Sunday, May 3, 2020

Sermon: Easter Life

Acts 2:42-47; John 10:1-10
Easter Life
James Sledge                                                                                                               May 3, 2020

Most of you have likely seen news reports about churches that insist on having in-person worship during this time of stay at home. I saw a newscast where a reporter interviewed members as they drove away from one such worship service. A woman said that she wasn’t worried about catching the virus because, “I’m covered in the blood of Jesus.”
The reporter asked her several more questions, and she seemed happy to talk with him. But her answer to nearly every question ended, “I’m covered in the blood of Jesus.”
If you’re like me and didn’t grow up singing hymns such as “Nothing but the Blood of Jesus” or “Precious, Precious Blood of Jesus,” you may not be familiar with this graphic, formulaic notion of how Jesus’ death saves and protects people.  But our own hymnal can also be formulaic, if not so graphic. On Easter Sunday we sang, “But the pains which he endured… our salvation have procured.”
I’m not sure why religious formulas are so popular. A friend remarked about the “tendency for faith to degrade into magic” when he shared a Washington Post article about a Virginia pastor who died from COVID-19 despite his certainty that God would protect him. I suppose that magic has a certain appeal over the difficulties, nuances, and messiness of biblical faith. Believe this and you are saved. Say this and all will be well. Abracadabra.
But if Christian faith were formulas and magic, the Bible would be a pamphlet, not over a thousand pages of stories, poems, letters, teachings, sayings, etc. Jesus wouldn’t have spoken in parables and vivid metaphors. He would have just given us the magic words. Abracadabra.

In our gospel this morning, Jesus mixes his metaphors a bit. He speaks of himself as the shepherd and as the gate for the sheep, and he says, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”  Not surprisingly, some have tried to turn this into formula. Believe in Jesus, and you’ll know abundance, cups running over, a table spread with good things, a bank account running over as well. Such magical thinking easily transfers to other areas. Believe in Jesus and you will have health in abundance, too. No coronavirus for you.
I suppose such formulaic thinking creeps into all religion here and there. Who wouldn’t want God as a personal genie. But Jesus is no genie, and he offers no magic formulas. Instead, he invites us to discover a new quality of life by following the path he shows us.
I wonder if our reading from Acts about the faith community that forms after Pentecost isn’t talking about this new quality of life.  All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. That’s not how the world usually looks. This is so different, so generous, so idyllic, so amazing that many scholars wonder if it every really happened.
In that first Christian congregation, radical sharing and generosity ensure that everyone has enough, although I don’t that I would call it “abundant life.” “Remarkable life” or “extraordinary life” perhaps. Interestingly, when I dug out my Greek lexicon and looked up the word in our gospel translated “abundantly,” the first definition read, “extraordinary, remarkable, of that which is not usually encountered among [people].” Now that sounds like the Jerusalem church described in Acts.
If we follow our shepherd, if we go through his gate and walk the path where he leads us, it will take us to a remarkable, uncommon, extraordinary life. I suppose it will even be abundant in terms of its generosity and sharing, in terms of its love and the impact it has on the world around. But it will look nothing like the ways of the world, the greed and selfishness, the focus on my needs over yours, the grabbing for all you can get without much worry about who might need it more.
In recent days, we’ve seen the ways of the world in action. Large, publically traded companies grabbed chunks of the fund created to help small businesses pay employees and survive this crisis. Large banks reaped huge windfalls in fees for dispensing these funds. The crisis has been leveraged for political gain. Some firms have engaging in price gouging, increasing prices fivefold for personal protective equipment.
But we’ve also seen a different way. Hospital staffs are working long, hard hours at great personal risk, sometimes to save those who have willfully disobeyed stay-at-home orders. People tirelessly sew masks for those who need them. Restaurants give free meals to healthcare workers and first responders. People volunteer and donate to food pantries. Members here help us keep a revamped Welcome Table going, and some have made large donations to funds we use to help the most vulnerable in our community. Many do stay and home and wear mask when out, not to protect themselves but to protect their neighbor. Some have given their coronavirus relief check to organizations helping immigrants or those who’ve lost jobs. Here and there we see signs of something different, something better than the way of the world. Here and there we see glimpses of remarkable life, extraordinary life, resurrection life, Easter life.
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Some years ago, I acquired a book of Walter Brueggemann’s sermons and prayers. I’ve always admired and appreciated the writings of this remarkable, Old Testament scholar, but this collection is not like most of his books. One of the prayers feels like a good way to conclude. It’s a prayer and a poem, and I think it captures some of what I’m trying to say.
On our own, we conclude:
that there is not enough to go around
we are going to run short
of money
of love
of grades
of publications
of sex
of beer
of members
of years
of life
we should seize the day
seize the goods
seize our neighbor’s goods
because there is not enough to go around.
And in the midst of our perceived deficit:
You come
You come giving bread in the wilderness
You come giving children at the 11th hour
You come giving homes to exiles
You come giving futures to the shut-down
You come giving Easter joy to the dead
You come—fleshed in Jesus.
And we watch while
the blind receive their sight
the lame walk
the lepers are cleansed
the deaf hear
the dead are raised
the poor dance and sing.
We watch
and we take food we did not grow and
life we did not invent and
future that is gift and gift and gift and
families and neighbors who sustain us
when we did not deserve it.
It dawns on us—late rather than soon—
that “you give food in due season
you open your hand
and satisfy the desire of every living thing.”
By your giving, break our cycles of imagined scarcity
override our presumed deficits
quiet our anxieties of lack
transform our perceptual field to see
the abundance… mercy upon mercy
blessing upon blessing.
Sink your generosity deep into our lives
that your muchness may expose our false lack
that endlessly receiving, we may endlessly give,
so that the world may be made Easter new,
without greedy lack, but only wonder
without coercive need, but only love
without destructive greed, but only praise
without aggression and invasiveness…
all things Easter new…
all around us, toward us and
by us
all things Easter new.
Finish your creation… in wonder, love, and praise. Amen. [1]
Amen.



[1] Walter Brueggemann, Inscribing the Text: Sermons and Prayers of Walter Brueggemann (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004) p. 3.

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