In the Flesh (John 20:19-31)

Sermon as preached at Lambs and Evington UMC  on 4/27/14

Image Courtesy of Vanderbilt Divinity Library 

This morning I want to take some time to talk about Nirvana. No not about the 90’s grunge band, but the belief in an afterlife held by different religions around the world. For Hindus, Nirvana is a is a level of  oneness achieved through following dharma and rising through the caste system with each reincarnation through good karma. The belief is that in Nirvana one becomes united with Brahman, the supreme being, and that a person loses all sense of self and becomes one with Brahman and creation. Buddhists also believe in Nirvana but their view of Nirvana is sometimes a little different. For many Buddhists, Nirvana is an escape, an escape from the evils, the temptations, the corruption of this world.  Nirvana is not even a place of joy or celebration, it is just the escape from the vicious cycle of reincarnation, from the pain and misery of this world.  While this idea of Nirvana may sound strange and foreign to us, while we as Christians reject these beliefs, and rightfully so for they are not part of our doctrine, far too often we as Christians still live as though we believe in Nirvana.  We live as though Heaven is like Nirvana. Sure heaven is more beautiful, and we here of stories of the roads paved with gold and pearly gates, but when push comes to shove many Christians treat heaven just as Buddhists treat Nirvana, as a place to go to escape from this world.

            Now don’t get me wrong, this world can be a harsh and cruel place. With Adam and Eve sin entered into this world, and at times it can feel as though sin is rampant.  We look at wars and genocides overseas and see the mindless killing of human life. We can look at our own country and the injustice all around us, that there are people earning far more money than all of our incomes and savings combined, while there are mothers or fathers working three jobs struggling just to provide a roof over their families head or food for the table. We look at companies like BP or Duke Energy who kill the very Earth our Lord created, and we look at ourselves for demanding cheaper over smarter or safer. There are many things out of our control that also haunt us, tornados, hurricanes, mudslides, heart disease, and cancer.  With all of this pain and turmoil it’s no wonder that we cling to some respite, so peace that we have after this live, and thank God that we have it in Heaven.

            It is after all part of the good news that we hear at this Easter time.  Jesus Christ died and rose again conquering sin and death, not just for himself but for all creation. That the words that we hear in John 3:16. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whomever believes in him shall not die, but have eternal life.” These words ring true.  Through Christ we do have eternal life, through Christ death does not have the victory. That as Paul  says to Timothy as his own death approaches, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. ⁸ From now on there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have longed for his appearing.  As Christians we so often cannot wait to “claim our salvation” to claim that crown reserved for us in heaven,  if we can just hold on in this life, do the right things so that we don’t go to hell, then we can cherish salvation in Heaven.  As Christians, this is what many of us believe, and yet this thinking is wrong, or at least incomplete.

            We often hear the Easter story, we hear about eternal life and salvation and we jump to thinking about the afterlife. We begin to think that salvation simply means getting into heaven. This leads many Christians to view salvation as only pertaining to one’s soul.  Our bodies, creation, none of that really matters as long as our souls are saved.  That theology is troubling enough by itself, but add to it that for many our souls are saved in heaven not here on Earth. This line of thinking makes it seem as though our bodies our useless, in fact our time on Earth is useless, all that matters is what we do to ensure our place in heaven. This dangerous theology is nothing new, but has been around in Christianity almost since the beginning. In Early Christianity there were groups called the Gnostics who rejected the earthly world and embraced the spiritual. [1] Another group called the docetics  believe that Jesus Christ’s appearance from the grave was not actually a bodily resurrection but just some spiritual form that looked real.  While for us this sounds crazy,  if we only believe the resurrection helps to save our soul for Heaven, then why is the bodily resurrection so important? Could the docestics be right?

            Our scripture for today gives a definitive no to that answer. Jesus appears to the disciples, pours out the Holy Spirit upon them, but we know the story, Thomas wasn’t there for the event so he did not believe. He cries, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe."   So often when we read this text is for us an example of unbelief on the part of Thomas. We liken it do our own doubt since we have not seen the marks for ourselves. Rarely though do we recognize the significance of Thomas’s actions.  Easter Sunday we heard of Mary not recognizing Jesus who stood before her, and in our story this morning we hear of Jesus somehow coming through a locked door. These stories could lend some credence to a belief that Jesus was only resurrected in spirit, but then there is Thomas. Thomas puts his finger in the holes in Jesus’s hands and side, Thomas touches the resurrected Jesus, the body of Jesus, not a spirit.

