Created for Wonder: Sermon for the Feast of the Ascension (transferred)

There are a variety of images of the Ascension that have been visualized by artists throughout the centuries, and they range from straightforward illustrations from one of the readings we just heard, to the somewhat weird and then to the sublime. 

Icons are usually pretty straightforward: Disciples gathered around, Jesus rising to heaven, maybe a rainbow breaks out. Weird ones show just Jesus’s feet dangling in the top center of the picture, focusing on the comically awe-struck faces of the disciples. But the sublime ones express the mystery that is at the heart of the Ascension in a way that promoted thought and wonder.

One of my favorite images of the ascension of Christ is one by Salvador Dali, painted in 1958. It’s actually called Ascension: Pieta. This is not one of his stranger paintings with crutches and melted watches, or impossibly spindly, toothpick-legged horses or robotic humanoid figures.

This one is hyper-realistic. Christ is depicted floating directly over the viewer’s head, so you see bare feet, thighs, ribcage expanded like a diver getting ready to plunge, arms outstretched, hands powerfully flexed, straining and grasping at the air. Jesus’s chin is pointed skyward. The feet are smudged; Jesus’s time walking with the disciples is over.

But this diver is plunging upward, upward into the center of perhaps the nucleus of a cell, but more probably the center of an atom. See, this painting was inspired by a dream he’d had years before, soon after mankind first began creating atomic weapons. Dali depicts Jesus entering the nucleus of the atom, literally becoming one with all, part of the building block of the universe, which is actually a beautiful way of thinking about God using a scientific metaphor. Dali’s Christ turns thus bodily transforms a figure of destruction into a hope for new creation and unity. 

The "pieta" part of Dali's vision shows Dali’s wife Gala posing as the Jesus’s mother Mary, looking down on the world, weeping; knowing how her son has suffered and continues to struggle against the evil in the world. Yet even here the risen Christ, on his way to heaven, acts to unify with what we have used all our vanity and skill to break apart, offering to bring peace where we have unleashed destruction. Dali uses the Ascension to insist on the inherent unity of faith with science, and of Creator and creation, with Christ as the mediator.

Given that the Feast of the Ascension is about Jesus leaving his disciples and ascending to heaven, one might wonder, first of all, how this is something that should be celebrated, and whether anyone in their right minds can actually believe it happened at all. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen sarcastic pictures of Jesus dressed like an astronaut noting that, unless he obtained warp speed, even after 2,000 years he would still be zooming through the space in the Milky Way, our own galaxy.

The meaning and truth of the Ascension, or any biblical account, does not depend upon whether writers 2,000 years ago could describe what they experienced and witnessed with scientific precision. The Bible was never meant to be a scientific text—nor was it ever meant to be used to oppose or contradict science, reason, or knowledge. Whether in theology or in literature, great stories can expose deep truths about ourselves and our world even using fictional events and characters. The beauty of the Anglican strand of Christianity is that most of us are quite willing to imaginatively engage with both science and faith, and see them as complementary.

For instance, we no longer believe in a three-layered cosmos, with the Earth surrounded by waters and held up by pillars. And hopefully most of us have abandoned the idea that the Earth is flat too. Hopefully! 

We now know our galaxy alone has 50 galaxies within it, with maybe as many as 100 billion stars, most with their own systems, and that there are possibly 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe. That we know of right now. Where “heaven” is in relationship to all that is not a fruitful line of inquiry for most of us.

But that doesn’t mean that the Ascension is untrue. It is true in what it expresses—that Jesus lives, and is available to all of us and seeks out relationship with all of us that we may change the world. While in his earthly ministry, as a human he accepted certain limitations. He couldn’t be in two places at once, for instance, and so his ministry was limited to a small part of the world. Even in his resurrected body, he was still limited to this constraint until his ascent.

It's funny—we supposedly live in a scientific age, but most people’s actual knowledge of science, mine included, is not that great. Yet we use the tools of science to assault anything that threatens our own assumptions. We are now at the point when people simply block themselves off from information they don’t like—a perversion of not just the so called scientific revolution, but the tactic of tyrants and despots throughout history.

Yet God created us for wonder. And that’s part of what faith is all about.

So what might we take from the Ascension that would have meaning in our own lives? There’s enough there for a book (or many). It is about the uniting of creation with God, the completion of the unification of human with deity that began with Jesus’s entry into the world and continues after his return to God. It is the same mystery we celebrate every time we prayer together the Eucharistic prayer and unite ourselves with the ongoing heavenly banquet before God’s throne.

The Ascension is a mystery.

WHAT heaven is, and the kingdom of God is, is what Jesus came to us to reveal— and, as our scriptures today remind us for us then to reveal to the world. And he was clear that it was not a place as a state of existence beyond life and death. He was clear that it IS a state of existence that we could and do participate in, seeking it, working for it, NOW.

Heaven, the kingdom of God, is now—where peace, justice, equality, communion, compassion, generosity, abundance, grace, sacrifice, the common good, empathy—otherwise known as love in action-- reign. And we are called to help exemplify that and build that with our voices, our actions, our advocacy, our time, our choices, and our very lives.

