Waiting for the morning: April 17, 2022

Year C, Easter                                                             Luke 24:1-12                                                                       

            When I was in the hospital, I hated the night.  Visitors had to leave at 8pm and could not return until 8am.  At 8pm I would start to panic because I knew I had 12 hours ahead of me.  And it’s the hospital, so it’s not like you can sleep at night.  Because I had an infectious disease, I couldn’t leave the room or open the door.  It felt like I was in a tomb.  Even when I came home, I dreaded the night.  Never in my life have I been so desperate for the morning.  As I look back on it, I am reminded of Psalm 130. "I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning."  I would like to tell you that the Psalm came to me in the darkness of the night when I most needed it, but it didn’t. Sometimes you have to wait.  Some nights last more than 12 hours.

            I have preached on this text from Luke several times.  Every time I read it, something different strikes me.  This year, it was the time of day that caught my attention. “On the first day of the week, at early dawn, the women who had come with Jesus from Galilee came to the tomb…”  Early dawn. There are 4 Gospels that tell the story of the resurrection and they are all a little different in the way they tell the story.  One of the things they have in common is that the women come either right before dawn or at dawn. 

            There could be a ritualistic reason they came early in the morning.  Typically bodies were anointed before burial. However, because Jesus’ death and burial was unusual for a variety of reasons, the women had not been able to anoint him when they normally would have---right after death.  That must have been upsetting to them.  The act of anointing was a way these women could mourn someone who was dear to them.  It was their last opportunity to minister to him.  So it’s possible they were simply eager to move forward with this important ritual that they had been denied.

Because of COVID, most of us have had experiences of not being able to mourn people as we were once able.  It could have been being denied a timely funeral or even not being able to gather friends and family to share stories.  Some who died of COVID or were in nursing homes or hospitals with strict policies had to say goodbye through a computer or phone screen.  I said final prayers for someone through and open window while huddled with the family under an umbrella. The traumas of the past two years have been compounded by our inability to mourn and process.   Thus I think many of us can understand why it was so important for these followers of Jesus to anoint him as soon as they could.

Yet I also could not help but wonder what their nights must have been like after Jesus was crucified.  It has been two nights and two days.  Jesus rose on the third day.  The women who came to anoint him were the very same women who had been with him while he shared his parables, when he performed miracles, when he raised Lazarus from the dead.  They were the same women who had been with him when he was crucified. After witnessing the crucifixion of not just a dear friend, but a man you believed was God in the flesh…how well do you think you would sleep?  Trauma can do some crazy things to your sleep.

The psalm I opened with mentions someone watching for the morning.  I bet these women did more than watch. I would think they were desperate for the morning---desperate for a time that they could be with their friends who had shared this experience, friends they could weep openly with. Desperate for some sense of closure.

They arrived at early dawn, which means they started their journey when it was still dark.  Can you see it?  These heart-broken women trudging through the darkness to a tomb.  They must have been carrying more than just broken hearts and spices.  Because a broken heart will not propel you forward.  There must have been an ember of hope buried inside them—a memory dancing on the edges of their consciousness.  He said he would rise again.  It didn’t make sense when he said it, but what if??  It was desperation, but it was also hope that drove them into the night. Desperation and hope are often tangled together. 

I have traditional book commentaries that I consult when I am preparing a sermon and a few online commentaries.  When things get desperate (as they did this week), I occasionally just google random thoughts and words.  When I did that this week, I kept seeing websites and articles with titles like, “Evidence for the resurrection.”  Those were not links I pursued. We don’t believe in the resurrection because of evidence.  There is no body of evidence that can prove that the resurrection happened.  Despite that lack of evidence, we are still telling this story thousands of years after the event.  That in and of itself is amazing.  A religion that started with a man born in a backwater town, who collected a small band of followers and then died a gruesome death currently has 2.4 billion followers.  And that doesn’t include all of those Christians who have lived over the last 2000 years.  How could any movement survive that long without proof?

When the women went and told the other disciples that Jesus had risen, they had not yet see the risen Lord.  They had just seen the empty tomb and been told that he was risen by two men in white.  They had no real evidence. But they remembered who he was in life.  They remembered the hope he had given them, the hope they still carried even after he was crucified—when there was absolutely no good reason to hope.  Who holds on to hope after someone has been brutally murdered? Christians.  We do.  And that my friends, is what gets us through the darkest of nights and the haziest of dawns. It’s not the light that we currently see, it’s a light that we are promised. A light that seems heart wrenchingly dim at times, a light we can best see when we have experienced total darkness.

