St. Michael and All Angels
Easter Sunday April 24, 2011
Preacher: Christopher McLaren
Text: Matthew: 28: 1-10
Theme: Paschal Joke
I wish to acknowledge my debt for the concept and flow of this sermon to Brother Martin Smith whose writing and theology has enriched my life for years.

Historians of the Church inform us that as late as the 18th Century in Germany, preaching on Easter Day held out a peculiar requirement.  Lutheran preachers still felt bound by an ancient custom on this day.  Custom prescribed that the sermon should begin with a joke, known as the risus pachalis, “the paschal joke.”  It is not hard to imagine the solemn pastor fiddling with his preaching tabs nervously in the pulpit, cracking a rare smile and beginning his Easter homily with “Have you heard the one about…? Or, “A funny thing happened on my way to the pub…”

Botanists have managed to grow plants from seeds found wrapped in mummies of Pharaohs, and perhaps this ancient and forgotten custom of the paschal joke still has some life in it as well.  Why a joke on Easter morning?  Why an attempt at humor on this joyous festival day?  For those who have ears to hear, the joke tells us that what follows – the news of the empty tomb and proclamation of the resurrection of Jesus – is a joke God plays on us.  In one way it is impossible to take the resurrection seriously.  It really is laughable, isn’t it?  Or is it?  The question remains, what is the joke and do we get it?

Death is no laughing matter and never has been.  When a human dies and goes into the ground that is that.  We don’t generally wait around for the person to reappear and take up where we left off – not on this side of the grave anyway.  But even so, there is this persistent dream of life beyond the grave.  Our forebears who invented agriculture found that the rhythm of their life as farmers brought them to the edge of solemn mysteries.  If the dry seed could be buried and then burst forth with tender green life and bear fruit, what about a human being, what about the corpses of men and women buried in the earth?  So, they buried their dead with all manner of ceremony and preparations sometimes burying them in boats for the journey through the netherworld or including things they might need on the other side like food, flowers, trinkets of all kinds and weapons.  All of this was done with the blind hope that perhaps the dying and rising of the corn or the new grain was a hint, a clue to the mystery of the universe that there was indeed life beyond the grave and what the eye could see.

The symbol of resurrection found expression in myths of gods who died and came to life, myths and rituals the encompassed the cycles of life and death around the harvest, the funeral rites that mourned short human lives and wove around them dreams of paradise beyond.  By Jesus’ day the lines were already drawn, much as we find them today, between those who condemn the symbol as illusory and deceptive and those who find it compelling and full of hope.  In Jesus’ day it was the Sadducees who were the conservatives about this, expressing their pessimism about it openly and encouraging others to mistrust the whole prospect of life beyond the grave.  The Pharisees on the other hand, held out hope for the resurrection of the dead as a remote prospect happening far into the future at the end of time.  Above all, resurrection was for the more liberal minded Pharisees a requirement for the last judgment – God would have to raise the dead if everyone was going to be present for the Great Trial at the end of time.

Resurrection is a disputed question and has been for ages.  It is for some an ambiguous symbol expressing human ambivalence about the finality of death.  However much we human say we accept death, it seem that we cannot help projecting into some distant, mythic future the possibility of restoration to life, in the symbol of the rising of the body from the grave.  

And on a particular Sunday morning, God did something absurd in the face of all the controversy and solemnity about death.  God took our symbol literally.  God did something scandalous and for some offensive to their sense of propriety and their understanding of the spiritual.  God decided to enter the debate about resurrection in a whole new way, as if to say, “having trouble with that rascally symbol of resurrection?  Well how about this, look at my beloved Jesus.  Now you see him, now you don’t.  One grave empty, the rest to follow, stay tuned.  

The joke is that human beings like their symbols to stay symbolic.  Undoubtedly that is why every year several books are published that endeavor to return the concept of resurrection to the realm of the symbolic and away from this tomfoolery of empty tombs and grave clothes lying about.  The resurrection they say, and have been for years is a “legend.”  The writers of these learned theological books all adopt a rather injured tone.   The resurrection should symbolize the enduring and uplifting effect of Jesus’ teaching in the hearts of believers, or express dramatically that Jesus is now an exalted spiritual leader for many.  These scholars are embarrassed or infuriated its hard to tell which sometimes at the naiveté and stubbornness of those ordinary preachers and faithful Christians who keep celebrating the emptiness of the tomb with rest of the disciples, and the women, especially Mary.  They are incredulous about why we don’t embrace their message – the resurrection is such a beautiful metaphor in and of itself, there is really no reason why we must insist on anything special or unnatural happening to the corpse of Jesus.  

But perhaps they have missed something; perhaps they just don’t get the joke?  Maybe we who believe in the empty tomb are simply captivated by the audacity and boldness of God’s sense of humor.  Who but the God of Jesus would think of such a wild joke to take humanity up on its fascination with resurrection, blowing a hole in the middle of human history and human thought? Resurrection not as a tame and distant symbol but rather as powerful reality, a tear in the fabric of the universe that exposes God’s hidden purposes for all that he has made.  

