Scars

Looking down at my hands I see two thin white lines…one below my second finger on the back of my left hand, the other a jagged “V” on the back of my right thumb. They are marks from brief moments in time, the mementos of hasty gestures that first were red and pulsing and now have faded white and numb.

The scars on my hands are not the dramatic kind. They just make me shake my head at my own clumsiness when I remember the shattering of a glass in the sink…or other such mishaps.

Other scars mean more than that. Some scars make us feel stronger, and we wear them like medals for bravery. Some are made on purpose to get underneath the surface to fix something more deeply wounded. These scars are reminders etched into our skin of how our bodies have failed or betrayed us…and that we are growing older. Some scars make us ashamed. Some we try to hide.

How do you wear your scars?

My most painful scar is one that I hide in plain sight.

On some days it is a badge of pride in my uniqueness and my ability to thrive. But on others, it feels like the brand of an outcast or a freak.

I wear this scar on my face for the whole world to see, even as it is partially hidden by cosmetics, by humor, by my hair, by clever prosthetics (which even I sometimes forget are a particular luxury of the wealthy and privileged).

I am blind in my left eye. In fact, I have no left eye. As gruesome as it is to imagine, the scarred tissue that remained of my eye at one and a half years old was cut out of my body. Thrown away like the useless thing it had become.

Sometimes days go by when I hardly think about how differently I see the world, and how differently the world may see me. On others, an chance encounter as brief as bumping into someone who I couldn’t see coming in the hallway leaves me feeling humiliated and diminished.

When people ask about my eye, or notice that the difference between the prosthetic and my good eye, I don’t mind talking about it. I know that people ask out of concern, and out of curiosity about a life experience beyond their own. But it can be hard to feel like an object of curiosity.

I suspect we all have  scars like these, whether perceptible to others or not. In thinking about this, I find that there is something profoundly comforting to me about the scars of Christ. After he so amazingly returned to them, his disciples poked and prodded his wounds. He had to endure questions and curiosity. He had to remember and relive the experience that marked him that way, even though his death was no longer the last word for him.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to be partially blind in the resurrected life, whatever it may be. I don’t want to feel incomplete anymore. But the wounds of the resurrected Christ make me wonder if my lack of physical sight is really where my sense of incompleteness comes from.

Perhaps, Christ’s scarred hands will reach out to me some day, and I will truly, finally understand that I am complete…scars and all. And that is where freedom truly comes from.

A Sermon for "The Day After the World Didn't End"

A Sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter 2011 - based on John 14:1-14.

Friends, I have to preface these words by saying that I, like many of you, I’m sure, am frequently frustrated by the way “religious” people – particularly Christians in this country – appear in the news media. We look judgmental, single-minded, preoccupied mostly with sex and the afterlife, and generally irrational. I resent this…and sometimes I worry about its implications.

And this week has been no exception…Christians appear in the news, and I want nothing less than to be associated with them and their billboards and talk radio shows. 


And yet…there is a funny sort of synchronicity between recent events (or the lack thereof) and the story we hear proclaimed from John today.           

What a perfect gospel for The Day After the World Didn’t End.

After this week, it is quite clear that the misunderstanding and anxiety of Jesus’ disciples given voice by Thomas and Philip are still alive and at work among religious folk today. The certainty we still crave in the face of great doubt is hard to shake– the desire to know a date or a destination where our journey of faith will be complete.

So, to back up… just in case anyone was lucky enough to miss the “religion” news of the past week or so…A Christian radio broadcaster did some calculations, and predicted (after a failed first attempt to do so in 1994) that yesterday was the day that Christ would come and whisk true believers away from earth and leave everyone else to burn…at 6 p.m….time zone by time zone across the globe…

And as easy as it might be today to use him as the butt of a series of jokes… I don’t bring him up to distance our views from his… or to gloat… or to make us look like mature and reasonable believers when compared to him and his listeners.

Rather, I would like to talk about how we are similar… how we, like Harold Camping, so often miss the richness of the gospel because we think it would be preferable, or at least more comfortable, if we could just find a nice math solution to our existential angst.

Camping’s complete misunderstanding of Jesus’ message is actually uncannily like Thomas’s…and like our own.

Jesus says, “‘I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.  And you know the way to the place where I am going.’ [And] Thomas said to him,  ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?’”

