Resurrection Now

 Welcome to all families visiting from out of town and to all guests!

When I look out at you sitting there in the pews today,

         I don’t know all your stories, all your history,

but I do know that you have chosen to be here today,

         and that lets me know first of all that this has importance for you.

No matter how each of you may be feeling at the moment

         that either encouraged you to be here or did not deter you from coming,

                  you are here.

This I do know:  that you are each uniquely created beings

         who are so valued by your Creator, so loved, so deeply known 

                  that despite whatever we may have ever said or done,

                           grace has touched our lives.

You are love,                    and I respect that and I thank God for you.

 

So at the time for Communion please don’t hesitate to join with us                                                                         in the receiving the bread and the wine.

         Wherever you are in your journey of faith, you are welcome at this table.

 

Today, Easter Sunday, we celebrate the Feast of the Resurrection

         and not just for today, but for the Great 50 Days of the Easter Season.

 

Christians are sometimes referred to as the Resurrection People.

         The emphasis is on Resurrection.

So liturgically in how we worship, we need 50 days of Easter

         - and notice that this is longer than 40 days of Lent. 

 

We need 50 days to celebrate and practice living in Resurrection Life

                  to foster being open to realization of Resurrection

                           as a present reality and potency of life

                                                               right here and now

 

But notice, this Resurrection is not just about one person raised from the dead,

         but ALL of us given the opportunity to experience Resurrection Life NOW,

                  even before we die.

 

Resurrection Life is realized life, 

         a quality of life revealed to us in the present moment

                  when we recognize the Holy One  present with us,

                  when we experience joy and wonder in Creation around us,

                  when we know that our love for others 

                                    is taking us beyond ourselves, outside of ourselves.

 

These are Easter moments

At these times, which we may consider “special”

         we are tasting the Eternal quality of Life,

                  that part of life that has a timelessness about it,

                           a fullness about it.

 

Take a moment right now to search your memory, something recent, 

                  or something farther in the past,

         those moments when what I am describing was something you tasted.

 

Maybe that is what you long for right now.

You might recognize 

         that our longings come out of what we have previously experienced.

When you recognize that this is so,

         then you have proof that you have tasted this Eternal quality Life.

You have tasted something of the Resurrection.

 

But let’s take a pause here to see how the great Spiritual Truth of Resurrection

         was initially experienced.

In the Resurrection story we just heard read

         the women come to the tomb seeking the corpse

                  to do it service and honor as respects the dead.

In that dark cave of a tomb as they fumble around searching for the body,

         instead they suddenly encounter right beside them 

                  two men in dazzling clothes that flood the tomb with light.

That’s enough to make you jump right out of your skin!

But it’s the question they ask which is the most important:

         “Why do you look for the living among the dead?”

 

Let me share a quotation with you from the late Bill Ellis,

         who had been dean at St. John’s Cathedral here in Spokane.

He wrote this to address that provocative question the two in the tomb had posed.

 

Our catechism tells us that 

         “By his resurrection Jesus overcame death 

         and opened for us the way of eternal life.” 

Were we to content ourselves with [this]…, 

         we would draw the reasonable conclusion 

                  that the resurrection of Jesus is not particularly relevant to us 

                           while we are alive on this earth; 

         it becomes important only when we die …

And thus, as far as our present existence is concerned, 

         the resurrection is like an exit from a very large building.  

It is nice to know it is there, but we won’t need it until we are ready to leave.

 

[end of quote]  This is helpful for all of us, 

      as we deal with our own mortality and of those we love, 

                  but it is not enough.  

 

A religion that deals only with what happens after we die 

         is a religion for the dead, not the living. 

What difference does the Resurrection make to us right here and now?

 

For all of us, from the least of us to the greatest theologians,

         our understanding of the resurrection 

                  is much too small, too limited, vastly incomplete.

Resurrection is far more than life after death,

         far more than an idea about heaven.

 

We say in the creed we believe in the resurrection of the body.

         But what sort of body is this?

