Sermon delivered Sunday, April 16, 2017 (Easter Day) at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA -- my last Sunday serving that congregation as long-term supply priest.
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Our observance of Easter is the liturgical high point of the year, one of the most joyful moments in the life of the church. Christ is risen! Life has triumphed over death! On this day, churches all over the world, from small communities like ours to the biggest cathedrals, pull out all the stops to put on the biggest celebration of the year.
But the first Easter wasn’t so purely joyful. The day the women discovered the empty tomb and Jesus began appearing to his followers, there were many other emotions that were likely more prominent than joy for the disciples. The stories of the first resurrection appearances show the disciples grappling with grief and sorrow, bewilderment, disbelief, and fear.
The Gospel of Mark tells us that after the angels appeared to the women at the tomb telling them Jesus had been raised, they fled from the tomb and said nothing to anyone, because they were terrified (Mark 16:8). John’s Gospel tells us that while Mary Magdelene was out weeping at the tomb, the disciples were gathered together in the upper room with the doors locked, out of fear (John 20:19) – presumably fear that they too would meet a similar fate as Jesus at the hands of the authorities. When they received the news that Jesus was alive... well, it seemed to them “an idle tale,” as the Gospel of Luke puts it (Luke 24:11). Even though they had seen Jesus raise dead people to life before – the daughter of the leader of the synagogue in Galilee (Mark 5:35-43), a widow’s son in the town of Nain (Luke 7:11-17), and Mary and Martha’s brother Lazarus (John 11:1-44), somehow the concept that Jesus could be alive after they’d seen him so brutally murdered was incomprehensible to them.
And perhaps rightfully so, because what happened to Jesus wasn’t exactly like what happened to the synagogue leader’s daughter, the widow’s son, or Lazarus. The disciples didn’t see the miracle in person, as they had with the people Jesus raised. The disciples only discovered it after the fact, after he was risen and began appearing to them. No one actually SAW him rise, and as our beloved forefather Thomas reminds us, it’s not just we modern scientific types who like to see things for ourselves in order to believe them.
Not only were there no witnesses to the actual event itself, but Jesus’s Resurrection had changed him in some pretty incredible ways. Although he still retained the scars and marks of his crucifixion, which the disciples were able to physically touch, and he ate and drank with them to prove that he was an actual physical being, not a ghost or some kind of apparition, he also wasn’t exactly the same as he had been before.
Presumably, the synagogue leader’s daughter, the widow’s son, and Lazarus all looked exactly the same before and after their resurrections, but when Jesus appears after his Resurrection, he’s not always immediately recognizable. The people who have spent many years traveling with him day after day don’t recognize him! Mary Magdelene mistakes him for the gardener. The disciples on the Road to Emmaus walk and talk with him along a long journey, not knowing who he is until he breaks bread with them when they arrive at home. And if that weren’t enough change, apparently he could also enter locked rooms without recourse to the doors, and appear and disappear at will.
Clearly, what happened to Jesus changed him in a way that the resurrection of Lazarus, the widow’s son, and the synagogue leader’s daughter did not change them. Their resurrections were a restoration of life and health to their physical bodies, but Jesus’s Resurrection was a complete transformation of the physical body. Presumably, all three of the people Jesus raised from the dead went on to die again at the end of their natural lives, but after his Resurrection, Jesus remained alive forever. His Resurrection wasn’t a simple resuscitation, bringing life back to his physical body. It was a complete transformation into a different plane of existence, one in which the physical body is still very real but the properties of this world no longer apply.
All of this was confusing and strange and mystifying to the disciples on that first Easter, as it still is to us if we take the time to really reflect on what we’re commemorating this day. When we say “Christ is risen,” when we talk about the power of life to overcome death, we’re talking about much more than the flowers blooming again after being dormant all winter, or the way in which new life can emerge from decaying matter in the natural world. Those transformations are certainly a kind of resurrection, bringing life from death, but at the end of the day, no matter how much we use that imagery at Easter, filling our churches with flowers, ultimately that image is a woefully inadequate metaphor for Christ’s Resurrection, and indeed all imagery or metaphors fall short to describe it. Because nothing that we can see or touch or feel with our senses could possibly come close to the complete radical transformation that was the Resurrection. That first Easter was like nothing humanity had ever known or experienced, before or since.
And as we all know, any time we experience significant change in our lives, it can be disruptive and unsettling. I’ve been reading a lot about transition lately, as I prepare to leave St. Cuthbert’s and begin my new ministry at the church of St. John the Baptist in Aptos, and all the psychologists will tell you that even good change, even positive change, even something that you’re happy about, causes stress. As human beings, for some reason, even though change is a regular part of our lives – we live in a world that is constantly changing, and we inhabit bodies that are constantly changing – most of us experience change as distressing in some way.
But no change you or I have experienced in our lives could possibly compare to the disruption the disciples were faced with on that first Easter. If we have mixed emotions when we move, or start a new job, or start a new relationship, or lose a loved one, imagine those experiences magnified about two hundredfold and maybe that would start to come close to something like what the disciples might have felt that first Easter morning.
Because unlike the resurrection of the synagogue leader’s daughter, the widow’s son and Lazarus, Jesus’s Resurrection wasn’t a restoration of the way things had been before. The families of the people Jesus raised were comforted that their loved one was healed and things could go back to how they’d always been before, but for the disciples, the fact that Jesus was now alive didn’t mean they would go back to wandering the countryside with him, and healing the sick and watching him teach. Instead, it meant that their entire lives were about to be changed, even more so than when they had left everything to follow him. They were about to embark on an entirely new journey, something that looked and felt totally different from what they had been doing before. And while some might have been excited and thrilled by that prospect, others were probably wary and skeptical, even scared. It was much more complex than the unadulterated joy we express on Easter morning in our liturgies. It was a direct experience of the power and presence of God that shook them to the core and completely rearranged their lives.
So while we rejoice in the Resurrection of Jesus, that central event of our faith that assures us of the promise of everlasting life, we also realize that that Resurrection also means that we are now tied to a life of transformation that leaves things unlike the way they were before. Through our baptism, we are joined to Christ; we become a part of his body. And as the Apostle Paul says, “if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will surely be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Romans 6:5) – a resurrection that means not the restoration of breath to our physical bodies, not an assurance that we will live forever in this world, in these bodies, as we are now, but a promise of complete transformation into a different plane of existence, a plane where death can no longer touch us, a plane where we too will receive our resurrected bodies, which may be as different from our physical bodies as Jesus’s resurrected body was from his. We don’t know exactly what that day will be like, and until then, we can only imagine, basing our guesses on the glimpses of God’s transformational power that we occasionally receive in this life.
“Christ is risen!” is a message not of restoration, but of revolution. It means incredible, mind-blowing change is not only possible but inevitable for those of us who have chosen to link our lives with his.
And if that thought brings you something other than pure joy, if you find yourself a bit wary of what that could mean for your life, remember that the disciples probably had mixed feelings about the Resurrection as well. The first thing Jesus said when he appeared to them after his Resurrection, as he stood before them, the embodiment of disruptive, unsettling change, was, “Peace be with you.” That was the first thing he said to them. “Peace be with you.” Peace to those who stood by him to the bitter end at the foot of the cross, and peace to those who deserted him and fled. “Peace be with you.”
Peace, and “remember, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). This new reality may turn your entire world upside down, it may transform you in ways that scare you, but do not be afraid. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you,” Jesus says to the disciples the night before his death (John 14:27). And as he sends them forth after his Resurrection to spread this world-changing news, he tells them, “Remember, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” “Peace be with you.”
Showing posts with label Easter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Easter. Show all posts
Sunday, April 16, 2017
Thursday, April 13, 2017
What is the "new commandment" of Maundy Thursday?
Sermon delivered Thursday, April 13, 2017 (Maundy Thursday, Year A) at St. Cuthbert’s Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA.
Sermon Text(s): Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14, 1 Corinthians 11:23-26, John 13:1-17, 31b-35
“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” (John 13:34-35)
We call this day Maundy Thursday after this “new” commandment Jesus gives the disciples – the word “Maundy” comes from the Latin word “mandatum,” meaning “commandment.” But this all-important commandment, this commandment that we give its own religious holiday, doesn’t seem to be so new or unique. “Love one another” – isn’t that what the prophets have always said, both before Jesus and after?
“Well,” some Christians will say, “He tells them to love one another ‘just as I have loved you.’ Loving as Jesus loved is different than any other kind of love.”
Or, “He’s showing that the leader or master should serve his followers – this was a revolutionary idea in that culture. Washing feet was the work of a servant, something a great leader never would have done, so Jesus was breaking social convention and showing them a new way to love.”
But I don’t buy any of those arguments. Yes, in washing the disciples’ feet, Jesus did something countercultural by being a leader who engaged in humble, loving service. But he wasn’t the only or first leader to advocate for this kind of love.