And where Hell is now, where violence, injustice, oppression, hatred, contempt, deprivation, want, fear, selfishness, destruction, and cruelty—otherwise known as evil and sin, from individual to systemic-- reign. And we are called to resist that not just with “thoughts and prayers,” but with our voices, our actions, and our advocacy, our time, our choices, and our very lives.

That’s where Jesus’s Ascension comes in. The Ascension is the fulfillment of the Incarnation. In Jesus’s birth, God entered time and history. In the Resurrection, Jesus defeats death. In the Ascension, humanity is taken into the Godhead, for the Incarnate One sits at the right hand of God in his humanity and well as his divinity. Creation becomes one with Creator.

Jesus returns to God, the first resurrected one, completing the work in incarnation, in which humanity and creation become physically, truly one with God. Through Christ we are empowered by the Holy Spirit to witness to the Good News of God’s dream for us. Through Jesus’s Ascension, he is no longer rooted to any one place but becomes available to all as a living, loving presence in each of our lives. Through Jesus’s Ascension, the focus of Jesus’s followers moves from “What must we do to be saved?” to “What can we do to serve God and each other?” Inward to outward. From Jerusalem throughout the world.

Jesus’s leave-taking as necessary for us to continue to grow toward spiritual adulthood and fuller discipleship. Jesus promises he will NOT leave us orphaned, as we heard in our gospel reading last weekend; but he also commissions us to carry on his work in the world as both individual disciples and as a community known as the Church. Jesus honors us by placing the task of witnessing to him and his gospel in our hands.

We are not called by Jesus to stand looking up. We are called by Jesus to look around. To look around, to see the wounds of the world, wounds human hands have inflicted all too often and human silences have made worse. We are then called to look within, to look within our hearts and to the very atoms of our bodies and all creation, where Christ longs to dwell. To look within, and then around again, and see the wonder of the intricacies of creation, signposts of God’s love that is also embedded into the very atoms of this world.

The great 20th century poet and songwriter Bob Dylan underwent a religious conversion in the 1980s, and became a Christian. He wrote a song that combines this acknowledgement of the sinfulness and the beauty that is woven through our existence. It’s called "Every Grain of Sand:"

In the time of my confession, in the hour of my deepest need
When the pool of tears beneath my feet flood every newborn seed
There's a dying voice within me reaching out somewhere
Toiling in the danger and in the morals of despair

Don't have the inclination to look back on any mistake
Like Cain, I behold this chain of events that I must break
In the fury of the moment, I can see the master's hand
In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand

Oh, the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear
Like criminals, they have choked the breath of conscience and good cheer
And the sun beat down upon the steps of time to light the way
To ease the pain of idleness and the memory of decay

I gaze into the doorway of temptation's angry flame
And every time I pass that way I always hear my name
Then onward in my journey, I come to understand
That every hair is numbered like every grain of sand

I have gone from rags to riches in the sorrow of the night
In the violence of a summer's dream, in the chill of a wintery light
In the bitter dance of loneliness fading into space
In the broken mirror of innocence on each forgotten face

I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn, there's someone there, at times it's only me
I'm hanging in the balance of a perfect finished plan
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand.(1)


Yes, we can see the heartbreak of this world. But we can also see the wonder. Then go, empowered by love, and BE Christ’s own hands and heart to heal and reconcile. Because we know we are not alone.

The point is, we are not supposed to just stand there as Jesus ascends, gazing up at heaven, waiting for God to “do something.” We are commissioned to go do something—lots of things—ourselves in ministry to the world. We can do this because we know that God, Trinity and Unity all at once, is still with us within us, in every bone and sinew and atom, challenging us, inspiring us, urging us to practice resurrection in every thing we do.

Today, we celebrate the risen and ascended Christ, risen to his glorification so that he can intercede for ALL of us, risen, but never gone, never leaving us alone. And we can look around this creation that God tenderly created and continues to love and treasure, and be filled with wonder and awe. And then joyfully, filled with wonder, to take up Jesus’s call to witness, to reconcile, to heal, with every blessed, sacred atom of our beings.

Amen.

Preached at the 505 on May 20, and at the 8:00 and 10:30 am Holy Eucharists at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.

Readings:

Acts 1:1-11 

Psalm 93

Ephesians 1:15-23

Luke 24:44-53

Citations:

1) Bob Dylan, "Every Grain of Sand," from the album Shot of Love, 1981.

Words and Actions: Sermon for Easter 5A

In 1988, a little-known jazz and folk musician named Bobby McFerrin broke nearly every rule of popular music and popular culture with a little ditty he wrote that rose all the way to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 charts.

First of all, the song was a capella, which means vocal music with no instrumental accompaniment, and we are talking about rock and roll.

