Happy Easter!!!
Got time to Guide? (Ex. 15:8-18; Acts 8:26-40)
There is a traditional tale that tells of a person who had been wandering about in a forest for several days. Yes, I said several days, not hours. Clearly, the person had very much lost their way. The bubble of hope in this person’s heart had long since popped, until, that is, it finally started to bloom again with great joy when someone was seen approaching from a distance. “Now I shall surely be instructed how to find my way out!” came an inner exclamation of relief.
Upon nearing each other enough to talk, the wanderer begged the other, saying, “Will you please instruct me on the way out of the forest? I have been wandering about in here for several days.” The reply arrived with quick, exasperated precision – “Oh, I do not know the way out either, for I, too have been wandering about in here for many days.” The bubble of hope and joy floated toward a tree and quickly popped upon impact with the bark. The stranger continued speaking, however, saying, “While I cannot fully instruct you on the way out, I can indeed tell you not to go the way that I have gone, for I know that it is not the way.” Punctuating this wisdom, the fellow wanderer extended an invitation with the words, “Now come, let us search for the way out together.”
This pleasant parable packs a pleasant, poignant punch. It offers a lesson about how people need to come together when a safe and sure way has been lost. I see another, more subtle lesson here as well. This is a lesson that lifts up a difference between teaching and guiding.
What other words do you think of when you hear the word “teaching?” I have words like “lesson,” “instruction,” and “education” floating in my mental soup. I also have images of some favorite teachers of mine along the way – Mrs. Searles in third grade with her kind but crooked smile; Mrs. Fleming the year after who was the first to teach me Haiku poetry; my irreverent sociological research professor in college; the professor of pastoral theology in grad school whom I plan to thank whenever I get around to writing a book. As I think of all the teachers in my life, there are, of course, some who were not in academic positions. These are the people who taught me life skills and lessons. I consider them, along with the greats I just mentioned, to be my mentors. I’m not sure, though, I’ve ever considered any of these folks as “guides.”
What words come together in your mental soup when you hear the word “guide?” I think of such words as “practical wisdom,” and “completely devoted.” A guide is, it seems to me, someone who knows how to instruct in the way of facts and logic, but who also draws from and gladly offers a depth of practical, real-life experience. Consider, for example, that we call certain people “trail guides” and not “trail teachers.” We need such folks not only be able to navigate a map and identify vegetation and animal habitats, but also to warn us of hazards and delights they have encountered in their own walks … you know, those little gems offered to enrich our own walking, and, perhaps, our own future guiding of others.
In our traditional tale, the wanderer initially wanted instruction, knowledge in how to find the way out. What was received instead was someone willing to share their experiences and to be a companion for the journey ahead. Combined, they became guides for one another, sharing knowledge and experience that kept the bubble of hope away from pointy branches.
“Do you understand what you are reading?” asked a Greek convert to Christianity living in Jerusalem (by the name of Philip) to an Ethiopian high court official he happened upon after a little holy prompting. This was not the Philip of the original twelve disciples, but someone who had been given the responsibility of caring for a food pantry in Jerusalem during the days when the Pharisee Paul, before his blessed conversion, had been violently persecuting every Christian he could find. The royal representative from the court of Candace, a city in Ethiopia, had been returning home from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Seated in a royal carriage that had paused for a rest on the journey, this Ethiopian official had been reading from the prophet Isaiah when Philip wandered up and took notice. Then came the question about whether or not the prophecy about a lamb who had unjustly been led to slaughter was understood. The Ethiopian replied, “How can I, unless someone guides me?”
Interesting, isn’t it? He did not ask Philip to teach him the meaning of the passage. He wisely requested to be guided. The ancient word that the Gospel writer Luke uses here for “guide” literally means “to lead the way.” Having experienced his own conversion to Christ, the sacrificial lamb of whom Isaiah prophesied, Philip was in an excellent position to fill the requested role of guide. And so he did, leading the truth-seeking Ethiopian out to the baptismal waters.
Very, very significant here is that Luke, the author of Acts, mentions that the Ethiopian was a eunich. This was not to introduce some random, strange element about the unique personhood of the official into the story. It was instead to emphasize that this fresh convert, despite his high official standing, was an outsider even in his home court. Culturally speaking, he was not regarded by his society as a “normal” person. How special, then, was the Good News of Jesus Christ! The Lamb had volunteered himself to be slain in order to level all layers of social strata, to unite everyone as brothers and sisters – eunuchs and “normally gendered” folks; Greeks and Ethiopians; Jews and Gentiles; and on through a diverse list that stretches wider than the universe. And what good news that Philip understood his Christian responsibility to guide every sort of person toward this Lamb and this holy unity. It would not have been enough to hand the Ethiopian eunich a Bible commentary and a few learned words and then leave him be to decipher the meaning of an ancient prophecy. He knew he had to be a companion sharing experiences of Christ in his life – of his own wrestling with Scripture, his own conversion, his call to ministry with the food pantry, and so on.
We greatly value those people in our lives who truly guide us to be the kind of community Christ would have us to be. We can be taught about the Way of love and unity, but we all sure as heaven know we really need to be guided – especially when we are lost and wandering, trying to find a way out.
