Easter Season - Year B -- 2006
Indexed by Date. Sermons for Easter Year B
Isaiah 25: 6-9
Psalm 118
Romans 6: 3-11
Mark 16: 1-8
The Worst Kept Secret?
Imagine!
Imagine a week so horrible you thought it would never end; you wanted it to end, and yet, what you really wanted was to turn back the clock to a happier time so that the end would never come. We can imagine, I am sure, because we have all been there.
Then imagine an experience that casts doubt on all of your recent horrible experiences. Did they really happen? Imagine your world being turned upside down and then having it turned upside down again!
(Pause)
I am sure that as the women approached the tomb on that first Easter morning they expected only more sadness as they continued to try to come to terms with your unspeakable loss.
The one who had breathed life into their lives was gone.
The one who had loved and respected them, as no one had ever done, was gone.
The one who presented a vision of human community that had no barriers and was bound only by the love of God was gone from their midst.
The one who ate with those considered sinners and outcastes, was gone.
The one who spoke of God in a way that no one ever had previously; with true authority; was gone.
They knew that they couldn’t go back to their old ways of looking at life.
They knew that their way of looking at faith had changed forever. They knew that pretending he had never become part of their lives was impossible. Yet, how would they live without his presence, his guidance, his companionship? They could not go back, but without him, it seemed that they could not go forward.
Then the tomb came into view in the early morning light. Mark tells us that they had been talking about how to roll that heavy stone aside. It was designed so that it could not be easily done. Who would help them?
They soon saw that everything was not as they had left it. Something was very wrong, but exactly what was it?
This next part of the story would make a great opening for an episode of CSI: Jerusalem, if there was such a tv show back then!
The stone had been rolled away.
The body was gone.
Then they did something I might not have done: they went into the tomb. Since bodies just don’t get up and walk away the logical explanation would be grave robbers, but what would grave robbers have wanted with Jesus? Despite their fears, they go inside.
Then they speak to (or at least listen to) a man sitting in the tomb, where the body should have been. The man tells them to go and tell the disciples to go to Galilee and that Jesus will be there.
Then, the women did something that I certainly WOULD have done. THEY FLED. They got out of there as fast as they could.
YET, it is ironic that Mark tells us that they kept this a secret because they were afraid! They didn’t tell anyone! Who would believe them anyway? Who would believe a group of women; women weren’t even considered reliable enough to testify in court? So the text tells us that they remained silent.
(Pause)
Obviously they must have broken their silence sometime, but at that moment they were scared speechless.
Imagine being told it was a secret but knowing that it was the best thing ever. It was, as they say, like trying to sneak dawn past a rooster!
Many years ago I knew a woman who loved secrets and she WAS good at keeping them, but she loved to tell you that she had a secret that she couldn’t share. When I knew her, these secrets were mostly about her future plans - or something that had happened to her but she loved to tell you that she HAD a secret.
I kind of smile when I read the biblical story and see that those who have just experienced whatever it is that has happened are not to talk about it.
Of course, if they had kept the secret the person who wrote down all those biblical stories wouldn’t have found out.
Sometimes though– you need time to think about things –time to process things. Then when Jesus began to appear to others, I guess the cat was out of the bag!
It took a great deal of time for the church to come to terms with what the resurrection actually meant. In fact, we are still struggling with what it means.
It is important to remember that the resurrection experience was about much more than a missing body. It was even about more than a handful of appearances - to the disciples - to groups of followers, and to others. If that was all there was to the Easter moment and experience I can say with absoluter certainty that we would not be here today celebrating Easter. The followers of the Way would never have persevered, never survived the hardships that came to them because of their faithfulness.
What IS the miracle of Easter? The real miracle has nothing to do with his absence from the tomb but his unmistakable presence in their empty lives.
That was the real miracle of Easter.
The real miracle of Easter is that this presence can be experienced by people gathered in Christ’s name, 2000 years later. The real miracle is that where those who call upon his name have gathered, the Christ is there!
The Risen Christ is among us.
Christ is Risen!
Christ is Risen Indeed!
