New Things

Revelation 21:1-6

John 13:31-35      

I came across a news story last week about a woman who was found living in a car in the Target parking lot. You might wonder if that’s really even news. There are so many homeless people in our country, so many of them living in cars – and some of these may not even consider themselves homeless because at least they are not sleeping in the bushes. At least they have a car and the car is their home. Yet we know it is a far from adequate home.

It was reported in the local newspaper, where it was considered to be newsworthy. Perhaps because it happened in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. King of Prussia is a fairly affluent suburban community outside Philadelphia. It has a very low rate of poverty. Life is generally pretty good. The shopping is excellent – King of Prussia is best known for its giant mall.

At any rate, perhaps it was news because it was in King of Prussia. I don’t imagine things like that are seen very often in King of Prussia. The staff at the Target store were asked by reporters if they knew she was out there in their parking lot, apparently living there. They said, yes, they knew. They chose not to respond – neither calling the police nor reaching out to help. Target remained neutral.

The fact that her car was a silver Mercedes might also have contributed to the newsworthiness of the story. She wasn’t parked out there in a beat-up old Chevy or a Ford van. This was a pretty nice car. One that many people would like to have if they could afford it. Yet, here was this woman, apparently homeless, with a really nice car. Well, it was a 12-year-old nice car, to be fair. But this still creates some cognitive dissonance for us – it doesn’t fit the stereotype of poverty we have in our heads. And we are not sure what to think of this situation.

This is the kind of real-life problem we tend to encounter when we are trying to figure out how to obey Jesus’ new commandment: to love one another just as he has loved us.

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.

There was actually nothing new about love when he said that. Love was not a new concept at that time. The theology of God’s love had been around for quite a long time. The exhortations to love God and love one another were clearly outlined in the law of Israel. The books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy include the commandments to love God, love the neighbor, even love the stranger, for you yourselves were strangers in Egypt, God says.

The idea of love is nothing new. But Jesus presents it as a new thing, and he seems to want his disciples to feel this command with a new spirit, a new energy, a new commitment. At this moment, Jesus is calling upon them to love with a new urgency in a new way. He is, after all, doing a new thing.

The story we hear today is taking us back to the days before Easter. Back to the place we were a few weeks ago, before he was arrested, before he was crucified. It takes us back to that upper room with Jesus and his disciples sharing a Passover meal before he is arrested. This is where we are at this moment:

The bread has been blessed and broken. Jesus and his disciples all reclined at the table together, relaxed, feasting. And suddenly Jesus says, “One of you will betray me.” They all looked at one another, not sure what to think. Jesus casually picks up the bread, he speaks again, saying, “The one to whom I give this piece of bread, he is the one.” He dips the bread into the wine and hands it to Judas. Judas takes the bread, eats it. Jesus says to him, “Go, do what you have to do,” and Judas immediately leaves.

None of the others, at this point, have a clue. The words about betrayal are disturbing, certainly, but nothing is yet clear to them. As Jesus continues, when Judas had gone out, he now speaks of glory, and love. It will only be in retrospect, after quite some time has passed, that anyone understands what he was saying here: that as I prepare to die I leave you this legacy of love. Love one another and they will know you are my disciples.

Love one another. And, just as we have done with many of Jesus’ most challenging words, we have zealously overanalyzed these words for the purpose of finding our way out of them. Surely he didn’t really mean to love everybody. Without qualification or stipulation? That doesn’t sound right.

To love someone, really love them – in action, not just in theory – is hard and sometimes confusing. We don’t know how to love all the others in the world. How do you love someone who is choosing to live in a Mercedes Benz in the Target parking lot? I mean, is the woman in that car included? And if so, what does that love look like?

The car was spotted by a woman on her way into the store. She looked at the woman in the driver’s seat of the Mercedes and instantly labeled her. A hoarder, she thought. The car was clearly packed with stuff. But she didn’t just let it go; she contacted a friend who was a social worker and together they approached the woman in the car.

They were afraid. They didn’t know how the woman in the car would react to them. Would she be violent? They didn’t know, but they knocked on the window anyway.

How do you speak to someone who has parked her car with all her worldly belongings in the Target parking lot? A woman who, from the smell of it, seems to have been cooped up with her two dogs in this car for a long time? What do you say?

They said, “Can we talk to you?” she said yes. They asked, “Are you living in your car?” She said, yes, for about two years now. They said, we’d like to help you. Do you want help? She said yes. Her name was Lynn.

And they learned the story about how Lynn had gone from enjoying a solid middle-class professional life to her current existence. Her fall had been dramatic and heartbreaking. After a series of losses, betrayals, and health crises, she found herself left with nothing but her car and her dogs.

It turned out that these two women had mutual acquaintances with Lynn, a professional network of friends. So they began reaching out to others and soon a network was woven together to help Lynn get out of her car and back in a home. People cleaned out and repaired her car, others helped Lynn and her dogs get cleaned and groomed, others gathered together clothing, others prepared meals for her and got her a hotel room while they sought permanent housing. They created a safety net for her and made sure that she would have some security.

The fact that two years went by before someone stepped up and loved Lynn enough to get her out of her car causes me to realize how far we fall short of Jesus’ new commandment. This new thing he is doing feels new to us each time we hear it, because it seems hard for us to believe that this is what he is asking us to do.

