Sermon: Where Christ is made known (April 26, 2020)

Full service can be found here. Sermon starts around 26:30.

Easter 3A

April 26, 2020 (pandemic)

Luke 24:13-35

INTRODUCTION

Today’s readings are a nice follow-up to last week’s readings. First, our lesson from Acts is, in fact, the conclusion of Peter’s sermon of which we heard the beginning last week. Peter, it turns out, the guy who is too quick to speak and frequently puts his foot in his mouth (I really relate to Peter in this way!), is quite a persuasive orator. As a result of his powerful Pentecost sermon, 3000 people are baptized. Woosh!

And our Gospel reading offers us another story about what happened on that first night after the resurrection. Remember last week, we heard John’s version of what happened, that Jesus appeared to the fearful disciples in the locked upper room and breathed his Holy Spirit on them and gave them his peace. Luke tells a different story, about Jesus appearing to two disciples (apart from the 12) as they walk the road to the nearby town of Emmaus. It’s a very different sort of appearance from John’s, but has some very wonderful things to speak to us in these times, not the least of which is the disciples’ observation that their hearts “burned within them” as Jesus opened the scriptures to them. So, as you listen, notice where Christ is warming your heart this day. What stirs you? What is speaking to you in a way you need to hear? Let’s listen.

[READ]

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

         I love the Road to Emmaus story. I can never remember which year is shows up in the lectionary, and so I am always pleasantly surprised when I see it. “Ah! Yay!” I think. “This story preaches itself. Love this one.” But this year when I read it, it’s like cringe after cringe. Two people walking together and a stranger joins them. Nope, that can’t happen. Traveling to a different town – that’s a no-no. Staying in a hotel? I don’t think so. And finally, the real clincher, Jesus is finally made known to them in the breaking of bread. In a time when we cannot share in the Holy Supper, this feels like a real gut punch. In my previous call, we only had communion every other week, but if this text happened to fall on a week we didn’t have communion, I insisted we break the pattern and have it anyway – how can you hear this story and then not have communion? It’s where Christ is made known to us, in the breaking of bread!

         Ah, well, those were different times, huh? But as has happened so many times during this pandemic, the different circumstances and the lack of so much of what is familiar has required that we not try to fit whatever shaped peg this is into a round hole, but rather, change the way we look at things entirely. And in doing that, I have consistently found, well, new life. New insights. Different perspectives and deeper understanding. And this story is no different. So here are some important things I notice in this story, that I think can be useful to us in this time.

         First, that Jesus invites them to voice their sadness, to tell their story. I talked a bit about this in my Facebook Live post on Wednesday, so I won’t elaborate much on this one, but just to say this: there is healing to be found in telling our story of pain. Doesn’t it seem strange that Jesus asks them what they’re talking about, and when they mention “these things” that happened – happened to Jesus, the guy they are (unknowingly) talking to! – Jesus doesn’t just jump in and say, “Oh, dude, no worries! It’s me! I’m here, and I’m alive! Forget about it!” Instead, he invites them to go ahead and tell the story he already knows all too well: “What things?” he says. Because he knows the importance of voicing your pain, your fear, your unmet hopes, your grief, your loss. “But we had hoped he was the one,” they say. And Jesus doesn’t stop them from telling it – instead, he meets them, and walks with them, in that pain.

         The next thing I notice anew this time around, is how long the disciples walk and talk to this guy, Jesus himself, without recognizing that it is him. Oh man, do I resonate with this one! How many God sightings do I completely miss on any given day, in any given hour! Maybe it is because I am looking at my phone, or tending to my kids. Or maybe it is like with these two disciples, that I miss it because I just have too much on my mind. I’m preoccupied with my grief, or my anxiety, or my uncertainty about the future, and I miss that Jesus is walking right beside me the whole time.

