Peace be with you :2 Easter 2017

2 Easter Year A 2017

April 23, 2017

“Peace be with you!”  I can imagine that when Jesus first appeared to the disciples and said “Peace be with you…” that probably the disciples might have said, “Is that all you got???”  Peace be with you??? What kind of greeting is that after all that has happened?

    And yet… in it’s own way, it is a most perfect greeting.  Jesus has literally been to hell and back since he has seen these guys… sometimes, I imagine him having a little fun at their expense when he just shows up like this.  He certainly has earned the right to have a little fun….

    But, his greeting is one that is filled with love and meaning.  Jesus knows that the disciples have been afraid… and given what they watched happen to him, they have some good reasons to be afraid… except that now, in this minute of hearing Jesus wish them peace, there is nothing to be afraid of now.  Everything they thought was true the day of his crucifixion, has been turned on it’s head.  I would imagine it might actually be hard to know exactly what the truth is…  But they were afraid, they doors were locked because of their fear… then Jesus shows up and greets them in such a way as to help them to overcome their fears…

    Peace be with you… it seems like a fairly simple greeting, one that we probably take for granted… when we look at the gospel story from this morning, we see that while it may be simple it is packed with meaning…

    Peace… at least as I see Jesus using it, it not a greeting that means everything is going to necessarily be OK, whatever that means.  Peace, doesn’t mean that we have nothing to worry about.  Peace isn’t some magical spell that takes away the bad stuff and makes everything into butterflies and rainbows… there are lots of days when I desperately wish that were so, but if it were so, then we as people would lose our freedom to chose, wouldn’t we?  Our freedom to chose good or evil, odd as it seems, is a gift of love from a creator who loves us enough to let us mess it up.  

    Peace, is also a gift.  In its own way, it is a gift of empowerment.  When Jesus offers us his peace, he is offering us the strength to do the kingdom work we have been given to do.  Here in this meeting with Thomas and the others, we know that they are afraid; they are so afraid that they have locked the doors, and I imagine that maybe they haven’t left the room all that often.  I think Thomas missed the first appearance of Jesus because he might have been out getting food and other supplies while everyone else stayed hidden.   Let’s remember the other half of the greeting that Jesus gives them… “As the father has sent me, so I send you.”  That part doesn’t sound so great at first, does it?  The disciples just witnessed Jesus being tortured as a criminal of the state…. Who on earth would sign up for that duty?

    Well, they did… and so did we.  As the Father has sent Jesus into the world, so Jesus sent those first disciples, and has been sending disciples ever since, and that means you and me too.  That same Spirit of Jesus that he breathed onto them that day is the same Spirit that inspires and moves us to be Jesus’ hands and feet in the world.  He gives us his peace, that peace that certainly passes all understanding… peace that says that Jesus is with us no matter where we find ourselves; peace that asks us to unlock the doors of our rooms and our hearts to let others in even when we are afraid, because we too have been sent as Jesus was sent.  Jesus knew the work he did was potentially dangerous; and yet he healed, he renewed relationships, he raised Lazarus from the dead, all because he was sent by God to bring a message of love and peace to a world that had become way too concerned about its fears.  

    Jesus’ gift of peace is perhaps then a misnomer of sorts.  Perhaps it makes more sense to us if we say it is instead a gift of strength and knowledge.  One of the gifts that Thomas and the others received that day, was the knowledge that even in the face of incredible evil, God is still God, the gift that no matter what, love wins… The message of Easter for us is in part to unlock those doors, and to go forward despite our fears, knowing that God is with us, that Jesus will never leave us, that we have been strengthened by the very Spirit of God to be sent out as Jesus was to do the work that Jesus has started…

    What doors are we locking to try and keep ourselves safe?  Where might we be being sent?  How might Jesus’ message of peace help us to be his disciples in the world today?