John 20: 1-18
In the early part of the last century, Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin was as powerful a man as there was on earth. He was a Russian Communist leader who took part in the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, was editor of the Soviet newspaper Pravda (which means “truth”) and was a full member of the Politburo.
He was also fiercely opposed to Christianity. One day in 1930 he addressed a huge assembly on the subject of atheism. During his hour-long address, he aimed his heavy artillery at Christianity- hurling insult, argument, and proof against it.
When he was finished he looked out at what seemed to him to be the smoldering ashes of the people’s faith. He felt very proud of himself. "Are there any questions?" Bukharin demanded. Deafening silence filled the auditorium UNTIL one man approached the platform and stood behind the lectern near the communist leader. He paused. He surveyed the crowd, looking first to the left then to the right.
Finally he shouted the ancient greeting well known to Christians all over his country: “CHRIST IS RISEN!" En masse the crowd arose as one and the response came crashing like the sound of thunder: "CHRIST IS RISEN INDEED!"
Christ is risen!
Christ is Risen Indeed!
To proclaim resurrection, is at the heart of our lives as Christians. To proclaim resurrection, even in our culture free of the extremely negative repercussions of practising one’s faith that were common in Communist Russia, is still a radical act. To proclaim resurrection is to speak boldly of the power of God over the forces of this world.
To proclaim resurrection is to speak boldly of life in a world full of death.
To proclaim resurrection is to speak of love in a world full of hate.
To proclaim resurrection is to speak of peace in a world full of violence and war.
To proclaim resurrection is to speak of hope to a world mired in despair
To proclaim resurrection is to speak of generosity and open hands in a world whose generosity is bound by a myth of scarcity.
To proclaim resurrection is to proclaim that the love of God as shown in Christ has the power to soften the hardest of hearts, to enter the most solid of doors and to bring sunshine and light to the darkest and most desolate of places.
To proclaim resurrection is our life, our mission, our reason for being.
Christ is Risen.
Christ is Risen Indeed!
(Pause)
The women who went to the tomb did not need to be reminded of what had just gone on. Their friend; the one who had breathed life, hope and the love of God into tired and hopeless lives, was GONE. Tried in the middle of the night on trumped up charges. Framed, we would say today. He didn’t have a chance. They had seen him groan on the cross, as they had seen so many - actual criminals, those who just wanted change, others the state wanted to be rid of. They didn’t need any reminders of death or of despair.
The gospel of John does not tell us why they went to the tomb that morning. As John tells it the body had already been prepared for burial, but maybe more needed to be done. Maybe they just wanted to say goodbye. Maybe they had things to say, much like many of you have gone to the cemetery to talk to your recently departed loved one.
Anyway, they went and got the shock of their lives! They went and it wasn’t what they found that was so startling, it was what they did not find. Or at least that was how it started out!
They saw the open tomb, and we presume the empty tomb. So they went and told someone. They had to tell someone. You can’t keep silent about something like that.
Later, after the men had come and gone, it was Mary, who had an experience of the Risen Christ and, once again, it was Mary who passed on this news to the others, especially the disciples.
So, what does this say to us in the year 2006? Where does resurrection speak to us?
Like Mary and the disciples we don’t need many reminders of death, despair and hopelessness.
Eight are found dead in a ‘cleansing’ of biker gangs in Ontario and we wonder about the drugs and the other crimes connected to gangs and if our children are safe.
One Christian Peacemaker is killed by his captors and while three are released we wonder what the future of peace is in our world.
We hear bad news from our doctor, or a loved one does.
We see families falling apart and relationships on the rocks and we wonder why love can’t seem to conquer all.
And we come to the empty tomb to unburden our soul.
There is a lot of debate about the historicity of the resurrection. Dit it happen? Yet, in the end the missing body is not the real point of the story and is certainly not it’s real power. You either believe it, or you don’t. What is the real miracle of Easter, is NOT Jesus absence from the empty tomb, but the presence of the Risen Christ in their previously empty lives.
The scriptures tell us of the numerous resurrection appearances, events that could not be captured, or pinned down, or even described – but which were powerful enough to transform this rag tag bunch of fear filled disciples into fearless evangelists.