Photo by Daniel Joshua on Unsplash

Just like those desperately hopeful women, we too have to start in the night if we want to make it to the dawn.  Every single person in this church has suffered in some way over the past several years, some more than others.  I would do anything to be able to take some of that pain away.  I can’t.  I can’t give you proof of the resurrection.  But I can promise you this—that ember of hope that propelled those women through the darkness to an empty tomb burns in each one of us.  If it were not so, you would not be here.  Something brought you here. It might seem to be a family obligation, or a tradition---some perfectly ordinary reason.  But God’s works miracles in the ordinary. 

Today we receive communion at the altar for the first time in 25 months.  Communion is about a lot of things and one of those things is remembering Jesus’ words.  It’s a weekly reminder that despite the lack of proof, we still gather with hopeful expectation.  We still believe that we have a God who works miracles out of the ordinary—a God who promises that no darkness last forever.  The morning always comes.

Easter: April 4, 2021

Easter, Year B                                                                       Mark 16: 1-8                                                               

           When we had to close our church building last year weeks before Easter, I thought that would be the hardest moment of the pandemic for the church.  I comforted myself and others with visions of Christmas inside, surrounded by poinsettias and carols.  When we were not able to worship in person for Christmas, I said, well we will definitely be open for Easter.  And we are. Alleluia, Christ is Risen! We are open!

            But I have to say, it’s not what I pictured a year ago.  If you had told me then that we would still be wearing masks, separated by 6 feet, unable to sing the hymns-- I would have disagreed vehemently.  I’ve decided denial is a unique form of optimism. I am thrilled to see your faces and hear your voices--but there is a small part of me that is disappointed.  This is certainly better than meeting online, but it’s not the way it’s supposed to be.  I know that others feel that too because some have said that they don’t want to come if it has to be like this.  It’s not the way it’s supposed to be.

            I cannot help but wonder if that is how many people feel about the ending of Mark’s Gospel.  There is no appearance of the resurrected Jesus.  Not only that, but the last line is: “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” Jesus never appeared and talked to the disciples.  He never sat and ate a meal with them.  The women ran away in terror.  This is the original ending of Mark. 

            Now if we were allowed to have Bibles in the pews, I could direct you to the end of the Gospel of Mark and you would see that while it ends on verse 8, there are two possible additions.  There is a “shorter ending” and a “longer ending.”  It is the only Gospel where you get to pick your own ending.  Most Biblical scholars will tell you that the earliest versions of the manuscript ended at verse 8.  So why do we have these alternate endings?

            Because this ending feels unsatisfactory.  This is not what we want for Easter.  To be fair, these 8 verses aren’t completely devoid of Easter imagery. We know that something miraculous happened because the huge stone has been rolled away and there is an angelic messenger announcing that Jesus is risen-- but we want to see Jesus—alive.  We understand that these women are afraid, but in the other Gospels, we see the disciples move past the fear because they get to meet the risen Christ.  I don’t want the Easter story ending in silence and fear. 

            Perhaps that is what makes this Gospel ending so appropriate for Easter 2021.  We are back in church.  There are lilies.  It’s definitely Easter.  Yet there is still silence (no congregational singing) and fears (too many to mention).  While I was so excited when I found out we could open, I was also afraid that people would be disappointed, because it’s not the same.  And I am not sure it ever will be.

            That scares me and I know it scares many of you.  But I learned something about faith and fear over this last year and while studying Mark.  Many assume that since the women ran away from the empty tomb in fear, then that implies they failed in their mission—that they did not do as the angelic messenger asked them to. They were supposed to tell the disciples that Jesus was going ahead of them to Galilee. It says they didn’t tell anyone----well not immediately.  Obviously they must have, or we would not be telling this story 2000 years later.

            Throughout the Gospel of Mark, fear doesn’t imply desertion or even failure.  Fear is a part of our journey with Jesus.   That is why angels are always telling people not to be afraid…because they know it’s a natural reaction to encountering God.  There were many times when the disciples were afraid and they didn’t always look so good when they were.  And yet…the fear did not stop them as followers of Jesus and it definitely didn’t stop Jesus.