         A part of my bedtime routine with my kids is to do FAITH5 – you may remember this from Lent last year. FAITH5 is a short devotion you can do with your family or a friend, where you first share highs and lows from your day, then read something from the Bible, then talk about how that scripture speaks to your highs and lows, then pray for each other (thanking God for the highs and asking God’s presence in the lows), and then bless each other. I sheepishly admit that normally, we skip the Bible part of this. Our bedtime routine has gotten so long, something had to go. Well this week, I put it back in, deciding that all week we would focus on that verse from last week’s Gospel about Jesus saying, “Peace be with you” to the fearful disciples, three times. So each night, I asked them, “How do Jesus’ words, ‘Peace be with you,’ speak to your highs and lows?” I’ve been amazed how my 3 and 4yo seemed to grasp this. They seemed to really get how Jesus might have been right with them in their lows, how they needed some Jesus peace during that frustrating episode in their day. Sure enough, through this simple exercise, those moment when we were intentionally aware and looking, we all saw clearly in hindsight how Jesus was walking right beside us in the highs and the lows of our day.

And that, finally, leads me to the last thing I notice: that although yes, Christ is finally made known to them in the breaking of bread, the disciples immediately recognize that this is not, actually, the first time they realized it was Jesus. They just hadn’t been equipped to name it that way before. Now in hindsight they recognize, “Wait, were not our hearts burning within us… while he was opening the scriptures to us?” It is so easy for us (it is for me, anyway) to grieve that we cannot take communion right now as we worship virtually, and that even when we come back together, communion can only be administered and received with an abundance of caution. I’m tempted to get stuck there, on the part of the journey where I do not notice Jesus right beside me. But the disciples’ realization at that moment of bread-breaking is to our benefit: “Were not our hearts burning within us, did we not know something amazing was happening, as we found ourselves immersed in the holy Word?”

And is this not the case also for us?

         You see, communion is not the only means of grace, not the only way by which Christ becomes present and known to us. Christ becomes known to us in baptism, for which we gave thanks this morning, and will do each week throughout the Easter season. Christ becomes known to us in our study of scripture, when we read it and look for the ways it speaks to us in our highs and our lows each day, when we notice that it may even speak to us differently today from yesterday from tomorrow, depending on how, exactly, we need God to be present for us at any given moment. And you know, Christ is, still, revealed to us in the breaking of bread – any bread, not just the communion bread. As my family prays at mealtimes, “Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest.” Come to our table every day, for every meal, not just in the one holy meal. Give us daily bread, indeed be our daily bread every day, providing us with just exactly what we need for sustenance, from one fuzzy, nondescript day to the next. Be revealed to us in the breaking of bread.

         I dearly look forward, my friends, to the time when we will share in that holy meal once again. Until that time, I pray that Christ will be made known to you in the abundance of ways that God can and does: in water, in word, in whatever community you can find, in daily bread. Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest, and let all these gifts to us be blest.

         Let us pray… Christ on the roadway, you walk with us in our grief and loss, in our highs and our lows. Open our eyes to see you. Open our hearts to know you. Open our ears to hear your words of grace, so that we would know we are never without you. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Easter Sermon: With fear and great joy (April 12, 2020)

Easter Sunday (A)

April 12, 2020

Matthew 28:1-10

(COVID-19, online worship)

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

My kids are at the stage of emotional development where we are trying to teach them that it is possible to have more than one emotion at the same time. A frequent one for my 3 and 4yo is, “Sad and a little bit mad.” A couple of common ones for me are, “excited and scared,” and, especially when something beloved but difficult has just ended, “sad and relieved.” Emotions are so complicated, right?

Well today we are faced, both in the Easter story and in our own current story, with an emotional pairing that is not so familiar, at least not to me: “fear and great joy.” This is what the women felt after seeing an angel arrive at the tomb like a flash of lightening, and being told that Jesus was not, in fact, dead, but risen! “With fear and great joy” they race to tell the disciples the news.

I feel this dual-emotion this Easter. It is always a great joy to celebrate the resurrection – the incredible story, the great hymns… it’s my favorite day of the year! Yet this joy is bittersweet this year by the reality that even as we sing, “Christ has triumphed! Alleluia!” …we are still looking so much death and fear right in the face. This Easter is definitely one that we experience “with fear and great joy.”