I’ll say it again, “The real miracle of Easter is not that Jesus’ body was gone from the tomb; the real miracle of Easter waas the presence of the risen Christ in their empty lives.
It is that presence that gave the people of Russia the power to persevered through generations of persecution;
It was that presence that gave the churches of many nations to survive and even thrive under persecution.
One of the things that strikes me every time I read these stories is how, even the so-called private resurrection appearances become a spring-board for public proclamation or a more public appearance.
There is little time here for private religious experience that does not result in proclamation of the great truth of Easter. When something like this has happened you just have to tell someone. When something like this has happened you just have to invite someone, anyone, EVERYONE else to an opportunity to have the same experience; to know the Risen Christ.
So we gather as COMMUNITY, to see, to experience, to sense and then to pass it on to others. We see and know and it gives us strength and hope. When we are in the darkness of doubt, the seeing and knowing of others will invite us in again to the community which knows and experiences the One over whom death held no sway.
We are not a people immune from sadness and tragedy, but we ARE a people of Resurrection. We are a people who can proclaim life in the face of death and hope in the midst of despair.
We are a people of resurrection faith.
We have seen Jesus. He has appeared to us. Let us go and tell the world.
Christ is Risen
Christ is Risen Indeed.
Amen.
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Acts 8: 26-40
Psalm 22: 25-31
1 John 4: 7-21
John 15: 1-8
Everybody ? .....Well, Except For .......!
“How can I understand – unless someone guides me?” Since we read the resurrection stories a few weeks ago the Good News of God’s love in Jesus the Christ is spreading far and wide. In today’s story the apostle, Phillip is sent to proclaim the good news and his only instruction from the Spirit is to go to a certain road.
As it happens a man from Ethiopia is coming along and reading from a scroll containing the book of the prophet Isaiah. This encounter becomes an occasion for evangelism and results in a baptism. It would be wrong to say that it is a conversion experience because, reading between the lines, it is obvious that this is not the first time that this man has heard of Jesus - but perhaps it is the first time that he has heard the connection between the teachings of the prophets and the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. As his request for baptism seems to have come out of nowhere (as Philip does not speak directly of baptism) it seems to me that he has encountered the community before. Perhaps this is the first time that he has had the opportunity to make the commitment of baptism. Perhaps it is the first time someone has talked to him as a potential member of the body of Christ. When the baptism is performed, Phillip’s task is completed and the Spirit takes him to another location for another purpose. The unnamed man goes on his way, rejoicing.
I have had a pair of books in my library for about 25 years, and until Friday I hadn’t thought of them in years. They are mostly books of drawings and most of the text appears to be printed by hand. One is called “A Bag of Noodles” and the other “Noodles Du Jour”. “Manufactured” by Wally Armbruster and published in 1972 and 1976 by Concordia A noodle is a cartoon, or a doodle, with food for thought. It’s something you can chew on, something to make you think, or even disturb your digestion. The last page of the first of the two books has a large heart and the words “I LOVE EVERYBODY” in large red letters. Then in smaller, black, print it has the word “except” and then a list of 38 groups of people that are excluded from the cartoonist’s love, such as Jews, Catholics, alcoholics, teetotallers, foreigners and flag-wavers and (in red print) the last on the list is “bigots”.
I suppose that it is impossible for a finite fallible human to really and truly ‘love everybody” and we have lots of reasons to exclude people from our love, and when we don’t have a reason, we invent one! People who have hurt us. People on the other side of a war. People we don’t understand. People who ...... (we can add our own category here).
All too often an tragic incident results in a whole group being tarred with the same brush as the perpetrator. If the person who broke into the store was a long haired teen all long haired teens are immediately suspect and if that person was from a group referred to as a visible minority - then all of those who belong to that group are immediately suspect.
I saw a commercial late last week in which the boss is asking for the recommendation of a hiring committee. When asked why the other candidate was not recommended the only answer that was given was that “that person has epilepsy”. Even if you had never seen the commercial you can almost predict the words when the boss stops, removes his glasses, pauses with a look of puzzlement and disappointment on his face ans says “I have epilepsy!”