I have no doubt my friends from non-Christian religious backgrounds would recognize this commandment from what they have been taught in their own traditions. According to Islamic tradition, the Prophet Muhammad once said, “You will not enter paradise until you believe, and you will not believe until you love one another.” Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth and final of the Sikh gurus said, “Only those who have love, will attain God.” The Bhagavad Gita, one of the sacred texts of Hinduism, teaches, “When a person responds to the joys and sorrows of others as if they were his own, he has attained the highest state of spiritual union.” (Bhagavad Gita 6.28-32). There are passages like these throughout the world’s religions, some of which pre-dated Jesus and some of which came after him. “Love one another” was hardly a new idea with Jesus, nor is it unique to him. So why does Jesus say he is giving the disciples a “new commandment?”
Well, maybe that’s not what he actually meant. One thing that was lost when the stories of our faith moved from oral tradition to the written word is tone of voice. As we all know, tone of voice can completely change the meaning of a sentence. “You are so talented” could be a compliment or an insult depending on the tone of voice in which it is said: (demonstrate: “You are so talented!” (genuine) or “You are so talented!” (sarcastic)). We tend to read the scriptures straight, taking them at face value, assuming that what they say is what they mean, especially when the words are coming out of the mouth of God. But sometimes I wonder whether at times, Jesus might have been joking, or being sarcastic. I can’t remember who first suggested this solution to the puzzle of what’s “new” about the commandment Jesus gives the disciples on Maundy Thursday, but it’s the way I now read this passage from John, with a wry tone in Jesus’s voice that suggests that he wasn’t actually presenting a new idea, but was reinforcing what they should have already known and been doing all along, perhaps with a twinge of the frustrated “don’t you get it yet?” attitude we see him take with the disciples at other times throughout the Gospels:
“I give you a new commandment: that you love one another. There’s a novel idea for you – how about you try loving one another? That would be something different and new for you!”
And the church, in her infinite wisdom, has taken that phrase and elevated it – oh, MAUNDY Thursday! The day we got the NEW commandment from Jesus! That revolutionary new teaching… you know, the one God had been trying to get through our thick skulls since the beginning of time.
What was new the night of the Last Supper, though, was Jesus’s commandment to continue the sacred meal they shared, in memory of him. While John’s Gospel focuses more on the footwashing than the meal, all the other Gospels emphasize the Last Supper and the institution of the communion ritual that Paul recaps in our passage from 1 Corinthians tonight:
“The Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’” (1 Corinthians 11:23-25)
The Gospel writers disagree as to whether Jesus’s Last Supper with his disciples was a Passover meal or was eaten slightly before the time of the Passover, but the institution of this ritual meal is the real “new commandment” of this holy night, this meal in which Jesus instructs his followers to take his flesh and blood into themselves. This wasn’t normal, this wasn’t something that was common sense to people of any religion. This was a strange new teaching that got the earliest Christians called cannibals on more than one occasion, when people heard them talking about eating flesh and drinking blood in their worship services.
Jesus’s followers interpreted this strange teaching by connecting Jesus’s death on the cross to the sacrifice of the lamb the Jewish people were commanded to eat during Passover, the history of which was recapped in our first reading from Exodus. Sacrificing a lamb and eating it every year at the Passover recalled the liberation of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt. Jesus’s followers decided after his resurrection that those strange words he had said to them the night before he died meant that Jesus was now the Passover lamb, and eating his flesh and blood in the ritual meal of bread and wine that he prescribed to them as his dying wish was their new way of observing the Passover, their way of recounting not just the liberation from slavery in Egypt, but the liberation from their sins and from the sins of the world.
“Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world,” we sing when we gather to share the Eucharist. “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us, therefore let us keep the feast.” All of this imagery links Jesus’s death with the sacrifice of the Passover lamb, and makes our ritual meal the liturgical descendant of the Passover meal, the seder. This “new commandment” Jesus gave to his disciples that night was what would eventually separate Jesus’s followers from traditional Jewish communities and Jewish practice, and is why Christians do not observe the holiday of Passover to this day. The Eucharist is our Passover, and more specifically, the first Eucharist of Easter, celebrated at the Easter Vigil or on Easter morning, is our Passover. It’s a reinvention and reinterpretation of an ancient tradition, changing it enough that it created a separate religion. Now that’s a new commandment.
But “love one another?” That’s not a new commandment. It’s perhaps the oldest commandment there is. And it’s one that we can all agree on, regardless of which ritual practices we observe in which tradition. So tonight, we remember simultaneously both the most universal and the most particular aspects of the Christian faith – the commandment to love and the commandment to celebrate the Eucharist. And at its best, that most specific of Christian commandments – to receive the body and blood of Jesus in the Eucharist – leads us to live out that most universal commandment – to love one another – more fully and completely than we would have without it. The particulars of our faith nourish the universal.
So as we wash one another’s feet tonight, an action that any human being can do for any other, and then receive communion, an action that is specific to the Christian tradition, let us remember that the God we worship in Jesus Christ, the God we attempt to take into ourselves through the sacrament of his Body and Blood, is the One who taught that very universal message – that the essence and core of all religion is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and strength and mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:36-40).
Sermon Text(s): Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14, 1 Corinthians 11:23-26, John 13:1-17, 31b-35
“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” (John 13:34-35)
We call this day Maundy Thursday after this “new” commandment Jesus gives the disciples – the word “Maundy” comes from the Latin word “mandatum,” meaning “commandment.” But this all-important commandment, this commandment that we give its own religious holiday, doesn’t seem to be so new or unique. “Love one another” – isn’t that what the prophets have always said, both before Jesus and after?
“Well,” some Christians will say, “He tells them to love one another ‘just as I have loved you.’ Loving as Jesus loved is different than any other kind of love.”
Or, “He’s showing that the leader or master should serve his followers – this was a revolutionary idea in that culture. Washing feet was the work of a servant, something a great leader never would have done, so Jesus was breaking social convention and showing them a new way to love.”
But I don’t buy any of those arguments. Yes, in washing the disciples’ feet, Jesus did something countercultural by being a leader who engaged in humble, loving service. But he wasn’t the only or first leader to advocate for this kind of love.
I have no doubt my friends from non-Christian religious backgrounds would recognize this commandment from what they have been taught in their own traditions. According to Islamic tradition, the Prophet Muhammad once said, “You will not enter paradise until you believe, and you will not believe until you love one another.” Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth and final of the Sikh gurus said, “Only those who have love, will attain God.” The Bhagavad Gita, one of the sacred texts of Hinduism, teaches, “When a person responds to the joys and sorrows of others as if they were his own, he has attained the highest state of spiritual union.” (Bhagavad Gita 6.28-32). There are passages like these throughout the world’s religions, some of which pre-dated Jesus and some of which came after him. “Love one another” was hardly a new idea with Jesus, nor is it unique to him. So why does Jesus say he is giving the disciples a “new commandment?”
Well, maybe that’s not what he actually meant. One thing that was lost when the stories of our faith moved from oral tradition to the written word is tone of voice. As we all know, tone of voice can completely change the meaning of a sentence. “You are so talented” could be a compliment or an insult depending on the tone of voice in which it is said: (demonstrate: “You are so talented!” (genuine) or “You are so talented!” (sarcastic)). We tend to read the scriptures straight, taking them at face value, assuming that what they say is what they mean, especially when the words are coming out of the mouth of God. But sometimes I wonder whether at times, Jesus might have been joking, or being sarcastic. I can’t remember who first suggested this solution to the puzzle of what’s “new” about the commandment Jesus gives the disciples on Maundy Thursday, but it’s the way I now read this passage from John, with a wry tone in Jesus’s voice that suggests that he wasn’t actually presenting a new idea, but was reinforcing what they should have already known and been doing all along, perhaps with a twinge of the frustrated “don’t you get it yet?” attitude we see him take with the disciples at other times throughout the Gospels:
“I give you a new commandment: that you love one another. There’s a novel idea for you – how about you try loving one another? That would be something different and new for you!”
And the church, in her infinite wisdom, has taken that phrase and elevated it – oh, MAUNDY Thursday! The day we got the NEW commandment from Jesus! That revolutionary new teaching… you know, the one God had been trying to get through our thick skulls since the beginning of time.
What was new the night of the Last Supper, though, was Jesus’s commandment to continue the sacred meal they shared, in memory of him. While John’s Gospel focuses more on the footwashing than the meal, all the other Gospels emphasize the Last Supper and the institution of the communion ritual that Paul recaps in our passage from 1 Corinthians tonight:
“The Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’” (1 Corinthians 11:23-25)
The Gospel writers disagree as to whether Jesus’s Last Supper with his disciples was a Passover meal or was eaten slightly before the time of the Passover, but the institution of this ritual meal is the real “new commandment” of this holy night, this meal in which Jesus instructs his followers to take his flesh and blood into themselves. This wasn’t normal, this wasn’t something that was common sense to people of any religion. This was a strange new teaching that got the earliest Christians called cannibals on more than one occasion, when people heard them talking about eating flesh and drinking blood in their worship services.