But in this, I find it really helpful to recognize that while this Easter is different from any we have experienced before… it is not that different from the very first Easter morning. While we may be used to packed churches, brass and flowers, the first Easter had only a couple of women, an angel and Jesus. While we are used to joy and celebration, that first Easter had so much fear that two Roman guards passed out, and both the angel and Jesus himself had to assure the women with the words: “do not be afraid.” While we are used to carrying out our various Easter traditions – brunch, egg hunts, ham, whatever it is – the women who went to carry out their usual burial custom were faced with the disruption to end all disruptions: an angel zipping down from heaven like lightning wearing clothes like the sun, an earthquake, and the utterly unexpected empty tomb. Small gatherings, fear, and disruption – that is what the first Easter was like!

This year, I’ve been especially drawn to that last one, that earthquake. This is not the first earthquake we have seen in this story – if you tuned in last week, you may remember that there was also an earthquake when Jesus died, one that Matthew tells us caused the earth to shake and the rocks to be split. It would seem that Matthew is really hitting home the point here that new life does not and cannot come about without some serious, earth-shaking disruption. I’m sure neither of those quakes was a pleasant nor satisfying experience (earthquakes never are), but then again, bringing about new life is also seldom a pleasant or peaceful experience. In fact, when I think back on the moments of my life which, in retrospect, are the ones that marked a turning point toward something new and important, they often correspond with some of the biggest and least welcome disruptions in my life. Things I would never wish on myself or anyone, but which in the end set me on the right path (or at least took me off the wrong path!). Those disruptions set me heading toward new life.

Maybe you have seen the movie Fight Club. It’s a difficult movie to watch, but the themes are quite fascinating. In it, a group of men rediscover the spark of life by engaging in consensual fistfights with each other, and through this, they find a new way to live. As the main character explains, “Only after disaster can we be resurrected.” Only after disaster can we be resurrected. I suspect the women at the tomb that morning might find some truth in that! And so do we: I think we often find it difficult to change our ways until we have been faced with the worst case scenario beginning to come true. Only after disaster can we be resurrected.

Disaster. Whether the brutal death of a friend and teacher, or an earthquake, or a global pandemic, disaster has the potential to serve as a great reset. That is the great gift of disruption: it forces us out of our rut, out of our usual way of doing things, and causes us to re-examine where we are and where we are going. There are many ways this may happen on a national or global level in the coming months and years, but I’m thinking more personally and maybe even more immediately. I have heard from several people in the past weeks about how their priorities have shifted during this time, generally for the better. Many report having been pushed closer to God, which is a great side effect. Many have realized how detrimental our frantic pace and our always striving for perfection is during a time like this. I hear this especially from parents. It has always been an impossible ideal that one can be a perfect parent and a perfect worker simultaneously. But add homeschooling your children and managing both their and your big emotions, and all without the ability to rely upon your village of support, and this fact becomes utterly clear in a big hurry! Standards have lowered, both as we take stock of what is most important or needful in any given moment, and as we recognize the importance of offering grace to one another. I have been abundantly aware of how much grace I need from people right now, and so I am eager to offer the same to others when I can. I was telling someone this week that my greatest accomplishment this Holy Week was recognizing when it is time to say, “Good enough!” and let grace take over. We are all doing the best we can, and that is enough!

I believe these realizations (as well as others that you have made for yourself) are fruits of new life pushing out of the dark dirt and into the morning light. And this quarantine may end up being long enough that some of these life-giving realizations might actually stick. To be clear, I do not believe God brought about this pandemic, but I do believe God is using it to show us a different way. God has a history, after all, of going to extraordinary lengths to get our attention and set us back on the right track. If the death and resurrection of his own Son wasn’t enough, add a couple of earthquakes to literally shake people into recognizing, “Hey, I’m doing a thing here! Pay attention!” I know that I need a shake like that sometimes, to get me to look around and see what God is doing. I need to be knocked off my feet before I recognize the possibility of new life in a different direction.