It is like Thomas says…“But…but…wait a minute… I need an address. Google maps won’t give me directions unless I can type in a destination…”

We want to take the Numinous…the Great Mystery…the Ground of Being…and make it concrete, tangible...predictable. We want to take Christ’s expansively metaphorical words  and turn them into formulas for salvation.We want to take Christ’s invitation into a way of living and turn it into a roadmap to a heavenly destination. We want to set aside the promise that the end will come like a thief in the night and instead pretend that there is a hidden code, a secret knowledge that we can decipher, to pacify our fear of an unknown future.

But Jesus is not focusing on formula, date or destination. For, though we have heard the promise that Jesus has gone ‘to prepare a place’ for us used to paint a picture of a heavenly mansion far away, Jesus is far more concerned with a journey…now…and a relationship….here. In the end, his promise is – “Where I am, there you will be also.”

If you’ve ever asked a child boarding an airplane where they are going, I suspect it is less likely that you have been told: Miami…or Chicago…or Sioux Falls…and much more likely that you heard: Grandma and Grandpa’s…or Aunt Susie’s…or even, to see Mickey Mouse!

Journeys are to people, not so much to places, in the wisdom of childhood.

And, our journey is to God…and it is with God. And there lies a great mystery: we journey even as our destination is with us. For Christ is The Way…and he is also our home…our dwelling place. And we do not need to be whisked away from here to be with him…because he comes to be with us. We do not need a green line on the ground to follow to get to a safe future. We don’t need a divine GPS unit to find him…as if heaven were a geo-cache or an X on a treasure map. We do not need a mathematical equation for when God will save us.

We already have what we need for the journey because we are in Christ and he is in us… already and always in our midst… yet leading us forward in the transforming work of God.

But it is hard to trust something so abstract. The map, the directions…the equations…are security blankets we crave in lives full of betrayed trust and wrong turns. It is just as hard for us to embrace this mysterious way of journeying in God as it was for Thomas, Philip and the rest of the disciples… and as it is for Harold Camping.

Yet, today, Jesus says that he and the Father and we…We all dwell within one another already…right now…and that we can trust this without a maps or formulas or timelines.

Perhaps you already know a bit about the early Christian community, and the first name (as far as we know) that they gave themselves. We find it in the book of Acts.

And the name was just: The Way.

Imagine for a moment, if this life of faith is about journeying within the love of God… What does it look like to be a part of The Way? Does it look like a group of travelers talking, laughing together… breaking bread and sharing stories… helping one another up when we stumble… perhaps carrying those who are tired or sick? Even stopping together along the road, when some of us need to rest or to wait.

I know I have felt what it is to be on The Way this year at First English Lutheran Church: Certainly in worship each week, especially at those moments of passage in individual lives as we have gathered for baptisms, weddings, funerals…the milestones in our individuals journeys… and as we have come to the altar and font, where God meets us in the sacraments and pour grace into our lives and sends us out into mission. I’ve been on The Way with this community preparing meals for street youth on freezing nights… collecting donations of food for the food pantry and money for mosquito nets…in learning about the lives and work and relationships of this family of faith over beers at Octoberfest…and reflecting together in midweek worship services during Advent and Lent.

We are here encourage each other and welcome others into this journey, because we know that the journey is so rich… and we also know that there are days when things are hard and we are tired, and we will need each other…

And it is a sacred task we have: to be present for one another and to our community… to honor the joys and fears and needs and questions of one another… and to accept the love and care of others as the very love and care of God.

Knowing we are on The Way frees us from looking for boundaries… because you really can’t draw a line around a journey. Knowing we are on The Way frees us from the need for a destination, because we know that the journey is the most sacred part. Knowing we are on The Way frees us from the fear that we haven’t got it right, because – of course we haven’t! But that’s not the point. Knowing we are on The Way is knowing that God’s presence is not something we predict or wait for but something we live in. And, the journey will never take us beyond the bounds of love.

Timelines and destinations are out of our hands. But Christ promises us his presence…so, we are free to keep doing the kingdom’s work without fearing the future…

We can, like Martin Luther is thought to have said, plant an apple tree today, even if the world might end tomorrow…and we can leave the math to God.

We are safe, today, in the one who is the Way, Truth and Life...even as our journey moves forward from here…into an uncertain but promise-filled future.                                   

Amen.

The Lord be with you.

A sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter, based on Luke 24:13-35. 

I wrote this sermon a year ago, at a time of transition for myself and many whom I love. It was a time when a story about being 'on the road' resonated deeply in our experience. Still journeying that road one year later, I find myself similarly excited, exhausted and apprehensive and offer these words to any fellow travelers who feel the same.

Jesus, himself, came near…and went with them.

And when they didn’t realize who he was…he walked with them. When the anxious, grieving, perplexed, and weary disciples couldn’t recognize their friend and teacher…their Messiah, who they had been told was raised…who was standing right beside them…Jesus walked with them.

