Alleluia!  Christ is risen!

We celebrate the resurrection of Christ anew this day, and it was wonderful to share this first Easter with the good people of St. Mark’s.  Great day with wonderful weather this morning, an amazing egg hunt outside, and great joy!  He is risen, indeed!

Easter Day 2011 — John 20:1-18

It’s early on Sunday when Mary goes to the tomb where they buried Jesus only a couple of days before.  They had already wrapped his body with linen cloths and spices, so there was no reason for her to come to the site, except of course because she was mourning the loss of this one she loved so much.  She did what many of us have done after a death, she went to the grave, to touch the place where his body lies, thinking about all the things that had filled her life before, wishing she could have it all back.

When she gets there, things aren’t as they were.  The large stone has been pushed back, and immediately she thinks the worst, that grave robbers have done their evil work.  In a rush of fear and uncertainty, she turns around and runs to the place where the disciples are staying, and tells them that someone has taken Jesus’ body.

Immediately, Peter and John—that disciple whom Jesus loved—spring up and run to the garden where Jesus was buried.  They sprint, probably hoping to catch the perpetrators of this crime, or because they don’t believe Mary’s words.  Maybe she got it wrong, went to the wrong place, or just imagined this due to her grief.  They get to the garden, and find the stone rolled back.  John hesitates a moment or two outside the cave, but Peter runs right into the tomb.  He sees the linen cloths lying there, but nothing else.  John then comes in to, and sees the head cloth rolled up, the wrappings just lying there, empty.  Our gospel writer says he believed, but we don’t know what he believes.  Is it Mary’s story?  Is it something else?  We don’t know.  We just know that after they saw this, the two disciples turn around and leave the tomb and go home.

But Mary stays behind, standing near the tomb, weeping.  The rush of emotion she is feeling would have been incomprehensible. She watched as this teacher she followed was put to an excruciating death, and she probably took part in preparing his body for burial.  There is denial and anguish in just losing him, but then to come and find that his body has been stolen, that was just too much to bear.  She is overcome by it all and breaks down.

In the midst of all this, she bends down to see for herself.  She looks into the empty tomb, and surprisingly sees these two men in white.  “Why are you weeping?” they ask.  “They’ve taken away my Lord,” she stammers, “and I don’t know where they have taken him.”  Then turning around she notices this man, probably the gardener coming to do his morning work.  He asks her the same question, “Why are you weeping?”  She thinks he may be the one who did something, and says, “Sir, if you’ve carried him off, tell me where you have laid him and I will take him away.”

He looks down with compassion on her and utters a single word: her name.  Immediately the recognition of this word washes over her.  He knows her name; she can’t believe but it’s true, the one she’s been looking for is standing before her.  He is very much alive.  He is risen.  “Teacher!” she exclaims, and she rushes to give him a huge hug, so glad to have him back.

But Jesus won’t let her touch him, “Do not hold on to me,” he tells her.  He has yet to ascend to his Father. Surely she’s confused about this since she just wants to grab his hand and run back with him to the disciples to show them that he is alive.

Instead, Jesus instructs Mary to deliver a message to the disciples, and say that he is on his way to the Father.  We aren’t told if anything else is said, or if Jesus just disappears or walks away.  We only know that Mary makes her way back to disciples and ecstatically proclaims that she has seen the Lord.

It is at that moment that Jesus’ resurrection truly happens.  The mysterious event that took place in the tomb happened without any earthly witnesses.  Peter and John and Mary all came to the tomb after the fact.  If all they had seen was the emptiness, they cloths just lying there and nothing else, they would have assumed that Mary was right, that someone had come and stolen the body.  The shell of what was left behind didn’t explain anything.  It only left unanswered questions.

Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “What happened in the tomb was entirely between Jesus and God. For the rest of us, Easter began the moment the gardener said, ‘Mary!’ and she knew who he was. That is where the miracle happened and goes on happening — not in the tomb but in the encounter with the living Lord.”[1]  If we came here this morning looking for the resurrection by peering into an empty tomb, we will miss it all together.

The resurrection plays out in ten thousand places, when we encounter the risen Lord.[2]  It’s in the daily living, in sharing a cup of coffee with a friend, or biking a trail, or reading a book that impacts your life, or writing a letter to a child you sponsor in Africa.  It’s in the time of quiet reflection and prayer, in helping out at the homeless shelter, or putting an extra box of Cheerios in your cart for the food bank.  The resurrection happens when you help an elderly neighbor with her yard work, or you seek to be reconciled with someone you love.  Resurrection takes place in all the big and small ways we share the love of Jesus Christ with a broken and hurting world.  It happens when we come to this place and listen to God’s word, and break the bread and drink from the cup.  It happens when we live as his disciples and are about the work of his kingdom, living lives of repentance and joy.

