Early Service

Isaiah 25: 6-9
Psalm 98
Acts 10: 34-43
Mark 16: 1-8
__________________________________

Nursing Home

Acts 10: 34-43
Psalm 118: 1-2, 14-15
1 Corinthians 15: 1-11
John 20: 1-18

We gather on this day to celebrate the formative event of the Christian faith. While we spend more time preparing for Christmas and celebrating Christmas, as far as the Christian faith is concerned, Easter IS the most important of the two. For without our Easter faith, Christmas would be meaningless; for without the resurrection, Jesus of Nazareth would have faded into history, or at best, be seen as another one of God’s strange prophets.

Strange? Well yes, his view of God and of faithfulness was all out of whack; he believed in forgiveness; he believed in the Spirit of the law, rather than the letter; he spoke of a relationship with God that was close and loving, like that of a “daddy” for a small child. Jesus healed diseases; made the blind see and the lame to walk; he freed people from the power of sin; and showed to them the way of grace. He talked about tearing down the temple and raising it again in three days; he talked of preparing a place for them and coming agin to take them there; yet they listened but did not understand; they heard but did not see. They did not see that the very life of Jesus proclaimed that the power of God was stronger than the power of sin and death; they did not believe, or they thought it was too good to be true.

They WANTED it all to be true but Jesus had his head in the clouds and they lived in the real world. Then the worst happened and this Jesus discovered that the power of the Roman empire and of human hate and jealousy was no match for all his talk of love, It could not save him.

They went home on that first Good Friday sure that it was OVER; they went home in despair because the light of their lives had gone out. The darkness of the world that afternoon reflected the darkness of their hearts and souls.

Yet WE keep saying that THEY should have known. They should have believed. They should have gone home to wait. BUT WAIT A MINUTE We can be too hard on those first followers; the gospels were written LONG after the resurrection; long after they saw what they failed to see at first; long after they came to believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that what he had taught was indeed true; that what he gave his life for was indeed true. We have the advantage of two thousand years of Christian experience; two thousand years of encountering the risen Christ; two thousand years of living our the truth of the Gospel; two thousand years of knowing the transforming, loving and strengthening power of God as revealed in the resurrected Christ.

The resurrection is not really something we can understand; it’s a little like trying to understand how a caterpillar turns into a butterfly. Oh we know that it happens, biologists have documented it; but I don’t think they can really understand it. Like life itself, such transformation is a mystery. The caterpillar changes into a butterfly in the mystery of the cocoon; we are transformed by the power of the risen Christ, not at the moment we realize the tomb is empty but at the moment when we know, NOT that he is gone, but at the moment when we can proclaim HE IS RISEN.

We can proclaim this, at and then we can spend the rest of our lives trying to get a handle on it. We can grasp toward understanding, and we should, but the only thing that will truly satisfy is to place our trust in the love of the God who showed that he did have power over sin and death; to place our trust in the One who walked the earth and who shared our lives in all of their ups and downs. And when we have begun to walk that road in faith our understanding will come in ways we can hardly imagine. When we see the butterfly we will know the miracle of transformation has occurred; when we encounter the risen Christ on our life’s journey, we will know that the miracle of resurrection is true and that it continues to be true here and now and will be so into the future.

The message of Easter is something that we can hold onto, for it is at the centre of our faith. The message of Easter is something we can shout from the mountaintops; CHRIST IS RISEN. CHRIST IS RISEN INDEED

Acts 10: 34-43
Psalm 118
1 Corinthians 15: 1-11
John 20: 1-18

A while ago there was a great deal of excitement in church, religious and archaeological circles about the so-called St James Ossuary. An ossuary is a bone box and it is alleged that this particular box once contained the bones of James, the brother of Jesus. It is alleged that James was stoned to death for proclaiming the divinity of Jesus. The controversy surrounding this simple limestone box reminded me of anther ancient relic which is said to have great religious significance, the Shroud of Turin. This Shroud is a piece of patched and stained linen just a little larger than 3 feet wide and 13 feet long and when you look at it in the right light you can see the reverse image of a man who bears the wounds of death by crucifixion. Some people believe this to be an image of the crucified Jesus while others see it as a clever medieval fake. Yet, no one can figure out how it was done! It seems that the image on the shroud shows a very high level of technological sophistication; such a high level that it is barely available today, let alone a thousand or more years ago.