When they didn’t understand his eloquent interpretation of the deuteronomistic history, of the prophets…when their minds and hearts were too distracted or too tired…he still walked with them.

Jesus lovingly walked with his disciples through their wilderness of grief and ignorance…with the same patience he showed during his ministry when, time and again, they missed the point, lost their faith or were too preoccupied with other concerns to recognize the coming kingdom.

Jesus walked faithfully with his fickle disciples…just as God walked faithfully with fickle Israel. Though they abandoned the covenant time and again…God stayed with them, and embraced them when they returned. After betraying their Deliverer to worship a more convenient idol of their own creation, God walked with them in their wilderness, leading them and feeding them. Even once they arrived in the Promised Land, when they abandoned the law, God stayed with them, sending them leaders and prophets…time and again…to help guide them back to faith.

And this same faithful and patient God, this same risen Lord Jesus, walks with us today when we are anxious, grieving, perplexed or weary…when we are preoccupied or miss the point...even when we are unfaithful. Jesus draws near to us time and again in water and word, bread and wine. Whatever road we are on…whether it leads to Emmaus, Chicago, El Paso, Detroit or a place that is still unknown…Jesus comes near to us wherever we are and walks with us…even when we can’t recognize him.

Jesus is walking with us now, in this Easter season, at the end of this academic year for some, near the end of an internship year for others…when many of us are weary or anxious…or both…

The Lord of the universe has come near to us now.

The Lord is with us. The Lord is with you. The Lord be with you.

The Lord be with you.

We hear these familiar words in worship every week, and we need to…I think because we can be so much like the disciples – oblivious to Christ’s presence among us… even though God comes near to us now just like God has been coming near for centuries…for millennia…for… forever. We should know to expect it by now, but we still need to be awoken, reminded and prepared to recognize our Lord walking among us. So we speak and hear these words.

But I think we also speak these words because we have been like the disciples in another way – startled when we have recognized Christ among us, amazed when we have seen the miraculous things that God has done. The Creator of the universe has broken in to time and space and met us…small as we are…and…sometimes…we notice. In those moments: when the words of a hymn or the creed catch in our throat, when we learn again how much we are loved in the embrace of a friend, when surprising violets by the sidewalk bring an unexpected smile to our lips…and when bread is placed in our hand and for a moment, we feel and taste what it means to receive the eternal One, who offers himself to us in love, time and again. In those moments, we want never to forget…never to return again to the cold loneliness of anxiety, distraction, and oblivion.

Even the disciples on the road felt this yearning…from within their clouded consciousness…They urged Jesus, the stranger, to stay with them that evening. And then they were caught by surprise, when Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it…and they saw him for who he was.

We are like the disciples, yearning to be awake to the presence of God, even when we don’t realize it. And these words of the greeting in worship call us to attention and proclaim God’s promised presence. The assembly gathers…time and again, and when we gather the presider speaks the words of the apostle Paul, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” And the assembly responds, “And also with you.”

These words are not a just an antiquated way to say hello or the rehearsal of some distant hope. They are a statement of faith, a statement of fact, a recitation of our community’s memory – spoken one to another because we deeply desire to be awake from our ignorance…to recognize our Lord.

So eager are we, that we echo this declaration again when we approach the table and font…we say “The Lord be with you.” “And also with you.” These words are a tap on the shoulder…a further reminder of what God has already done…time and again…so we might be astonished once more to find God walking among us today.

How, then, might we respond to these words – believing them to proclaim the very presence of Christ here and now? We might receive them with a gracious bow of reverence and gratitude, as if we know our Lord and King is here. We might receive them with just a gentle or eager smile, as we anticipate meeting Christ our beloved teacher and Savior. We might turn our attention to the table and the font, where God has promised to come to us in the sacraments. Or maybe we might even respond to these words by scanning the whole room…as if God might be in here anywhere…in anyone.

If we did this, perhaps we would find other times to exchange this greeting with one another beyond when we are gathered for worship. We can say these words at other times of gathering, like the beginning of classes and meetings. For isn’t God with us there? We could say them at other meals, remembering how we have been fed at God’s table and how we are invited to see God at the other tables in our lives. We might even say these words and remember our baptism and God’s presence in water…while we wash the dishes with a spouse or friend, as we water the vegetable garden, or when we start a water fight when we are out canoeing. We might say them anytime we are startled into seeing the Lord among us.

