April 26, 2009 at Saint Mark in Norman, OK

Acts of the Apostles 3, 13-115. 17-19 + Psalm 4 + 1 John 2, 1-5 + Luke 24, 35-48

Sometimes I am almost overwhelmed at the thought of what we are and what is happening to us in the place, in this church, our Jerusalem. It frightens me sometimes to wake up from routine and remember what happens to us in here. We are so casual, so complacent, and so comfortable. You come late, sometimes I come unprepared. It’s the same thing. We slip into the role of spectators. With arms folded you stand and sit, kneel and sign yourselves. I watch you and you watch me sometimes. Most of the time we listen to the Word of God as though it were a story someone is reading about the good-old days. Our imaginations, if they are working at all dwell on the past, and we get stuck remembering what God HAS done, what Jesus HAS said, what happened in that Jerusalem as though it was over, finished, and done with.

Then sometimes I wake up and I get it. I dawns on me again that this is Jerusalem, and what we proclaim in here is about today, not way back then. The one who speaks to us all is Jesus raised from the dead. But because we keep looking backward, we don’t recognize him. We are like those men and women in Jerusalem who kept thinking about those times before the death and resurrection. In that kind of thinking there is no future and nothing to do much less anything to become.

Last week, we heard an experience in Jerusalem. While Thomas may have been the one who spoke the feelings of many, the incident was really about Jesus and about what happens to someone who is raised from the dead by God because of their obedience to and commitment to God’s Will. Today we hear an experience that is not about Jesus, but rather about people who gather around a table in Jerusalem and look into God’s Word to understand what is happening to them in that place.

It is not hard to understand the experience of the apostles and their closest friends. No one has been raised from the dead before. They have nothing to relate this experience to except ghost stories, and so they do. For a brief time, they are stuck looking backward, remembering the past, longing for it, sad that it seems to be over, and not quite sure what it means or what to do about it. So they sit together and ponder the Scriptures waiting. Some of them try going back to their old ways, they fish again, they walk home to Emmaus; but the truth is, there is no going back.

This week it is about them, about how difficult it is to grasp the fact that someone has been raised. They kept thinking it was a ghost. Ghosts for most people interested are the “so-called spirits of the dead”. What stands before them in Jerusalem is not the spirit of a dead man. It is someone alive enough, real enough, present enough to eat! How to understand this is the question with which they struggle, and so they are led to search the Scriptures for insight and understanding. The one who appears to them affirms their search but tells them that it will take another witness, more testimony, before this resurrection transformation can be believed, understood, and appreciated for what it really means. That witness is the Spirit which He will send. When that Spirit comes, the transformation of Jesus will no longer be the remarkable experience because their own transformation will open their eyes and their hearts. They will be the ones transformed.

And so it happens Luke tells us, but not just for them. We too are in Jerusalem trying not to look backward while pondering the scriptures to see and understand what is happening to us. We are aware that people all around us seem to be getting it – seem to be grasping the meaning and being transformed by it. Just as Apostles burst out of that room and out of their timid uncertain selves to peach, proclaim, forgive, and heal, we see it happening. Men like Stan Rother, a little nun in Calcutta, a courageous priest a sister and laypeople with a vision of the Kingdom of God living in Haiti’s poverty and disease, mothers and fathers forgiving each other and sacrificing everything for their children, young men chosing a seminary rather than careers of prominence and power. Nurses, Doctors, Teachers touching other lives with compassion and gentleness!

It’s everywhere, this victory of the resurrection with it’s transformation. How can we understand this? The Scriptures read not as a history lesson, but read under the power of the Spirit opens minds and hearts to discover and embrace a God who wills us to be free, forgiven, loving, caring, and faithful stewards of his gifts.

We are in Jerusalem today, and Christ is in our midst. Some may think its just the memory of a dead man; but we are invited to touch and see, listen and understand.

If you are here today, you are people of the resurrection having made the choice to come to Jerusalem. Yet we are surrounded by too much darkness and death. We allow ourselves individually and as communities of faith to succumb to the trivialization of our faith rather than proclaim the call to repentance and conversion by our own transformed lives. You don’t need a pulpit to proclaim the resurrection. You do it in your kitchen, on the phone, at work over coffee. By the power of God’s Spirit we are witnesses to the dawning of God’s new order for the world: a world free of anger, hatred, lies, self-serving behavior, pride, and any other deed of darkness.

