My time here is short,” he said. You see, while, yes, kings were anointed, it was usually on their heads.  The dead were anointed on their feet, just like Mary anointed Jesus and Jesus would have also known that as he prepared to head to Jerusalem.

It’s Barbara Brown Taylor who also reminded me that Mary doesn’t actually say anything in this stunning moment. She doesn’t confess a statement of belief that has Jesus nodding in approval at his star pupil. Instead, belief is in her hands. It’s in her hair.  It’s in that arresting smell--somewhere between jasmine and mint--that’s in the air.  It’s in her bent body as she leans over Jesus’ feet.  This is what love looks like. This is her belief on display for everyone to see.  

When the gospel was read as a longer story instead of these strange little truncated bites we get each week, 

the ancient people would have heard this story continue a few moments later. At the dinner in Bethany, Mary wipes Jesus’ feet with her hair.  There is only one other time when this slightly strange word, “wipe” is used in the gospel of John and it pops up a handful of verses later when Jesus, a few days later is now in Jerusalem and in the upper room with his disciples. 

In this scene, Jesus ties a towel over his clothes at his waist and then, scripture reads “he poured water into a basin and begin to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him.”  

If we had heard this story in the original Greek, we would have immediately heard the through line  as Jesus knelt at the feet of his disciples and wiped their feet.  

We will hear this story on the night of Maundy Thursday, and as it goes, Jesus “came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord are you going to wash my feet!? Jesus answers him, Peter, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”

And this is gospel truth for us today.

If Jesus is asking us to do certain things “to feed my sheep,” to “wash each other’s feet” and to “love one another,” sometimes, we do these things when we don’t yet understand. “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” The doing comes before the understanding.  We love first and then we believe.  

Faith isn’t something that we can achieve. Belief isn’t a goal or a prize that we win. It is a gift that we receive and then we tend to it in community through how we serve each other, and through how we serve folks around us.  Yes, of course, our belief can bring us great comfort and solace and that is fine and good.  

But, if you’re not sure today what you believe. If you’re not if you believe the right things or if you believe enough to belong around here, take heart, and know that this faith that we cherish is a way of life. It isn’t something we always have to be working out intellectually. The gospel of Jesus is intensely practical. It looks like the generosity of Martha serving her guests, like Mary wiping Jesus feet with her hair. It looks like us serving the people in front of us: our friends, the students we teach, our family, the people in the meeting with us.  It looks like feeding God’s sheep and washing people’s feet and loving one another.

Someone can tell us that they love us, but we believe it through how they treat us and care for us and support us. 

Being a Christian person should impact the way we live. It isn’t about “believing ideas to be true or false” or “just showing up on Sunday morning.” Our faith is meant to be lived in the streets of the world.  

Our belief is in our bodies
In our hands, 
in our words, 
in our presence, 
in our patience, 
in our courage, 
in our love.

Now go and live it.