Photo by Jonny Gios

            I’ve always found it interesting that the women were so concerned about the stone.  Given everything that had happened, and all that Jesus had foretold, why were they worried about a stone-- a stone that could have been rolled away?  But isn’t that always the way, instead of looking for openings and new opportunities, we looks for roadblocks and impediments.  Instead of rejoicing about worshipping in person with you lovely people, I’ve been freaking out about what we can and cannot do.  And I am not saying we should not be taking these important precautions---we should.  However, once we have done all that we can do, then we need to put ourselves in God’s capable hands.  We can rest in the assurance that we worship a living God who continues to walk with us even when we stumble around in fear.

            While the women were worried, they didn’t let that stop them from going to the tomb.  That’s what matters…when all the other disciples hid or ran away, these women showed up.  They didn’t just show up, the text says: “When they looked up…”  They faced their fears and they looked up, they raised their eyes and their heart to the road ahead.  When they did---they realized that God had already removed the stone.  They just needed to open their eyes wide enough to see it.

            As we move into this 2^nd or 45^th phase of pandemic life, let us take a new look at the perceived barriers in front of us.  We may find that those barriers aren’t really barriers at all. They are opportunities for a new path.  The angelic visitor told the women that Jesus has already gone ahead of them to Galilee.  While they stared at an empty tomb---while the disciples hid in a locked room, Jesus was already charting a new course. He was moving ahead. 

            I don’t know what is next for our schools, our jobs, our economy or our church.  What I know is that Jesus is already there.  He’s been busy moving boulders out of the way.  When we follow him, it might feel like a tricky obstacle course at times—but the obstacles aren’t endings, they are new beginnings.  That doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy, but it’s still amazing and achingly beautiful at times.     Let’s not spend too much time looking back because that’s not where Jesus is.  He’s on his was to Galilee and the question is—are we ready to follow?

 

 

Grace in the Wilderness: Easter

Year A, Easter                                                                       

Jeremiah 31:1-6                                                                                         

How can we shout Alleluia and announce a risen Christ in the midst of such grief, illness and death? Many are lamenting our loss of an Easter celebration because of the recommendations to shelter in place and the order that we not gather in groups of more than 10.  But really, even if there wasn’t a fear of infecting one another and rules about staying home, would we really be able to celebrate with so much death around us?

            This past week the Surgeon General declared this week to be our Pearl Harbor and our 9-11, the week that would test the strength and endurance of Americans.  Even if we were able to gather without fear of getting sick or infecting another unknowingly, it would be hard to celebrate in the midst of such pain and anguish. While I grieve our inability to gather as a community, I have to admit that I am relieved that we don’t have to pretend that all is well when we know all is not well.

One of the things that distinguishes St. John’s in terms of our Easter celebration is the Easter Egg hunt in our cemetery.  It seems an odd tradition and the first few times you see young children weaving between tombstones carrying Easter baskets, you can’t help but recognize the bizarre juxtaposition, seeing such life and vitality in the midst of death.   Yet my friends, that is exactly what Easter is, what Easter has always been.  We can never forget that the very first Easter was in an empty tomb.  It was in the midst of grief, fear and weeping. 

Every Easter, I preach on the Gospel.  Anyone coming to Easter Sunday service wants to hear about the empty tomb and the appearance of the risen Christ.  But this isn’t your average Easter Sunday, so instead, I am going to talk about our Old Testament reading from Jeremiah.  Jeremiah was such a depressing prophet, he carries the unfortunate nickname of “the weeping prophet.”  Like other Old Testament prophets, much of his book was about encouraging people to repent from their sins and turn back to the one true God.

Typically there is a shift somewhere later in the book where the prophet moves away from judgment and warning to hope and comfort.  Our reading for today depicts this very shift.  But it’s more than just comfort.  It’s not the chicken soup for the soul kind of comfort that reminds us to look for the silver lining or search for the bright side.  This is about restoration.  This is about re-creation. It is a reminder that we worship a creator God and if God can create the world, he can re-create it as well.  That is what Jeremiah means when he writes, “Again I will build you, and you shall be built.”

These are words to people who have seen their homes destroyed and seen many loved ones die.  Some have lost faith in their God.  They have questioned why God would allow so much pain, so much unnecessary loss to a people he is supposed to love. They are a people who are weary, terrified and frustrated.  (Sound familiar?) Yet Jeremiah reminds these people that they are the same people who found grace in the wilderness. He is referring to the Exodus, when the Hebrew people escaped slavery in Egypt only to wander in the wilderness for 40 years.  Jeremiah reminds them that they found grace in the wilderness.

