A Living Hope

The best news for the Easter season is that God has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  I don’t know about you, but I am always grateful when there is a sense of living hope for all people.  Easter is that living hope and the welcome news of new life for all of God’s creation.

In our reading from the Acts of the Apostles, Peter “raised his voice and addressed the multitude.”  He was excited by the Easter news of Christ’s resurrection.  Peter said, “God raised Jesus up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power.”  And Peter wrote a letter in which he said,  “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!  By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…. Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”

The reality of our lives today is that our world is troubled by violence, international conflicts, and hundreds of deaths from a capsized ferry, a major landslide and a missing airliner.  Tragedy and evil acts are seemingly unending.  In the midst of all the suffering and death Jesus is raised from death and, as we are told, he appeared to his disciples.

The Gospel of John tells us, “Jesus came and stood among the disciples and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side.  Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.  Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’” Then he breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."

Thomas who was not with the disciples at the time of Jesus’ appearance was not convinced.  He wanted proof.  He was one of those people who said, “seeing is believing,” and unless he could see the “mark of the nails in his hands” he would not believe. 

We should remember that Thomas was no different from the other disciples.  The disciples had to see in order to believe in Jesus’ resurrection.  As we heard, “Jesus came and stood among the disciples and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side.”  Only then did the disciples rejoice. 

During the week following his appearance to the disciples Thomas probably anguished over his doubt because of the testimony of his disciple colleagues.  But then Jesus appeared again and this time he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands.  Reach out your hand and put it in my side.  Do not doubt but believe."  Thomas was then convinced and expressed his new-found faith, "My Lord and my God!" Jesus said to him, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."  From this point on the faith of the disciples and of all Christians has relied on the disciples’ experience and testimony.

This story in John’s Gospel concludes by informing us and all who hear and read about the resurrection that “Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples… 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.”

Two things are important in these events of Easter.  First is the written testimony of scripture reflecting what we read this morning in Psalm 16:  “You will show me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy, and in your right hand are pleasures for evermore.”   The second matter of importance is the body of the church, the people who are given “a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”

The Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann comments,  “In the horizon of Easter, it is faith that counters the anxiety of the world, confidence that God’s goodness will give the gifts we need.  It is hope that counters the despair of the world.  The church has confidence that the future -- as bewildering as it is -- is in God's good hands. The walk with the risen Christ is an ongoing process of having our anxiety transformed in faith, and our despair transformed in hope.  While our anxious, despairing world is inevitably self-destructive, the church alternatively lives in buoyant faith and daring hope that issues forth in an emancipated life in the world.”

Good friends, Easter lives on.  Let us all participate in and enjoy a new birth into a living hope for all creation.  Amen.

Recruiting for the Kingdom of God

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!  The Lord is risen indeed.  Alleluia!

“Jesus lives; Jesus is Lord.”  This is the Easter story.  St. Paul wrote in his letter to the Colossians,  “Set you minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth… When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.”

How amazing.  Setting our minds on things that are above is an invitation to wonder, to imagine, and to ponder the mystery of God.  “Set your minds on things that are above,… [and] you shall be revealed with Christ in glory.”

This semester I am teaching a course in philosophy at Rhode Island College.  The course is titled the “Idea of God.”  In this course we begin with a discussion of the dawn of history and look at the many gods of the earliest humans.  Then we trace the development of cultures from hunting to agriculture to technology, and examine the understandings of God from polytheism to monotheism where there in one God.  The God who is One is the God of Abraham, the God of Jews, Christians and Muslims, the God of Creation and of all that is and is to come.

Students are sometimes speechless when we talk about the idea of God.  God is beyond our human knowledge and understanding, beyond what we can imagine.  God is so much more than we can ever know, but what we do know as Christians is that God is revealed in the life, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  It is the heart of our Christian faith, and it is what it means to “set our minds on things that are above.”  It is the story of God’s revelation to us in Christ, and it is our experience as Christians living in this 21^st century.

The New Testament scholar, Marcus Borg tells us, “Jesus lives and Jesus is Lord.”  These statements are “grounded in experience.  Some of Jesus' followers experienced him after his death as a figure of the present, not just of the past. And they experienced him as a divine reality, now ‘one with God’ and ‘at the right hand of God.’”

“Many of these experiences were visions. Paul's experience of the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus, described in Acts, and referred to by Paul in Galatians was clearly a vision.  It happened a few years—three to five—after the death of Jesus.”

“Visions are about ‘seeing,’ as the word implies…. And there was something about these experiences that led to the second meaning of Easter in the gospels and the New Testament.  Not only that Jesus lives, that he is a figure of the present and not just of the past, but that he is "Lord"—a divine reality, one with God and having the qualities of God, at ‘the right hand of God.’"

