Easter 3B

The lectionary readings throw us into an unusual position of hearing over and over again events that happened within the first twenty-four hours or week of Christ’s resurrection. Though our outside world seems to have moved on to summer with our 80-degree weather yesterday, and the half-price sales of Easter candy have long disappeared, our lectionary keeps us back at that moment of wonder and bewilderment at Christ’s resurrection. It is almost as though the lectionary is telling us it is OK to experience the broad range of emotions of joy, exuberance, confusion, and doubt because, ‘Look! The disciples felt that way, too.’ It also seems as though we are being treated to an exposition of the different gospel writers’ take on the story: last week we heard from John, this week we hear from Luke, next week we will bounce back to John to a passage that happens before the passion.

Last week we thought about Thomas’ realisation that if Jesus really had risen, then the disciples had a big time task ahead of them. If Jesus’ resurrection were just a story, then the consequences would not be so drastic; they could all go back to their simple lives. But since Jesus had risen, then they would have to leave their locked hearts, leave their locked places, and enter into the world. Since Jesus had risen, they could no longer avoid the mission to the world that Jesus had given them.

The reading from the gospel of Luke gets to the same message but via a different story. Nonetheless, the implications of Christ’s resurrection are clear: We are called to repentance, to a change of mind for the forgiveness of sins, and we are called to preach that message and baptise, too. Despite the doubts of the disciples, it is clear what they and we must do: Embrace and live out Christ’s mission of reconciliation to a broken world. But it takes an awful lot to get them (and us) to understand that.

There are similarities between this passage and the one we heard last week from John. Jesus greets the gathered disciples with the words, ‘Peace be with you.’ Unlike in John, here the disciples think they are seeing a ghost. There is great effort on the part of Luke to assure us that this is no ghost. Jesus has a real body (he can eat — broiled fish! — and he shows the disciples his hands and feet), indeed the same body that was crucified. As Jesus exclaims, ‘It is I myself!’

Having established with the disciples who he is, Jesus then teaches them. Immediately preceding this passage is the well-known story of Jesus’ appearance on the road to Emmaus when he teaches the two followers using passages from scripture. For the two walking with Jesus on the road to Emmaus, their hearts burn having heard all that is said. Here, Jesus continues to teach. He explains the things written about him in the scriptures and how they show that the Messiah had to suffer and be raised from the dead.

Then, the scene turns into a commissioning of the disciples. They are commissioned under the same scriptural imperative as the passion, death and resurrection of Christ were written. Without missing a beat, Jesus declares to the disciples: ‘Repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in Christ’s name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.’

We do not hear the disciples’ reaction to this command… they may be a little like Thomas, realising what the real implications of Jesus’ resurrection are, and wishing that maybe it would be better if they were facing a ghost, rather than the resurrected Christ. For, preaching repentance of sins and forgiveness and baptising in Christ’s name is dangerous stuff… not only for the disciples then but also for us.

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Being a reconciler, a person seeking forgiveness is not always easy or painless. Perhaps that is why the disciples and we keep asking for proof of Christ’s resurrection. Perhaps that is why we want to linger, not daring to step into the waters of baptism and its demands.

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One local example of extreme forgiving comes to mind —and can serve as a model of reconciliation for the rest of us.

The friends of Michelle Gardner-Quinn, the 21 year-old UVM woman murdered in 2006, started a foundation in her memory, Michelle’s Earth Foundation. One of their projects is to plant sunflowers in the neighbourhoods of post-Katrina, New Orleans, that were inundated by water filled with toxins. The sunflowers leech out the poison and restore the land to its original state. Why sunflowers and this sort of project?

Michelle was an environmental science major at UVM and this foundation, that seeks to restore the earth to a healthier state, fits well with her belief that, ‘we should understand our place in our regional ecosystems and communities, as well as pledge our allegiance to the earth as a whole.’

The website states: ‘Michelle’s Earth Foundation (MEF) was created to pay tribute to Michelle’s inner and outer beauty, her kindness, her love for nature, and most of all, to carry on her life’s ambition to continue as a dedicated environmentalist. Her life’s goal was to build a healthy and sustainable habitat on earth for generations to come—and her motto was “small actions equal big change” – an adage now adopted by our organization.’

The foundation also seeks to ‘facilitate the role of the community, especially youth and minorities who are vastly underrepresented in the sciences, in regional, national and international efforts toward creating a healthy, sustainable habitat for humans and nature.’

