Tuesday, April 29, 2014
Sermons now on youtube
I am experimenting with youtube right now. Greg Brauer recorded my most recent sermon and you can find it here: http://youtu.be/RNylLMoL_z0
Sunday, April 27, 2014
April 27, 2014: John 20:19-31
Year A, Easter 2
During my first year of seminary, I had to read a book
called We
Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families. It was about the Rwandan Genocide of
1994. There are two main tribes in Rwanda: the Hutus and the Tutsis. They lived in relative peace, often as
neighbors. The Hutus made up 85% of the population. In 1994 Hutu extremists began a plot to wipe
out the entire Tutsi population. It is
estimated that 800,000 Rwandans were killed in a matter of months, the majority
were Tutsis. Seventy percent of the
Tutsi population was killed. That book was one of the most painful
things I have ever read. It primarily
covered what led up to the genocide, the killing itself, and then a very brief
aftermath. While I think about that book every time I see an article about
Rwanda, I have not read much about it until this week.
Just
this week I saw a piece in the New York Times
magazine called, “Portraits of Reconciliation.”
This piece ran on the 20 year anniversary of the beginning of the
genocide in Rwanda. It was here that I
read more about what came in the years after the genocide. When the killing and
looting finally ended, the Tutsis (the tribe that was almost obliterated)
returned to their homes to find that they were living next door to people who
had brutally murdered their families and driven them out. As you can imagine, this was a difficult way
to live. There were court trials and
some of the people who had committed the atrocities were sent to jail, but they
eventually got out if they were convicted at all. The justice system was not equipped for this
kind of mass slaughter, and it certainly could not help people emotionally.
A Roman Catholic group aptly called “Pax Christi,” [1] stepped in and introduced
a totally different model, reconciliation.
They[2]
worked with small groups of Hutus and Tutsis and counseled them over many
months. At the end of the program, the
perpetrator would formally request forgiveness from the victim. If forgiveness was offered, the perpetrator would
present the victim with an offering (usually food and banana beer).
I often wonder
what it was like for the disciples to see Jesus after they had abandoned him
and denied him. It probably had not
occurred to them that they would see him again, certainly not so soon. Jesus was aware of their angst and guilt and
started with a fairly standard greeting, “Peace be with you.” But then he followed it up with something a
little new. “Receive the Holy
Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any,
they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
It might seem
strange that he did not tell them that they were forgiven. They had committed some pretty egregious
sins. One would think they needed that forgiveness. If you were here on Maundy Thursday, you
might remember that Jesus had already forgiven his disciples when he washed
their feet. He forgave them before they
even knew that they needed to be forgiven.
So he did not have to tell them again. Now he was commissioning them to
proclaim God’s forgiveness to other people.
We forgive one another in one sense, but when there is a sin that is
committed, it is only God who can forgive.
What we do is tap into that that forgiveness. We proclaim that forgiveness…which you would
think would be easier to do than the actual forgiving…but it’s still pretty
hard.
Each portrait
in the Times’ piece depicted two people: the person who had perpetrated the
crime and the person who had suffered from that crime. One of the pictures depicts a man who killed
a family and the mother of the family sits right next to him. One story was about a woman who was chased
from her village. She became homeless
and insane. She returned to find her
home destroyed. Her husband was gone and
she had to care for her children. One of
the men who looted her home asked her forgiveness. She granted it (although not easily) and he
brought 50 people, many who had committed atrocities during the genocide, and
rebuilt her home. In the interview the
woman said, “Ever since then, I
have started to feel better. I was like a dry stick; now I feel peaceful in my heart,
and I share this peace with my neighbors.”[3]
When she
compared herself to a dry stick, I was reminded of a line from Psalm 22 that we
heard on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.
“My strength is dried up like a potsherd.” A potsherd is like an old piece of pottery
you might find in the ground. Sometimes
we all feel that dryness. It’s that
feeling of being brittle and weak, like we might fall apart at any moment. Or maybe we are just thirsty, in need of
something to sustain us. The thing that
quenched her dry body and heart was the freedom to forgive. Once she forgave, she was able to find peace
and share that peace.