Jesus’s followers interpreted this strange teaching by connecting Jesus’s death on the cross to the sacrifice of the lamb the Jewish people were commanded to eat during Passover, the history of which was recapped in our first reading from Exodus. Sacrificing a lamb and eating it every year at the Passover recalled the liberation of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt. Jesus’s followers decided after his resurrection that those strange words he had said to them the night before he died meant that Jesus was now the Passover lamb, and eating his flesh and blood in the ritual meal of bread and wine that he prescribed to them as his dying wish was their new way of observing the Passover, their way of recounting not just the liberation from slavery in Egypt, but the liberation from their sins and from the sins of the world.
“Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world,” we sing when we gather to share the Eucharist. “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us, therefore let us keep the feast.” All of this imagery links Jesus’s death with the sacrifice of the Passover lamb, and makes our ritual meal the liturgical descendant of the Passover meal, the seder. This “new commandment” Jesus gave to his disciples that night was what would eventually separate Jesus’s followers from traditional Jewish communities and Jewish practice, and is why Christians do not observe the holiday of Passover to this day. The Eucharist is our Passover, and more specifically, the first Eucharist of Easter, celebrated at the Easter Vigil or on Easter morning, is our Passover. It’s a reinvention and reinterpretation of an ancient tradition, changing it enough that it created a separate religion. Now that’s a new commandment.
But “love one another?” That’s not a new commandment. It’s perhaps the oldest commandment there is. And it’s one that we can all agree on, regardless of which ritual practices we observe in which tradition. So tonight, we remember simultaneously both the most universal and the most particular aspects of the Christian faith – the commandment to love and the commandment to celebrate the Eucharist. And at its best, that most specific of Christian commandments – to receive the body and blood of Jesus in the Eucharist – leads us to live out that most universal commandment – to love one another – more fully and completely than we would have without it. The particulars of our faith nourish the universal.
So as we wash one another’s feet tonight, an action that any human being can do for any other, and then receive communion, an action that is specific to the Christian tradition, let us remember that the God we worship in Jesus Christ, the God we attempt to take into ourselves through the sacrament of his Body and Blood, is the One who taught that very universal message – that the essence and core of all religion is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and strength and mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:36-40).
Saturday, April 19, 2014
Easter Message: God goes beyond what would have been "enough" to lavish abundant blessings on us
Sermon delivered Saturday, April 19, 2014 (The Great Vigil of Easter, Year A) at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN.
Tonight we gather for one of the most ancient liturgies in the church. Although celebrating Easter on Sunday morning became the main Easter observance in Western churches after the Reformation, the custom of celebrating Easter with a vigil on Saturday night is much earlier, dating back to at least the 3rd century. When we gather for the Easter Vigil, we are celebrating Christ’s resurrection as some of our most ancient forefathers and foremothers did. As we say their prayers and sing their songs, they become our songs as well, no matter how long ago the texts were written. In the liturgy, time collapses, and no matter how many centuries have passed between the events we remember and our present time, we experience them as if they are happening now. Today, tonight, “this is the night that Christ broke the bonds of death and hell and rose victorious from the grave.”
This custom of retelling the sacred stories of our history as if they were happening now, as if we were participants in the story, is even more ancient than the Easter Vigil service itself. In fact, it’s something we inherited from our Jewish brothers and sisters. Every year on Passover, the Jewish community gathers to remember the story of God’s deliverance of the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt, one of the foundational stories of the Jewish tradition. As they gather around the table for the seder dinner, the traditional liturgy of Passover, the youngest child present has the honor of asking the loaded question: “Why is this night different from all other nights?” This question comes in the middle of the re-telling of the Passover story, which is told as if it happened to the people present. The leader of the seder says, “We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and the Lord our God took us out from there with a strong hand and with an outstretched arm.” [1] Passover is not just about remembering an event that happened to some other people a long, long time ago. It is about reliving that event, experiencing it as if it happened to them, as if it happened this night, so that the ancient story of their ancestors becomes their story, so that they become one with their forefathers and foremothers.
And tonight, in the Easter Vigil, we celebrate our own version of Passover. Jesus died during the time of the Passover in Jerusalem, and his death took on added religious significance to his Jewish followers because it occurred during that most sacred holiday. Although our English word “Easter” bears no resemblance to “Passover,” in most languages the word for “Passover” and the word for “Easter” are linguistically related, if not identical. The Latin word for the holiday we celebrate this weekend is Pascha, and Eastern Orthodox Christians still talk about celebrating “Pascha” rather than “Easter.”
The Passover imagery is vivid and plentiful in our liturgy tonight – we open by declaring that this is “the Passover of the Lord,” in which “our Lord Jesus Christ passed over from death to life” (BCP 285), and the exsultet, that wonderful ancient hymn at the beginning of this service, declares this is both the night that God brought the children of Israel out of bondage in Egypt and the night that Christ rose from the dead (BCP 287). Of the nine readings we hear from the Hebrew Bible during the Liturgy of the Word, the only reading that is not optional, that must be included if you are going to do an Easter Vigil service, is the story of the Exodus, of Israel’s deliverance at the Red Sea – the story of Passover (BCP 288). A clergy colleague of mine who was raised Jewish says that, in essence, the Easter Vigil is our Passover seder! [2]
In this liturgy, we too declare that this night is different from all other nights. We too remember the deliverance of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. But we add another way this night is different from all other nights: “This is the night that Christ broke the bonds of death and hell and rose victorious from the grave” (BCP 287).
In Jesus’s Resurrection, in his defeat of the powers of our greatest enemy, death, his earliest Jewish followers saw an echo of that ancient Passover story – the deliverance from their enemies at the Red Sea. The early church declared the Easter Vigil to be the most appropriate time for baptisms not only because at Easter we recall the Resurrection and we are joined to Christ’s resurrected life through our baptism, but because baptism symbolizes a movement from slavery to freedom through water – an echo of that ancient Passover story. Just as the Israelites came out of slavery in Egypt into freedom in the Promised Land by passing through the waters of the Red Sea, so the newly baptized move from slavery to sin into freedom in the new life of Christ through the waters of baptism. In baptizing Megan and Anders tonight, we join them to the stream of God’s redemptive work that flows from the Exodus to the Resurrection and on to this day. The layers of meaning enfold over one another as we pour symbols upon symbols in this liturgy, in an attempt to give words to what is ultimately beyond the bounds of human language – the abundant mercy and love of God.
In the Passover seder, there is a famous liturgical poem, a hymn, that is sung after the re-telling of the story of the exodus. It is called, in Hebrew, dayenu, a word that is translated as “it would have been sufficient for us” or “it would have been enough.” One by one, the people recall the various stages of the exodus story, after each one saying that “it would have been enough” if God had stopped there – if God had only brought us out of Egypt, that would had been enough. If God had only split the Red Sea, that would have been enough. If God had only sustained us in the wilderness with manna, that would have been enough. If God had only given us the Torah, the Jewish law, that would have been enough. If God had only led us into the Promised Land, that would have been enough. This hymn emphasizes how abundant God’s mercies are – because even though any one of these great acts of deliverance would have been “enough,” God continually goes beyond what is merely “sufficient” to lavish his love and mercy on us. God wants us not to just survive, but to thrive, to use an old cliché. Or as Jesus says in the Gospel of John, he came that we might have life, and might have it more abundantly (John 10:10).
The clergy colleague I spoke of earlier who was raised Jewish has written a Christian version of the Dayenu, which seems appropriate to share with you at this Easter Vigil, which is in so many ways the liturgical descendant of the Passover seder:
“If only God had come to be with us, it would have been enough.
If only God became human, the Word made flesh. If only through Jesus God entered creation so that by his presence he might bless it, it would have been enough.
If only Jesus taught us and healed us and fulfilled the Law in Love, it would have been enough.
If only he’d died, if only he stretched out his arms of love on the cross, if only Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us, it would have been enough.
If only he rose again, if only he left a pile of linens in an empty tomb. If only he denied death the final word and changed forever the life we live here and now, it would have been enough.
If only he sent us the Spirit to be a comforter and advocate and to lead us into all truth, it would have been enough.
If only he ascended, drawing our humanness back to God, leading the way for us, it would have been enough.
If only he made a way for us all to be adopted as daughters and sons, if only he led us all through the waters to be joined to him, our hope and our calling, and to be joined to one another, it would have been enough. Dayenu. It would have been enough.” [3]
For each one of those statements, of course, there is a still more wonderful action of God for us to celebrate, a way in which God went the extra mile, so to speak, to come even closer to us and draw us closer to one another, bringing even more blessings and joy into our lives. And although the litany must stop somewhere, in fact it never really stops. There are always more ways to say “dayenu” – it would have been enough – and to experience gratitude for the abundance in our lives.
So what is your “dayenu” this Easter season? If only God had _______, it would have been enough? In what ways has God gone beyond what would have been “enough” in your life to lavish you with abundant blessings?
In the church, we are pretty good about observing the season of Lent, but we often forget that Easter is not just a day, but an entire season. While we have 40 days of Lent to reflect on our mortality and repent of our sins, we have 50 days of Easter to celebrate the joy of the Resurrection! We’re all familiar with the tradition of taking on a Lenten discipline, but what if we started a new tradition and during the Great 50 Days of Easter, we took on an “Easter joy”? What if we committed to spend the next 50 days – from now until Pentecost, which is on June 8 this year – doing things that that bring us joy, and intentionally bringing to mind all the ways in which we are abundantly blessed, all the ways in which God has gone beyond what would have been enough in our lives?