The story of Christ’s passion, his crucifixion and burial are all about human power over God.  We, yes our sinful humanity took God’s expression of God’s very self, nailed it down, killed it, and buried it.  We took the Son of God and tried to push him out of the world.  But the funny this is, just when we thought we had him contained, entombed and out of the way for good, suddenly the stone was rolled away and …. Nothing, nada, Gone! As Martin Smith says the whole thing is in terribly bad taste, as if God were to play Houdini.  God get free.  He escapes.  His mission impossible is accomplished.  The grave is empty, and the shroud and head cloth are folded neatly.  Martha Stewart would be proud.  The Lord of all creation seems to wink at us, behaving like a thoughtful houseguest who doesn’t leave the bedclothes scattered about the room when he leaves.  

Jesus is free to leave the tomb, and that means that we lost.  We failed to keep God contained or shut him up even by dragging him into our death.  But this is a very strange game after all.  By losing, we win.  The result of it all is that the rules have changed.  The universe is different.  God is free to punch a hole in the fabric of reality with resurrection and what is more he intends for us all to follow Jesus through this opening into his arms open arms.  The hole in the universe has a tremendous gravitational pull drawing us all into the life and being of God.  Jesus says, “I am ascending to my Father, and your Father, to my God and your God.”

By losing we win.  The joke of the resurrection is on us.  God plays this masterful joke on us by taking us up on our dream of resurrection just once for Jesus his beloved.  And you either get the joke or you don’t.   If you get the joke you realize that life can be full of holy laughter.  You begin to realize that those who want to insist that resurrection is merely symbolic and that “Of course the tomb wasn’t actually empty” really are rather humorless and unimaginative sorts.  

Realizing that the joke of the resurrection is on us, makes the Gospel’s playful accounts of the disciples varied encounters with the Risen Lord full of humor and sense of comedy.  In John, Mary mistakes Jesus for the Gardener?  Was he sporting a large floppy sun hat and a pair of pruning sheers strapped to his side?  And what about Jesus cooking breakfast on the beach for his tired disciples, offering the first breakfast of a new creation in the light of the resurrection? Or Jesus as the mystery traveler on the road to Emmaus, and then performing a disappearing act at the dinner table? These are strange and comical stories.  They are stories of people who are lighthearted and feel the wonderful freedom to make the joke they have heard from the mouth of God even funnier in the retelling.  

So laugh this day, don’t be afraid to laugh down in your soul in your very bones.  Feel the laughter of the universe, the hilarity of the hole God has punched in the fabric of time and space with the joke of Jesus resurrection.  Laugh out loud if you want, laugh for joy, laugh at Jesus wearing a funny floppy gardener’s hat, laugh at Jesus minding the BBQ on the beach and eating fish, laugh because you have hope, a wild hope that death is not the end of the story.  Laugh because you get the joke, God’s love is stronger than death.  Laugh as you bath in the hilarious light of the Risen One.  Laugh and dance for the story that seemed a tragedy has become a comedy, for Christ is Alive.  That is the joke and a joke we can keep telling until we find ourselves dancing and laughing will all the saints at the end of time.

I wish to acknowledge my debt for the concept and flow of this Easter sermon which I borrowed liberally from Brother Martin Smith, SSJE whose writing and theology has enriched my life for years. May we all know the Holy Laughter of Christ’s resurrection deep in our bones.

We're sorry, the full text for this sermon is not available at this time.

In elementary school I had a good friend who was a Roman Catholic.  While our friendship was tolerated by our parents, I certainly couldn’t attend church with her or she with me.  If she were a boy, our friendship would not have been tolerated because the potential of dating would be an intolerable thought.  But Mary Miller and I talked about church and God and Jesus because those were important elements in our lives.  I wore a plain gold cross around my neck and Mary wore a crucifix.  In our conversations, we realized her church did not have a cross without Christ crucified and in my church there was not a crucifix to be found.  I asked my grandfather about this and he replied simply: “They are more into the suffering and we are more into the saving.”  

That answer satisfied me then, mainly because whenever my quiet grandfather answered my questions, I listened.  Now I know there is much more to the issue of suffering and salvation than an either-or answer.   Much of Jesus’ life and teaching rests on paradox.  Jesus challenges us to live in tension:  the first will be last, lose your life to gain it, the burden is light, those who come late will be paid the same as those who worked hard all day.  His very human death was no different: Suffering is a way to salvation.  

The cross symbolizes suffering and salvation.  Today we embrace the suffering.  And although we know the end of the story, today we sit at the foot of Christ being crucified.  As a child it may have felt good to have the clean cross of victory and salvation, but I learned you cannot live without the flip side of the crucifixion.  This very emotional day tells us precisely that: we cannot have one without the other.  It is something to contemplate.  In pursuit of that, I give you two questions to ponder.
The first question is:  Why are you here?  The second is:  What is saving you today?
 Why are you here?  What brings you to this place on this black Friday they call Good Friday?  Are you here out of habit because this is simply what you do during Holy Week?  Is it because Fr. Christopher told you to go for a home run?  Is it for an emotional high or low?  

Are you here because you, too, are feeling crucified and want company?  Or is it because you simply wonder about this day and are trying to understand what the Gospeler John meant when he wrote: “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son…” What kind of God do we have anyway?

Is there a more subtle reason?  Do you have this nagging feeling that perhaps you have not been able to hold your ground in this post-Christian era and too many times you were guilty of shouting “crucify him” without saying the words out loud.  Perhaps your actions didn’t reflect your heart.  Perhaps it was just easier to keep your mouth shut than to open it and reflect the heart of Christ.  Perhaps you are here to just say to God that you are sorry.