Love one another just as I have loved you. Love one another, and if you do, then everyone will know you are my disciples. In this love, they will see God’s glory. Christ’s glory. And his glory is to weave love through the brokenness of this world that killed him.

Indeed, as John writes in his Revelation, God is doing a new thing, God is making all things new. The home of God is among mortals, those who are mourning and crying and suffering pain of body, mind, and soul. God does not forsake the suffering in this world. On the contrary, it is God’s desire to be right in the midst of it – wiping away every tear, relieving all suffering, making all things new.

The newspaper columnist David Brooks writes frequently about the fabric of our society and how essential it is to weave a strong fabric. Much of the common cause that used to hold us together has been lost in recent decades, and it is easy to see the negative effects of that loss. What he is advocating for isn’t anything new; it’s actually something old. It’s just that when we lose it, we realize anew how much we need it, how much we need one another. Sometimes people can’t take care of themselves. Sometimes, we can’t pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and carry on. Sometimes we really, truly need one another. And when we do need one another, that is when we are closest to God. Because this is what God is: God is community. God is care for one another. God is love.

And the world will know us as Christians – if we love one another. What a wonderful world this would be.

Photo: Ed Yourdon from New York City, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Radical Trust

John 10:22-30    

In the movie Ghost, Patrick Swayze plays a man who is murdered. I’m not giving away the plot. That’s just the set up. The story is about how his spirit lingers on earth, because he needs to communicate a message to his wife, Demi Moore, who is in danger of being killed, too. He needs to figure out how to communicate with living people, so he goes to a psychic – Whoopi Goldberg. She’s actually a fake psychic. She has never communicated with the dead in her life; she just puts on a show and the people who pay for her services believe her.

So when the ghost of Patrick Swayze walks in the room she practically jumps out of her skin. Because she can see him and hear him. She never knew she really could communicate with spirits. Now that she does, she’s not at all sure she wants this gift. 

But the ghost of Patrick Swayze convinces her to help him get a message to his wife. Which means they have to convince his wife, the grieving Demi Moore, that Whoopi Goldberg truly is speaking for her dear departed husband. As I’m sure you can imagine, this is not going to be easy.

The movies are full of plots like this, where some characters need to convince others that they really are who they say they are. It usually leads to all kinds of comic action and reaction. But something that never happens is for people to turn to the unrecognized one and ask, “Look, are you the one?” Demi Moore isn’t going to walk the streets of New York asking people, “Are you my husband?” She’s not going to walk up to Whoopi Goldberg and ask, “Are you my husband?” because that would seem crazy.

She is never going to know it’s him just because someone tells her it is him. She has to experience his presence with her, then she knows him.

Once she knows, she doesn’t have to ask. But if you don’t know, you are never going to know, no matter what anyone says.

At least, that seems to be the approach Jesus takes.

In this chapter of John’s gospel, he begins speaking of himself as the Good Shepherd. It’s worth looking at what comes before this chapter, because it matters. This begins in the aftermath of a long, involved interaction with a blind man, his parents, and some religious leaders. In that story, Jesus healed the man of his blindness, then nobody seems to recognize him because he is no longer blind. Which is a pretty cool example of irony, I think.

The religious leaders enter the fray laying out their circular arguments to deny that Jesus has the power to heal blindness. Because, evidently, they don’t want to believe. And Jesus says some words about how his presence in the world enables some who were blind to gain their sight, and others with sight to become blind. It confuses these religious leaders, mainly because they are among those who are spiritually blind to Jesus. They are unable, unwilling, to recognize who Jesus is.

As we begin chapter 10, Jesus starts to develop this metaphor of the shepherd and his sheep. His listeners fall right in with this; they know sheep and shepherding. They are people who live pretty close to the earth and are not unfamiliar with animal husbandry. So they know that sheep are exceptionally good, for some reason, at recognizing their own shepherd.

That seems to be the peculiar kind of intelligence sheep have. They’re not original thinkers; they’re not headstrong or independent. Sheep are followers. But they are not undiscerning in their following. They know their own shepherd.

I have heard it said that when flocks of sheep get mixed up together at the watering hole, each shepherd knows that when it is time to leave all he has to do is call his sheep. His sheep will follow his call, because they know him. Sheep know their shepherd and they trust him completely.

The shepherd doesn’t have to worry that any of his sheep will have a different idea about where to go. He doesn’t have to worry that some of his sheep will have doubts or skepticism. They trust their shepherd completely.

And we are not like sheep, are we? We have ideas, we have doubts and skepticism, we have independent thoughts of our own. We are not sheep. But we who call ourselves Christian also want to follow our Good Shepherd, the Christ. And we want to feel the assurance that we are, indeed, following him and not going astray.

All this means that it’s not as simple for us as it is for sheep. We have competing desires – we want to be independent and in charge; and we want to follow Jesus. Which means we are sometimes confused.

The people who were gathered around Jesus at the temple that winter day, in the portico of Solomon, were confused – about whether he was the one. And they simply wanted him to tell them. Just say it, yes or no.

As if this were a court of law and they are simply gathering facts to make a case; tell us, are you the messiah? It’s a simple yes or no question.