In a book titled, Memories of God, a seminary professor tells of one her most painfully lost and wandering moments. This is someone, mind you, extremely well versed in the Bible and in theology. But all of her study combined didn’t come close to the way her mother had always been her best guide. That’s why the phone call tossed her into deep woods. She received it from her brother one evening. “Hey, Sis,” he had said, “I’m calling about mom … she’s in the hospital. I think they’re going to do bypass surgery on Monday. She needs you to come on up.”
Hearing the news, the little girl with the seminary professor’s credentials felt lost. It took some inner wandering, but she worked through enough anger, fear and rescheduling nightmare to make the journey up north from the south. She found her mother in the bed, looking exhausted, waiting on the scheduling of the surgery. She was walled around by her daughter, sons, sisters, and half of her grandchildren. They talked, writes Professor Roberta Bondi, “on and on about nothing” until her mama decided it was time to send everyone home. On the one hand, she explained that this was because she needed to sleep. On the other hand, however, she added a few words born from the heart of a true and wise life-guide. She said, “You children visit one another.” She was ready to face the night, the needed rest, and the coming surgery; and part of this readiness was to guide her family into making sure they would be with one another come what may.
Jesus did the same. As the time of his death neared, he asked the beloved disciple to take care of his mother. He also exhorted the disciples to gather in Galilee and wait for Good News. Jesus didn’t teach salvation so much as guide others toward it by example.
This morning, around this baptismal font and beautiful child, we have not gathered to be taught a lesson on the meaning of baptism. My place is indeed to teach, but more so, like Philip, it is to guide others toward new life in Christ. By responding with a glad “yes” to this baptism request (which happens to be the third one for myself and the Martin family, a new record!), I stand as a guide on a journey for which I will not always know the way out, but I will know where I’ve been and I know I will be a companion in Christ in the days to come. More importantly, though, we – immediate family and church family – hve all pledged to God that we will honor Christ’s gift of cleansing from sin by being good and faithful guides. Our pledge of love and unity as a family of faith is what will reveal the Way for Cole, as it continues to do so for his big sister Kaileigh and big brother Teddy.
Who have been your most significant, steadfast guides in the faith? I trust today you just might be affirming your mothers! Hopefully, a pastor or two as well!
All in all, as you go forth from this beautiful sanctuary to be guides and to thank your guides, I invite you to take to heart the lyrics from one of my favorite songs by the now defunct Christian rock group Audio Adrenaline. It was the last song of the last record they recorded, and it summed everything up with a word about God’s ever guiding presence – “God came down to walk beside me … God came down to send friends to guide me … God came down to remind me … this is what it feels like, to be loved.” Amen.
Loving Truth and Action (Deut. 6; 1 Jn. 3:16-24)
The man’s name is Chuck. Chuck used to tell as many people as possible that his hero is Jesus Christ. He declared every chance he could, that he desired to meet “honest, loyal people who are devoted to things and take them seriously.” The company of friends forty-four year old Chuck kept shared the same sentiment … always emphasizing a message of love rather than hate.
The forty-three year old woman’s last name, rather poetically I’m sad to say, was Lynch. She had been a loner seeking the company of those who wanted to share the message of love she and Chuck and too many others held in common. Having made a connection through the internet, she had taken a flight to meet Chuck and his inner circle last November. Something didn’t sit right with her once face to face in the company of Chuck, his son, and several others. She turned to leave for home. That’s when Chuck, the avowed follower of Jesus Christ who valued honest, loyal people, allegedly shot Lynch to death and had her body dumped in a backwoods canal.
I read all this while sitting at the car dealership this past week awaiting a repair. It was in the current issue of Time magazine, an article titled, “Rebranding Hate in the Age of Obama.” The “rebranding” focuses on the racist rhetorical downplaying of violence and hate in favor of a message about love. Love, that is, of only a single sort of “white” people. They sell baseball caps with the message IT’S LOVE, NOT HATE, have their sweet Sunday-school aged children draw signs that say, WHITE PRIDE WORLD WIDE, and sing songs about the evils of oppression (against their understanding of the Aryan race, that is.) Hooked, lined, and sunk, Cynthia Lynch had believed Chuck’s KKK offshoot was softer than the older white supremacists. She apparently had wanted to be part of this “new” generation. We don’t know what happened to change her mind at some point during an initiation ceremony, but she lost her life trying to reassert her freedom in the face of their brand of “love.”
It’s an interesting article that argues that certain racist groups are trying to come across more “normal” and “non-threatening” these days, now that arguably the most powerful person in the world is an African-American. That said, while an interesting report, its words and pictures made me feel sick. All that free coffee at the dealership re-brewed itself in my belly several times over. I sat there waiting for word on the minor minivan repair just shaking my head and muttering a little louder than I should have been in the company of other customers.
Somewhere in the midst of all this I started thinking about the text I’d already chosen to preach on this morning. I thought about how racists read the same words, but come to a vastly different conclusion about 1 John 3:18’s exhortation to “let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.”
We know all too well from history and the history being written still today how hate groups put their version of love and truth into action. Their understanding of the God who embodies truth and action in the Gospels could not be any more polar opposite than my understanding. This is so obvious that there is no further need to elaborate on it. My attention this morning is instead on what we are doing in our personal and communal lives to firmly stand with the Jesus who loved and loves all races and who went to the Cross to bring about the reconciliation of every person in the world with God and with one another.
