Sermon: The stones that keep us in (Easter 2019)

Easter Sunday

April 21, 2019

Luke 24:1-12

Alleluia, Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia! Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Like much of the world this week, I was devastated to watch news of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris burning. This gorgeous work of art holds so much religious, historical, and artistic and cultural significance, and I couldn’t bear to watch it being destroyed in real time.

But then the post-fire pictures started appearing. And when I first saw one with the floor of the cathedral covered in ash and debris from the fallen roof, but above it all that gorgeous gold altar cross shining brightly – I thought, “This is Easter.” This is life after death. This is hope in the midst of despair. New life is possible, even though it may mean going through something pretty horrifying first.

And I thought of those words the angels say to the grieving women: “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” Every time I read Luke’s version of the resurrection, these first words the angels utter to the grieving women stop me in my tracks. I find them at once joyful, and a bit amusing (I mean, why wouldn’t they look for Jesus among the dead – he was, after all, dead the last they knew!). And sometimes I even find them a bit irritating. Why irritating? Well, I think it is because I know that I, and perhaps we, are all guilty of doing the same thing as the women: we live in the past, stuck on looking at and for things that are dead and gone, even as God is beckoning us to look up, see that golden cross, and walk in a new direction.

The women no doubt felt hopeless as they made their way to the tomb that early dawn. As they stood in the cave, perplexed by the absence of the body, they needed something to jolt them out of their despair, their clinging to what they thought they knew, and the angels offer it: “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” Wait…Huh? “He is not here,” they go on, with a heavenly twinkle in their eye, “but has risen.” And with that, everything changes!

         The women are not the only ones who need that jolt. We too, all too often, find ourselves in the hopelessness of the dark cave, unable to step out of death and into life. That hopelessness is something so many of us have experienced, in the various types of metaphorical darkness we endure in the journey of our lives: depression, loneliness, addiction, grief, difficult decisions, life-changing diagnoses, broken relationships, job losses, bullying… the list goes on. Any of these can feel like a cave, like a tomb even, and we are sealed in by a large stone, and it is very dark and seems hopeless.

         What interests me, though, is not so much the hopelessness we experience, but rather, considering what those stones that are keeping us in that cave, keeping us searching for life among the dead. Luke tells us that when the women arrived that early dawn, they saw that huge stone that had trapped Jesus in the tomb had already been rolled away! As if Jesus said, “Yeah, that’s not enough to keep me in this death hole forever. I’m just going to move that aside, roll it over, and walk out into resurrected life.” No mere stone could be more powerful than God’s plan for life!

         A stone could not keep Jesus in the tomb. But what about us? What stones are keeping us in our dark caves, whatever they may be? What needs to be cast aside? What is preventing us from walking out of death and into new and abundant life?

         I think they are some of the very same stones that held back the disciples. The women’s first response to the incredible news of Jesus’ resurrection is a feeling with which we are all familiar: they are terrified. Fear is so powerful in holding us back. Fear makes us blame others. Fear makes us exclude others, and judge others, even hate others. Fear keeps us from doing the hard work of examining our own hearts to find our own brokenness and seek healing. But one thing fear has never done is helped people to grow toward life. Yes, fear is very often the stone that keeps us trapped in the tomb, keeps us from walking out into new life.

         Another stone we might find at the entrance of the tomb is the stone of unmet expectations. When the women go to tell the disciples what they had learned, the disciples refuse to believe it, calling it an “idle tale.” They had an expectation, you see, about how the world works – namely, that the dead stay dead – and could not open their minds and hearts to the possibility that God might do something new and amazing. As a result, they almost missed that new thing entirely.

Unmet expectations can be crippling for us, too. We have held out hope before and been burned. We have never seen positive change before, so why would we now? We don’t dare hope that things will get better, because we will probably be disappointed at best, and deeply hurt at worst. Easier just to stay in the darkness of the cave.