It reminds me of another episode that both Matthew and Luke tell us about. When John the Baptist, who has been imprisoned by Herod, sends his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one we have been waiting for?” Just tell us, is it you or should we continue searching?

But, if you don’t already know, you will never know.

I don’t mean to be snarky when I say that, no more than Jesus means to be snarky when he says, “I have told you, and you do not believe.” He refuses to give them a direct answer to their direct question, but it isn’t because he is shying away from the matter. It really is because, if they don’t know, they won’t know.

They won’t know because he tells them, “Yes, I am the Messiah.” They won’t know if he wears a Son of God identity badge. They won’t know him by his words, because they don’t know him by his work.

They are like the religious leaders in chapter nine who refused to believe the evidence right before their eyes that Jesus had healed a man of his blindness, because such a thing didn’t fit into their narrative. They had already decided Jesus was at best, a nuisance, at worst, a heretic. They said, “We don’t know where he came from.” As if that would settle the matter.

Perhaps it is this same crowd of people confronting him on the portico of Solomon saying, “Just tell us plainly. Are you the one?” Although this time betraying a degree of uncertainty about their convictions, they are still unwilling to trust their eyes when they see the acts he has done, the signs he has performed. They do not trust the voice of the Shepherd calling to them through his works.

They have not recognized him when he healed the blind and the lepers, when he fed the thousands, when he restored life to so many in so many ways.

So why should it matter what he tells them? If they don’t know, they won’t know simply because he tells them, “I am the Messiah.”

They won’t know because they are somehow unable or unwilling to see him, hear him, trust him. Jesus says, “you don’t know because you don’t belong to my sheep.” It seems like it’s out of their hands. Is it out of our hands?

The strange and paradoxical truth of it is that it is out of our hands, while it is also in our hands. In a way, it’s a matter of seeing him and hearing him because you trust him.

We might look back again at that story from Luke, involving John the Baptist’s disciples, who come to Jesus at John’s request, asking, “Are you the one? Or should we keep waiting?” His answer to them is sublime: Go and tell John what you have seen and heard. The blind see, the lame walk, the deaf hear, the lepers are cleansed, the dead are raised, and the poor receive good news.

And this is what Jesus means when he says to the religious leaders, “I have already told you.” He means, I told you with my life, with every condition I healed, every hungry body I fed, every act of compassion, every work of justice. I told you. And you didn’t believe it. I told you with my thumbprint, my unique DNA, my body, my blood. I told you in a hundred different ways, different than what you were looking for. And you just could not see it; could not believe it.

Here, again, we have the competing desires at play: wanting to be in charge, to be in the know; and wanting to follow Jesus. Independence at war with radical trust.

The religious leaders of his day were at the forefront among those who could not recognize Jesus, because they were swimming in their sense of certainty and importance. And, the truth is whenever we fall into that place of feeling too certain, too secure, too important in the world, we also risk not being able to recognize Jesus. If we stop seeing as he sees.

If we stop seeing goodness, if we stop looking through eyes of compassion, if we stop believing he can make a way, somehow, when there seems to be no way. If we stop believing that his light leads us to eternity, we stop knowing him. Like a sheep without a shepherd, we are lost.

You know there are some things you can’t know just by someone telling you about those things. You need to experience these things for yourself.

Look, you don’t have to believe what you don’t see, because if you open the eyes of your heart you will see his work all around you. You don’t have to follow blindly and dumbly, because if you open your ears you will hear the sound of your shepherd’s voice calling you. It starts with radical trust.  

You know God by God’s care for you, the ways God provides for you, and the way a relationship with God shapes you to grow in gratitude during times of blessing; and patience and trust will get you through the dark valleys. We know God by the ways God cares for us, so we need to let God care for us.

Grace and Peace

John 21:1-19               

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the greeting Paul liked to use in his letters to the churches with whom he corresponded.

In these weeks since Easter Sunday I have been thinking about the kinds of feelings the disciples of Jesus might have experienced after his resurrection. As I said last week, fear was among those feelings, possibly even fear of the resurrected Jesus. But also guilt. They had failed Jesus spectacularly. They let him die.

Not that they could have prevented it, of course. In fact, they had tried on various occasions to stop him from going down the path he was going. He would not be stopped. There wasn’t anything much they could do, short of dying with him.

They weren’t personally responsible for his death. But that didn’t mean they weren’t feeling personally responsible. Perhaps you can identify with that sort of feeling – if you have ever failed someone. Is there anyone here who has not, somehow, failed another?

When we love someone, we feel some responsibility for them. And we feel guilty. Sometimes so guilty that it surprises us to find that the ones we have failed actually still love us.

There may have been some of that going on for the disciples of Jesus during these post-Easter days. If they were human, and if they loved Jesus, they felt some guilt. So when Jesus appeared to them as they huddled in that locked room and said to them, “Peace be with you,” I don’t doubt they were shocked on more than one level.

They were shocked in the same way any one of us would be if Jesus walked through our locked doors and greeted us. It just wasn’t something they expected. But they were also shocked, I think, by his words to them: “Peace be with you.”

He said it twice, just to make sure they heard him. And to assure them he hadn’t misspoken – he really meant it. And then he came back the next week to say it again. Because Thomas hadn’t been there the first time, and Thomas needed to hear it too. Peace, Thomas. Peace be with you.