How amazing to have such a God...an Immanuel…a God with us…whose tent is pitched among us…who dwells with us…and walks with us…who walked in the garden with Adam and Eve, who journeyed with the Israelites in the pillar of cloud and flame…who walked with Shadrach, Meshack and Abednigo through the fiery furnace…who comes and dwells deeply with us, as one of us, in Christ…who continues to walk among us now.

The Lord walks with you. And the Lord walks with me. And we are all on different journeys, to be sure. And as each year comes and goes…separates us or brings us together again…as we are spread across the country…sometimes on new and as yet unknown roads…and sometimes on well-worn and familiar paths…

Yet these words are a dialogue, declared one to another…and this is not just to remind each one of us of God’s presence in our individual journeys…

When we say these words we are reminded not only that God walks with each of us, but that we walk with each other. The very shape of this proclamation is a covenant of community…If the Lord is with me and also with you, then we are together in the Lord…When we say these words we agree to be with one another, as God is with us. We are called into relationship with one another – bound together by sharing in the presence of God.

We may be like the disciples, yes, occasionally too preoccupied weary to recognize the God who comes among us day after day, year after year. But, just as God has come to us throughout history in astonishing ways and brought us to astonishing places – dry on the floor of the sea, fed in a barren desert, safe in a blazing fire, held in the very embrace of God in Christ  – so God continues to surprise us and walk with us to places we would never imagine. God comes among us - bathing and drowning us into new life in Baptism, reforming us as Christ’s body in the Meal…and sending us back on the road and into mission. And we have been given words to proclaim to one another…time and again…so we might be ever awake and aware...astonished to recognize that we have a God who walks with us along the road.

The Lord is with us.

The Lord is with you.

The Lord be with you.

Amen.

Peace be with you.

Sermon for the Second Sunday of Easter, Year A – based on John 20:19-31.

“Peace be with you.”

Jesus appears among us today to say these very familiar words: “Peace be with you.” But what does this greeting from the risen Christ mean? It certainly stands in contrast to the mood of the scene Jesus enters: his disciples locked in their house and afraid.

We are all told, time and time again, from childhood onward, it seems – by the ones who love us… by parents or friends, and in our faith story by angels and by Jesus himself  – “Don’t be afraid.” Because we are so like the disciples so much of the time…trapped in fear and mistrust.

The most famous character of our gospel today has become the icon of mistrust… of faltering faith…of doubt. Poor Thomas gets a pretty bad rap.

But I’m not going to talk too much about Thomas – partly because pretty much every other character in this resurrection journey has their own doubts and their own need for proof…which makes me inclined to cut him some slack.  But, more than that, I think Jesus’ first appearance to the disciples in that locked-up house bears powerful implications for our life as followers of the risen Christ today… So, I think we’ll keep our focus on that room of fearful followers and on Jesus’ greeting of peace and what it appears to mean.

Most of us know what it is to try to build a barricade between ourselves and something we fear. When I thirteen, I was a big fan of the television program The X-Files (still am, actually). It was a smart and creepy kind of show with all sorts of monsters and mutants and conspiracies and mysteries. One episode featured a villain that could contort his body and fit into tiny spaces, making him able to enter and escape places without detection.

Now, I like to think I was a brave thirteen year old…but after that episode, when I got ready for bed…I admit… I locked my bedroom door. Then, I locked my windows…Then, I blockaded my closet door with my desk chair…closed the heating vents…and I opened every drawer in my dresser, desk and nightstand…before I crawled into bed.

Granted, that’s only funny because what I was scared of wasn’t real. What the disciples were afraid was all too real. The threat to their safety could, indeed, have been lurking just outside their locked door.

So, too, for us. There are things we fear, things we hide from…or wish we could hide from…and those things…well, they aren’t funny.

But, in the gospel today, we hear how our risen Lord and Savior walks right through the barricades we’ve put up, and appears in our places of fear and hiding: like a father who crawls all the way under the bed and empties out the closet to show his son that there are no monsters…and then sits with him until his breathing slows and he is safely sleeping; or, like a friend who comes over after a frantic 2 a.m. phone call…to keep heart-pounding sleeplessness at bay…and sit vigil through an anxious night. And, with Jesus, we don’t even need to cry out in fear or pick up the phone for him to come rushing to us. He just appears.

The appearance of Jesus in the disciples’ locked house makes me think of those pretty pastoral paintings…maybe you’ve seen or even owned one…It’s of a country cottage with a big wooden door, lit by lamplight in the dark of night…with Jesus gently knocking, just waiting to be let in…

Well, today…Jesus isn’t waiting for anyone to let him in. He just busts right through the door when we’re too afraid open up. And thank God he does.

