An Easter message: When fear and joy hold hands and walk us to courage

A blessed and joyous Easter to you! Christ is risen, he is risen indeed, Alleluia! 

After our Maundy Thursday service as we were driving home, I said to Omar, look at the moon!  It was a glorious and full moon glowing down through the trees at Horner park.  Easter is the only church holiday dependent on the moon. We celebrate Easter the first Sunday after the first full moon following the spring equinox.  Turns out our Muslim and Jewish siblings also observe Ramadan and Passover dependent on the moon and this year we have this rare convergence of Holy days. While it seems a little complicated and unpredictable to determine our religious festivals by the moon, there is some reason for it.  In the case of Christianity, Holy Week and Easter coincide with spring.  All around us everything is coming to life.  Tiny buds are appearing on trees, the parsley is starting to come back in my garden, flowers are pushing up through the ground. God’s creative power is on full display all around us. While this natural waking up of the earth makes sense and is predictable, resurrection on the other hand is natural.  

When someone is buried, they stay buried and, at least in this life, we don’t expect to see them again in any tangible way. While the gardens in the cemeteries come back to life in the springtime with flowers and grass, that’s about it and the best we can do is visit the graves of those we have loved and continue on. This is what Mary Magdalene and the other Mary did that early, early morning when then went to visit Jesus’ grave. But, what they encountered was anything but natural and predictable.

The way St. Matthew tells it, that quiet morning that they went to the tomb, as soon as they get there, an angel flutters in and makes such a thump of a landing that it causes an earthquake.  The angel then rolls back the massive stone and plunks down on top of the boulder. You can almost see that angel sitting there and grinning with their arms crossed while the guards tremble and then pass out. The two Marys are standing there stunned--taking it in. What in the world. 

You see, it had been a terrible last few days.  The entire city had been up in arms about Jesus.  The Romans and leaders of the day had done everything they could to get rid of him, smearing him, condemning his followers, launching a highly successful PR campaign against the charismatic, gentle teacher, and then publicly executing him. The governor, Pilate, was eager to quiet the uproar in the city, and he washed his hands of the whole debacle. Then he sent a couple of guards to the tomb to make sure no one tried to pull any monkey business with the body after Jesus was buried. The two women probably crept to the tomb that dawn still terribly afraid and now this! An angel!?  They must have been trembling or quaking in their boots because the angel says to them “do not be afraid.”  

That feeling of fear they’re channeling is right on par with how all the great biblical characters respond when there is big news to manage.  Remember Mary the mother of Jesus? “Fear not” the angel said to her, you’re pregnant (with the son of God) and unmarried which is about to get real fun to explain but God is with you, fear not.

Not only is fear the right response for ancient biblical people confronting big news, fear also happens to be the way that everyday people like us respond when we’re looking straight at something—at a new truth or a new reality that we know is going to change us forever. We feel fear when we’re standing on the edge of something new. It’s the fear you feel after the phone call you didn’t expect or the news you didn’t see coming that leaves a pit in your stomach.  But the odd thing is that right there with that pit in your stomach, somehow your priorities become clear and you sense that sitting right there next to fear is gratitude or even, joy.

It happened to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary: they were terrified, but at the same time they were overjoyed with the news that Jesus was alive.  And we know that feeling too: We feel fear of what might happen to our children when the world seems dangerous and then we feel joy when we think of that blessing they are in our lives.  There’s fear when someone we love is sick, and joy in registering what they mean to us and the gift they are to us.  There’s fear in leaving an old job, but joy in coworkers we love and the possibility of what could be. There’s fear when the end of life draws near, but joy remembering the life we’ve lived! There’s fear as we look at all the problems in our nation, world, neighborhood, and then joy to be here in this moment and with the ones that we love.  Fear and joy so often hold hands.

As Mary Magdalene and the other Mary process those twin feelings of feelings of fear and joy, the angel invites them into the tomb to have a look around and see for themselves that Jesus is not there. They poke around in that cold, damp cave looking at each other in wide eyed wonder and terror and then, angel, pipes up and tells them to, “go now quickly and tell the disciples, he has been raised from the dead and is on his way to Galilee” This show is on the road!”