We are human though and it’s not unnatural for us to be wary of the stranger and those who are different. However, we have acquired the idea that God’s love is limited by ours. We have picked up the idea somewhere that God loves those we love and despises those whom we despise. However, the gospel message challenges this idea most strenuously. Someone once said that “it is important for us to remember that God is not the enemy of our enemies”. Indeed, it is clear to me that the work and actions of the Spirit are consistently working against our prejudices, our hurts and our tendency to exclude others, for whatever reason.
As the early church began to proclaim the good news they had to struggle with the questions of the recipients of this good news. Some in the church thought that only Jewish people could become Christian, because the hope for a Messiah was a very Jewish hope and connected to their history and their faith for hundreds of years. So all pagans had to become practising Jews before they came to believe in Jesus. Eventually this ceased to be the case but it was a great struggle for the church.
Today’s passage is about Philip, the apostle, and a eunuch from the court of the Queen of Ethiopia. Many of us have heard this story often enough that we forget how very unusual this event was and why, in fact, it might offend some. Why was it unusual? Why would it offend? This person was not a child of Israel but was a convert to Judaism. He was a foreigner and he would have stood out in a crowd in downtown Jerusalem, because of the colour of his skin and, of course, because of his obvious wealth.
We are told that he was returning from worshipping in Jerusalem. In addition to great cost, this trip would have taken time and great effort so this man was very committed.
BUT we are told something else that was very important; He was a eunuch. A man who was put in charge of the King’s harem or the Queen’s household was usually castrated so as to make him safe and trustworthy but the surgery would have been forbidden under Jewish law and have made him permanently unclean because the surgery that had been done to him had made him unable to father children.
We are told that he was reading from the scroll of Isaiah. It would have been an expensive purchase. Before the days of printing presses all texts had to be copied by hand and only the wealthiest people owned their own copies. His copy was probably a Greek translation as it would be more likely for him to know Greek, rather than the original Hebrew and there were many Greek speaking Jews in the countries around Israel.
We need to keep in mind that even though this man had gone to great trouble to express his faith he would still have been considered an outsider and nothing that he could do would change that.
Yet, guided by the Spirit, Philip does not have a problem with this and speaks to him of the message of Jesus of Nazareth and readily responds to his request for baptism, no questions asked, no conditions other than his obvious faith.
The church has not always listened to this message of the Spirit. When this country was being settled well meaning Christians sent missionaries to evangelize the native peoples. They did not accept them for who they were and forced them to accept European ways and give up native customs as a condition of becoming a follower of Jesus. Eventually combined with the power of the federal government in the system called “residential schools” this attitude toward those of a completely different culture caused great hardship among native peoples and the aftermath is still being felt today.
20 years ago the United Church of Canada began the long process of apologizing and seeking to forge new relationships with the native peoples of our church and in the whole country.
Of course the work of the Christian churches in many third world countries was hampered by the same racism and cultural imperialism as we confused European ways with the gospel and in our ancestors’ zeal to share the good news great damage was done.
We need to pay attention to these lessons from the early church were people who were previously thought to be unclean or excluded are welcomed into the fellowship of Christ’s people, as they are.
In essence this passage is much more about the call of the Holy Spirit than it is about any specific person or persons. We are called to open our hearts to the call of God, particularly to that call which makes us uncomfortable; that call which stretches what we believe; that call which asks us to open hearts and minds to grow, to change and to struggle with our faith in the context in which we live our day to day lives.
May we know the power of God’s Spirit as we seek to be faithful servants - in the time and place in which we find oursleves.
Amen.
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Acts 10: 44-48
Psalm 98
1 John 5: 1-6
John 15: 9-17
Joy and Grace Are Kissing Cousins
If you watch any TV at all, I know you have seen the commercials I am speaking of. Two tickets to Venice - $1,000. A gondola ride for two - $200. Tickets to the opera - $250. The second honeymoon - Priceless. While the commercial seems to indicate that the best things in life can’t be purchased, the real implication, lurking just under the surface, is that you can only have those priceless things after you’ve laid down your MasterCard at least a couple of times!