It seems like Jesus is constantly meeting his friends and followers in their fear and doubt and distress in these chapters of John – and not just Thomas, for sure. He met Mary, weeping in the garden that morning…and when she didn’t recognize him, he called her by name.  He comes to the disciples, locked away in fear – apparently not comforted by Mary’s claim that she had just seen Jesus, back from the dead. And, when Thomas is late to enter the scene, yes…Jesus continues to show up and answer fear and doubt with his presence and peace.

His peace. Now, this is the really fun part…What is this peace about?

Jesus shows up in the middle of the cowering crowd of disciples…and says “Peace be with you.” He shows them his wounds, and they rejoice to see that it is really him… truly alive and with them again…

But then…Jesus does something a bit curious. He repeats himself. “Peace be with you,” and he this time elaborates: “As the Father sent me, so I am sending you...”

Read a certain way, I think it sounds like Jesus is repeating himself because he’s not sure the disciples heard him correctly the first time. It’s almost as if he wonders what they’re all still standing around for: “I said, ‘peace be with you’…I am sending you to keep doing the work the Father sent me to do…Do you get it?  ‘Peace be with you’ means ‘Go!’ Get out of here! I’m alive. You don’t have to be afraid…So, get on with it!” (I owe this interpretation to Vitor Westhelle, professor of Systematic Theology at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago.)

Jesus comes to us where we are…when we fear, when we doubt, when we mistrust.  Locked doors and hearts don’t keep him out. Yes, he is patient with our slowness to catch on…but he shows up with the purpose of calling us out into the journey of faith and mission.

He breathes on the disciples and gives them the Holy Spirit, but this greeting of peace and gift of Spirit have a motion and direction. They are not meant to stay locked inside the doors of safety. They are not meant to be confined to what is comfortable.

Jesus has walked the way of the cross, has returned from death, has shown us his wounds. His peace and spirit meet us in our wounded-ness and fear now to heal and transform us, so that the wounded-ness and fear of the world might also be healed and transformed…and so we might be a part of it. We are Holy Spirit bearers now, too. We are not meant to stay locked up in fear or paralyzed in our wounds. Christ comes to us where we fear so we don’t have to stay there anymore!

And we hear echoes of this promise and this missional movement in worship every week. Soon, we will share the peace together, share Christ’s very words with one another, so we can come to Christ’s feast as a reconciled community. And once we have shared that meal, and been strengthened and made courageous by Christ’s presence with us and for us today, we will hear a word of peace again, but with a charge: “Go in peace. Serve the risen Lord”

One pastor I worked with jokingly said he preferred the idea of sending the assembly from worship by saying, “Go in peace. But GO!”

The going is key, you see. The serving is key, as well, of course…I mean, wouldn’t it be something if we were all so charged up about the work of the kingdom, that once we heard the words, “Go in peace,” we just bolted for the door…to get out there and start doing it?

So, as we hear Christ’s greeting of peace in that locked-up room and look on his wounds today, what might “Peace be with you” mean for us now? What are Christ’s peace and the Holy Spirit urging us to go and do?

Perhaps it is something as simple as writing a card to a friend or family member we haven’t seen for a long time. Or something a little less comfortable for some of us, like greeting someone begging on the street with a kind word and the offer of a shared meal instead of turning our eyes away. Perhaps it means donating ten dollars, or whatever amount we can afford, to the Lutheran Malaria Initiative for mosquito nets to help end malaria in Africa. As a congregation, can we be called beyond our comfort as a community…to keep discerning more and more how we can be Christ’s body in this city, even if it might mean doing something new or letting go of something old?

It is no small shift to move from a fear-filled locked-up room to such a courageous mission as this. But, that is what freedom in Christ allows us to do – be a part of the transformation we and this world need so desperately. Christ send us to others, just as surely as Christ comes to us and sends others to us.

More than anything, though, one thing is clear: Christ’s peace and the Holy Spirit are not about sitting still or staying put. They are on the move, and so are we.

So, as we have been gathered and nourished with God’s Word, let’s go now to be fed and encouraged at God’s table by the very presence of our risen Lord among us.

And then, in the peace of Christ and empowered by the Holy Spirit…Let’s get out of here! Let’s go in peace and serve our risen Lord!

Peace be with you!

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Life and Death and Life

A sermon manuscript for the Fifth Sunday in Lent. 

Readings: Ezekiel 37:1-14, Psalm 130, and John 11:1-45.