It is no wonder
that Jesus brought both peace and a challenge to forgive when he came to the
disciples. He knew that they would need to
share this message of forgiveness with others because it is not something that
comes to us naturally. It can be a very
hard thing to do. I have always found
the line “If you retain the sins of any, they are retained” to be a little
strange. Does that mean that we can
withhold God’s forgiveness? Of course
not. We cannot control who God
forgives. But we can withhold
forgiveness in the sense that when we refuse to forgive, we hold on to that
sin…we retain it. We become like a dry
stick, brittle and weak.
When you look at the portraits, and
I encourage you to do so, you will not see warm and fuzzy images. Most of the people look pretty awkward. Some
have become close, but most have not.
Part of the reason they forgave was because they had to live with these
people. It was the only way they could
survive. We think that when we forgive,
when we share God’s forgiveness that it will be easy and natural. Usually it’s not. That dry and brittle feeling might stick
around for awhile. When Jesus returned,
he made sure to show his disciples his wounds.
Even though he was back from the dead, he still carried his wounds. Forgiving others…forgiving ourselves does not
erase the wounds, it transforms them into something else. Sometimes that transformation will take
longer than 3 days….maybe longer than 3 or 30 years.
The man who looted the home of the
woman I quoted also spoke of the process of reconciliation. He said, “I had lost my humanity because of
the crime I committed, but now I am like any human being.” It is amazing to me that we can lose our
humanity. People can take it from us;
sin can take it from us. At least it
feels that way. But God never takes away
our humanity. That is God’s gift to us. We are created in God’s image and no one can
change that. We tarnish ourselves and we
tarnish others, but God’s image is always there, waiting to shine through.
It made me smile when I read that
part of the reconciliation process is for the perpetrator to bring an offering
of food and banana beer. I thought, that seems like a pretty pathetic offering
in comparison to what they did. Then I
thought of what we offer to God on Sundays.
We bring wine and bread. We might
bring some food for the local food pantry, and then whatever money we can
spare. This is the offering we give to
Jesus for his sacrifice on the cross. At
least the food they offer in Rwanda is fresh!
Those wafers are the most stale bread you can imagine.
But that’s not
really what the offering is about is it? Psalm 51 says, “The
sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken
spirit; a broken and contrite heart.” The banana beer and
wine is nice, but what God really wants is a contrite heart and heart ready to forgive. A broken and contrite heart might feel
brittle and weak to us. To God, it is
the most beautiful and powerful thing we can offer.
Monday, April 21, 2014
April 20, 2014: John 20
Easter
Year A
It was my first Ash Wednesday as a
priest and I was a little nervous about leading the church through Lent all on
my own. I was planning on visiting
someone and stopped in the sanctuary to retrieve the reserved sacrament from
the aumbry. The aumbry is the wooden box
between the main church and the side chapel.
When we have left over consecrated bread and wine, we put it in the
aumbry. In the Episcopal Church, we
believe that Christ is present in the sacrament. We call the bread the body of Christ and the
wine the blood of Christ. Even once the
service is over, Jesus is still present in the bread and the wine. When I looked in the aumbry, I realized that
the container that held the bread was gone.
That container is always supposed to be there, even when it is empty.
The only time it comes out is when we take it out during the service
itself. Of course I panicked. My first thought was, “Oh dear God, someone
stole Jesus. It’s my first Lent and Easter as a priest. I am all by myself and I have already lost
Jesus.” I realize that my reaction was a little
irrational, but I was very sincere.
When Mary Magdalene saw that the
tomb was empty, her first reaction was that someone stole the body of
Jesus. That reaction might seem a little
irrational to us now. Who would steal a
body? Didn’t she know that he was going
to be resurrected? Hadn’t she been
listening? It was a fairly reasonable
fear, one that the other disciples probably shared. One of the concerns of the Roman and Jewish
leadership was that Jesus would be worshipped after his death. This could happen in a couple of ways. His followers could steal the body and tell
everyone that he came back from the dead.
