What Mary saw ...

Easter 3-23-2008 St. Paul’s

Acts 10:34-43
Psalm 118 Colossians 3:1-4
John 20:1-18

How did Mary Magdalene have the energy even to get out of bed on that Easter Day?

What could possibly have been worse, than to witness what she had witnessed just two days before? Her community was scattered and shattered. Her news of a vandalized tomb brought a few of them running – imagine this as one more shock, one more ghastly realization that the powers of death reached even beyond the grave, continuing to defile the body of their beloved friend. The men all leave, go their separate ways; only Mary stays behind, grief-stricken, exhausted, a woman with nothing left, no defenses, no hopes, no strength.

In a wonderful book by Studs Terkel, a collection of interviews with ordinary people, Hope Never Dies, I came across the words of Ed Chambers, a community organizer. He describes his life, influenced by Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement, his work trying to make communities safer, healthier – to encourage people that they had the power within themselves to make their own lives better. He also described how hard this work had gotten:

"I’m a little bit discouraged, but I’m not quitting, I’m not giving up. … The purpose of life isn’t truth; the purpose of life is meaning. The struggle of meaning that keeps you going, and a hope that you’re about to get something greater than anything you’ve got. … What keeps me going is that I realized, sometime in my 40s or early 50s, I couldn’t just dig down inside myself and pump it out like in my 30s. Then I realized that I got my energy for this work from other people, so the self must stay in connection with others, new others, others that have more talent and more vision and more power than you have. That energizes you and keeps you going. Without that you ossify. You can call it what you want. You can call it community, you can call it necessity. You’ve got to be in relationship with real people." [i]

Way back, 2000 years ago, at that first Easter, there must have been some idea, some hope, that God indeed had the power to bring about the resurrection of the dead. Right there in the text: “… for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.”

Indeed, the hope of resurrection was something floating around religious thought at the time – around Jewish people tired of exile and persecution and occupation and corruption and taxation and struggle. Resurrection was an idea that the whole community would rise again on the last day – would be renewed and reconstituted at the end of time, as a community of justice, of God’s justice. Not just I would be resurrected on the last day, but we – and not just our spirits or our good wills, but our whole bodies. Us. All of us. Every part of us. And every part of the community, of the household of God – and after Mary’s discovery that not only was the tomb empty but that Jesus himself stood there in the garden with her – we now understand resurrection as the restoration of the Body of Christ – his real body, and our real bodies: the first fruits that are revealed.

It’s hard to talk about this in a way that makes it real, which takes me back to the words of that community organizer. His experience underscores for me that this whole resurrection business is not about the “individual” but about the “us” – the collective – the communal – about all of humanity. The reality of human life is no, we can’t go it alone. We certainly try – witness the scattered disciples, Mary going to the tomb to weep alone.

But the reality of the resurrection life is that life is communal, that we are no longer alone, that life as God intended it included you and you and you and you and all of us, restored, whole, hopeful, a whole creation renewed.

The powers of death want to keep this reality from us. Jesus died on the cross. But the power of God proves that all of that isolation and loneliness is the lie. The powers of death have done their worst. With the resurrection of Jesus, the body, the community is restored. Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia. Christ is risen.

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[i] P.231, Ed Chambers in Studs Terkel, Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Troubled Times (New York: The New Press, 2003)

With palms before him went ...

We have a new look to our church - the altar in the midst. Palm Sunday we processed around it all. The chaos and confusion and noise of the procession contrasting with the chaos and confusion and silence of the cross.

Palm Sunday March 16, 2008 St. Paul’s Isaiah 50:4-9a
Psalm 31:9-16 Philippians 2:5-11
Matthew 21:1-11, 26:14-27:66

Today, prayers go unanswered. Cries of anguish are in vain. On this day, God is silent.

