Reflections on Holy Week and Easter

Here we are now one whole week into the Great 50 Days of Easter.  This year Holy Week and Easter Sunday were as packed full of liturgies as ever, but even though they required a lot of time and attention and care regarding detail, the whole thing flowed with uncanny grace.  And when we finished up with the last Eucharist on Easter Sunday the clergy and worship leadership at Emmanuel felt filled and joyful.  Now after resting up for a week I am finally posting my preaching from the Triduum and Easter Sunday.  I hope that the two sermons below help to give context and meaning for the Great 50 Days.

Good Friday

I look around and notice that this is not the crowd we will see

            on Sunday morning.

It’s no wonder.

            Who really wants to spend an hour

                                                focused on the crucifixion of our Lord?

The Good Friday liturgy can’t compete with

            the joyous exuberance of the Easter Alleluia celebration.

Yet here you are, drawn here by your faith, your devotion, your hope,

            or because you get the truth about how today

                        is part of a seamless flow of worship began Palm Sunday.

There is an irony today about how on Good Friday

            we read the longest Gospel lesson:

                        John 18:1-40 and 19:1-37

But we don’t have the time or opportunity

to go into an in-depth Bible study

on all the segments of these 2 chapters.

I think that this portion of the Gospels, the 4 Passion Accounts,

            are the least read or studied;

they are the least popular.

If we could see in John’s Gospel

            how Jesus is the One who is empowered, who is acting,

            our attitude might change,

and we might find ourselves dwelling more and more

on this portion of the Gospel,

            reading it with love and devotion,

                                    with joy and wonder and thanksgiving

for its powerful message to encourage us

            and fulfill our hopes and give us deep gladness of heart.

In John’s Passion Account Jesus is the only one in control.

Everyone else exhibits

that they have no control over what is going on,

that there is great failure on their part

to achieve what they want to do.

As we know from the other Passion accounts,

the disciples have no apparent control over their drowsiness;

                        they fail to stay awake.

And then they all run away, fleeing for their lives.

Judas is doomed to play his role as betrayer

            despite whatever his motivation and intentions were.

Those in the band that comes to arrest Jesus at Gethsemane

            are knocked to the ground by the force of the word

spoken by Jesus, his simple statement: “I AM.”

Only when Jesus purposely gives them a second chance

            can they lay hands on him and take him away.

Peter, in spite of his earlier protestations,

            fails in his ability to keep from denying his Lord.

The high priests and Sanhedrin

can’t make a credible case against Jesus.

And they have to revert to political pressure

to get Pilate to cooperate.

Pilate tries but fails to set Jesus free.

And Mary, his mother, must stand by

helplessly watching with the other women as he dies.

Everyone is ineffective.

One of the times I was in the Middle East

I was leading a pilgrimage in the Holy Land,

and when we were in Jerusalem

            we walked the original Stations of the Cross,

                        the Way of the Cross, the Via Dolorosa.

It was not a nice spiritual exercise

            there in the ancient city of Jerusalem,

            in the heart of one of the most volatile places on earth.

Many would probably prefer the setting for such a Good Friday meditation

to be in chapels or cloistered walks

            so as to enhance the meditation.

But this was on the busy streets of the old city of Jerusalem.

It was entirely lined with shops and businesses

            and in some places too narrow for a motor vehicle to pass.

So as we walked along we got close up views of all the commerce

            taking place beside us.

The last 5 stations are in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre,

            a church overlaid with the clutter of centuries

                        and a definite eastern flavor of spirituality about it

                        that can seem quite foreign to our western minds.

And along the way some of the other 9 stations

            have little chapels you can step into off the street.

But most of the time it's pushing your way through the crowds.

Carrying a large cross through the street

            helped give coherence to the group,

            identified us as pilgrims engaged in a religious ritual.

But that was no protection.

The way of the Cross is full of evils and pitfalls and temptations.

In fact, we had not quite begun

            when one of our group became victim to pickpockets.

We had to be assertive about making a pathway through the street.

We had to read the liturgy by shouting over the surrounding noise.

In one place there was construction - jackhammers

            and blowtorches showering sparks around us.