Easter 2017

Easter 2017

April 16, 2017

    Can you imagine what that first Easter morning must have been like?  Peter, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of Jesus, the disciples… they must have been exhausted that first morning.  There had been nothing but chaos and death that followed them.  It must have seemed as though they were losing their minds sometimes.  Things had seemed to be going OK; when they all showed up in Jerusalem, things looked like maybe they had been worried for no good reason.  The people seemed to love him.  Palm branches were strewn across the ground, cries of Hosannah followed him as he rode through town.  It all seemed like it was going well… then he had to start talking about betrayal at dinner that night… He washed their feet, … like a house servant… spoke about love… and he spoke about betrayal.  Peter winced when he thought about it.  Judas was not the only betrayer… Peter must have heard those words over and over again since Jesus said them:  Before the cock crows three times, you will deny me… and Peter did.  He was afraid… after all they had been through together, Peter was afraid… again.  And, he denied Jesus whom he loved.  Peter, on whom the church was supposed to be build was no more a rock than a pile of sand.  He denied his friend, he denied their teacher.  In the end they all did.  Only some of the women and his mother stayed until the bitter end.  No one really cared what the women thought or said.  It didn’t matter… But Peter and John and the rest… well, they could be next.  If there was any chance that the empire didn’t kill the movement along with Jesus, then, soon they would come looking for Peter and the rest.  And he was scared.

    Mary Magdalene was also scared, and grieving deeply, and so she goes to the only place she can…. She goes to the tomb to weep there… but… the stone has been moved.  The body isn’t there… in her fear, she doesn’t remember what he said… he told them he would die… and in three days he would rise again.  But who on earth would believe that?  And so she runs and gets Peter who comes to see for himself.  It is as Mary has said.  He’s gone.  And so off they go, probably even more confused than before… where did they take him?  What could they possibly want with the body?  Hadn’t they done enough?  

    Woman, why are you weeping, whom are you looking for?  Her heart must have broken into a million pieces again… Where is he?  Please tell me, and I will take him away… I will make him safe… I will do for him what I could not do when they killed him… and then, suddenly, he speaks her name as she heard it so many times, and suddenly, Mary knows the truth… he isn’t gone… he isn’t dead… He is alive… he is risen, just as he promised them… in all of the horrors of the last few days, it was so easy to forget, so easy to let fear take over… and yet… here he was… talking to her, just like he did just a few days ago… Here, here is God’s truth; they tried to silence him, and not even death on the cross could do it.  They called him names, they mocked him, they lied about him and they killed him… and yet; God’s love, and God’s truth, lived in the life of Jesus, are alive again… Perfect love and truth Risen from the dead, and proving for ever that no matter what happens, God’s love will always overcome fear, hatred, and death.  Nothing is impossible with God.

    Beloved, the miracle of that morning, is our miracle today; as Mary, and Peter experienced that first Easter morning, so too, you and I, experience Jesus’ resurrection today… Today, the Good News of God lives in Jesus, the one whom God has raised from the dead.   It is a new morning, and new world, made new by the God who created it.  The resurrection of Jesus gives us the gift of eternal life with the God of Love.  We are reunited, brought into the very life of God because of the life God lived on earth as Jesus… and that is a bond that will never be broken by anyone, or anything.  God has shown God’s infinite love for humanity by embracing all that we are on the cross… and then bringing it into Jesus’ resurrection...  This is God’s radical, life giving work done

on behalf of Mary and Peter… done on behalf of you and I, done on behalf of all whom we love who have gone before us.  This miracle, this mystery of faith isn’t just about the afterlife… it has implications for us right here and now… Resurrection, like much of what Jesus did in his ministry is something that stands against earthly power.  Power seeks to multiply at all costs… God doesn’t need earthly power.  God’s whole cause is love… from before creation until this moment, this morning, God shows us love that we cannot destroy, even when we try our hardest.  

    God chose us… Jesus chose us by showing us what perfect love looks like, by putting relationships above power, by letting love conquer fear, hatred and death… so beloved, what are we going to do in response?  How are you and I going to choose Jesus this day?  How will his resurrection change us so that we might chose perfect love?  Alleluia, Christ is risen!

Be known to us in the breaking of the bread

3 Easter 2017

April 28, 2017

    One of the things that I have appreciated most about the Episcopal Church, is the sense of mystery that surrounds much of what we do… I am grateful for the sense that we do not rush toward easy answers; and some days we acknowledge that perhaps there isn’t an answer, at least not an answer that we can know in ways that we “know” other things.  I suppose it is a gift as well as a frustration sometimes when we say things are mystery… in our society most people want answers, they want to be told what to do… we acknowledge that answers are never easy, if they even exist at all.