We started out in chaos and noise. The Liturgy of the Palms is at its best when things are noisy and a little confused, when we don’t quite know where to go. We are full of hope and excitement and anticipation. The whole city is in turmoil as our procession approaches, people everywhere asking, “Who is this? What is going on?” We answer, full of confidence and hope: “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”

That sentence alone speaks volumes: “prophet,” meaning someone who is sent from God. “From Nazareth in Galilee,” implying that this prophet is an outsider, that he is from the place where these rabble are from, a poor, rural, out of the way village, from people not treated kindly by the Roman legions and tax collectors, or by the Jewish establishment who are their enforcers. Our loud and crazy procession is full of hope for some, full of nuisance for the Romans who dislike disorder, full of threat for the Temple establishment who fear any force that might upset their dependent relationship with the violent and powerful Romans.

Who is this, the city in turmoil asks. This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee, we joyfully shout.

That is the beginning of the week. By the end, our shouts reveal that we have turned on this prophet: Crowds, swords, clubs, soldiers, civil and religious functionaries, bystanders, onlookers, and then, of course, even those who betrayed him: the sleeping disciples, Peter trying to hide in plain sight, Judas who signaled the arrest with a kiss. We continue to be a loud and chaotic bunch but now we have turned on this prophet we hailed as the One who came in the name of the Lord.

The one at the center of this story keeps still. He kneels in grief and prayer, when he listens intently for God to answer him. Nothing. No response. Does he really believe what he says later, that with but a word God would send legions of angels to rescue him? One by one, then all at once, his formerly loyal defenders fall away, the Romans keep their distance, not enforcing their laws, the Temple authorities push him toward death, the crowd turns from hope to cynicism, jeering and taunting.

The one at the center of the story has only one more thing to say, words that betray his fear that God has left this scene, left this world, abandoned him to powers of death. God has answered neither his prayers said in the dark of night nor in the middle of the day which is so dark that it mimics night. It must now be still around the cross, for at the moment of Jesus’ last, loud cry, an earthquake shakes the foundation of the Temple.

The crowds are gone, the fear is over; no one else will be killed on this day. Quietly a few of his followers ask for his body; the Romans let them take him – they have no dog in this fight. The body is wrapped, buried, the tomb securely sealed with a stone. Once again, night falls, and darkness and silence envelop us all.

Prophesy to the Bones

Lent 5-A
March 9, 2008
St. Paul’s

Ezekiel 37:1-14; Psalm 130;
Romans 8:6-11; John 11:1-45

The people were in trouble, big trouble.

The lived in exile, in Babylon, far from home, far from traditions, far from their past, far from all the landmarks of what made them a people – and even far from the God who called them “my people.” The powers of this empire had won, their gods had won, their armies had won, this empire of Babylon. The people who were once the people of Israel, with a temple in Jerusalem, a proud heritage, a powerful God, mighty to save, were there, stuck in this foreign place, crying to God from the depths of their soul – unsure if there even was a God anymore who would listen.

Before this passage from Ezekiel is a story of hope and resurrection, it is a story of despair. It is the story of the valley of dry bones, the story of the desert, of desolation. The empire – the powers of the human worst – had won; what more could the people formerly known as Israel do?

You know that place, we all know that place. That deserted, desert place, where we do not expect hope to come, that place we will put up with until we die.

For the people of Israel, though, there is another dimension to this place of exile. Their prophets, like Ezekiel, of today’s reading, like Isaiah and Jeremiah, and Amos and Hosea, have told the people that they have had a hand in this exile. The people of Israel have strayed from what God wants – and what God wants is not just attention, or worship, or obeisance. What God wants is what the people of Israel forgot: justice. I’m not making this up just because we have a soup kitchen in the basement – but what God wanted from the people of Israel that they forgot was justice: care for the poor, compassion for the orphan, food for the hungry, hospitality to the stranger, homes for the widows. God’s world was not to be one where some lived well and some languished. The people of Israel had gotten the equation out of whack, prophets like Ezekiel reminded them. Too many rich people, too many poor ones. Prophets like Ezekiel interpreted the political events of the time – the Babylonian empire invading Israel and carrying away the captives – as God’s judgment on his disobedient people. So imagine this: sent into the desert of exile, by one’s own God.