Well, there are as many reasons for being here as there are persons in this place.  Times haven’t changed.   In the 4th century there was a pilgrim named Etheria (or Egeria or Sylvia…we are not sure or her name) who travelled from Spain to Jerusalem and kept an extensive diary which included the events of Holy Week in the Holy City.

In her account of Good Friday, she relates that when it came time to venerate the cross, the Bishop seated himself at a table behind the large crossbeam, holding the beam firmly in both hands.  Two hefty deacons stationed themselves at either end of the beam as the faithful came by to kiss the cross in memory of Jesus’ sufferings.  Etheria writes that this precaution resulted from an incident several years earlier when a pious pilgrim, anxious for a relic, took a bite out of the cross instead of kissing it.    

I agree with the commentator who says this story holds a warning for us.  As we gather here to remember Jesus’ death, we must guard against becoming that ancient pilgrim with strong teeth and splinters in his gums.  We could say, “Look!  I was there!  I can tell you about the emotions, the music, the words, the silences.”  I showed up.

Whatever brings us here, Jesus on the cross is our common ground.  Why are you here?  Are you a pilgrim looking for a relic?  Are you a casual visitor searching for answers?  There are answers at the foot of the cross.  But how does one sort out the intense suffering and the resulting salvation?  Here is one analogy:  Think of yourself as parents who are bedside of their very sick child and are praying to God to let them bear the pain instead of their child, not because they are masochistic or guilty, but simply because they love the one who is suffering.  

Today’s Good Friday Liturgy invites us to embrace the suffering of Jesus on the cross as we would the pain of a family member or friend we love deeply. (Read quote from Nouwen’s Road to Daybreak)   And through our prayers in this service we are invited to embrace not only Jesus’ suffering, but the suffering of our brothers and sisters throughout the world.  A commentator continues, “The cross is raised before us, not as a souvenir taken down from the shelf and dusted off for our admiration, but as the bed of our suffering brother, who incarnates and bears the world’s pain.”

“Like all the events of his life, the death of Jesus stands as our judgment.  We can respond to it like curious tourists, who look and then move on, little changed except for some painful splinters.  Or we can recognize the face of the one we love, though ‘marred beyond human appearance,’ and embrace his pain as ours,  In that embrace, we find our own pain enfolded in God’s love, united with the world’s pain and healed because Christ first loved us and embraced our pain.”  (Author unknown.  Excerpt beginning with story Etheria comes from Homily Service: An Ecumenical Resource for Sharing the Word, Vol.20, No.1, April 1987,pp. 27-28)

Why are you here today?  My second question folds into the first:  What is saving you now?  I was away from the parish for most of Lent.  As a Lenten study, many here read Barbara Brown Taylor’s book An Altar in the World.    I read it a couple of years ago when it first came out and frankly had not reread it for our communal study.  But when I picked up the book last week, I found I had highlighted the story in the introduction where Ms Taylor relates that she was invited to preach on the topic of “what is saving your life now.”  BBT writes, “It was as if he(the priest)had swept his arm across a dusty table and brushed all the formal china to the ground.  I did not have to try to say correct things that were true for everyone.  I did not have to use theological language that conformed to the historical teachings of the church.  All I had to do was figure out what my life depended on.  All I had to do was figure out how I stayed as close to that reality as I could, and then find some way to talk about is that helped my listeners figure those same things for themselves.  The answers I gave all those years ago are not the same answers I would give today—that is the beauty of the question….the principle is the same.  What is saving my life now is the conviction that there is no spiritual treasure to be found apart from the bodily experiences of human life on earth.” (unquote,p.xv)

No spiritual treasure exists apart from the bodily experiences of human life on earth.  That is precisely what Jesus taught by his life and death.  We say:  Jesus is my Lord and Savior.  Jesus saved me.  What does that mean?  How is Jesus your Savior?  How is Jesus your Salvation?  What does he teach?  What does Jesus say to you?  What does his suffering on the cross and death do to save you?

What, indeed, is saving you now?  Now, this moment.  The answer can and will change.  Here are only  a few things I have discovered for myself.  It isn’t a job that saves me.  For years I depended on my various job identities in church work to explain to the world who I was.  It isn’t my good looks.  I still have a great smile that has blasted me through and saved me a lot of times.  But I am, friends, growing older and am shaped differently and I have a decided limp.  Good looks aren’t going to save me.  Alcohol saved me from reality for many years.  It helped me to get away from inner pain, to go somewhere else.  It no longer saves me, it will in fact kill me if I abuse it.  

I say Jesus is my Savior.  What do I mean?  I mean just that.  Jesus teaches me how to live in paradox, how to live mindfully each moment in this world if I simply pay attention.  It’s pretty simple because it’s about embracing the suffering in a circle of love that reflects God’s love to me and to the world.  It is about relationships.  It is living out the great commandment to love God with all your heart and mind and soul.   And if you love God, you must surely love God’s creation, this earth, our planet home.  I felt it more than ironic that during this Holy Week we remembered the first anniversary of the Gulf spill, that we continue to read of the impact of nuclear power uncontrolled in Japan, and today is in fact Earth Day.   I find it hard to believe that my husband Fred as a reporter covered the first Earth Day in 1970 in Bloomington,Indiana.
 Another sermon might be:  Are we crucifying the earth which is, in fact, the same as crucifying God?  More simply, sitting at the foot of the cross, we might ask ourselves if we are playing any part in causing the earth’s suffering.  Are we, in fact, connected to everyone and everything, by the arms of Jesus stretched out on the cross?  That is connected, of course, to the rest of the great commandment.  Jesus says, to love the Lord your God with all you heart and mind and soul.  The second is like unto it:  love your neighbor as you love yourself.  Can you love your neighbor, can you love God if you don’t love yourself?