With all this mind, I have wondered if we might be in the Easter earthquake stage of this pandemic, the part that is still dark and fearful, that is shaking our foundations, that maybe is even knocking us off our feet… but also the part that is what moves the stone away from the tomb to reveal that it is empty, that death does not get the final word. The part that shows, as unexpected and even terrifying as it is, where new life is possible – even, is already happening. The part that can fill us with fear, yes, but also, ultimately, with great joy.

“Do not be afraid,” the angel says to the women. And while this may seem impossible at times, these four words are also the best news of all, because they offer us the promise that comes with the shock of the resurrection. When the angel says these words, and when Jesus says the same words a bit later, it is not to assure us that nothing will ever go wrong. We know from experience that things do frequently go wrong. We are experiencing a huge communal disruption right now, even as the earth-shaking things that are unique to our individual experience haven’t stopped: injuries and illnesses, pains in our bodies and hearts, loss and grief, broken relationships, all the burdens we were already carrying. So no, those words don’t shield us from trouble. “Do not be afraid” does not mean that everything is going to work out for the best, because while we may like to tell ourselves that, we know that it isn’t always the case, and in fact, it often isn’t.

         No, when we hear those words, “Do not be afraid,” it is an assurance that what earthquakes we may endure, whatever ways our lives may get turned upside down, whatever gutters we may find ourselves in, God has the power to hold us and strengthen us through it, and to use it to point us toward new life. Furthermore, those words tell us that whatever we may have to face, we need not face it alone, and that no earthquake, no matter how strong, is stronger than God’s love for us. 

         At the end of the day – or in the case of the resurrection story, at the beginning of the new day, just before dawn – God gets the last word. God’s love wins. God’s love and power turn our earthquakes and our despair and our devastation into an opening of a tomb, into hope, into the possibility for growth and newness and new life. Sometimes it is an earthquake that we need in order truly to see and experience resurrection.

Let us pray… Resurrected God, you bring life out of death, possibility out of disruption, and resurrection out of disaster. Do that again for us this Easter, Lord, and every day after. Shake us out of death, and set us on the way toward life. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Maundy Thursday Sermon 2020

Maundy Thursday

April 9, 2020

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

I have loved Maundy Thursday – and all of Holy Week, for that matter – since before I can remember. A story my parents love to tell is when I was about four or five years old, and I was coming out of our Maundy Thursday service. The church was dark and bare, as we’d just witnessed the stripping of the altar, while my mom’s beautiful mezzo voice chanted Psalm 22 into the darkness. As the story goes, I looked up at my dad with very big eyes and said, “Pastor, that was incredible!”

Four-year-old Johanna was right. The Maundy Thursday service is incredible. There is so much going on, in the lessons and the actions. The powerful recollection of the Passover; the intimacy of that first Eucharist as Jesus celebrates the Last Supper with his disciples; the shocking humility of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet; and finally the desolation expressed by the stripping of the altar. It is incredible.

All of that makes this year’s Maundy Thursday so very painful for me, and for many of us, this year. I think of the line from Psalm 137: “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” How can we remember and celebrate these events that are all about community, and touching one another and being with one another – when these things are all so hard to come by, if not outright forbidden, right now? No Eucharist, no washing each other’s feet, no gathering for a meal.

So I have had to spend some time reframing this for myself. (That’s a good word for this time, isn’t it - reframe? We’re doing a lot of reframing these days!) It helps a bit to think about how our experience of this night echoes that of the disciples. Consider what it was like for them. I suspect the air was thick with fear for the disciples, as the authorities ramped up their conspiracy against Jesus. He was a hunted man at this point, and they all knew it! Not to mention they are country folk in the big city, which is itself disorienting, confusing, and fearful – being in a place where they don’t know the way around and very few speak their language. And now, in addition to all this disorientation and fear, the disciples are hunkered down, locked in a room together.

In the midst of all this, they gather together to share a meal: these twelve friends and their teacher, perhaps others—gathering to share a meal as they have done many times before. It is a note of familiarity, an anchor, in a world that seems to be spinning out of control.