“How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refused to help?” This question of 1 John 3:17 is a rhetorical call to action. It’s not just a call to charity for the sake of being charitable. It’s a call to be charitable of heart for the sake of God’s heart. It’s got a firm root in Israel’s sacred shema from the sixth chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy, which exhorts us to act with our whole heart, soul and might in response to our steadfastly abiding God.
This action begins by holding fast to our individual and collective remembrance of all the ways the Scriptures attest to how God has lovingly interceded to deliver suffering humanity from injustice. Rob Bell, pastor of the 11,000 member Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville, Michigan, states it this way in a recent interview — “Our redemption experience is deeply tied to extending our redemption experience to others. God says,” continued Bell, “I know how you are. You’re going to forget Egypt and how I rescued you. You’re going to forget your own liberation narrative unless you’re endlessly extending generosity to the widow, the orphan and the stranger among you. And so God connects personal salvation with acts of justice, compassion and mercy.”
How have you experienced divine redemption? Has this stirred you to go out and help God help others experience the same?
When we remember our redemption experiences and honor those we read of in the Bible, we indeed should feel compelled to extend that Good News. We do this in so many ways — by being faithful stewards of our personal wealth, by advocating for socio-economic balance and equity, by giving our valuable time to directly assist people burdened by oppression, by praying for others, by deepening and growing our knowledge and experiences of God’s love.
We find ourselves, in a myriad of ways, striving to be what Sister Helen Prejean was to death row inmate Robert Lee Willie just before his execution. In the movie version of this real life tale, entitled Dead Man Walking, we hear her say, “I want the last face you see in this world to be the face of love, so you look at me when they do this thing. I’ll be the face of love for you.”
I get to wondering whether or not there was a face of love for Cynthia Lynch or for Raymond “Chuck” Foster that could have helped God transform their poisonous, deadly prejudice. I wonder and then I resolve that we need to keep stirring one another up to be bold faces of true love. We must understand and be vigilant that the identification of “Christian” is a verb!
One solid reason we need to stir one another up is because every single one of us can succumb to the more unintentional resistance to God talked about in the eleventh chapter of a new book in our church library called Love One Another: Becoming the Church Jesus Longs For.
“It should be obvious,” writes Whitworth University professor and this book’s author Gerald Sittser, “that the Christian life is not a journey for casual weekend strollers. It is more like a strenuous hike in the Rockies.” He talks about how some people are very intentional in their resistance to God, while others are more naturally inclined toward inertia, that is, toward sluggish inactivity. It is “the human condition at its unselfconscious worst,” which in Sittser’s opinion, “may be the more deadly of the two simple because we are unaware of it, like death by gradual poisoning.” This inertia is like “water that flows to the lowest elevation possible, where is can rest after cascading down mountainsides.”
We all spend or have spent enormous chunks of our lives cascading down mountainsides. And all this cascading pulls us toward the need to rest. Naturally, we need this rest. God commands it. The trouble is, in the words Sittser that I find myself fully agreeing with, this inertia can also come about in the form of “comfort zone Christianity …,” to “a laziness of spirit, deadness of faith, a routine that gives the appearance of religion without cultivating a heart for God … to dead worship, exclusive churches, lifeless devotions, token service, easy giving, and superficial knowledge of the Bible.” The professor points out that in the Book of Revelation this inertia is labeled “lukewarmness” and is considered more dangerous than open rebellion.
It’s clear to me that hate groups are always at work against inertia within their ranks; what are we doing for one another and the communities where we live and serve to keep our reconciling, ever-inclusive faith vital, fresh, and aggressively loving? I ask you to pray on this in the coming week.
One suggestion I have right off the bat (can you tell it’s baseball season?) is to invite folks you know to come to worship here on the 17th – we’ll have the bell and gospel choirs from the Good News Home for Women here, along with a speaker testifying to what our support of this mission field means. Another suggestion is to support all of the ASP fundraisers here and with our sister churches. This will in turn directly support the welfare of impoverished brothers and sisters in Appalachia. Friends, please keep a careful eye and heart on all that FPC is doing in loving truth and action. And if you feel stirred to spread this love in some new way, don’t hesitate to let me and the Session know.
I know that the violent, vigilant outreach and advocacy coming from hate groups of all sizes and shapes will not cease. I also know that all that effort combined cannot ultimately trump the love of God in Jesus Christ. This, my faithful friends, is what we are to hold fast to when we are going about our daily routines, find ourselves reminded of evil, and have coffee re-brewed in our bellies. “We know that we have passed from death to life,” concludes 1 John 3:14, “because we love one another …” Amen.
The Face of Fellowship (1 Jn. 1:1-2:5)
A German, born in 1929, she grew up under the thumb of fascism. Having been brought up against this backdrop, prominent liberation theologian Dorothy Solle, who died in 2004, did not believe sin to be merely a “superficial feature of poor religious socialization.” When explaining what it meant to her, she didn’t spout pious platitudes or quote verse after verse from the Bible. She instead offered a powerful image for us to consider. “When I try to say how I see the world,” she wrote, “I can’t get away from an image that forces itself on me and won’t let go: the Ice Age – this slow advance of cold, a freezing process which we experience and try to forget. Ice Age in the schools, in the factories, in the high-rise silos we live in, in those smallest units formerly known as families … we don’t just live in an advancing Ice Age; we produce it, maintain it and profit from it … you don’t have to be ‘religious’ or ‘especially sensitive’ to understand what I’m talking about. Sin – the absence of warmth, love, caring, trust – is the most normal thing in the world.” In short, Dorothy Solle believes “sin is when life freezes.” We really only recognize what sin is when we begin to “measure false, unconscious, frozen life … when we, related to one another, begin to learn to love.”