Can you embrace the suffering?  Can you prepare yourself to walk from the foot of the cross and through the cross knowing you are not alone?  Can you wear a two sided cross of suffering and salvation on your chest and in your heart?

Why are you here?  What is saving you now?  Amen

The Maundy Thursday service is one of endings and beginnings.  What was begun on Ash Wednesday is brought to a close here tonight.  What begins tonight does not end until the resurrection of Easter.  It is the ancient Triduum: “The Three Sacred Days,” which lead us to Easter:  Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday:

Listen to the words of our gospel story:        
    
“Jesus got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself.  Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples feet     and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him.”

He came to Simon Peter who said to him, ”You will never wash my feet.”
    Jesus answered, “UNLESS I WASH YOU, YOU HAVE NO SHARE WITH     ME.”
    Later, after Jesus had finished washing all the disciples feet he said this:
    
“So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.  For I have set you an example,  that you also should do as I     have done to you.”

We note that Jesus did not wash the disciples feet when they first arrived.  Foot washing was very much a hospitable act of the day.  The guest would arrive for dinner and their feet would be dusty and dirty from the day’s travel.  Of course the host would not wash the guest’s feet, but a servant would do so.  But Jesus takes this simple act and creates something different in its meaning.  He waits until they are in the middle of their meal and then he stops eating and performs the task during the meal.  
Jesus was drawing attention to something much more profound than just a gesture of hospitality.

When Jesus takes the feet of the disciples and lovingly cleans and dries them, it is an act of beautiful relationship.  Jesus proclaims to each one, individually, that they are intimately connected with him.  

When Jesus reaches Peter, he meets with resistance. Peter is not rebuked for refusing to wash someone’s feet.  He is rebuked for refusing to let Jesus wash his feet. Peter expresses for many of us – that feeling of awkwardness in having someone else wash our feet.  It is easier for us to wash someone else’s feet than to expose our own vulnerability by having another care tenderly for us. .

A couple of years ago, I was sitting outside a Catholic school waiting for my grandchildren to come out and I happened to notice a sign outside the church building.  It read in Spanish:  “Deja que Dios te ame! which translated means:  ALLOW GOD TO LOVE YOU!!!!!!

Many of you know that this has become a phrase that I have taken to heart very personally and often use it in my own ministry to others --  the reason being that these words really are profound.  If you were to put this into the first person you would say:  Dejo que Dios te ami: meaning:  I allow God to love me!!!!!

Think about this for a minute.  We know that God is Love, but what would it mean to all of our lives if we truly could began each day by saying:  I ALLOW GOD TO LOVE ME TODAY!!!!!!

Just this last week I was asked to pray for someone who is having a very difficult time.  I had suggested that this person begin the day by saying I allow God to love me this day.  The following morning I was asked – Just how do I go about allowing God to love me?

It made me pause for a moment and then I realized that the answer is PRACTICE!!! PRACTICE is how we learn to allow God go love us.  Everyday, we have to practice surrender, we have to practice willingness, gratitude, openness, honesty, and trust!  THAT’S HOW WE PRACTICE EACH DAY - ALLOWING GOD TO LOVE US.

I like the words of Jean Vanier from the l’Arche community in France living with those who are mentally challenged.  He reminds us: “that Jesus came to bring good news to the poor, not to those who serve the poor.”  AND WE ARE POOR – ALL OF US –IN NEED OF GOD’S LOVE.  Vanier goes on to say: “I do not believe that we can truly enter into our own need for healing and open our hearts to others unless we have an experience of allowing God to touch us.”

Do you remember the beautiful lyrics of the Musical Les Miserables, based on the touching story of Jean Valjean set at the time of the French Revolution?  Jean is finally released after being sent to prison for 19 years simply for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister’s child who was starving and close to death.

Finally NUMBER 24601 is released but still on probation and no matter where Valjean turns he is met with recrimination – given half the pay for the work he does, and finds every door closed to him as well as being refused a night’s sleep in a barn.

Then Jean Valjean sits down despairingly outside a house from which emerges the Bishop of Digne – who comes out and says to Valjean:
    “Come in, Sir, for you are weary,
    And the night is cold out there.
    Though our lives are very humble
    What we have, we have to share.
    
    There is wine here to revive you
    There is bread to make you strong.
    There’s a bed to rest till morning,
    Rest from pain, and rest from wrong.

When Valjean then steals the silver from the bishop’s house the next morning and is brought back by two constables, here is what the Bishop says:
    
    “But my friend you left so early
    Surely something slipped your mind.
    You forgot I gave these also
    Would you leave the best behind?  
(And the bishop gives Valjean two silver candlesticks as well)  The Bishop truly becomes an example of the Christ figure giving so much to wash away the pain and wrong from Valjean’s life!

And then the Bishop addresses Valjean one final time –
    “But remember this, my brother,
    See in this some higher plan,
    You must use this precious silver,
    To become an honest man.
    By the witness of the martyrs,
    By the Passion and the Blood,
    God has raised you out of darkness,
    I HAVE BOUGHT YOUR SOUL FOR GOD!!!!!

