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Written by scott
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Sunday, 10 June 2007 |
HOPE LIVES
Acts 10:34-43; Luke 24:1-12
April 8, 2007
Easter
I was talking with a friend, another pastor, who commented that preaching on Christmas and Easter was the hardest of all: that she felt pressure to do her very best on days most likely to bring together those who are present only a few times a year with those who are here week in and week out: what can be fresh and compelling and accessible in such a setting? In our conversation, I said that I thought that Christmas preaching was all about one common theme: we are not alone; and that Easter preaching speaks to the other most common human longing: evil does not triumph.
Last week, we made a harrowing journey, traveling in time from the glorious ecstasy of Palm Sunday to the wrenching pain of Good Friday, from celebration to crucifixion, entering the sanctuary with palm fronds and song, beating tambourines to hasten our excited procession, and then putting ourselves into the story, right up to the point when we sang together, “Were You There?” and trembled, ourselves, in this time, to remember.
Through the week, parts of the story echoed for us. On Thursday, some of us gathered to eat a simple meal, remembering the last time Jesus gathered with his followers. After the meal, we prayed for healing, for ourselves and others, and then we gathered, children and grown-ups together, to color 47 dozen eggs, our gift to neighboring children and families who might not have the resources that we take for granted, making a rehearsal of the charge Jesus laid upon us, that we love our neighbors as ourselves, making this a lived out story for our children, a story of the duty and joy of service to others.
Some of us had been giving ourselves to a weekly discipline of fellowship, prayer, and spiritual growth. We met as a group on Wednesday, and then again on Friday night and Saturday. We have been learning and practicing the discipline of listening, listening deeply and with love to one another. This week, we experienced the pain and awe that is present when people slip off the masks and start talking openly with each other, sharing confusions and betrayals, short-comings and longings. It felt as though we walked the path from the Palm Sunday glory to the Good Friday despair all week long. It has made the stories we read last week very real.
We gather today, then, to remember and reflect upon the experience of the women and men who had followed Jesus on his journey from Galilee to Jerusalem, who had given up old ways to join him in the proclamation that God’s realm was at hand, who had believed so intensely, and then been utterly crushed to watch as this man, this one they understood as the Son of God, this teacher, this healer, this liberator, this source of all hope and vision, this one they loved more than they had thought they could ever love—they had watched this one be captured, tried, sentenced, tortured, reviled, and killed. Can you imagine their grief, their despair, as they made their way back to the tomb on the day after the Sabbath, going to express their love and devotion in the only way they could imagine, given what had happened, going to tend to the broken body of the Lord they had loved so much—and then meeting with bright beings who told them what no one could comprehend: “He is not here, but has risen.”
The women, these women who loved Jesus so much, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary who was the mother of James and Jesus, and others, went back to the place where the men had gathered, grieving, terrified, despairing, went back and told what they had seen. And the apostles, oh, in such a human response, they looked at each other and said, in different ways, “Well, you know women. They can’t take the despair, the hard edges of reality, they’re making up a tale—maybe they believe it, but we know it can’t be true—making up a tale so as not to have to face the despair, now that the one we believed in has been killed.” Can you hear them, not wanting to be jerked around by the terrible demands of hope, defending their “realistic” despair? Do you know that some of the most ancient texts lack the line that says that Peter got up and ran to the tomb, stooped to see the linen cloths there, and was amazed at what had happened? It is possible, these oldest versions of Luke’s gospel tell us, that the original news of resurrection was attested to only by women, women who could not give testimony in court, women who were not allowed into the inner circle of the worshipping community, women who had left their socially defined roles, forsaking all to follow the one who treated them as whole and faithful and sacred people, that it was the women of a women-demeaning culture who were first to proclaim that, in some way that they could not understand but knew to be true, the one who was Jesus was not dead; the Lord lived on, even after death. What an amazing claim!
Almost as amazing as Peter’s testimony, years later, after he had come to believe the women’s tale, after he had also experienced Christ alive, after he had given his life to spreading the wonderful news of Easter, and God and God’s actions with God’s people, with God’s chosen people. The lectionary passage comes at the end of the report of a vision that changed Peter’s life and ministry. For, you see, after the death of Jesus, followers told the story, spreading the news of God alive in their midst, conquering death, and in the telling, brought others into a Jewish movement following the Nazarene, Jesus. Jewish leaders were disturbed by this movement that threatened to split the faith, disturbed even to the point of creating a curse against the Nazarites (the earliest Jewish name for these followers of the way.) Paul, a Jewish scholar and rabbi, was among those who persecuted followers of Jesus until his conversion; afterwards, he had traveled around the Mediterranean world making converts, among the Jewish communities, and among the Gentiles, the people who were not bound by Jewish practices. As Paul’s communities of believers grew, tension developed within the Jesus movement: did one need to be a Jew to be a Christian, or not?
How important was this question? For a people who had always understood their people to be the chosen people of God, incredibly important, equal in importance, I would contend, as if a question were now put to Christians: does one need to be a Christian to be saved? Does God have favorites? Is one people chosen?
Peter had a vision of God commanding him to break the laws of kosher that identified Jews as Jews, commanding him to recognize that God shows no partiality among peoples. It transformed him, bringing him to go to the council and argue against the very rule that he had so adamantly supported: that God demanded that God’s followers adhere to Jewish beliefs and practices. Can you hear the radical breakthrough that this was? God was alive in the midst of them, rolling back stones, bringing down barriers, turning grief into insight and boundaries into welcome mats. God was doing a new, a living, a miraculous thing, not only in the experience that Christ lived beyond the crucifixion of the man Jesus, but in the overturning of long-held suppositions and understandings of how the world was to be.