There are may reactions to such relics and the devotion around them. Some believe that they are genuine and their faith is strengthened by being in their presence. Some believe, out of hand, that they are fakes but this knowledge does not alter their faith in any way. Others see these as fakes, and as further proof that all religious belief is false. Still others find their faith shaken when scientific evidence is uncovered which discounts the authenticity of such relics. They want and need physical proof of religious faith.

The thing is that the gospels were not primarily written as history; they were written to tell the story of the Good News of God as revealed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Each writer was different and each had a different memory of the events of Jesus’ life. While independent historical evidence does corroborate the basic facts; such as the existence of Jesus, the popularity of his ministry and his death by crucifixion, there is little else that can be proven in accordance with our modern historic methods. The resurrection of Jesus on Easter morning is one of those events. The good news is that this doesn’t mean much to the Church’s proclamation because the proclamation of the church has never depended upon whether or not historians could prove the accuracy of the events, of which the gospels tell.

The story sounds a bit like aocnfused three ring circus. The women arrived at the empty tomb and found it empty. They ran to tell the others. Some believe, some do not. But for the faith community the empty tomb was not enough to result in a belief in the resurrection. All that this really proved was that the body was not there! As we read in the gospel, the woman’s first assumption would be, what you or I would assume: someone must have taken him! The first question: “Who took him?” and the second, “Where did they put him?” Others would follow in quick succession, “How did they roll away the stone?” And “How can we get him back and bury him properly?”

We forget that the first followers did not know what to expect, as we do. We know that Jesus will appear soon! In the gospel story for today the woman at the tomb did not even recognize Jesus when she fell over him. It was only after he spoke to her that she saw and believed. I don’t think that we would do any better. We know that this kind of thing does not happen, even though we wish that it did!

But it was his undeniable presence in her life that convinced her that he had risen, not his absence from the tomb. When Jesus was crucified his disciples fled in fear for their lives. Their leader was dead and they likely began to doubt everything he had taught them about God and the life of faith. And then! And then they had an experience of the risen Christ.

It was not the empty tomb which created Christianity but the appearance of the Risen Christ in these empty and fearful lives. The skeptics could never be convinced, but they were. They knew that Jesus had been raised.

There are a number of stories, recorded in the gospels of the appearance of the risen Christ in the 50 days after that first Easter Sunday. The one which is, for me, the most powerful, is the story of the first post-resurrection Holy Communion. As the story goes, several of the disciples encountered a stranger while on the way -10- to Emmaus; someone oddly ignorant of Jesus and what he meant to them. They told this stranger all that Jesus had said and done and then, in the spirit of the Jesus who had just died, they invited this stranger to eat with them. When the stranger broke the bread and said the blessing they KNEW that it was the risen Christ. They then looked back at the afternoon and knew that they had been feeling something ever since Jesus has joined them on the road. The feeling was described as ‘their hearts burning within them’.

They knew that he would always be experienced in the breaking of the bread. They knew that he had risen because they knew that he was still with them.

This was not a presence that could be proven but the early church was so convinced of it that they were willing to give their lives for it. Their persecutors thought they were crazy but they knew that they were following the risen Christ who was alive and present in their community and in their own lives. It didn’t have -12- to be proven because they knew it to be true. It was a truth which sustained them in times of faith and in times of doubt. It was a truth which they proclaimed to others as part of the proclamation of the Good News.

As Christians we are primarily an Easter People. We are a people who believes that the power of God has conquered both sin and death and that all who believe in Jesus can have abundant and eternal life. It is the centre of our faith and it is the truth toward which we live ouir lives. It is a truth which will grow in us and on us and be shown to others through us.