We just might begin to re-tell the story of Easter as if it had happened to us personally. We might experience the resurrection as if it were happening now. We might live into the story so completely that it would become our story. We might become aware in new ways of our mystical union with Christ’s death and resurrection in our baptism. And in the liturgy each week, we might say with ever-deepening appreciation:
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
(The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
---
[1] English Haggadah Text With Instructional Guide, http://www.chabad.org/holidays/passover/pesach_cdo/aid/661624/jewish/English-Haggadah.htm Accessed 14 April 2014.
[2] The Rev. Jenna Faith Strizak, associate rector at Holy Trinity Parish in Decatur, GA.
[3] The Rev. Jenna Faith Strizak, “a sermon for the feast of all saints (year c), with baptisms,” November 3, 2013, Holy Trinity [Episcopal] Parish, Decatur, Ga. http://graceandgrits.wordpress.com/2013/11/03/a-sermon-for-the-feast-of-all-saints-year-c-with-baptisms/ Accessed online 8 April 2014.
Tonight we gather for one of the most ancient liturgies in the church. Although celebrating Easter on Sunday morning became the main Easter observance in Western churches after the Reformation, the custom of celebrating Easter with a vigil on Saturday night is much earlier, dating back to at least the 3rd century. When we gather for the Easter Vigil, we are celebrating Christ’s resurrection as some of our most ancient forefathers and foremothers did. As we say their prayers and sing their songs, they become our songs as well, no matter how long ago the texts were written. In the liturgy, time collapses, and no matter how many centuries have passed between the events we remember and our present time, we experience them as if they are happening now. Today, tonight, “this is the night that Christ broke the bonds of death and hell and rose victorious from the grave.”
This custom of retelling the sacred stories of our history as if they were happening now, as if we were participants in the story, is even more ancient than the Easter Vigil service itself. In fact, it’s something we inherited from our Jewish brothers and sisters. Every year on Passover, the Jewish community gathers to remember the story of God’s deliverance of the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt, one of the foundational stories of the Jewish tradition. As they gather around the table for the seder dinner, the traditional liturgy of Passover, the youngest child present has the honor of asking the loaded question: “Why is this night different from all other nights?” This question comes in the middle of the re-telling of the Passover story, which is told as if it happened to the people present. The leader of the seder says, “We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and the Lord our God took us out from there with a strong hand and with an outstretched arm.” [1] Passover is not just about remembering an event that happened to some other people a long, long time ago. It is about reliving that event, experiencing it as if it happened to them, as if it happened this night, so that the ancient story of their ancestors becomes their story, so that they become one with their forefathers and foremothers.
And tonight, in the Easter Vigil, we celebrate our own version of Passover. Jesus died during the time of the Passover in Jerusalem, and his death took on added religious significance to his Jewish followers because it occurred during that most sacred holiday. Although our English word “Easter” bears no resemblance to “Passover,” in most languages the word for “Passover” and the word for “Easter” are linguistically related, if not identical. The Latin word for the holiday we celebrate this weekend is Pascha, and Eastern Orthodox Christians still talk about celebrating “Pascha” rather than “Easter.”
The Passover imagery is vivid and plentiful in our liturgy tonight – we open by declaring that this is “the Passover of the Lord,” in which “our Lord Jesus Christ passed over from death to life” (BCP 285), and the exsultet, that wonderful ancient hymn at the beginning of this service, declares this is both the night that God brought the children of Israel out of bondage in Egypt and the night that Christ rose from the dead (BCP 287). Of the nine readings we hear from the Hebrew Bible during the Liturgy of the Word, the only reading that is not optional, that must be included if you are going to do an Easter Vigil service, is the story of the Exodus, of Israel’s deliverance at the Red Sea – the story of Passover (BCP 288). A clergy colleague of mine who was raised Jewish says that, in essence, the Easter Vigil is our Passover seder! [2]
In this liturgy, we too declare that this night is different from all other nights. We too remember the deliverance of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. But we add another way this night is different from all other nights: “This is the night that Christ broke the bonds of death and hell and rose victorious from the grave” (BCP 287).
In Jesus’s Resurrection, in his defeat of the powers of our greatest enemy, death, his earliest Jewish followers saw an echo of that ancient Passover story – the deliverance from their enemies at the Red Sea. The early church declared the Easter Vigil to be the most appropriate time for baptisms not only because at Easter we recall the Resurrection and we are joined to Christ’s resurrected life through our baptism, but because baptism symbolizes a movement from slavery to freedom through water – an echo of that ancient Passover story. Just as the Israelites came out of slavery in Egypt into freedom in the Promised Land by passing through the waters of the Red Sea, so the newly baptized move from slavery to sin into freedom in the new life of Christ through the waters of baptism. In baptizing Megan and Anders tonight, we join them to the stream of God’s redemptive work that flows from the Exodus to the Resurrection and on to this day. The layers of meaning enfold over one another as we pour symbols upon symbols in this liturgy, in an attempt to give words to what is ultimately beyond the bounds of human language – the abundant mercy and love of God.
In the Passover seder, there is a famous liturgical poem, a hymn, that is sung after the re-telling of the story of the exodus. It is called, in Hebrew, dayenu, a word that is translated as “it would have been sufficient for us” or “it would have been enough.” One by one, the people recall the various stages of the exodus story, after each one saying that “it would have been enough” if God had stopped there – if God had only brought us out of Egypt, that would had been enough. If God had only split the Red Sea, that would have been enough. If God had only sustained us in the wilderness with manna, that would have been enough. If God had only given us the Torah, the Jewish law, that would have been enough. If God had only led us into the Promised Land, that would have been enough. This hymn emphasizes how abundant God’s mercies are – because even though any one of these great acts of deliverance would have been “enough,” God continually goes beyond what is merely “sufficient” to lavish his love and mercy on us. God wants us not to just survive, but to thrive, to use an old cliché. Or as Jesus says in the Gospel of John, he came that we might have life, and might have it more abundantly (John 10:10).
The clergy colleague I spoke of earlier who was raised Jewish has written a Christian version of the Dayenu, which seems appropriate to share with you at this Easter Vigil, which is in so many ways the liturgical descendant of the Passover seder:
“If only God had come to be with us, it would have been enough.
If only God became human, the Word made flesh. If only through Jesus God entered creation so that by his presence he might bless it, it would have been enough.
If only Jesus taught us and healed us and fulfilled the Law in Love, it would have been enough.
If only he’d died, if only he stretched out his arms of love on the cross, if only Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us, it would have been enough.
If only he rose again, if only he left a pile of linens in an empty tomb. If only he denied death the final word and changed forever the life we live here and now, it would have been enough.
If only he sent us the Spirit to be a comforter and advocate and to lead us into all truth, it would have been enough.
If only he ascended, drawing our humanness back to God, leading the way for us, it would have been enough.
If only he made a way for us all to be adopted as daughters and sons, if only he led us all through the waters to be joined to him, our hope and our calling, and to be joined to one another, it would have been enough. Dayenu. It would have been enough.” [3]
For each one of those statements, of course, there is a still more wonderful action of God for us to celebrate, a way in which God went the extra mile, so to speak, to come even closer to us and draw us closer to one another, bringing even more blessings and joy into our lives. And although the litany must stop somewhere, in fact it never really stops. There are always more ways to say “dayenu” – it would have been enough – and to experience gratitude for the abundance in our lives.
So what is your “dayenu” this Easter season? If only God had _______, it would have been enough? In what ways has God gone beyond what would have been “enough” in your life to lavish you with abundant blessings?
In the church, we are pretty good about observing the season of Lent, but we often forget that Easter is not just a day, but an entire season. While we have 40 days of Lent to reflect on our mortality and repent of our sins, we have 50 days of Easter to celebrate the joy of the Resurrection! We’re all familiar with the tradition of taking on a Lenten discipline, but what if we started a new tradition and during the Great 50 Days of Easter, we took on an “Easter joy”? What if we committed to spend the next 50 days – from now until Pentecost, which is on June 8 this year – doing things that that bring us joy, and intentionally bringing to mind all the ways in which we are abundantly blessed, all the ways in which God has gone beyond what would have been enough in our lives?
We just might begin to re-tell the story of Easter as if it had happened to us personally. We might experience the resurrection as if it were happening now. We might live into the story so completely that it would become our story. We might become aware in new ways of our mystical union with Christ’s death and resurrection in our baptism. And in the liturgy each week, we might say with ever-deepening appreciation:
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
(The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
---
[1] English Haggadah Text With Instructional Guide, http://www.chabad.org/holidays/passover/pesach_cdo/aid/661624/jewish/English-Haggadah.htm Accessed 14 April 2014.
[2] The Rev. Jenna Faith Strizak, associate rector at Holy Trinity Parish in Decatur, GA.
