Easter 2011 a sermon preached at Washington Plaza Baptist Church, Reston, VA from Matthew 28:1-10
Stories that conclude without happy ending drive me completely nuts. I’d almost rather not hear the story if I don’t know everything is going to work out ok in the end. Sound familiar to anyone?
This is especially the case when I go movies. When the plot line finishes unresolved, with couples who don’t kiss and make up, or the final scene being a summary of this is how life stinks when we are alone, I feel like my hard-earned 10, 11 or even now 12 dollars (growing all the time these days) is wasted. For, I didn’t need to pay money to be reminded of unfair life can be. And, I’ll leave the theater in a bad mood. (Kevin knows this is so true).
Such sentiments of gloom would be perfectly understandable too in the case of where we left our gospel story when we last read together on Friday.
After a humiliating trial and unrelenting crowds shouting, “Crucify Him” and six hours on a cross facing a cruel Roman execution, Jesus dies. No happy ending. The beloved teacher, friend, and one said to be called, “The King of the Jews” on whom many hopes of the coming of the kingdom of God were placed, dies. So much promise, carrying on his shoulders so many hopes, yet he dies. It was the original unhappy ending.
Just as Jesus cried out from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” the followers of Jesus must have felt pretty abandoned too at this point. All the good talk Jesus had engaged in about “the kingdom of heaven is near” and “Trust God, trust also in me” seemed like a bunch of bologna as Jesus breathed his last and word got out in the community that had trusted him heard Jesus was dead. Anger and bad moods too were probably shared all around too.
If you’ve recently lost a loved one, you know that one of the first things that we do immediately following is not always full-out “cry a river of tears” posture.
While there are tears, yes, there’s a lot of quickly trying to jump to what is next.
There are funeral arrangements to be made, family to inform, decisions about what to do with the body trying to unsure that the deceased has a proper burial.
The natural human instinct, for many, is a desire to move on and move on quickly. You begin imagining life without this person. You might even find yourself supposedly comforted by others of by the notion of “Ok, now, that he or she is dead, let’s just get on with our lives.” You begin to change the focus of your gaze from hope for your life together with the loved one to how you can get over this wrenching pain as quickly as possible.
Though the past day and a half had probably seemed like the most emotional, longest time of their lives, they were seeking to close the loop on their friendship to Jesus by morning. It was why they got up so early.
I think “drama” is the last thing that they were looking for or even expecting. They believed and hoped that everything was in good order—they were just going to make sure. Therefore, all that the scene needed was a powerful melodic closing song and it could win the Oscar for the saddest story ever told.
For, it would not be the unhappy ending they were living and preparing to keep on living. What would come next would be the disruption that changed everything!
As Matthew tells the story, as soon as Mary and Mary found themselves in the place where Jesus’ body had been laid, all of nature erupted in an earthquake.
We’ve all done a lot of thinking about earthquakes recently, sending our hearts out to our friends in Japan, so we know how shocking and overwhelming such an occurrence can be. The ground that you trust so much to lift you up and keep you safe is taken from beneath you. But this was not all.
Verse two goes on to tell us more about this interruption.
As the earth itself opened up, simultaneously, a messenger appeared an angel of the Lord from the heavens. Matthew gives us some good metaphors to deal with here because he writes that this angel was “like lightening” with “his clothes white as snow.”
It was a sight to behold.
An interruption to normal in more ways than one and not only just for the women: scripture tells us that the guards who had been sent to guard the tomb were greatly shaken and fell to the ground like dead men.
This was now the Lord’s day and the women were about to not only to see something of earth shattering proportions, literally, but there were going to get a word about it too.Look with me at the interruption from the angel after the stone to the tomb has been rolled away in verse five:
“Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come see the place where he lay. Then, go quickly and tell his disciples that he has been raised from the dead.”
From now on, when religious leaders and government officials ruled with an iron fist and fraudulent practices, such was not the end of the story.
What they saw in front of their eyes in moments of deep loss, soul crippling pain, and heaps of sorrow was not the end of the story.