But then to this moment of familiarity and comfort, Jesus brings a twist: he gets up from the table, takes off his outer robe, ties a towel around himself, pours water into a basin, and begins to wash the disciples’ feet. Though Jesus acts calmly and deliberately, this had to have thrown them for a loop. Though it was common to be given water for washing your feet when you entered a house, people usually washed their own feet; maybe, if your host was wealthy enough to have servants, one of them would do it for you. But even that was when you first came in, not in the middle of dinner. Furthermore, that was the unpleasant task of a servant, not your host, and certainly not your Teacher, your Master, your Lord.

So they did not expect it. It shakes them out of their own thoughts. We see that in Peter’s response – “you’ll never wash my feet!” I’m sure I would have said the same! Suddenly here is Jesus, kneeling before each of them, serving them, demonstrating his love for them, showing them that real love means even this level of humility.

And now here we are, hunkered down, afraid to go out. Like the disciples, we are in an unfamiliar place, a foreign land, a city with frightening noises and shadows and unseen dangers. We cannot understand the voices around us—not because they speak a different language, but because we seem to hear so much contradictory information, or rapidly changing advice. Some of us are completely alone. Some of us are with those we love, but with the constant close quarters, tensions are running high. Some of us long to be with loved ones who do not live in our homes, but we can’t, and it is breaking our hearts. All of us are lost in thoughts we never thought we’d have to think.

And in the midst of this, Jesus does something surprising. He calmly, deliberately, takes a basin of water and begins to wash our feet. For us this night, in this time, that can be only a metaphor. But for us hunkered down ones, for us who feel lost in a strange place, it is our souls that are dusty and tired, our spirits that are weary from what already seems like too long a journey. And that is what Jesus washes: our spirits, our souls. It is unexpected, but it is real. Later in this service, you will be invited to wash your hands in the bowl of water I hope you set up before watching. You may think, “Great, wash my hands again… just what I need!” But this time, let it not be for germs. During that time (or maybe every time you wash your hands for the rest of this Holy Week), don’t count to 20. Instead, picture those waters as Jesus deliberately and calmly washing and refreshing your very soul.

That calmness of his action is especially important for us right now. The world outside is in turmoil, but even if we shield ourselves from that, the chaos still invades our hearts and our lives daily, and we know we are not immune. But in the midst of it: Jesus is calm. I wonder if the disciples thought back to when Jesus calmed the storm on the sea? I wonder if his deliberate and gentle demeanor now stilled the storm in their hearts, their roiling fears about what was to come?

And then there are his words! I bet the disciples were relieved when he said, “You do not know now what I am doing.” Uh, yep, you got that right! But his explanation is plenty clear: “If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet… I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.” The words, together with the gesture, say all we need to know about what Christ-like love is about: it is humility and service.

And so it is for us, my friends. The love of Christ, the love that washes over our weary souls, is shown in humility and service. That is always the case. There was a best-selling book published back in the 80s, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera. I haven’t read it, nor do I even what it’s about, but it’s sure a compelling title: Love in the Time of Cholera. What is love in the time of Covid-19? Well, it is just what love always is, for the disciples of Jesus. It is humility and service: humility, in that we cannot know what the Lord is doing or what it means for us; service, in that caring for one another is still our mandate.

That love will look different for each of us. It might be making masks for the hospital, or for your friends and family to wear to the grocery store. Perhaps it means, if you are able, helping out at Loop Ministry, or at least donating food, or any number of other ministries still striving to get people what they need in this time of increased need and reduced resources. It might mean checking on a neighbor, asking if they’d like to add anything to your Instacart order, or calling someone whom you know is alone or frightened. Certainly, for all of us, it means praying, lots of praying for all manner of people in the midst of this crisis. But in all these things, it means turning your eyes away from your own fears and concerns; it means looking toward Christ, who so calmly washes our feet and our spirits and our hearts; and it means looking toward others whom Christ loves (and that’s everyone), serving them, loving them, as best we can. It is being mindful, but not fearful. That is Christ’s commandment, and it is Christ’s promise.

