Easter Sermon - "Facing the Darkness"

Musings on the Daily Lectionary - Awe

The LORD is king;
let the peoples tremble!
He sits enthroned upon the cherubim;
let the earth quake!

In a Bible study class this morning we were talking about a story in Joshua where God "fought for Israel," killing the enemy with hailstones and causing the sun to stop in midheaven. The story unashamedly insists that God intervened in history for Israel. But class members struggled to speak literally of God intervening in history. The story in Joshua seemed an ancient perception of natural events.

Today's lectionary passages speak of a God whose power at work in the world is amazing, even terrifying; the Passover and Israel's escape from Egypt; and perhaps the most incredible exercise of divine power, the Resurrection. Psalm 99 also opens by acknowledging the power of God that cause the people to tremble and the earth to quake.

But many modern Christians worship a God who is distant, withdrawn, and little interested in intervening in history. If this God is concerned with us, it is only on a very personal level. Indeed the only examples this morning's Bible study could come up with for God intervening in history were little personal nudges that had perhaps altered their lives' trajectory a bit.

It sometimes seems that we have traded the awesome God of all creation for a divine buddy who can make us feel better, but little else. No wonder a recent, mammoth study of the faith of American youth and young adults characterized that faith as "Moralistic, Therapeutic, Deism."

In her book, When God Is Silent, Barbara Brown Taylor wonders about our current situation where God seems downright quiet compared to biblical times. And she draws on the prophet Amos and his warning about a coming famine, "not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD." And I wonder if our loss of awe, our loss of any sense that God can act powerfully in history, is not of a piece with this. Indeed, why should God speak to a people who cannot imagine that God might intervene with power and might for the poor and oppressed, for the weak and the vulnerable, and against those who exploit them?

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Musings on the Daily Lectionary - Resurrection

Most Sundays in worship, our congregation repeats the Apostles' Creed, in which we say that we believe in, among other things, "the resurrection of the body." Like a lot of things that get repeated routinely in worship, I don't know that people often give much thought to what they say. I feel pretty safe that they don't with this line considering how little most folks connect resurrection with "the body."

For reasons that are not entirely clear to me, Christian belief in resurrection has become wedded to Greek philosophical notions of the immortality of the soul. For a lot of Christians, resurrection is simply another way of saying that our soul persists after death, with the added benefit that it is with God in some way.

It is interesting to contrast this with how Paul thinks about resurrection. For him, and indeed for the Bible, resurrection is connected to bodily existence. Jesus' bodily resurrection at Easter is a precursor of what is to come. When Jesus returns, death will be totally defeated and the dead will be raised. In our reading today, Paul speaks of death as an enemy, the last enemy to be defeated when Jesus returns. Paul does not view death as a natural passage from this life to the next. Rather he sees death as an enemy of life itself. But Jesus' resurrection means the power of death is not absolute. This enemy could not hold Jesus. And so we trust that it will not be able to hold us.

Richard Hays, in his commentary on First Corinthians (in the Interpretation series p.279), tells of a young woman whose 18 year old sister had been killed in an auto accident. Friends and family kept telling her that she should should be glad that her sister was in heaven. Surely her sister, who had been an unhappy child, was much happier now. This young woman was infuriated by pious talk that seemed to deny the tragedy of her sister's death. But she also felt guilty that, as a Christian, she ought to believe the pious things she was being told. This young woman found Paul's words to be incredibly liberating. They allowed her to mourn the tragic death of her sister, while giving her a strong hope that she would yet embrace her sister again some day.

What do you understand resurrection to mean, and how did you come to have this understanding?

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Easter Sermon - "Facing the Darkness"

In John's gospel, Mary goes to the tomb "while it was still dark." And Mary is caught up in that darkness even after finding the empty tomb. Mary's witness is powerful precisely because she knows the depth of the darkness.

April 4 sermon.mp3

John 20:1-18

Facing the Darkness

James Sledge April 4, 2010, Easter

Surely Easter is the brightest day of the year for the Church. The culture may prefer Christmas, but the Church knows that Easter is the center. The very fact that we worship on Sunday rather than the Sabbath is a nod to Easter. Each Sunday we celebrate the resurrection.

This Sunday would have been a great day to attend an Easter sunrise service. The light streaming over the horizon signals a new day, the Day of Resurrection. We rejoice in its dawning. But in John’s gospel, there is no sunlight on that first Easter morn. Mary heads to the tomb early, while it is still dark.

In John’s gospel, we hear often of light and dark. The gospel opens with the Word that was in the beginning with God. This Word is the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. But try telling that to Mary as she makes her way in the darkness to find an empty tomb. In the dark, the empty tomb brings no joy to Mary. All she can think is that grave robbers have struck. And so she runs to find Peter and that other disciple. Maybe they can help her find Jesus’ body.