[3] The Rev. Jenna Faith Strizak, “a sermon for the feast of all saints (year c), with baptisms,” November 3, 2013, Holy Trinity [Episcopal] Parish, Decatur, Ga. http://graceandgrits.wordpress.com/2013/11/03/a-sermon-for-the-feast-of-all-saints-year-c-with-baptisms/ Accessed online 8 April 2014.
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Easter Message: God uses the ordinary to mediate the extraordinary
Sermon delivered Easter Day, Sunday, March 31, 2013, at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Franklin. TN. (Scripture passages: Year C: Acts 10:34-43; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24; 1 Corinthians 15:19-26; Luke 24:1-12)
To observe Christianity from the outside, filtered through the lens of American culture, it might seem that Christmas is a bigger deal than Easter. After all, we see decorations on homes and town squares, hear Christmas music playing in stores and restaurants, and receive Christmas cards and presents from friends and family. By contrast, the cultural celebration of Easter is much more muted. Sure, you might see a few giant Easter baskets in some neighbors’ yards, but nothing like the total light extravaganza that takes place in December. Though the greeting card companies stock the aisles with Easter cards, they just don’t seem to be as popular as that annual Christmas letter. And when was the last time you heard “Welcome, happy morning” or any other Easter hymn blaring over the loudspeaker at the grocery store? And as far as the secular mascots go, everyone knows that Santa Claus is way cooler (and usually brings way better presents) than the Easter Bunny.
But despite the message sent by our culture, Easter is actually the most important Christian holiday, even more important than Christmas. The Easter message – that Jesus was raised from the dead – is the central claim of Christianity, the core message of our faith. It is also significantly more controversial than the message of Christmas – that Jesus was born. Perhaps the wider culture prefers Christmas to Easter because it is easier to affirm that Jesus was born than to affirm that he was raised from the dead. Even people who do not acknowledge Jesus as the Son of God or the Messiah can accept the historical fact that he existed, and thus, that he was born. But our Easter faith demands something much more challenging of us than an acknowledgement of Jesus’s birth and a respect for his teachings. It demands the proclamation of an outrageous claim – that Jesus has been raised from the dead.
Jesus’s Resurrection is not accepted as historical fact in the way that his birth is because it is not universally acknowledged, nor was it universally experienced. In Peter’s famous speech to the Gentiles in Caesarea that we heard from Acts today, he tells them that “God raised [Jesus] on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people, but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses” (Acts 10:40-41, emphasis added). It certainly would have been a lot easier to “prove” that the Resurrection happened if God had allowed Jesus to appear to all the people rather than only to a select few. But as it is, the evidence for the Resurrection is limited to the experiences of a relatively small number of people, whose testimonies we are asked to accept on faith. And once we have accepted it, we are to join them in their witness, to spread the message of Jesus’s Resurrection and ask others to accept our testimony on faith as well.
So why didn’t God allow Jesus to appear “to all the people” after his Resurrection? If God is all-powerful and desires to bring all people to faith in Christ, why did God not make the Resurrection of Jesus as undeniable as the fact of his birth? Why didn’t he appear to the whole world and prove his triumph over death and the powers of sin? Why would God choose such a messy and inefficient means of delivering such an important message? Although we will never have definitive answers to these questions in this life, this humble means of spreading the news of the Resurrection does seem to be in keeping with what we know of the nature of God through the earthly life of Jesus.
Despite Jewish expectations that the Messiah would overthrow the occupying Roman government and restore the kingdom of Israel, Jesus arrives as a baby, born in the most humble of circumstances, in the ancient near Eastern equivalent of a rest stop, to a poor, virtually unknown family. The star of Bethlehem and the stories of the magi coming from the East notwithstanding, his birth was probably largely unnoticed in the world’s terms. When he began preaching and teaching as an adult, he did not seek fame and power, but traveled humbly on foot in the midst of a community of people from all walks of life, but primarily those who were poor. He taught his disciples that in contrast to the world’s rulers who lord their power over their subjects, it should not be so among his followers. Instead, he taught them that “whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all” (Mark 10:42-45). His “triumphal entry” into Jerusalem before the Passover, which we commemorated last week on Palm Sunday, was not a grand military processional led by a powerful king on a horse ready to lead a revolution against the occupying powers, but a peaceful and joyful celebration led by a peasant riding a donkey. The night before his death, he takes the role of a servant in washing his disciples feet, and he goes willingly to death on the cross, executed in a shameful manner among common criminals. He has no crown but the crown of thorns, no throne but the cross.
And yet, despite the utter humility of his life, we who call ourselves by his name – Christians – have been unable to resist the temptation to use royal and militaristic language to talk about his death and Resurrection, saying that he has “won the victory” over death, and that he now “reigns” in heaven as “king.” We talk about Jesus “conquering” death and the grave, but Jesus himself did not seem to be interested in “conquering” much of anything, but rather in transforming things through mercy, prayer, and service. Even after his Resurrection, Jesus is no more the powerful king some of his disciples wanted him to be than he was before his death.
In Luke’s account of the story, Jesus’s first appearance to the disciples after his Resurrection is on the Road to Emmaus, which comes immediately after the Gospel passage we read today. Although the angels at the tomb appeared in dazzling white clothes, Jesus appears as a regular guy walking down the street, and the disciples don’t even recognize him. It’s not until they sit down to eat together, when he reenacts the four actions of the Last Supper – taking, blessing, breaking, and giving the bread to them – that their eyes are opened and they recognize who he is. After his Resurrection, Jesus is not a regal king riding in as a triumphant conqueror, but a regular guy walking down the road and sharing a meal with his companions – doing the same kind of thing he had always done when he was among them before his death. In his Resurrected life, as in his earthly life, Jesus reminds us that the extraordinary is mediated to us through the ordinary.
Perhaps Jesus did not appear “to all the people” after his Resurrection because the God we know in Christ is not a God who forces himself on others through showy displays of power, but who comes among us humbly and gently, among the outcast and the lowly, in ways that make it easy for those of us expecting power and looking for “triumph” to miss him entirely. Perhaps it is fitting, then, that the Resurrection was not an event that drew universal recognition beyond the shadow of a doubt, that it took place quietly and humbly, in an unmarked tomb, and was witnessed by a small group of unassuming, mostly poor people, and that the news about it spread through the messy and inefficient means of word of mouth. Because in this, we see the truth that Jesus taught us time after time in his early ministry, that God uses the ordinary to mediate the extraordinary.
God used the testimony of regular first-century people to spread the news about the Resurrection, and God continues to use regular people like you and me to spread the message of the Gospel today – because we, too, are called to be witnesses to the Resurrection. Although we were not among those who experienced Jesus in the resurrected flesh in Jerusalem, we have a continual opportunity before us to, like the disciples on the Road to Emmaus, meet the risen Lord in the breaking of the bread. Each time we celebrate the Eucharist, we have an opportunity to encounter the presence of Christ in the elements of the bread and wine. The Resurrection is as extraordinary as the ultimate undoing of the powers of death and sin and as ordinary as bread and wine. It is as distant as an empty tomb in first-century Palestine and as near as the wafer on your tongue. And so, as we carry on the testimony of the apostles that “Christ has died, Christ has risen, and Christ will come again,” we become witnesses with them to the Resurrection. As we go forth nourished from this table, our experience here enables us to join with them in proclaiming, “Alleluia! Christ is risen!"
To observe Christianity from the outside, filtered through the lens of American culture, it might seem that Christmas is a bigger deal than Easter. After all, we see decorations on homes and town squares, hear Christmas music playing in stores and restaurants, and receive Christmas cards and presents from friends and family. By contrast, the cultural celebration of Easter is much more muted. Sure, you might see a few giant Easter baskets in some neighbors’ yards, but nothing like the total light extravaganza that takes place in December. Though the greeting card companies stock the aisles with Easter cards, they just don’t seem to be as popular as that annual Christmas letter. And when was the last time you heard “Welcome, happy morning” or any other Easter hymn blaring over the loudspeaker at the grocery store? And as far as the secular mascots go, everyone knows that Santa Claus is way cooler (and usually brings way better presents) than the Easter Bunny.
But despite the message sent by our culture, Easter is actually the most important Christian holiday, even more important than Christmas. The Easter message – that Jesus was raised from the dead – is the central claim of Christianity, the core message of our faith. It is also significantly more controversial than the message of Christmas – that Jesus was born. Perhaps the wider culture prefers Christmas to Easter because it is easier to affirm that Jesus was born than to affirm that he was raised from the dead. Even people who do not acknowledge Jesus as the Son of God or the Messiah can accept the historical fact that he existed, and thus, that he was born. But our Easter faith demands something much more challenging of us than an acknowledgement of Jesus’s birth and a respect for his teachings. It demands the proclamation of an outrageous claim – that Jesus has been raised from the dead.