I was struck by that phrase.  I feel as though this period we are in right now is very much a wilderness period.  We are isolated, even though we are surrounded by the news and social media.  We have plenty of food as they did in the wilderness (because God provided) but we still feel the need to hoard.  We still feel anxiety for what we might lose.  We are in the wilderness.  Like others before us, we can find grace in this wilderness.  I often hear myself using the word stuck when I am talking about my current situation, which is not a good word for this situation.  We are not stuck.  We are free.  We are free because we have a God who loves us with an everlasting love. That is what Jeremiah calls it. 

One of the reasons I feel Jeremiah is so perfect for where we are now is because he uses past, present and future tense in these verses.  After reminding them of their wilderness period of the past, he writes, “Again I will build you, and you shall be built/ Again you shall take your tambourines, and go forth in the dance of the merrymakers. Again you shall plant vineyard on the mountains of Samaria…”  Today is not the day for tambourines and the dance of merry makers.  It is not the day to plant a vineyard.  Today is not the today for countless lilies, sumptuous food and an overflowing church.  But it is still a day for Alleluia.  It is still a day when we announce the risen Lord. 

One of the things I like to remind people at funerals is that the funeral liturgy is the one time we are allowed to say Alleluia during Lent. We believe that when we die, our lives are changed, not ended.  We are people of the resurrection.  Even in the midst of death, we still embrace the hope of the resurrection.  So yes, we are in a horrible period in our world where far too many people are dying, not just in other parts of the world, but here in Virginia, even in Hampton Roads. Yet as our funeral liturgy says, “even at the grave, we make our song Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.”  We sing that song with tears in our eyes and a lump in our throats, but we still sing the song.  Even in the wilderness, we find grace.

            Sometimes in church we act like Easter is the end of this long marathon and we can all relax and go back to our normal lives. But that has never been true.  Easter is not meant to be the end.  It is a new beginning.  That is why in our Gospel story, Jesus tells Mary that she cannot cling to him, because he’s not done yet.  He has more to do.  We know, that even after the peak of this virus is past us, there will be more work to do.  We will need to rebuild.  We will need to comfort those who are mourning.  We will need to take measures to keep our people safe.  Things will never be as they were before.  That’s ok.  That doesn’t mean we cannot mourn the loss of people, jobs, financial security, and experiences.  It just means that we keep going.  We discover a new normal.  And most importantly, we can’t let ourselves grow complacent and comfortable as we were before.  While people were not dying at alarming rates even a month ago, I think we can all agree that things were not ok.  It was only ok because the bad things didn’t affect many of us. 

            Now, we are all in this wilderness together. Perhaps we should stop trying to escape the wilderness and instead, find some grace in it.  Grow into our better selves.  Grow into the people God created us to be.  And then we can truly let our voices soar when we say together, “Alleluia.   Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.”

Approaching God: Matthew 28:1-10

Easter, Year A                                                                 
April 16, 2017

            One of my favorite hymns is “Were you there.”  If you do not know the hymn, it is about the crucifixion.  It repeats the phrase “were you there” adding various parts, like were you there when they nailed him to the cross….were you there when they pierced him in the side?  Singing it this week, I started to think about what makes it such a powerful hymn…why it gives me goosebumps every time I hear it. 

I still remember the first time I heard it.  It was my senior year of high school. My friend’s church was doing a passion play.  One of my friends was playing Jesus and he was one of the last people you would expect to play Jesus, but he did an amazing job and then there was the song. It was sung from the balcony by one voice. It sounded almost haunting.  I can remember it that vividly.  This year, one part struck me more poignantly than the others. After we ask, were you there, we sing, “Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble…”  That was when I got goosebumps this year.  I thought of those words again when I considered the Gospel reading for today.

            Each Gospel has a slightly different interpretation of the resurrection story.  Mark’s is very simple.  It ends too quickly, as if Mark’s pen just ran out of ink.  Both Luke and John contain more detail about the tomb itself and Jesus’s interaction with the women or apostles.  There is a little more drama.  There is a lot more information of Jesus’ actual appearance and interactions with the women and the disciples. It’s almost like there is an epilogue to the resurrection in Luke and John. 

Matthew’s story appears almost start by comparison, except for a few unique details.  Since it is relatively stark and brief, these unique details seem extremely important, especially when contemplating a sermon on Matthew.  One of the biggest differences between Matthew’s story and the others is the earthquakes.  The first earthquake happens right after Jesus dies.  It’s not a huge earthquake. Matthew says, “The earth shook and rocks split.”  Apparently it got the attention of a few people, but not most. 