I’m not at all sure what motivates the foot race that follows. The last time we saw Peter he was denying that he was one of Jesus’ disciples, but the other disciple was there with Jesus at the cross. Is Peter trying to redeem himself here? What does he hope to find when he gets there? But the other disciple bests Peter again, although Peter enters the tomb first.

They see the grave clothes, neatly folded, not at all like when Jesus raised Lazarus who came out of the tomb all tangled up in cloth, needing to be unbound. When the beloved disciple with Peter goes in and sees it, he believes. Just what he believes is a bit unclear. The reading says he doesn’t understand that Jesus must rise from the dead. He apparently doesn’t get what has happened. Still he believes.

Maybe this comforted him in some way that he couldn’t quite understand. I don’t know. But he and Peter go home, leaving Mary alone in the dark. Sometimes I think that we in the church are a bit like this. We see the empty tomb. We believe it is good news in some way. We celebrate Easter and we go home. And we never quite seem to recognize or confront the darkness. But Mary does.

Mary is caught up in darkness. How could she not be? Her loss is so great. Obviously she has loved Jesus dearly. She stood by him as he died. Now, before it was even safe to be out, she has gone his grave. But his body is not there.

Desecration of a body was a terrible thing for Jews such as Mary. In our day, we’ve seen news stories about funeral homes that didn’t actually bury people where they said or presented families with ashes that weren’t actually their loved ones. The trauma for these families is terrible. First the loss of a loved one and then this. Darkness on top of darkness.

But today is Easter and we are here to celebrate the light that darkness could not overwhelm. But that does not mean there is no darkness. And I worry that the church’s witness is sometimes compromised by not confronting or even acknowledging the darkness.

Sometimes people outside the church view us as a bunch of Pollyannas who see the world through rose colored glasses. I realize that does not accurately describe many of you, but it is how we are often perceived. And we do sometimes live out this stereotype.

As a pastor I spend more than my share of time around illness, pain, tragedy, and death. And I see church members lovingly care for one another and support one another in times of great difficulty. Yet I have observed that those whose presence is least comforting are often those who waltz into the room with an Easter message on their lips. “Cheer up. Everything is going to be okay. He’s in a better place. You should be happy that she is in heaven.” All those things may be true, but they do not change the fact that the pain, the loss, the darkness of that moment can be overwhelming. This sort of “comfort” seems to deny the darkness.

True Christian witness knows all about darkness. That is why Mary is such a compelling witness, even in a day when women were not considered reliable or legally valid witnesses. Mary is no cheery-faced Pollyanna. She does not go to the tomb sure that everything will come out all right in the end.

She is distraught. She has watched Jesus die an agonizing death. She has had to delay visiting his grave because of the Sabbath. And now that grave is empty. Even the presence of angels cannot draw her out of the darkness. At first, even Jesus himself cannot deflect her desire to find the body, to find some small anchor to hold onto in the midst of the darkness that she fears may swallow her up entirely.

Then Jesus speaks. The good shepherd calls his sheep, and she recognizes his voice. The darkness is real, but it has not been able to swallow up this light. And when Mary tells the others, “I have seen the Lord,” it is the powerful witness of one who knows full well the terrors of the darkness. It is the powerful witness of one who knows that no matter the terrible pain and suffering in the world, no matter the awful power of darkness, God’s love will somehow triumph.

This is a promise that has transformed countless people prompting them to live totally new lives, to challenge the powers of darkness even at the risk of their own lives, because they know that even death cannot separate them from God’s love.

But then religious folk go and domesticate the message, robbing it of its power and hope. I’m not talking about people like you. I’m talking about people like me, pastors, theologians, and educators who want to explain it and help everyone understand. We compare resurrection to a butterfly emerging from a cocoon and invoke images of spring, as if the whole business was simply the normal course of things. Oh, there’s not really any darkness. It was just winter. It’s just the natural order.

Mary knows better. Mary can come and sit with the mother who has just lost a child, the soldier whose body and mind was shattered by a roadside bomb, the father who has lost job and home and must take his family to a shelter, the person whose marriage has disintegrated. And Mary can speak good news to them because she knows their darkness is real. She makes no claims that it is not, nor does she pretend to fully understand how on earth God’s creation could have gotten so messed up, so filled with darkness. Her message is simple. She has seen the Lord, and so she knows that no enemy, no darkness, is stronger than God and God’s love.

Darkness is real. Most of us have times in our lives when we fear that it could swallow us. But, the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. God has done the impossible! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Thanks be to God!