I’m not sure we always understand just what this means. It means a whole lot more than flashing a peace sign. It means I forgive you. It means I still love you, in spite of what has passed between us, we’re good; nothing stands between us now. We’re whole, you and I. But peace was not among the things they were expecting.

We use that word all kinds of ways, even flippantly. The peace sign is just a fashion statement. It means nothing. We pass the peace in our congregation, but sometimes that means nothing more than sharing tidbits of gossip with each other or confirming when the next committee meeting will take place.

“They have treated the wounds of my people carelessly, saying ‘peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.” We hear from the prophet Jeremiah. Too often we use that word carelessly, because we don’t want to have to understand what real peace will demand of us. To treat the wounds with care, to dress the wounds with love.

When Jesus brings greetings of peace to his beloved disciples in that upper room, his disciples who abandoned and betrayed him, he is bringing them so much more than we are inclined to hear. He brings them forgiveness; he restores them to wholeness. Peace.

And he comes to them again at the lakeshore, while they are out fishing. They went back to what was familiar, fishing, perhaps thinking that it would be their future. They were not dead, and apparently were going to be alive for some indefinite length of time, so they would need to figure out what was next. Fishing was an obvious choice – for people who didn’t yet see the full extent of the change that had been wrought.

It didn’t work out well for them that night, though; they caught nothing. They might have seen this as a sign, or not. No doubt there had been other nights when they came up empty. At any rate, Jesus again appears to them, and we can see that they are still not comfortable with the post-resurrection Jesus. Silence. It seems like Jesus is doing all the talking.

But after the meal he turns to Peter. Simon, he calls him now – his former name. The name he had before Jesus anointed him as the foundation upon which his church would be built. Simon, he says, do you love me?

Then Simon Peter and Jesus begin a little dance. Simon, do you love me? Yes, Lord, I love you. Then feed my sheep. Simon, do you love me? Yes, Lord, I love you. Then feed my sheep. Simon, do you love me? Yes, Lord, I love you. Then feed my sheep.

Three times they repeat this, varying the words slightly. And Peter’s feelings begin to resurface during this dance – his guilt, his love, his shame, his hurt, his sense of helplessness, even hopelessness. Lord, he says, you know everything.

Everything – you know what I did, of which I am ashamed. And you know my shame, too. You know all of it, so you know how much I still do, and always have loved you.

As painful as this was for Peter, it was necessary. He needed to face all of this for him to be fully redeemed. Redemption doesn’t come cheap. It costs something.

Grace costs something. We know what it cost Jesus – his suffering and death, a journey through hell and back. We know this grace he brings is not cheap.

But do we know that it costs us something too? And do we know what it costs? It costs us our complacency; the denial of our complicity in the sin of the world; any privilege of hate. We give these things up for the sake of grace and peace.

Christ came to his disciples three times, John says, enough times to offer them his forgiveness, to offer them a chance to redeem themselves, to offer them a path forward. Grace and peace, he gives to them – through his broken body and the blood he shed – so that they may have life in abundance.

Christ came to them three times, John says, but he comes to us still, offering these same gifts.

May you receive these gifts:

May you know that as much as we bear responsibility for the brokenness and the hurting of this world, we are forgiven.

May you be blessed with the knowledge of your part in all things – the sin and the healing of the world.

May you hear the call of Christ to extend his forgiveness, to love his people, to feed his lambs.

And may grace and peace be yours in abundance.

Breath of Life

John 20:19-31    

Do you remember that ad campaign from about twenty years ago? Somebody started taking out billboard ads that were meant to look like messages from God. They were usually kind of funny. One of them said, “Well, you did ask for a sign.” Some were cute and encouraging, like “Come on over, and bring the kids.” Or “Let’s meet at my house Sunday, before the game.” Or “Loved the wedding; invite me to the marriage.”

Some were a little more ominous, although still funny, like, “You think it’s hot here?” “What part of ‘Thou shalt not’ didn’t you understand?” My favorite has always been, “Don’t make me come down there.”

I love that one because, well, it reminds me of my parents. And yes, I have probably said it, or something like it, myself at some point in all my years of parenting. I love it for those reasons, and also because God did come down. And he will come again. And, how do we feel about that?

With our text today, we have an opportunity to think about how the first disciples felt about it.

Last week we read the resurrection morning story as Luke tells it, in which the women who arrive at the tomb see that the stone is rolled away, the body of Jesus is missing, and two dazzling guys, probably angels, are waiting for them. They tell the women they are looking in the wrong place, because Jesus is not dead, he is risen. Then the women run off to tell the men all of this – which the men do not believe.

John’s telling of the story is a little bit different – which shouldn’t surprise anyone, because isn’t it perfectly natural that everyone has a slightly different version of how things happened? In John’s gospel, Mary Magdalene is alone that morning, and when she sees how everything has been overturned, she runs back to the men. A couple of the men run back to see for themselves, but they don’t understand so they just return home, John says, the place where they have been staying in Jerusalem.

Mary stays and sees the angels – but that’s not all. She has a face to face encounter with Jesus himself. Jesus tells her to go and share the good news with the disciples, which she does immediately. Unlike Luke, John doesn’t say that the men did not believe – but neither does he say they did.