Of course it’s a commercial trying to sell a product, and what would you expect it to say - the best things in life are free? Hardly! But these and other commercials do cause us to reflect on what is important in life and how we can achieve what is of greatest importance.
What is really important in life? On what things should we spend our time and our energy? We know that the “world” asks us to value things that can be counted, or bought and sold; things that are very concrete. Our entire economy is based on consumption of one sort or another. We buy and sell goods or knowledge or professional services. Without it, we would be living in caves.
As a people of faith, however, we are called to value things which are harder to put a dollar value on and next to impossible to quantify. The biblical world values grace, happiness, love, hope and joy and love and calls us to live out those values.
Now, those words are not unique to the church but I would suggest the biblical world-view defines them in quite different ways from those of the secular world. Some of these seem like normal, everyday words, but in most cases our everyday understanding does not do any justice to the biblical understanding of these very important ideas.
Take the word happy; it’s a commonly used word, but our concept of happiness in 2006 has little to do with the deep sense of complete and total well-being that is implied when it is used in a biblical context. Some translations of the Bible tend to use the word because it is common language, but because it is common language it is easily misunderstood. We use if for everything from what a small child feels when she is snuggling with Dad before bed or what the teenager feels when Mom says he can have an iPod for his birthday to what someone feels when she finds an odd dish at a yard sale to match the one that got broken last year and is not being sold in stores anymore, Or the feeling I get when someone gives me a 25lb box of my favourite chocolates!
Joy is another of those words and is often equated with happiness. However the word “happy” just doesn’t come close to equalling the deep meaning of the word “joy”. “Truly happy” or “completely happy” come closer, but of course, those are phrases, not single words.
In the end, the reality of biblical language and ideas, is that they cannot really be defined, they must be lived and experienced to be truly understood.
This leaves us with the question: How do we achieve true joy in life?
As some of you already know, er is one of my favourite shows. This year’s “season finale” was a true cliff-hanger in the vein of ‘who shot JR?” One of the threads of the finale was the funeral, with full military honours, for Dr Michael Gallant, a 20 something doctor serving with the US army, killed in Iraq by a roadside bomb. His wife, Dr Neela Rasgotra, with tears in her eyes, expressed deep grief and anger that he had returned to Iraq after his required tour of duty was over, when he did not need to and put his life on the line - when there were those who loved him at home. Apparently his father, had taught him a different kind of lesson about duty and sacrifice and his previous experience had led him to believe that he could contribute something valuable. The differing reactions of Dr Gallants family point to different ways of looking at how one looks at duty and achieving peace and joy in life.
Meanwhile, in the other thread of the episode, back at the hospital, a shootout has taken place and many people, including several hospital staff are bleeding and dying from gunshot wounds.
As the episode nears the end, Dr. Greg Pratt, who has accompanied Neela to the funeral receives an urgent page from the ER and knows that something is very wrong.
Now I don’t know what the writers have planned for the season opener in the fall but I suspect that Neela and Greg will race back at the ER and begin doing what they know how to do best, patching up the wounded and saving those lives that can be saved. And in that activity Neela will find some peace and meaning in her life and in her husband’s death. That’s my prediction at least.
We all know that just this past week another Canadian soldier was killed in Afghanistan. Her husband tells us that she dies doing what she wanted to be doing and that he continues to support the efforts of the Canadian military in Afghanistan, despite the risks. And the debate about war and peace and the appropriate role for Canadians continues on.
What is worth dying for? What makes life worth living? What are we called to do and be?
One of the passages read today speaks of laying down one’s life for one’s friends. That verse is often interpreted in terms of war - and the sacrifices made by comrades in arms for one another and for the peace and freedom of their own country or for an oppressed people. And we can all relate to that in these past few months and years.
Yet, we are not all called to be soldiers or serve in the military. How do the rest of us appropriate the meaning of this passage?
Our culture has the tendency to teach us to be self-centred. We are to look out for #1. If we don’t look out for ourselves, no one else will. Today’s gospel passage points to something very different.