In their own way, her friends are working on forgiveness, I think. On reading archived reflections, forgiveness not something that happens instantly, and one can see them struggling toward forgiving — one friend lanced a double-edged sword when she wrote in 2008, ‘I forgive the despicable human being who hurt her.’ She has not totally forgiven the assailant but she is getting there slowly.

While the word or concept, ‘forgiveness’ does not appear anywhere on the website, I think forgiveness underlies its mere existence. Her friends could have spent all their energy demanding retribution for Michelle’s murder but instead, they took their sorrow and anger and turned to life-giving actions that will affect many for the good. They are providing opportunities for others that might not have them. They are reconciling the earth to itself and in that action, demonstrating forgiveness for an act that so many find impossible to pardon. Out of death comes life. Forgiveness, especially when hard-won, can bring resurrection.

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We also are called to witness the resurrection, and to action… to action as forgivers and those seeking forgiveness. We are called to be a community of reconcilers. That is part of Jesus’ commission, as we have heard it in this morning’s gospel: acting as forgivers and reconcilers is also part of our baptismal covenant.

It takes a lot of energy and effort to forgive. Forgiveness is not always something that happens overnight. Sometimes it does not happen the way we want it to, and sometimes it does not happen at all. It takes a lot of prayer, a lot of time to create an open space in one’s heart to begin the process of forgiveness. It takes bringing those places and persons in our lives where we need forgiveness and those to whom we must extend forgiveness with us every time we come to the eucharist, offering them up with our gifts of time, talent and money. It takes trust to accept that they and we will be transformed through the shared meal of the eucharist. It takes faith to struggle towards change so that someday, those places and persons that need to receive our forgiveness and from whom we ask forgiveness can be let go of. And it takes the community gathered together, working together, praying together for one another, breaking bread together that we might become a community of reconcilers. We have to keep trying…

For how else can we say, ‘Peace be with you,’ as Jesus said to the disciples? How else can we be witnesses to the Resurrection? How else can we live out fully our baptismal vows?

So, come and be fed at God’s table so that we can be like sunflowers, leeching out the toxins in our collective life to become fertile soil — fertile soil where God can work.

Easter 2B

Sometimes I wonder if I don’t engage in a form of self-punishment by reading the newspaper, particularly the letters to the editor or off-the-wall comments on blogs. What utterly amazes me is people’s certitude of what is right and what is wrong. How often have I seen a letter in which somebody declares how their religion tells them exactly what was right and what was wrong and how glad they are that their church gives them up or down answers.

As difficult as it is, I am glad that our Anglican tradition does not paint the world in broad brushstrokes of black and white. I am so thankful for our Anglican tradition of living in ambiguity and the messiness of questions. While having absolute, facile answers may be consoling—and it is to the majority of people who call themself Christian these days—such certitude eliminates or hinders the honest and true struggle with the mysteries that our faith presents us.

Doubt comes from raising questions. Questioning my second-hand beliefs. My beliefs only become first-hand if I doubt, raise questions, and do all of this as an act of faith. All of us seem to be brought up to deny these faith questions. I have had people over the years tell me that in previous churches, or with previous clergy, they were not allowed to ask questions. My heart weeps when I hear that. As a lover of Christ, I love the questions that come. And I am not afraid to ask them, nor do I want anyone here at Trinity to be afraid to ask questions. It is in asking questions that one can figure out for oneself what parts of this rich and complex faith we have been given by tradition don’t make sense or to which we absolutely cannot relate. Perhaps part of the Fifty Days of Easter is being given permission to question, because we have that Paschal candle, reminder of the resurrection, standing smack in the middle of the church, telling us that it is all right to doubt, to question the status quo so that our faith won’t be second-hand, but first-hand. To ask a question demonstrates strength.

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So here we are, a mere week after the great Easter celebration, a day when we declared with all our heart and soul, Alleluia, Christ is risen, indeed, Alleluia! And look what the gospel story presents us today: a tale of fear, doubt and faithlessness on the part of those closest to Jesus, his followers. Are we missing something here?

No. Because even two millennia later, we still struggle with those real feelings. Wisely, though, the gospel does not leave us with doubt or fear because along with the familiar story of doubting Thomas also comes the promise: Peace be with you, my spirit I leave with you.

Remember that on that first Easter, the disciples were locked in—locked in fear, dissention, confusion, pain and division. Life was not hunkey-dorey—they last saw Jesus on the cross before they fled. Only Mary Magdalene and the beloved disciple and Peter had seen the empty tomb. Even when Jesus appears to the disciples in the upper room, their apprehending him is not without pain: they must enter into the mystery of his wounds and suffering. At the same time they enter into that mystery, which leads to faith and belief, Jesus gives them the Holy Spirit.