I wonder if, before they took off running, they thought about it for a moment—grasping each other’s hands, leaning against each other trying to catch their breath--but then they run with  their hearts pounding. No sooner had they taken off when Jesus shows up there on the road.  “Greetings” he says and it’s just about more than they can bear and they grab onto his feet, beside themselves.  He also tells them not to be afraid—probably because new life is frightening.  

When you expect a sealed rock in front of the tomb and instead you find a big angel sitting on the boulder grinning down at you, when you’re spinning your wheels in the past and then suddenly, someone stops you points you forward and says look what’s coming in the future--when you’re searching around the tomb for something dead to hang on to and instead you find the risen Christ—the possibility of what could be is stunning and even frightening. It certainly isn’t natural or predictable.

What happens next is the stuff miracles are made of.  You see, something about that joy they feel pushes them through to courage and off the go to tell the disciples what had happened. Off they go to build a new world. 

And isn’t that the way with us too? The joy and hope we feel for what could be pushes us through to courage.

We are living in extraordinary times.  Sometimes it feels like the very world is shifting and quaking beneath our feet. And yet we hope for a new world.

What I know is that God is always pushing us to the edge of what’s comfortable or what feels predictable in our own lives and in society and asking us to imagine what could be. Right now, we have the opportunity to be a part of shaping the world into something new.  It is the honest truth that new life is frightening. It’s not predictable like the moon cycles, it’s not smooth like butter, but we must imagine what God is calling us to grow into.  We cannot stay looking at the cold, gray walls of the tomb. Sometimes, love will ask us to take a stand, to step out onto the road, and it will take us where we don’t think we can go. Real conversations about justice or equity or love or change in our selves or in the wider world cannot happen while we sit in our comfort zone. 

Just as God pointed those women and set them on the way we are sent to go and seek the love of God alive around us and to share the story of how we know God’s love is alive in our lives even while the very ground shifts and quakes beneath our feet.

For Christ is alive, he is risen!
He is risen indeed alleluia!

A message about goosebumps, neuroscience and the power of being known by God (from 4.9.23)

John 4:5-42

 Last week, I looked in my files in my computer curious about what I had preached on this gospel text three years ago when it came up.  I knew that three years ago around this time, we had gone into the lockdown and, sure enough, this was the last Sunday we met in person in the sanctuary.  As I skimmed what I had written, I was transported back to that time and felt a tingle in my spine: "We had hoped," I reflected, "that the kids would only be out of school a few weeks. We had hoped that we would be back to church by Easter." None of us had any idea what was before us on that Sunday three years ago.  And as I thought about that for a moment I had goosebumps.

There are studies that show that when you feel goosebumps or a tingle the chills that they come when you feel this heightened sense that you are joined with others in community or that you share a common experience. Evolutionarily, there are some essentials we have as mammals. Right alongside of the need to eat and keep our oxygen at the correct level, we have to keep our body temperature in the right range in order to survive. Not to hot or cold.  There are some mammals that are highly social, like some dogs or wolves or primates and humans that, when they get too cold: they huddle. The very first physical response social mammals have when it gets very cold is that our hair stands up so that our skin bunches up so it’s less porous to the cold. This, then, signals to others to draw near and even embrace, which releases oxytocin, a neurochemical that rushes through the body and makes us more open to others. Neuroscientists say that the sensation of goosebumps unite or connect us with others as we try to make sense of these big unknown things before us. 

When our ancient mammal relatives came up in front of vast mysteries, and even dangerous ones: their hair stood up and they found this warmth and strength in drawing closer to each other.  What were vast unknowns or mysteries for these ancient relatives? a roaring waterfall, a powerful thunderstorm, a massive canyon, wild gusts of wind. 

Our bible doesn’t talk specifically about chills or goosebumps. It also wasn’t written in the verbose times we live in now where we record every minute detail.  There is so much left to imagination and interpretation. But the bible does have some stories of people who, in the face of vast mysteries open up to each other and this fits with the neuroscience like a glove.  There are a lot of stories about mysteries and epiphanies and how they change us, but today’s is about a Samaritan woman that Jesus encountered at a well.