At the beginning of his ministry, the Spirit came upon Jesus. That same Spirit has come upon us and our ministry has begun once we understand what is written in these scriptures. The same experiences available to the apostles are available to this apostolic church even if corporal appearances of the risen, ascended and exalted Jesus have ceased for a time. Opened eyes and opened minds communing with Jesus are what it takes to see clearly and comprehend with discernment what we are becoming here. When you start to get the point, it ought to be enough to scare you, and prompt you to say: “Come Holy Spirit” for without it, we shall remain only spectators all the way to the end. I don’t want to be a spectator when everyone else is rising from the dead.

April 12, 2009 at Saint Mark in Norman, OK

Acts of the Apostles 10: 34, 37-43 + Psalm 118 + Colossians 3: 1-4 + John 20: 1-9

Matthew says:

“After the Sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene came with the other Mary to inspect the tomb. Suddenly there was a mighty earthquake, as the angel of the Lord descended from heaven. He came to the stone, rolled it back, and sat on it.”

Mark says:

“Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome were saying to one anther, ‘Who will roll back the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb? When they looked, they found that the stone had been rolled back. (It was a huge one.)”

Luke says:

“The women came to the tomb bringing the spices they had prepared. They found the stone rolled back from the tomb.”

You just heard John say:

“Mary Magdalene came to the tomb. She saw that the stone had been moved away.”

If all four evangelists write about the stone, it is a big deal. It is important. There is something about this stone moving that carries with it a message worth our notice this glorious day. However, getting that message is not easy if we continue to think that the stone was there to keep Jesus in. I would propose to you that we have the whole thing backward. The point is not that there was a stone closing the tomb, but that the stone has been rolled away opening the tomb. Open tombs, just like open doors are not open just to let people out.

Some ancient cultures have believed that tombs were a gateway to the next life. That is good thinking. It is certainly Gospel thinking. We need that stone rolled back. We need that tomb open, not to let Jesus out, but to let us in. Peter and John went into that tomb, and they emerged with a new life, a new mission, a new way of seeing and believing. It will be no different for us if we want to be counted among the chosen, the believers. What ever stones get in the way must go. They must be rolled back. We have to die and face a tomb or two or there is no way we shall really live. The point is to live, not to survive. People who have not faced a tomb, only survive for another day to survive again. We are not called by God to be survivors who scratch around in this life defending and protecting ourselves, fearful of what will come next to threaten what we have and what we have stored away. We are called to Life – called to Live, and the only way to that life is through the tomb.

There are in this life a thousand deaths and more. Times when there is loss or change and we think we are going to die. Times when bad news comes, and we die of fear and sorrow. There are people in this assembly who live this day with sadness and an empty place at the table, parents who have lost children and discouraged men and women who have lost jobs and savings. This sadness is the sadness of the tomb. Yet for those who know the story of an open tomb in Jerusalem this sadness is not the end.

Something happens in tombs for those who are attentive to the will and word of God. Pay attention to Jesus in these accounts of the tomb and resurrection. The verb in the gospel is in the passive voice grammatically: “He has been raised.” Jesus is not the actor here; he has been acted upon. He did nothing except fulfill the will of God and accept the consequence of doing so. Because of that, God acted upon him raising him to new life.

It is this news that gives us hope and confidence that whatever death we may face, sadness, disappointment, or tragedy if we have fulfilled the will of God, we shall be raised from any grief or loss that has put us down. God acts upon those who are faithful. To anyone who has ever cried out: “God, Why?” “Why have you forsaken me?” there is an answer. God’s action in the tomb is God’s answers that question. The news today is that the stone has been rolled back: the stone that would leave us defeated by evil, sorrow, sadness, or grief; the stone that would not give us access to that action of God who will raise us again and again, as many times as it takes for us to really live. Life is what God is about. Life is the Will of God. Life is the surest sign of God’s presence. Life is the consequence of a willingness to die to self, to sin, to selfishness.