Second of all, it displaced Guns N Roses’s “Sweet Child o’ Mine” at that number one slot-- a song that one can both simultaneously love and hate. You can love it for lead guitarist’s Slash’s musical genius, as guitar aficionados consider his lead guitar work to be #37 of the top 100 guitar solos of all time. You can also hate it because first of all, this damn song never seems to die. You can hate it due to Axl Rose’s whiny vocals blatting all over a six minute song—one that was so long the band didn’t know how to end it, which is why Rose sings “Where do we go? Where do we go now?” as they look for some kind of musical stopping point. Seriously. And if you are from St. Louis, you can hate it even more because a 1991 riot at the- then newish Riverport Ampitheatre here in St. Louis ignited by Axl Rose almost destroyed the joint and got the band banned from St. Louis until 2017. For real. You can look it up.

But back to Bobby McFerrin. The little song he wrote, as he himself tells us in its opening lines is called “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” McFerrin was living in San Francisco, and he saw posters reminiscent of the 60s for a jazz duo named Tuck and Patty (look them up, they are also fabulous) repeating this slogan from the 1960s: “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” which had first been popularized by the Indian guru Meher Baba.

The song starts out with happy whistling and scat singing, which is repeated in between each verse. Then the singer, in a humorous accent, begins:

Here's a little song I wrote
You might want to sing it note for note
Don't worry, be happy
In every life we have some trouble
But when you worry, you make it double
Don't worry, be happy…

McFerrin then goes on to list things that one might worry about: not having a bed, your landlord threatening to begin eviction proceedings, being broke, being unfashionable, not having a girlfriend… The answer to all these things is “Don’t worry, be happy!” and happy whistling like you don’t have a care in the world. The video, since this was the age of MTV, was also charming, and included our favorite Hollywood Episcopalian, Robin Williams.

It was infectious. And it was amazing—especially when we learned that every single sound on the song was produced by McFerrin using his voice and his body. And by the way, how many of you now have this tune echoing around in your head? You’re welcome.

Now, there are always going to be naysayers who sneer at the idea of a song making much of a difference, and there are also those people who will fight you tooth and nail if you try to encourage them NOT to be miserable.

But.

The world NEEDED this song in 1988. It was an intense year, and not just because that’s the year I got married. The US was embroiled in the Iran-contra affair, which alleged that government officials had illegally provided the Iranians weapons in their war with Iraq in exchange for secret payments that could be laundered to fund extremist rebels against the extremist government in Nicaragua a half a world away. 

Iraq, meanwhile, was poisoning the Kurdish people who lived within its borders with poison gas. We finally concluded yet another treaty trying to control the spread of Intermediate Range Nuclear Weapons, because yes, we were still afraid that some madman would launch a nuclear war that would extinguish the human race and indeed the planet. In southwest Asia, Myanmar erupted in pro-democracy protests led by students against its military dictatorship, as Poland experiences the rise of protests against its Communist government by the working class movement called “Solidarity.” 

The Soviet Army finally withdrew from its invasion of Afghanistan after 8 bloody years, and the Space Shuttle program flew its first mission nearly three years after the tragic Challenger disaster. An earthquake in Armenia killed 60,000 people.

We were tense, afraid, worried about the future for a variety of reasons. So thank God for Bobby McFerrin trying to reassure us with five minutes of light-hearted piece of perspective altering. The success of this song actually disproved the claim that telling someone to calm down never actually calms anyone down. As light-hearted as this song was, it was much-needed medicine. It was wrapped around the truth that worrying never solves ANYTHING, and that keeping our perspectives firmly fixed in what we have right now can help us avoid needlessly torturing ourselves about what might, or might not, be.

We all NEED these reminders. We are hard-wired to notice and hyperfixate on things we perceive as threats, and when we let that take up all our capacity, we then fail to notice and appreciate things that are gifts, blessings or causes for joy. Our adrenal system takes over when we worry, and we become blind to anything good. Ironically, one of the things that can most soothe moods is music. And so, yes, I am convinced Bobby McFerrin did us all a great service that year, and it paid off for him too. He received the Grammy for Song of the Year, Record of the Year, and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance in 1989.

The opening words in our gospel passage today depict Jesus trying his best to encourage his followers not to worry as they too face some of the darkest days of their lives—so dark, they still don’t understand how dark it is about to get. And so he starts with “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.” He then promises that even when his physical presence is no longer with his beloved friends and disciples, they can never be separated from him or from God.

We need that reassurance, because several of the readings for this week sound like the plagues of 1988. In Acts, Stephen, deacon and first martyr of the infant Church, is stoned to death by religious authorities who accuse him of blasphemy as he testifies to his experience with Jesus. Yet even with this horrific fate, he rejoices because he sees Jesus sitting at the right hand of God, and breathes forgiveness of his enemies even as he meets his fate—just as Jesus did upon the cross. Our psalm also has violence and betrayal as a subtext, yet the psalmist declares their faith in God for deliverance from those who are setting nets to entrap the psalmist. Our epistle scorns those who rejected Jesus, and calls him instead the chief cornerstone. And then here our disciples are huddled with Jesus, their heads swirling with his enigmatic statements as he tells them he will be leaving them, and that one of them will betray him.