It is the proclamation of every Christian and the centre of and reason for our faith:

CHRIST IS RISEN

CHRIST IS RISEN INDEED

Acts 4: 5-12
Psalm 23
1 John 3: 16-24
John 10: 11-18

In the summer of 1995 a new movie hit the big screen. “Babe” was the story of an ordinary piglet who became a sheepdog. Of course he didn’t really become a dog, but this ordinary little pig learned how to herd sheep. It all begins when a farmer named Hoggett wins a piglet. This piglet is taken home to the farm and adopted by a sheepdog named Fly. As this movie progresses this piglet learns from Fly and from his canine brothers and how to herd sheep.

We see his first attempt to herd sheep by himself. He tries to act like a sheepdog,: barking, nipping at heels, generally being mean and disrespectful to the sheep, but, no matter how hard he tries, they wont fall into formation! Frustrated he goes to the oldest ewe in the herd, by the name of Maa, and finds out that most sheepdogs are usually obnoxious and rude. She tells him that the sheep wont tolerate such a superior ‘sheepdog-like attitude’ from a pig. All he needs to do is to ask nicely and the sheep will do whatever he wants them to. So, that’s what he does and he even manages to get the sheep to line up two by two as if they are auditioning for a movie about Noah’s Ark. Everyone on the farm is very impressed, except that is, Rex, the sheepdog now ousted from his position as the head sheepdog. His skill impresses farmer Hoggett so much that he enters him in a sheep-herding competition.

Today’s passages use the image of a shepherd to show us something about God and God’s care. Furthermore, the gospel passage makes a direct connection between God’s care and that of Jesus, using the metaphor of the shepherd.

Even in rural farming areas, we know very little of the kind of shepherds and shepherding that the original readers of the 23rd Psalm and those who heard Jesus’ words would have known. In that day and age, shepherding was dirty and dangerous work. Surprisingly, shepherds were not highly regarded. Perhaps they were regarded as trespassers, because as they sought the best pastures for their sheep they may have had to cross private property. They could not always follow the ritual laws about hand washing and resting on the Sabbath. Yet sheep were a cornerstone of the economy. Wool was needed for clothing, the meat was needed for food and lambs were the common item of sacrifice in the temple for those who could afford them.

The dedication of the shepherd to the sheep could not be disputed. The passages draw a distinction between two kinds of shepherds: the real ones and the ones who just worked for their wages. This kind would flee at the sight of danger while the real shepherd would face it and fight it at the risk of his own life, for the lives of his sheep were in danger.

This passage is not a slight against all employees over against owners of businesses, but rather it shows which kind of shepherd Jesus is: the dependable kind, the kind who has a stake in the welfare of the sheep, the kind who would in fact risk death to save the life of a sheep.

Jesus must have ruffled a great many feathers by talking about shepherds who did not really care for the sheep. All of his listeners would know that he was not really talking about the wooly four legged kind of sheep, but rather about the sheep of the nation of Israel.

It is all too easy for us to assume that Jesus is talking about certain religious leaders of his day, and he was. But its meaning must move into the present, or it has no relevance. Jesus means to speak to us and how we, 2000 years in the future, act out our responsibility toward the world which we are called to love and care for. We are not ‘hired hands’, we are part of the family. We are called to give our lives for others, because Jesus gave his life for us.

I frequently catch an episode or two of Murder She Wrote, Columbo, or Magnum PI. Frequently the murderer is someone who has felt slighted, someone who feels they are owed something, a family member who, to follow Jesus’ metaphor, acts more like the hired hand than the true shepherd. Usually these shows end with a sense of loss or sadness as the culprit is led away as a criminal when he or shw could have been so much more had selfishness and shortsightedness gotten in the way.