Yes, it is an incredible night, this Maundy Thursday, unlike any other. It is in some way this year a desolate night as we sit alone, the altars of our normal existence stripped until there seems to be nothing left. But though we cannot be together, though we cannot wash one another’s feet, though we cannot gather at the table to receive the gracious gift of his body and blood, still he is with us even in our desolation. Still he brings that sense of calm and peace. Still he loves us, loves us to the end. Still he teaches us to love one another, as he has loved us. And for us right now, that is enough.

Let us pray… Gracious and loving God, just as you were with your disciples on that fearful night, be with us in our own fears, uncertainties, and desolation. Cleanse our hearts and our souls, washing the dust from them. And make us ready to love and to serve one another, however we are able, just as you have commanded. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

What I have in a time of pandemic

A saw this post on Facebook: “I didn’t intend to give up quite so much for Lent this year.”

Yeah. I admit I hadn’t planned to really give up anything this year, except that I was going to do some decluttering to engage in our Lenten simplicity theme, and I had a devotional I was planning to read. And then God said, “Nah, step aside. I’ll show you what I want you to give up.” And there it was:

·      Gathering in the flesh. Obviously. For me, gathering in the flesh is an essential part of my work, whether it is a one-on-one visit to a homebound member, or gathering for corporate worship, or using my body to hand Christ’s body to another body – all of it is essential in my understanding of this inherently incarnational faith, and the God I proclaim. Can I limp along without for a while? Sure. But it is not sustainable.

·      My village, at least as I knew it. No daycare or preschool, no babysitters, no physical shoulders to cry on, no choir rehearsal (a time that has served as my emotional and spiritual release). As much as I know people want to help (and have, by bringing food and checking in), I want to keep the circle of exposure small, and so can’t even take care of my basic needs without my kids tagging along. (Here’s to peeing with audience!)

·      Time with my husband. He’s been deployed to help with this crisis, which is at once awesome, and horrible. I adore my kids, but an adult to talk to would sure be nice, not to mention that stuff before about not having a village. “Military spouses always show up for each other,” they say, but oh wait… not this time.

·      A general sense of safety and security. Yeah, that’s a big one. Everything I touch makes me feel dirty and worried, every person I pass I look at with some skepticism (“could you be carrying the dreaded virus?”).

·      Time off. Lent is always a crazy time for pastors, but this is a different level. In addition to all the extra services I’m planning, I’m also figuring out a completely different way to do my job (so there is very little I can fall back on from previous years’ work), trying to care for people with a uniquely heightened need for hope and comfort, and doing all this while my children are in some cases literally crawling all over me. From 6:45am to 7:30pm, I am Mommy, and from 7:30-11:30pm I am trying to do all the pastor things. Who is catching up on house projects, binging Netflix, reading that stack of books?? Not this lady!

All of this, I notice, I have framed from a place of scarcity. I have been forced to give these things up. I am lacking these things. I do not have. But that’s not what fasting is about, whether a Lenten fast or any other kind of fast. The purpose of a fast is to drive us to God, even to see God more clearly. Here is a line from my own sermon, which I preached March 1^st of this year, before most of us had any idea that this is what we would be facing one month later: “One of the traditional disciplines of Lent is to fast, to remove whatever comes between us and God, so that we would stop relying on that, and instead learn to rely on and trust in God’s proven providence.”

Whoa, Nelly. Could this time, instead of being about what we don’t have, be about what we do? Just three weeks later, our 2^nd Sunday worshiping online, the Psalm was the beloved 23^rd: “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.” I shall not want, you say? Ok, message received. So then, what is it that our forced Lenten fasts (which will take us well into Easter as well) are giving to us?  

·      Deeper trust. We all want a silver lining in times like this, and while I’m hesitant to pose one, I do truly trust that God is using this somehow. This is a refrain that was oft-repeated by my grandmother, but never has it felt quite so big and important. When my heart starts down the path to anxiety, the possibility that God is using this evil for some ultimate good points me back in the direction of trust.