    One of the things that we do, that has a great deal of mystery surrounding it, is the Eucharist.  Eucharist means “Thanksgiving;  certainly, giving thanks is part of what happens when we gather around the table… but giving thanks is what you and I do; what is it that Jesus does as we gather around the table?

    “On the night before he died for us, our Lord Jesus Christ took

bread; and when he had given thanks to you, he broke it, and

gave it to his disciples, and said, "Take, eat: This is my Body,

which is given for you. Do this for the remembrance of me."  We hear these words at every Eucharist that we celebrate… Jesus takes bread, blesses the bread, breaks the bread and then gives the bread… it is what he did at the last Supper with his disciples, and what he does in today’s reading from Luke’s gospel… and it is in these four simple actions done to bread, that the disciples recognize him as the risen Christ…

    It seems so simple… take, bless, break, give… four simple actions that have become the center of how we worship and how we interact in the world…

    These simple actions are more than just about bread; Jesus identifies himself with the actions as well… he asks us to “Do this in remembrance of me” …  When we do this, when we take bread, bless bread, break bread and then give bread… it is not simply a way for us to remember in the simple sense of remembering Jesus and his actions… although it is that too; when we do this together, we are joining ourselves to him, to each other and to those who have done this same thing over the centuries; it becomes part of our community’s memory and action over time; in some mysterious sense, we are joined with those first disciples at that table, so it is not so much just remembering, but becoming part of something much bigger than ourselves; our words and actions transcend space and time, and reality becomes God’s reality... and yes, it is a mystery…

    One of the holiest moments of the celebration of the Eucharist, is the moment when the bread is broken… the symbolism of the broken bread is, I believe, central to who we are, and what we believe about Jesus…

    Brokenness, is at least in part, the foundation of the church… Jesus identifies himself with the bread, making it into his body because he knows that his body will be broken; on a cross on Golgatha his body, mind and spirit were horribly broken… and that body, that person of Jesus, was indeed given for the reconciliation of the entire world…

   

    Those actions of love however, did not stop on that day; as Easter people, we know the hope of resurrection, we know that the brokenness that Jesus suffered was ultimately made whole on Easter morning… and we live in the hope that our own brokenness and our own death will also be made whole as his was…

    But bread and Jesus are not the only ones who are taken, blessed, broken and given; these simple actions are also the church’s actions… the church, the body of the risen Christ, is, like Jesus, like the bread of Eucharist, taken and blessed by God, broken by all manner of things, and then given to others… brokenness is central to who you and I are, and in so many ways, our brokenness is what connects us to others…

    Everyone here knows they are broken in some way, even if they cannot admit the details… we have all been victims of our own bad choices; relationships gone bad, addiction, health issues, loss, financial insecurity… many of these and more are part of our ordinary lives… daily, we make decisions and choices that place barriers between us and the people we love… daily, we make choices that lead us toward idolatry of some fashion, be it power over another, money, sex or some other choice that diminishes us and our relationships in the long run…

    We all do it… we are all broken in these ways… and yet, we are taken and blessed by God, and in all of our brokenness, and then we are  given back to the world…

    Why are we given to the world?  Well, the simple answer is, because Jesus was given to the world… not really all that simple… I know…

   

    But you and I are the body of Christ in the world… and so we are the ones who go out and continue to do his work in the world… the work of forgiving and reconciling; the work of healing; the work of restoring justice; the work of peace… it all sounds so hard and it’s tempting to think that maybe Jesus has made some cosmic mistake about choosing us because holy crap, Jesus wants me to what?