Like the Bishop of Digne – ready to follow the commandment of Jesus who says to each of us:  “As I have washed your feet, so you are to wash one anothers’ feet”

Valjean has some of the same reaction that Peter had with feelings of unworthiness -- when the Bishop reaches out and ministers in love to him-- we hear Valjean saying to himself:
    
    “Sweet Jesus, what have I done?
    Become a thief in the night?
    Become a dog on the run
    And have I fallen so far
    And is the hour so late
    That nothing remains but the cry of my hate?

    Yet why did I allow that man
    To touch my soul and teach me love?
    He treated me like any other
    He gave me his trust
    He called me brother
    My life he claims for God above
    
The disciples are called to this foot washing to share in the relationship that Jesus and God have with one another.  The foot washing becomes a symbol of hope to each one of us.

When we participate in this moment of the sacred we are experiencing God’s love for us through another as we allow our feet to be washed and we are at the same time called to take off our outer robe, wrap a towel around ourselves -- to minister to those in our community -- to share our hope with another.

When we come together on this night, we meet to remember Christ’s example of servant-hood by washing one another’s feet;  in that remembrance He becomes present with us as surely as He is in the breaking of the bread!  Washing away the pain and the wounds from each of us.

We will wash each other’s feet tonight, not because we want to pretend we are in the upper room two thousand years ago but rather because Jesus showed us that washing feet is what loving one another looks like and what allowing God to love us looks like.  
God’s love is big enough to include the whole sorrowing, hurting world, but it is also exact enough to address each and every one of us personally and individually.

ALLOW GOD TO LOVE US –EACH OF US –THROUGH ONE ANOTHER.  This must become our PRACTICE --Say to yourself as you prepare for this sacred time tonight:  “I ALLOW GOD TO LOVE ME-- DEJO QUE DIOS TE AMI”!!!!!

AMEN

The look on one’s face can express many thoughts and emotions.  Happiness, sadness, anger or even love.  While Deacon Judith was reading the Gospel, I watched the look on your faces as you listened to this story that has been told every year for over 2000 years.  A story that is simultaneously so familiar and yet so distant.   

What look comes over your face when you hear of that amazing young Jewish man, who welcomed the outcast, loved everyone he met, touched the sick, embraced the lonely, is betrayed, tortured, hung on a cross, dies slowly, and then becomes life for each one of us.  

Do you look at the cross in wonder or has it become so familiar that it has become another symbol or even fashion design.  We wear it on vestments, necklaces, rings and earrings.  We have it tattooed; it sits atop buildings and even carved into headstones.  

After hearing that story, an instrument of torture that represented a excruciating death now becomes a simple symbol of hope, a symbol of God.  Think of it, how more telling can those two pieces of wood be.  Two beams, one vertical signifying the relationship between God and his creation; reaching out and reaching back.   

The horizontal beam signifying our relationship with one another, reaching toward the person next to you.  And the bottom, the rough worn out place where the wood of the cross touches the earth and radiates out into the world.  And at the center, where the two pieces converge is Christ, God and humanity tied together by love.    

This realization came into view a few weeks back in a conversation with a friend.  Mark prides himself in his independence, which includes independence from the Church.  Yet he needed someone to talk to.  I could see he had been crying.  He explained that he lost the love of his life due to a series of bad decisions on the part of both of them.  

He could not make sense of the pain, how something that had given him so much joy was now tearing at the depths of his being.  As he was leaving, he pointed to a small crucifixion in my office and with a look of despair on his face said “and tell me how that makes any sense?” God sends his son to suffer, all you church people are happy here in church, yet there are killings, wars, discrimination, tsunamis, people out there hurting one another.  I thought this was supposed to solve all that.  

At first I did not know what to say, was that cross the great eraser that is supposed to wipe away all the pain.  And then I thought of an article, that allowed me to remember the meaning of that cross, not as an eraser, but a healing balm.   

Brian Doyle wrote about a young girl named Isabel and Ms. Doyle was Isabel’s art teacher in the hospital.  Isabel was 4 years old when she got unbelievably sick. At 5 years old she stunningly wonderfully got well. When she was 6 years old she got even sicker than before and soon she died.

She was buried in a nearby cemetery so that her parents could be close.  Her coffin was small and when it was lowered into the ground, one of the ropes slipped and her coffin tilted.   Her baby brother burst out laughing and then he wept and wailed like a child has never wept before.

The author’s wife spent much of the previous year with Isabel in the Hospital.  As Isabel got sicker and endured oceans of pain and grew more swollen and weary by the day, his wife, the day before Isabel died sprawled on the grass, weeping like never before. She cried out – “Isabel is being crucified. Everything they do to her hurts. It's torture. Why do they torture her so? All little crucifixions.

Isabel just accepts it. She never complains. She has that look on her face.  She just stares at us with that stare from another planet. She gets crucified every day and no one can stop it. All the little children being crucified. I can't bear it anymore. They just look at me. Why does this happen? Why does this happen?”

As I told this story, Mark had this look on his face of compassion.  For one instant, it  seemed as if the images and pain of all the crucifixions in this world seemed to float through our collective thoughts.   All these tiny crucifixions in the world, Isabel, children killing each other because of gangs and drugs, loved ones who believe suicide is the only way out,  children sold into prostitution or how a precious child of close friends, is killed in his backyard this past week because he was tormented by schizophrenia.  

