May 18, 2003

Acts 9: 26-31 + 1 John 3:18-24 + John 15: 1-8

Those of us who have grown up hearing this gospel passage over and over again can easily grow comfortable with the image.  We have all heard countless homilies about unity and fruitfulness; and believe me; I’ve done my homework in past years about the care of vines and fruitfulness. I’ve begun to discover that all of that reflection was, in the end, just a distraction; an intellectualizing of the gospel that might make its demands less pressing. It’s easy to sit back and think about vines and branches and grapes and wine. It doesn’t take a degree in theology to find out that this is a time/worn image used in the Old Testament and a favorite of rabbis and prophets to describe Israel. It gets carried into the New Testament to suggest that there is a wild vine that doesn’t produce and a “True” fine that does. But when you finally exhaust all of that stuff, have analyzed all the “I AM” passages of John’s Gospel, there is nothing left but the human experience that must have given rise to this image in that community from which John’s Gospel springs.

I have a strong feeling that they were dealing with two issues that just did not go away with time, and so they leaned back on their collective memory of Jesus to keep their focus and maintain some balance in their lives. One of the issues is “dead wood”; the stuff that gets pruned away. In the context of a community, this is a delicate and sensitive issue: yet it is one we ought not avoid. There is dead wood here – it weighs down the fruitful branches – takes up space and blocks the life-giving light from the living/fruitful branches. Every time we hear this gospel, we need to wonder about ourselves

and whether or not we have become “dead wood” on this vine.

The other issue haunts us more than the community that shaped this Gospel. It is that issue of independence, of being isolated, cut off, and on our own. It is that illusion of being self-made and self-confident. It is the folly of thinking we can make it on our own. It is wrong thinking and wrong acting that threatens our nation, our neighborhoods, and the very roots of our faith. We cannot and ought not think we can “go it alone.” Isolationism in politics, Congregationalism in religion, and Individualism in personal behavior, all dressed up under the guise of “freedom” is a pretense that leads us away from the truth of this Gospel. It makes dead wood.

“Without me you can do nothing.”

Herein lies the truth of this Gospel. Being one with Jesus necessarily makes us one with each other. Nothing that we do is without consequence in the lives of others. That is what it means to be a vine. To think that we can do anything or say anything without affecting everyone else is to be “dead wood.”  Believing in the name of Jesus Christ is no private, personal issue. As soon as that belief is experienced says the second reading, we are connected with each other. When Paul came to believe in Jesus, he could not stay away or remain away from that group in Jerusalem. This Gospel then is not so much about vines as it is about relationships. If it is about Jesus and his identity, then it is also about us and our identity. To hear and believe in this Gospel leaves us with the challenge of acknowledging our relationships to one another. It calls into question our very presence here. It examines the depth of our commitment and the measure of our stewardship. It exposes the lie of false freedom as “independence” with the truth of responsibility and duty. It examines “choice” outside the boundaries of one’s own little life. It forces us from the shadows of lonely isolation to the light of truth, and into the glory of God’s own life.

May 11, 2003

Acts 4:8-12 + 1 John 3:1-12 + John 10:11-18

This familiar image carries some profound ideas about Jesus from John’s perspective, and some specific implications for us as well. This gospel isn’t about shepherds. It’s about the risen Christ: his self-understanding and his mission. Therefore, it begins to be about us, or about any who would make themselves one with Christ and take up a share in his mission. We do no justice to John’s Gospel by reducing these verses to sentimental portraits of pastoral landscape with soft lighting and lovely clean robes on a man with flowing hair. This Gospel is about the Passion, Death, and Resurrection, and it is John’s image of Christ that we hear of today:

the Christ who is no victim, who is not murdered or put to death by someone else, but who is in charge from the very beginning of his passion, who willingly suffers, willingly goes to his death, willingly lays down his life, all in order to take it up again.