            And so it brings us back to that question why is the bodily resurrection of Jesus important? Why is it important that we know that Thomas touched the wounded body of Christ?  The answer is that Jesus’s bodily resurrection teaches us more about salvation than we may think. If salvation were only about the afterlife, why would Jesus need to come back body and all? The truth is that salvation is about far more than the afterlife, that salvation involves the here and now. Salvation does not just involve our souls either but involves our bodies as well. In fact salvation involves all of creation.  God’s act of mercy and reconciliation through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus was not simply so that our souls may be saved, but rather so that all that the Lord has made may be restored and made new. It is as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5, “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!  or as the voice in John’s  Revelation says, “See, I am making all things new!” Thomas being able to put his finger in the side of the risen body of Christ, reminds us of the magnitude of God’s redemptive love. Dr. Norman Wirzba says it so well in article he wrote for the Duke Divinity School Magazine. He says, “God did not become incarnate in the body of Jesus Christ in order to then condemn bodies and leave them behind. He came to heal, touch, and feed them; and in doing so he leads the whole of creation into redeemed, reconciled, and resurrection life.”

            You see the news of the risen body is truly good news.  It is in fact incredible news far beyond what we could ever imagine. It teaches us that salvation is not just some escape from this world. It teaches us that our goal as Christians is not some Nirvana, our goal is not even Heaven. Our goal as Christians is to be reconciled with God, with each other, and with all creation. Our goal is to be drawn into a perfect relationship with Christ so that we may be restored, so that creation might be restored to a right relationship with God.  But the news is even better than that.  We aren’t just being restored to the wonderful life that existed before the fall of Adam and Eve, before our banishment from Eden and into the sin plagued world we live in now, God is making all things new. This transformation that God is working in the world through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ and now through the power of the Holy Spirit is taking us into time and place even greater than our original paradise on Earth. Why would we want to escape from this wonderful transformation that is taking place?

            You see, Jesus’s bodily resurrection does mean something; it means that the here and now matters. It means that our bodies, the animals, the trees, in fact all creation matters. That a wonderful transformation is taking place right and front of our eyes if we are only willing to see it. What about me you may be asking? What does anything have to do with me since I will probably die before this transformation comes to completion? And yet this transformation is already happening in you. Through grace those of us who have been baptized have already been justified, aligned, turned towards God and away from the snares of sin and death.  Each and every day that you spend in scripture reading or prayer, serving the needy, or receiving Holy Communion you are allowing opportunities for the grace of God to work in you and draw you closer to Christian Perfection, yes perfection. Each year at Annual conference as clergy prepare for ordination they are asked these questions, “Are you going on to perfection? Do you expect to be made perfect in this lifetime?” The correct answer to each is yes. We are going on to perfection, and that we truly can experience that in this life. That doesn’t mean that we become superhuman or can’t make wrong decisions, but that our hearts are in perfect alignment with God’s, that what we desire above anything else is for God’s will be done. If you don’t believe this is possible, look at some examples throughout history who have demonstrated this love,  Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day or Nelson Mandela, or maybe someone closer to home maybe even from this church who always seems to be a shining example of someone who lived the love of God at all times.

            And if we look at all of these saints of the church  we will start to see that they all had something in common, they all served the Lord.  Whether it be through serving orphaned children, feeding the poor or  working towards bringing racial reconciliation to a whole country, these saints served God in the here and now. These saints were part of the transformation that we talked about, these saints were kingdom builders.  They had aligned their hearts with Christ and in doing so developed a heart for a creation, a heart that saw a world of turmoil but also saw the hope of transformation.  Today, we are all called to be kingdom builders. We are called to serve, to love, to take care of creation, and to work with Christ in his transformation of making all things new. Christ did not come to Earth in flesh so that we can simply disregard the things of the Earth.  In putting his finger in Christ’s side, Thomas reminds us of our calling to help bring forth the Kingdom of God, here on Earth.