Jesus’s Resurrection is not accepted as historical fact in the way that his birth is because it is not universally acknowledged, nor was it universally experienced. In Peter’s famous speech to the Gentiles in Caesarea that we heard from Acts today, he tells them that “God raised [Jesus] on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people, but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses” (Acts 10:40-41, emphasis added). It certainly would have been a lot easier to “prove” that the Resurrection happened if God had allowed Jesus to appear to all the people rather than only to a select few. But as it is, the evidence for the Resurrection is limited to the experiences of a relatively small number of people, whose testimonies we are asked to accept on faith. And once we have accepted it, we are to join them in their witness, to spread the message of Jesus’s Resurrection and ask others to accept our testimony on faith as well.
So why didn’t God allow Jesus to appear “to all the people” after his Resurrection? If God is all-powerful and desires to bring all people to faith in Christ, why did God not make the Resurrection of Jesus as undeniable as the fact of his birth? Why didn’t he appear to the whole world and prove his triumph over death and the powers of sin? Why would God choose such a messy and inefficient means of delivering such an important message? Although we will never have definitive answers to these questions in this life, this humble means of spreading the news of the Resurrection does seem to be in keeping with what we know of the nature of God through the earthly life of Jesus.
Despite Jewish expectations that the Messiah would overthrow the occupying Roman government and restore the kingdom of Israel, Jesus arrives as a baby, born in the most humble of circumstances, in the ancient near Eastern equivalent of a rest stop, to a poor, virtually unknown family. The star of Bethlehem and the stories of the magi coming from the East notwithstanding, his birth was probably largely unnoticed in the world’s terms. When he began preaching and teaching as an adult, he did not seek fame and power, but traveled humbly on foot in the midst of a community of people from all walks of life, but primarily those who were poor. He taught his disciples that in contrast to the world’s rulers who lord their power over their subjects, it should not be so among his followers. Instead, he taught them that “whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all” (Mark 10:42-45). His “triumphal entry” into Jerusalem before the Passover, which we commemorated last week on Palm Sunday, was not a grand military processional led by a powerful king on a horse ready to lead a revolution against the occupying powers, but a peaceful and joyful celebration led by a peasant riding a donkey. The night before his death, he takes the role of a servant in washing his disciples feet, and he goes willingly to death on the cross, executed in a shameful manner among common criminals. He has no crown but the crown of thorns, no throne but the cross.
And yet, despite the utter humility of his life, we who call ourselves by his name – Christians – have been unable to resist the temptation to use royal and militaristic language to talk about his death and Resurrection, saying that he has “won the victory” over death, and that he now “reigns” in heaven as “king.” We talk about Jesus “conquering” death and the grave, but Jesus himself did not seem to be interested in “conquering” much of anything, but rather in transforming things through mercy, prayer, and service. Even after his Resurrection, Jesus is no more the powerful king some of his disciples wanted him to be than he was before his death.
In Luke’s account of the story, Jesus’s first appearance to the disciples after his Resurrection is on the Road to Emmaus, which comes immediately after the Gospel passage we read today. Although the angels at the tomb appeared in dazzling white clothes, Jesus appears as a regular guy walking down the street, and the disciples don’t even recognize him. It’s not until they sit down to eat together, when he reenacts the four actions of the Last Supper – taking, blessing, breaking, and giving the bread to them – that their eyes are opened and they recognize who he is. After his Resurrection, Jesus is not a regal king riding in as a triumphant conqueror, but a regular guy walking down the road and sharing a meal with his companions – doing the same kind of thing he had always done when he was among them before his death. In his Resurrected life, as in his earthly life, Jesus reminds us that the extraordinary is mediated to us through the ordinary.
Perhaps Jesus did not appear “to all the people” after his Resurrection because the God we know in Christ is not a God who forces himself on others through showy displays of power, but who comes among us humbly and gently, among the outcast and the lowly, in ways that make it easy for those of us expecting power and looking for “triumph” to miss him entirely. Perhaps it is fitting, then, that the Resurrection was not an event that drew universal recognition beyond the shadow of a doubt, that it took place quietly and humbly, in an unmarked tomb, and was witnessed by a small group of unassuming, mostly poor people, and that the news about it spread through the messy and inefficient means of word of mouth. Because in this, we see the truth that Jesus taught us time after time in his early ministry, that God uses the ordinary to mediate the extraordinary.
God used the testimony of regular first-century people to spread the news about the Resurrection, and God continues to use regular people like you and me to spread the message of the Gospel today – because we, too, are called to be witnesses to the Resurrection. Although we were not among those who experienced Jesus in the resurrected flesh in Jerusalem, we have a continual opportunity before us to, like the disciples on the Road to Emmaus, meet the risen Lord in the breaking of the bread. Each time we celebrate the Eucharist, we have an opportunity to encounter the presence of Christ in the elements of the bread and wine. The Resurrection is as extraordinary as the ultimate undoing of the powers of death and sin and as ordinary as bread and wine. It is as distant as an empty tomb in first-century Palestine and as near as the wafer on your tongue. And so, as we carry on the testimony of the apostles that “Christ has died, Christ has risen, and Christ will come again,” we become witnesses with them to the Resurrection. As we go forth nourished from this table, our experience here enables us to join with them in proclaiming, “Alleluia! Christ is risen!"
Sunday, December 30, 2012
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
Sermon for Sunday, Dec. 30, 2012 (First Sunday After Christmas, Year C: Isaiah 61:10-62:3, Psalm 147, Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-7, John 1:1-18). I was sick on Dec. 30 and did not get to deliver this sermon publicly, but I publish it here in written form for the edification of any who might come across it.
On this First Sunday After Christmas, we hear a very different version of the Christmas story than the one we heard on Christmas Eve. Rather than shepherds and angels and a family sent to the stable because there was no room for them at the inn, we hear John’s version of “the beginning” of Jesus’s story, a beginning that began not in Bethlehem, but at the beginning of all time, before the creation of the world. John’s account is a cosmic creation story, a magnificent theological poem about the very essence of the Divine breaking into the depths of our world: “the Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14).
And in this artistic proclamation of the origins of the Christ, the author of John’s Gospel gives us what I believe to be one of the most powerful summaries of the Christian message in all of Scripture:
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1:5).
In that one sentence lies the heart of the Gospel: the power of light over darkness, of love over hate, of life over death. Jesus’s Resurrection is the ultimate expression of this truth. Death itself could not extinguish the light that came into the world with the birth of Christ, and it continues to shine through all the ages, despite countless attempts and threats to extinguish it.
This is the heart of the Gospel, the Good News that we proclaim as Christians: that nothing will be able to extinguish the light of God that shines in all creation. The Apostle Paul said in his letter to the Romans that he was convinced “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38). This is the message we are called as Christians to proclaim to a broken and hurting world: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5). And we are called to proclaim this message precisely during those times when we cannot see the light, when all seems to be darkness, when the world around us tells us there is no joy, no hope, and no love.
In the wake of the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut two weeks ago, many people around the country have questioned how they could go on with Christmas preparations and celebrations in the midst of such unspeakable loss.
One of my colleagues from seminary told me that a sermon preparation resource she reads sent out a message to their subscribers suggesting that they not light the “Candle of Joy” for the Third Sunday of Advent this year, given the deep dissonance many would feel in proclaiming a Sunday of “joy” just two days after such a horrific event.
In the news coverage of the observation of Christmas in Newtown this year, reporters talked to people gathered at makeshift memorials, keeping vigil beside twenty-six candles kept lit all night from Christmas Eve through Christmas morning. Some said it felt too sad to be Christmas this year. One woman said it had taken her longer than usual to finish her preparations for Christmas. “I just felt like my heart wasn’t in it,” she said. Another man said he felt celebrating Christmas at all was inappropriate, given the town’s grief. “Christmas shouldn’t even be happening,” he said. “Life has changed as we know it.”
But it is precisely during those times when the darkness seems to have won, when our hearts just aren’t into the proclamations of joy, when we do not know how we can possibly affirm the goodness of the world and the goodness of God’s providence, that we most need to do so. To not light that Advent candle of Joy on December 16 would have been to affirm the truth of the world rather than the truth of the Gospel. To not celebrate Christmas Eve on December 24 would have been to say that the darkness had overcome the light.
Monsignor Bob Weiss, pastor of St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church in Newtown, encouraged his parish that there was still reason to celebrate Christmas in Newtown, even after he and the community spent the week before Christmas burying eight children from their parish, sometimes conducting two children’s funerals in one day. In the midst of what was surely one of the darkest weeks in the history of that church, Weiss wrote these words to the parish in his annual Christmas message:
This is a difficult task, to be sure, and I dare say it would be impossible for any one person to do. But the good news is that none of us is called to carry the light of Christ alone. We are part of a community of faith, the Church, which is the very Body of Christ, which will go on proclaiming the good news of the Gospel even when we as individuals are not able to proclaim it ourselves. When we fall into despair and find ourselves quite literally unable to say the words of faith, when we have no will power to pray, and when we can affirm nothing but the existence of the darkness around us, the corporate prayer of the Church goes on in endless praise of the One who is the Light even in the midst of the darkness.