   

    But he has gone before us to show us what to do… he has gone before us to show us that even though we are broken, the promise of Easter shows us that we can be whole again… and at least for some, the brokenness we experience is part of what can make us whole again… certainly those who have experienced healing through programs like Alcoholics Anonymous know that their addiction and recovery are the very things that help another recover and find a path toward wholeness…

    The church is no different… when we come together, and perhaps most especially when we are out in the world, our actions toward others are meant to reflect Easter hope and Easter joy… and the good news as well as the bad news, is that you and I are it… we are the ones whom Jesus has sent, even though we may not feel like we are worthy or up to the task…

    The disciples knew Jesus in the breaking of the bread… Eucharist is part of the radical love fest that God has asked you and I to be a part of.  In every celebration of Eucharist we are being asked to be broken apart, to be changed… and in the simple act of taking the body and blood of Jesus into our bodies, we are made whole.  It is my hope that we shall know Jesus as we break bread today… and perhaps we will also come to know ourselves and each other as well, in that holy mystery where bread is taken, blessed, broken and given… just as Jesus was… and just as you and I are… may we find his wholeness in our brokenness and may we know him in the breaking of the bread.

Sunday of the Passion 2017

Sunday of the Passion Year A
April 9, 2017

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
The saddest words in scripture I think.  Jesus calls out to the God and Father he loves, in pain and darkness, and in desperation… and as we hear his cry of brokenness, we too wonder, why has God forsaken him?  Where is God as his only Son is dying?

    It has been so hard to read or watch the news the last few weeks.  It seems that everywhere we look, something awful has happened.  A young police officer gunned down in Tecumseh, a woman murdered by her stepson in Edmond, a high school teacher kidnapping a female student in Tennessee… a young father in Syria cradling his twin babies who have been killed in a deadly gas attack; many people afraid after our own military strike against Syria, and news this morning of deadly bombings in Coptic churches in Egypt … it’s too much… there is too much pain, suffering and death swirling around us… and it is hard to see God in any of it. 

    A friend of mine used to say, that when suffering became intense, when it became too much to bear, that the suffering and death of Jesus was the only answer that made any sense.  I have pondered that statement for many years, and while I don’t think I can explain it very well, I think my friend is right.  There is no way for any of us to make meaning out of the suffering around us.  Suffering is always a tragedy, and in that darkness we shake our fists and we cry out to God… It’s hard not to be angry knowing that ours is a world where evil and suffering are allowed to happen, but that is the price we pay for the freedom to choose; being free is a gift of love that allows us the option to be fully who God has created us to be… or we can choose to turn away and choose a different path… and sometimes the bad news is we become the victims of someone else’s evil choice.  It doesn’t seem fair… and yet somehow in God’s kingdom where the king rides on a donkey rather than a grand chariot, it might make sense.  In Jesus God has chosen to be with us even in the evil and suffering that we experience… In Jesus, God is always to be found in the suffering… and I am convinced, that our suffering and our death breaks God’s heart… as Jesus wept at the grave of his friend Lazarus,  he weeps at ours… and as Jesus cries out to God the Father from the cross of suffering, he cries out when we suffer as well because he has joined himself to us forever by emptying himself and being born in our likeness…
    But we are now in his likeness… and while God is present in the darkness and in the suffering of the world, the great mystery is that the darkness and suffering are not all there is.  God is indeed in the suffering… but God is also beyond it, reaching through the horror of the cross to bring us into Easter light, helping us to somehow know that God is present…

    The world we live in often seems overrun by greed, fear, and violence.  Suffering was not God’s choice for Jesus… and it is not God’s choice for us.  Jesus was the victim of the greed and fear of the empire that he dared to challenge.  Sometimes it seems to me that human beings are hell bent on their own destruction and the destruction of perfect love, because love challenges us.  It demands that we choose love over fear… Love demands that we risk everything in order to gain everything.  Love demands that we live as disciples in the kingdom, rather than live as patriots of the empire.  Perfect love came into the world in Jesus, and cries out from the cross for the suffering of the whole world, pleading with us to choose love.  Love will always win, even in the darkest moments.  As we turn our own faces toward Jerusalem to where Jesus is, may we join our voices with his, crying out in love on behalf of others who may not know to whom to call to.  May our own cries of abandonment be joined with Jesus’ cries to the Father… and may we always know the mystery of God’s love and presence is with us no matter where we are, or what we have chosen.  Jesus is our answer to suffering and evil and death, because perfect love will always win.