Inspired by our reading from 1 John this morning, I profess that the way we warm-up to love, caring, trust and above all to love, is to be gathered in Christian fellowship. This is not an abstract, idyllic concept. It’s rubber-hits-the-road reality for we who profess to believe in Jesus Christ. When we intentionally and regularly gather together in faithful prayer, praise, and the promotion of holy peace, we disperse the icy clouds of sin and sadness, we drive the gloom of doubt away.
Our fellowship can be said to have a face. By face, I do not mean the physical, first-century Palestinian Jewish face of Jesus. I mean that we have a collective “face” to show the world, whereby the powerful presence of the Risen Christ can be readily acknowledged, shared and lauded. This face is comprised of the beautiful, wondrous diversity of people who have come to know and identify themselves with the Savior of the World.
It has three features in common that I want to lift up this morning. Consider them the marks that Charles Wesley preached about when he said that the aim of 1 John is “to confirm the happy and holy communion of the faithful with God and Christ by describing the marks of that blessed state.” Three features, or marks, that we exhibit as God works through us to press on toward the perfection of love are as follows – the face of fellowship is illuminating, it is forgiving, and it is obedient. Let’s consider these more carefully so that when we leave this sanctuary we can have our best, most authentic faces “on.”
The face of fellowship is illuminating. The author of 1 John could not be any clearer – “God is light” and in God “there is no darkness at all.” (1 John 1:5). Pay attention to that “in” God part. It’s referring to the essence of God being pure light, without any shadow, any dark inner-contours of being. All this world revolves around and is sustained by this Light. We, then, who have been engrafted into full fellowship with Christ, are, in redeemed essence, pure and eternal light. We are a new creation. Just as the spring and summer sun brings about new blooming, so too does the holy Light of heaven strengthen, transform and beautify our spiritual life. Nothing can be more illuminating to the human condition than the glorious proclamation that God is light!
Now, the writer of 1 John fashioned himself a wise elder. One of those seasoned saints who cared enough to mentor others in the faith. We hear this tone in verse 2:1 – “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin.” This is admirable, but it calls a question to mind — if we are in full fellowship with Christ … how then can we ever sin?
We still sin because in the symphony of salvation that is arranged and conducted by God , we are always free to play the wrong notes. We can always choose to try reading the majestic music and to attempt playing our instruments in the pitch black; this despite the faithful fact that God’s concert hall for this symphony is brilliantly illuminated by the Cross. If you’ll recall, last week I preached that the truest biblical meaning of resurrection has to do with the end-time renewal of all creation. Until such time, then, we do indeed live in the light of the Risen Son, but are not immune to the persistent encroachment of sin on our lives.
So while the face of fellowship is illuminating – shining God’s redeeming love – it also has a shadow side here on this earthly plain. However, this is not something we should spend our precious time despairing about, for the second feature on the face of fellowship is that is forgiving. Whenever we realize that we’ve thought and acted in less radiant ways than our essence in Christ truly is, we must realize that we have not trapped ourselves in a dismal, dark alley. We instead have only to remember to turn anew toward our Advocate, Jesus, and confess the darkness. The Light of Christ does not burn out. It was not a one-time flare from the Cross. It pierces and dispels all darkness and will continue to do so until Christ comes again in glory. Eternal forgiveness stands firm. Eternal forgiveness in fellowship with one another truly is, as the inspirational maxim writer William Arthur Ward once quipped, “a funny thing – it warms the heart and cools the sting.”
When we do not confess our sin, however, we essentially waste its energy within us. I don’t know about you, but I sure don’t want to be a non-energy saving light bulb in this world! We know better than ever what that amounts to in the long run.
Not wasting the divinely driven, holy-illuminated energy of the Risen Son within us and all upon the world takes obedience. This is a third feature on the face of fellowship. “Faith and obedience,” preached Charles Spurgeon, “are bound up in the same bundle.” The reconciliation between our sin and God’s love that occurs in Christ is a call to action, not just some wonderful sounding but otherwise static statement. Being intentional about our fellowship – that is, about being in worship, Bible study, out in mission fields – is the way we lovingly hold one another accountable to this.
I know … “obedience” is a strong word. Yet how much service could a seeing-eye dog offer if it did not know how to be obedient? How well could injustice be prevented if we all stopped obeying the laws that govern us? Why is obeying everything Jesus teaches us any different? Can any of us really believe that our disobedience to his reconciling work will not result in further building up an ice-age for all humanity? It is not obedience for the sake of blindly following some abstract power principle – it is obedience toward the perfection of love, toward the restoration of the paradise garden that we once fully enjoyed with God, who planted it. We may believe we know best how to till it, yet reaching for just one wrong fruit can spoil everything.
