Where Are You?

Luke 24:1-12  But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.

+++

Many years ago I had a job as a teaching assistant in a college class for education majors.  We taught teachers how to evaluate their students.  It was not their favorite class.  One day the professor sought to liven up his lesson by staging an event.  He recruited a woman to walk through the back of the classroom, taking a shortcut to the other side of the building, in the middle of his lecture.  As she was walking through, he suddenly stopped lecturing and called her out.  He told her he’d seen her do this before, she had no business interrupting his class, and so on.  She argued back with him, saying she wasn’t creating any kind of disruption, that everyone does this.  It was all staged, but the class didn’t know it.  They sat there with wide eyes and gaping mouths.

After the woman left, the professor asked the class to write down a brief summary of what happened, in case there were questions about it later.  He said he thought he might have to report this incident to his department head, and he wanted their “testimony” as witnesses.  Absolutely, they said.  You’ve got it.

The testimonies were interesting.  They were all over the map.  Some were unemotional, detached, just the facts – but only a few.  Others embellished with details about how this woman angrily stomped through the room, called the professor ugly names, and that sort of thing.  And then there were others, who maybe had a beef with this professor, who suggested that the problem was really him; he had no call to be so angry with this woman who was doing nothing wrong. They were not consistent.  And that was exactly the point.  Oftentimes, our observations are colored by our feelings, our expectations, our beliefs.  The truth as we see it is formed by our personal experience.

I wonder how the personal experiences of the men and women who followed Jesus affected their thoughts and actions on that first day of resurrection.  Luke tells us about the women who went to the tomb that morning.  These were the women who had been following Jesus from Galilee.  They were there while he preached and taught, healed and fed, performed wonders and signs.  They were there when he entered Jerusalem in a triumphant procession, and they were there when he was arrested.  They were there at the cross – even when his dead body was taken down and carried to the tomb. 

They were the last to leave at his death and the first to arrive on this morning.  They are the only ones to hear the question: Why do you seek the living among the dead?  They were, perhaps, the most steadfastly loyal of his disciples, but they were also women.

And the fact that they were women may help us understand why they went running back to the men.  On their own they had no authority.  It wouldn’t even surprise me if they failed to trust their own judgment, because they had been taught all their lives that their minds were too weak to be trusted.  So I wonder if the women believe what they had seen and heard?  Did they believe their own reality?

The men – Jesus’ inner circle of disciples – had also been with Jesus for a long time.  They had seen and heard it all, too.  In fact, they had been his privileged students, with extra special classes devoted to teaching them how to become leaders in the movement after he was gone.  While it’s true they didn’t stick around to the end last Friday, and they didn’t venture out this morning to the tomb, it’s understandable.  They were at risk; they were wanted men.

So they didn’t get to see the evidence.  They didn’t get to hear the proclamation, “He is not here; he is risen.”  But even so, they were the best and the brightest, hand-picked by the Lord to carry his message.  Did they believe everything they had learned from him?

This thing that the women are telling them – is it reality? Or merely an idle tale?  Apparently, only one of the men – Peter – thinks there is even the slightest possibility that what the women are saying might be true. He runs from the room, no explanation, directly to the tomb, wanting to see for himself.  And even then, we have no idea if Peter believes it. 

Welcome to Easter morning.  There will be more encounters, more discussion, more revelation to come.  There will be those who come to believe in an instant, and those who are much slower.  But on this first resurrection morning, it’s all up for grabs.

Over the weeks and months and years, the stories will be developed, practices will be formed, belief system will be established.  The scriptures will be written, doctrine will be taught, and the church will be institutionalized.  But in all of that, and from where we sit now, perhaps we lose sight of one thing.

What we believe in our heads will only ever reach our hearts, and be expressed in our lives, if we know it to be true in our experience.

We can all recite the events, the elements of this story – the cross, the burial, the empty tomb, the risen Christ.  We can say the words, but the truth of the resurrection is in the experiences of our lives.