Or…his body would remain there and his burial site would become a place
of worship for his followers, which would create problems for the Romans.
While there was a rationale for a
missing body I am still surprised that disciples thought the body was stolen
after all that Jesus had told them when he was with them. Yet we look at it through the lens of
already knowing the end of the story. Jesus’s followers didn’t have the Gospels all
written out. Jesus told his followers about his resurrection, but he did not
give them concrete details. They had no
idea how it would happen or what it would look like. We really cannot blame them for expecting to
find the body of Jesus in the tomb where he was buried and then be confused and
scared when it was gone.
Peter and the beloved disciple
reacted to this fear and confusion by leaving the garden and locking themselves
in a room with the other disciples. Yet Mary
stayed. She wept and continued to gaze into
the empty tomb. Through her tears she saw two angels in white who asked her why
she was weeping. She told them she was
weeping because they had taken away her Lord and she did not know where to find
him. The angels did not respond and then
for some reason she turned. She turned
away from the tomb and the angels within.
Perhaps she sensed there was someone behind her. Maybe the sight of the angels disturbed
her. When she turned, she found Jesus. But she did not know it was Jesus. She thought he was the gardener.
One cannot help but wonder how Mary,
someone who knew Jesus well, was not able to recognize Jesus. Some have hypothesized that it was her tears
that clouded her vision, literally and figuratively. Perhaps her grief was so great she could not
see properly. She was so convinced that
this was a stranger was not Jesus that she asked him to tell her where he had
taken the body of Jesus. Then Jesus said
one word, her name. That was all it
took. She heard him call her name and
she knew that it was Jesus.
I often run into people from the
parish outside of the church. It might
be a restaurant, the grocery store, the gym, any number of places. Usually I recognize the person, but
occasionally I don’t because the person is not in the right context. But most of the time, I recognize the person
long before they recognize me because I am really out of context. I am not wearing my robes or my collar. We tend
to put people in certain categories-- in boxes and it can be disconcerting when
we encounter that person in an entirely different environment. It’s not that we do not want to see the
person; we just don’t expect it. And in
that moment we don’t always recognize the person, even someone we might know
well. I wonder if that was what happened
to Mary on a much more dramatic scale.
She had seen him die. She was
there to mourn him, weep for him. She
was there to close this chapter of her life. Yet when she saw that tomb empty,
everything changed. The paradigm shifted.
Her role as a disciple of Christ was not ended; it was just
beginning.
While seeing the living Christ was
comforting and hopeful, it was also disconcerting. The first thing he said to her after he said
her name was, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father.” What?
There was no, “So good to see you, thanks for being one of the few
people to stick with me through the end.”
No big hug. Not even a reassuring
hand on her shoulder.
It’s not that Jesus didn’t want to
show Mary that he loved her. I am sure
he wanted to comfort her. However, he knew that the person she was clinging to
was the person who died on that cross…the same person she was expecting to find
in the tomb. But he was not that person
anymore. He was the resurrected Christ
and he could not be confined to the tomb, nor could he be grasped by human
hands or hopes.
It would be nice if we could always
find Jesus in the last place we left him, like a tomb or an aumbry. That way when we needed him, we could just
visit him there, or possibly take him out and hold on to him for a while. Yet Jesus refuses to be confined to a
tomb. He likes to surprise us and come
to us in different forms when we least expect him. I fear that often we get so wrapped up
staring at the empty tomb (because that is where he is supposed to be) that we
ignore the stranger standing behind us.
We are afraid to turn around because while the tomb is dark and empty,
it’s what we know and understand.
I eventually found the consecrated
hosts. Someone had mixed them with
unconsecrated hosts…which really blew my liturgically correct mind. I ate
them all…and there were a lot. I have no
idea if that was the right thing to do.
I wanted to make sure that the consecrated host was consumed, but I did
not want to jumble them all together since some were not consecrated.