All these tiny crucifixions.  What could I say?  Some theological babble or psychological soothing?  Any word is insufficient.  How do I explain a mother watching her son be tortured and nailed to a cross and then holding him in her arms; there are no words for what she felt. A mother watches her daughter suffer in the hospital as she slowly dies, and she holds her in her arms and there are no words for how she feels.  How do I explain that tomorrow our friends will bury their precious son and as they touch his casket there are no words for how they feel.

We looked at that broken body on the cross, and the only word, the only look was that of love.  Love, the only explanation for the unexplainable. This nonsensical, illogical, unreasonable, insupportable, improvable conviction that one time a long time ago a thin young mysterious eloquent Jewish man was crucified and died and then he came alive again in a way that no one understood then and no one understands now.

God looking down, not wanting us to be alone, sharing in our journey in this world.  Understanding the tremendous pains and the indescribable joys of life.  God’s voice whispering "You are my creation and I know you well."  Because God, in Christ, not only knows us,  but has lived among us—has been one of us.  All because of a  look of love on Gods face, hoping that the love will be reflected in ours.  

And what is amazing is that if you really listen to this passion story, you will see your life reflected in that last week. In this story, God is closer to us, to our lives, than ever before, all our tiny crucifixions hung on his cross.   Think of it, friends loving us one minute, like the joy of Hosanna into Jerusalem and then deserting us in our desolate gardens.  Jesus life like ours, the struggle with brokenness, uncertainty, breaking bread with his friends, betrayal, jealousy, questioning God, fear, loneliness, abandonment, pain, suffering, crucifixion, darkness.   Yet, always transformation and a knowing of eternal hope.

This story of a young Jewish man nailed to a cross, a mother crying in pain, an empty tomb makes sense because we are reassured that God knows what it is like to be human.  The amazing, unbelievable story that we are loved by God, a loving who gave up a heavenly crown in order to wear a crown thorns.  All because God wanted to see that look of love on all of our faces, for each one of us to know that Easter is coming.

There is a poem that captures God desire to see the expression on our face:  Have you ever wondered why God gives so much?  We could exist on far less.  He could have left the world flat and gray; we wouldn’t have known the difference but he didn’t.  He splashed orange in the sunrise and cast the sky in blue.  And if you love to see geese as they gather, Chances are that you’ll see that too.

Did he have to make the squirrel’s tail furry? Was he obliged to make the birds sing?
And the funny way that chickens scurry Or the majesty of thunder when it rings?
Why give a flower a fragrance? Why give food its taste? Could it be that he loves to see that look upon your face.

God could of walked away and never allowed the divine to become human,  Why send his son to empty himself, and die on the cross.  But he did not, he loved the look on our face when we are happy, and sent his son.  Mark smiled and said, I guess I cannot explain love, so I guess that cross thing kinda makes sense.   

Somehow it does, because for all the tiny crucifixions, there is an understanding that a knowing God is with us, and understands.  There are no explanations only those beams that reach up and out.   So for Mark, Isabel, Christopher and others.  We cannot explain it, all we can do is tiptoe into Isabel's room, and spread out all the holy colors on her bed, and make her laugh, and sing her grace under duress.  

All we can do for Mark is walk with him as he takes those solitary steps into a new world.  All we do for Christopher’s mother is hold her hand as she tearfully says goodbye to her youngest son.   Because somehow, in ways we cannot explain, love conquers all. God has proven it with his son, and with Isabel and Christopher.  They will come alive again, each one of us will live again, and there will be a light, the light of Christ on all our faces for which there are no words, only a look of love.

*I would like to acknowledge Brian Doyle for his beautiful article “The Terrible Brilliance for the use of Isabel’s Story and Max Lucado for the poem.

St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church  
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Sunday April 10, 2011 Lent 5A
Text: John 11: 1-45 Lazarus
Theme: Love’s Procrastination

Jesus is summoned with the words, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” From the very word go this story turns on affection. Love will bring Jesus to Lazarus. Love beckons in the voices of the sisters. But there is also fear in this story. Fear that may send chills down your spine or recall you to difficult memories.  Each of us has a connection with this strange story. We know the fear and the ache of hearing that someone we love has been admitted to the hospital or has been diagnosed with an illness. “The one whom you love is ill.”

From the passage we learn that Jesus loved the whole family, and yet when he received the news of Lazarus’ illness he does not drop everything and hustle off to Bethany. No, Jesus lingers for two more days before setting out for Judea where his friend’s home was. Why this procrastination? Certainly none of us have procrastinating types in our lives? One reason may have been that Jesus was not especially welcome in Judea. The religious authorities were after him and his disciples were worried that he would be arrested and killed if he dared to travel close to Jerusalem. Yet eventually Jesus chooses to go, his love for his friend overcoming the danger of the trip. So Love’s procrastination propels the story forward.

Sadly when Jesus nears Bethany he learns that he is too late. His friend Lazarus had died and has been in the tomb for 4 days. Upon his arrival Jesus is met by Martha, one of the sisters, who says “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” There is a quiet confidence in these words. They are not full of anger or bitterness or resentment that Jesus did not drop everything and come immediately. There is a simple acknowledgement that their brother’s death was unexpected and tragic but at the same time she feels that Jesus’ life force and the mysterious power that resided within him would have changed things, if only he had been there.