It is in the experiences we have of those individuals who first taught us about Jesus – ones who brought us to church – held the hymnal for us, gave us our first taste of communion bread.  The ones who answered our questions about God and helped us believe.  The ones who sat with us when we were facing the hard questions, the questions that can’t be answered, and gave us the support we needed as our faith was tested and refined.

It is also in the experiences we’ve had of witnessing to our own faith in our words and actions.  When we read the scriptures and heard him say, “feed my sheep” and “love your neighbors” and we tried to do just that.  When we, in our own turn, taught someone about Jesus, walked with someone through the hard times. 

The truth of the resurrection is in the everyday practice of faith for each one of us, and for the church as a whole.  And the truth of the resurrection is tested every day by the powers of this world.  We are, as Christ’s disciples, the ones to show the world this truth.  So I ask you, does our faith attest to the truth of Christ’s resurrection? 

Is there evidence in your life that life has overcome death? Is the hope of Christ alive in the way you respond to your neighbor?

Is the triumph of life over death proclaimed by this congregation in the way we make decisions for our church?  When it comes to the power of the resurrection, where are you?

Are you with the disciples, hiding out in the upper room, refusing to believe that there might be good news?  Are you with the women, fearful and insecure about taking a stand?  Are you with Peter, running to the tomb to see for yourself because maybe, just maybe, you want to believe? 

O, that we might be with the angels, saying, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?”  God has defeated death through Christ who is alive. Hallelujah!  Amen. 

Christ is risen.  He is risen indeed.

Why Do You Look For the Living Among the Dead?

Luke 24:1-12  But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.

+++

In Cuba, we once talked our tour guide into stopping at a cemetery, because we were curious about it.  She finally agreed and instructed the driver to stop.  He was surprised and dubious.  Why would we want to spend time in the cemetery?  When we got out of the bus our Cuban guides were scandalized that we wanted to walk among the tombs.  This was unseemly.   We were somewhat aware that we were breaching a cultural taboo.  But we were too curious to care about it.

The cemetery in Cuba looked much like the cemeteries in New Orleans that you might have seen in pictures or films.  The tombs are above ground.  Walking around them we noticed that the backs of some tombs are open.  Inside you can see the bones of the buried. 

It was clear that families visit the tombs of their loved ones from the evidence they left.  In this country we are used to seeing bouquets of flowers left in front of gravestones.  In Cuba the offerings were more diverse.  People would leave food or trinkets that they perhaps thought their loved ones would need or want to have.  But why?  Bones have no need of food.  Bones don’t read books or play with games or wear clothing.

Why were people leaving things in the cemetery that could only be of use to the living?   Were they looking for life among the dead?  It would seem so.  It looked as though these people were expecting that – even though their loved ones were now only dry bones – they were still, in some sense, alive.

The women who visited Jesus’ tomb early this morning had none of those kinds of expectations.  They only wanted to care for the body of their beloved – to honor his body and their religious duty. 

It had been a pretty horrible week.  These are the women who, we are told, have been with him from the early days, back in Galilee.  They have traveled with him, caring for him, supporting him in any way they could.  They have been privileged to hear his teaching and to witness his signs and wonders.  They were there when he was arrested, tried, and crucified.  They followed him as he dragged his cross up the hill.  They bore witness to his crucifixion; they stood vigil that day while he died.  They were there until the end.

I can imagine that it must have been an unbearably mournful Sabbath for them.  They thought about the devastating loss, and about the one thing they could still do for him – wash and anoint his body for the grave.

They did not go looking for the living on this early resurrection morning. 

And so what they found at the garden was something they had no way of understanding.  A gaping, open, empty tomb.  Two strange, dazzling men.  A puzzling question: why do you look for the living among the dead?