Jesus said, "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”

Jesus comes to us to live with us in a world where life and death are in a constant dance. Blooming oak and ivy find their nourishment from the soil made up of things long dead. In hospitals, life begins and ends not just daily, but even hourly. Sometimes it seems like this whole world is a swarming train platform with passengers arriving to begin new journeys at every moment, even as the journeys of others end.

Yet, despite how fundamental this truth is, we live in a culture that is simultaneously fascinated with and yet in almost utter denial of death. Hospital and crime dramas populate network television. Yet, they are interspersed with advertisements for clothes, cars, creams, and so many other products that promise perpetual youth and beauty.

But today’s scriptures put us unavoidably in touch with the death we know to be real even as we try to hide from it, or to keep it safely confined to television, or to buy it off with so many consumer goods. 

In Ezekiel: we are taken to a valley eerily full of dry dismembered skeletons… In John: to a body rotting in a tomb… In the psalm: to a voice crying from the depths… from drowning in the sorrow and desperate hope of waiting for the presence of God.

This is the reality of death, and it confronts us in scripture today. And, even as we turn to look fearfully into death’s face, we are offered a promise that is so hard to believe – for Ezekiel, for Israel, and for Martha, and for us: 

God can bring life even to the most dead places…and God will. God does.

God can restore life to a valley of dry, dead bones – can bring a people dead in exile out of their graves. God can reach into the tomb, and call out the one who is 4-days dead, can reach beyond the stench of decay and unbind Lazarus from his grave clothes. God can reach into our own despair, decay, and fear, can bring us into light and life. And God will. God does. 

But, strangely, this beautiful, almost unbelievable power is exactly what the powerful ones of Lazarus’ time seem to fear in Jesus… That he is powerful enough, and so fundamentally different from them… that he can turn death into life terrifies them… because it turns their world inside out, and threatens their power.

   

They rely on things working the other way around, you see… because that is where so much abusive human power derives… from the threat of turning life into death. If the powers of this world cannot bind us in grave clothes and consign us to our tombs, we don’t need to fear them anymore. This Jesus undermines every fear-mongering, abusive, control-seeking power that slouches around this living dying world stalking new prey.

The power of Jesus to call forth life out of death is so strong, in fact, that some people have chosen to interpret Jesus calling Lazarus out by name not only as an expression of Jesus’ personal love and care for his friend… but also as an act of restraint. If Jesus had not called to Lazarus by name, and to Lazarus only, they say, his command “Come out!” might have caused every grave and tomb on earth to open at that moment and their occupants to rise right then!*

And because they fear this awesome power, even as Lazarus steps out of the tomb, we will soon find the powerful ones plotting against this power of life, plotting to make Lazarus dead all over again… And even more, at this moment, the whole gospel of John takes a decisive turn, as the powers of death begin decisively to seek to destroy the one who gives life, who is life. If we hadn’t already, we have turned towards the cross today – toward the final desperate act of death to cling to its throne.

So, even in this story where Jesus brings life and resurrection to earth, we find that we receive the promise of life in a world where death still seems to roams with impunity.

We live in this promise even as Japan mourns thousands dead. We live in this promise even as we receive cancer diagnoses, lose jobs, have our families or our friendships torn apart. We live in this promise even as children sleep on the streets, as people go hungry, as Libya, Syria, the Ivory Coast, and so many nations are ravaged by violence. We live in this promise even as we say good-bye to dear ones who have died.

And yet, we are learning with Martha and Mary and Ezekiel and the exiled children of Israel that we can live without fear… because though death still dances around us, its power over us ends when we are brought into the power of the one who is the Resurrection and the Life… When we die in baptism, we are called out of our tombs and into this world to live without fear.

Sometimes we over-domesticate baptism and forget how much our identity as people of faith is part of the dance of death and life. We may think of baptism as washing or cleansing, as an initiation into a family or community. And it is all those things. But sometimes we forget that it is no less than dying and rising to new life.

Saint Ambrose claims that being covered by the water of the font fulfills the promise we heard on Ash Wednesday, “You are dust and to dust you shall return.” The font is our first grave… For this reason, I think Ambrose might appreciate the sand in our font, because he seems to think that if we could actually immerse people in earth, in dirt, without bodily killing them, maybe we should… because then we might better understand the death and resurrection that is baptism. We might better understand that in baptism we truly enter our tombs… and then those tombs are opened and we are called out by God into the promise of life.*

So, like Lazarus and the bones brought back to life, we still live in this same dancing dying world, but, like Lazarus and the bones of Israel, we have been called out of the grave and unbound from the garments of death… able to look ahead to Easter… to the moment when we will again break the surface of the depths of waiting for God’s promised presence, of the waters in which we are buried. We look ahead to emerging from those depths to gasp again our first breath of resurrected Easter life. We are able to look to the moment when we will not only be free of the rotting grave clothes but will be clothed instead in living white light.