It is willingness that John shows us – a Jesus who makes choices for the sake of others who is obedient to the wish and will of his father/God who understands that to lay down one’s life out of love is to rise up in the Kingdom of God. This image is not for admiration. It is for imitation. It proposes to us that we make choices, and that by those choices we shall find our place and our way into the Kingdom of God. To lay down one’s life is the way to rise up. Service, Sacrifice, Love given freely: this is what we proclaim as Gospel A life laid down is a life raised up.

The command Jesus received and spoke of in the last verse of today’s passage is not just his own. Those who will be one with him, one flock, one shepherd will have the same command. Those who will come here to eat his flesh and drink his blood share his command. Those who have gone with Him willingly to the grave of baptism rise up with him to glory. This is what we proclaim this Easter day. Our Gospel is not about the past, but about the present. It is not simply a story about Jesus; about what he said and what He did. It is about the present and what he continues to do in us. It is about our future and who shall become children of God. It is about the world coming to know Him because it comes to know us.

May 4, 2003

Acts 3:13-115,17-19 + 1 John 3:1-7 + Luke 24:36-48

Last week we took up John’s version of an appearance of the risen Christ. This week it is Luke. The verses today follow the Emmaus story. The two disciples are the ones who met him on their “way”. They have now returned to Jerusalem with their story. The Jesus who has reviewed the scriptures and eaten with them does it again. They are still in that room terrified and unbelieving. It is their shame that holds them back. It is the memory of their failure that they recall, not what he promised them. All they seem to remember is that they abandoned him. All they could see is failure, theirs and his. Their messianic dreams and expectations are over. The cross was the end of that. They thought it was all about them; and the truth of their failings is more than they can bear, so they hide. In their midst comes the risen Christ: a failed Messiah in the midst of failed disciples, and what we hear when they come together is talk of forgiveness.

This is the heart of the Christian story. It is the essence of the Gospel and the source of belief in the risen Christ and the greatest joy. What those disciples came to realize sitting in that room sharing their shame and admitting their guilt and suffering their terror was that the whole experience of Jesus had not been about them. It was not about their messianic expectations. It was not about their power and their victory over their enemies. It was not about how loyal they were as disciples. It was not about their religion either. It was about God and God’s love and God’s plan for them. It was about what God could do with failure and sin.

Until those two making their way to Emmaus had their eyes opened

and one more time went over all that Moses and the Prophets had to say, they didn’t get it. Until those others in that locked up room had the same experience, they didn’t get it. But once he came into that room of failure and shame and doubt, it was different.

Forgiveness became for them the moment of awakening and belief.

He did not avoid them in their guilt nor abandon them in their fear.

He did not reproach their denials of him nor the betrayal. He never mentioned it. He simply reproached their fear. Once they experienced that forgiveness and realized that their failures had not been the end of God’s plan, they understood and were overcome with Joy.

This Easter season can do the same for us. It is not about those disciples and something that happened in Jerusalem. This Easter is about us. We understand their part of the story because we are just like them. Our denial, our betrayal of Jesus and our quickness to abandon Him is just as real as theirs. We have just as much to fear as well. The only difference is that in addition to locking doors,

we set alarms, close the gates, and look the other way at the failures of justice and the suffering of the innocent. The wounds of Christ alive in our midst do not interest us. We want the sentimental Jesus with fair skin, long hair, and gentle voice. He stands before day in and day out inviting us to see and touch wounds, and he asks us for food.

It is to disciples who have failed that the risen Christ appears. It is disciples who are ashamed and hiding that Jesus sends forth in Joy.

It is people forgiven and redeemed who inherit the Gospel and its mission. Our own experience of failure and sin is what puts us in the company of the saved and the redeemed. To the eyes of his own and the eyes of his world, Jesus was a failure – no power, no strength, no miracles. Yet when he confronted with forgiveness the failures of others, he was exalted; and they came to believe. Our best prayer this third Easter day is that it may be so again that he may come into this room or our homes or our hearts with that message of Peace and that mission of forgiveness. When we have come to know that Peace, we shall believe in the risen Lord not because someone told us about it, but because we have known it ourselves.