         Another stone, which isn’t stated explicitly by Luke but is certainly an undercurrent is that of being stuck in our past, and the need for forgiveness. If you recall, the disciples have not been their best selves the last few days. Judas betrayed, Peter denied, the rest deserted. The only ones who hung around were the women. So when those women come to tell the disciples Jesus isn’t dead after all, I wonder if a part of the disciples’ quickness to dismiss their story as an idle tale is that they are disappointed with themselves, and have not forgiven themselves, or maybe, they have not forgiven each other.

This stone we understand all too well: being ruled by past events, either being unwilling to forgive someone who has hurt you, or bearing the burden of knowing that someone you have wronged has not forgiven you. We carry with us so much baggage from the past, baggage that taints our vision of the present and our hope for the future. This one is also tied up with all those unmet expectations we talked about before. And so our past also acts as a stone, sealing us into the tomb where death rules, rather than letting us out into where new life can begin.

         But here is the moment where the Easter story is truly remarkable and meaningful for us today: it was in that darkness, while still sealed in by a stone, where Jesus defeated death. Even while it was still dark, Jesus turned that tomb from a place of death, into a womb, a place where new life prepared to emerge. Then that stone that would have kept Christ sealed in death forever was moved aside, and he emerged, bringing into the world the promise of new life for all of us, too, as he stepped out of that dark cave and into the morning light.

         God will not leave those imprisoning stones in our lives; God will move them aside to deliver on the promise of new life, the great gift of the resurrection. As the stone was moved aside and Christ emerged from the tomb that morning, he showed us that no death or darkness can win the day. He showed us that tombs – those places that are so dark and hopeless – can, by God’s power, be turned into wombs, birthing us into new life. Like a golden cross towering over ashen debris, Christ overcomes the darkness of our lives with hope and possibility. God moves aside all that would keep us in despair, and beckons us into the morning dawn. God turns all of our deaths into new life.

         Alleluia! Christ is risen! Christ is risen, indeed! Alleluia!

Let us pray… Resurrected God, we sometimes find ourselves trapped in the darkness of the tomb. Just as you rolled away the stone to bring about new life, roll out of our way all that would keep us from growth and life, so that we might step out into the morning dawn and feel the light of new birth. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sermon: Anxiety and healing love (Maundy Thursday 2019)

Maundy Thursday Sermon

April 18, 2019

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.  

I’ve spent the past couple years doing some focused learning about Bowen family systems theory, and specifically how this can help us work through times of transition or conflict in the congregation. A big part of systems thinking, and seeing things through a systems lens, is noticing where the anxiety is, and how it is playing out in various ways in the system. Anxiety, of course, is a feeling we are all too familiar with, and we know it can be triggered by all kinds of things: feeling threatened or unsafe, feeling insecure, sometimes certain words or situations. And we also know that anxiety can present in all kinds of different ways – as anger, sadness, fear, overcompensating, perhaps as trying to make others feel as anxious as you do to diffuse your own anxiety, as making jokes at inappropriate times... the expressions are endless! Now, not all anxiety is bad – indeed it is necessary for survival! If you didn’t feel anxious when you see a bear, then you become that bear’s lunch! But when anxiety is not recognized and named, it can wreck all kinds of havoc in our relationships, in our families, in our workplaces, and yes, even in our churches.

As I have been learning about systems and anxiety, I have started watching for it in the various current issues and events we encounter – mass shootings and gun laws, controversial laws about women’s health, healthcare generally, immigration policies… Each decision made about these issues has the potential to trigger our anxiety about something: our safety, our autonomy, our rights, our values. When we feel an attack on any one of those things, we feel anxious – and we then take our anxiety out on each other, by name-calling, finger-pointing, blaming, statistic-dropping, clinging to those with whom we agree, or picking fights with those with whom we don’t. It can become quite a mess, as we have seen in the decline of civil discourse in this country. We live, I think, in a very anxious country right now.

Anxiety like this is nothing new – and it was certainly something all too familiar to the characters in tonight’s story about Jesus washing the disciples’ feet. Talk about an anxious scene! Let’s keep in mind the setting here: Jesus is a hunted man. The authorities have been seeking to arrest him and have him killed for some time now, and Jesus and the disciples all know this. Now Jesus has gathered them into a room together. What would we expect him to do in this situation? What would you do? Arm the disciples? Teach them self-defense? Show them how to make a human barricade to protect Jesus? All reasonable approaches, especially when anxiety is high! Remember, I said anxiety is what has allowed humanity to survive for so many years! Anxiety naturally causes us to seek self-protection.