In this bible story of The Other Good Samaritan Jesus and the woman have a taboo conversation it’s taboo for a lot of reasons.  Not only is there the male/female thing happening, Jesus and the Samaritan woman are also on two sides of a deep divide.  In their day, the Israelites and Samaritans were enemies, but not distant, “out there” kind of enemies.  More like “in my back yard, looks a lot like me but is different in all the wrong ways kind of enemy.”  Their religion agreed on some key points but diverged around a couple of details that were significant enough to make them hate each other. The set up of this encounter between Jesus and this woman is immediately tense in the minds of ancient people. These two have no reason to interact or get to know one another, but Jesus asks something of her anyway.  That’s the first mysterious thing. 

The scripture does not say this, but I have to wonder if she had chills when Jesus asked her for a drink of water.  We don’t know this, but again, neuroscience tells us that when people feel that profound human connection that causes a tingle in the spine or goosebumps, it releases oxytocin and it makes us more open to others.

With that question that reached across the breach, they were immediately stepping out onto a limb. The conversation continues. 

History has not been kind to the Samaritan woman around the issue of her five husbands. We have no idea what her story is, but there are a number of choice words and phrases that have been tagged to her over the centuries.  Folks say she was “no angel” had a “checkered past” was a prostitute and was “living in sin.” There’s no biblical basis for any of this.  Just cultural…

Honestly?  We could easily guess she had been widowed. Or maybe she had been divorced because she couldn’t conceive a child and her husbands divorced her because of it. We don’t know why she had been married so many times. But husband after husband divorced her or died until she was finally left with the brother of her late husband who basically took her as a pity-wife because the law said he had to.  
In their conversation, this woman shares her truth with Jesus and admits that she has no husband. That's bold. She could have just ignored him. It was a moment of taking off the mask and sheer honesty.  She meets him halfway. Mysteriously, Jesus fills in the gaps of her story and then meets her at the other half tells her his truth. He is the great I Am. In that mysterious moment, it was like goosebumps radiated up and down their arms and they drew close to one another.  You can see this image of the two of them on the front of your bulletin meeting each other in the middle with true honesty. She shows us how to be completely and fully honest and known before God.  

Face to face with the messiah, you really know who you are: the good, the bad, the embarrassing, the hopeful, all of it. It is the mystery of being fully known, seen and understood. There is no hiding here, no hiding the parts of ourselves or the parts of our lives that we would just as soon forget.  

In the gospel of John, to be a disciple of Jesus is to be in relationship with God. It doesn’t necessarily mean “to follow” the way it does in our other gospels. And that’s okay, Sometimes, I think this idea of “following” makes it seem like we can’t question anything or interrogate anything.  It is an image of sitting, like this cover shows eye to eye, heart to heart with Jesus. 

What does it look like to be in relationship with God? Last week, I met with an old friend who was in town for breakfast.  He has a current mantra He’s working on, he told me. “Don’t criticize, complain, or condemn.”  Apparently, it’s loosely related to the philosophies of addition and recovery that he’s involved with.

This is good solid advice, but I happen to know that this person periodically changes their mantras, breathes them, repeats them throughout the day, writes them on the corner of pieces of paper laying around, and I’d say prays them, until they weave themselves into his being.  

What would be the mantra that you need to pray continually? What is your honest truth that only God knows and the prayer that lifts out of it. What is it that you must cultivate more of in your heart? More grace or mercy towards people who “aren’t getting it right?”Less cynicsm? More tenacity? Less knee jerk judgement and more openness? More generosity towards people who have less than you? More compassion for our bodies that are thankfully less than perfect? Less-self doubt?  More appreciation of the beauty you run across in your daily life?

The spiritual growth that we crave and long for must be cultivated beyond a visit to church on Sunday morning.

If believing in the gospel of John means to be in relationship with God: to let ourselves be fully and honestly known. We must be honest about where we’re cracked and crumbling and to quietly, slowly let God work on us. Sometimes it is these daily quotidian habits that slowly deepen our connection to God over time. 

Lent is a time where we open our hearts so that God can prune away the old habits and patterns that should be cut back.  Then, we fertilize and cultivate the areas that need to grow.  God does this all with the aim of greening our souls. In the profound gift of being truthful and being known by God, may we draw closer to and be shaped by the one, who is, who was and who will be.