We need that reassurance, because we also live in a time when it is hard to see and know Jesus within the world around us. Yet our Easter proclamation and faith is that he IS here, alive, and active in the world around us. He asks us to trust in that bedrock principle of faith.

Jesus tries to remind us that perception is key, just as McFerrin’s little song does in a whimsical way. Jesus also reminds us that there are many ways to see and to know someone. As anyone who has ever been separated from loved ones, either by distance or by death can attest, you can still see and experience the presence of someone even when they are not right here with you. Perhaps that’s one reason why this gospel passage is also used at funerals—so much so that many of you may be thinking about funerals as your first thought when you hear this passage.

Others of you may be thinking of the way this passage may have been misused in your own life to exclude people rather than comfort and include them. Because it certainly has been used to claim that ONLY professed Christians are the true children of God. And that is not the intention of this passage, especially when we look at the reality of Jesus’s ministry and actions during his human lifetime. Far from it. Just think of the stories we have heard in the previous weeks: last week, Jesus reminding his followers that he had other sheep than just this one flock, for example in John 10. Jesus treating the Samaritan woman at the well with courtesy, acceptance, and seriousness rather than condemnation and rejection.

I don’t know about you, but I do find comfort that those who have been Jesus’s closest friends and followers still have a hard time really seeing and knowing him, beyond mere physical presence and sight. I find that comforting, because it helps us have perspective about our own doubts and misunderstandings of Jesus. Let’s remember, the Gospel of John begins with equating Jesus, as the Word of God, with God Godself. This passage refers back to that assertion in the Prologue when Jesus asks Philip “Have I been with you all this time, and you still do not know me?” in v. 9.

Now here is a place that perhaps can shed some light upon us in our time. Even in this secular world, one would have to be willfully ignorant to claim that they have heard nothing of Christianity. We still have a very vocal portion of the American population claiming to be acting in the name of their Christian faith in all kinds of ways within our government, our schools, and our society. Often they do this because they have misunderstood that the Word of God we worship is Jesus. The Bible is the record of the Word of God, and should be studied and interpreted again and again as the Spirit and Jesus continue to reveal God to us in the world today. We worship Jesus—not individual verses or words in documents, as holy as they are. The books are the lens, but Jesus is the light.

What has the world heard about Jesus? As the season of Easter reminds us, Jesus has been with us all this time, yet what does the world know about him? As our gospel points out, there are two ways to know Jesus: by his words, and by his actions. Not just actions in the past, but action right now, acting through the testimony and the actions of each every one of us who claim the name of “Christian.”

In the end, Jesus urges us not to worry, not to fear, but instead to believe. To try and sometimes fail but to keep trying in our journey of discipleship. And this kind of belief operates not at the intellectual level but above it at the level of trust. Part of our charge to trust is to not try to use Jesus as a way of dividing people and stoking fear.

One way to avoid fear and worry, I have found, is by activity. If the world around us does not know Jesus, we are called to respond by seizing the opportunity rather than apathy or despair. To turn away from gossip, slander, and trying to make ourselves feel better by tearing those around us down and instead embrace Jesus’s call to integrity, responsibility, and duty to each other. Jesus will not get any better known by our silence—or worse my our misdeeds in public. Jesus is best known and seen in the world right now through us and how we behave.

To the dirge of the world around us, Jesus calls us to sing a song of peace, of relationships healed and enemies reconciled, of embracing justice and compassion as our lodestars against the ignorance, betrayal, and corruption that swirls around us in this world that needs Jesus now more than ever. To remember that Jesus is our shepherd, and everyone’s. That there are many dwelling places in God’s eternal home, and to stop thinking we get to decide who gets in and who is left out. But most of all, for us to take up our own share in the kingdom of God right now, and live so that our words and actions reveal Jesus to those around us every day.

Amen.

Readings:

Acts 7:55-60

Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16

1 Peter 2:2-10

John 14:1-14

Preached at the 10:30 Holy Eucharist at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO, 63011.

Citations:

Bobby McFerrin, "Don't Worry, Be Happy," from the album Simple Pleasures (1988).

Recognizing the Resurrected One: Sermon for Easter 3A

When I was in Camp Fire, one of my favorite activities was hiking. One of my favorite hikes was when our group went to a place outside of Tulsa called Redbud Valley. It was just to the north of Tulsa, right near the zoo. Given how close this area was to town when I had first learned where we were going my hopes had not been very high for it to be anything special. But I soon learned how wrong that expectation was.

Surrounded by farm fields and airport runways and state highways, Redbud Valley was an area that was unspoiled, except for a few small trails, probably first laid down by the native wildlife-- deer and coyotes and foxes. 

Butterflies like the ones that we just looked at in the children's message energetically flitted from blossom to blossom on the flowers that dotted the forest floor in sunny patches. Birdsongs of dozens of kinds echoed overhead in the treetops and the understory.