But that’s not what Jesus does. No, instead he takes off his outer robe, ties a towel around his waist, washes the feet of this ragtag bunch of sinners and misfits, and dries their feet with his towel. It is a stunning action – people in first century Palestine generally washed their own feet, or maybe a servant (always a woman) would wash your feet. But never would a rabbi, a teacher, wash the feet of his disciples. Peter is right to resist – it is inappropriate, embarrassing, and improper for Jesus do to this. The only time someone would do such a thing… is to demonstrate a deep and abiding devotion to another.

Ah, and you see, there it is. Jesus is showing them what love and devotion look like. It looks like humility, like vulnerability, like selflessness. It looks like making the space for someone to bare their deepest and most embarrassing self to you, without judgment. It looks like the willingness to get right up close to their dirtiness and pain, and not flinching, but rather, reaching out to ease that pain.

But the real kicker is realizing who all is there: not just Jesus’ loyal and loving disciples, or those who have proven themselves worthy of such an act. Among those whose feet get washed is Judas, whom Jesus knows is about to betray him and hand him over to death. (In fact, that is what happens during those missing verses there – Jesus tells Judas to go and do what he must do, and Judas departs and heads out into the night to betray him.) Also there is Peter, who will shortly after this encounter deny knowing Jesus at all – three times. And the rest of them? They will desert Jesus in his hour of need. These: these are the feet he washes. It is to these betrayers, deniers and deserters that Jesus expresses his deep devotion. It is to these that he later says how much he loves them, loves them, in fact, enough to die for them.

All of that is pretty remarkable. But then, another anxiety trigger: Jesus asks us to do the same. He says, “You call me teacher, and that is what I am. I’m setting an example for you. I’m washing your feet” [even those of you who are about to betray, deny and desert me] “and so you should wash one another’s feet.” In other words, Jesus is telling his disciples – that includes us! – that a part of being his disciple is to show this sort of radical love and devotion even to people whose actions are not deserving of love.

Of course, it’s one thing to find ways to love the people I meet in my day-to-day life who annoy me, or who live a way I disagree with, or even people who scare me a little. But what about people like, a school shooter, a tyrannical dictator, or a child molester? What about someone whose words or actions cause immense pain to another? What about someone who has caused immense pain to me?? What does this sort of radical Jesus-love look like in those situations? Yeesh, talk about anxiety…

When the council met last month to talk about our priorities for St. Paul’s for the coming year, one priority we brought up was healing, after a long and painful time of transition. This is appropriate, because I believe that healing is something God is constantly striving for throughout the story of scripture – it is, indeed, the primary reason for the event that we remember in these coming days: Jesus bore our sins and died and rose again so that we would be healed and restored from the power of sin over us. And so with that in mind, I find it helpful to approach the various places of brokenness in our lives with this question: “How can healing happen here?” Sometimes, in the case of truly horrific instances (like a mass shooting), or really anything that deeply hurts us on a more personal level, finding healing can be difficult. How do you love someone who can hurt so deeply?

Well perhaps loving someone with the love of Jesus looks like seeing that person for the absolutely broken individual he is, to see him as someone who must be so deeply in need of love and healing that he got to the point of being capable of this horrific act. Perhaps loving this person with the love of Christ looks like simply praying for the healing she might not even realize she needs. Or maybe, praying that we would get to a place, where we could bring ourselves to pray for that. Sometimes we aren’t ready to pray for another who has caused pain, so our prayer instead becomes, “God, I don’t want to pray for that person – so help me to want to pray for that person.”