Musings on the Daily Lectionary - Remembering

Today's lectionary has more readings than usual because of Maundy Thursday. Today Christians worldwide will gather to remember and to share the bread and cup. And as Paul writes, "Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread."

I often lament the fact that many Christians seem to think of every Lord's Supper as a reenactment of Maundy Thursday. The early Church clearly did not. It was a "joyful feast," a foretaste of the heavenly banquet. But tonight is different. Tonight, while the promise of a feast is still present, we are centered around God's love in Jesus, a love that was willing to risk everything for us.

There is much that divides Christians. We come in many shapes and sizes with varied theologies and practices. Sometimes we act as though being a real Christian means agreeing with our practices and theology. But tonight the focus moves off us as we remember. Tonight we recall that each one of us is embraced in God's love, not because we got our theology or practice correct, but because God so loves the world.

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Musings on the Daily Lectionary - Community

Today's reading from Hebrews contains some of my favorite words in Scripture. "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God." I have always been drawn to these words even though my faith has often been lived out in the most private and individual ways. Despite my typical, American individualism, I long for this sense of community, a community that is bigger than those I know, one that reaches back in history linking me with all the faithful of the past.

At a recent men's prayer breakfast, a church member led us in a discussion about loneliness, focusing on how men seem to have more problems with this. I certainly have experienced this myself. My own introversion combines with a drive to be competent and successful in ways that often minimize relationship. Yet over and over the Bible talks of our faith in terms of community and relationship. Hebrews even speaks of our actions benefiting faithful people of the past, saying in the verse that precedes today's reading, "... so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect."

Despite my own personal, individualistic tendencies, I feel strangely warmed and drawn to this notion of true community, a communion of saints that transcends all boundaries. And what better time than Holy Week, as Christians throughout the world focus once again on the events in Jerusalem all those years ago, to remember that we all are made one in Jesus, and we're all in this together.

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Musings on the Daily Lectionary - Contrition

Zion stretches out her hands,
but there is no one to comfort her;
the LORD has commanded against Jacob
that his neighbors should become his foes;
Jerusalem has become a filthy thing among them.
The LORD is in the right,
for I have rebelled against his word;

So go today's opening verses from Lamentations. Lament is a fairly common form in the Bible. People cry out to God in distress. Sometimes they even rail against God. But not here. Here the writer looks at suffering and says, "This is my doing. I brought this on myself."

I want to tread carefully here because some will hear me say that it is fine to blame the victim. I do not want to say that at all, but I do think that our culture finds it increasingly difficult to say, "Look at the terrible mess I've made. I am getting just what I deserve."

We have little trouble pointing out others' failings and assigning blame, but we are disinclined to take much upon ourselves. All the world's troubles are their fault.

I think I've mentioned before something Martin Luther is supposed to have said. It goes something along the lines of, "When you find yourself before the judgment seat of Christ, plead your faults, not your merits." Luther is speaking of opening ourselves to God's limitless grace and mercy. But if we follow Luther's advice, some of us won't have anything to say.

I like to think myself deserving of all the good I experience and horrible undeserving of and wronged by the setbacks and tragedies of life. I wonder how often I close myself off from God's grace in the process.

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Musings on the Daily Lectionary - Bearing Fruit

Today's reading from Mark has always bothered me just a bit. Jesus goes up to a fig tree, hoping to find something to eat. But finding nothing, he curses it. Yet the gospel clearly states that "it was not the season for figs." Why curse a tree for failing to bear fruit out of season?

Today's reading got pointed out to us in seminary as an example of one story sitting in the middle of another so that they interpret one another. Here Jesus curses the fig tree, then we see him cleanse the Temple, and then we happen by the fig tree again and see that it has withered. While the fig tree episode has its own lesson on prayer, it also seems to provide a commentary for the Temple cleansing. Is the Temple apparatus here condemned for failing to bear the fruit it is meant to bear? Does in season or out of season have anything to do with the failure of the religious institution of that day?

If you do a little research on the money changers and sellers at the Temple, you'll discover that they were not doing anything all that terrible. Churches that operate Christian bookstores or offer credit card giving are doing similar things. But then we local congregations are often better at being religious institutions than at being houses of prayer.

If Jesus sauntered by our church one day, looking for fruit, what would he find? Would the season matter? Things to ponder.

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Palm or Passion? Lectionary thoughts on a non preaching Sunday

I'm not preaching today, which is a relief in some ways. I like preaching, but I'm never sure what to do on Palm Sunday. The lectionary has an incredible amount of scripture for today. One set of readings is focused on Jesus' procession into Jerusalem, and the other covers the Passion. (If one read them all, there would be no need for a sermon.) In fact, my lectionary labels today Palm/Passion Sunday.