I have this idea that some might find slightly irreverent, but I think that Jesus lived in a state of constant surprise. I believe he was surprised when Peter, Andrew, James and John quit their jobs to follow him. I believe he was surprised when Matthew left his desk in the tax office and came along. I feel sure he was just as surprised as the wine steward who tasted that wine in the water jugs at Cana and raved about its quality. I think he was surprised when Peter’s mother-in-law got up after he touched her. I think much of his life was a pleasant surprise, even the day he called for Lazarus and he actually came out of the tomb. Think how much more wonderful it is to imagine these events as surprises rather than as just something ordinary in the life of a miracle worker. With that thought then, imagine how surprised Jesus was that morning to discover what God could do with and for him. My Easter prayer and my hope for you my friends is that having been faithful to the will of God you will be surprised again and again and what Life God has planned for you. May every Sunday be another Easter for each of you, and may you be surprised to find that the stones that keep you from truly living have been rolled

April 11, 2009 at Saint Mark in Norman, OK

Mark 1: 1-10 Palm Blessing + Isaiah 50: 4-7 + Psalm 22 + Philippians 2: 6-11 + Mark 16: 1-8

In the era of human civilization, human scientists can mark the Iron Age and the Bronze Age with the discovery of these things and their impact on human life and history. Then I suppose the development of the wheel, electricity, and the printing press ought to be counted, and perhaps many other moments that left their mark on human life. But none of them compares to the inaugural event that forever changed this world: the resurrection of Christ. It does not make any difference whether you believe it or not. The impact, the consequences are unmistakable as the lives of those who experienced and witnessed it began to change the course of human history.

Once every twelve months on the Sabbath after the first full moon of the spring equinox, people like us everywhere on this earth assemble in the night – at an hour that is in-between. We are between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. We are between the death of Christ and the Resurrection. We are between sunset and sunrise. In a sense, for a moment, time is suspended giving us a space in which to reflect upon how we use time and what happens in time.

How we live in time shapes the quality of our relationships with ourselves and with others; with the world and with God. Too many of us seem to see time as something to be ticked off, or counted down wishing they had done things differently, looking back. This moment in here suggests that we would do better to look forward and live in anticipation of what will happen next.

Here in the darkness of this Easter Vigil, we are between times. We know darkness, sometimes far too well and too often: and in that darkness we search for meaning in our lives and the world around us.

Here in the darkness of this Easter Vigil we practice, we practice waiting. It is the crux of our faith this waiting, and if we practice it well, we shall endure other times of waiting that come: waiting for a birth, waiting for the results of a medical test, waiting for a loved one to breath their last, waiting for our own last moments.

Here in the darkness, we remember who we are and whose we are, We gather in community to keep company in the dark because it is frightening and lonely without another. It is so easy to fall into the violence, greed, and narcissism of this age, and so we sit in the dark to remember that we have embraced another way of life, and that along with those who keep this vigil we do not turn back for like the Israelites whose story we told again, we go forward even if the way is uncertain: forward to grow in relationship to God. Together we can face the unknown, the unfamiliar, and trust God for what is to come.

Mary Magdalene and the others show us how. Although frightened, they pressed forward facing the challenges that assaulted their faith. A new day dawned, and it was time to carry on with life even in the midst of death. When they arrived at that tomb, they were surprised that he was not there. Even though they could not possibly have understood what it could mean, what began in the darkness of an uncertain night was now beaming with possibilities and newfound hope. It is when we choose to live in the face of what looks like death that God most often surprises us with a glimmer of light and will carry us into a new day. We have held that glimmer of light tonight, and we have shared in this darkness. We must continue to do that, and when we do, we shall live in time and in the future.

April 10, 2009 at Saint Mark in Norman, OK

Isaiah 52: 13-53, 12 + Psalm 31 + Hebrews 4: 14-16, 5: 7-9 + John 18:1-9, 42

Time, culture, and familiarity have just about insulated us from the reality of what we remember today. We have managed to become immune to the reality of what happened in Jerusalem and what continues to happen around us. The self-proclaimed “civilized” society in which we live now avoids passion, and when it is observed, it is either distant from us as an admirable quality of a few or an always to be avoided behavior seen in those different from us.

The inevitable consequence of this is a wrong conclusion that Christ had to die on a cross and that he chose to do so. That thinking is somehow an attempt to distance ourselves from the harsh and brutal reality of what happened. The truth is it repels us.

We are appalled by it. So, it is tempting to take refuge in the thought that it was God’s will even though we do not understand why God would will such a thing. It is a way of finding a comfort that shields us from the truth. God did not will His son to be condemned as a criminal and executed. Jesus Christ did not choose to be crucified. He chose to be faithful not matter the consequences. The fact is, Christ died because human beings chose to kill him. This was not some divine plan.