When, on the cross, Jesus gives up the spirit, he gives up more than his life, though that is how we tend to take that wording. Martin Smith, formerly of SSJE, suggests that at that moment Jesus hands over the life-giving Holy Spirit to the disciples so that they will continue in his footsteps. The continuation of this handing-over takes place in the upper room on the evening of Easter when Jesus comes to the disciples and tells them, Peace be with you. In the Johannine version of Pentecost, Jesus breathes on the disciples, telling them: Receive the Holy Spirit. What do they make of this? We do not know.

All we know is Thomas was not there for the initial handing-over of the Spirit and commissioning of the disciples. Though the disciples tell him for a week they have seen the risen Christ, Thomas cannot believe. As he finds out, in order to believe, he, too, must enter into Christ’s wounds. Through his doubt comes the ability to believe. Yet even here, the gospel leaves things vague—we will never know whether Thomas actually touched the wounds—as if to remind us that we will never have certain answers. Even with the other signs Jesus does so that others may believe, always we are called to look with the eyes of faith… never with blind faith, but an active, probing faith.

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Maybe I look for the difficult in life, and maybe sometimes God hands me a challenge but I would rather wrestle with the questions and doubts because ultimately I trust that God’s voice will become clear to me. Sometimes it takes a long time to hear what God is telling me, especially when I want signs and clear evidence the way Thomas wants. Sometimes all I can hear is ‘no’, when really I should be hearing ‘yes.’ Mercifully, God is infinitely patient with me. Usually when I let go of trying to figure out with my mind what God is saying and let my heart take over, I gain a bit more clarity. But never absolute clarity. The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews, written after the fourth gospel, writes, ‘To have faith is to be sure of the things we hope for, to be certain of the things we cannot see.’

I find our Anglican grace lies in having the latitude to say, as the unknown Jewish person in WWII wrote: ‘I believe in the sun even when it is not shining. I believe in love even when feeling it not. I believe in G-d even when God is silent,’ and not feel condemned for doubting. Sometimes our doubt is our belief and that is the best we can muster. Doubting does not mean the end of one’s faith, rather, it indicates a desire to delve deeper into the questions. Nor does doubting mean fear. If we doubt, we do not have to withdraw from the community, as did Thomas. The community needs to hear our questions and doubts because in wrestling with them, it, too, can learn and be strengthened. The one place not to go either in questioning or doubting, though, is fear. Our faith cannot grow if it is afraid.

If I am still, I can hear where God is writing straight on the crooked lines on my life. I know through faith that what might seem like a loud ‘no’ can also be a loud ‘yes.’ I also know that there is no clear road, but that the way is made by walking.
Like Thomas, there are times when I yearn for a sign, a guide-post or marker. Like Thomas, there are times when I have tried—unsuccessfully—to bargain with God.

Those moments are when I have to remind myself that through baptism, God has already chosen me and marked me to be bearer of hope and faith. Through baptism, I have already received the life-giving gift of the Holy Spirit, just as Jesus breathed the Spirit onto the disciples that scary night.

And if that isn’t about resurrection, new birth and new life, I don’t know what is.

Easter Sunday sermon

Easter Sunday 12 April 2009

It was a fall Sunday morning at the early liturgy in a different place and time. The person sitting in the front pew was someone who had talked with me a few days earlier about the difficulties and heartbreaks in his life. For over an hour, as he talked, he had wept openly, so difficult for him, and I did my best to console him even as I listened. For all the heartbreaks, betrayals and disappointments in his life, I tried to say that his life wasn’t a disaster, it wasn’t a failure, that life would come out of death, that as difficult as it was for him to let go of parts of his past, he had to in order to find new life. His boat was sinking and he needed to throw some unhealthy relationships and habits overboard in order to survive. It had been one of those wrenching conversations that leave both persons — speaker and listener — utterly drained. When I saw his face at the morning eucharist, I did something unexpected. Even though it was in the fall, I wanted to communicate to him once again that out of sadness comes hope; out of death comes life. So, after doing the customary salutation, ‘Blessed be God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit…’ I added, ‘Alleluia! Christ is risen.’ He responded with the perhaps confused congregation, though it didn’t miss a beat in its response, ‘The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia!’ From the way he said it, I had the sense he understood, through the words of the liturgy and despite his grief, what I had tried to say earlier on.