This week, some of us experienced again the ways in which God is at work to turn grief into life and hope. Friday night, the Companions group invited people from the Alcoholics Anonymous group that meets here at UPUMC to join us for dinner and conversation. Afterwards, we went to the AA meeting with them. We heard stories of wrenching pain and of amazing spiritual growth. We listened to one man there for his first meeting, grief stricken and fearful that he has likely destroyed his marriage and family; we saw one woman twist and jitter as she tries to settle down, we heard stories of lives redeemed and of God present and real. Men and women who thought the walls might fall in if they came into a church now testify to God’s deep love for them, “for me, for me personally, God has told me that I am His beloved child and He’s with me every day.” It was an awesome experience, to be present with people who have traveled fro gutters to glory, who know God to be utterly real and essential in their lives.
Saturday, those of us who have taken this class together talked about what it has meant for us, to gather and share, to listen deeply and dare to be real. We made connections between our lives and the stories we had heard the night before, connections that turn on our own captivity to fear and to culturally driven addictions, but also on our longing for deep belonging, truthfulness and growth.
We ended the retreat by writing letters, reflections on what we had experienced and learned. We will gather again to refine them, to bring testimony about our faith to you, our beloved congregation, but for today, I want to share some of the beautiful and poignant truths we found ourselves sharing.
Listen then, to this witness, voices of people here among you, come to us like the witness of the women running in to tell their stories of wonder and amazement.
Dear ones, I want to say how encouraged I am by the experiences I have shared. I felt a bit uneasy and fearful when we began the series, but have felt nothing but acceptance and openness as we each shared our personal place of growth, pain, burdens and joy. Learning to listen and making time to connect with each other has opened my heart and my mind to God’s will in my life to listen to the cries of his people.
It was a time of togetherness, getting to know more about each other, whatever it was.
For six weeks we gathered together once a week, formed a circle of strength and protection, and bore witness to each other’s journeys of faith. Within this circle, we engaged our voices, our hands, our eyes and our ears in the delicate work of emerging from exile. this coming out was in direct response to the call of God’s great Spirit, spilling over and amongst us with abundance and urgency. At moments we caught glimpses of the fellowship that awaits us, should we make this crossing. I write so that we may not forget the details of those moments, and so that others, too, can make their way through the wilderness, and come home.
It’s been for me a great relief to share, get tears, and speak when I was ready. I love these people even more; we are all more real and open.
In this time a group of us shared our real pain, real life, real feelings and were able to uphold each other by being together regularly, knowing the value of spiritual time and this is what really gets us through it. We knew how to pray for one another. We felt each other’s pain; we were community. I am God’s beloved, he loves me (us) for who and what we are now. WOW. God loves every human and feels the pain of each one of us—He desires to let people feel and know his love and he uses us as vessels to touch those he brings into our circle of contacts.
I can’t solve others’ problems nor should I have to. Others can’t solve my problems, nor should they have to. Our duties to one another are to be there, to be present to and for one another. We lift our problems up to God. We are imperfect in totality alone, a little more perfect together with others and closer to perfection with God.
We have traded affluence for true joy and peace with our maker and with ourselves; we have given up the discipline of bearing one another’s burdens; we have been seduced by a dark side into believing worldly riches will give us happiness; we are all now broken because of these choices.
One of the images that came from the study was that we all sit beside our won pool of tears. We cover it over, as best we can, though, so that others can’t see it or experience it. We put on a game face and try to appear as if nothing is wrong. As we talked about our own pools of tears, we came to the conclusion that if we could combine them there would be enough breadth and depth so that we could swim together—experience each other’s pain but also experience each other’s joy. Won’t you take the risk to jump into the pool?
I’ve watched while others modeled a way of honesty and deep spiritual growth, something I want, deeply, for myself and for our congregation. I wonder, could we dare to live as people who trust only in God, who see each other as beloved, who find Christ in the recovering alcoholic and in the recovering player of the social game? Can we be like that? Could we become a community that offers deep welcome which is the way of authentic love? O, I hope so. I long for that life in us.
Christ has died, Christ is risen. Death is not the end. Hope lives, in spite of the cross, in the face of injustice and anguish, in the continuing dynamic of hope and trust and determination that is our calling, that is our faith.
Dorothy Sőlle has written it this way:
The Resurrection cannot be discussed in isolation, as if it had nothing to do with the cross. As if Jesus would in any case, even if he had died of old age, have gotten the benefit of this wonder drug. If we keep before our eyes what this puzzling phrase ‘resurrected from the dead’ says, then the reality ‘cross’ belongs to it: whoever lives in love has to reckon with contempt, abuse, discrimination, even with death. In this other way of living, the Resurrection is already visible long before death. Jesus believed above all—and for all—in a life before death. The Resurrection, this spark of life, was already in him. And only because of this God-in-him were they unable to kill him. It simply did not function. Even today the powerful do not succeed in extinguishing this love of justice, this sustained interest in the ‘last.’
It is wonderful news, wonderful, amazing news, this refrain, Christ is risen, Christ is risen indeed. It speaks our hope, our conviction, our utter trust that God lives on, undefeated by death, or evil, or apathy, or injustice. Resurrection is real, over and over, every time any one of us looks despair in the face and still lives in hope, every time we refuse to let injustice be the final word, every time we see the face of God in our neighbors, here, or around the world. Christ is risen! And the people reply: Christ is risen, indeed! Thanks be to God. Amen.
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