All we know was that they remained behind locked doors. John tells us they were locked in because of their fear of the Jews, but I don’t believe they were really afraid of the Jews. After all, they were Jews – each and every one of them. It’s possible they were afraid of the Romans. Although, they were not afraid to run to the tomb that Sunday morning, so they might not have been afraid as they claimed.

Not of the Jews. Not of the Romans. It’s possible they were afraid of Jesus. Because he was back. And what would that mean.

They weren’t looking so great right now. They had saved themselves, but they couldn’t save Jesus. They would not stand with him through his ordeal of the week before. Peter, for all his bravado, would not declare his allegiance to Jesus. Instead, he lied three times and said he did not know him. None of these men had been able to accompany him to the cross. None of them had been willing to fight for his life.

And I’ll bet they were really miserable about that – not just Jesus’ death, but their own failures. Part of them had died when Jesus died. But that didn’t mean they were ready to welcome him back. What would he do? What would he say?

Such a concern would be legitimate. Jesus had a legitimate beef with these guys. Perhaps they were thinking of the law saying you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth and so on. Even though Jesus said something different, but they might not have remembered that. People rarely seem to remember that he had said to them, “You have heard it said, ‘eye for eye, tooth for tooth,’ but I say to you … if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.”

Our adherence to this lovely and gracious ideal is tested every day. Last Sunday we grieved the violent attacks against Christians during their Easter celebrations in Sri Lanka. These attacks were claimed to be payback for attacks against Muslims at worship in New Zealand last month. Those attacks were also religiously and racially motivated. It goes on and on.

And just Saturday we bore witness to another synagogue shooting, as people worshiped on the last day of Passover. Again, someone acting out their anger, feeling justified in doing so.

We are so used to seeing acts of violence born of vengeance and rage, because this is what people do. But Jesus taught his disciples, “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

Would someone who teaches this be someone they need to fear?

They stayed inside, behind a locked door. Maybe they though a locked door could keep him out.

When it was evening on that first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples were staying were locked – locked for fear of something; maybe just for fear of coming face to face with themselves. Could they forgive themselves for failing Jesus like they did? They grieved his death, their failure, and this loss of hope.

Turn the bolt, lock the door on hope, on freedom, on life.

Then Jesus busts in.

The book of Revelation says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any hear my voice and open the door, I will come in and eat with them and them with me.” Many have interpreted this verse in art, and we get these paintings of Jesus standing in front of a door; knock, knock. He politely waits.

Can you imagine that, really? The one who busted out of hell, busted out of the grave, right through that stone – is he going to stand outside and wait?

When it comes down to it, neither locked doors nor massive stones, not even death can keep him out. Jesus came in and stood among them and without waiting for a greeting or a response, he wished them peace. Peace. And this means I forgive you. I love you. We’re good, you and me.

He showed them his wounds. He breathed on them the breath of life, and he gave them a job: Go out, be my witnesses, and spread forgiveness.

And now they can, because once they have received forgiveness and the new life in the Spirit, they can share that forgiveness with everyone.

I wonder what this world would be like if everyone who professes to be Christian lived by these principles.

Do we welcome Jesus back? We sure do need him. There are too many messengers of hate and death. We need words of peace and forgiveness. We surely need his Spirit – the breath of life.

Photo: from https://godspeaks.com/

But …

Acts 10:34-43    

Luke24:1-12     

During this season of Lent I took on a daily discipline of writing. A group called Rethink Church, affiliated with the United Methodist Church, offered something they call the photo-a-day challenge for Lent. Each day they offered a word and invited people to share a photo on social media that expresses that word for them. I decided to also use words, to think through what the word prompt means to me and share that, along with a picture.

It’s been an interesting and challenging experience, the kind of exercise that helps me think deeply about what words mean to me. Something I think is worth doing, because words are important. Words provide much of the meaning in our lives. even little words like “but.”

You might have thought this a strange sermon title. “But” is not much of a word. It does not really stand alone, nor is it a proper way to begin a sentence, so we were taught in school. Yet, this is the word that begins the 24^th chapter of Luke’s gospel.

It’s a very strange way to begin something new, because the very nature of the word means you have to look back to see what happened before it. What happened before this chapter that is being rebutted? What happened before this chapter that has been disrupted? What happened just before this which makes the events of this chapter a surprise? We actually know the answer to that.

We know what happened before. Jesus was hung on a cross, the Roman instrument of torture and execution. He breathed his last breath. His friends stood by and bore witness to this. Then they went to get permission to take down his body. They took his body down and wrapped it in a linen cloth and laid it in a tomb.

Then they left, for it was the eve of the sabbath, a day that would require rest. “On the sabbath they rested according to the commandment,” Luke says at the end of chapter 23. Then we turn the page, and we find that word:

But, early in the morning of the first day of the week, the women went back to the tomb with the intent of tending to his corpse, the thing they were prevented from doing the Friday before. They were expecting to find a three-day-dead body to deal with, but –

They found the stone had been rolled away. They found no body in the tomb. Instead, they found two men in dazzling clothes standing beside them – angels, we might assume – who asked them why they were looking for the living among the dead. He is not here. He is risen.