Ezekiel knows this. These people are mere bones, dried up, scattered, with no memory of what it meant to have flesh, no memory of what it meant to rise and walk as free people.

So imagine Ezekiel’s surprise to get the word from God: Mortal! Can these bones live? Ezekiel gives the only answer he knows: no.

And then God turns the whole thing around: get these bones up, breathe breath into them, bring them new life.

That is what a prophet does: brings the hope of God into a place that is desolate and bone-ridden and dried up, and says, you may not see anything here right now, but you will. God is in this place. God will do the impossible. What Ezekiel breathed into those dry bones was imagination – those bones could not have imagined anything but death, and then they were imagining what it would be like to be back in Jerusalem, to rebuild the temple, once again to be the people of God, the people of justice. They could imagine what it was like to be restored not only to life but to God’s favor.

That’s what the prophet does: offer a vision of hope where there is none. Where there is none. Nothing. Nada. Then God comes along and says, prophesy to the bones. Prophesy to the breath. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live.

Lazarus is dead. His sisters plead with Jesus, when he finally appears: Lord, if you had been here, our brother would not have died.

For Jesus, Lazarus’ death is deeply disturbing, yes, but it is also something else. It is an opportunity for the glory of God to shine – it is an opportunity to show the whole world that God is doing a new thing – that God is still saying to those hopeless, hapless bones to get up and walk. You can hear Martha saying, yes, Lord, I have that faith. I know that Lazarus will rise in the resurrection on the last day.

WILL rise. The future. The last day.

Jesus changes the tense. That resurrection is here, and now, Jesus says. I AM the resurrection. Here. Now. Among you. These bones walk. If Lazarus can come back from exile, so can you. Your time in the desert is over. Your four days in the tomb are done. Lazarus, come out.

Of course, there are lot of powerful people who want Lazarus to stay dead. They want their slaves to stay in captivity. They want the poor to stay poor. The hungry should never have enough. There are people who will never deserve a decent home, there are children never entitled to a good education. It’s OK if the wells dry up for some people, if glaucoma robs others of their sight, if somebody’s house gets cold because they cannot afford $4 a gallon heating oil. There are a lot of people who will be a lot better off if Lazarus would just stay dead.

In the Gospel of John, this raising of Lazarus from the dead is the last straw. The powers that be begin to gather their forces for the final showdown with Jesus, the entrapment, the trial on trumped-up charges, the death-march to the cross, to the hill-top of dry bones. Over the next few weeks we’ll walk that way with Jesus, fearing the worst and seeing it come true. We’ll do it with these words echoing in our ears: I am the resurrection and I am the life. When we’ve retreated to our own tombs, to our own desert places of all fear and no hope, we’ll hear Jesus again: Lazarus, come out. Unbind him, and let him go.

Lazarus, come out!

Yes, this is the Gospel reading for Sunday, March 9, the story of the raising of Lazarus from his tomb. Yes, I am still writing my sermon, so yes, more on this text later.

LAST WEEK, when the Gospel story was about Jesus giving sight to the man born blind, I did a power point illustrated sermon. All the Gospel texts this Lent are long ones, sometimes better understood if read in parts, or if I illustrated them as I did last week. I found a wonderful variety of depictions of the story of the giving of sight to the man born blind, pictures you, too, can find on the internet. Just do a Google Images search, and wonderful things appear -- images that might make you stop and think, might give you another interpretation of the text, another idea where it might lead you deeper into the mystery of Christ.

I'm going to put up a few links to other blogs -- see over there on the right -- that use art and imagery to expand our ideas of the texts, of the words, of our faith. Stories bring pictures to our imaginations. See how artists over the centuries have brought those imaginations to light.

No limits

Lent 3 A Feb. 24, 2008 St. Paul’s
Exodus 17:1-7 Psalm 95
Romans 5:1-11 John 4:5-42

The Savior of the World brings water.