You and I are resurrection people, not Good Friday people. There are times in our lives, for sure, when we feel as though Good Friday will take over them. But as we stand here this morning and profess our faith in the risen Christ, so we believe that out of the deaths in our lives will come new life.

Roberta Bondi, in her Memories of God: Theological Reflections on a Life, writes about how in her late forties, she was extremely depressed. She felt like a failure as a wife, a mother, a teacher, a friend, niece, historian, and teacher. All she could think of were her unmet obligations, the people she had hurt, the suffering she had done and even the dirty house. She finally dragged herself to her favourite chair in her study and cried out to God her failures, saying that there must be something in Christianity she had missed.

Then, out of the depths of her soul, she remembered a line from the Roman Catholic eucharistic prayers for Easter: ‘The joy of the Resurrection renews the whole world.’ Every cell in her body responded, and she knew that statement was true. And then it all began to make sense for her. She writes:

‘”The joy of the Resurrection renews the whole world,” I repeated to myself in wonder.… Of course! There was, indeed, something I had missed about Christianity, and now all of a sudden I could see what it was. It was the Resurrection! How could I have been a church historian and a person of prayer who loved God and still not know that the most fundamental Christian reality is not the suffering of the cross but the life it brings? Of course, Jesus did not die to bring death to the world, but to establish the life God intended for us from the beginning. It was so very obvious. The foundation of the universe for which God made us, to which God draws us, and in which God keeps us in not death, but joy.… Truly, Jesus had not died to show me I must earn my right to be loved, nor been crucified so that I would take onto my own shoulders infinite responsibility for the pain of the world. Jesus had died for the New Creation, for the joy of the resurrection of the whole world.’ (1)

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The joy of the Resurrection renews the whole world. Mary Magdalene, who went to the garden that first morning, had no idea that the joy of the resurrection renews the whole world. She only knew that she needed to tend to the last rites for her master’s corpse. She went with oils, and her love for this itinerant teacher who walked the roads of Galilee and Judea for three years. She went, because women were the ones who usually prepared bodies for burial. She went, most of all, because she believed in what her teacher, Jesus, had to say. Of all the prophets, he taught about God’s love and actually demonstrated this love. He listened to her, he believed her, and he respected her.

The joy of the resurrection renews the whole world. Mary still didn’t understand that when she talked with the man at the tomb. Thinking him to be the gardener, she pleaded with him to tell her what the authorities had done with her master’s body. Only when he called her by name, did she recognise him to be Jesus. Even as he told her to let go of him, he also told her to spread the good news that he had risen, that the resurrection had happened. And, so, Mary Magdalene, the marginalised, became resurrected, too — the first apostle, even to the apostles.

The joy of the resurrection renews the whole world. That is why we have gathered here this morning. We come with our own heartbreaks, our own sense of failures, our own brokenness and our own deaths. They are part of who we are but they are not the whole picture. Never.

The good news in all of us this is that especially on Easter, we proclaim that forgiveness and new life are offered to all of us — whether we are Peter who denies Jesus three times or even Judas who betrays Jesus unto death. Jesus died, that we might live. As Paul writes, ‘If Christ had not died, our faith would be in vain.’ But Christ died to forgive us all. All are forgiven, all are made new. The joy of the resurrection renews the world — everyone.

What does this mean, this forgiveness? As William Sloane Coffin wrote in his book Letters to a Young Doubter, ‘It means that with the zeal of gratitude we can too can become ten times the people we are. It means that instead of trying to prove ourselves endlessly, we can express ourselves as fearless, vulnerable, dedicated, joyous followers of our risen Lord.… God has done God’s part: resurrection has overcome crucifixion, forgiveness, sin….’ (2)

Where are the places in your lives today that need resurrection? What are the relationships that need resurrection? What are the concerns that need resurrection? With the knowledge of God’s forgiveness, how can you live fearlessly, vulnerably, dedicated and joyous? Where can you find new freedom that comes from this resurrection? Where will you find renewal?

Even if you are like Mary, standing peering into the empty tomb this morning, remember that she was greeted by her master and saviour. So are we this Easter morning.

The joy of this resurrection renews the whole world and it will renew us, too. One of our Easter hymns (190) says, ‘Life is yours for ever, Mary, for your light is come once more and the strength of death is broken; now your songs of joy outpour. Ended now the night of sorrow, love has brought the blessed morrow. Let your alleluias rise.’

While we may live in a Good Friday world, may our heart’s first inclination be always to proclaim, ‘Alleluia, Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!’