·      Gratitude. In the most difficult times of my life, gratitude has been my lifeline, and this experience is no exception. In the early days of #stayhome, when my husband was anticipating deployment and right after he left, I was a wreck. I remember saying, “I’m a resilient person, I’m strong, I’ve been thought a lot of crap, but I do not think I can do this.” Thinking back to how I’d gotten through other difficult times, I knew I would need to start a gratitude practice. The worse the day, the more things I force myself to be grateful for. I try not to repeat (I’m grateful for technology these days, like most people, but I can only use that once!), which forces me to think more deeply about gratitude and thus internalize it more. It didn’t take long before, by God, I knew I’d be okay after all.

·      Perspective. A major disruption always serves as a sort of “reset.” When I think of resetting something, I feel anxious. What if I lose something important? What if I never recover it? What if I don’t ever get back to normal? But author Dave Hollis said it well: “Before we rush to return to normal, use this time to consider what parts of normal are worth rushing back to.” This is a real gift of fasting: without our regular patterns and habits to fall back on, we start to realize what of those patterns and habits were giving us life, and which were dragging us down (even if we perhaps thought they were neutral, at worst, or even providing us with something useful). There are many things I would never think to give up on my own, but now in their forced absence from my life, I am discovering what I am antsy to get back (and given space to reflect upon why I’m so antsy), and what of those things I don’t really miss, or at least needed a break from.

The five things I mentioned above that I lack are not bad things, not one of them. My faith is incarnational and the day I can look in people’s eyes and place the Body of Christ in their hand again will be a joyful day indeed. Though I love spending time with my incredible children and am cherishing this front row seat to their daily development, I will be so glad to expand their circle of love once again to include the many, many people in this world who rejoice in being a part of their life and mine. The couple of days Michael had off last weekend, when we could just be together and make dumb jokes and bounce things around without devices as the intermediary were a true gift. Encountering the world with joy and trust once again will be a relief, and Lord knows I could use a real day off! (Here’s looking at you, Easter Monday!)

But until then, I will try, during this involuntary fast, to look for the ways in which I have, rather than dwell on the ways in which I want.

Sermon: We need a suffering God. (April 5, 2020)

Palm/Passion Sunday

April 5, 2020

Matthew’s Passion

INTRODUCTION

         Palm Sunday, or Passion Sunday, or Palm/Passion Sunday, offers us this ironic juxtaposition, where we start the service smiling and celebrating and shouting, “Hosanna!” and then our smiles quickly fade as we hear the story of Jesus’ suffering and death. To ease us into that shift, we’ll hear first from Isaiah about the suffering servant, and then from Philippians, the famous Christ Hymn, which describes the simultaneously humble and exalted position of Jesus. That pretty much sums up the story of Palm Sunday, doesn’t it? Jesus is simultaneously exalted and celebrated, and then quickly humbled, even to death on a cross.

         I don’t normally preach on Palm Sunday, or Good Friday, but rather just let these rich texts speak for themselves. But this year, it felt right to preach on it. Because I think we all really need the Passion of Christ. We need to know that God knows our pain. We need to hear about the extent of God’s love. We need a suffering savior. And Jesus delivers. So, let’s hold onto that as we hear these texts today. Let’s listen.

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

         Writer and preacher Debie Thomas tells about when her daughter was in middle school, and was battling anorexia. During the worst of the illness, she was hospitalized for both physical and mental treatment, and the doctors would not allow her mother to see her depressed, malnourished child for several days. Thomas writes, “I walked out of the hospital, got into my car, and started driving without aim or purpose. I ended up in the parking lot of a Catholic gift shop I’d never seen before. Shaking, I walked in and wandered the aisles until a woman with a kind face approached me. ‘Can I help you find anything?’ she asked. I burst into tears and said nothing. She gave me a hug and said, ‘Wait here.’ After disappearing for a minute, she returned with a small, velvet box. Inside was a tiny silver crucifix on a chain. Pressing the necklace into my hands, she said, ‘Hold this. Keep it with you. Only a suffering God can help.’” Thomas goes on, “I’ve never forgotten that line (which I later learned was Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s), and I’ve been thinking about it pretty much nonstop since the coronavirus pandemic began. Only a suffering God can help.”[1]