Often we find that things that
are holy and sacred are jumbled in with the ordinary. Sometimes Jesus looks more like a gardener
than God. What we have to decide is if
we are going to leave him in a box or allow him entry into every aspect of our
life. God does not typically come to us
in bite sized pieces. God comes to us in
inconvenient times when we have 1000 other things we are supposed to be doing. As lovely as our Easter service is, this is a
tiny tiny glimpse of God. And if this
all we are experiencing of God, we are missing out. We could leave this service and consider our
Christian duty complete. Or like Mary
who finally turned from the empty tomb to start a new life, we too can leave
and realize that our role as a disciple is just beginning.
April 18, 2014: Psalm 22
Year A, Good Friday
It has been
a dark week. It started with the
shooting at a Jewish Community Center.
The motivation is not completely transparent, but it would seem that it
was murder motivated by hate. This week
was also the anniversary of the shooting at Virginia Tech and the bombing at
the Boston Marathon only one year ago. Then
there is the Korean ferry that sunk leaving almost 300 trapped and most likely
dead. Unfortunately, this is only a
piece of the devastating things that are happening around the world. It seems at times that it is not just a dark
week, but a dark time.
Yet we all
know that there have been many dark times in our history. Psalm 22 speaks eloquently to that
darkness. The Psalm begins with, “My
God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?” At another point he says, “I am
poured out like water, and all my bones are out of
joint; my heart is like wax; it
is melted within my breast…”
You cannot help
but wonder what the author of this Psalm was going through. Was it a horrible disease, an emotional
breakdown, war….? We will probably never know what it was. What we do know is that it was unrelenting. Despite the changes in tone throughout the
Psalm, there is no evidence that things ever changed for the better.
We also
know that whatever he was going through led him to believe that he had been
utterly abandoned by God. He was calling out to God, but God was not answering. Verse 1 says, “Why are you so far from
helping me, from the words of my groaning?”
The literal translation for the Hebrew word that is translated to
groaning is actually roaring. This man
was literally roaring his prayers, his pleas.
And he was getting no answer. It wasn’t just that he was abandoned. He was ignored as well.
In the
course of the Psalm he tries to comfort himself with past memories of God’s
faithfulness, but it seems as though those memories just remind him of how
alone he is now. However, at verse 21, something changes. “Save me from the mouth of the lion! From the
horns of the wild oxen you have rescued me.”
The tone changes from desolation to praise. What happened? Did the people stop mocking
him? Were his bones put back into joint? It doesn’t say that. In fact, the words the Psalmist uses are very
subtle. “From the horns of the wild oxen
you have rescued me.” Many scholars say
that a better translation for the word rescued is actually answered. I suspect
they used rescued because it makes more sense in the context of a verse about
wild oxen. However, in the context of
the Psalm as a whole, answered fits a lot better. The root of this man’s
suffering was not these horrible things that were happening to him, but God’s response
to his pleas, his roars was silence. Finally,
God had listened and answered. Or perhaps, finally, this man was desperate
enough to listen.
I cannot
help but wonder that if nothing in his life changed, how he suddenly knew that
God was listening. Was there a voice
from the heavens? Was there a sudden
peace that overwhelmed him? Or maybe something small, seemingly inconsequential
changed, just enough to give him that space for hope. In times of darkness like this when all we
see is hate and violence, we look for a ray of light, something that indicates
that good will overcome evil. Yet if we
keep looking for something that tangible, we will probably get very
discouraged.
Each one of
us has some darkness in our life. It
might not be as dramatic as the things that are happening in our nation and our
world, but as Christians, we carry that worldly darkness with us, even when we
think we already have enough in our own lives.
It can be overwhelming and heartbreaking at times. I often hear Christians called “Easter people
or people of the resurrection.” That may
be true, but we are Easter people living in Good Friday. The
challenge of living in Good Friday/living in these dark times is discovering
God’s devotion to us, even in the midst of despair and suffering.