Consider the story of the rose and the caterpillar. An old elder tree illuminated truth for every flower in the garden by advising them all to shake off their caterpillars. A dozen or so shouted back, “Why?” “Because if you don’t they will eat you up alive.” Following this, there was a whole lotta shakin’ going on. All but the rose shook off every last predator. She decided to give one little fella a pass, saying, “Oh, this one’s a beauty! I’ve just got to keep it!” The elder tree continued illuminating truth by saying, “Just one is enough to spoil you.” The rose replied, “But look at his brown and crimson fur, and his beautiful black eyes, and scores of little feet. I want to keep him. Surely one won’t hurt me.” A few mornings later, there wasn’t one whole leaf left on her. Her beauty was gone. Tears stood like dew-drops on her tattered leaves.
So here I stand this morning on behalf of our Creator, our Redeemer and our Sustainer. I stand for the sake of holy illumination, forgiveness and obedience. I do not stand alone. You all stand with me in this blessed fellowship we share. And we all stand with all of our other brothers and sisters in the faith across town, across the country and across the world. We are facing the dark corners and frightening undercurrents of the world with the united face of faithful fellowship. This is one way to look at what we are doing here on this earth. Other purposes come to mind, but they all feel rather chilly, as if some deep freeze is intent on settling in on us for good … Amen.
Possible cover art to my forthcoming, homespun (in a friends studio!) CD titled ”Simplify”
Who Will Roll Away the Stone for Us? Mark 16:1-8
It was a tremendous obstacle, blocking both the way in and the way out. That it blocked the way out was not the concern of Jesus’ aunt Mary, her younger sister Salome, and his deeply devoted friend Mary Magdalene. They knew the very dead body of their beloved was sealed within the cave-tomb. Their concern was that nobody had properly anointed his bruised, bloodied, broken body, as his burial had been hastily done. They had thus not been able to honor Jewish burial custom. Moreover, they felt the inner weight of an even greater injustice. It is that they were denied one last opportunity to bless the one who had so blessed them, to seek in a light, last touch or a gentle forehead kiss some sort of inner peace to contradict the panic and pain of having watched him suffer so greatly unto his last suffocated breath.
Yes, their collective concern was not how he would get out … for the gravity of their grief grounded their hope from flying much higher than the grave. They just needed to get in, to get beyond the obstacle that surely lay ahead of their loving intentions.
Part of planning ahead involves anticipating any and all obstacles to fulfilling your duty or accomplishing your person mission. There is no sense assuming it’s ever going to be clear sailing; life teaches us to expect the unexpected. The question is whether or not it will be a minor glitch or a major delay, a pebble or a boulder.
Do you have any projects, plans or personal goals you are working toward completing in full right now? Are you ignoring, dreading or addressing possible obstacles?
The three women knew the way to the tomb and knew well what they were called by custom and by their God and by their deep devotion. They just didn’t know how they were going to get around the obstacle of the great stone that had been placed to seal in Jesus’ remains, to shut him up and out once and for all.
They could easily have turned back for home, abandoned the yearning in their hearts to do the right thing; but they did not let knowledge of the obstacle deter them.
They could have stayed home in the first place, stuck in sorrow like a fly on sticky paper; but they did not allow the betrayal of disciples and the conspiratorial worldly powers to crush their courage, to kill their devotion.
They could have chickened out, convinced that the guards posted at the tomb might abuse or arrest them; but they held fast to their spiritual hearts, to their deepest security system.
So they walked ahead, surely quite unsure, yet fully resolved to offer final blessing.
Have you ever felt like some great effort or project wasn’t worth getting off the ground, convinced it was doomed to defeat from the start? Have you ever felt this way but forged ahead despite the apparent odds? If so, what spurred you on?
In the aftermath of witnessing the heart-wrenching horror of Jesus’ crucifixion, these women nonetheless ventured out in steadfast hope. When they finally arrived at their destination, they were handed a giant-sized umbrella of utter amazement to cover their concerns and sorrows. The massive obstacle had been moved aside! The tomb … was empty! Jesus was not there!
The moment that umbrella had been raised, however, there also rose up great concern and fear. Just how and why had this happened? Had someone stolen the body, committed a final, disgusting injustice against Jesus by not even letting him rest in peace? Had the guards been asleep? Or had they allowed it, they who had so delightedly rolled dice to gamble off pieces of his clothing? Why not his entire body? Would they, his truest friends, ever be able to be with and to bless Jesus again? Was there any hope beyond their horror?
Understand that these women were his closest kin, not, technically speaking, his disciples. They may or may not have heard Jesus make a couple key promises before his self-emptying walk to the Cross. They may or may not have heard him foretell that he would rise again after three days in the tomb and how he was going to then go ahead and meet everyone again back in Galilee. They may or may not have heard him foretell that the grave was not at all about to forever swallow up his ministry of holy healing and the forgiveness of sin.
If they had heard, then why didn’t they believe? Was such a holy promise to fantastical to anchor their hope? It’s more likely that had they heard, they most likely did not focus on the promise of a bodily resurrection. We today who are preoccupied with the scientific method, forget that Jewish tradition taught that resurrection was first and foremost about the end-time renewal of all creation. His speaking of a miraculous return, therefore, would have been considered something much grander in divine scheme than just popping back into his broken body.