The women in the Gospel story for today come to the tomb,

         and even before the stone is rolled away, the body is gone.

That’s some sort of body! a body that can dematerialize,

         and then rematerialize in a room where the way in by the door is barred.

 

Yet it is a body that can be touched, 

         a body that can take in food, eat and swallow,

                  not like Marley’s ghost whom Scrooge could look through

                  and see the waistcoat buttons on the other side.

What kind of body is this?

The bodies we are familiar with die and decompose and return to dust.

 

But resurrection is more than a body, a physical body or a spiritual body.

Resurrection came after the death of Jesus,

         a death into which Jesus has perpetually taken all our sins, 

                                                      all our suffering, all our deaths.

He died our deaths.           He died our deaths for us.

 

Resurrection is the New Creation.

 

With his last breath, the last breath of the One who is the Word of God,

         who spoke all creation into being,

         now in this last breath he takes with him all beings,

                  back into that realm of Uncreated Light,

                  the realm of the undivided waters over which the Spirit was hovering,

                  back into the Source, back to God,

and now he brings to life, lifts up all that the Father had entrusted to him.

 

And so now everything is New Life, new life sustained in the resurrection.

It is all the New Creation, 

         continually and eternally sustained in the resurrection life of Jesus.

 

Now we can begin to see what difference resurrection means to us 

                                    right here and now.

 

We are living in resurrection.

If we had eyes to see this, we would be able to recognize

         the newness of every moment,

         the incredible wonder of life, of breathing, of growing,

         the love which sustains all life new every moment,

                  despite all the strife, contention, warfare, and suffering.

 

We would see the abundance of goodness.

We would see through our attitudes of scarcity.

We would see through our fears for what they are.

 

If we had eyes to see the resurrection

         we would see in each other the image of Jesus the Resurrected One.

 

We would see Jesus in each and every one of us,

                                                      in all living beings.

We would bow down in awe and love before one another.

If our awareness of present resurrection were to expand,

         this would have great implications on what we would do.

 

It could shift our priorities, reorder our attitudes,

         change our emotional reactivity,

         reorient our aims and purpose in life,

         and energize us for participating more fully in life.

It would send us out as agents of resurrection,

                  lights sparked eternally 

                           from that ultimate Paschal candle

                           of Uncreated Light at the Source,

                           the creating Word of God himself,

                           the Resurrection Lord.

 

So that group of devoted women left the tomb

         and reported to the disciples and everyone all that they had seen and heard.

And the disciples’ response was not the joyful response we give when we hear

                  Alleluia! Christ is risen!

not

                  The Lord is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

 

They dismissed the women’s testimony.

         Easter Day was not yet a celebration for them.  They would be in hiding.

Still, Peter, at least, went to check out the report.

         But don’t go looking for the living among the dead.

 

May we not be so slow to believe, to accept the joyful Gospel good news.

 

Alleluia.  Christ is risen…

Walking the Via Dolorosa

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

         on this coming 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:

                  from the first verse of John 18 through to chapter 19, verse 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 to 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 but provocative 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 to set Jesus free but fails.

 

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 making noisse

         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.

 

And 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 for 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.

Humility

Sequence building throughout the week:

         Palm Sunday – entry into Jerusalem

today – Foot Washing

         The Last Supper, institution of the Eucharist, 

         Garden of Gethsemane – watching in prayer

 

Foot washing – from our Lord’s own example 

         of his own humility and self-giving.

But I would like you to notice

that not only does it take humility to bow down before another

                  and wash feet, the lowest part of the body,
                           the part closest to the grime and grit and contamination

                           of the world,

         it also takes humility to expose this part of ourselves to another.

 

We may be embarrassed by how our feet have aged,

         how our feet reveal the wear and tear of life on our bodies:

                  the corns and bunions, the twists in the toes,

                  the thickening of nails, 

                  the lingering odor of shoes made old by work and wear,

         no longer babies’ feet that once were kissed and played with – 

                  “This little piggy went to market…”

 

 

Now the feet describe metaphorically the wear and tear of life in general,

         how in need we are again of that loving touch in our lives

                  where there is the most grit and grime,

                  the most contamination of the world,

         that which, after our initial washing in baptism, we pick up habitually,

                           that needs Another to help us wash off.