In the midst of this strange story, the writer of John offers a crucial theological point that is the commentary for this culminating “sign” in John’s Gospel. Jesus engages Martha in discussion about the nature of resurrection, and proclaims one of the I am statements this Gospel is noted for, “I am the resurrection and the life.  Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.
 
Mary’s arrival takes this story out of the head and into the heart of all those involved.  Jesus is himself greatly disturbed and deeply moved by the weeping of Mary and others.  As Jesus begins to seek out the place of Lazarus’ burial he too begins to weep.  Jesus is deeply moved as the text tells us. But the Greek word here is note-worthy as it implies that Jesus was not only moved but angry, full of righteous wrath, and ready to act. Why is Jesus so disturbed? At whom or what is he angry?  
 
We are not given an explanation but perhaps Jesus’ tears were for the whole world. Perhaps his anger was for the cruelty of death, that stalks all, takes some violently, snuffs out lives too soon, leaves such big holes, causes such suffering. To be sure he wept for his friends Martha and Mary in their loss. He wept for his friend Lazarus, decaying in the grave.  But Jesus wept for more than that. He wept for the frailty of life, and the crazy unfair way of death’s dark dealing. Like the granddaughter of one of our members whose life ended last month by an overdose of heroin, or the constant news of bodies pilling up in new global killing fields of Juarez or the incredible loss of life in Japan. More than likely Jesus’ wept because he knew that there was so much more to the story than those in front of him seemed to understand.  There was so much fear in their eyes, such a resignation toward death.  Perhaps he wept because so few seemed to understand what he was about, so few seemed to believe in what they had seen already. Perhaps it was the sadness of abundant life meeting the ordinary limits we humans are all tempted to settle for.
 
But in the midst of his tears and sorrow Jesus found his center and felt the quickening of the Spirit within him.  There was life in him, a wild kind of life that needed to be let loose.  There was a life in him that reached out to say there is more, more than you might believe, more, than you can even hope.
 
Approaching the tomb Jesus commanded that the stone be rolled away despite the protestations of the truly reasonable. Jesus filled the air and bodies around him with prayer until they crackled and buzzed with the glory of God, and uttered the fearsome call, “Lazarus, come out.” There was a trembling of the earth, the sound of wings and rushing air, and cries and moaning from within.
 
His beloved friend, Lazarus, a dead man was walking again, drinking in air, stumbling on weakened limbs, searching for answers to too many questions at once.  People were shouting and crying and shrieking and running and feinting. Jesus’ voice pierced through the noise, “Unbind him and let him go.”   
 
What does one do when one is brought back to life? One of the problems with this story is that we never find out how Lazarus responded to love’s procrastination.  He is the recipient of one of Jesus’ biggest miracles and then he drops out of view.  Lazarus is snatched from the stench of death and is never heard from again.  No one asks him what it was like to be dead? I would have liked to be in on that interview. Or what his plans are now that he is once again alive. We’ll never know, or will we?
 
To be sure things like this don’t happen every day in Albuquerque.  It would be easy to allow our skepticism to ruin this story altogether. We are moderns and miracles just don’t happen, we’ve seen our friends suffer with disease despite our heartfelt prayers. Jesus may be the resurrection and the life but we still fear death like hell.
 
The trouble is that the more you hang around people who are attracted not only to the Jesus of History but to the Christ of faith, the more weird miracle-like things you find happening.  The more new life seems to be the order of the day.  The more resurrection reveals itself in the lives of Christ’s disciples. Oh, to be sure, there is the tendency among the educated faithful to disregard “signs” even when they stand out against the ordinariness of life. Our interpretive machinery begins to whirl and clank and we historicize, or we psychologize, we defend ourselves against the uncanny, the unusual, and the unfamiliar.  What’s dead should stay dead, that is the way the world works.
 
When Jesus shouts, “Unbind him! Let him go!” he is not only shouting to dead Lazarus, he is shouting loud enough to be heard even by us, listening in on the scene.  He is shouting to a dead man but also to every dying person, including us.  Jesus’ words are not just ancient history, they are a promise for us today as well.  
 
We are all of us Lazarus. Oh we may not be dead yet, but we are headed there and some of us are in more of a hurry than others.  What of death binds us, controls us or confines us? What part of our life needs to be made new? The truth is that like the line of a T.S. Elliott poem we are all “living and partly living.”
 
The point of this strange pre-Easter story is that Jesus loves Lazarus enough, loves life enough to call Lazarus back into it.  In essence Jesus is saying, I’m Lord of Life not Lord of Death. The everlasting life that I bring is found where people are willing to embrace life, to choose the path that leads to life. Recently I had a privilege of listening to someone embrace the 5th step in the 12-step spiritual process in which a person takes a comprehensive look at their life and where they have been consistently choosing death. It was an amazing experience for me, but what was more amazing was the sense of new life I sensed in the room, doors were opening in front of the person who was willing to tell the truth about his past, his unhealthy patterns, and his addictions. It was one of the most spiritually affirming life honoring moments I’ve ever been a part of in my life, watching someone choose the path of life right in front of me.
 