At that moment, they began to have their entire worldview reframed.  He who was dead now lives.  He is king not of this world but of eternity.  In dying, he has defeated death and given us life.  Life!  He has given us, in exchange for the life that ends in death, a new life eternal.  For, as the Apostle Paul said, “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.”  This small life is nothing compared to the life he fought for us to have.  He lived and died and went through hell to prove to us that death is not the final word. 

Why look among the dead when this fullness of life has been given to us?  Why choose to live among death, dry bones, when Christ has given us a window straight through death and into life? 

Why choose to live a life that is small and limited by the conventions and expectations of this world, when we have had a glimpse into the kingdom of heaven?  A realm where love reigns supreme.  And we don’t have to wait for it.  We can choose this life today, and every day.

Christ has opened the door for us to enter the life of eternity, and we are challenged to begin living this moment, this day.  Not tomorrow or sometime in the future, but this day. 

Let our every breath from this moment on say, “Christ is risen!”  He is risen indeed. 

Finding Our Purpose

The session of Faith Presbyterian Church has recently adopted a purpose statement for our congregation.  This is the first of three sermons on "Finding Our Purpose."

John 2:1-11    On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it. When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

+++

Bloomsburg, the town where we lived for 20 years, is a small town – with all the good and bad qualities that go along with that.  One of the funny things I noticed, that I consider a small town quirk, is that when a new restaurant opened in town, everyone in town flocked to it – everyone.  In a small town, there is only one novel thing happening at a time, so everyone is paying attention to it.  And a new restaurant – well that was about as exciting as it gets.  Kim and I learned to hold back and wait awhile before trying out a new place.  Check our excitement, exercise patience, and just wait for the crowds to dwindle after everyone had their curiosity satisfied.

I worked in restaurants for a while when I was in graduate school; I learned a little bit about the business during that time.  One of the terms I learned was the “soft opening.”  Sometimes an establishment will have what they call a soft opening before a grand opening.  A soft opening might be a friends and family night, where guests are invited for a trial run, to test out the equipment and the staff.  Or it could be just quietly opening for business without any advertising and fanfare.  The point is to ensure that if things go wrong the impact will not be too great, because not too many people will notice. 

By the way, I don’t know if you could pull off a soft opening in Bloomsburg, because if something new is going on, everyone is noticing it.  Huber Heights may be a little like a small town in the same way.  I think of how people have been watching and discussing the progress on the new Panera opening this week up on Troy Pike. 

So just thinking all week about the wedding at Cana, I began to wonder:  Is this sort of like a soft opening for Jesus?

On first read, it kind of looks that way.  According to John, it is the first miracle he performs – or the first sign, as John calls them.  And he does it at a private party where he is simply a guest – not the main attraction.  He does what he does quietly and behind the scenes.  And what's more, his action seems fairly inconsequential.

They go to the wedding – Jesus, his disciples, and his mother – as guests.  The wine runs out, which I don’t think rates as a world-class catastrophe.  Nowhere near the level of a tsunami or drought.  No lives will be lost for a shortage of wine.  It may be regretful but surely not a real crisis.  And yet, Jesus’ first miracle is to make more wine.

All the evidence combined might suggest that it was something like a soft opening for Jesus – except for one thing.  John thought it was worthy of inclusion in his gospel as our introduction to Jesus the Christ.  And he frames it in powerful language –

It happened on the third day.

My hour has not yet come.

And it revealed his glory.

The story has surprised readers more than most stories of Jesus’ ministry, and we need to take it seriously.  Creating wine out of water is the world’s introduction to the Savior of the world.  Therefore, it must say something about his purpose.

I have had a lot of conversations about purpose lately.  It has been a significant part of the session’s work during the last year, and it has also become a part of the conversation at the presbytery level, in the Leadership Council on which I serve.  We are in deep discernment about our purpose – as a congregation, as a presbytery, as the Church of Jesus Christ.  It is time for us to talk about purpose – because, frankly, the church of the last century, in its comfortable complacency, has all but lost its sense of purpose.