 

One could say that letting your feet be washed by another 

         is sort of like going to confession.

 

And the one who kneels at the feet of his friends,

         silently washing their feet,

takes on the role of Jesus.

 

We serve one another as Christ’s Presence.

This foot washing can be a symbolic, sacramental-like action

                  in a very personal and intimate way

         where we are Christ for one another.

 

Two years ago I was again in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Five times I have been to the Holy Land

         (or perhaps we should call it rather the Land of the Holy One

                  for all the centuries of warring there make it unholy.)

Every time I have been in that country I have gone there

                  to the Garden of Gethsemane.

On one visit I had stopped there twice, 

         first when I arrived 

         and again         for one more visit before going home.

There is something about the place that draws me back,

         a prayerful oasis of olive trees in the midst of an intense city.

 

Since childhood I recall various pictures and representations 

         of Jesus praying in the Garden 

         with the exhortation to watch and pray one hour with him,

                  to repeat his prayer with my own lips,

         “Father, not my will, by thine be done.”

Garden – across the lane from the traditional Garden of Gethsemane

         is another olive grove, small, with paths among the trees

                  and with a profusion of wildflowers in the spring .

This place is usually ignored by tour groups,

         but I just happened to be there 

                  when the door was unlocked and a small group had been let in,

so in I slipped too.

This is the place where tradition has it 

         that the disciples were to keep watch 

                                    while Jesus went a little ways off to pray.

This was the site where the disciples slept,

         unable to follow through in heroic effort

                  worthy of their Teacher and Lord 

                  and what he was doing for them.

How human a touch this is inserted in the whole account

         of this central event of our faith.

They can’t even keep watch one hour.

But maybe this tells us of the possibility of something else,

         in the face of the life and death situation,

         in grave danger,

         they were not so afraid that they couldn’t sleep.

They must have been trusting that they were taken care of to some extent

                  by the One who was asking them for their care at that time. 

 

Even if we had been able to sit with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane

         and not fall asleep,

even if we had been able to so focus and concentrate our minds

                  in prayer and meditation

         that attention did not waver,

even if we had been able to keep the law scrupulously,

                                                      we would not have saved our souls.

We would have secured a strong ego.

We would have been able to define ourselves

         as complete and sufficient in our isolated individuality,

we would have become our own separate god.

This is idolatry.

We have replaced God with self.

And even though we aren’t able to be so heroic 

in the observation of our religion,

         we live in a state of hypnosis – 

                  hypnotized by our own sense of successful living,

                  or adequate living even.

We are enthralled by illusion.

Let us no longer treat the cross as something ignored, disregarded, devalued.

This is the one, true, perfect and sufficient sacrifice

         that eliminates the need for all our spiritual and religious striving.

Or strive hard to please God with utmost scrupulosity 

         until you run into a wall and can go no farther.

Hurry to this point of utter frustration and failure, 

         so that you can then be broken into by the Holy Spirit,

         by grace pouring abundantly – 

                  not so that we can break through to grace,

                  but that grace will break into us,

                           into our conscious awareness.

 

Then we can value the Cross in all honesty and without illusion.

 

So let us come to the table prepared for us,

         this banquet of simple bread and wine,

                  which is none other than 

                  that which, if we were to consider what we are doing, 

         would shock the sensibilities – 

                           the very body and blood of the One we worship.

 

Strange things we do tonight,

         actions that link us physically, 

                  as well as emotionally, intellectually and spiritually,

         actions that link us to the Mystery of this whole week, the Holy Week.

You don’t have to understand it.

You don’t even have to like it,

         simply accept the invitation and participate,

and enter the gracious holiness of these actions,

 

and see what happens to you.