For many of us death is an article of faith, functionally we believe: there are no second chances, you can’t teach a old dog new tricks, people don’t change, I had no other options that is all I could do, I like things just the way they are, or I simply cannot face the pain and uncertainty of new life.  We are hooked, addicted, stuck, bound, lost and fearful.   We have all kinds of names for these tombs we inhabit: substance abuse, bad habits, burn-out, cynicism, apathy, egoism, life-long patterns, depression, intellectual pride, abject fear – but these are really the facts of death.  As Lent sharpens into Holy Week, Love’s procrastination in the story of Lazarus offers each of us a way forward into newness of life. Is it possible to pray of ourselves or of our friends, “Lord if you had been here, our brother or sister would not have died?”
 
Into the midst of our lives, into the midst of this community Jesus confidently strides and commands “Come out,”  “Unbind her. Let her go!”  Love’s procrastination is near at hand. It is just waiting for us to admit our need of it.  The truth of the matter is that Jesus is in the resurrection business. He joys in surprising and shocking this dying world with new life.  One does not need to wait for Easter, for Jesus is the Lord of life from the beginning of time.  He comes with resurrection in his fingertips, his heart open, and his eyes alive with compassion.

I wonder if we are willing to allow the ways of Jesus to surprise us into new life? Are we too consumed with our fear of death, our old ways, our known patterns that we can’t allow Love’s procrastination to come in to our lives. Sometimes love has to wait until we really sense that we have faced death, “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.” Love’s procrastination is ready, ready to call us out of our tombs if we can but roll the stone away from the door and expose our need. What are we waiting for? Or is God waiting for us?
 
On the edge of the village, among the tombs, in the midst of St. Michael’s on Montaño Jesus is crying with a loud voice, “Lazarus come out.” The air crackles. The earth trembles…Love’s procrastination is never too late. 

Eastering and Ashen Ways:
A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Susan Allison-Hatch

John 9:1-41

Did you hear the echoes in the texts read this morning—echoes of the Easter story?  Did you hear the current of alleluias running under the words we just heard?  Take a minute.  Shift your perspective just a bit.  Look out at Lent not from Ash Wednesday but from Easter morning.  Work your way back from the last Sunday in Lent to that first Sunday.

On the last Sunday in Lent, the gospel ends with Jesus saying in loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”   This week, we hear the story of the man born blind; we hear him say, “One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”  Our epistle this week ends with the words, “Sleeper, awake!”   And just last week, we watched that Samaritan woman receiving Jesus’ living water—water that brought her to a whole new way of living in her world.   Perhaps you remember the story we hear each year as we begin our Lenten journey.  It’s the story of Jesus in the wilderness—Jesus being tempted by Satan, Jesus holding tight to the words of scripture, and Jesus being ministered to by angels.

The dead rising, the blind seeing, waters of new life bubbling up.  Sleepers waking, angels ministering. Echoes of renewal and rebirth reverberating through our Lenten texts.  Can you hear the distant alleluias?  Can you see that ribbon of Easter wending its way through Lent?  

And yet there’s that other side of Lent—the one you see when you look out from the Ash Wednesday vantage point.  You know that side of lent—the one that calls us to face squarely our bruises and our brokenness.   The vein we tap into as we begin our worship with confession.   Its ashen current runs through the scriptures too—temptations in the wilderness; a woman shunned by those with whom she lives—her neighbors and her kin; disciples looking for sin and Pharisees assigning blame.  Do you hear the echoes of our ashen ways in the words of scripture?

Eastering and ashen ways—the two go hand and hand in Lent, and I suspect in life as well.  For how can we face our ashen ways without the hope of Eastering?  How can we acknowledge our brokenness without the promise of new life?  How can we walk through those dark valleys without confidence that God’s great welcome table awaits us?    

I don’t think we can. I don’t think we can go through Lent or life hewing just to pole of focusing on our ashen ways.  There’s no hope in that approach.  And no destination either.  That’s staying mired in the muck of life.  But taking the opposite approach doesn’t work either.  Think about it:  Eastering without the ashes would be impossible.  Eastering only comes when we look squarely at our ashen ways; when we see ourselves and God sees us—both broken and beloved.

Yet far too often we tend to personalize and privatize all this ashenness.  Too often we forget the communal focus Lent demands.  And so we overlook the ashen ways abroad in our land and in our world as well—our fear, our self-absorption and our indifference to the plight of others, our resignation and our despair, our hesitancy to trust and our reluctance to act.  

Forty-three years ago today, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke in Memphis, Tennessee, to a crowd of sanitation workers and their supporters.  Though pundits called it a speech it was really a sermon—a sermon reminding both the people of Memphis and the people of our country of our ashen ways and pointing to the promise of God’s eastering.  

King said, “...the world is all messed up.  The nation is sick.  Trouble is in the land.  Confusion is all around....But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars.”  Think about it:  in the middle of all that ashenness, King saw the promise of God’s eastering ways.  

Towards the end of that sermon, King called the people gathered in the hall that night and the people of our country to a dangerous unselfishness—“one that asks not ‘If I stop what will happen to me?’ but rather, ‘If I don’t stop, what will happen to those who need my help?’” and he called us to a greater readiness as well—a readiness to step into the fray.  

As we look out on our ashen ways and on the ashen ways abroad in our land today may our Lenten prayer be, “Easter us to a dangerous unselfishness that we might see the pain and need and sadness in our midst; Easter us, God, to a greater readiness to act to ease the pain and serve the needs and soothe the wounds we see.”  Amen.