The moment
that the psalmist transitions to more praise and hope is also the moment when
he discovers the support of his faith community…or perhaps the existence of his
faith community. Right after he talks
about being saved from the horns of the wild oxen, he writes, “I will tell of your name to my brothers and sisters; in the midst of the congregation I will praise you…” It is immensely difficult to be Easter people
when Good Friday seems to last forever.
That is why we have the community of the faithful, to remind us that God
is with us even in the darkest of times.
Before the service started on Palm Sunday, we had to move the cross into
the sanctuary. I said to the person
doing it, “I will help you, we can do it together.” He looked at me like I was crazy and said,
“You can’t carry this cross with 2 people.”
It’s true. That cross requires 4
or 5 people to carry it. We are Easter
people living in Good Friday, and we are carrying that cross, anticipating the resurrection
together.
Saturday, April 19, 2014
April 17, 2014: John 13
Maundy Thursday, Year A
I have always been a little torn
about the foot washing portion of the Maundy Thursday liturgy. There are a couple of different approaches to
the service. The first is to have the
clergy wash the feet of any and all who would like to have their feet washed. This is what was done in my previous
parish. Another method is to have the
clergy start the foot washing and then people wash one another’s feet. Both of these approaches have been used at
St. John’s in recent years. There have
also been times when there was no foot washing at all. I was told by a couple of people that it
would be ok with them if we stopped the whole foot washing thing and it would definitely
be ok if we skipped the assembly line method in which one person gets their
feet washed, and then they wash the feet of the next person, and on and
on. The assembly line was not a popular
technique.
Sticking with the traditional method
was fine with me because that was what I was used to and being a good
Episcopalian, I will usually defer to what I have already done. What I was accustomed to- was being the
person who washed everyone else’s feet. No one washed my feet and that was
perfectly fine with me. This is not to
say that I enjoy washing people’s feet.
I really don’t have strong feelings about it either way. I am not one of those people who fears feet,
it’s just an intimate act and it’s innately uncomfortable for that reason,
especially for Episcopalians, “God’s frozen chosen” (as we are commonly
called). Yet there is something that
has always concerned me about having the clergy wash everyone’s feet. It feels like we are making ourselves out to
be Jesus and you all the disciples. While
we should all try to emulate Jesus, I do not want to give the impression that I
am emulating Jesus better than the rest of you.
We are all his disciples.
Of course foot washing is not a new-fangled
liturgical act we have just started in the last couple of years in an attempt
to be all touchy feely. Foot washing has
its origins in the Old Testament.
At
the time, it had a very practical purpose.
People wore sandals and the streets were not paved. Often times the streets were covered with
animal feces, so people’s feet were covered with more than just dust. They were filthy. Because of this, when you entered someone’s
house you would wash your feet before sitting down for dinner. The job of the host was to provide the water
so you could wash your own feet. If your
host had the resources, they would provide a servant to do the washing.
It
was also a way to show hospitality in a culture where hospitality was
considered almost sacred. One of my
favorite examples of foot washing is in Genesis when Abraham is sitting in his
tent in the middle of the day. He sees
three strange men approach and he runs to them and bows before them. He says, “My Lord, if I find favor with you,
do not pass by your servant. Let a
little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the
tree.” These three men turned out to be
angelic messengers bringing Abraham and Sarah the news that they had been
praying for. Abraham did not know they
were angels. It was his custom to
provide hospitality to anyone who turned up at his home.
Foot washing was also used for
ceremonial purposes. The priests would
wash their hands and feet before entering the temple as a sign of purity since
they were entering a holy space. It was
also a symbol of forgiveness. In
biblical times, people considered the hands and feet as the area of the body
that symbolized human activity. To wash
the feet or the hands is to wash away offensive deeds.[1]
It was a way to literally cleanse you from your sin.