            And yet the good news is that Heaven does matter.  As Paul says in Corinthians, “ He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; ¹⁶ for in^[h] him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him… and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.”  God is God of both Heaven and Earth.  God is God of all things visible and invisible.  While Heaven is not the goal of Christianity, it is a rest that God provides for us. Like one of the hymns from our hymnal exclaims, “For all the saints, who from their labors rest, Who Thee by faith before the world confessed, Thy Name, O Jesus, be forever blessed.”  You see as Christians we don’t believe in a Nirvana, we don’t believe in Heaven as an escape from an evil world, we believe in Heaven as an eternal rest from our labors of Kingdom building here on Earth, until the Kingdom of God comes in its fullness and we rejoice at the beautiful reconciliation and restoration that the Lord has completed, and yes that we were a part of. Now that’s good news.

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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism

There's Still More (John 20:1-18)

Sermon as preached at Lambs and Evington UMC on 4/20/14

Image Courtesy of Vanderbilt Divinity Library

Has anyone seen a crucifix before A crucifix, , is simply a cross that still has the image of Jesus hanging on the cross.  For Christians it is a reminder of the gruesome way in which Jesus Christ was killed, and at the same time it is a reminder of the great love that God has for us, that Christ was willing to die on behalf of our sins. The crucifix also has a lot of  deep theological significance to it as well. It reminds us that God came to Earth as human for our sins. It also reminds us just as we have been talking about throughout Lent, that we as humans are sinful. That we have rebelled against God’s love, and that our nature is one that is now self-serving rather than God serving. Most of all the crucifix reminds us of what we as Christians honor as Good Fríday, the day in which Jesus Christ died on a cross, died for our guilt of sin, and died so that through grace we may be reconciled with God. There is in fact good news in Good Friday. As we have said we are able to celebrate the forgiveness of sins, we are able to marvel at the amazing love of Christ, that our God would die for us.  And yet far too often in Christianity the story seems to end there, we tend to leave Christ up on the cross, or at least let him rest in his grave. While the crucifix may be more common in Catholic churches, the emphasis of Jesus on the cross is quite common in many Protestant churches. Just look at some of the hymns that we love to sing.  “On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross the emblem of suffering and shame; and I love that old cross where the dearest and best for a world of lost sinners was slain.” or               “Christ our Redeemer died on the cross, Died for the sinner, paid all his due; All who receive Him need never fear, Yes, He will pass, will pass over you.When I see the blood, when I see the blood, When I see the blood, I will pass, I will pass over you.”     Or even   Jesus paid it all, All to Him I owe; Sin had left a crimson stain, He washed. it white as snow.”    

            While the crucifixion of Christ is certainly important to us as Christians, far too often we focus so much on Jesus’s death that we act as though the story ends there. We become like the disciples and friends of Jesus on that Holy Saturday; Appreciating what Jesus has done for us, but heartbroken at his death. We rejoice at the forgiveness of our sins,  but begin to ask ourselves what now?  This is how we find the disciples and Mary Magdalene in our scripture for today. It is now the third day and Mary is going to the tomb of Jesus.  When she gets there she realizes that the boulder in front of the tomb has been rolled away and so she runs back to the disciples in a panic and exclaims, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him."   Peter and the beloved disciple respond to Mary and the three dash off back to the tomb. The beloved disciple gets there first he looks into the tomb and sees nothing but the linen wrapping lying there.  Peter then arrives and in typical Peter fashion he boldly enters into the tomb. As he enters he see thes linen just like the other disciple had noticed, but he also found the cloth that had been on Jesus’s head rolled up in a place by itself. At that moment the beloved disciple got it. Scripture tells us, Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed.”  He started to piece things together in his mind.  At first they had suspected that grave robbers had taken the body, but grave robbers wouldn’t have taken the cloth and linens off of the body and rolled it all up nice and neat, no they would have just taken the body.  You can imagine at that moment in the mind of the beloved disciple things were falling into place like at the end of a good mystery book where all of the clues finally seem to make sense. I imagine the words of Jesus’s farewell flashed in his head, “Very truly, I tell you, you will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice; you will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy. ²¹ When a woman is in labor, she has pain, because her hour has come. But when her child is born, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy of having brought a human being into the world. ²² So you have pain now; but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.”  This is what Jesus was talking about, we have experienced the pain of his death, we have lost Jesus but he says we will see him again. The body is gone, he wasn’t being figurative, Jesus is risen, Jesus is Alive! Though the beloved disciple figures it out, for some reason he doesn’t tell it to the others. All we have in our scripture is that he and Peter return home while Mary remains and weeps.