What a relief it is to experience the corporate and communal nature of our faith! When we cannot see the light ourselves, we come to church to allow others to hold it up for us. When we cannot find the words to pray, we allow the community to pray for us until we are able to join in again. We are able to carry the light of Christ through the darkness only to the degree in which we are willing to carry one another through the difficult times.
And, thanks be to God, the truth of the Gospel does not depend on our emotional state of being. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it,” whether or not we believe that is true, whether or not our hearts are in it when we say that statement. Trusting in the truth of the Gospel, a truth that comes from outside ourselves, we continue to say it, even when the world around us screams that the light has gone out. We light the candles of joy, faith, hope, and love even when the world says there is no joy, faith, hope and love. We sing songs of praise and joy even in the midst of great loss. “Even at the grave we make our song, ‘Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia’” (BCP 499). We do so because we are an Easter people. We do so because at the center of our faith lies the proclamation of a Truth that is greater than the truth of the world: “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5).
On this First Sunday After Christmas, we hear a very different version of the Christmas story than the one we heard on Christmas Eve. Rather than shepherds and angels and a family sent to the stable because there was no room for them at the inn, we hear John’s version of “the beginning” of Jesus’s story, a beginning that began not in Bethlehem, but at the beginning of all time, before the creation of the world. John’s account is a cosmic creation story, a magnificent theological poem about the very essence of the Divine breaking into the depths of our world: “the Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14).
And in this artistic proclamation of the origins of the Christ, the author of John’s Gospel gives us what I believe to be one of the most powerful summaries of the Christian message in all of Scripture:
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1:5).
In that one sentence lies the heart of the Gospel: the power of light over darkness, of love over hate, of life over death. Jesus’s Resurrection is the ultimate expression of this truth. Death itself could not extinguish the light that came into the world with the birth of Christ, and it continues to shine through all the ages, despite countless attempts and threats to extinguish it.
This is the heart of the Gospel, the Good News that we proclaim as Christians: that nothing will be able to extinguish the light of God that shines in all creation. The Apostle Paul said in his letter to the Romans that he was convinced “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38). This is the message we are called as Christians to proclaim to a broken and hurting world: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5). And we are called to proclaim this message precisely during those times when we cannot see the light, when all seems to be darkness, when the world around us tells us there is no joy, no hope, and no love.
In the wake of the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut two weeks ago, many people around the country have questioned how they could go on with Christmas preparations and celebrations in the midst of such unspeakable loss.
One of my colleagues from seminary told me that a sermon preparation resource she reads sent out a message to their subscribers suggesting that they not light the “Candle of Joy” for the Third Sunday of Advent this year, given the deep dissonance many would feel in proclaiming a Sunday of “joy” just two days after such a horrific event.
In the news coverage of the observation of Christmas in Newtown this year, reporters talked to people gathered at makeshift memorials, keeping vigil beside twenty-six candles kept lit all night from Christmas Eve through Christmas morning. Some said it felt too sad to be Christmas this year. One woman said it had taken her longer than usual to finish her preparations for Christmas. “I just felt like my heart wasn’t in it,” she said. Another man said he felt celebrating Christmas at all was inappropriate, given the town’s grief. “Christmas shouldn’t even be happening,” he said. “Life has changed as we know it.”
But it is precisely during those times when the darkness seems to have won, when our hearts just aren’t into the proclamations of joy, when we do not know how we can possibly affirm the goodness of the world and the goodness of God’s providence, that we most need to do so. To not light that Advent candle of Joy on December 16 would have been to affirm the truth of the world rather than the truth of the Gospel. To not celebrate Christmas Eve on December 24 would have been to say that the darkness had overcome the light.
Monsignor Bob Weiss, pastor of St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church in Newtown, encouraged his parish that there was still reason to celebrate Christmas in Newtown, even after he and the community spent the week before Christmas burying eight children from their parish, sometimes conducting two children’s funerals in one day. In the midst of what was surely one of the darkest weeks in the history of that church, Weiss wrote these words to the parish in his annual Christmas message:
“I have been asked so often how do we celebrate Christmas this year. I believe that we celebrate it in its truest sense, putting aside all the secularity and simply sitting in silence and praying that the hope, healing and peace promised to us by Christ will be given to us in abundance… We need to know that even in these darkest hours, there is still light, light that is brighter than that great star over Bethlehem, which will take us to the place where we need to be… it will take us to the heart of Christ who will heal our brokenness, remove our anger and hurt and fill us with the peace and strength we need to not just move forward but to reclaim the life that is ours as a community in Christ Jesus.”The only time we let the light go out in our churches is on Good Friday – in a symbolic recreation of the darkness of the crucifixion, when the disciples thought the light really had gone out, when that light of the world that John’s Gospel speaks of was, for a time, absent. But the light did come back – it burst forth from the tomb in the body of the Resurrected Christ and set ablaze the light that the church has carried ever since, through times of deepest darkness. In the Church, we are an Easter people, a Resurrection people. Except for the one liturgical exception of Good Friday, no matter what else is going on in the world around us, we come to church to see the light. Our calling as Christians is to carry that light even when the darkness creeps in around us and we are certain it will extinguish the light.
This is a difficult task, to be sure, and I dare say it would be impossible for any one person to do. But the good news is that none of us is called to carry the light of Christ alone. We are part of a community of faith, the Church, which is the very Body of Christ, which will go on proclaiming the good news of the Gospel even when we as individuals are not able to proclaim it ourselves. When we fall into despair and find ourselves quite literally unable to say the words of faith, when we have no will power to pray, and when we can affirm nothing but the existence of the darkness around us, the corporate prayer of the Church goes on in endless praise of the One who is the Light even in the midst of the darkness.
What a relief it is to experience the corporate and communal nature of our faith! When we cannot see the light ourselves, we come to church to allow others to hold it up for us. When we cannot find the words to pray, we allow the community to pray for us until we are able to join in again. We are able to carry the light of Christ through the darkness only to the degree in which we are willing to carry one another through the difficult times.
And, thanks be to God, the truth of the Gospel does not depend on our emotional state of being. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it,” whether or not we believe that is true, whether or not our hearts are in it when we say that statement. Trusting in the truth of the Gospel, a truth that comes from outside ourselves, we continue to say it, even when the world around us screams that the light has gone out. We light the candles of joy, faith, hope, and love even when the world says there is no joy, faith, hope and love. We sing songs of praise and joy even in the midst of great loss. “Even at the grave we make our song, ‘Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia’” (BCP 499). We do so because we are an Easter people. We do so because at the center of our faith lies the proclamation of a Truth that is greater than the truth of the world: “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5).
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Jesus didn't stay dead
In preaching class this week, the assignment was to preach a sermon on a "doctrinal subject" -- like atonement theology, ecclesiology (theology about the nature of the church), pneumatology (the study of the Holy Spirit). I chose to preach an Easter Day sermon, on the (bodily) Resurrection (of Jesus), the central tenant of the Christian faith.
Last week, residents of the Myrtle Beach area of South Carolina got a controversial message in their mailboxes: a postcard, with a picture of a dead white rabbit surrounded by a bunch of smashed colored eggs. The caption on the postcard read, “Bunnies stay dead. Jesus didn’t.”
A church in the area sent these postcards as an invitation to their Easter services (service times were listed on the back), but they may have turned off more people than they reached. The online comments on the news story run by the local television station admonished the church for the implicit violence in the ad and expressed concern over its potential effect on children.
But however disturbing the imagery and however crude the message, the church was right about one thing: Jesus didn’t stay dead. And that claim has been causing controversy since it was first made two thousand years ago.
The people of Jesus’s time knew just as well as we do that dead things usually stay dead. So when the women who had been to the tomb started telling the male disciples that Jesus’s body wasn’t there, and that then they saw Jesus – or, well, they didn’t really know it was Jesus at first because he was different – but they knew it was him, really! – no wonder the men thought it was an “idle tale,” as Luke puts it.
But then they started encountering Jesus as well. The same Jesus who had been killed just a few days before appeared to them in locked rooms, entering and exiting through walls, appearing and disappearing like a character in some kind of children’s folktale. The Gospel accounts repeatedly tell us that the disciples were terrified when they encountered Jesus and thought that they were seeing a ghost. But the stories of the resurrection appearances also are careful to document that Jesus was not in fact a ghost, nor were the disciples merely having a vision of their deceased teacher – those who saw him after his resurrection attested that Jesus had a real, physical body (that still bore the marks of his execution) and that he could eat food and be touched. It was like nothing they had ever experienced. He wasn’t a ghost, but he wasn’t a regular living human being either. He was a physical being, but not constrained by the limits of human physicality.
These stories were just as incredible in the first century as they are today, and despite the fact that Christianity has become the world’s largest religion, there are still plenty of people who do not believe that Jesus was actually, physically raised from the dead. One woman who commented on the news story about the dead bunny postcard wrote,
“Perhaps the most ignorant thing about the card is that Jesus IS dead. He lives on in our hearts, but as far as walking around goes, nope, not happening. So I guess he DOES have a lot in common with that dead bunny.”