The final victory is still to come for Christ and for us, but the drama is unfolding…as life dances with death, as we journey with Christ toward the cross, waiting for the Resurrection and the Life to bring us finally and fully out of our tombs. 

And we trust that he will do this, because we have heard today that the order of things that we know and fear– where living things are made to die – is being turned on its head. And now, in Christ, what dies is made to live.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

*Eslinger, Richard L. "Fifth Sunday of Lent, March 9, 2008" in New Proclamation, Year A, 2007-2008: Advent through Holy Week. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2007. 202.

*Ambrose of Milan, "Prefigurations of Baptism" in Edward Yarnold, ed, The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation: The Origins of the R.C.I.A.  2nd ed. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1994. 117.

Hope

Is the source of human hope internal or external? Does it come from inside of us or outside of us?

This question came up in a women's Bible study at church this month. It's simple enough, yet it leads me down a path of reflection that begs all sorts of questions about the qualities of my own spirit and the nature of God's action in the world.

Surely, there have been times when no outside source gave me a cause or the ability to hope, yet I was still able to watch and wait for a transformation that I believed could, and would, arrive. On the other hand, there have been times when the roots of hope only burrowed their way into the dense darkness in the center of my chest because a beloved one (usually my mother or father), persisted in loving me until my dry and thirsty heart cracked open enough to let hope in.

Whether hope has sprung up, quiet and solitary, or has been coaxed into life by another, I have never felt like I am in any way its source. It feels like a separate thing, a foreign thing. I don't understand hope, but I welcome the gift of it.

I also ache for that gift to live in others. This week, many people I love prepare to remember and celebrate the life of a friend who seems to have been living apart from hope - so much so that he didn't know how to keep living anymore and chose not to. If we don't create our own hope, where does it come from? Is it a gift from God? If it is, why doesn't God give enough to everyone? Why doesn't God water and tend even the driest deserts of despair to offer life and growth everywhere? Why should anyone have to live without hope?

Perhaps this is an echo of the same cry of "Why?" that comes to our lips in the wake of the destruction and death in Japan...

It is a heavy thing to love enough that we ache for something beyond our power to create or control. Perhaps the best thing we can do is look for the seeds of hope in ourselves and others and tend them and invite them to live and grow. And maybe that's enough...

I was walking outside with a friend yesterday who pointed down at my feet at a shoot of ivy, asking if I'd seen them popping up lately. "Something has happened in the last few days," he said. I hadn't noticed any change outside my front door, hadn't seen the new life right under my feet, but something different - the moisture or temperature or chemical composition of the soil or air - has coaxed it out of the ground.

Hope is a mystery. In this time when new life begins to spring forth in the Northern hemisphere...In this season of the Church's life when the living water offered by Christ begins to flow in torrents towards the saving flood of the resurrection and Easter baptism...In these days, this mystery pulls at my heart.

And even though there is still death and darkness...Even though we may still be in the desert, hope lives in me today. I don't understand it, but I am grateful.

Blessed

A sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent. 

     Readings: Genesis 12:1-5 and John 3:16.

The questions that ran through my mind 

     as I worried whether my heart's response to these texts 

was too personal and too raw to preach: 

     Can I preach this? Can I not preach this?

I decided to try...

I wonder about the idea of ‘blessing’ a lot.

     I have studied what the biblical writers mean 

          when they talk about it.

     I think a lot about what it means 

          when we talk about it.

And this week, I certainly wonder 

     what Abram and Sarai thought about blessing…

          after being told by God to leave everything they knew,

               to journey to an unknown land...

                    so they could be blessed,

                         and in turn be a blessing for the whole world.

As many of you know, 

     I used to work at a church in downtown Minneapolis.

We had a social ministry program 

     that offered a variety of services to people in need.

And, as the receptionist, I was often the first one to greet 

     those who came looking for help.

And I would usually start, unsurprisingly, by saying, 

     “How are you?”

I learned quickly that I should not expect the safe,

     politely superficial answers 

          that I was used to getting in response to that question.

There was one particular answer that I actually heard quite often,

   and which continually caught me off guard.

“How are you?” I would ask. 

     And I would be told, “I’m blessed.”

Honestly, at times I was confused by this answer…

     at other times I was just skeptical.