            We are then left alone in our story with Mary as she weeps at the tomb.  She looks into the tomb for herself and Lo and behold she sees two angels sitting at where the head and feet of Jesus had been. The angels ask her, “Woman, why are you weeping?  Once again Mary answers with her words of heartache and desperation, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”  Once again Mary sees the empty tomb not as a sign of hope but as a sign of loss, not as a victory over death,  but as some cruel and harsh action done by someone else to further rub in the pain of losing someone she so deeply loved. Even angels cannot shift Mary’s focus away from the cross and towards the good news of the tomb.

             In fact, even Jesus himself is not recognized by Mary.  We are told in our scripture that Jesus approaches Mary as she is looking into the tomb, Mary turns around and does not recognize him, she thinks he is just the gardener. For a second there actually seems to be a little bit of hope in Mary’s voice,  Mary starts to think maybe this guy saw who took him, or better yet maybe he is the one who took the body. She says, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Mary so desperately wants closure,  she understandably wants to put an end to this drama and heartache of the past few days. She just wants to find the body so that she can return the body to the tomb, so that she can move on in peace, so that it will finally all be over. But the Easter story is not about finality, it is not about embracing  Jesus’s death,  Easter is a celebration that Jesus Christ is risen!  On Easter we do not cling to the cross, we rejoice at the empty tomb. 

The power of this truth was finally realized in our scripture through the power of just one word, “Mary.” Mary, Jesus calls Mary by name, finally Mary recognizes who it is that is standing before her, finally she realizes that the empty tomb is not bad news at all, but rather a reason to reason to rejoice. Finally she recognizes that Jesus Christ is alive, and so she cries outs, “Rabbouni!”  Everything changes for Mary with that one word from Jesus, “Mary,” her name.  Being called by name is something special,  it speaks to a recognition of who you are, but much deeper than that it speaks to a relationship that you have.  For Mary, it brings back all of those feelings and memories that she thought she had lost forever, it was a sound that probably sounded much like an echo in her memory of the times she spent with Jesus, the time she thought she lost, and yet here it is loud and clear, that Jesus is still with her, that Jesus had conquered sin and death; that the Lord has risen.

            And so it is for this reason, at least for Protestants, that simply the cross, not the crucifix has become such a powerful statement for our faith.  This does not diminish the significance of the crucifix, of Jesus hanging on the cross. None of this could have happened without his death on a cross.  Our guilt of sin was forgiven on that cross, our hearts were ransomed from the clutches of evil, and yet that’s not the end of the story, as we know there’s still more. We depict a cross without the crucified Lord because we recognize that Jesus no longer hangs on that cross, Jesus no longer lays in his tomb, we depict a cross without the crucified Lord because Jesus is not dead, he has risen!  We celebrate because Jesus has conquered sin and death. Just when it looks as though evil had won, just when it looks as though God incarnate would fall victim to the same fate that awaits all humans, Jesus defies death. It’s not that Jesus couldn’t die, Jesus who was fully human died just like anyone else, but Jesus proved that death had no hold over him, that death wasn’t the end, that through God even in death there is new life.  Easter morning brings us the good news that death is not the end, just as sin was conquered on the cross, death was conquered in the resurrection, and we loved ones of Christ, we as a people called by name at our baptism, have the hope of being freed from the bondage of sin and death. This is good news on Easter morning,    and yet there is still more.

            After  Mary finally realizes who it is that she is talking to, after her cries of joy had died down Jesus shocks Mary once again. He says, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'"  Do not hold on to me, this probably has to be the hardest words for Mary to hear. She thought she had lost her Lord,  now finally she just felt the joy of seeing him again, knowing that he is risen, and now he is telling Mary not to hold on to him. It just doesn’t seem fair for her, that he should once again leave, but as Jesus tells her, I am ascending to my father and your Father, to my God and your God.  This too is crucial in faith as Christians.   Jesus Christ died on the cross, he rose again from the grave, but Christ will not die again. No Christ will ascend into heaven to be at the right hand of God the Father.  While for Mary this may sound like horrible news, the truth is for the world it is great news, in fact it is the greatest news of Easter. That Christ is risen, that Christ has not and will not die. That means that Christ is alive, yes Christ is alive even today.  That Jesus truly is Lord, and reigns in heaven and on Earth. The good news for us as Christians when we proclaim on Easter that Christ is Risen, is the fact that he is still risen today. That we are able to be in relationship with him, he is able to guide us, watch us, love us, even today.