April 27, 2003

Acts 4:32-35 + 1 John 5:1-6 + John 20:19-31

There is a dangerous way of hearing this Gospel story that would lead us to suspect that God favored a chosen few with an experience of the risen Christ, and the rest of us simply had to take it on their word. If that were the case, Thomas would just have had to make it on the word of the others. But notice that he is not left to believe that Christ is risen because of “here-say”. He believes it because he has his own experience of the Risen Christ

It is not a matter of touching – notice that he never does. It is a matter of seeing. What the Gospel story tells us is that Thomas, in spite of absence and in spite of doubt is able to join the others in saying: “We have seen the Lord.”

What I suspect is that before that day, Thomas was not looking. At least, he was not looking either in the right place, or was not looking for the Risen Christ. For that matter the others were not either, after all, they were sitting in a room with the doors locked. Thomas may well have been out the first time Christ appeared looking for the dead body of Christ. He may have been taking another look at the empty tomb. He may still have been looking the political Messiah who was going to set everything right. The point of the story is that Thomas has an experience of the Risen Christ. From what he says, he is looking for a dead Christ: no one who has all the scars of death. What he finds, what he sees is the Risen Christ.

It is Easter again in this place, my friends, not because the calendar says so or because Lent is over; but because there are some here who have seen the Lord, and some who are here because they want to see the Lord, and they are looking. It is always Easter when the risen Lord is among us It is always Easter when people who are one in mind, and heart, and faith look into each other’s eyes and share what they have: bread, wine, hope, joy, money, kindness, and forgiveness. It is always Easter when we see people who accept suffering with dignity and courage when we look upon the old and children, the most vulnerable among us, and stand together to protect them. It is always Easter when we recall how we have been forgiven, and rejoice in the times we have forgiven.

This world and our lives are charged with the glory of the resurrection. What we need are eyes to see the risen Lord in our midst and willing hearts to call Him by name. That gift is the Spirit. He sends us from the Father. When we have it, when we know it, when we use it, we will have seen the Lord.

April 20, 2003

Acts 10:34,37-43 + Colossians 3:1-4 + John 20:1-9

No talking angels in John’s Gospel, just three people: Mary of Magdala, Peter, and “the other disciple”. They all three see the same thing; an empty tomb, and they each have a different reaction:

one is concerned, one is confused, the other believes.

We are left by John to wonder on this believer’s feast about the difference between them. A closer look at the details reminds us that this one ”who is loved” is the believer, and we are left to suspect that somehow love and belief are to be found together.

People who experience love are open to the miraculous. What they discover in love is that the unexpected is possible; that saying “yes” in love rather than “no” opens their hearts and their eyes to see what others cannot see and believe in things others never dreamed of.

It is the same for believers. They are not closed to any possibility – like lovers. They greet the unexpected with eyes open to the miraculous. Lovers and Believers alike can take painful surprises, disappointments, tragedies, and even death without confusion or undue concern. The unexpected, the unexplained, the unplanned, even the unwanted finds them looking for the surprise, the miracle, the joy for which others would be too skeptical or doubtful. To look at that tragic death and believe required love. To look at that empty tomb and go beyond confusion and concern required love, which becomes belief.

Seeing is not believing. They all saw the same thing. It is the lover who believes. This then is the feast of believers, the feast of the loved. It can only mean something to those whose eyes are open and whose hearts expect the wonder and the power of God to bring victory and peace, joy and healing. Yet there are many who look for the miracle in all the wrong places. The miracle that draws us here in such great crowds is only found in an empty tomb. It is not found in power, control, authority, money, weapons, size or strength. It is found only in love, the kind of love we have remembered the past two days – the love of service, of sacrifice, and the love of obedience to the will of God.

In his letter to the Colossians, Paul has reminded us to keep our hearts set on greater things. The disciple who saw and believed had his heart set on greater things. Those who work against incredible odds to bring about justice in a little corner of the world are able to do so because they have set their hearts on greater things. Those who live with compassion and patient understanding, who know the power of forgiveness, and the healing balm of mercy have set their hearts on greater things. These are the ones who see and believe, who expect miracles and see them, who can look at every tragedy and know with confidence that good will come, grace will prevail, and love with last.