It was there that I first saw a pileated woodpecker. It was the size of a chicken, with black and white feathers, but the brightest red mohawk crest on its head. It zoomed right over us and then fixed us with a beady eye, daring us to move. And we didn’t. And suddenly we saw the beauty of our town in an entirely new light.

Even though I was in a crowd of kids and leaders traipsing single file through the woods, I was drawn so deeply into the beauty of the place that I also found myself thinking deep thoughts about nature, humanity, and our relationship between the two. To this day I have found that, often when a problem seems intractable, or if I just can't figure something out, it's a sign that I should get up and take a walk.

That's what I think these two disciples that we hear of in our gospel today might be doing. I wonder if they're not trying to walk off their grief and confusion over the events of the past three days. And as they were walking along, suddenly a stranger comes alongside them and ask them why they are so visibly upset and troubled as they walk. Now it might be helpful to understand that Emmaus was a place that was known for its resistance to Roman rule, it kind of birthplace of rebellion--and we remember that many of the people who had followed Jesus, possibly including judas who betrayed him, had expected Jesus to become a warrior king and physically expel the Romans from their oppression of the people of Israel and Palestine. So perhaps these two disciples are thinking about their disappointed partisan hopes, emphatically crushed as they watched Jesus be tortured and executed by the Roman Empire just three days prior.

Many of us might wonder why and all the stories that we've heard so far of Jesus after his resurrection, people cannot recognize him, or refuse to believe he is who he is unless they see the marks of the nails and the spear on his body. Surely, many of us might think, if Jesus walked up in front of us, we would know it.

But I think today's story, and all the other ones of encountering the resurrected Jesus before his ascension that we hear during the great 50 days of Easter, are actually meant to comfort and encourage us. Because after all if even the disciples who had known Jesus in flesh and blood have a hard time recognizing him beyond the cross and the tomb, that might help explain why we also fail to see Jesus in our everyday lives.

I wonder if all of those disciples who saw Jesus on the first Day of Resurrection had a hard time recognizing him because they had a hard time casting away their expectation of what THEY wanted Jesus to be. And if you listen to the way that Jesus is aligned by some to issues about which he said absolutely nothing, we know that we constantly walk in danger of doing the same thing ourselves. It’s so tempting to want a Jesus who confirms all of your own prejudices, rather than recognize a Jesus who calls us to be changed and transformed by following him, as hard as that may be. Sometimes we want a fossilized Jesus, one preserved in the amber of books and pages and verses, and resist the idea that Jesus could still be walking among us, transformed by resurrection—and calling us, too, to embrace resurrection and be ourselves transformed.

Because, as Christians, we proclaim exactly that: that Jesus is alive and present in the world and in our own lives right here right now. We just have a hard time recognizing him. Because I am convinced that sometimes he appears in guises that we do not expect--the same as those two disciples walking along the road did not expect to see the risen Jesus suddenly hove into view and start explaining scripture to them so powerfully that it made their hearts burn.

Where do we see and recognize Jesus today?

Sometimes it's in a stranger reaching out to help someone in crisis, even in the face of danger and terror. We saw that last week when a 16-year old Black teenager, musician, and honor student named Ralph Yarl, while trying to pick up his younger brothers, was shot by a white man in Kansas City, simply because he knocked on the wrong door of an armed man beset by fear. He was shot through the door and through the head, and then shot again as he lay on the porch. As he miraculously staggered away, he eventually found someone who came out of their house and started tending to his wounds helping him to avoid traumatic blood loss until the ambulance could come and take him to the hospital, helped by other neighbors. Those people, obviously, were Jesus.

But it doesn't have to be as earth shaking as that example. Jesus can appear before us and the woman who offers water and food to a stranded traveler. Jesus can appear before us in the person who helps acclimate refugees to the new life after they have fled all that they have loved and known to the violence war or natural disaster. Jesus can appear to us in the teacher who stays after school for hours each week on their own time to make sure that their students learn how to bake, like my sister does for her students.

And then it can be even more simple than that. Look back at this story and step back from it for a second. Can you see the shape of the liturgy and the story that we heard in Luke's gospel?

Disciples are walking along a road, weighed down by their thoughts. In answer to the pressures of their lives, to the situation that they are currently in, they hear the reading of the scriptures and have them explained so that they can see themselves and their situation in those precious words. They then joined together around a common table. And when the bread is broken, then especially, Jesus makes himself known to us, as our collect at the beginning of worship says, “He made himself known in the breaking of the bread.”

Nothing fancy. But nothing that we should ever take for granted. Each time we gather around this table, for strength as well as solace, out of a sense of need, perhaps, but always joined to our obligation to others, to the command for us to go and do likewise, we encounter Jesus as both host and guest, calling us to follow in his footsteps, to share the gospel with those we meet, and to offer spiritual encouragement and nourishment to those that we encounter after we leave these doors.

I imagined what their thoughts would be in a poem that I wrote earlier this week, entitled “We Had Hoped:

We had hoped
that he would redeem Israel,
make Israel great again, a power among powers.