“The central meaning of Easter is not about whether something happened to the corpse of Jesus.  Its central meanings are that Jesus continues to be known and that he is Lord.  The tomb couldn't hold him.  He's loose in the world.  He's still here.  He's still recruiting for the kingdom of God.”

Our Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori writes in her Easter letter, “The tomb is empty, and nobody knows where the body is.  Mary Magdalene tells the others about the mysterious disappearance, but they give up and go home.  Mary stays behind, weeping, and then fails to recognize the risen one before her.  As the days pass, each resurrected encounter begins in surprise or anonymity – the disciples fishing all night without catching, Jesus cooking breakfast on the beach, the two on their way to Emmaus.  Nobody recognizes him at first sight.”

The risen Body of Christ– what we often call the church… is rising today where it is growing less self-centered and inwardly focused, and living with its heart turned toward the cosmic and eternal, its attention focused intently on loving God and neighbor. … The Body is recognized when the hungry are fed – on the lakeshore with broiled fish, on the road to Emmaus, on street corners and city parks, in food pantries… and, as the Body gathers once again to remember its identity and origin – Christ is risen for the sake of all creation.”

How is the risen Body of Christ affecting your life today?  It is up to us to share the magnificent story of the Resurrection as an Easter people, transformed to heal the sick, feed the hungry, comfort the bereaved, and live in hope for our human future.  So let us on this Easter Day come together as the Church, the living Body of the risen Christ, and set our minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth….  [Because] when Christ who is our life is revealed, then we also will be revealed with him in glory.

Christ is risen, Alleluia!  The Lord is risen indeed.  Alleluia!  Happy Easter!  Amen.

Palm Sunday’s Dual Processions

Today is a day for joyful celebration, a time for a parade about a triumphal entry into the holy city of Jerusalem.  We bless branches of palm and wave them as we march around outside and inside the church hailing Jesus with shouts of Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!  We sing the hymns, “All Glory, Laud and Honor,” and “Ride on, Ride on in Majesty.”  It is a grand event, a glorious day.  But then something happens.  The person we follow and praise is soon arrested, tried as a blasphemer, and executed on a cross of wood.  The story of Palm Sunday is not complete without the account of what happened in the days that followed.

In their book, “The Last Week,” the authors, Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, tell us there were two processions that entered Jerusalem at the beginning of the week of Passover. “One was a peasant procession, the other and imperial procession.”  One was about the kingdom of God and the other was about the power of the Roman Empire to control.

Jesus entered the city from the east.  He “rode a donkey down the Mount of Olives, cheered by his followers.”  They had journeyed from Galilee, about a hundred miles to the north of Jerusalem.  It was the annual pilgrimage that Jews made to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover, recalling the freeing of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt. “Enthusiastic followers and sympathizers spread their cloaks, strewed leafy branches on the road, and shouted ‘Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

“On the opposite side of the city, from the west, Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor… entered Jerusalem at the head of a column of imperial cavalry and soldiers….. The two processions embody the central conflict of the week that let to Jesus’s crucifixion.”

In the early part of the first century Jerusalem was a well-established city of about 40,000 people.  It was one of the most beautiful cities in the Middle East.  The temple had been rebuilt in glorious splendor.  Tourists coming to Jerusalem brought a lot of wealth to the city.  At the time of a major festival like Passover the city grew to about 200,000 people because of the Jewish pilgrimage.  There was laughter and celebration, and there were times when it could get out of control. 

Borg and Crossan ask us to “Imagine the imperial procession’s arrival in the city.  A visual panoply of imperial power; cavalry on horses, foot soldiers, leather armor, helmets, weapons, banners, golden eagles mounted on poles, sun glinting on metal and gold.  Sounds: the marching of feet, the creaking of leather, the clinking of bridles, the beating of drums.  The swirling of dust.  The eyes of silent onlookers, some curious, some awed, some resentful.”

“Pilate’s procession embodied the power, glory, and violence of the empire that ruled the world.  Jesus’s procession embodied an alternative vision, the kingdom of God.”  The contrast between these two processions is central to the story of Jesus and his early Christian followers.  Here are the two contrasting themes: the followers of Jesus into Jerusalem is about hope for the kingdom of God but it leads to death and resurrection. The entrance of Pontius Pilate is about the power and control of the Roman Empire and the necessarily complicit Jewish authorities needing to maintain law and order among an excitable and exuberant population.