So today, in this place made holy by fire and light, water and blood, bread and forgiveness, we have crowded together like Mary of Magdala, Peter, and the “one who is loved” to look into the empty tombs, of broken hearts and empty lives. What we see can confuse us, concern and frighten us, or it can lead us to believe that having been loved by God, the best we can hope for and all we have been promised will be ours.

Christ has died.

Christ is risen.

Christ will come again.

April 19, 2003

Romans 6:3-11 + Mark 16:1-7

By the clock, it is still night. If someone threw the right switch, it would be dark in here. It is dark outside. The darkness is not just a matter of the position of the sun. There is plenty of darkness even at noontime. It is very dark in the life of simple Iraqi child. It is dark in the lives on death row. It is dark in some churches where there are no priests. It is dark in the lives of families split by the death of love’s promise. It is dark in the heart of a mother who loses a child. It is dark minutes after losing a job. It is dark standing over the grave of a life-long companion just put to rest. All of these dark tragedies are ripe for resurrection; but not necessarily very soon. For some, relief may never come. If left to itself, darkness covers the whole earth. The light comes only when it finds a crack of future hope.

Tonight, we have made a crack in the darkness.  Our future hope, our confidence in God, our covenant in the blood of Christ raises high the tiniest of lights in the darkness that would consume all. We have led thirty-eight people into the Light of Christ, and in doing so, have pushed back the darkness even further, for now there is more light than when we began. But the light in symbol is a only a candle: fragile light when the wind blows as it always does.  Yet in our hope and in our faith, these fragile tongues of fire will themselves harness the wind of a new Pentecost of the Spirit that will finally light up the whole world by our joy, our hope, and our love that will lead those still in darkness into the light. Christ is risen, my friends. He has come from the darkest of tombs to become our light. For us then, night has become like the day. The power of darkness is no more.

April 18, 2003

Isaiah 52:13-53:12 + Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9 + John 18 1-19:42

If all our minds can see today is pain, blood, and dying, then we have failed to understand the Passion of Christ. Reducing this event to the senseless murder of an innocent man misses the point entirely. Take care not to ponder this death through guilt-conscious eyes that would exaggerate its brutality. Becoming preoccupied with the anatomical/medical details and the production and interest in the physiological consequences of being nailed and hung up on a cross avoids the real issue here. Beware too of approaching this event with only the mind toying with the theological implications it presents.

To do any or all of these things trivializes God’s mercy. Nothing here is about us, that is idolatry. This is about God! A human being died – that is the point of affirming that blood and water flowed from his side. Human beings die all the time, and truth be told, many of them die worse deaths, Human beings are executed all the time, and too many of them are just as innocent of any crime. The agony of Jesus, by some accounts lasted three hours. Many are in agony for decades. The “Place of the Skull” is a tiny plot. There are greater ones in our history. And that’s the point – this is about Mercy, God’s Mercy, not about our cruelty, our injustice, our betrayals, our fear, or our sins.

The burden he has carried up that hill was not just a load of wood. It was the burden of our lives. The cross is more than a reminder of betrayal and anguish. It is the throne of Mercy. The cry of Jesus on the cross is not just the scream of agony. It is the cry of one giving birth.

To look at the cross is to see the face of God. To look at the cross is to peer into the very interior life of God. To do anything else or see anything else is to miss the whole point of Jesus.

The Passion story we have just proclaimed begins in a garden and ends in a garden. In the first garden we find the forces of military and political power ready to put down this movement of liberation. There is no Judas to identify him – he simply utters the ultimate words of power once before spoken from a burning bush as that first movement of liberation began. He says: “I AM”; and with that all the powers lined against him fall to the ground in disarray. In the presence of “I AM” there is no other power.