In my experience with the liturgy of
Maundy Thursday, the focus has always been on the service and humility that
Jesus displayed. Jesus is the Lord and
he was willing to stoop at the feet of his disciples and wash their dirty feet. As we have already heard, this was an act of
a servant. Thus it makes sense to focus
on servant hood. However, I think this
action was more than just one of humble service. Earlier in the passage we hear that Judas had
already planned to betray Jesus and Jesus knew this. We also know that Peter would deny him and
Jesus knew this as well. Yet Jesus felt
this was the time to wash the feet of his disciples. In doing so, he was showing them that he had
already forgiven them and that they would need to forgive one another as well.
Jesus knew that there would be
factions amongst his followers. While
his disciples were faithful people, they made mistakes and they sinned. If they were not willing and ready to forgive
one another and themselves, then they would never spread the message of Jesus
Christ. The community would never
survive. That is why he was so insistent
that follow his example. He would not
be there to keep peace and love in their fellowship. They had to be ready to forgive one
another.
Foot washing could mean any number
of things. It could be a person showing
hospitality to an angel in disguise. It
could be a way to prepare ourselves to enter into a holy space or a holy
time. It might be an act of forgiveness
or repentance. Or it could be a display
of humility or vulnerability. Maybe it
is all of these things. Let it be what
you need it to be tonight, or preferably what God needs for you tonight.
Part of the purpose of this is for us
all to be a little uncomfortable and vulnerable. One of the things that makes me really
uncomfortable is not having control over the flow of the service. I like to know what is going to happen so I
can make sure things run smoothly. I’m
going to lead by example and let go a little tonight because I want you all to do
what God is calling you to do. Maybe you
want Charlie or me to wash your feet.
Then we will do that. Maybe you
would like to wash someone else’s feet. Then
you can do that. Charlie and I will
start (because I have to control something).
We will be available to wash people’s feet or have our feet washed. Then we will see where the spirit moves us. I
need your help in this service. Try to
open your heart to the movement of the spirit.
What is it that your soul longs for on this holy evening? Before we
continue, we will take a couple minutes just to be still, to be silent, so that
you can hear God speak to you. What is
God calling you to on this evening: hospitality, repentance, forgiveness,
humility, service, vulnerability or perhaps something known only to you? What does your soul thirst for? Whatever it is, I hope you will find it in
these waters.
[1]
Saint Louis University Liturgy, John Pilch http://liturgy.slu.edu/HolyThursdayA041714/theword_cultural.html
Sunday, April 13, 2014
Blast from the past: An old Palm Sunday sermon
(It is the tradition of St. John's not to have a homily on Palm Sunday. This is fine with me because I needed a break for my brain. However, I wanted to post something. This is a sermon I delivered about 5 years ago.)
Palm Sunday, Year B The Passion of Mark
Until about age 18, my
understanding of Holy Week was shaped primarily by frequent viewings of the
rock musical, Jesus Christ Superstar.
The musical was written in the 1970’s and to this day, when I think of
the disciples, I picture hippies and Jesus has a high whiny voice when he
breaks into song. While I still love the
musical and the movie, I realize now that some of its interpretations were a
little off. Pilate was depicted as a
pawn of the Jewish and Roman authorities who simply got caught in the middle of
it all. This interpretation is not
completely unfounded. Some of this comes
from the Gospels. Luke has one of the
most sympathetic views of Pilate. He actually
has Pilate arguing on behalf of Jesus when he addressed the crowd. Matthew has Pilate wash his hands and
proclaim himself, “innocent of this man’s blood.” Mark on the other hand, does
not feel the need to hide his weaknesses or faults. Of all the Gospel writers, Mark is the one
who seems to catch people at their worst.
I suspect that this was because Mark was the first Gospel written. The rest of the Gospel writers had more time
to make the life of Jesus seem a little more polished, a little less gritty.
All of the
Gospels agree that Jesus is brought to Pilate by the Jewish leaders. Pilate did
not arrest Jesus. It was the Jewish
leaders who found him, held their own trial, and then brought him to Pilate to
be condemned to death. Pilate was the
Governor of Jerusalem and Judea. It was
his job to make sure that the Jewish people did not revolt against the
Romans. He was the keeper of the peace. Apparently he was not very good at this job because
during his 10 year reign, there were 33 riots of the Jews. The Jewish leaders knew that Pilate was
probably desperate to avoid another riot.