The familiar words from the 23rd Psalm have comforted countless generations of the faithful. When Jesus referred to himself as the good shepherd it is little wonder that the early church also connected Jesus to the Psalm. Jesus words also call the Christian community to a life of following in the way of the good shepherd.

We are called to form our lives and our communities after the one who gave his life for us. We are called to recognize that living for self, and constantly looking out for #1 is not the way to follow the Risen Christ. We are called to live as if we trust the one who gave his life and was raised to new life by the awesome power of Almighty God.

Today is widely recognized as Mother’s Day. On this day we honour our mothers and thank them for the love and their sacrifice and their mountains of macaroni and chocolate chip cookies! Interestingly, the origins of Mother’s Day are shrouded in no small amount of controversy. While the people of earlier centuries sporadically celebrated a day to honour mothers it was not until the 19th century that what we know as Mother’s Day began. Two women vie for the honour of starting modern ‘Mother’s Day celebrations. Julia Ward Howe promoted a day for mothers, not to honour them, but as a way for them to band together and work for peace. She was appalled at the carnage and suffering caused by war. Her focus on ‘mothers for peace’ seemed to be overshadowed by the efforts of another woman, Anna Reeves Jarvis. Jarvis began to promote a day to honour mothers but she protested its commercialized connection to greeting cards and flowers. She felt a greeting card was a “poor excuse for a proper letter” and while she supported the wearing of carnations to show respect for one’s mother she was upset at the blatant attempts of the florists to use it as an occasion to make a great deal of money. Mother’s Day continues today as an occasion to send flowers and cards to mothers all over North America. We choose cards with eloquent verses and take Mom out to supper so she wont have to cook.

It is also on this day that many children woke up early, and mothers pretended not to hear all of the noise coming from the kitchen, were eventually served breakfast in bed - and exclaimed how good it tasted, whether it did or not, and hoped it will not take too long to clean up the kitchen.

Yet, if we are honest we know that Mothers’ day is often a day which presents an unrealistic and overly idealistic pictures of mothers and motherhood. Mothers everywhere know they do not measure up to the idealized Hallmark Mom. These mothers have children and even teenagers who say, “I hate you Mom”; mothers who don’t always want to give up their piece of cake or to be the one to take all the kids skating or to the beach when they have something else planned. They are mothers who just wish for an hour of peace and quiet, an hour to be able to have a leisurely cup of coffee with a friend or some time in the flower bed without being bothered. Of course, such is a natural part of motherhood. Motherhood, like any other role in life, has its ups and downs and the goals should not be to measure up to the sentiments of the greeting card industry but, rather, to do the best  one can, given all of the circumstances of the moment. As Christian community we must never forget those who have not had positive examples of mothering and be supportive of them as they seek this kind of nurture from others.

This is also Christian Family Sunday. It is not the ‘nuclear family’ we celebrate, ie Mom, Dad and kids, but rather the wider family of Christians to which we all belong. On this Sunday we are called to look beyond the boundaries of our own homes and look at the whole family of God. All too often we go from the ‘me first’ attitude of childhood to the idea that we must work and give time to the support of our personal families - and there is nothing wrong with that, but we cannot stop there. As Christians we are called to look beyond the boundaries of our own selves, our own homes, our own communities, to the world which Jesus called us to love and care for.

Jesus called the people listening to him to look beyond their normally unquestioned prejudices about who belonged and who did not belong to see that all people were loved by God and called and enabled to be in the family of faith. It seems that in every day and age the words of Jesus must be heard anew to guard against the tendency toward putting up boundaries around our communities. Jesus call us is to service, and we can follow because Jesus was the ultimate shepherd and servant. He gave his life for us. So as mothers, as members of the Christian family and those who seek the role of shepherds, we can have no better guide and model than the one who died and was raised to new life by the power of Almighty God.

Amen.

Tragedy strikes and we can ask, “Why Me?” “Why this family?” “Why?” “ We took every precaution!” “We followed all of the rules!” “Why us?” Sadly, no matter how many precautions taken, there are no real guarantees against the tragedy of illness, accident or violent crime. We also know that neither religious belief nor practice is an antidote to tragedy.