I don't know if this was always the case, or if it developed because of the tendency for modern Christians, especially Protestant ones, not to attend church services on days other than Sunday. And so without some Passion today, many move directly from "Hosanna!" to "Christ is risen!" We know the cross happens somewhere in between, but why dwell on that?

Every year I must decide how much the Passion gets to rain on the Palm Sunday parade, and I've learned from experience not to neglect the Palm part too much. It makes me wonder what the members of Paul's churches thought of his focus on the cross. In his first letter to the Corinthian congregation he says, "But we proclaim Christ crucified..." and just a few verses later, "For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified."

Curious how Paul saw the crucified Christ as good news, but we often view it as "a downer." I once leaned a wooden cross against the manger during Advent. You'd have thought I'd set the communion table on fire. We wear crosses round our necks and we hang them on the walls of our sanctuaries, but for some reason we don't like to pause for long at the cross.

The cross makes no sense without the Resurrection, but the Resurrection becomes triumphant bluster without the cross. Easter is God's affirmation of the cross. It is God's yes to the self giving, self emptying life Jesus leads and calls us to live. Wave the palms. Shout Hosanna! But don't forget why Jesus enters Jerusalem, and don't forget to wonder what it means to follow this sort of king.

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Musings on the Daily Lectionary - Wealth and Worry

In today's gospel Jesus says, "How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!" Curious, Jesus seems to see wealth as an impediment to the true life God created us to live, but most of us worry regularly about maintaining and/or acquiring wealth. Even my denomination worries about how the market is doing. After all, a lot of pastors' retirements are invested there.

This has been said so many times that it sounds like a broken record (for those who remember records). But Jesus spoke about the faith problems associated with money and greed more than any other issue. Interesting how most Christians have decided the focus is better placed elsewhere.

I'm reasonably sure that Jesus doesn't demand everyone take a vow of poverty. But I am also absolutely certain that Jesus considers money to be the biggest single obstacle to a life of genuine faith. Money itself isn't inherently evil. (The Bible does not say "Money is the root of all evil" but rather, "the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.") But our desire for it and our worries about it often stand directly between us and God.

In the Lord's prayer, Jesus tells us to ask for enough bread for the day. And in another teaching he tells his followers not to worry about what they will eat or wear or drink. Instead we should work for God's kingdom and trust God to provide what we need.

Like a lot of people, I sometimes lament that God so often seems hidden, that God rarely speaks loudly and clearly to me or to the Church. People in the Bible heard God speak, and some of them got to hear God speak through the person of Jesus. But now we seem to be dealing with echos, with the written reports of long ago conversations. Why doesn't God speak more clearly now?

The thought sometimes occurs to me that if God is speaking, I might be to busy striving and worrying to hear it. But can I trust God enough to stop, to be still, to quit worrying and listen?

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Musings on the Daily Lectionary - Dependence

Today's gospel includes the famous episode where the disciples try to stop people from bringing their children for Jesus to bless. But Jesus glares at his disciples and says, "Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it."

It's a beautiful picture; Jesus welcoming and placing his hands on these children. But what does it mean to receive the kingdom "as a little child?" We can rule out notions of childhood sweetness and innocence. Children were not perceived this way in Jesus' time. But that still doesn't answer the question.

I won't claim to know the answer, but I'm partial to the idea that as children they can only receive it. They cannot do anything to get it. Children in 1st century Palestine didn't have disposable income and weren't considered to be full persons. No part of the economy was focused on them; no advertising aimed at them. They were totally dependent.

I don't know about you, but that is the last thing I want to be. I want to be competent and to accomplish things. I want to be independent, not dependent. I want to earn, not receive.

I suppose it is humorous in a rather tragic way that I would prefer a mess of my own making to the gift of God.

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Musings on the Daily Lectionary - God?

When Moses first goes to Pharaoh and speaks to him on behalf of the LORD. (The capitalized LORD is used to avoid saying God's personal name, Yahweh, which is what is actually written in the Hebrew text.) But Pharaoh says, "Who is the LORD, that I should heed him and let Israel go? I do not know the LORD, and I will not let Israel go."

The events that follow - competitions between Moses and the Egyptian priests, the plagues, and finally the Passover, are all related to these opening words from Pharaoh. Will Pharaoh recognize the LORD? Will Pharaoh ever acknowledge that the LORD is God and heed God's command?

In some ways, this is THE question. Will we recognize and acknowledge that the LORD is God? I generally give lip service to this, but like Pharaoh, when push comes to shove I often act in other ways. I live as though this were not true. I live as though I was Lord of my own life. I follow Jesus when it suits me or when it is convenient, but not if it will cause me difficulty or make me look silly or cause people to laugh at me.

"Who is the LORD, that I should heed him?" Not just a question for old Pharaoh.

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