They preyed on this fear by labeling Jesus as a disturber of the
peace. The person who we now call the
Prince of Peace, was killed for being a disturber of the peace.
While Mark’s Gospel is the shortest
of them all, it includes some interesting details that are not in the other
Gospels. In his description of Pilate’s
interaction with the crowd, Mark writes, “Pilate, in his desire to satisfy the
mob, released Barabbas to them; and he had Jesus flogged and handed him over to
be crucified.” Pilate knew that Jesus
was innocent of the charges brought up against him. He was aware that the chief
priests had brought Jesus to him out of malice and jealousy. He even knew that the crowd was not even
speaking for themselves, they were being provoked by the chief priests and
other Jewish leaders. Knowing all of
this, Pilate succumbed to the will of the mob and killed an innocent man. He did this because it was more important to
keep peace than carry out justice. In
the end, it was no peace at all.
It is very
easy to read this story that we heard today and believe that we would never
have been part of the mob that demanded his crucifixion. We would never have spit on him, or flogged
him. We would not have betrayed him, or
denied him. These things are all
dramatic gestures that seem almost incomprehensible to us now. Yet how often have you gone against your
better judgment, your conscience, maybe even your faith, to satisfy or please
others? I often find myself saying to
others, and to myself, “You’ve just got to choose your battles.” You can’t always get your own way, and
sometimes you shouldn’t. Compromise can
be a good thing.
However, what I have found is that
sometimes it is less about compromise and more about fear. You want people to
like you, so you let something slide. It
starts small, but then all of a sudden you realize you are not fighting for
anything anymore. You’re just trying not
to rock the boat. That is why of all the
characters in this story, I can identify most with Pilate. I can see myself wanting so badly to maintain
peace, that I would allow the crucifixion of our only chance at peace. He probably even convinced himself that one
death would actually save many lives.
Ironically, he was right. Jesus’
death saved us all.
Some people
think that the important thing about being a Christian is being nice and not
offending people. Jesus died because he
offended the wrong people. He was not
mean spirited or cruel. But he refused
to conform to what society and the religious establishment of the day expected
out of its leaders. Being Christian is
not about being nice, it is about loving and sacrificing. And sometimes loving means speaking a truth
that people do not want to hear. The way
I see it, if the church isn’t offending someone, it’s probably not doing its
job.
Sunday, April 6, 2014
April 6, 2014: Ezekiel 37:1-14
Year
A, Lent 5
As most of you know, this church
(both the worshipping community and the building) have been through a lot in
the last 404 years. Many of us know the
dramatic story of its burning in the Civil War; but the Civil War was not the
first war that it witnessed. This structure
stood through both the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. It would be easy to assume that it was the
wars that led to the deterioration of the building and the worshipping
community. However, it was more than that. A contributing factor was a shift in
the way the church was perceived in the culture as a whole. The church was no longer supported by the
government and no one knew how to support a church without the British Empire
or the Church of England.
The War of 1812 was the final
straw. The British troops used the
church as a barracks and left it almost destroyed. For the 10 years after the War of 1812,
nothing was done to restore the church.
However there were still a few people who maintained hope for St.
John’s. One of them was Richard
Servant. He found inspiration in a
rather unlikely place. He told a story of visiting the graves of ancestors near
the ruined church with a friend named Jane.
As she stood at the dilapidated door of the church she said, “Cousin, if
I were a man I would have these walls built up.” In a letter he wrote “her words were like
electricity, and from that moment my determination was fixed.” Within 4 years, people were worshipping in
the restored church once more.[1]
Ezekiel lived about 600 years before
Christ. He was a prophet who was exiled
to Babylon with many of the Hebrew people.