When they felt abandoned, forsaken and as if the whole world was against them, such was not the end of the story either.
And, the icing on the cake that morning came as the women were beginning the four-day journey, all 63 miles of it, from Jerusalem to Galilee. Because, I feel, they had eyes ready to behold the disruption—after accepting the word of the angel—Jesus appears to them on this road and they see him! He greets them, allowing the women to touch his feet (to know for sure that he was real) and said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”
You and I would not be sitting here today, hearing this ancient story once again, if this disruption of major proportions was not received into the lives of the Marys and then later the other disciples.
For while the story of resurrection was Jesus completing the work of love he came to do, it had a dependant human element to it: resurrection would mean nothing, absolutely nothing if those who experienced it did not share it.
The interruption—the transformation, the new life-giving opportunity that the resurrection on Easter morn would give all of humanity—would be not one at all, if the women and then all who came after them at the empty tomb, and generations and generations that followed those first eyewitnesses had not allowed the disruption to sink into their beings and become a part of who they were.
Resurrection was more than a proclamation on that Sunday.
For the women at the tomb that morn, resurrection was the interruption that gave them purpose beyond being the traveling companions of this great teacher. They were charged to bear witness to this divine truth: God could be trusted to see the darkest night of our lives through.
Because in the end, this was all they were asked to do—not give theological accounts as to the science of the resurrection, not to be able to connect every dot of this point in the faith story to that one, not even to convince those whom they told with persuasive and passionate arguments so that they would believe too, they were just to live into the disruption by announcing it not only with words, but in presence too.
So, this morning I want you to practice. Those of you who were at the early morning service will remember this litany written by Sharlande Sledge. And, this is your part: we are resurrection people with Easter in our hearts. Say it with me.
When others dismiss your story as an idle tale, who will you be?
We are Resurrection people with Easter in our hearts
When the world seems to be crumbling around you, remember who you are:
We are Resurrection people with Easter in our hearts
When despair would seem to squelch all hope, believe in who you have become:
We are Resurrection people with Easter in our hearts
When it is hard to persevere against all odds, trust in God who names you:
We are Resurrection people with Easter in our hearts
As we follow Christ into the world, may God help us remember who we are . . .
We are Resurrection people with Easter in our hearts
So today, I say again, covering you my beloved, with the hope of this very good day—that whatever place of life you find yourself in this morning that in Christ, that even in the most difficult circumstances of our lives and in death too, we are people of the resurrection. Thanks be to God.
Let us proclaim: Christ is Risen. Christ is Risen Indeed.
AMEN
The Last Word from the Cross:
Jesus called out with a loud voice:“Father into your hands I commit my spirit.” When he had said this, he breathed his last.” Luke 23:46
“Father, into your hands, I commit my spirit.”
As we sit here with the very last word of Christ, death has come. We have reached the end of our watching and waiting by the cross. For the first followers of Jesus sitting by the cross that day, there was nothing more to do. Nothing.
If we read earlier in this passage, we know that symbols of this death were all around before Jesus spoke his last. Darkness fell over the whole land. The sun literally stopped shinning in disapproval. Many signs of God’s presence in creation were gone. It was a shattering moment— a moment that people of faith or no faith at all were forced to recognize. Everything was changing. Everything had changed with those last breaths of the one who was called God with Us.
There’s an old gospel song that I imagine many of you know: “All to Jesus, I Surrender, All to him I freely give. I will ever love and trust him and know that thou art mine.” And it was in those moments that the cross presented Jesus a choice. What would he do with his final breaths? Who would he bless? Who would he curse? Or, would he surrender to something greater than himself?
Yet, if you have sat beside the death of any, you know that the last of the last words are always hauntingly important. They are the words that stick with us, that we hear played in our head over and over after they have passed. We recite them to others. We remember them often times more than anything else the dying person has said previously.
So, if you only listen to one word of Christ, hear this:
When Jesus uttered his last, we hear in this utterance an acceptance of his death. What we hear is not a combative last wish, or an “I wish I’d done more of this.” Or, “Why aren’t there more people here mourning my death?” But, an, “I accept the fact that even though this all is so painful and uncertain I WILL leave this earth in acknowledgement of my Father God.” I will surrender my life the plans of the one who sent me here.