            But still as we sit here gathered on Easter morning, we may be wondering why is this celebration of Easter so important?  We know we are supposed to gather here with our family of and friends, we know that this is one of the most important if not the most important Christian holiday, but we may be wondering what does an empty tomb, what does the Resurrection have anything to do with my life? The answer is everything.  In a world full of pain and heartbreak, in this dog eat dog world where it seems as though the bottom line is more important than the poverty line, in a world where the politicians, families, and even the church can be so easily divided, in a world in which we mourn the loss of loved ones that seem to leave us far too soon, in a world like this it is easy to lose hope. It is easy to look around at the world and think that evil has won, that the world is destined for destruction, and that our lives here on Earth have no real meaning, But the good news of Easter is that Christ has won. 

            Christ died, but rose again conquering sin and death, not just for himself but for all of creation. That means for us death is not the end, death is just a continuance into the eternal life that Christ offers us through his resurrection.  Christ victory of death also means that Christ is not dead Christ is risen! When Christ tells Mary not to hold on to him, it means that there is still more in store for this world.  That some two thousand years later Christ is still alive and offering us through the power of the Holy Spirit the same love, the same grace he offered the world centuries before. And it means that long after we have passed and we rest in peace with the Lord, Jesus will still be with humanity, still loving, still extending his grace.  What it means is that Jesus Christ truly is Lord, he is king. That through his life death and resurrection and ascension, Jesus established his Kingdom on Earth and will work with us here on Earth until that Kingdom is fully arrived.  This means our lives do have purpose, we are kingdom builders, we are servants of the Lord. We are helping Christ to change the world and fully establish the kingdom of God.  You see the resurrection gives us hope. It first gives us hope that we too shall not die. That though our bodies will eventually fail us, that we have eternal life through the one who conquered death. But the resurrection also gives us hope that this world that can so often get us down, will one day be made new through a Christ that lives and reigns with God the Father, and the we, as insignificant as we me sometimes feel, have a part in that transformation.  The good news of Easter is that Jesus did not just die for our sins, that he is not someone who we memorialize as being gone forever, but that Jesus Christ is Risen, Alleluia, Jesus Christ is Risen, Alleluia, Jesus Christ  is Risen Alleluia!

           

           

Saying it Right, Getting it Wrong (Matthew 21:1-11)

Sermon as preached at Lambs UMC on 4/13/14

Image courtesy of Vanderbilt Library

God be with you. This is a simple yet powerful phrase that we as Christians often use as we depart from or as we leave worship. There is even a great hymn of dismissal that many of you probably know that is based around this phrase. “God be with you till we meet again;
By His counsels guide, uphold you, With His sheep securely fold you; God be with you till we meet again.”  The phrase just speaks to our hearts and to our souls, that God will be with us, watching us, guiding us, loving us until we meet again. Over time this phrase has lost much of its power, it has lost much of its meaning, so much so that most of us probably use this phrase on a daily basis without knowing it.  Not me, you may say, If I were to say God be with you I would surely know I was saying it, I wouldn’t just throw that phrase around for nothing.  But I ask you, when is that time you said goodbye to someone? It probably wasn’t that long ago was it? Well the last time you said goodbye,  you were in fact saying God be with you, and you probably didn’t even know it. This phrase God be with you used to be such a common phrase for departing that over time it morphed from saying God be with, into a brand new word, goodbye. Now that word is used so often that for most of us there is no religious connotation to it; it has simply become a meaningless word.  We even shorten the word to bye, which we all know what it means, but when we say bye we are in essence saying “be with you;”  which seems to make no sense at all.  Just as the phrase “God be with you” had become so commonplace that it morphed into a word that lost its meaning altogether; So too was the meaning of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem lost on most of the crowd gathered there. They said all the right things, they did all the right things, but we know the story, and we know that this triumphal entry into Jerusalem continues on to Christ’s death, we know that Palm Sunday leads us right into Good Friday.  How could a crowd that seemed to get it so right, get it so wrong?  What was it that the people of Jerusalem were missing?