His writings contain visions which prophesy the destruction of Jerusalem
and the holy temple. Most of the Hebrew people
believed that Jerusalem would never fall because God protected it. They believed that the temple was God’s home
and therefore it would always stand. While
Ezekiel’s prophesies were not appreciated, they were accurate. The Babylonians destroyed the city of
Jerusalem as well as the temple. Most of
the people were exiled to a foreign land where they were left for
generations. After the destruction of
the temple, one of Ezekiel’s missions was to restore hope to a battered and
beaten people. The temple was more than
just a beautiful place that people worshipped, it was where God resided. For many of the people, it was not only the
temple that was destroyed, it was their faith in God.
The vision that we heard today
described Ezekiel being set down in the middle of a valley that was full of
bones. Many people have surmised that
this was a battlefield. This would make
sense since there was a massive battle to defend Jerusalem from the Babylonians
and many people died. Most of the people
who survived were sent to Babylon. I
suspect the city itself looked a little like Hampton after it was burned in the
Civil War. There was nothing left. Thus it is not hard to imagine a valley
littered with bones. But let’s remember
that this was a vision. This was God
trying to teach Ezekiel something in a very dramatic way.
The vision is near the end of the
Book of Ezekiel. The exile had probably
lasted far longer than any of the Hebrew people expected. The temple remained in ruins. So perhaps it was not the dead who God was
worried about—who God was trying to speak to.
What if the bones represented not the dead, but the living?[2] If you were to read this text in Hebrew, you
would see one word used nine times. It
is ruach and is translated to three
different English words in these fourteen verses: breath, wind and God’s
Spirit. The word ruach appears all over the Old Testament, even in the creation
story when God’s spirit moved over the waters. The essence of the word is life
giving force. In Ezekiel’s vision (even after the bones came together, the
muscles and tendons were added, and the skin covered all the necessary parts) ---even
after all of that--there was still no life.
It was not until God breathed into these empty bodies were they truly
alive.
The people of Israel, even those who had
lived through the exile, were missing something. They were missing the breath of God because
they felt cut off from God. They felt
as though God had deserted them. We hear
that in the Psalm for today, “Out of the depths have I called to you, O Lord;
Lord hear my voice…” With the temple
destroyed and being displaced from their home, they did not even know where to
look for God. There was no hope because
the source of their hope had deserted them.
At least, that is what they thought.
The Hebrew people thought that if
only they were not exiled and their temple was still glorious and powerful,
then they would know God was with them. They would feel his presence. The people of St. John’s (200 years ago) might
have thought if only they still had the support of the government, then their
church would stand tall again. I find in
my life that it is really easy to make excuses and to use those excuses not to
take risks. Believing in God is a risk,
especially when we don’t have a strong establishment or government supporting
us…especially when all we are looking at rubble or bones.
One commentator wrote that it would
be far easier to prophesy after the bones came to life. Yet God asked Ezekiel to prophesy to a valley
full of lifeless bones. If I were
Ezekiel I would have been mortified. What
would be the point? But obviously there was life in them, or they never would
have heard the prophesy. There was
something there that was just waiting for those words, God’s words. I think that often, even when we feel that
all hope is lost, really it is only we who are lost. Our souls are hibernating waiting for that
infusion of breath. Hope, that was the
last name of Jane, the person who challenged others to rebuild the walls of St.
John’s. She was standing among graves
when she said it and I bet she felt like she was just talking to a valley of
bones. But there was one person there,
one person just waiting for the opportunity, the spark that would electrify the
community into action.
While we are undergoing a little
renovation now, our building is in pretty good shape. We don’t have to build it up again, but that
does not mean that we do not have a mission.
We are not talking to the graves…but we are living in the midst of a
community that doesn’t care much about what we are saying as the Church of
Christ. When some people look at us, all
they see is a graveyard. And we might
not be able to change many people’s hearts and minds, but I bet (like Jane
Hope) we can change one. And that one might just be the spark we need, the
spark that could electrify the community and to provide that life giving spirit
that we all so desperately need. So prophesy. Prophesy when it seems all hope
is lost, because that is when we need it the most.
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