Yet this same reaction can also apply to the hearing of a piece of good news: “This can’t be happening to me!” “I don’t deserve this” Or the winning of a prize: “Why, I’ve never been first at anything. There must be a mistake.” Or to a pledge of love: “There must be some catch! No one has ever loved me unconditionally.”

A few years ago the children in Vacation Bible School learned a song called “When I Wiggle”. The chorus went like this:

“God’s great love for me
makes me want to jump
God’s great love for me
makes my heart go thump.”
(song --Cathy Skogen-Soldner © 2000)
Of course since this is a song for children in the heat of a summer church school program, it is punctuated by the kind of actions kids love so much - jumping, chest pounding. You can make up your own verses and add the appropriate actions too!

In the light of the good news of God’s love, it is unfortunate that there are some who would say, quite sincerely, “Surely the Good News of Jesus doesn’t apply to me, it must be for someone else!”

Sadly, as far as the ‘church’ has been concerned, this has been quite true; there are many people who, over the years, have been excluded or relegated to ‘second-class’ status by the church establishment. As the church began to spread out into the gentile world, some of the Christians who had been Jewish saw themselves as more important than those who had been of other religions. This caused problems in the day to day organization of Christian communities. The early church shared many things in common and the way it was supposed to work was that those who did not have enough were cared for by the wider community. Well pretty soon the Greek Christians complained that the Jewish Christians were being unfair in the distribution of food to the widows and orphans. In response to this problem, the apostles appointed seven people to ensure the fair distribution of aid in the church and one of these people was a Greek-speaking Christian named Philip.

Obviously he did not spend all of his time solving such disputes because he found time to do other work in the church. In today’s passage his role is that of an evangelist; someone who proclaims the good news. However, the audience, as it were, in today’s scripture, is no ordinary group or person. The details are specific and are given to us for a purpose and we are wise to pay attention to them. Today’s passage from Acts is about crossing the boundaries that are all too often set up around the faith community, barriers which keep people out of the church and away from the Good News.

The basics of the story are this: the evangelist Philip encounters a man often referred to simply as ‘the Ethiopian eunuch” and leads him to Christian faith. We do not know this man’s name and we never hear of him again. There is the tradition that he was the founder of Ethiopian Christianity, and later its bishop, but this cannot be proven.

We know that he was from Ethiopia, meaning that he was a foreigner. In this case he was most likely very dark and obviously a non- Israelite. He was a eunuch, ( a castrated man) likely made that way so that he could serve in the Queen’s court. Such was also the common practice for those who were placed in charge of the king’s harem.

We are told that he was in charge of the treasury, which would meant that in his circle at least he had status and the trust of his Queen. It seems that he was well enough off to have had his own Isaiah scroll, no small item in the days of  meticulous and tedious hand copying. We are told that he was coming from Jerusalem where he had gone to worship, so we can surmise that he was Jewish, a convert from whatever religion he had practised previously.

However, as a foreigner and as a man who was considered ‘blemished’ and not completely whole, he would not have been fully accepted at the temple. The scriptures were quite clear that the surgery which made him eligible for such a position of high honour would have rendered him unacceptable before the God of Israel. No matter how much faith he had, no mater how many sacrifices he made, he could never be totally acceptable. That was the fact of the matter.

By some coincidence though, or by some action of the Spirit, on this day he is reading from a scroll of the prophet Isaiah, the prophet who spoke of a time in the future when such divisions would be a thing of the past and that all people would be accepted to God.

Apparently this man was reading out loud as his chariot thundered along. Philip takes a bold step when he asked this obviously wealthy and powerful foreigner if he understood what he was is reading. The official’s reply indicated that he could not since he had no teacher. The stage is set for him to hear and accept the good news of God’s love in Jesus of Nazareth. After Philip makes direct connections between the passage from Isaiah and the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, he comes to believe in God’s love as shown in this Jesus. He requests baptism and it is done, because, as the text indicates, there is no reason that it cannot be done. He has met the orly criteria: faith in Jesus.