When I was in high school, Frank Herbert’s novel Dune was very popular. It is the story of life on a desert planet, where hallucinogenic sand spice is mined and traded. Yet on that desert planet, water was an even more precious commodity. The people wore suits which collected and recycled the water in their breath. Early each morning, the peasants would collect the tiny drops of dew; they could not afford to squander even the most minute amount of liquid.

Our own planet seems to be moving toward desertification. One of the consequences of global warming may be the increased possibility that people will fight over water. In a world that values the “them that gots get more” way of thinking, the rich will get water while the poor die of thirst.

In a world that values scarcity, competition, survival of the fittest, life is a zero sum game. If you have something, I don’t. If you lose, I win. It’s a world defined by limits and by what is mine (it’s not yours).

The woman comes to the well from such a world, a world of scarcity and argument and lack of security. This is a woman on the margins: the Jews shun the Samaritans because of centuries-old religious differences. She does not have the protection of a husband, and has somehow run through five of them. Men like Nicodemus, the proper and pious man we met in last week’s gospel, would have nothing to do with a woman like this. But remember: men like Nicodemus, even though they seek what Jesus has to offer, don’t get it. Men like Nicodemus, circumscribed by propriety and piety, stay in the dark, in the world of limits and scarcity, a world of ordinary life, and ordinary water – when Jesus offers living water and eternal life.

Both the story from Exodus, of getting water from the rock, and the conversation Jesus has with the woman at the well, use water to make two points.

The water is everything God has to offer: it is pure grace, never-failing love. It is profligately abundant. It refuses to be limited or channeled or controlled or dammed-up. The eternal life Jesus describes is as miraculous and surprising as the water springing from the rock in the desert. It is a water that will quench all thirst for all time.

Such living water – such eternal life – is a gift which has nothing to do with worthiness. It is not something taken from the categorically “bad” and given to the “good.” Receiving it does not depend on your lack of sin. God did not save the children of Israel in the desert because they were particularly good, or virtuous – remember what a hard time they gave Moses. God saved the children of Israel because he loved them.

The Samaritan woman, who came from a group who broke every law the Jews held sacred -- laws they lived by so they could be closer to God – even these Samaritans, Jesus said – especially these Samaritans and people like them on the margins of proper society – these are the ones who understand that this living water leads to eternal life. This woman at the well “gets it” so strongly that she becomes the first missionary. She runs back to town and tells everyone that this man she met comes from God, that this teacher delivers the goods – the message that answers every question they ever had, the salve that soothes every wound, the water that fills every heart to overflowing. And these poor people, on the margins of Israel, in a desert land of scarcity and hard-living, get it so strongly that Jesus stays with them two days. These poor village people, living on the margins, have ears to hear what the urban establishment, the rich, powerful and secure people do not: that Jesus speaks a truth that reveals the Spirit of God, and that, bringing this Spirit, he is the savior of the world.

In these two stories from the Gospel of John – that of Nicodemus and of the unnamed Samaritan woman – we are meant to see what gets in the way between us and God. Things we cling to get in the way, things we are afraid to lose. These two stories contrast someone who has much to lose, and so chooses to stay in darkness, with someone who recklessly leaves everything behind to tell the good news of what she has seen and heard. So often, like Nicodemus, we let complicated things get in the way. The reality of God’s love, God’s presence, God’s living water is far simpler and more straightforward than we often allow. That is Paul’s point in his letter to the Romans. God comes to us in our human condition – in our sinfulness and suffering, in our ordinariness, in our shortcomings, in our failures. It is nothing we deserve; God just loves us.

So drink of the living water. There is plenty of it, for all eternity. It has nothing to do with success or how much money you have or what street you live on. Your daily life might be measured by these things, meted out like drops of water on the planet Dune. The spring of living water is different from that. It gushes and rushes, it is wasteful and profligate and never comes to and end. From that fountain we can drink to our hearts’ content.