And then perhaps while we’re praying, we can also pray for our own healing. While we may not be capable of some of the particularly heinous things that happen in this world, our various brokenness and anxiety can certainly make us do other things that we don’t want to do – betray or deny or desert our friends in their hour of need, perhaps; or say things that hurt people, even people we love; neglect helping people in need; even being too hard on ourselves. And so let us also remember, as we pray about how we are called to love even our betrayers, deniers and deserters, also to let Jesus wash our feet. Let us be willing, especially on this Maundy Thursday, to be vulnerable with Jesus, to take off our shoes and socks, reveal our deepest sadness, brokenness and vulnerability to him, and let him touch us, clean us, and heal us. If we can let Jesus wash our feet, we will be one step closer to knowing how to wash one another’s feet.

No one said following Jesus would be easy or comfortable. Sometimes, it is a great comfort, yes, and I am grateful for those times. But with Jesus as our teacher and example, we are always pulled out of our comfort zones and into a place where radical, life-changing, world-healing love can happen. May God give us the grace and the strength to do it.

Let us pray… Rabbi, Teacher, you showed us what true love looks like: to wash the feet even of our betrayers, deniers and deserters, and to love them with your own radical and healing love. Give us the courage to follow your example, and in doing that, make us agents of healing in this broken world. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Procession of Palms: A Palm Sunday Reflection

The following is what I wrote for my church newsletter for April, as we prepare to do a procession of palms for the first time in recent memory.

            I’ve always been a church nerd. That comes with the territory for at least some “PKs” (pastor’s kids). I have many fond church memories. But all my favorite worship memories come from Holy Week. I got a little excited each year on Ash Wednesday, only to be disappointed that I had to wait six more weeks for the really good stuff that would come later. (See, I told you – church nerd.) The Stripping of the Altar on Maundy Thursday filled me with wonder as my mom hauntingly chanted Psalm 22 from the back, and I was enchanted by the gorgeous a cappella music filling the darkening space as we heard John’s Passion on Good Friday (even as my brother and I always snickered about the particular tone with which the local Episcopal priest always read the line, “Now Barabbas was involved in a rebellion.”).

            Yup, I loved it all. But right up there with my favorite things about Holy Week was the Procession of Palms that kicked it off each year. Even though we had to get there soooo early so mom could sing in the choir, I loved the unique opportunity to gather outside the church to hear the processional gospel. I loved singing those first stanzas of All Glory Laud and Honor outside in the sun, and walking into the sanctuary to hear the organ already blasting the tune. I loved feeling, even as kid, like I was a part of something cool, something the whole congregation was doing and I was just as important as anyone else there. I loved waving my palm frond and belting out, “to whom the lips of children made sweet hosannas ring!” I loved that it was a little bit confusing and chaotic, because I imagined it probably felt that way at the first “Palm Sunday” too. It was all so different, so physical, so visceral, so real.

            As I grew in faithful maturity, I also grew to love the meaning of the event: that we were, in essence, following Jesus himself into his beloved Jerusalem. We were beginning Holy Week by not only saying we would follow Jesus to the cross and beyond, but we were actually doing it. How stark it was, then, to hear the Passion directly following, to shout those congregational lines in the drama (“Crucify him!”) so soon after we had joyfully followed him to what people did not yet know would be his death. As The Manual on the Liturgy states, “As a prelude to the reading of the passion, the procession with palms provides for an appropriate outburst of joy which does not lose sight of the solemn goal of Jesus’ triumphal entry. He rides to die.”

            Over the years, the Procession with Palms, a tradition which began in the 4^th century, became an essential event for my own piety, a chance to pray and repent, praise and lament with my whole body in preparation for the Holy Three Days to come. This year at St. Paul’s, the Worship and Music Committee decided to do a Procession with Palms on Palm Sunday. I’m sure it will be a little chaotic – just like Jesus’ actual entry into Jerusalem. I suspect it will be a bit confusing – just like the whole premise of Jesus’ passion can be for us. And I also trust it will be incredibly joyful – as any opportunity to join with the church across time and place to praise God ought to be!

            I very much look forward to walking with you into the sanctuary, and through the holy days leading up to Christ’s death and resurrection, for the first time this year. May God bless us richly as we contemplate Christ’s Holy Passion, and step together into newness of life.