Even so, Jesus’ promises still stood firm. His ministry was not just about the end-times, but very much about the here and now. Evidence of God’s resurrection power was needed to rally the troops. He was not about to renege on meeting them again in Galilee three days after the evil of this world had done it’s best to rid itself of his saving grace. Nobody knew this better than the angelic young man who sat in the empty tomb. His dazzling white robe clearly identified him as a heavenly ambassador sent to let the women know that Jesus was loose in the world once more.
Have you ever had an obstacle to your plans, your dreams, your duties removed in some seemingly miraculous sort of way? If so, was there anyone in your life at that time who helped you confirm that greater, holier plans are always afoot? Someone who said something like, “When one door closes, God opens another?”
Interestingly enough, the women did not react with relief. It was not a particularly liberating joy and comfort to have the answer to the question about who would roll the stone away. It was, of course, God who rolled it away. It was God, “because there are some things that even the monstrous power of death cannot digest.” <!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[i]<!–[endif]–> But by God trumping the grave, by sending Jesus back to Galilee where his ministry began, it was clear to the women that the sacred journey with Jesus was restarting. And this meant having to once again go out and face a world the both desperately needed him, while simultaneously dismissing and mocking him. It meant that his followers would need to endure their own crosses until that final end-times day of promised renewal.
We bear our crosses for Jesus. We daily live with the reality of seemingly immoveable obstacles to faith, hope and love. They are always just ahead of us on our faith journeys. We want to serve our Risen Lord, to be his utterly devoted friends and disciples, yet we aren’t always confident in His promises. We don’t always remember that God rolled away the biggest boulder sized burden on our heart – that of death — once and for all. God did so to show us that all fear-mongering, despair-inducing obstacles can and shall be moved by the resurrecting love of Christ Jesus. To this we must hold fast in faith, that by grace we will go out and catch up with the Lord of All who always goes ahead of us to show us the Way, the Truth and the Life.
We see apparently sealed up tombs every day in the news. Innocent lives gunned down; cities swallowed by earthquakes; economies crawling through a cloud of doom; modern-day pirates terrorizing alongside saber-rattling dictators and jihadists; war snatching the lives of both brave defenders and people just trying to live their lives, to raise their families, to live peaceably in constant contexts of hostility and chaos.
How do we get beyond such boulder-sized burdens and into the tomb with Jesus? We don’t. The boulder isn’t there. It’s been removed. He isn’t there. He out and about! We must turn around, constantly and faithfully, and head with hope toward the Galilee’s of today, and on through to the New Jerusalem. Jesus awaits us. He is Risen! Alleluia, let’s meet up with him and by the amazing grace of God, keep up the holy work! Amen.
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<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[i]<!–[endif]–> Rev. Dr. Scott Black Johnson, http://day1.org/1241-deadly_things
Isn’t It Iconic? Don’t You Think?
Rublev’s Trinity (circa 15th century)
Icons are windows through which we gaze upon God and God gazes upon us. We do not pray to the image. We pray through it …
A Banner Day? Ps. 118:20-29; Jn. 12:12-19
I must have a lot of Odd in me. I say this because it is not the first time I’ve decided to quote the Dean Koontz fictional character known as “Odd Thomas” from the pulpit. I just love this series of supernatural, supercharged novels and the way the main character balances hope and heroism in the context of uncertainty and evil. Although the fourth and most current edition, titled Odd Hours, is my least favorite, I found one section quite relevant to consider for our slow march into Holy Week.
Chapter forty-four has Odd inside of a church. He is engaged, as usual, in a life and death struggle with a couple evil-intentioned villains. At one point, he retreats to a safer part of the church building by way of going through an enclosed walkway linking the sanctuary to an annex of some kind. The walls of this walkway, we are told, are adorned with the artwork of children. Each artistic offering highlights the actions of a “smiling bearded man in white robes” with a halo. Odd Thomas obviously realized this man must be Jesus.
As to the details of these actions, I’ll let our protagonist speak directly – “The Son of God, inadequately but earnestly rendered, was engaged in all manner of tasks that I did not recall being recounted in Scripture. Jesus with hands upraised, transforming a rain of bombs into flowers. Jesus smiling but shaking his finger at a pregnant woman about to drink a bottle of beer. Jesus saving a stranded polar bear from an ice floe. Jesus turning a flamethrower on stacks of crates labeled CIGARETTES … Jesus in a helicopter, rescuing livestock from a veal farm.”
This novel scene begs the question, “What kind of Savior do people expect Jesus to be?” A human Star Wars defense shield? A stern but loving teacher against self-inflicted harms? A rescuer and deliverer of endangered animals and idealistic causes?
Jesus’ entire life, of course, was lived under the weight of people’s expectations. You may well know a similar feeling, with its pressures to perform under a microscope and the constant threat of dashing hopes. In Jesus’ case, though, we are talking generations and generations and generations of people scrutinizing and idealizing him as the possible Savior of the World. And while we are blessed to read this historic account of Jesus’ entry in Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday from a post-Easter perspective, we cannot really understand what happened and why this is significant for our faith journeys today until we give some consideration to what the expectations were that made that such a banner day. The way we do this is to read the accounts of this triumphal entry as it comes to us through each of the four Gospels.
While each Gospel account is worth considering in great detail, today we focus on John. We do so for it is only in this Gospel that we have specific mention of palm branches. And it is also only in this Gospel that the day of the week of Jesus’ entry is specified as six days before the Passover remembrance. Since the Passover would have been held on a Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, this means he entered Jerusalem on a Sunday. Put it all together and we have John to credit for why we have “Palm Sunday.”