We had hoped
that he would cleanse us of sin
without changing us too much--
that he would keep out of politics,
hate all the people we do,
and keep us comfortable in our prejudices.

But instead,
he appears to us as a stranger,
slightly shiny around the edges,
but a stranger
making our hearts burn,
setting us aflame
for the love of the world
including all those we render invisible,
powerless,
voiceless,
and excluded from the table.

In the breaking of the bread,
he is at once revealed and vanishes,
lightning crashes at our feet
and rolls away the stone of our hearts.

He vanishes into those he renders visible
by his companionship and kinship,
and bids us welcome all to the table
where he is at once both host and guest.

This is the eternal life he gives:
to be his hands
pierced yet restored
that break bread
and hearts
open
tenderly
on the way to Emmaus
and beyond.

Amen.



Preached at the 10:30 am service on April 23, 2023 at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville MO.

Readings:

Acts 2:14a,36-41

Psalm 116:1-3, 10-17

1 Peter 1:17-23

Luke 24:13-35

The Marks We Need to See: Sermon for Easter 2A

“Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”

Our gospel writer known as John has a plethora of stories, and can’t be bothered to tell them to us there are so many, but THIS is the story the lectionary writers choose EVERY SINGLE Year for the 2nd Sunday in Easter?

And this one has more questions in it than answers, which of course is not surprising, but still. I am wondering if, like me, you may have heard this reading 50 times, but you have some questions.

For instance: where did Jesus go between Easter morning when Mary Magdalene thinks he is the gardener, and Easter evening, when he proves to the disciples that when he says “I am the door,” he means “No door can hold me out?”

And why was Thomas not there in the room? We’ve heard him speak only two other times in John’s telling of the gospel of Jesus. The first was in chapter 11, when Jesus decides to go to resurrect Lazarus, just two miles from Jerusalem, where the leaders there are trying to find any opportunity to kill Jesus, and Thomas moans morosely to the other disciples, “Let us also go, so that we may die with him.”

The second time is during Jesus’s Farewell Discourse, at the beginning of chapter 14, when Jesus urges his friends not to let their hearts be troubled even though he has just told Peter that he will deny even knowing Jesus three times that very night. As he announces he is leaving, he tells them they know the way to where he is going. Only Thomas is brave enough to pipe up: “No, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” And Jesus then makes another of him vital “I am” statements, playing off the name for God. Jesus responds, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”

Remembering the first time Thomas is recorded as speaking sheds some light on why perhaps the disciples are hiding behind locked doors with all the rumors rattling around Jerusalem that Jesus may be dead or he may be alive despite what everybody saw with their own eyes. The disciples can’t bring themselves to leave, and yet they know that staying puts them at risk of joining Jesus on a cross or some other method of execution, perhaps death by stoning, which was the punishment for blasphemy at that time—the very death that the first martyr among the disciples, Stephen, will undergo for testifying about Jesus.

So to the first question. I imagine that Jesus, after letting Mary Magdalene know who he is, goes straight to his mother.

I personally, as a mother, hope that one of the stories omitted was Jesus returning to see his mother, calling her “Imma,” which means “Mama” rather than “Attha” which means “woman,” as we heard from the cross in John’s gospel. I believe this because I believe Jesus loved his mother, despite what some of the gospel writer depict. Read the Magnificat, and you know where Jesus got the courage to overturn those tables in the Temple. Consider a 14- or 15-year old girl embedded in a culture that made her a pawn having the audacity to consider and say yes to God despite what it could potentially cost her, and you see where Jesus gets the courage and resolution and passion for his earthly ministry.

I imagine that this meeting took place also because I also think of one of the last images in popular art of Mary with Jesus: that of the Pieta—whose name means “Pity,” or “Compassion.” After my mom took my brother and myself to Rome when I was seven, one of the things she carried back all through that journey was a smaller, about 8 inch high copy of the Pieta, a sculpture by Michelangelo that we had seen in the Vatican. Michaelangelo depicted the crucified Jesus sprawled across his grieving mother’s lap. 

I think of the Pieta, and I think that Jesus would have gone to his mother and given her a personal chance for that heartbreaking, traumatic image to not be the last image she had of her beloved first born. I think Jesus would have wanted to bring his mother’s broken heart to healing, because healing was the core of who he was. He would have wanted to show her his scars too, as a sign of his ongoing, resurrected life-- rather than leaving her with the image of his death.

I picture the risen Christ appearing before his mother in her house full of mourners just as he appears to these disciples in their locked room. Because if he did, he would hear her call him not “Jesus,” which is the Greek form of his name. No, Mary would breathlessly cry out his true name of “Yeshua,” which means “Salvation” in Aramaic.

Unlike Thomas, Mary would not ask to see the scars on his wrists and ankles and side. She would have been intimately familiar with those wounds as she held the body of her son sprawled across her lap. The marks she would want to see was the light of love in Jesus’s eyes as he embraced his mother. Even as those mourners sitting with her scatter in their confusion, Jesus and his mother embrace.