And here, really, is where the story of the good news begins. If not for the but, there would be no gospel. If not for the but, nothing in Chapters 1 through 23 would have been written. If not for the but, we would not be here today.

“But” is the promise, the hope, the assurance of things not seen. It is a strong word of faith.

It’s not much of a word, I admit. But. It’s a little thing, overused and underappreciated. Nevertheless, it is the engine that turns the page.

It tells us something disruptive happened on that weekend 2,000 years ago. It tells us that God has broken in to disrupt the cycle of death. God has made a move to disturb the forces of evil in the world with good. God has interrupted our usual programming with breaking news! Some really good news.

When we hear “but,” we know that what the world had come to assume and expect, would no longer be the norm. God has intruded into our lives, intruded into the work, the domain of death, and restored life. Today we celebrate that God has done a new thing.

On Friday, he died. On Saturday, they rested. But – on Sunday, he is risen!

When the women stepped into the tomb Sunday morning and saw the dazzling men instead of the body of Jesus, they were flooded with feelings. Perplexed, disoriented, confused, anxious, terrified. In terror, they fell to the ground, hiding their faces. And they hear the dazzling men say to them, why do you look for the living among the dead? You thought he was here, but he is risen.

Well, that’s something we haven’t seen before, isn’t it? Okay, there was that one time when Jesus called Lazarus out of the grave. Lazarus was restored to life, but he was going to die again. This thing that happened with Jesus at the tomb was different. This is God reaching into our world and saying, death doesn’t mean a thing. The life I am offering you is bigger than that. I’m talking about a new kind of life.

God reached into this world and changed things. God gave Jesus new life; and through the risen Christ, God is offering it to us too.

Easter, life eternal, is not a thing that only means something to us at the time of our death. It means something every day of our life.

He was in the grave, but now he is risen. He was dead, but now he is alive. We were filled with sadness, but now we are filled with joy. The power, the anticipation, the hope expressed in this word “but.” Everything turns on this word. “But” is the hinge that opens the door to new life.

Now that we know this, now that we stand in front of this open door, what do we do? How does this impact the way we live our lives today?

The truth is much of the time we still live our lives as though this had never happened. We live as though the most important things are the things that are perishable. We attach great value to things in the world that are as good as dead. We carry on with the old life, the one that God broke into the world to disrupt, the one where death still has the final word. We live this old life which is a zero-sum game, where in order for me to gain something someone else has to lose something. This is the way the world works. It offers a life where the things we fight for, obsess about, boast of, are things that will all perish anyway.

That is the old life that God broke into and offered something new. In this new life, everything is changed. We know that not only does death no longer have the final word, but also that there is greater life – deeper, joyful, and abundant life – when we stop trying to hold this perishable life with such a tight fist.

The dazzling men/angels said to the women, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? Don’t you remember all that he told you? That all these things would happen and on the third day he would rise up. Remember?”

And then they did remember, and they went back to find the men and tell them everything. But, the men did not believe them. These words seemed to them an idle tale.

Again, it turns on this hinge – the word “but.” This time, however, that little word turns them not toward life but away from life.

We all are given this opportunity. We have heard the story, probably many times over. We recite the lines in the Apostles’ Creed: Jesus was crucified, dead, and buried. He descended into hell; the third day he rose again. We say these words, but the real truth of the resurrection comes to us in the experience of our lives.

If we want to truly know the resurrection from the dead, we need to live this new life God offers us through Christ, walk through that door and live that life. We do that best when we do it for each other. When we help one another live a resurrected life, in the little ways we often do –

teaching a child how to worship, holding the hymnal with them, giving them their first communion bread;

sitting with one who is facing the really hard questions, the questions that can’t be answered to our satisfaction, the questions that test our faith;

being the help that someone needs, even when helping is hard;

being the cool glass of water for the one who is thirsty, the piece of bread that is broken off for the one who is hungry.

We do it best when we do it for each other.

The new life in Christ, the resurrected life, comes to us when we let go of the old life, because the old life weighs us down and fills us up with things that don’t matter ultimately, things that are perishable.  Open your hand, let them go, and receive the new life in Christ.

But I have some things I need to take care of first, you might say. Like some characters we meet in the gospels – the ones who said they wanted to follow Jesus, but they had some things they needed to do first.

The hinge turns both ways. We can hear and see and believe how God has broken into the world and rebutted the wisdom of the world. Or we can offer our own “but,” turning away from the life that is offered. It is our choice. We can walk through the open door, or we can shut the door. Our choice.

The stone is rolled away. The tomb is empty. Christ is risen and he has opened the door to life for you and me. Let us walk through that door together.

Photo credit: Leitzschederivative work: MagentaGreen [CC0]

What the Lord Needs

   
Luke 19:28-40

As Jesus and his disciples are getting ready to enter Jerusalem, they are taking care of some of the details – as anyone would do before a parade. They pause some distance before reaching Jerusalem, near Bethany and Bethphage. Here, Jesus turns to two of his disciples to give them instructions. “Go ahead into the village. You will find a colt tied up. Untie it and bring it here.”

And here you might be asking yourself: Is this really okay? That they should just go in and take a colt that clearly belongs to someone else? Might someone object to this?