“Father, into your hands, I commit my spirit.”
Even more so, what we hear in Christ is a TRUST in the Father to handle what he could not—the mystery. There was no provable assurance of what would come next. There was much pain and few comforting presences gathered around him.
Sure, there was the hope of resurrection. Sure, this hope meant there could be good things to come. But in the pain and the agony of that moment of that very last breath type of moment, none of this was present, none of this was certain.
I believe this is where the cross often leads us, if we are going to be people who follow in its way. When we leave the cross, there is nothing more we can do than surrender. There is nothing more we can do than to lift up our hands acknowledge there’s a God who has a plan and who is working to bring even the most difficult circumstances for the good—even when we feel the most lost, forsaken and in our deepest pits. There’s nothing more we can do than sing, “I surrender all.”
It’s a difficult choice to give up our ability to control, to have our say, to seek to make things go as we wish. It’s frightening to just do the simple thing of “letting go.” It’s anxiety producing to look death in the face and not run away.
Yet, “Into your hands I commit my spirit.”
But, my friends, Jesus taught us that day that we aren’t just surrendering to anybody. We aren’t surrendering our lives to one that will toss us aside, ignore us, or not feel the agony of every tear we cry.
No, we can have confidence in the one in whom we are surrendering too: a God who was present with Jesus at Calvary, a God whom meets us in death.
Nineteenth century pastor and writer, Andrew Murray said this about surrender, “God is ready to assume full responsibility for a life wholly yielded to him.” It's God's job then to take our lives, take our deaths and make something useful of them once our surrender has been given.
So, In the darkness we surrender. In the pain we surrender. In the unknowing we surrender. Because yea though we walk through the valleys of the shadow of death, we will fear NO evil. For we know, yes, we know who is with us; a loving God in whom we can commend our spirits.
AMEN
John 12:1-15
Palm Sunday 2011
My name is Mary and I know you’ve heard a lot about me as I have about you.
We need to get a few things straight this morning before we go any further. I need you know who I am, not who many of you think I am.
So first of all, I am not Mary Magdalene, or I never have been. These rumors began in the 6th century with Pope Gregory. He preached a sermon calling my story that of Mary Magdalene, and thus I’ve had a case of mistaken identity ever since. (You know how it goes when a man in power says something; everyone believes him as if his words were always true . . .) It’s easy to get us confused. Yet, I am merely Mary from Bethany as recorded in John’s Gospel, not the unnamed woman in the other accounts.
Second of all, you need to know that I am not a woman who works in what you people today like to call the adult entertainment industry. Though Luke’s account of a woman anointing Jesus adds the phrase twice that this woman was a “sinner” (and we all know what a woman who is a “sinner” does in the Biblical stories—prostitution of course), this is just not me.
Of course I’m not without fault. Of course I’ve made my mistakes throughout my life—which Martha, my overbearing older sister has never allowed me to forget. But, I’ve never been a person who has to sell her body to make money for the family. Lazarus, my brother, has always been a very good protector and provider in this way. He has made sure that my sister and I have what we need and my work has usually kept me close to home.
Yet, what does make me special, I believe, is the relationship that my family and I had with the Galilean Rabbi named Jesus.
If you’ve ever met someone who has to travel a lot for their vocation, you know how taxing this can be both on their body and their spirit. When you are or the itinerant lifestyle you know that one of the best gifts you can have is the comfort of having a “home away from home” . . . somewhere you can go for a hot meal, some good wine and a share an evening of conversation with people with whom you share a history with.
Such was the role that my brother, sister and I played for Rabbi Jesus.
When he first came to our town of Bethany, we hit it off right away. There was a comfort level between us that let us know that this was the kind of guy that was not only going places in this world—doing really important stuff—but that we were meant to be friends. So, we promised him that anytime he was in town, he just must stay with us!