Then as to my second question of where was Thomas? Since I am not persuaded that Thomas has been treated fairly throughout the centuries with getting the adjective “doubting” permanently conjoined with his name, I imagine that Thomas wasn’t behind those locked doors because he was out on the streets looking for Jesus, as I wrote on Thursday for Episcopal Journal in my poem, “Thomas Speaks:”

What would you have done?
We all had heard Magdalene’s crazy tale,
but even after all the Master’s assurances,
it was fear that seized us.
My brothers and sisters shivering behind locked doors,
while I was out in the streets and the garden
looking for our risen Lord, hoping
to see him kneeling in some thicket,
speaking to God like a child speaks to his mother.
Why they should be more afraid of a missing corpse
than of the horrors of Golgotha I cannot say.
I was out looking for him,
looking, and scattering the resurrection news like seed.

I was the only one looking, hoping,
and yet the only one to not be found by him that night.
And so I missed his murmured “peace,”
his outpouring of Spirit and commission:
“Your forgiveness of sins forgives them;
your holding fast to someone holds them fast.”
But God knows we clung to each other in our grief,
and the whole town was muttering--
you could feel the rising fear lapping
at the foundations of our house.

An octave of days passed,
and this time I heard the melody of his voice
offering us peace once more.
I was like a man parched with thirst
offered sweet, cool spring water.
My mind whirled.
And so I confessed:
“Lord, I cannot be sure that it is you
Unless I myself see the wounds you bear.”
And touching them, I was able
to find my place on the map of the good news.

Our scars are proof of life and proof of God’s love.
The healing power of overcoming those wounds
make us who we truly are:
bearers of the image of Jesus,
the One who does wonders in our lives
by loving us, scars and all.
And with that promised peace,
holding each other fast in mercy and grace,
the world is changed.
And so I believe.


How might the world be changed if we were all out on the streets looking for the resurrected Jesus and proclaiming the good news of Christ to those we meet? What marks does the world need to see from us? What marks proclaim the good news of God’s amazing grace and abundant love, rather than reinforcing the worst impulses human beings have and are called to overcome by God?

You know, those of us in the church business as a profession traditionally refer to today as what is known as a “low Sunday.” That means “low attendance.” “Low Sundays” come after the cataclysmic celebrations of Christmas and Easter in particular. Those two celebrations are known for being times when there are lots of visitors, and lots of people who only attend worship on those two occasions each year. Some people make jokes about this. Some of these jokes are kindly meant, but many of them are not. Some of the jokes about those who come to church only on Christmas Day or Easter Sunday assume a sense of smug superiority over those new faces. And friends, that is certainly not kind, not is it welcoming.

Here's the thing: Easter can be extremely hard for some people. Easter talks about things that are unbelievable, for one. But going deeper, even if most of what you see is goofy Easter bunnies and Honeybaked Ham on a groaning dinner table covered in millions of calories, church is often at the center of Easter. Easter is notoriously one of two times every year when a lot of people who never go to church during the year drag out a pastel colored shirt and some slacks and a sport jacket, or a gauzy dress and if you are a lady from certain parts of the country a jaunty hat, and go to church. Some can’t bring themselves to do even this. A lot of people, in fact.

And for too many of these people, there is a reason why feeling that pull to cross the threshhold of a church is painful. The Big C, institutional Church, fallible and made up of fallible human beings as it is, has hurt them. It has told them that Christianity is about judging others and demanding sacrifices of their essential natures that those same judgmental ones would never even consider in their own lives. It’s a Christianity that looks for scapegoats while completely missing the irony that Jesus himself served exactly as that in the politics between the common people and the power of empire.

It’s a Christianity that decides that the people different than you are different than you due to sin, and that they need repentance. And then the next step is that it is a “Christianity” that tries to justify hating or marginalizing already marginalized people into repentance and thinking that that ever works, like we see in a plethora of bills in states across the country that target the poor, or minorities, or immigrants, or our LGBTQ kindred.

And all this is done in the name of the same Jesus we see today inviting people to see his wounds as signs of his realness. Or there are people who have been shamed for questioning, for doubting, like that’s a bad thing—just like poor old Thomas there, who gets that damning “Doubting” adjective permanently glued in front of his name forever, even though what he experiences is SO common and relatable, unlike all the apostles except for Judas.

Going back to church for those who have been hurt and marginalized by this kind of Christianity is more like returning to the scene of a crime than getting your spiritual batteries recharged. And those of us who identify ourselves as actively Christian thus are presented with our first chance to ourselves take part in the salvation of Jesus which bring healing and reconciliation. And we don’t even have to do it by glomming onto every stranger that walks through our doors, especially at Easter.

The good news of the time in which we live is that the world is our mission field, much like it was for those early disciples. The good news is that we, by our testimony, by just showing up and showing the marks of Jesus’s self-giving love, have it within our power to counter the narrative of exclusion and division and condemnation that passes for Christian belief in too much of the world outside our doors. We can and must be better than that, and do so visibly, embracing the vulnerability of Jesus in showing our marks, our scars, our empathy and common cause with those who are hurting.