            As we begin to look at our story for today it is obvious that the importance of this entry is not lost Jesus, and is not lost on Matthew as he records what happened.  Jesus is on the outskirts of Jerusalem, the holy city, about to enter in, but Jesus recognizes that this moment is special. For so long the people of Israel have been waiting for their Messiah, for so long they have been waiting for their new King;  one who would protect them from their enemies, one that would restore justice to the land, one that would bring peace to the land. In many of the prophets in the old testament prophesy about the day in which this Messiah would.  For example we find in Zechariah chapter 9, “Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. I will take away the chariots from Ephraim, and the warhorses from Jerusalem, and the battle bow will be broken. He will proclaim peace to the nations. His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth.”  And now here is the Messiah, God incarnate, about to enter into the holy city, just as was prophesied by the prophets of old, and so Jesus understanding the significance of this moment gives the people a sign of who he truly is.

            He sends two of his disciples before him and tells them that they will find a donkey and a colt tied up. He tells them to take it and bring it back, and that if anyone asks what they are doing, that they should tell them that the Lord needs it.  The disciples do just that,  they bring the donkey and colt back, and Jesus enters into Jerusalem riding on them.  Jesus fulfills the prophecy that we just heard from Zechariah, and in doing so Jesus is proclaiming to the world that he is the Messiah. He is proclaiming that he has come to bring peace to the world, that he comes on a  donkey and not a war horse because the Lord reigns with humility not with an iron fist. The Messiah has arrived.

            All signs point to the fact that the people of Jerusalem get it, that they understand the importance of this amazing event that is happening before their eyes. The crowd gives Jesus the royal treatment as he enters into the city. The gather in the road, they lay their coats down road as he comes by, and they wave palm branches and lay them down in the road as well. As all of this is going on they celebrate Jesus,  saying, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!" As the crowd grows others from the city come out and when asked who is this? They respond, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”  It seems as though if the people of Jerusalem ever got it right it was here on this triumphal entry. They are praising Jesus and shouting Hosanna, Hosanna, and yet not even a week later these shouts of Hosanna have turned into the cries, “Crucify him.” What happened, what went wrong, when everything seemed to be right?

            Do I have the absolute answer to how the people could go from singing Hosanna one day to yelling crucify him less than a week later?  No, none of us can really know what was happening in the minds of those inhabitants of Jerusalem, but I can imagine some of what may have been the cause. As we know, this moment comes at the end of Jesus’s ministry. That means that word of those miracles that he has performed, the teachings of love and justice, his confrontations with some of those in power has probably spread around the city.  Now here comes this man,  this legend, riding into the city for all to see.  As he approaches on a donkey I’m sure that there are some that realize the significance of this moment and so that start to praise him. Others see the commotion, and having heard the stories of Jesus, join in, maybe hoping to see some miracle performed in front of their own eyes. The crowd continues to grow and grow, people of the city start asking,  “ Who is this?”  And those present answer, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.” You know, the one we’ve all been hearing about. Suddenly you can imagine that this moment of praise has become much more like The Beatles invasion, with all of the screaming girls , and less like worship. What about their praises of Hosanna you may ask, doesn’t that show their worshipful manner?  But what does Hosanna really mean? Just like us, this word Hosanna is one that the Jewish people have heard over and over again. It comes from Psalm 118 and literally means, “Save us, we beseech thee O Lord.”  Save us, we beseech, or in other words we urgently ask O’ Lord that you save us. These are words of desperation, words of great turmoil and fear. These are words  that recognize our own sin, recognize our need for a savior, they are words appropriate for the Messiah, and yet as Jesus rides in the words are said with joy and jubilation, not with urgency and desperation. You see by the time of Jesus the word Hosanna had lost its meaning, much like our word goodbye, and Hosanna simply became nothing more than a “religious hurrah”[1] like an Amen or and Alleluia to something that we like.