Jesus seems to think so, for he also tells them, “If anyone asks you what you are doing just tell them this: ‘the Lord needs it.’”

So they went in and they found the colt. They untied it and someone asked them what they were doing. And they followed his instructions to the letter, saying, “The Lord needs it.”

They whole scene has an air of mystery to it. It is an intrigue where there are code words that need to be spoken. And I don’t know but that it had all been arranged ahead of time. In any case, they come back with the donkey and the procession into Jerusalem begins.

Entering Jerusalem at this time is particularly dangerous for Jesus. Remember last week we talked about the fact that there was now a warrant out for his arrest. People were looking for him, and in Jerusalem they would surely find him.

It was dangerous for another reason, too. It was the time of the Passover – a time when Jews from all over the diaspora were making their pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The city would be packed and tensions would be high.

The Roman authorities would put in a special showing, too. As much as the Jews loved Passover, the Romans hated it. With so many people milling about, there was a high risk for some disturbance of the peace.  The Romans prized peace above all things.  But for Rome, peace meant something different than what it means to me and you.  For Rome, peace was their unquestioned, unchallenged authority.  For Rome, peace meant that there was no dissent, that there was total obedience and loyalty to the empire.  Rome prized their peace and was more than willing to use violence to keep this peace.   The irony of this should be self-evident. 

The Romans dreaded the Passover.  But this was not only because of the large crowds; it was also because of its meaning.  The Passover was, and is, Israel’s remembrance and celebration of their liberation story.  Many centuries ago, Israel remembers, God freed them from the bond of slavery in Egypt.  Many centuries ago, God chose Moses to lead them out of Egypt, through the wilderness, and to the promised land.  They remembered that God had given them freedom.  But how could they celebrate this freedom, while suffering under the oppressive foot of the Roman Empire, and not be inspired to resistance?  Rome dreaded the Passover, because they knew there was a heightened risk of uprising.

Everyone knew that this was a dangerous time in Jerusalem. Jesus, too, knew that this was a dangerous time in Jerusalem. Yet they enter the city gates, boldly, singing their praises to God and songs for peace.

Not the peace of Rome, either. These are the voices of resistance rising up.

The Pharisees lose their cool; this tension is becoming too much for them. Jesus shouldn’t be making such a big entrance. There are already reasons enough for the Roman authorities to be tightening the screws on the Jews, they don’t need another reason. The Pharisees order Jesus to shut his disciples up. But he says to them, it would make no difference.

It would make no difference, because the stones would shout out, all of God’s creation would shout praises to God, shout prayers for peace. This, too, is what the Lord needs.

This is a moment for what the Lord needs. And what we are seeing in this scene is a challenge to the oppressive powers of the world, in the name of the Lord – because the Lord needs it.

This text says to us the Lord does not need people to furtively creep about trying to keep a low profile. The Lord does not need people to practice appeasing the brutes of the world whose view of peace is having no one challenge their authority. The Lord does not need to have his people suffer deprivation. The Lord needs something very different.

But Jesus knows that getting to what the Lord needs is not a simple and easy thing. It is not as simple as saying the right words to get permission to take a colt. Getting what the Lord needs means standing against the powers of the world like Rome and any other authoritarian powers that would oppress people and ravage God’s good creation.

What the Lord needs is for us to ask for it in the Lord’s name.

It is what the disciples did when they fetched the colt. “The Lord needs it,” they said. What if we did too? When we ask people to donate to One Great Hour of Sharing, because the Lord needs it. When we protest the inhumane treatment of those who are weak – the immigrants, the poor – because the Lord needs it, because they are beloved children of God – as are you and I. When we fight to preserve a shrinking social safety net, for preserving human dignity should be our high priority because the Lord needs it.

What if we boldly asked for what the Lord needs?

What does the Lord need from you and me? I will tell you the answer that is written in the prophet Micah: The Lord needs us to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God.

On this day as we remember the sacred and loud and demanding procession into Jerusalem, let us each ask ourselves, what does the Lord need from me. As we stand on the threshold of Holy Week, knowing that as the week goes on the days get darker, let us meditate on the question: what does the Lord need from me?

Photo: Palm Sunday Cheering Crowds, from BBC Online Educational Materials

The Scent of Sacrifice

Philippians 3:4b-14    

John 12:1-8        

You may recall that this scene made it into the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar. Judas, growing increasingly outraged at the direction things are going, just loses it here. He sings essentially the same words that are in the text. Meanwhile, Mary and a chorus of women are singing a soothing song to Jesus, urging him to relax: try not to get worried; don’t you know everything is alright now, everything’s fine. We want you to sleep well tonight. Let the world turn without you tonight.

In the play, Jesus needs soothing because he has become overwhelmed by the masses coming to him for healing. But in the actual biblical text in John’s gospel, if he needs soothing, we can probably attribute that to what has happened just before this text.

In the previous chapter, Jesus has raised Lazarus from the dead. And for Lazarus and his family and a lot of others, this is cause for celebration. But, of course, not everyone is celebrating.

Lazarus and his sisters, Mary and Martha, they were good friends of Jesus, and had been for some time. Jesus stayed at their house when he traveled through town. Mary sat at his feet, drinking in his every word; Martha toiled away in the kitchen to prepare a feast worthy of their guest. Mary and Martha and Lazarus loved Jesus.