But this is precisely what the followers of Jesus did NOT say about him after his death: that he “lived on in their hearts.” No, they claimed that he was actually, physically alive – albeit in a different kind of body than he had before his death. When we Christians say that Jesus lives, we do not mean that he lives in the metaphorical ways in which loved ones “live on” after their deaths in the memories of others. No, when we say Jesus lives, we mean that he actually LIVES, that he appeared to his disciples in an embodied, physical form after his death.
This claim is outrageous, and from the start it has provoked ridicule and disbelief. The skeptics of our day are not saying anything new when they point to the lack of hard and fast proof that the resurrection actually happened and thus discount the witness of the first Christians as fanciful and deluded. Even some within the church, unable to believe in the bodily resurrection themselves or perhaps embarrassed by the foolishness of it in the world’s eyes, concede to the skeptics that perhaps Jesus was not raised in the flesh. As Christians, they still want to hold on to a belief in the resurrection, so they do this by saying that Jesus was raised from the dead, but that his resurrection was a spiritual resurrection, not a physical one. It doesn’t matter whether or not Jesus was physically resurrected, they say, what matters is that his followers continued to have an experience of him in some way and that we continue to have faith in him today. Even if the body of Jesus was found tomorrow, I could still be a Christian, they would say.
But the bodily resurrection does matter to our faith as Christians. It may seem attractive to have a faith that is impervious to challenge from outside forces, and belief in a spiritual resurrection of Jesus certainly gives one that gift. But it contradicts the testimony of the first Christians – that Jesus appeared in bodily form after his death – a testimony that forms the heart of the faith that the church has handed down over centuries. And to me, it seems like an intellectually sophisticated version of “Jesus lives on in our hearts.”
It matters that Jesus’s resurrection was a physical reality, not a vision. If it was a vision, it is entirely subjective, something that is nice for us Christians to believe, but doesn’t make any kind of claim on anyone else. On the other hand, if it was an objective, physical reality, it changes the course of history for all people.
If the resurrection really happened, if God actually raised Jesus from the dead, then Jesus’s message has been affirmed and shown to be true. He was not a false prophet deserving death for blasphemy, but the actual Son of God. And if the resurrection really happened, then the powers of sin and death have been overcome by the powers of love and forgiveness.
At the heart of the good news that we proclaim to the world is that God is not a god of violence and revenge. Jesus does not come back to wreak vengeance on those who betrayed and killed him. He doesn’t destroy Pilate or the religious authorities who had him put to death. Instead, he returns speaking peace. “Peace be with you” are his first words to the disciples who had deserted and rejected him. And then he sends them out with a message of forgiveness and reconciliation for all people.
If Jesus lives, then the cycle of violence has been broken. And if we are in Christ through our baptism into his death and resurrection, then we too are given the power to resist the evils of this world without fear and without violence, because we know that we too will share in that resurrected life that transforms and embraces all.
Jesus didn’t stay dead. It is a controversial claim. Of course, we cannot objectively prove that Jesus was raised bodily from the dead, but one historical fact is undeniable, even by the most skeptical of scholars: Jesus’s followers believed he had been raised from the dead, in bodily form, and they risked their lives to bring that message to the world. The question for us is, will we believe them?
**I must acknowledge both Christopher Bryan's The Resurrection of the Messiah (Oxford University Press USA, 2011) and The Resurrection of Jesus: John Dominic Crossan and N.T. Wright in Dialogue (edited by Robert B. Stewart, published by Fortress Press, 2006), which both played a strong part in the development of the ideas in this sermon.
Last week, residents of the Myrtle Beach area of South Carolina got a controversial message in their mailboxes: a postcard, with a picture of a dead white rabbit surrounded by a bunch of smashed colored eggs. The caption on the postcard read, “Bunnies stay dead. Jesus didn’t.”
A church in the area sent these postcards as an invitation to their Easter services (service times were listed on the back), but they may have turned off more people than they reached. The online comments on the news story run by the local television station admonished the church for the implicit violence in the ad and expressed concern over its potential effect on children.
But however disturbing the imagery and however crude the message, the church was right about one thing: Jesus didn’t stay dead. And that claim has been causing controversy since it was first made two thousand years ago.
The people of Jesus’s time knew just as well as we do that dead things usually stay dead. So when the women who had been to the tomb started telling the male disciples that Jesus’s body wasn’t there, and that then they saw Jesus – or, well, they didn’t really know it was Jesus at first because he was different – but they knew it was him, really! – no wonder the men thought it was an “idle tale,” as Luke puts it.
But then they started encountering Jesus as well. The same Jesus who had been killed just a few days before appeared to them in locked rooms, entering and exiting through walls, appearing and disappearing like a character in some kind of children’s folktale. The Gospel accounts repeatedly tell us that the disciples were terrified when they encountered Jesus and thought that they were seeing a ghost. But the stories of the resurrection appearances also are careful to document that Jesus was not in fact a ghost, nor were the disciples merely having a vision of their deceased teacher – those who saw him after his resurrection attested that Jesus had a real, physical body (that still bore the marks of his execution) and that he could eat food and be touched. It was like nothing they had ever experienced. He wasn’t a ghost, but he wasn’t a regular living human being either. He was a physical being, but not constrained by the limits of human physicality.
These stories were just as incredible in the first century as they are today, and despite the fact that Christianity has become the world’s largest religion, there are still plenty of people who do not believe that Jesus was actually, physically raised from the dead. One woman who commented on the news story about the dead bunny postcard wrote,
“Perhaps the most ignorant thing about the card is that Jesus IS dead. He lives on in our hearts, but as far as walking around goes, nope, not happening. So I guess he DOES have a lot in common with that dead bunny.”
But this is precisely what the followers of Jesus did NOT say about him after his death: that he “lived on in their hearts.” No, they claimed that he was actually, physically alive – albeit in a different kind of body than he had before his death. When we Christians say that Jesus lives, we do not mean that he lives in the metaphorical ways in which loved ones “live on” after their deaths in the memories of others. No, when we say Jesus lives, we mean that he actually LIVES, that he appeared to his disciples in an embodied, physical form after his death.
This claim is outrageous, and from the start it has provoked ridicule and disbelief. The skeptics of our day are not saying anything new when they point to the lack of hard and fast proof that the resurrection actually happened and thus discount the witness of the first Christians as fanciful and deluded. Even some within the church, unable to believe in the bodily resurrection themselves or perhaps embarrassed by the foolishness of it in the world’s eyes, concede to the skeptics that perhaps Jesus was not raised in the flesh. As Christians, they still want to hold on to a belief in the resurrection, so they do this by saying that Jesus was raised from the dead, but that his resurrection was a spiritual resurrection, not a physical one. It doesn’t matter whether or not Jesus was physically resurrected, they say, what matters is that his followers continued to have an experience of him in some way and that we continue to have faith in him today. Even if the body of Jesus was found tomorrow, I could still be a Christian, they would say.
But the bodily resurrection does matter to our faith as Christians. It may seem attractive to have a faith that is impervious to challenge from outside forces, and belief in a spiritual resurrection of Jesus certainly gives one that gift. But it contradicts the testimony of the first Christians – that Jesus appeared in bodily form after his death – a testimony that forms the heart of the faith that the church has handed down over centuries. And to me, it seems like an intellectually sophisticated version of “Jesus lives on in our hearts.”
It matters that Jesus’s resurrection was a physical reality, not a vision. If it was a vision, it is entirely subjective, something that is nice for us Christians to believe, but doesn’t make any kind of claim on anyone else. On the other hand, if it was an objective, physical reality, it changes the course of history for all people.
If the resurrection really happened, if God actually raised Jesus from the dead, then Jesus’s message has been affirmed and shown to be true. He was not a false prophet deserving death for blasphemy, but the actual Son of God. And if the resurrection really happened, then the powers of sin and death have been overcome by the powers of love and forgiveness.
At the heart of the good news that we proclaim to the world is that God is not a god of violence and revenge. Jesus does not come back to wreak vengeance on those who betrayed and killed him. He doesn’t destroy Pilate or the religious authorities who had him put to death. Instead, he returns speaking peace. “Peace be with you” are his first words to the disciples who had deserted and rejected him. And then he sends them out with a message of forgiveness and reconciliation for all people.
If Jesus lives, then the cycle of violence has been broken. And if we are in Christ through our baptism into his death and resurrection, then we too are given the power to resist the evils of this world without fear and without violence, because we know that we too will share in that resurrected life that transforms and embraces all.
Jesus didn’t stay dead. It is a controversial claim. Of course, we cannot objectively prove that Jesus was raised bodily from the dead, but one historical fact is undeniable, even by the most skeptical of scholars: Jesus’s followers believed he had been raised from the dead, in bodily form, and they risked their lives to bring that message to the world. The question for us is, will we believe them?
**I must acknowledge both Christopher Bryan's The Resurrection of the Messiah (Oxford University Press USA, 2011) and The Resurrection of Jesus: John Dominic Crossan and N.T. Wright in Dialogue (edited by Robert B. Stewart, published by Fortress Press, 2006), which both played a strong part in the development of the ideas in this sermon.
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