Some come to Easter morning expecting just the opposite of Mary.  Some come expecting the empty tomb and the stone rolled back and the body gone. But that isn’t where the resurrection is.   Sometimes we hold on to the notions in our minds about the way things are to be with Jesus and us, the way our interactions with Christ have been before, primarily on our terms, and think that that is the resurrection in our lives.  We may like the way things have been and want to keep everything the same.  But when we encounter the risen Christ—when we encounter the resurrection—things change.  “Don’t hold on to me,” he says to Mary and to us.  “You can’t keep me the way I was before.  Things are changed, and you are changed as well.”

You see when one story ends, another story always begins.  We cannot hold onto the earthly Jesus anymore than Mary could.  Nor can we hold on to the earthly memories about the way things were before in our lives, whatever we use to mark that time before.  Before my wedding, or the start of my new job.  Before the accident or the day I graduated, or before my world fell apart, or before my children were born.  No matter what happened before, we cannot hold on to it, nor onto the way we encountered Christ at that time.  Rather we must look ahead.   We need to see that the resurrection is not a return to the past, but a movement to the future.

What will resurrection look like in your life now?  Will this season of Easter be the time when you recognize the risen Lord in a new way?  He comes to us today offering us life—forgiveness and joy and hope and love.

The miracle of Easter that began in the garden continues on.  It happens to us when we hear the gardener say our name—Mark! Laura! Rebecca!  Tom!   We experience the mystery of this day when we turn to Jesus, recognizing him as our Lord, and joyfully exclaim, “Teacher!”  We experience the resurrection when we let go of the way things should be and run to those who share our lives with us, and ecstatically proclaim that we have seen the Lord.  That is the beauty of this day.  That is why we gather on this morning to celebrate.  That is why we are here at this table, so that we too might experience the risen Christ.

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

My take on the perennial question via my sermon for Good Friday.

Good Friday— John 18:1-19:42 

            It’s a question that gets asked every year, I suspect.  Usually the younger ones are able to verbalize it, but I know that many of the adults are thinking the same thing.  It was my 7 year-old niece Lily who asked it this year to my sister.  “Mom,” she said, “why do we call it ‘Good Friday’?  It doesn’t really seem ‘good’ at all.”

Quick answers won’t do.  They leave too much unsaid.  A story is better.

A long time ago the Hebrew people came to live in Egypt because there was a drought in the land where they had been staying.  The man in charge of preparing for this famine was named Joseph, a Hebrew himself, brought to Egypt ahead of his family through very difficult circumstances yet by the will of God.  Many, many years later a Pharaoh came into power who didn’t remember Joseph.  That Pharaoh hated the Hebrew people, and he put them in bondage.  He made them his slaves, and he wanted all the baby boys that were born to the Hebrew women to be killed.

Except one of those boys wasn’t murdered.  His name was Moses, and when he grew up, God asked him to come before Pharaoh and ask that Pharaoh release the captive Hebrew people.  But Pharaoh refused.  God showed God’s power by sending plagues upon the people of Egypt, and each time, Pharaoh refused to release the Hebrews.

Until one night when God told Moses to get the people ready.  They were to take a lamb and after killing it, they would take some of the blood from that lamb, put it on a branch of hyssop and mark the doorposts of their homes with that blood.  Then they were to roast and eat that lamb along with unleavened bread that night, being sure to stay indoors.  During the night, an angel of death passed through killing the firstborn of every family in the area that didn’t have the blood of the lamb on the doorposts.  Death passed over the homes of the Hebrews who had done what Moses said.

And on that night—the night of the Passover—God delivered the Hebrews.  They were never again under the bondage of Pharaoh.  And they left Egypt forever.

Many, many years later, Jesus came into the world.  And when John the Baptizer first saw him, he said, “Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”  And when John said this, those gathered around him couldn’t help but think about the Passover lamb, and the deliverance from bondage in Egypt.  And they got excited, these descendants of the Hebrews, because while they weren’t in bondage to Egypt anymore, they were under the oppression of the Romans.  Some of them thought that Jesus would be the one to free them from the tyranny of the Romans; some began to wonder if Jesus was the Messiah.

Jesus taught about a new kingdom and he did miracles, and he showed people God’s love.  He forgave people their sins and healed them, and this made people in authority—both the Hebrew leaders and the Roman leaders—get anxious.  And they decided that Jesus was better off dead than alive.  So they conspired together to kill him.

They waited for a time to do this, and they worked with one of his disciples, Judas, who had become disillusioned because he thought Jesus would overthrow the government, but Jesus didn’t do that.  So Judas betrayed Jesus.

And it was at the time of the Passover.