The Church calls itself the Body of Christ for a reason. We call ourselves the Body of Christ because we ARE the living representation of who Jesus is to the world. Each and every one of us, and all of us collectively. And I am convinced that the marks the world needs to see are not the marks of a bully in the culture wars, othering people because we can get away with it. No, that is EXACTLY what put Jesus on the cross to begin with, and drives people away from a life of faith because they associate it with a life of exclusion, rejection, and casting people out rather than gathering them within the embrace of the outstretched arms of Jesus. By way of us.

What marks does the world need to see? The marks of love. The marks of compassion, like Mary holding the broken body of her baby boy on her lap. The wounds that tell the world that we are here to heal and reconcile no matter what it costs us, because that is exactly who Jesus was and IS. Present tense.

As I insisted last Sunday, we are an Easter people. We are a people who proclaim resurrection and eternal life in the name of a living God, a living Messiah, a living Holy Spirit. We can do it by showing the marks of Christ to a doubting world—a world that needs those marks now more than ever.

Amen.

Readings:

Acts 2:14a,22-32

Psalm 16

1 Peter 1:3-9

John 20:19-31

This was preached at the 505 on April 15 and the 10:30 Eucharist at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.

Citations:

The poem, "Thomas Speaks," was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on April 13, 2023. Copyright Leslie Barnes Scoopmire. All rights reserved.

Amen.

Prayer, day 2681: Standing for Right

God of Abundance,
we raise our hearts to You in praise,
and ask your Spirit to guide us in wisdom and love.

Help us, O God,
to be rigorous in judging ourselves,
and gracious in judging others,
remembering the repeated forgiveness which upholds us.

Even when we cannot think alike,
help us to love alike, Blessed Savior,
making us of one heart
even if not of one opinion.

Rather, let us love one another fully,
embracing all who seek You, O Holy One,
by doing all the good we can,
by all the means we can,
in all the ways we can,
in all the places we can,
at all the times we can,
to all the people we can,
as long as ever we can.

Spirit of Love, set us ablaze with a holy fire,
and fill us with courage
to witness to the power of God's love in our lives,
as we ask your blessing upon these beloveds.

Amen.

Prayer, day 2680

Holy One,
I lift my heart before You
and amplify the proclamation of your glory.

May I proclaim your greatness, O God,
from the depths of my soul
with a shout of joy and victory.
May I give thanks, Lord,
for your manifold blessings and great mercy
that maintain my life and my spirit.

Your love, O Almighty One, forever will I sing
joining the chorus of generations in praise.
May I walk in paths of justice and mercy
that my life may testify to the power of the Holy One.

For You, O Sustainer,
call us to stand alongside the oppressed
and fill the hungry with good things.
You, O Mighty One,
cast down the oppressor
and scatter the schemes of the powerful.
You, O Savior,
have lifted up the humble
and exalted the ordinary,
but chasten the tyrants
and call them to justice.

Your promises are our foundation and hope, O God:
we appeal to You in trust and faith as we pray.

Amen.

Prayer, day 2679

Place a new song in our mouths and our hearts, O Lord:
let us sing our praises from the deeps of our souls.
Give us a joy in doing your will:
to act justly,
to love mercy,
and walk humbly with You in love, O God.
You have lifted us out of the pit we ourselves have dug;
You have delivered us to abide in your light.
Take us by the hand and lead us for joy;
may your healing radiance shine through us.
Knit us together in justice, reconciliation, and peace,
loving each other as ourselves.

Spirit of Peace,
spread the wings of your redemption and grace
over all who call upon You as we pray.

Amen.

Prayer, day 2678: for strength

O God of Hope,
accept our prayers and praises
as we lay them before You in morning's light.

Our times are in your hand, O Creator,
and our trust is in You
as we navigate the pathways of life.
With your benevolent help, Lord Jesus,
teach us to walk the good road,
and reconcile us to each other.
Make us humble,
aware of our own manifold faults,
especially our seeking advantage over each other,
rather than rejoicing in the bonds of love and mercy.
Pour out your peace and grace
like oil upon the turbulent waters,
that we may be unified by love.
By the power of the Holy Spirit,
renew our hearts and minds in holiness
and bless and keep those we remember before You.

Amen.

Prayer 2677

We raise our hearts before You,
O God Our Rock,
who births creation into being,
who calls us to renewal and repentance.

May we walk in integrity, loving-kindness, and charity
before our God and Savior,
the One Who Sees all our works,
the Supporter of the Fallen who calls us to compassion.

Beloved Savior, Blessed Jesus,
guide us into your way and truth,
and protect those who do what is right
even in the face of corruption and evil.

Strengthened in love and upheld in wisdom,
may we use this day to your glory
and the comfort of the suffering around us,
O Spirit of the Living God.

Bestower of Faith, bless us this day,
and extend the awning of your mercy,
we humbly pray,
over those for we lift before You.

Amen.