And Jesus loved them, too. But when he gets word that Lazarus is dying, he decides to wait before going to him. He said, It’s not the dying kind of sickness. But it was, and Jesus knew it. It seems like Jesus is setting up the situation where he will raise Lazarus from the dead.

When he finally does arrive in Bethany, Lazarus has been dead four days. His family and friends have already laid him in the tomb and sealed it. There is no question about this – Lazarus is most certainly dead when Jesus calls his name and Lazarus walks out of the tomb in his grave clothes.

All the people there knew they had witnessed something extraordinary. And, of course, word of this amazing sign gets to the religious authorities – the Pharisees and the Priests. Rather than rejoice at the power of God on display, they are worried about the potential for chaos breaking loose. And this is where Caiaphas, the Chief Priest says, “It is better to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.” Now plans are underway. Jesus will be sacrificed.

The clock is ticking now and he knows it.

Now, in this chapter, it is six days before the Passover, Jesus is again at the home of Lazarus, newly alive, and Martha and Mary. And Mary sits down at his feet and pours out a pound of perfume and anoints his feet, wipes them with her hair. The smell of the perfume fills the house.

I wonder what it smells like.

The text says it is made of nard; spikenard, which is a flowering plant known for the medicinal properties of its oil. The oil has a therapeutic aroma that helps relax the body and mind. In ancient times it was regarded as one of the most precious oils. It was quite expensive, this nard oil; it was quite extravagant, pouring out a full pound of it on Jesus’ feet.

What does it smell like, this nard oil? To Judas, it smells like waste.

The scent of the oil raises his ire, and he voices his righteous indignation. The money spent on this could have fed the poor. But John can’t help whispering to his audience: Judas didn’t give a fig about the poor. He was an embezzler, stealing from the treasury. Even so, does he have a point? Was it wasteful to pour out a pound of perfume on Jesus’ feet?

Meanwhile, Martha is still busy fixing food, and Lazarus sits at the table quietly. You could almost forget that Lazarus was only recently dead and in the grave. Literally. Here he is, sitting at the dinner table with his family and guests. He is alive and, I imagine, happy about that. He doesn’t yet know that as he sits there the Chief Priests are plotting to have him murdered. In their minds, Lazarus is the problem. If he weren’t walking around alive, people wouldn’t be able to talk about how amazing Jesus is. They think that if they can just get rid of Lazarus, people will stop following Jesus and everything can return to normal. Lazarus doesn’t know that he will be dead again soon.

For now, he sits among his guests enjoying the aroma of the nard oil perfume. What does it smell like to Lazarus? To him, it smells like life.

Mary, I have always assumed, doesn’t let Judas and his rantings disturb her. She continues rubbing that oil she has poured out on him, using her hair; her head is bent down, her face in the thick of the scent. She is enjoying the smell of it. To Mary it smells like gratitude.

She is grateful for the gift Jesus has given to her and her family. Lazarus was dead and there was no expectation that he would live again. Yes, the sisters understood that Lazarus would rise someday – on the Day of Resurrection, the Day of Judgment, the end of time as we know it. But Jesus says to them, I AM the resurrection. I AM the life. Mary and Martha knew that they would have life through Jesus, and they bore witness to this truth that day when he called Lazarus out from the tomb. To Mary, this perfume she is filling the air with is the scent of her gratitude.

While Judas is filling the air with his self-righteous rants, Jesus speaks up in defense of Mary. “Leave her alone. She needs this for my burial.”

Now, it is hard to know how to take this. Because, in fact, she is not using it for his burial, she is using it on his living body. If it was for his burial, then she has, indeed, wasted it. But with these words, what Jesus has done is brought death back into the room.

To Jesus, this perfume is the smell of death. Because he knows that death is all around him and his own death is before him. The Passover is coming. He will travel on to Jerusalem for the festival, even though he knows there is a warrant out for him.

He knows that he must go on. He must walk into it. Because everything he has done has moved him in this direction, to this end. There is no turning back for him. The day of sacrifice is coming. As Caiaphas said, one man must die for the sake of many. It’s in the air.

It is the scent of sacrifice.

Strange, isn’t it? Thinking of all these things in terms of smell. The Apostle Paul used an unusual phrase in one of his letters, calling us “the aroma of Christ.” But it is a way of saying that we, as his followers bring him with us wherever we go – and not just in words. When we have Christ in us, we fill the air with him. Anyone will know the sincerity of our intentions because we carry the very aroma of Christ within us.

It is the scent of a lavish gift poured out to overflowing. It is the scent of his words and deeds, the scent of his crucifixion and resurrection. It is the scent of gratitude, the scent of sacrifice, the scent of death, and the scent of life.

In this reading from Philippians, Paul says there are so many things that used to be important to me but no longer matter. There are so many things I used to be concerned about but these things are now only rubbish. All that matters now is Christ crucified. Sacrificed. He said, all I want now is to know Christ and the power of his resurrection. Like Jesus did, on his way to Jerusalem, I press on, Paul says, straining forward to what lies ahead: the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

As we move toward Holy Week, may you press on. May you breathe in the aroma of Christ, and may you fill the air with him.

Photo: a spikenard plant