Over the years, we developed a strong bond with this teacher. Our mutual friendship and love for one another grew. I just was amazed each time Jesus stayed with us, the patience and compassion in which he showed not only me, but everyone. I couldn’t help but want to soak up whatever I could from his stories and ideas. I was mesmerized by his presence around our table. I just couldn’t learn enough from his wise words. It was a delight for Jesus and his disciples to come into our home when they did.
In general, because I wasn’t married, still going about the business of existing in my childhood home, I often felt like an outsider. Yet, never when Jesus was present among us—though there were, I know, countless others who adored him as much as I did, I always felt like an “insider” around him.
So, the choice for me that evening at dinner was an obvious one. I had to do something to show my appreciation for all that Jesus had done for us, what his presence had meant to us . . . little did I know, though, that what I choose to do would lead countless centuries of folks to either praise me as a “model of womanhood” or wondering if I had completely lost my mind. . .
It began like this: I went into the quarters of our home where important things were kept. I grabbed the bottle of pure nard that had been in our family for as long as we can remember, but technically belonged to me, in hopes that I was the sister in the family that would actually get married one day. It was a beautiful jar—I had admired it for as long as I could remember.
And, just before dinner began, I got down on my knees at the foot of the reclining table where Jesus sat and began to pour the nard from the jar . . . not on his hands (just trying to make him smell better) and not on his head (so to anoint him as king as others had done before) but intentionally on his feet.
You might wonder why would I choose to do this. Didn’t I know that Jesus’ feet smelled and that it would not be worth my while to get down there? But furthermore if you are familiar with Jewish customs at this time, you would know that to anoint the feet of another was an act of death. Anointing feet symbolized preparation for burial.
Seems like a strange way to “welcome” a house guest, doesn’t it?
And so you can imagine the strange looks that I got as soon as I opened the jar and directed it toward Jesus’ feet.
Judas, one of Jesus’ disciples, in particular especially objected saying that I could have better used this jar of pure nard as a mission offering for the poor. Judas was right about one thing—this was a good bottle of fragrance.
It was known to have origins in the mountains of far away regions of the East and so a rare treasure. If I were to translate this into terms that you folks out there listening to me today would understand, I think that would be over $30,000 US dollars. Truly, a year’s wages for many. . . .
But, while, yes, Judas had a point, this perfume jar could have been used in others—maybe more useful ways in fact in the eyes of others—I had this hunch, this intuition if you will, that this just might be the last time we ever saw Jesus alive.
The crowds following him were growing by the day. The word on the street was that the religious leaders of the day had it out to make sure the upcoming Passover would indeed be his last. And, there was something inside of my spirit that said, “Now is your time Mary. God is calling you to this. Don’t hold back. Show with your extravagant gift who this man really is to you.”
But, it is not what you think. I didn’t love Jesus in the way that many of you in this room love your boyfriends or your girlfriends or your partners.
Sure, I let down my hair and wiped his feet it, but what else was I suppose to do. It wasn’t like Martha was approving enough of this act that she’d willing go and get me a towel. . . .
Truly, I loved Jesus because he was the greatest teacher I’d ever met. I knew that he was God, though countless contemporaries of mine and even some of you would debate me on this point. And so because he was God in the flesh, I needed to show to the world who Jesus truly was and I needed him to know that I saw what the future held for him.
Was I scared you might wonder? Sure I was. Taking down your hair as an honorable woman was just not something that you did in a room full of men. I wasn’t expecting praise.
Others would later tell me that I was following in the tradition of the prophets from the Hebrew scriptures who had often been asked of God to do things that seemed laughable too--- prophets like Ezekiel who was asked by God to each the scroll of the law as a sign of the Word of the Lord inside of him, or like Jeremiah who smashed clay jars to show God’s judgment on Judah and Jerusalem or Isaiah who worst of all, was asked by the Lord to walk around naked and barefoot (ouch !) as a sign of judgment against the nations.[i] Yet, for me, I wasn’t thinking about getting famous or being compared to a man of greatness right then.