While I think that it is important not to let the world treat us like a doormat, I think that the biblical view calls us to “lay our lives down” for others, not just the ones we would call friends, but for the ones Jesus would call our friends. In other words we are called to live our lives, making small and large sacrifices, for our children, our parents, our neighbours, those we have known since we were kids, those with whom we share our sorrows and joys, the people we would never want to come over and spend the evening, AND total strangers – in short, “the world God loves.” Whether we define the “other people” as “friend” or “enemy” or “stranger”; God defines them as “FRIEND”.
This contrast of values pervades the entire Christian faith. The passage from John’s gospel is one of Jesus’ last speeches to his disciples, his closest friends. Like any last words they bear special attention because Jesus knows his time is short and wants his last words to be words of great importance; its worth his last breath!
This is a passage about joy, not about what the world may define as happiness. The biblical paradox is that even when our circumstances are quite tragic, even in the midst of very real tears, true joy will remain.
Another of those words that the world sees in a different way is “love”. There is a lot of talk about love in the popular media. Our culture tends to define love as a feeling that can come and can go. A popular expression when I was a teenager was, “Love means never having to say you are sorry”. In the biblical way love means being prepared to apologize because the health of the relationship depends on it.
In the popular view. Love is closely related to physical attraction and cannot be forced or commanded yet the gospel calls us to a very different way of being in the world. This passage calls its readers to have a different outlook. Love is a choice, a choice that we are compelled to make by Jesus’ own command.
It is interesting that Jesus connects following this command with joy. The way the world looks at following commands is often a little cynical: we must not get caught doing wrong. We think of commands in terms of civil law. We put on our seat-belts because a) we want to be safe, or b) we don’t want to pay a fine. We would hardly think that we do it to achieve joy. While we know that most rules are for our overall benefit, we hardly think of them as a means of offering us joy. In fact some of us are sure that law is designed to keep us from achieving any kind of joy at all!
Some would say that the only law that Jesus really gives is the law of love; wee are commanded to love so that our joy may be true and complete.
It’s not easy to get our heads around this, because as I said before, it has to be lived and experienced for its truth to be truly known.
In the biblical view, when things have gone wrong, love means seeking a new relationship with those who have been hurt and going from “sorry” to true and supportive relationships of love and support.
This is the anniversary of the United Church’s “Native Apology”. At the General Council in 1986 we made statements to Canada’s native people about our part in the destruction of their culture and their society. When our ancestors came to this land many native peoples were killed because our ancestor’s goals for the land were incompatible with those of the indigenous peoples. The church was not much better. Missionaries, albeit with good intentions, tried to make native people follow white ways as a condition of accepting the gospel. Combined with the power of the Residential Schools, the damage to native culture was immense. For the last 20 years our church’s leadership has worked hard to forge a new relationship with the people who were in this land long before our ancestors arrived.
It’s not just Canada that has issues such as this. In Australia the week of May 26 to June 3 has been named National Reconciliation Week.
Love, and being Jesus’ friends in this instance, and in many others, DOES mean having to say we are sorry. It DOES mean seeking to change our ways. It DOES mean trying to redress some of the wrongs through compensation which will enable healing. It DOES mean a change of attitude and the grace to admit that our ancestors were wrong and we have benefited in many ways from their policies and the ways in which they mistreated our nations first peoples. Love DOES mean seeking a new way for the future.
As Christians, we are called to love others. We are called to relationships with exhibit mutual love. We are called to relationships of trust. To abide in love is to be in true relationship with another.
To love is a choice, but we must always remember that it is based in God’s love for us. In Christ God’s chose us first. God loved us first. What grace! What love!
I titled my sermon ‘joy and grace are kissing cousins’. You really can’t have one without the other. You cant have either without the experience of love, given and received.
An experience of God’s love and grace brings us such deep joy and peace that we can do no less than share it with others. Guided by the Spirit, in the community of faith, we respond in joy and chose to be agents of love and care.
May we follow Jesus command to love the world that God loved. And may we find the joy that is promised when we commit ourselves to this way of life, no matter the cost.
Amen.