The second earthquake happened as Mary Magdalene and the other Mary approached the tomb.  They did not go in. They did not knock on the tomb door.  They just approached it and the earth began to shake.  Here the Gospel writer says, “There was a great earthquake.”  This one was more significant than the last.  As the earth quaked, an angel descended from heaven and his appearance was like lightning. The angel immediately rolled back the stone. 

            What seems odd to me about this whole thing is the timing of the second earthquake.  The first earthquake happened right after Jesus died. That makes sense.  That was a big moment—a life changing moment.  The earth should have shook. The second earthquake happened as the women approached the tomb.  The angel tells them that Jesus is not there.  He has been raised.  He is already risen.   My question is, why didn’t the earth quake then?  It should have quaked as Jesus left the tomb...or perhaps the moment when he took that first breath.  There should have been quaking, a bright light, angels singing.  Yet it seems as though the actual resurrection went unnoticed.  The event that rocked the earth was not the resurrection itself, but the women approaching the tomb. 

            There is one thing that has always struck me as odd about each resurrection story in all of the Gospels.  There is never a description of the actual resurrection, or Jesus’ departure from the tomb. The logical explanation would be that the authors of the Gospels could not write about that since no one had witnessed it.  Yet it is surprising that no one used creative license to fill in the gaps.  Jesus could have told the story later. It seems like a story people would have wanted to hear. Another explanation is that the Gospel writers felt like some things could not be explained.  The moment was so sacred that it could not possibly be described by words. That seems plausible to me.

            The hymn, Were you there is asking not if we were actually there at the crucifixion…but if we can imagine ourselves there.  Can we put ourselves in that moment, at the foot of the cross?  If we can, would be tremble?  Presumably we would all have different reactions, but I think trembling would be a fairly reasonable reaction. I is important to consider the moment of Jesus death…that moment when the earth shook.  It’s almost like the earth, the ground felt the weight of the moment and so it trembled. 

Therefore it makes sense that it would happen again at the resurrection.  This time it was not grief that caused the earth to tremble, it was the moment when heaven and earth touched.   They touched ever so briefly, but there was a moment that transcended time and space, the moment when two women opened their hearts and minds to the possibility that Jesus was alive.  In that brief moment, everything changed for these women and ultimately for humanity as a whole.  Their world was shaken.  It was rearranged in a way that seemed almost unrecognizable.  The crazy thing is that they had not even seen Jesus yet.  All they had done was approached the tomb…because in approaching the tomb, they took a chance so that when the tomb opened up, their hearts and minds did as well.  They saw a world transformed.

            The reason it is important to imagine ourselves at the foot of the cross is because we need to feel the depth of that grief.  When we do, we will know the hope of the resurrection that much more powerfully.  If we tremble when we consider the death of Jesus, then we should be shaken in body, mind and spirit by the hope of the resurrection.  I know that is a not an easy thing…not an easy leap to make.  You might think, well if I was there in Jesus’ time, that would be different. I could have believed if I was there.  Yet the only reason that we know about the resurrection is because a few women were willing to approach the tomb.   They had to approach it. 

Sometimes we think that if we cannot wrap our heads and hearts around everything that the Bible and the church say about God and faith, then we have fallen short---it’s really not worth bothering at all.  That is not true. Remember, the earth did not quake when Jesus appeared.  It quaked when the women approached the tomb.  Before we can have a real relationship with Jesus…maybe even before we have any relationship at all, we have to be willing to approach God, to come face to face with our hopes and fears.  It is only then when we will find the strength to open our hearts and minds to the reality of the resurrection. It is only then when we can be shaken. 

The logical question is how can one approach God.  It’s not like he’s standing on the corner.  He’s not on social media.  It’s not easy.  But in the Episcopal Church, we have a way to start. Come to the altar.  Come to the heart of the church.  You don’t even have to take communion.  You might not be ready for that.  Just come, kneel, leave your doubts and fears in the pew. You can get back to them later.  It might not be an earth shaking moment.  I can pretty much guarantee there will not be an earthquake (although that would be awesome if we could have just a little one at a pivotal point in the service).  You have already taken a huge step.  You are in church.  Take the next. Approach the tomb.  Approach the altar.  If you can take that first step, you will always find the living God.