Then the Passion story concludes in another garden as Nicodemus comes out of the darkness and joins Joseph of Arimathea. These new children of Light do more than bury the body of Jesus. They plant a seed in this garden that will soon burst forth: the victory of light over darkness. This day is not about death. It is about life. The appropriate sentiments of those who see and understand the cross as the throne of grace and mercy are Joy and Hope; where Peace reigns over violence and Mercy is embraces the sinner.

April 17, 2003

Exodus 12:1-8,11-14 + 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 + John 13:1-15

It is Passover for Jesus as he sits with his companions. The experience of God’s liberating love is real for them. Egypt is past. Their slavery is at an end. They sit together and with ritual words and foods, to remember, and they acknowledge the covenant Moses made with God. It was a Covenant that secured their place in God’s heart and God’s place in their lives. They eat that meal in symbolic readiness to depart from their enslaved condition.

Tonight we do the same. We sit in symbolic readiness to depart from our slavery. We have passed forty days cleaning up and cleaning out our lives It is as though we were moving, and having sorted through what we needed and what we did not need, the garage sale is over, the dumpster is full, and our bags are packed. If we did it any more symbolically, there would be luggage in the aisles. The best of us would have packed lightly.

They ate unleavened bread. There was no time for it to rise. They sprinkled the blood of the lamb on the entrance to their homes so that the angel of death might pass over them. We do the same. No time to rise, this bread we bring is eaten in haste. We save only enough for tomorrow, and we care for it more preciously than anything else we have, and tonight we keep watch and guard lest it be taken for granted. The blood of the Lamb we consume so that the angel of death might pass over us.

This day is our Passover Feast, and we sit with companions here and everywhere. Our slavery to sin and death is at an end. Our Egypt is past. We sit together and with ritual words and foods, to remember, and acknowledge the covenant the new Moses, Jesus, made with God. It is a Covenant that secures our place in God’s heart and God’s place in our lives. Tonight we eat this meal in very real readiness to depart with Jesus for the journey into his death and resurrection: the ultimate and final Passover. The old sign of one’s share in the covenant of Moses was circumcision. That old covenant and its sign held those people together until God’s final act and ultimate plan came of age. The sign of this new covenant is love made visible by service and forgiveness: the washing of feet and the reconciliation of those estranged. It is both our privilege and our duty to wash and to heal, to love and forgive, to serve and to remember.

April 13, 2003

Isaiah 50:4-7 + Philippians 2:6-1– + Mark 14:1-15:47

It only takes Mark 23 verses to get to the point. In the firstchapter, verse twenty-three a demon shrieks: “Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are – the holy One of God!” With that, the great struggle begins between the Holy One and the Evil One. Fifteen chapters later, the struggle comes to an end. By all appearances at the time, the Evil One has the victory; but it is only a matter of appearances. This time, someone else knows who he is and says so. A centurion speaks the words of the first and the primitive creed; words that acknowledge salvation and confirm our best hopes: that God has come among us and is among us in our most desolate and desperate moments.

Death in this gospel is real. It is neither symbolic nor theological. It is cruel, unjust, swift, and merciless. Death embraces us all. No one shall escape. The death story Mark gives tells of the cruelest death of all. The one closest to the dying Jesus is the enemy – the executioner. Gone are the friends, companions, and loved ones. Shame and fear have had their way. There is no one to comfort him. Innocence is what has been proven by this silly trial, not guilt. There is no justice! Yet right in the middle of this mess, we find God says the centurion:

A God who takes a failure to make a Messiah;

A God who takes a death to make Life Everlasting;

A God who takes injustice to make Mercy;

A God who takes sinners to make Saints.

So the end is not the end. The victory does not belong to the demons of chapter one or the Romans of chapter fifteen. It belongs to those who know failure, suffering, death, injustice, and sin. It belongs to those who are abandoned as well as those who hide in shame and fear. This Gospel is as much a story of disciples as it is a story of Jesus. It tells as much about how slow they were to believe, and how they got it wrong again and again as much as it tells about how Jesus got it right.

We have this Gospel to proclaim not just because of the victory of Jesus; but also, because those disciples finally got it right. May it be so for us, who are slow to believe, nowhere to be found when there is need, and quick to deny when their risk or danger. My friends, let us make this week Holy, every day of it, not because of what happened in the past in Jerusalem, but because of what is happening now in our own lives.