What mattered to me most in those moments were for all eyes to be on my Lord. I desired for him to get the recognition and support he needed to face all the challenges that lie ahead of him, that would quickly find him soon after he left the ease of life as a guest in our home.
And, looking back on that day, and the criticism I took from my family later—relatives coming up to me saying, “Why did you waste your perfume on him? What were you thinking Mary?”-- I don’t regret what I did. Because soon after he left our home the next day, the Lord found himself nearing Jerusalem—the city that would praise him as king at the beginning of the week by laying down palm branches and shouting, “Hosanna, Hosanna!” would by the end of the week would be shouting, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!”
As hard as it was that day to get down on my knees and risk the chance of deeply felt rejection and humiliation, I am so thankful I shared my moment with Jesus that evening. He needed that perfume more than any other worthy cause ever did. Soon he would be taken from us too quickly and it was right and good to join not the majority who praised him when it was easy, but the few of us who stuck with him even when the outlook seemed grim.
For on that day:
The Spirit of God asked me to love Jesus, even though the answers to all of the “big picture” questions weren’t clear . . .
The Spirit of God asked me to sacrifice the best of what I had to offer even when others would automatically disapprove . . .
The Spirit of God asked me to posture myself on a journey of service at the foot of Jesus even though there were countless “Martha” types in my life that kept begging me to control things through busyness to things that didn’t really amount to much of anything in the end . . .
The Spirit of God asked me to be with Jesus in the unknowns of this thing called the Road to Calvary especially because we knew that death happened there . . .
And in the same way, I can imagine that the Spirit of the Lord is asking you the same things as you enter into this Holy Week observance this year.
It’s true, as a pastor from this pulpit has been telling you each week about other characters (You wonder how I know: I’ve been listening to her sermons on the worship section of the church’s webpage), God didn’t and doesn’t love me anymore or any less because I gave him this gift of love found in a cracked bottle of nard.
Nothing I did that evening “earned” the love or grace Jesus had for me. But, yet, it was in the experience of following Jesus past my comfort zone and being led by faith in service that I found myself in the amazing encounter of participating in the divine life.
For just as that jar was broken and spill out before my eyes, I got a glimpse of what Jesus would soon do for me in just days when he would push through the crowds, carrying his cross and willingly allow his own body to be broken for me and all of you. Yeah, I lost a bottle of good perfume but Jesus lost his very life: an act of love unprecedented before or since.
So, today, I can imagine that some of you will hear my story and still go home and think this Mary from Bethany was a little bit crazy (and that’s alright), but may you really remember that if you find yourselves in this journey of following Jesus, on the floor in tears with broken pieces your hands of a life you thought you wanted but is now unrecognizable that this, yes, this, is exactly where Christ can welcome you—all of you—the most.
Thanks be to God for broken jars, broken pieces and the fragrance of lives fully committed to Christ in our midst.
AMEN
[i] Idea taken from Barbara Brown Taylor. “The Prophet Mary” http://day1.org/1760-the_prophet_mary
Grace is like . . . tulips that pop up in your backyard that you did not plant.
We moved into our new home last May. Our backyard has been an untamed pasture ever since (as we never seem to be home long enough to do anything about it). It has great potential to be cool, I've heard from countless friends. But, having potential has done little for us. The weeds are overwhelming and the leaves are everywhere.
Yet, what a pleasant surprise to find these tulips growing in our yard this week. A tender reminder that there are many good things in our lives that we have no control over. Beauty can find us even we do nothing to create it. This is grace!
"This is not the life I'd hoped for myself."
Such is the sentiment that often seems to be on the lips on folks both in my faith community and among others that I love. And, it is a scary place to be, to even say aloud. It's dark. It's lonely, and it's found in a state of being without a lot of comfort. There are sleepless nights, actually many of them. And from our weary voices we cry, hoping that someone hears:
I'm 36 and not married and really want to have children with a partner I love . . .
I always imagined I'd make more than minimum wage . . .
I thought I'd be growing old with the person I said, "I do" to 40 years ago until cancer came. . .
I thought this job would last forever and I'd retire from here until . . .