The Lengthening of Surprizing Grace

We read a series of wonderful stories this Lent, stories which emphasize the wideness of God's mercy, the expansiveness of grace, the profligacy of love. These are stories of Jesus having improbable conversations with all sorts of people: the establishment leader Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman at the margins of society, the blind beggar by the side of the pool, and finally the dead Lazarus whom Jesus calls to come out of the tomb. This is not the vision of Lent we expect -- not the repent from your sins, nose to the floor kind of Lent. This is a Lent of repentance, meaning of turning around: turning around from the prisons that bind us, prisons of our own making or the prisons in which social expectations place us. It is a Lent of turning from death to life. Not an easy journey, but easier than you may think ...

Lent 2A Feb. 17, 2008 St. Paul’s

Genesis 12:1-4a; Psalm 121; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17

"The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes."

I’ve told this story before, about camping in a motor home, when our three older children were small. We were awakened around 5 or 6 in morning by a sound like that of an oncoming train. The towering pine trees among us were bending and breaking; the wind shook the vehicle. We heard cracking and whooshing, the sound of a powerful wind through the branches and needles, and then, quiet. No trees hit our heads, but the door was blocked by a fallen tree and another crushed the top of our car. A child we knew down the road had his foot broken by a tree that fell on his tent. A few miles away, a father died, sleeping next to his family, as their tent was crushed by a tree.

We certainly experienced that wind – the meteorologists called it a “micro-burst” – not a tornado but a wall of wind – but we could not even imagine controlling it. We didn’t know where it came from, or where it went, although in some places in the woods you can still see the uprooted trees. And try as we might to understand why this happened, we could not even begin.

You can tell I often think about this experience. It comes to mind when I am facing something I do not understand, or when something powerful happens to me that I cannot predict or control. When I need to imagine something not in human terms, but on the scale of how God works.

When Nicodemus came to Jesus, under the cover of darkness – was that so no one else would see him? Or is that just a symbolic device to illustrate to us just how little Nicodemus understands? –when Nicodemus came to Jesus, it was as a representative of the establishment, of the old guard – “old school” as young people say now. Nicodemus, as a friendly voice from the old guard came to Jesus and said, Just what are you doing, and don’t you think you could damp it down a bit?

Not a chance, Jesus said. If you are interested in what God is doing, the only way is to be born from above.

Born again? Nicodemus asks, misunderstanding Jesus’ word – missing the point entirely. Nicodemus thinks Jesus is talking in human, experiential, existential terms – “the kitchen table exists because I scrub it” kind of terms. To think so humanly, so literally, well, of course it does not make sense to be born again. How can that be? Nicodemus has a stake in the way things are for the religious establishment; he benefits – he sees no reason to change, to see anything in any new way.

No, Jesus says, you must be born from above. It’s like that wind that blew out of Canada that morning years ago. The Spirit blows where it will, and those who live in the realm of God experience that same powerful, uncontrollable, life-changing Spirit. Once you feel that Spirit, you cannot go back to old, predictable ways. It is those old ways that lead to death – if we live merely human, merely predictable lives, of course we will perish. We will have nothing else. But if we allow ourselves to be swept up in God’s uncontrollable and unpredictable Spirit, if we live the way God would have us live, it will lead us to eternal life.

I think Jesus is astounded that Nicodemus doesn’t get it – doesn’t get it that life in God’s Spirit is a great adventure in which we give up control of where the Spirit will take us. I think Jesus is astounded that such a teacher of Israel would forget a lesson so basic to the formative stories of the Jewish people. We read that story today: the story of Abram and Sarai leaving home to follow God’s promises of blessing and abundance. God was telling them to leave everything familiar behind – everything humanly possible – everything beloved and old and time-worn and traditional. To stay behind meant no future – no children, no descendents, no nation, no blessing. It was only when they left it all, when they followed the Spirit of God blowing like that uncontrollable windstorm – then and only then, God says, will this come to pass that in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

Remember that story of Abram and Sarai when you think God is asking you to do something impossible. Remember that blessing that blew their way on that powerful wind. Remember that Nicodemus stayed in darkness when he could have had eternal life. Remember that, when you take your next big risk, when you feel on the edge of the precipice, that God is the ground on which you take your next step.