John’s Gospel is full of tremendous symbolism and irony. He loves to lead us to one conclusion and then turn it completely inside out in an effort for us to get the big picture about Jesus. Asking ourselves how the palm branches and the donkey are symbolic and are servants of John’s illuminating irony is essential to our grasping the meaning of this historic event.
Matthew’s Gospels mentions people cutting some kind of branches from trees (Matt. 21:8). Mark adds that these branches were “leafy.” (Mark 11:8). Luke is mute on the matter of branches. John, however, makes it clear that they were palm branches. Common enough for that region of the world, right? Everybody in the huge crowd who had gathered to welcome Jesus understood the deeper meaning of the palms, however.
Traditionally, palm branches were waved like victory banners. They symbolized the heroic, triumphal return of a king from battle. Now what good is waving a banner if you aren’t making some noise, right? Thus the palm waving crowd also shouted with joy and thanksgiving by quoting Psalm 118 – “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord – the King of Israel! Actually, John added the clarifier about the King of Israel, just to make sure his readers would never miss any of the meaning of the royal Psalm.
Try and picture the crowd. Some scholars believe that upwards of 250, 000 visitors would come, as required by religious law, to the lavish Temple in Jerusalem during Passover. This number would be added to the estimated 80, 000 residing in the great city. Ruling over the crowd, and the city, was Herod the Great, who was quite a character. He was a “proxy-king” fully allied with the overall governing power and might of the Roman Empire. He has been described as “Ten times married, a serious drinker and a half-Jew who was half-trusted by his subjects,” who “played the superpower politics of his day consummately.” To this end, he had largely kept down anti-Roman rebellions, and maintained order between the Temple priesthood and their pagan overseers.
The ministry of the lower-middle class teacher and healer who was Jesus, however, threatened to upend all of this. That the majority of the massive crowd had assumed Jesus’ arrival meant the overthrowing of Herod, of the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, and of the Roman Empire itself is well justified by the collective, historic witness to the people’s experience of Jesus’ miraculous power that we find in the Gospels.
We wave our special palm branches today (they are fashioned into crosses in an African village) to also hail Jesus as King. Go ahead … let me see some waving. You shout out some loud “Hosannas” if you feel so moved as well! What the crowd didn’t know at that time, and what even Jesus closest disciples ironically failed to realize, was that Jesus had no intention of meeting their royal expectations. He was not on course to claim an earthly throne of power, to play puppet politics under the thumb of Julius Caesar, Mark Antony and Emperor Augustus. He had not arrived in Jerusalem to be Rome’s “boy” nor to be the High Priest of the mighty Temple. He had arrived to passionately fulfill his reverent obedience and incarnation as the Son of God.
As we hold our palms, let’s also gaze upon the mighty, white stallion Jesus rode to town on to claim his divine reign. Oh, wait, we can’t. There wasn’t one. Oh, John, you did love your symbolic, ironic details don’t you? He tells us that Jesus rode into Jerusalem on, of all things, a donkey! Hosanna! Hosanna! Hee-haw, hee-haw! This decision of Jesus was not made randomly or for anyone’s amusement. It was a serious fulfillment of a prophecy about the “end times” offered by the ancient prophet Zechariah (Zech. 9:9).
Deeply divine humility would be the mark of the Messiah-King, not worldly political prowess. And, further, the message was that His reign would not ever come to end, it would still be standing strong at the consummation of all things of God.
Again, however, nobody on the scene that first Palm Sunday really understood what God had going on. It would take the quickly unfolding, terribly traumatic, conflicted and confusing events in the days that followed to get them better clued in. And it would take faithful hindsight following Jesus’ death and resurrection for all the pieces to fall into place.
Today, we stand with them waving our palms, sort of ignoring the donkey. It’s a banner day, though not quite all it appears to be according to our expectations. The most faithful thing we can do this morning is examine those expectations; ask ourselves why we palm branches in our palms. Who is this Jesus, really? What kind of power of God does he represent? To what end? Whatever the sum is of all our expectations, it is not too heavy for Jesus to carry. Check back this Thursday evening at 7 p.m. for a fuller report on this …
Amen.
The late Newberry-Medal winning author of young adult fiction, Madeleine L’Engle, once wrote that “When we were children, we used to think that we when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow-up is to accept vulnerability … to be alive is to be vulnerable.”
When we feel vulnerable, we realize that we are susceptible to being wounded in mind, body and spirit. We realize that we are not immune to attacks, be they diseases of society or of mortality. We find ourselves filled with deep, soul-stirring trepidations, confronted by the simple yet brutal fact that we cannot completely control what happens to us. We dread feeling persecuted by other people and by socio-economic forces.
We also often experience a spiritual undercurrent during times of feeling vulnerable. It can subtly swish within us, or be a riptide. At the heart of this stream of varying strength is, I believe, the question of why we have faith in God.
We ask ourselves blunt questions. Am I wrong to feel so vulnerable when I profess to have faith in God? Is my trusting in God’s redeeming work in Jesus Christ mean I’m to always feel secure?