The problem presented by Palm Sunday for us as 21^st century Christians is that we are tempted to see the Christian life as moving from one triumphal day to another.  Our tendency is to bounce from Palm Sunday to Easter day.  Jesus rides on a donkey through the gates of Jerusalem and then is resurrected to new life the very next Sunday.  But the real story is that our journey cannot avoid what happens in the week between these events; betrayal, trial, torture, and death.

I invite you to reflect on the events of this week and to make the journey through these days of this holiest of weeks.  As St. Paul wrote to the Philippians, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus [who], being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.”   Amen.

The Spirit is Life and Peace

“To set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.”  There is no better phrase in the New Testament than this from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans about what it means for us during this Lenten season.  Our life in God’s Spirit is about continuing the ministry Christ’s mission of healing and bringing peace to our troubled world.

Our reading this morning from the prophet Ezekiel is about a vision.  He probably had this vision while in captivity in Babylon around the year 598 BCE.  Ezekiel’s vision was followed by an interpretation.

The scene shows the prophet in the desert, an arid place.  The dry bones were lifeless.  Following the Babylonian exile there was no hope for restoring the kingdom of Israel.  But the Lord spoke to Ezekiel and said to him, "Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: “O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.”  Most of us know the old spiritual song about the dry bones:

Ezekiel connected them dry bones,

Ezekiel connected them dry bones,

Ezekiel in the Valley of Dry Bones,

Now hear the word of the Lord.

Then the Lord God said to these bones: “I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.  I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord."

There is a message of hope in hearing the word of the Lord.  God will renew his covenant with Israel, but it will be a spiritual renewal rather than a literal one.  “I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act.”

Life in the Spirit of God is about the work of God throughout our human history.  In our world today, and in the Church through the ministry of all who are baptized,  it is through the Spirit that we are led into a life of justice, peace and compassion for all people. 

The story in the Gospel of John about the raising of Lazarus is a later account of the work of God’s spirit.  Lazarus lived with his family in Bethany.  He was the brother of Martha and Mary.  He was ill so his sisters sent word to Jesus about his friend.  The message said, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.”  When Jesus received this news he said, “This illness does not lead to death, rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”

We can imagine that John in writing about Lazarus saw it as a premonition about Jesus’ own resurrection from the dead.  Fred Craddock, professor of preaching and New Testament at Candler School of Theology, says the primary function of the story about Lazarus is revelation.  “Some truth about the meaning of God’s glory and presence in the world is made known through Jesus’ ministry.  For the stories to function this way, they must be seen to operate on two levels. On one level Jesus heals a cripple, opens the eyes of the blind or raises the dead, but on another level he reveals a truth about life eternal which God makes available in Jesus Christ.”

“What is really going on here is not only a family crisis in Bethany but the crisis of the world, not only the raising of a dead man but the giving of life to the world.  On one level the story is about the death and resurrection of Lazarus, but on another it is about the death and resurrection of Jesus. The sisters want their brother back, to be sure, but Jesus is also acting to give life to the world.. Jesus declares this truth to Martha at the heart of the narrative: "I am the resurrection and the life."

In an article in the current issue of the Christian Century, Stephanie Jaeger writes, the raising of Lazarus “reveals God’s power to overcome death and renew life.  God calls us out of metaphorical tombs in which we are buried: addiction, hopelessness, guilt, depression, loss, pain.  God offers us a new beginning.

“…God also calls us out of the tangible tombs of entrenched poverty, poor education, and limited opportunity.”  In the Lazarus story, “Jesus looked upward and said, ‘Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.’ When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth.  Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’"

When Lazarus emerged from the tomb he was still bound with strips of cloth.  He was alive but he was not completely free.  It took his family and friends to unbind him and to let him go.  The point here is not only God’s power to renew life but it is our power to participate in the unbinding of all people who are oppressed, abused, or in any way victims of discrimination.

Stephanie Jaeger gets to the meaning of this story, “When I hear that God has the power to bring Lazarus back to life, …[and] to breathe life into skeletons in the desert, I know that God has the power to breathe life into our urban deserts.”  We are to “cooperate with God and do our part to unbind our cities and those who live in them from the bonds of poverty.”

To enjoy true life and peace is to set our minds on the Spirit knowing that God’s Spirit “dwells in us.”  It is our Lenten discipline to reflect on this as we come together to read and meditate on God’s holy Word.  Through our worship we grow in the knowledge of God and in the meaning of Christ’s resurrection for us.  It is about new life, restoring and renewing our dry bones by breathing life into our urban deserts.  It is what we do to alleviate poverty, to understand and respect people who are different from ourselves, to build communities of equality and opportunity, and to rejoice in knowing that God resuscitates us through his Spirit in this life and in the eternal life to come.  Amen.