The Gospel writer named John wanted to show the connection between the Passover lamb and Jesus as closely as he could.  He reminded his readers about the Baptizer calling Jesus the lamb of God when Jesus was first introduced.  He writes that the day Jesus was crucified was the day of Preparation for the Passover, the very day the lambs were slaughtered in preparation for the festival.  And he told them as well that when Jesus was offered a drink of water from a sponge while he hung on the cross, bleeding and so very thirsty, the stick used by the guards to give him that drink was hyssop, just like the stick used at the first Passover.

And as soon as he had taken a drink from that sponge—when his bloodied lips had touched the sponge on the hyssop—he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and died.

“It is finished,” Jesus said.  His last words before he died.  And I think what he meant was that his work on this earth was finished, that he had done what he was supposed to do.  More so, I think he also meant that in his becoming the Passover lamb he would free his people forever from bondage.  Not in the sense that some thought about freedom from earthly powers—like the Romans—but freedom from those things that bind us and put in slavery.  Evil, and death, Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God, and those sinful desires that draw us away from the love of God.  Jesus finished that work through his death.  In giving himself on our behalf, he was victorious.  And he gave to us freedom forever.

We gather on this holy night to remember the things Jesus did for us through his life and death.  He came, as another Gospeler penned it, “not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”  The ransom of his life opened up for us a way of freedom from slavery, oppression and bondage.  While we are indeed sorrowful to see our Lord, broken, beaten, despised, alone, we cannot also overlook the freedom and release offered to us.  He gave his life a ransom that we might live.  We gather on this holy night, this good night, to remember, and to seek God’s love and God’s desire for our lives.  So that we may no longer live as those in slavery, but as those who have been freed forever.  May we remember, and may we seek repentance and life, and always see how deep God’s love is for us.  Amen.

I often get asked where the “Maundy” of Maundy Thursday comes from.  It’s taken from the Latin “Mandatum novum” or New Commandment.  We get our word mandate from that origin.  It’s the night Jesus instituted Holy Communion and on that day he got down and washed his disciples feet.

Foot washing is a really important part of this service, and so last night I (re-)introduced it to the St. Mark’s community with great success.  It was a wonderful and solemn service that led to the stripping of the altar.

My homily on John 13.

Nine months after the wake of Hurricane Katrina, I traveled with a group of adults from the church I was then serving to the Gulf Coast in Mississippi that had been ravaged by the storm.  Before we left, we received a list of things we would absolutely need.  Heavy gloves, bug spray, sleeping bags and pillows, ear plugs since we would be sleeping in a large gym area and, most important of all, sturdy work boots.  The good people at Camp Coast Care—the organization we’d be working with—reinforced this last one.  “Tennis shoes and flip flops will not work.”  Too many hazards were lying on the ground.  Too many things that could cut your feet.

So I went out and bought a new pair of work boots.  And I was glad that I did.  On the second or third day I was there working among the wreckage at a house, I stepped on a nail.  Thankfully, because of the boots, I could barely feel the prick of it.  So I took a moment, grabbed a pair of pliers and pulled out that nail, thankful I hadn’t worn sneakers and had avoided a trip to the doctors.

One of the houses we worked on that week was owned by a man named Gerard.  He and his wife had spent the past nine months living in a motor home in their backyard.  They lived a few miles in from the Gulf, yet much of their home had been filled with over 3 feet of water.  Gerard was in limbo; he hadn’t done much to his house as he waited for insurance monies to come in.  A group of us came that day to begin the demolition of much of the interior in order to get it down to the base structure.  But before we began, we needed to clean out their belongings.

So we did that, our group of volunteers from Camp Coast Care.  We carried out photo albums, and towels.  We took out books, and clothes.  We dug through everything in their house, exposing Gerard and his wife’s entire life and placed it on the front lawn.  Their life’s belongings were there for anyone to take a peek at.  Their lives were completely exposed.

Tonight we’re asked to do the same; we are asked to show our vulnerability.

I know that foot washing hasn’t been done much here in the past.  But Jesus gives us an example and then asks us as his disciples to do likewise.  We like walking around in our heavy boots, keeping our feet well covered and insolated from the world.  But Jesus says, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.”  Unless we become vulnerable, and take off our heavy shoes, we cannot be his disciples.

Jesus shows what he means in his giving of himself.  What he does is take the role of the servant; he makes himself vulnerable, and lays down his life.  When we take off our shoes, we lay down the notion of our perfected image.  We look somewhat foolish.  We show our weaknesses.

And we acknowledge our imperfections and need of grace.  God’s grace comes to us in the way Jesus washes his disciples’ feet, in the way we wash each other’s feet.  He shows his love in giving of himself.  Trust is needed.  He shows how we are to serve one another, to let down our own guard and be the people he calls us to be.

The question is will we do this?  Will we acknowledge our own vulnerabilities or will we keep our heavy boots on?  Will we open ourselves up to the example that Christ gives us to show our love to one another?  “If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.”  Amen.