One thing we often do when we are inwardly wrestling like this is to look toward the example of our faithful leaders and mentors. We observe and inquire about how they handle congregational and denominational crises, the pitches and plummets of their personal lives, the application of our common faith to ever changing, uncertain circumstances. While we may acknowledge that they of course feel vulnerable at times, deep down we need them to be strong and secure for us when we feel most vulnerable.
This is historically true. And by all initial, outward appearances, the priesthood of ancient Israel responded by presenting itself as being strong and steadfast. They ministered in a truly grand fortress of a Temple. They had rigid laws and time-honored rituals. They wore special garments that symbolically spoke of full protection in the care of God.
The main purpose of the priesthood, we remember, was to act as intermediaries of the people by offering atoning sacrifices to God. And atop the hierarchy of these intermediaries, the most venerable of them all, was the High Priest. It was him, and him alone, who once a year had the privilege of entering into the innermost sanctuary of the great Temple, called the Holy of Holies (and alternatively, the Most Holy Place). This central, sacred location was kept in total darkness and contained the Ark of the Covenant, with its gilded lid covering the Tablets of the Ten Commandments, the Rod of Aaron (Moses’ brother and the first priest), as well as a pot of manna.
Depending on how much you’ve studied the Bible, everything I just said may or may not be familiar sounding. What is certain is that none of it would have been news to the people who first received what we know today as the Book of Hebrews. It was written for believers who had converted from the old law and religion of Judaism to being followers of the new law and Christ. They would have known well the institutional security of the Temple and its priesthood.
At the time Hebrews was written, this community had fallen prey to weariness about their new faith. They had been “captured by its promises on great spiritual highs,” but “the reality of the daily living out of faith didn’t sparkle for them as it once had.” As a result, they had apparently stopped growing in the new branch of faith. Stuck nursing on milk and not strengthened on any real meat, they became vulnerable to strife within their community and to persecution upon their community. It became increasingly evident that their belief in Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah was not delivering them from worldly sufferings.
Acutely aware are of the vulnerabilities associated with being part of a new religious movement, they grew increasingly tempted to leave behind the new and retreat to the old; that is, to return to the familiarity and security they had in the religion of Moses and Aaron. Afterall, the Temple was a bulwark of protection and tradition. Its priests were dressed for success. Its people well established. And Judaism had not been broken by the advent of Jesus of Nazareth. It had instead become resurgent, rattling this fledgling community of Jewish Christians, tempting many to believe that the movement was “just another sect which had lost its way, carried off by enthusiasts who had betrayed Israel’s heritage and which should now be left to peter out and become an institutionalized irrelevance.”
Plus, a high priest, in their innermost understanding was one from the tribe of Levi, who served at the altar and performed sacred, protective rites. On paper, Jesus, the carpenter’s son, the itinerant preacher and healer, did not qualify. And not one of them missed the fact that Jesus had rather violently “cleansed the temple with a whip and clashed with the priests.” In a time of uncertainty and vulnerability, of persecutions looming the degree to which they could scarcely imagine, it sure made sense to move out of the house churches and back to the Temple.
We do not know for sure who wrote the Book of Hebrews. We do know that this was a sermon that sought to address these very concerns. Chiefly, this first century Christian preacher sought to clarify Jesus’ qualifications as high priest; and not just any old one, but THE high priest.
And so we read that Jesus was appointed by God. We read that God did not appoint him to just keep on offering sacrificial goats, but as someone so tremendously in tune with human sin and vulnerability that he cried out in fervent intercessory prayer. In Jesus, an intermediary was sent whose self regard was humility and radical obedience to God rather than high and mighty allegiance to the institution of the Temple. As preacher Tom Long has described it, “The human being each of fails to be, he was,” and he was “not ashamed to call us his brothers and sisters.”
So in Hebrews, we have a call to keep maturing in the faith, to not slip into apathy, to draw ever nearer to the Son of God, whose self-sacrifice ripped in half the curtain that hid the Holy of Holies, making the way in available to every single soul. An especially excellent point to hammer home Christ’s supremacy and high priesthood is made in Hebrews 7:23-25, where the preacher asserts, “Furthermore, the former priests were many in number, because they were prevented by death from continuing in office; but [Jesus] holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever. Consequently he is able for all time to save those who approach God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.”
A more modern day preacher sums up the intentions of her ancient colleague in this way — “In Hebrews we have a beautiful and complex treatise intended to help them and us, meet Jesus again, understand him as our high priest … the one who brings God, God’s love and God’s power, God’s intimate presence to us in a real and vibrant way.”
This is a call to the vulnerable to venerate Jesus. He is the most venerable for the most vulnerable. It is a call for all of us, for we are all vulnerable. It is a call to above all revere his priestly ministry – his intercession and atoning sacrifice once, for all. It is a call to model our lives on his reverent obedience to God the Father. It is a call to believe that come what may, we “do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.” (Heb. 4:16).
This is the final Sunday in Lent. Our journey of acknowledging that we are dust and to dust we shall return, of repentance and yearning for renewal, is swiftly moving toward Jesus’ oddly triumphal entrance to Jerusalem. Next Sunday and the Holy Week to follow will have us revisiting the extreme vulnerability he volunteered to endure for the sake of our sin. On that journey we will realize in full that to be vulnerable … in Jesus … is indeed to be fully alive. Amen.
Fred Craddock; www.religion-online.org