The Surprizing Wilderness

Lent 1 A Feb. 10, 2008 St. Paul’s

Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7 Psalm 32

Romans 5:12-19 Matthew 4:1-11

After Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River, the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness. He ate nothing for 40 days, and at the end of that time, the devil came to him with three temptations, that if he only did these three things, life would be good. The devil promised him money (all the bread he would ever need), power (all the kingdoms of the world would be under his rule) and protection – and at this point the Gospel sounds a lot like a plot from The Sopranos. Money, power, protection – if you just do what Tony Soprano says and don’t get anyone angry.

All three lessons today deal with sin – and I am afraid sin is something that is very much with us. Life on the streets, like life in the wilderness, is hard. You can see all the temptations just walking out our doors. Buy that bottle of whiskey, that bag of dope. Get angry at the least thing. Be suspicious, greedy, devious. The lessons today deal not with the mild sins of omission – the things we have left undone – but those big things we know all too well that we have done all too often.

And where did sin come from? St. Paul lays out the classic argument that lies at the basis of Western civilization: it was Adam, in his disobedience, who did it all. Adam’s curse. Adam’s fall. Jesus, the sinless one, through the grace of God, reverses that curse, restores us to our loving relationship with God, gives us a second chance.

But what a story we have in the gospel, which is a bit more nuanced than St. Paul’s letter to the Romans. The gospel story is the story of temptation. I think it is wrong to read into these lines that this temptation in the wilderness was easy for Jesus. Remember, Jesus, the son of God, is fully human, vulnerable to be tempted, vulnerable to sin. Money, power, protection: Jesus, the human being, knows just as strongly as we do why those things are appealing.

The word in German for “temptation” is versuchung. Literally, it means a mis-search. A mistaken quest. The word for “search” is suchen; a quest is die Suche. So a temptation is a search that goes awry, a search for something in the wrong place. Jesus did go on a search in the wilderness, and indeed in his ministry, he was concerned with money – mostly dealing with people who had very little – and with power – although he said his power was not that of this world – and with protection – with healing and care for the poor, the marginalized, the forgotten. So yes, the devil was right in that Jesus went out into the wilderness to search for things that included what to do about money, power and protection. But Jesus was right in knowing that the versions of those things offered by the devil were things that would take him further from God, not closer to God, who is, after all, the subject of all our quests and longings and searches.

Sin is not only about disobedience and punishment. It is not always about breaking rules, for we all know plenty of people who sin mightily, right out in the open, perhaps even following the letter of the law. People who have power behind them, people who have money, people who can be protected after they sin. Mostly, though, our sins are smaller, more mundane, slips of the tongue, little power plays, the desire to put my ego before the other person’s, my needs ahead of someone else’s. The list goes on and on.

But what sin is really about is distancing ourselves from God, and I don’t mean God as a little voice of conscience sitting on our shoulder. I mean God as our loving creator, who put us in this world to care for it as God intended it to be cared for, God who has already given us more than all the power and protection Satan’s money can buy.

The gospel lessons for Lent this year are stories that underscore just how much God loves us, and how much God tries and tries to get up close to us. We will read a series of stories from the Gospel of John: the story of Nicodemus, to whom Jesus says, you must be born of water and the spirit. The story of the Samaritan woman at the well, with whom Jesus discusses the water of eternal life. The story of Jesus restoring sight to the man blind from birth. And finally the story that sets in motion the events surrounding Jesus’ arrest, the story of the raising of Lazarus from the dead. The stories of our Holy Lent this year are not stories of sin and disobedience, but of light, and love, and hope, and promise, stories of God coming to us time and time again, just to get us to turn around and get close. I invite you to the observance of this Holy Lent, a time of surprising grace. The angels will come and wait on us.