Palm Sunday is a hard one liturgically.  You get 7 minutes or so on the triumphal entry and then get whisked all the way to Good Friday with the reading of the Passion.  The general consensus is that most people who show up on Palm Sunday won’t make the return trip for Maundy Thursday or Good Friday, so if you want to preach about the crucifixion, you’d better do it on Palm Sunday.

In spite of this collective wisdom, I did more with the triumphal entry this year.  I’ve always been struck by Matthew’s rendering of it, so it caught my fancy.

And I hope you’ll be attending church this week for Holy Week.  This is an amazing journey for us, and one that is not to be missed.

Palm Sunday—Matthew 21:1-11

I’ve always been fascinated by Matthew’s retelling of the Triumphal Entry, simply because of the great detail he goes into regarding the donkey and the colt those two disciples are to find.  Matthew, unlike the other  Gospel writers, informs his readers that there is both a donkey and a colt that the disciples are to find for Jesus.  Mark, Luke and John all say that it is a solitary animal.  And I can’t help but be amused at the seemingly odd description when Matthew tells us that once the donkey and the colt arrived, some of the bystanders threw their cloaks on those animals, and Jesus sat on both of them.  It’s almost comical, and I’ve always chalked it up to the way Matthew plays with numbers and numerology throughout his gospel when compared to the other writers; he seems to say, if one is good, two is better.

I clung to the amusement, that is, until I read a comment about that verse this past week.  John Dominic Crossan writes that Matthew “wants two animals, a donkey with her little colt beside her, and that Jesus rides ‘them’ in the sense of having them both as part of his demonstration’s highly visible symbolism. In other words, Jesus does not ride a stallion or a mare, a mule or a male donkey, and not even a female donkey. He rides the most unmilitary mount imaginable: a female nursing donkey with her little colt trotting along beside her.”^[1]  Military leaders would often ride into their cities in a display of power—which is hinted at in the reference to the prophet Zechariah that Matthew records.  The entire context from the prophet is this: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!  Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nations.” (Zech 9:9-10)  Jesus, the Messiah, the Christ, would come not in a display of power, but in humility.  He would come to bring peace to the nations while the Romans would continue to ride in on their chariots with their military might blazing, bringing anything but peace.

And we know what happens when people come in humbly promoting non-violent peace.  We have a tendency to kill those people.  We heard it this morning in the Passion, and we’ve seen it in stories we know like the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., Ghandi, and Archbishop Romero.  But it’s also in the lesser known stories, like Brother Roger of the Taize community killed during a service at that ecumenical community in France, or Rachel Corrie who was killed by a bulldozer while simply standing in front of a home trying to stop the bulldozer from destroying that house in a refugee camp in Ramalah.  Jesus came exemplifying peace, he rode in on a mother donkey that had yet to wean her foal with that little one trailing alongside, and he was ultimately crucified.

He was crucified because when he came preaching about love, about transformation, about peace, about new life and the forgiveness of sins, people got anxious and did away with him.  We joined with the crowd this morning on both ends: we yelled out “Hosanna!” which means “Save us!” and we also cried out “Crucify him!”  What they didn’t notice then, and which we often don’t see even today, is that the two shouts are inescapably linked.  Jesus saves us through his crucifixion and the resurrection that is to come.  He brings about salvation and peace and offers it to us and to any who are willing to accept it.

But we, along with the rest of the world, often do away with those who bring peace.  You might be hesitant to accept this as true for yourself, but I certainly know it in my own life.  I see the struggle that sometimes takes place when, although I am drowning in the circumstances of my life—be they the chances and challenges of the world or sins of my own devices—I often refuse to grab hold of the life preserver offered to me either by those who love me or in the life offered by Christ.  I’ve seen it in others who are dealing with addictions and can’t take it upon themselves to follow through and get support.  I’ve watched it unfold in married couples who are heading down the road toward divorce and can’t bring themselves to seek out help.  I’ve seen teens get further and further disconnected from those they love rather than take the hand that is held out to them.  I’ve noticed it in those who are widowed and cannot imagine a new life so they shrink away into lives of quiet disappointment.

And I want to say to us all that Jesus comes wanting to bring peace to the tumult and chaos of our lives.  He entered into Jerusalem that day in humility, and a few days later was ultimately killed, so that he could bring us life.  While we are inclined to reject him, to push him away, to even kill his presence in our lives, he is triumphant and victorious, as the prophet, Zechariah declares it.  He was betrayed, and beaten and killed for us, so that when he completed his work in the world and on the cross, he might bring us peace and hope.

As we wait this week for that work to be completed, as we walk these last days with Christ and place him gently in that tomb, I hope that we will ultimately see that he is the Prince of Peace and he so desperately wants to share that peace with each one of us in order that we may experience transformation.  Hosanna, dear Christ.  Save us.