Poor lighting and uneven paving stones plagued us.

And always the shops

            shops which lured our attention away from what we were doing,

            with their materialistic promises.

All antithetical to our task at hand.

There were hawkers pushing postcards in our faces.

There was a professional photographer flashing shots of us

            so that he could come and sell us the photos later.

And one of his pictures caught four of our pilgrims

            following the cross, but all of them looking sideways

                        into a shop that seemed particularly enticing.

So much for our attempts at trying to make this religious ritual

            spiritually efficacious!

Jesus had to face taunts, indifference, cruel looks

as he and his guards pushed their way through the same streets

            2 millennia earlier.

Some people went along with their business of buying and selling

            while the Lamb of God passed by.

How could they be oblivious to what was happening!

How could life go on as usual

            while this execution was taking place!

They have eyes but cannot see,

            ears but cannot hear.

So, that time in Jerusalem there is no perfect way to carry out this ritual

            of the Stations of the Cross.

It's always going to be less than perfect.

So this really is all a picture about us,

our failure,

our helplessness,

our misguided attempts to take matters into our own hands,

and how the results are not what we anticipated or wanted. 

How often has this happened to you?

None of us is able to do what it takes save our own selves,

            let alone the world.

But it is Jesus who acts, who is in control,

who accomplishes all that needed to be done,

right down to the last detail described in the ancient texts

about the Servant, the Lamb of God.

It is he who chooses when his last moment is, when he dies.

He completes all,

and breathes out his breath

and gives up his spirit.

Usually in each sermon there is an exhortation

            - that which we are urged to do in response to the Word of God.

But on Good Friday, today, I give none.

Today we sit and do nothing, no action.

We can’t.

It is impossible.

Nor need we do anything…

…despite our question carried down through 2,000 years of history:

            “What may we do that we may work the works of God?”

                        the question asked of Jesus in the 6^th chapter of John.

The answer is believe, trust, surrender.

            Surrender to Jesus; trust into him.

Today it is Jesus alone who acts, who by dying accomplishes all.

It would be a denial of faith, of our basic trust in Jesus,

to seek to add our own action to what he has done for us.

Even the faith we do have in him is a gift that he has given to us,

            breathing his breath/his Spirit into the disciples

                                                                                    and into us,

            breathing out his last breath

                        to release that breath in us for life.

This death,

which we have such a hard time being with and paying attention to,

            is for the healing of the world,

            is for all those who suffer and struggle

                        and fail or who want to think they succeed.

We are not alone in having a hard time staying present to this death.

In the Garden of Gethsemane the disciples ran away.

Later, however, after the Resurrection and Pentecost

            something very significant changed for them all,

and the rest of their lives they were engaged full out in ministry.

How interesting - the disciples,

            though they all ran away that night of the betrayal,

later they all stayed the course.

Tradition has it that each of them, except John,

            died a martyr's death, and often in horrible torture.

John suffered exile and imprisonment on a desolate island,

            a prolonged torture.

What made the difference for them,

            that turned them from deserters to martyrs?

After Christ's death and resurrection,

            they got it.

They got the message Jesus had been telling them all along.

One death does it all.

One death buys life for all.

One death brings healing and sanity and hope and new life,

            and everything worth giving up your own life for.

I pray that each of us will be able to really get it

            about this death, about this day.

It can be life changing

            if you let it.

Easter Sunday

Alleluia!  Christ is Risen!

The Lord is Risen Indeed!  Alleluia!

I want to welcome all guests and family members and visitors.

           Welcome to the most joyful of all of our feast days to celebrate in church.

We’re glad you are here to join with us in offering our worship

                        and thanksgiving and praise to God.

We hope you all will join us at this altar for communion,

            for sharing the Bread and the Cup,

                        the sacrament of union with Christ,

                        the sacrament which strengthens us for daily following Jesus

                                    in a life of love and service in his Name.

This is the place to be for Easter as the celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus.

Welcome…

The Gospel of John’s account of the Resurrection, just heard,

            is full of subtle details

            that describe very human responses to this event of Resurrection

and that can be very encouraging for each of us

                        as we connect with the words of the Gospel

                        and take in for ourselves the Mystery of the Resurrection.