         I have been thinking since this all this began that I really need some Easter, the assurance of new life. Of course, that conviction started when I thought we might actually be back together for Easter, or shortly thereafter. But still, even as the news and mandates changed, I kept hoping for some clear vision of new life, some clear sign beyond my inner conviction that God has got this under control. I wanted something external to assure me. Preaching about all this during Lent is one thing – Lent is a time to fast and to reflect and to pray. But I have longed to get to the Easter part of this story, to the part where we look back on this and think, “Boy, that was rough. So glad God (already) came through again!”

         But now we know we will not, on Easter, be able to gorge ourselves on metaphoric chocolate to mark the end of our coronavirus-induced fasting from social contact. We will not, on Easter, be able to look back at how bad things were, back on Good Friday – indeed, we’re still looking forward at the worst, for the peak of this monster is still ahead of us. And while that reality may be really difficult to come to grips with, this line, “Only a suffering God can help,” can really put things into new and valuable perspective for us. Because even as we will celebrate resurrection next week on Easter, we do still need that suffering God, and the story of his passion. More this year than any other Easter in my memory, we need to hear about how God suffered, just like we do.

Maybe we, just like the 1^st century Israelites, were hoping for a super-powerful, invincible hero as our savior, someone with sword and shield, washboard abs and chiseled features, someone who can swoop in and defeat the enemy with power and strength and make everything suddenly better!

But Jesus is not this kind of savior – and that’s a good thing. Jesus saves, not by making the bad go away, but by joining us in it. The way Matthew tells it, Jesus suffers all the way through this story. On Good Friday later this week, when we hear John’s Passion, we’ll see a different Jesus, one who is in control of the situation and knows he is fulfilling his purpose. His last words from the cross will be a triumphant, “It is finished!” But in Matthew, his last words are an anguished, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” In Matthew, Jesus throws himself on the ground in the garden, and pleads for his life. Later, he is too weak to carry his own cross. Though Jesus certainly suffers in John’s version, in Matthew we really see on clear display our suffering savior. We see a God who loves us so much that he went to great length to be right there with us in our suffering – our longing, our pain, our loss, our fear, our sadness, our disappointment, our uncertainty, our despair. Remember back at the beginning of Matthew, the name given to Jesus in the Christmas story? Emmanuel. God-with-us. And in the Passion story, we see the extent to which this is true: God is so Emmanuel, that he becomes a suffering God, with us and for us.

Debie Thomas ends her reflection this way: “I’ll be honest: like many of you, I come to this Holy Week tired, uncertain, and afraid. Who knows how many deaths lie waiting around the corner? How many sorrows, disappointments, farewells, and jagged endings we will face before resurrection comes home to stay? I can’t imagine most of it, and sometimes I can’t bear any of it. But Jesus can. If anything in the Christian story is true, then this must be true as well: our suffering God will not leave us alone. There is no death we will die, small or big, literal or figurative, that Jesus will not hold in his crucified arms.”

And so, my friends, we enter Holy Week, and the story of Jesus’ own suffering. We enter this story knowing that our suffering God is right there with us – in the story of Jesus, in the story of pandemic, in whatever story of pain and fear and suffering you might be living through right now. We enter this story knowing the ultimate ending, in which God does bring about new life. We enter this story knowing that we do not enter it alone, and never will be left alone, because our God is indeed, Emmanuel – in death, and in life.

Let us pray… Suffering God, you know how it is to be in pain. You know what it is to cry out in anguish and uncertainty. You know us, Lord. Thank you. Thank you for your passion, for your presence, and for your life. Make us ever aware that even in this, you are Emmanuel, God with us, and for us. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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[1] Journey With Jesus blog, current essay.