END NOTES
(1) Roberta C. Bondi, Memories of God: Theological Reflections on Life (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995), 170, 172.
(2) William Sloane Coffin, Letters to a Young Doubter (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 174. 179.

Easter Vigil Sermon

The Great Vigil of Easter • 11 April 2009

This wondrous liturgy of the Great Vigil of Easter begins in the dark with just the flicker of a small fire, the first fire of Easter, moves into the dark church, behind the pillar of light that the Paschal candle provides for us, and then asks us to sit for a while with our small candles, to ‘hear the record of God’s saving deeds in history, how God saved God’s people in ages past; and [to] pray that our God will bring each of us to the fullness of redemption.

Some may wonder why we chose (or, for some, have) to sit through all these readings. The reason is simple: This is the Easter Vigil. This is our great night of story telling. And what a set of stories we have to tell! The stories we tell tonight are those that are central to our faith and to our understanding of salvation. These stories tell us of God acting throughout history, being constantly with us throughout time. These stories tell us of God’s everlasting covenant with us, a covenant that is steadfast and loving — despite the worst we can do. These stories speak of hope, pardon, reconciliation and redemption. It is important for us to spend time listening to these stories for they are part of who we are and where we are going. Our time spent hearing these stories tonight is so short compared to the generations and generations who form the living texts we hear. If we seem tired, it is because we have travelled very, very far in a very, very short amount of time. We have travelled the road of salvation history.

Of all these readings, the one that the prayer book requires is the Exodus reading. For years, I have been greatly troubled by its inclusion. Even if the Book of Exodus is the first book of the people of Israel’s story to have been written, and even if it is the root metaphor of what follows, the particular story we always hear at the Easter Vigil makes my teeth grind. How can we, on this most holy night, celebrate the death of another people as God’s people were saved? It seems wrong. Each year, it grates.

Every year on the radio program, ‘Speaking of Faith,’ Krista Tippet spends an hour on ‘Exodus, Cargo of Hidden Stories.’ She talks with Avivah Zornberg, one of the great interpreters of the Talmud and Torah. Given that Passover and Holy Week coincide this year, it seems fitting for us, descendants of Abraham, too, on our most holy of nights, to reconsider a story that seems to counterintuitive but is that which our Jewish sisters and brothers remember this week, the Exodus and Passover.

Midrash, that wonderful process in Judaism of engaging with a story, asking questions of it and finding its meaning, a process in which we also engage, has tackled this story, too. Over and over, the midrash explanations say that when the angels begin to celebrate with the Israelites at the death of the Egyptians, God does not let them sing because God’s creatures — the Egyptians —are dying. The text shows the pathos and sadness that comes with the death of the Egyptians; even as the Israelites sing, they are aware of the price that has been paid for their liberty. God is sad at the brokenness of the world even as God’s people are set free from the bondage of slavery.

All the midrash demonstrate God’s sadness at the limitations of humankind. Even in the great moments of joy comes sadness. Nothing is simple in humankind’s life — to think that we can live in absolutes is to impoverish our lives. A mixture of emotions always comes at those major moments of transformation in our lives.

Even this glorious evening, as we ponder the gift of God’s love incarnate in Jesus, we must also recognise how it is that things got to be where they are. The stories we hear from the Hebrew Scriptures give us an idea of how our brokenness led God to send the prophets over and over again to remind us of God’s unfailing mercy and love.

If it were not for all the stories we have just heard, if it were not for the repeated promise of God’s covenant with us and of God’s faithfulness, we would be tempted to say that the story ends at an empty tomb, a sign of death and hopelessness. But just as the cross is not the last word, nor is the empty tomb.

Out of the emptiness comes life. Out of the emptiness, comes hope. Out of the emptiness comes the stunning news of Christ’s resurrection. The women, who come to bury his body and find the empty tomb instead, learn from the angel that Jesus has risen! Jesus has gone on ahead of them to Galilee and so they must go, too. As the women run to tell the other disciples the incredible news, in their disbelief and sadness, they meet Jesus on the way and their joy, wonder, and amazement is boundless.

We, too, are those women on the way. We have journeyed all the way to this moment and now it is time for us to move on, with all the welter of emotions that dwell in our hearts —on to Galilee, on to participate in the on-going story of salvation, on to proclaim the words that are the sign of God’s loving covenant with us:

Jesus Christ is risen! Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!

The Great Vigil of Easter

The Lighting of the Paschal Candle

After sunset on Holy Saturday we assembled.

In the darkness, fire was kindled; after which Lee lit the Paschal Candle from the newly kindled fire.



































The light of Christ.