I assumed it was just a different form 

     of superficial or false response…

          partly because I don’t talk about ‘blessedness’ 

             with total strangers,

          and partly because I didn’t see many things

             that looked like 'blessing' 

                 in the lives of many of these people.

But I have been realizing 

     that I may have been very wrong about that…

 because blessing isn’t about everything being okay.

     Blessing goes much deeper than that.

          Blessing is God’s love and promised presence 

               being poured into the world

                    through people onto other people…

         It is a resurrection power 

               that can exist within pain and death…

                   because it is stronger and will live longer than both.

         And it is a force that multiplies itself as it grows 

               and pours through us like a fountain 

                    with bowls that overflow from top to bottom…

                         one into another…

Blessing can be found in times of anticipation and joy, surely,

     but it can just as truly be found 
          in times of sorrow and hardship.

The truth of this 
     became very powerfully real to me this past week,

because someone very close to my family 
     died about a week ago…

And, his family and mine have journeyed together through

     those first numb and then searingly painful days

          in the valley of the shadow of a sudden and tragic death…

      My parents’ house became their sanctuary…

          and my family were among the first to hold them…

               to talk with them…to cry with them…

I was talking to my father on the phone this week…

     and I asked, unsurprisingly, “How are you?”

     And, in a voice that sounded very tired,

he told me how they were putting one foot in front of the other…

     taking things a day at a time…

Then he said something that caught me off guard, 

     “But we’re good. We really are. We’re blessed…

          so we can be a blessing to others. And that’s good.”

He had no idea we would be reading about Abram this week.

     He didn’t need to.

          Because he is living this story…

He is just one of the many children of Abraham, 

     blessing the world today.

Like Abram, who left the safety of his homeland 

     not really by choice,

so many people today are on journeys 

     not entirely of their own choosing,

         putting one foot in front of the other.

And on their journeys, and on ours, 

     every going out and coming in

          happens under the guard of an ever-watchful God…

               who does not fall asleep,

                    but holds vigil over both our joy and our sorrow.

And that is blessing.

     This watchful God is one who offers the gift and promise 

          of life and love 

               that will live beyond all sorrow and all death.

And that is blessing.

Today we, with many others, pray for the people of Japan,

     whose journey has also brought them 

          into the valley of the shadow 

               of sudden and tragic death and loss.

We will pray to the One who watches over 

     and loves these brothers and sisters…

          who struggle today in the wake tragedy…

               in grief and in fear…

We will pray for healing and for hope. 

     We will pray for comfort and for peace.

We are not so naïve as to pray that everything will be okay.

      Everything is not okay.

But God’s blessing is deep and strong enough 

     to live amidst the pain.

So we pray for the God who neither slumbers nor sleeps

     to bless these grieving and weary ones.
For, we trust that God’s blessedness…and love…

     and healing...and watchfulness are so broad…

We trust that the heirs of the promise to Abram 
     are so numerous…

that we cannot comprehend or count them…

        

     Yet it need to be said that,

          for many years and for many reasons,

     there have been those who have tried to draw boundaries

          around God’s boundless love,

               sometimes so they can try to 

                    explain away life’s tragedies

                         by excluding people who experience them

                             from the circle of God’s blessing.

     

But today we hear in Genesis that through Abraham

     all the families of the earth will be blessed…

And Paul reminds us 
     that Abraham is not only the father of some –

          but of all of us…

And in the words from John 3 that so many of us know by heart…

     words that have sometimes been used wrongly

          to draw borders around God’s transforming love…

     we hear that God so loves this world…

          this whole world…

               the cosmos…

                    the whole universe…

          the people of Japan, my family and yours,

               those suffering in Minneapolis,

                    the people of Libya, Yemen, Egypt 

                         and all the world’s conflicted places.

God loves it all…and through Christ all of it…everything…

     is to be saved…restored…

          brought into life that does not end.

   

If today’s scriptures tell us anything

     it is that you can’t draw lines around what God loves

          with anyone or anything on the outside.    

And that is blessing.

By grace, we are all children of Abraham,

     Through Christ, we are all blessed ones

          through whom the blessings of God echo 

               and multiply and flow into the world.

     We are not the source, just as Abraham wasn’t…

          But God’s boundless love and blessing have embraced us.

               So that in our joy and our sorrow,

                    we are held within the love and promise of God.

So whether we are joyful or sorrowful today,

    whether we are dancing 

           or just putting one foot in front of the other…

     whether we are weeping or laughing on this journey…

How are we?

We are blessed –

     beloved of God,

and part of God’s work of embracing this whole weary world

     in blessedness and boundless love.

Amen.