The powerful figures in this account all had a part to play.

The Pharisees, Peter, Judas, Pilate, Herod, James and John, his closest friends:

any one of them could have stopped it, but they did not do so.

• The Pharisees could have stopped it all, but to them, Christ was an impurity who broke the tradition of Moses. There is no reason to think they were evil. They were simply complacent and very self-satisfied. They fell into the trap of assuming that challenges only come from enemies.
• Judas surely believed that his own vision should be Christ’s vision. He must have thought that he could force the issue by putting Christ on the spot. I suspect that he was actually a very dedicated man who had simply become too narrow, too caught up in his plans and vision: another deadly trap.
• Peter the Rock, knew a moment of betrayal and panic. We’ve all been there. One split second and a bad decision. It is easy to understand Peter. He was afraid. Fear does terrible things to people. It does terrible things to us.
• Pilate the intellectual. He wants to debate or argue. “What is Truth?” Meanwhile he tries to read the crowd. He wants to please. Should he release Barabbas or Jesus? What will please the crowd? What will please the Emperor? So, the last result of a people pleasing politician is? Do nothing at all. He washes his hands, claims it’s not his concern and that way he doesn’t get hurt.

So, the cross goes up because no one stopped it. It happens all the time, not just on Good Friday. At least part of the Goodness ought to be because it does not have to be. This world never needs to be narrow or small. We never need to be trapped by our own assumptions and self-satisfaction. We never need to argue or make that one wrong snap decision. We have nothing to fear. That is not God’s plan, and neither was the cross in God’s plan. Two days from now we shall remember what God’s plan is: a world full of hope, full of joy, as full of goodness as God’s boundless power and mercy. A world full of life.

April 9, 2009 at Saint Mark in Norman, OK

Exodus 12: 1-8, 11-14 + Psalm 116 + 1 Corinthians 11: 23-26 + John 13: 1-15

The hour has come. Lent comes to a close now. The great hymn, “Gloria” which we have not sung since the Sunday before Ash Wednesday brings the season to a glorious and thrilling conclusion. Now begins the Sacred Triduum, the Three Holy Days when we shall remember what Jesus has asked us to do in his memory, and tomorrow look upon the crucified man of sorrows, the suffering servant on the altar and throne of the cross. It is a lot to take in, but tonight and tomorrow lead us to Saturday night when we shall make sense of it all in the darkness enlightened by the Word of God and sing once again that great hymn of Glory.

Again and again in John’s Gospel we have been told that the hour has not yet come. Then this past Sunday we heard Jesus announce as those Greeks come to see him that Jesus knows that his hour has come. In a stunning reversal of roles, the teacher, the Lord, the Master, the Son of God, the Son of David, the Son of Man, the Messiah (call him everything you can) girds himself as servant and crawls around on the floor to wash feet.

It is a startling image of God, a God on the floor, bent down, kneeling. It is a humble God the Jesus reveals. The challenge of this image makes as much impact on us as it did to the disciples and a protesting Peter. Where is the God of anger and wrath? Where is the God of power and might? Where is the God who slew enemies, who strikes down opposition, who crushes the infidel? Where is the God in radiant robes on a throne with servants and angel / choirs? Where is this feared omnipotent one who speaks in mystery through a burning bush to tell Moses: “I Am”?

That God is in an upper room down on the floor and the treasures offered him are human feet, dusty, worn, tired, split, calloused, swollen, blistered and dirty. Something is wrong with this picture thinks the Peter inside of us. Yet, something is right says the Jesus wrapped in a towel.

Feet tell a lot about us, and we like to keep them hidden, covered with socks and shoes. If not, we’re off to pedicure and paint to distract from the blemishes most of us would rather hide. Our feet tell our story. They tell where we have been and where we should not have been. They carry our burdens, they bear the first scars of our journeys. They sweat and smell. They ache and twist with age. There is something a little daunting about placing our bare feet before another, exposing them to be touched and washed by another. It is the same for the one touching and washing.

But it is God who does the touching, the washing, and the healing. It is God who accepts those feet the story they tell and the burden they bring. It is the humble God that Jesus offers to those who will offer their feet and all the burdens those feet carry from place to place and day to day.