In the Bible Study on Tuesday evening we looked at this passage in some detail. I asked the question: “Who or what is this story really about? Who is really the main character?” We discussed the three possible answers: Philip, the eunuch and - the Holy Spirit.

It seems to me that the writer of Acts goes to great lengths to show that it is the Holy Spirit who is directing things here. While the interactions of the man from Ethiopia and Philip are very important, without the Spirit Philip would not have been where he needed to be. Without the Spirit he may not have known what to say to this man as he asked deep questions about the work of the prophet Isaiah. Without the Spirit he may have refused to talk to him, or refused to baptize him. Because of this action of the Spirit, Philip has an opportunity to present to him the interpretation of the scriptures that saw Jesus as fulfilling the passages in the prophet Isaiah’s writings known as the ‘Suffering Servant Songs”. Perhaps it was this connection to suffering that captivated this man so much. Perhaps he knew more about suffering than most of us could ever imagine.

The passages from Isaiah presented the picture of an age where human categories would no longer apply, when those usually excluded from temple worship (even eunuchs) would really and truly be included.

This passage was a reminder to the early church, and to us, that this age had arrived. It was a reminder to the early church that the calling and welcoming work of the Spirit could not be stopped. It reminded the church that the Spirit desired an inclusive and welcoming community; a community not based on the way things have always been done but upon the new way of Jesus of Nazareth. Sadly the church did not learn the lesson, at least not permanently. Each age seems to present new challenges to inclusion and the true proclamation of God’s unconditional love.

There is the story about the man who was shipwrecked on a desert island. When he was rescued it was discovered that he had built two churches. Asked why he said, “That is the one I go to now, but that other one is the one I used to go to”.

An internet colleague wrote in an email to one of the clergy groups to which I belong that when he was serving his first church he noticed that a great many people lived in a trailer park while they worked at seasonal jobs. He wanted to start a ministry to these migrant workers. After some discussion his church board refused to sanction the ministry and further, they decided to limit church membership to those who owned property in the area.

As a community we need to reflect on who we exclude and then compare that to those whom the Spirit calls to come to us. We cannot keep this passage in the past, as a quaint story about the early church.

The passage is also addressed to us, not as command but as “Good News”. Deep down there is a place within us that feels excluded, blemished, cut off from the boundless grace of God. We are all, in some way, like the eunuch; feeling out of sync; searching for a place to belong or waiting to hear the truly good news hat we are loved and do belong; waiting to hear; hoping to hear, but knowing that it is not likely that we ever will.

It reminds me of the gospel song. “Why me Lord” “What have I ever done to receive even one of the blessings ....” While such self deprecation is usually unhelpful, I think that this is how many of us truly feel until we experience the unmerited grace of God.

No! We cant earn it by birth or by ‘brownie points’ we accept it in faith as a gift of God. The point of the Good News is that we are all acceptable, we are all loved and we all called to respond in joy and praise

The very young children in our Vacation Bible School knew this as they sang, “God’s great love for me.” Yet in our lives between the time we are children and when we grow up many things happen which makes us feel unloved and even unlovable: broken relationships, illness, being fired, not being hired, family conflict, being arrested, not meeting others’ expectations, or even our own, and etc.

As hard as they are for us to get our hearts around these are of no consequence to the Holy Spirit. We are never too far away for God’s love and grace to reach us.

But what if the man in the chariot had not met Philip - what if he had met someone who held him at Arms length or would not get into the chariot with him, would not give him the time of day and would not baptize him - the story would have been very different.

You see we are called to embody the welcoming and inclusive love of God, just as we are called to claim it for ourselves.

God’s great love for me
Makes me want to jump.
God’s great love for me,
Makes my heart go thump.
(song --Cathy Skogen-Soldner © 2000)

Amen.