I always believed my son would one day have a father. . .
I imagined four generations around this Thanksgiving table . . .
It's the land of broken pieces that our journey has brought us too.
And like seeking to put together a 5,000 piece jigsaw puzzle without the box top for a guide, we throw up our hands and say, "This is just too hard for me! I want to quit."
Quitting looks so appealing . . .
Yet, consider this: what if the broken pieces weren't simply named for what they weren't, but what they were.
Sure, such pieces are cracked, ugly, and will never to be mistaken for perfect. But, what if they had their own unique gifts to share?
Gifts like being given over to a new puzzle that is more beautiful. Or, being able to connect with other similar broken pieces in ways that was impossible before?
What if the broken pieces were the way things were to be all along? That in the brokeness, the unexpected wasn't exactly "bad" but just the unexpected with new opportunities to learn to love ourselves and others more in the meantime?
There's nothing worse, I realize sometimes that realizing that your life is forever in a thousand little pieces, but what I fear in many is that the new pieces stop the joy of what could be next.
There's one thing I know for sure, once you've been broken, you don't really like being around the nice and shinning pieces as much as you did before. The most beautiful pieces become those like yourself who have looked their ugly brokeness in the face and have not let its blessings run too far away.
So, maybe the calling is for all the broken pieces to unite, to stand together, and to say "this is what real life looks like."
As a Christian pastor, I say this is what church looks like. This is what community feels like. These are the lessons of life that many of our mommas never taught us, but will serve us well to get to know better in our search of this beautiful broken thing we call eternal life.
It was just a normal Tuesday afternoon at the office. Lent was quickly approaching, and I was racking my brain trying to put together our spiritual formation class for this season of the year.
Reading spiritual memoir? Some individual writing? Group spiritual direction?
I just wasn't sure. . . . until I remembered my fondness for an author I'd begun reading back in seminary: Anne Lamott.
She might be the one, I thought, to bring even more spiritual and emotional honesty into our congregation. And, then I knew, yes, this was what we would do.
If we were going to read Lamott, I knew we'd have to start with her first spiritual book: Traveling Mercies.
I knew Lamott was not for the prude or extra holy but I had forgotten many of the specific details of her story which include graphic accounts of drug abuse, underage drinking and an abortion.
But when the flyer went out about this class called "Spiritual Stories" with Lamott as our guide, the word on the street around the church was: "I can't believe what OUR pastor is asking us to read."
Many who chose to attend the class confessed that they'd loved this book for years, but thought it would never be appropriate for church.
The thing is when you read Lamott, you either love or hate her. There's not much in between. Yet, in our case, I think those gathered on Wednesdays nights for the last several weeks are loving her more and more as we go.
It's true, Traveling Mercies, is not for those who want to pretend that "Life is always great and knowing Jesus just makes it all better," (If you did, you'd be rather disappointed by page two).
During the time of our Lent study, the group and I cried together over the deep pain of loss. We talked much about our negative experiences in more traditional faith communities. And, we've said, "Yes, yes, that is exactly how I feel, and I never had words to describe it just like this!"
The format of the class was simple.
We've gathered to hear some words of devotion and prayer, we've talked through passages within the week's reading, and done some memoir writing of our own on topics such as, "Who is God to you?" "What was a time when you found it hard to forgive someone?" and "Tell about a time when you felt deeply lost."
One class member said, "When I was attending another congregation, it seemed that in group meetings like this one I'd always be the only sharing a problem. Everyone else seemed to be always trying to do each other talking about how great their lives were (when of course this was not always true). I was tired of the only one being honest until I found this church. Here, I feel I can be myself, problems and all and surprisingly, I found all of you are seeking to do the same."
My pastoral heart leap when I hear these words. This is exactly why church exists. To journey authentically alongside one another in Christian community sharing broken parts of our lives as well as what is good.
As for my church, I'm thankful for the ways her gift of beautiful words has given us more beautiful ways to speak to each other. And I'm hopeful our all those of us who participated in this group: that we will keep sharing spiritual stories just as Lamott has taught us.