The 20^th century was, by and large, a pretty good time for the church in America.  Attendance was great; growth was great.  The church held a place of honor in the American culture, just by virtue of being the church.  Many people came to church because that was what you were supposed to do.  And people would notice.

There was the baby boom, and church nurseries and Sunday school classrooms were filled to overflowing.  The pews were crammed with worship-goers.  Do you remember the days when the ushers had to actually help you find a place to sit?

Offering plates were full because the church was full.  We didn’t really have to think too much about our purpose.  But obviously things have changed.  And in a certain way, maybe that change is a good thing.

Because if we aren’t thinking about our purpose, if we don’t know what our purpose is, we are surely not fulfilling it.

There is no doubt that Jesus had a purpose when he began his ministry in Galilee.  We hear it in a variety of ways in the four gospels.  He came to give us power to become children of God. He came to save us from our sins and to bring in the kingdom of God, to lift up the lowly and fill the hungry with good things. 

The miracle at Cana certainly says something about his purpose – and I will say more about this later.  But the thing we struggle with is not so much Jesus’s purpose as the church’s purpose.

The gospels tell us that the church’s purpose, in the broadest sense, is to make disciples for Jesus Christ.  There is not one way to do this any more than there is one kind of disciple.  It is the task of every congregation to discern their particular purpose in their particular location.

It was more than 15 years ago that this church went through the process of writing a mission statement.  The statement is thoughtful, carefully crafted, and says much to us about our beliefs, our vision, and our mission.  To some degree, it has guided this congregation over the years, but it has not been enough.

Now we are taking the next step.  We are establishing a statement of our purpose, which attempts to do these things:

It tells us what we aspire to.  A purpose statement is not just a bullet list of what we do; it’s much more.  It perceives what we hold to be most valuable and then puts that value before us as an ideal.  We will probably not fulfill our purpose statement completely, but we will hold it out as a reminder every day of what we are all about.

It gives us something to share with others.  Please understand me – a purpose statement is not a marketing slogan.  It is primarily for internal use.  But it gives us one very important thing: Our purpose statement gives us tools, words to use when we talk to others about our church and why it matters to us.

One of the hardest questions for church people to answer is the question of why.  Why do you come here?  Why is it an important part of your life?  Why might it be of value to someone else?  It can be very hard to answer the why questions about something that has always been a part of your life, such that you don’t even have to think about why you do it.  Why is not terribly important to insiders.  But it is very important to those standing outside.  It is the question that becomes most important when we are standing at the gap between the church and the community, and we are trying to build a bridge. 

Many of us have struggled to find answers to the why question.  But the purpose statement gives us words with which to begin.  And it gives us one more thing –

It captures who and where we are at this particular time, but we are not going to carve it on the cornerstone of our building.  A congregation’s purpose may change, because the congregation and the community may change.  There may come a time when our purpose statement no longer helps us to live and grow as faithful disciples.  It will be necessary to revisit our purpose in a few years time and see if it still resonates, or whether it is time to discern anew, with enthusiasm and trust that God will lead us.

So, you may be wondering, what is our purpose statement?  It is this:

Our purpose is to be Christians growing in faith by caring, connecting, and serving community. 

In the next few weeks we will begin to break down and unpack this statement, to understand and explore the ways everything we do serves our purpose. 

Jesus understood his purpose, and everything he did served that purpose – yes, even making wine.  He went to a wedding feast, a celebration of the union of two people, and he provided the wine – the best wine.  A lot of it.  He filled their cups to overflowing with joy and life.  We don’t have to work too hard to see that the kingdom of God Jesus brings to us, the reconciliation he offers between the world and God, is a joyful celebration.  Out of his love for us his life is poured out as a libation.  He asks us to continue the celebration in his name. 

There’s a word we don’t use often enough about church: Celebration.  Let it be the place we start as we begin to find our purpose.