First and foremost in this Gospel reading is the focus on Mary Magdalene

            and her relationship with Jesus.

Here is a person who deeply loved Jesus,

            who expressed her discipleship to him,

            and her dependence on him that even death could not break,

because, you see,

            even after his death Mary still refers to him as her Lord.

At this point she does not know the Resurrection.

Nevertheless, even though she thinks him dead,

            she still calls him Lord; “They have taken away my Lord, (she says)

                                                            and I do not know where they have laid him.”

Jesus is still her whole life.

Mary Magdalene was the first witness of the Resurrection,

            the one who would then be honored as an Apostle by the Church.

Yet in her tears of sorrow and devotion,

            she does not recognize her Lord until he calls her by name.

Hearing and recognizing the voice of the Good Shepherd,

            we see that she is a sheep of his flock,

                                                            following him in loving trust.

But then when Mary recognizes that it is her Lord

                        there before her and speaking to her, and not the gardener,

            she responds with the title for him most familiar to her

            and she wants to embrace and cling to him and not let go

                                                                                    now that she has him back.

But that’s the problem.

Mary can’t have Jesus back the way she used to know him.

Never again will it be the same relationship

                                                            as before the crucifixion and his death.

That relationship, as wonderful as it was, must go

            and now there is a whole new way of being in relationship

                        with the One who has taken into himself all suffering and death

                                         and who now is Savior,

                        more than Teacher, more than Rabbouni, “my rabbi,”

                                    as Mary used to call him  --  now Savior.

So when Mary goes to embrace him, to grasp hold of him and cling to him,

            Jesus says to her, “Do not hold on to me, do not hold me.”

If he had let her embrace and cling to him at this time,

            it would have been as if to say,

“Yes, all is as it had been,

            back again where we were before this awful death by crucifixion.”

Well, now things are different.

Now there is a new relationship,

            now there is more than relationship with another,

            now there is new identity to be realized,

                        new identity of a fullness of life,

                                    of Resurrection Life opened to Mary and to all of us.

For Mary Magdalene, and for us, from now on

            there will be a new way of being with Jesus,

                        a way that goes beyond the physical limits of his body.

Now we live in him and his Resurrection,

            like branches on the vine.

This is how we understand baptism:

            being united with Jesus in his death and resurrection

            so that now we live in him, in new life, the life of resurrection.

This is what we will be bringing Molly Renee Masterson into when we baptize her.

            She will be a new branch on the vine.

Now we live in him and his Resurrection,

            like branches on the vine.

Now his Spirit lives in us, the Resurrection Jesus present with us

            intimately and immediately

                        when we pause and are silent and can look within the heart.

With the Resurrection

            our understanding of our relationship with Jesus must change.

We can know his presence

                                    but we cannot grasp hold of him.

But he can grasp hold of us.

Have you ever seen an Eastern Orthodox icon of the Resurrection?

Typically in an icon of the Resurrection

            Jesus is depicted as grasping hold of

                        someone who has been lying in the grave,

                        usually identified as Adam and Eve

                                                representing all of us.

In the icon Jesus has a strong hold on top of Adam’s wrist

            and he is pulling him out of the grave,

                                                out of Hades, out of the abode of the dead.

The energy in the lines of these icons is apparent.

Jesus is strong, his grip irresistible, his intention insistent.

He yanks us out of death into life.

It is his action entirely.

Adam is not reaching out to grasp the hand of Jesus.

Adam is not leaping up,

                        he is being pulled up.

It’s unmistakable.  We do not grasp him.  He grasps us.

Follow Jesus and he will yank you out of the bondage and death

            that limits life for us, that keeps us bound in suffering

                                                            and identified with our suffering.

Follow Jesus and he will yank you out of the known and familiar

                        in its tomb-like confinement

            out into a limitless openness, an expansion of life.

Follow Jesus and he will yank you into a whole new relationship

                        of Resurrection Life.

Follow Jesus and discover what he offers you in Resurrection.

                        Alleluia!  Christ is Risen!

                                    The Lord is Risen Indeed.  Alleluia.