A humble God looks for humble people. That’s the story of this day, and it is what we are invited to remember. He never said: “Be sure to remember how I cured the blind and the deaf, the mute and the crippled or those possessed by demons; how I forgave prostitutes and ate with sinners.” The one thing Paul tells us he did ask us to do in his memory concerned what we do at this table.

Here we remember what Jesus has done for us. We recall his saving deeds in the Eucharistic Prayer, how he suffered and died for us, rose from the dead and sent the Holy Spirit. He comes to us each time we gather here as he did to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, and because of that, we come here week after week to share what he has done for us and how we have seen him. Strengthened by the Spirit that comes upon us in this place, we then begin to be what he has been for those who are sick, desperate, and lonely.

The more we eat of this bread and drink of this cup, the more we become the Body of Christ. To share in his glory we will find our way into his sufferings. Betrayed, mocked, ridiculed, and asked to carry a cross, we will fall from time to time; but we will get up again assured of victory. We will be Simon of Cyrene for each other and carry one another’s burdens. We will be Veronica tenderly wiping each other’s face. We will go down on our knees humbly before one another, break and share bread transformed and transforming us into the Body of Christ. We will profess over and over again that we believe in the resurrection of the dead, the life of the world to come, and that Christ will come again.

April 4, 2009 at Saint Mark in Norman, OK

Mark 1: 1-10 Palm Blessing + Isaiah 50: 4-7 + Psalm 22 + Philippians 2: 6-11 + Mark 14: 1-15

I am not exactly sure what it is or why, but we have so sensationalized the death of Jesus Christ that we have lost something very siginificant that is right here in the text no matter which of evangelists you read. The truth of the matter is that there were at least three executions that day outside Jerusalem. There may well have been more. It was a very common and ordinary event. Internal disputes among the Jews were common as well. The factions pushing and shoving for power and inflence were at each all the time. Pilot was there because of it. He knew their intrigues. He knew how to play them against one another. Keeping them divided was the easiest way to keep them in check.

It did not take much to draw a crowd in those days, especially during the seasons of High Holy Days. Outside of the Temple and its rituals, there wasn’t much to do. Children did what children do: they play games, march around, sing, and dance. They play with sticks and branches and anything else they can find. The children of Jerusalem knew the rituals and the story of the Feast of Tabernacles, its procession with branches waving in the wind was deep in their imaginations.

Roman soldiers did what Roman soldiers do: they oppress, torment, humiliate, and the steal. Paid little, far from home in a very alien and unfriendly land, they took the spoils and what was left from those they executed day after day.

What’s the big deal here? Nothing; and that is the tragedy of it. This death we have just recalled was perfectly ordinary and perfectly legal. There is no blaiming Pilot, the Jews, the Sanhedran, Herod, or the High Priest. This death was not some rare insanity of a few evil people. There is a deeper flaw, a deeper tragedy to be addressed that will not allow blaim or the shifting of responsibility by sensationalism. The people in this Gospel are convinced that they are acting rightly, morally, and justly.  What frightens me is that Christ was executed by good people. The same people who brought the Palms brought the Cross. The fault here is not that they were evil or bloodthirsty, but that they were complacent. so compacent and easily swayed that they shout “Hosanna” one day and “Crucify Him the next.”

What ought to disturb us most of all with this scene is not the cross but the crowds. Tools of execution are common enough: guns, gas chambers, electric chairs, ropes, chemicals in syringes, pills, swords, rocks and clubs Sadly, what is just as common and the harshest image of all is a crowd doing nothing. Standing there, ready to watch if there is something interesting, and just as ready to move on if there is none. No one seems to say: “Stop this?” The only one who questions what Jesus has done to deserve death is Pilate! What irony is this?

To whatever extend we are still part of the crowd, we are part of the tragedy, the injustsice, the sadness of life. We cannot hear this Gospel and wonder, “What was wrong with those terrible people.” Every one of us has stood around and said nothing in the face of injust, evil, and cruetly. It happens everywhere from school yards to coorporate offices. Jesus shows no anger at the crowd, or to those who nailed his hands;

but He did have strong words for the luke-warm, those who never could speak up, stand up, question and step out of the crowd’s fickle mediocrity.

As we ponder the events of our religious past against the events of our own time, rather than be appalled or sorrowful about what happened in Jerusalem a long, long time ago, we might take a closer look at our own passion or lack of it for justice, for truth, for peace and for life itself.