Raising of Lazurus Lent 5 Year A

5 Lent A 2017
April 2, 2017

    So, remember last week when I said the closer Jesus gets to Jerusalem, the less subtle he gets?  Last week he healed the man born blind on the sabbath, which was enough to enrage the authorities… and here we are this week, at the tomb of his friend Lazarus, whom Jesus raises from the dead.  There is nothing subtle about that; if we thought the authorities were upset last week, just go home and read a bit further in John’s gospel; it won’t take you long.  The plot to kill Jesus becomes known just a couple of verses later.

    Ironic, isn’t it?  Jesus has tried to heal the divisions around him by accepting the Samaritan woman; he has brought a blind man to wholeness; and now he has raised Lazarus from the dead; and for his efforts to bring God’s people closer to God, those in power are going to make sure they stay in power by destroying this man who tried to show others what God’s love and God’s kingdom looks like.  The death and raising of Lazarus begins to prepare us for the rest of the gospel story as a foreshadowing of what awaits Jesus…

    Today’s readings are full of human anguish; they are also full of the hope that rests in God.  I think it’s important to realize that the hope our readings point to is not just about eternal life with God at some future time; certainly, it is that; and it’s important and comforting (at least I hope it is) for us to realize that death is not final; but really, I think, that’s a message Jesus brings us in few weeks. 

    If we look at Lazarus and perhaps even the dry bones that Ezekiel prophecies to, what I see anyway, is that Lazarus is changed in the present moment; he is called by name by the one person who can give him his life back; and when he leaves the tomb, Jesus tells them to unbind him and let him go.  We are told that his feet and hands are bound and his face is covered by some sort of grave cloth; until he is unbound, he cannot see and I doubt he can walk all that well… of course, in the moments before that, he couldn’t see or walk at all because he was dead; but now he lives; he hears his name called by Jesus, and he responds to the command to come out… to come out of the tomb, out of the darkness, out of the place of death into the light and into life…  and, like the blind man, I imagine that Lazarus and his sisters probably aren’t welcome in the synagogue after all this… and so once again, because of an encounter with Jesus, one’s status in society is changed; they are outcasts as far and the empire is concerned, but now they are accepted into the greater community of God’s kingdom.

    Do you believe that Jesus can drastically change your life?  What would it be like for each of us if we heard Jesus call our names and command us to come out of the darkness into the light?  What would it be like to allow ourselves to become unbound?

    Interestingly, Jesus doesn’t ask Lazarus to unbind himself; he doesn’t say, “Hey Lazarus, take off the grave clothes and come join the party”.  What Jesus does, is he asks members of the community to help unbind him.  When Lazarus was dead, touching him would make one ritually unclean for a period of time; I don’t know what it makes you if you touch someone who was dead but is no longer dead; probably didn’t matter; the whole lot of them was probably going to get thrown out of the synagogue; but Jesus involves the community in the unbinding of Lazarus, which I think places a huge significance on community.   I don’t think that any of us can be unbound without a community to help us… and there are so many things that bind us, that cause our souls to die… some of those things are less obvious than others, things like fear, inability to forgive, the hate that we feel but may not show towards others, broken relationships, substance abuse…. All of these things kill our souls and separate us from God;  and let me be clear, it’s not God that leaves the relationship, it’s us that put up barriers that keep us away from God and each other… but community can help unbind us; sometimes we need to ask for help, and sometimes it’s pretty clear that we are bound up by the situations and difficulties in life.  Community can show us what it’s like to be accepted for who we are; community can help us to remove or help to carry the weight of what keeps us bound...community can hold us accountable in our new life of being unbound; and we can do that for each other.  If discipleship means that we do what Jesus does, we are to call to each other so that we can each know which direction the light is in; I know when I am bound by my fears or other things, it is sometimes hard to know where the light is, and like the dry bones that receive their flesh, we are all spiritually dead without the breath of God, the breath of hope to bring us back to life…

    Jesus calls each of us by name… he calls us from our graves into eternal life; he also calls us from the many smaller deaths and darknesses that we experience in our lives… and he has breathed his spirit into each of us, so that we can be a gift to each other in those times when maybe we need loving hands to unbind us from the messes we have made; community reminds each of us that we are loved and accepted in ways that communities of fear and power cannot even imagine.  That’s the power of love… what binding are we each being asked to be released from?  Who needs our help to become free?