April 4, 2003

Jeremiah 31:313-34 + Hebrews 5:7-9 + John 12:20-31

They wanted to “see” Jesus all right, just like the apostles on the mountain top saw him in glory. They wanted to “see” this rabbi/preacher who was such a sensation. They wanted to see this one who out talked the Pharisees and humbled the Scribes. And what might they have said after they heard him that talk of falling to the ground and being lifted up? “Whoa, we just want to see Jesus, not get all involved in this stuff.” “We just want to see Jesus, not get mixed up in this service and forgiveness, this turn the other cheek, this repentance, this losing one’s life, this talk of suffering…..Let’s see some glory here, some real Power!” What they get is “thunder”: another voice from heaven.

Then the final words: talk of being executed, which is what “being lifted up means to them.” I imagine those Greeks were halfway back to Athens before the end of that thunder roll.

Of course, this isn’t history here, and by the time John writes this Gospel, plenty of Greeks and other gentiles had come through the apostles and their witness to “see” Jesus; but not with their eyes. For the “seeing” of Jesus means “understanding” much as when something has been explained to us we say, “Oh, I see.” With that understanding comes then the decision to look and watch or follow and participate. Do these Greeks, you and me who are Gentiles drawn by the witness of the Apostles, want to look or do we want to go further? This Gospel calls us to distinguish between admiring Jesus and following him. It looks at whether or not we just keep our distance or actually step in and become what we admire.

In John’s Gospel there are twenty-six references to “the hour”, by which Jesus means not a time of day, but the beginning of the reason for which he has come among us: the redemption of sinners and his return of them to God. It is as though we have been stolen or sold into slavery,

and now someone has come to set us free and return us to the One with whom we rightly belong. This the nature of a Covenant – an agreement that ends slavery and binds the one freed to the one who sets free. With Moses, the covenant marked the end of Egypt’s slavery and the beginning of Israel’s freedom to become God’s people.

With Jesus, the new Moses, a greater covenant is struck that sets free those enslaved to sin. This is our Redemption. We have come now in Lent to the “hour”, the hour when we shall determine who is here to see and who is here to understand: who is here to look at Jesus, and who is here to become “Christos” (anointed). In another week we shall begin through ancient prayer and ritual our celebration of the Covenant that has set us free and marks forever our status as God’s own people restored to friendship with God by the redeeming action of Jesus Christ. It is our “hour” too – when all that he has done for us is claimed, remembered, and celebrated.

The week we call “Holy” is just that. Time set aside for God alone. The three days of that week mark the “hour” of our redemption. The rituals of those days are really simply one great prayer of remembrance and thanksgiving. What begins on Thursday, ends with Easter’s dawn when we keep the Great Vigil. From the washing of feet; to the Passion’s Proclamation and Cross’s Veneration; to the Light and the Water we drawn. There is no place for followers of Jesus other than their churches at those hours. Like disciples who sleep through his prayer in the Garden, some will declare “it is too long”, they are “too tired”, “three days of prayer in one week is too much.” But I say to you what Jesus says to those who would follow him: “Stay here and watch with me. The hour has come.” Those who must work those evenings to care for their families already share in prayer and life of Jesus Christ out of love and service. Those who are ill also share in the suffering remembered and celebrated here; but those of us who have the gift of time and want to see Jesus more than just look at him will make the week truly “holy”.

To take communion week after week and be absent from the celebration that recalls and renews the giving of that gift is puzzling. To make the sign of the cross and fail to be here to kiss the cross is curious at best. To recite the Creed and take our place among the Baptized week after week and then ignore the great vigil from which our faith springs like light in the darkness calls into question the communal faith the elect have come seeking here. With one week to prepare and deepen our Lenten resolves, we set our faces toward Jerusalem and our sights on Jesus Christ. We follow in his footsteps with the assurance that he will be faithful to his promise: “Where I am, there will my servant be.”