            What is so painful about this Palm Sunday story is that the people of Jerusalem are so close to getting it right, but still get it so wrong.  They celebrate the arrival of the Messiah into the holy city, the praise him with palm branches and by laying their coats on the road before him. They even cry Hosanna, Save us, O Lord we beseech thee.  Words as we have said that are so fitting for the Messiah, the one who is to come to restore Israel to its glory, the one who has come to bring peace and justice to the land,  the one who has come to bring good news to the poor, set the prisoners free, to restore sight to the blind, and to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the  year of the Lord’s favor. This is the very person we should be crying out to, save us, save us, and yet while the people Jerusalem say it all right, they get it all wrong. Their words are correct but hollow. Some praise the Lord out of habbit, some praise the Lord for the thrill of that exciting day, and so it is no wonder then how these same people later that week can once again get exciting about a commotion in town. That this man Jesus has been declared a heretic and a leader of an insurrection and so once again caught up in the moment those shouts of Hosanna turn to shouts of crucify him.

            Let us not be quick to judge the people of Jerusalem, thinking that we are so much better than them. We too often say the right things while getting it all wrong.  Each week we proclaim, “I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and Earth. And in Jesus Christ his only son our Lord” but how often have we stopped to think about what we mean when we call Jesus Lord?  I mean we say it all the time, Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, but do we really know what we are saying? Do we really live out what we are saying. A Lord is a master. It is the person in which we work for, who owns everything. That means we own nothing, everything we have is the Lord’s. It means we are not our own bosses, but live by the Lord’s commands. Do we really live this way?  If we do why do we view our money as my paycheck, my income, my money, my house, my land, when in fact it all belongs to God?  Why do we so often put what we want over the needs of others, if all of us are made in the image of God?  Just like the people of Jerusalem,  we often proclaim one thing and live another. We say it right, but it get it wrong.  Hosanna, Save us, we beseech thee O Lord.

            Even as this pivotal event of Easter approaches, the event that is at the very heart of our beliefs, how often do we say what it is all about, and yet not live it.  We say that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, and yet act as though we have no sins for Jesus to save us from. We act as though Jesus is saving all the other “bad” people in the world. We act as though we are not broken, as though we have already reached Christian perfection, as if our hearts are already attuned with the Lord’s. We act as though we don’t need saving.  Hosanna, Save us, we beseech thee O Lord.

On that Easter morning, when we hear of the boulder being rolled away and the body missing, we cry out in joy, “he is risen, He is risen indeed”  and yet so often we act as though Christ is still dead.  We act as though Jesus was something in the past, that he’s not here, not present with us today, we ignore the power of the Holy Spirit, but the phrase is Jesus is risen, not Jesus rose. Jesus still lives, still guides our every step, still loves us, and still hears our prayers.  Yet how often do we act as though we are honoring a fallen hero rather than serving a risen Lord? As though we are living in a world from which we are trying to escape, rather than a world in which Christ is Lord, and who is daily working to make all things new.  Hosanna, Save us O Lord we beseech thee.

            You see, we are not that different than those people of Jerusalem some two thousand years before us. We too recognize a glimpse of something special happening and yet so often offer up hollow words of praise.  Too often we ask for Christ to save us, and yet live as though we need no saving. We proclaim that Christ is Lord, and yet live as though we are our own masters, that all that we have belongs to us.  And yes we proclaim that Jesus is risen, and live as though he is not with us today.  You see this morning we too are in need of a Messiah. We too approach the Last Supper with shock and confusion. We too approach Good Friday and Jesus’s death on the cross with sadness and hopelessness. We too are in disbelief of the missing body on Easter morning. We too celebrate this Palm Sunday’s with shouts of Hosanna in highest,  but we too also cry crucify him.   As we enter into this Holy week, let it not be for us just another holiday. Let us not offer up our shallow praises, but rather prayers of true confession, true wrestling, true submission, and yes true thanksgiving. Let us gather as a people who truly acknowledge our faults, who truly realize our need for the Messiah, and who truly anticipate the good news of Easter morning.  Hosanna, Save us, we beseech thee O Lord.

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[1] New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary pg. 403

Hearing Loss (John 11:1-45)

Sermon as preached at Lambs and Evington UMC on 4/6/14

I have a good friend that I met back in college that I have a special relationship with. I say this because one of the things that most people try to avoid, we do quite regularly, that is we argue. It doesn’t matter what it is about it can be who we think will win the World Series, our stance on the Affordable Care Act, denominational differences, or even whether something is truly bar-b-q if it is not pulled pork. In all honesty, it doesn’t take very much to get us arguing. Funny thing is even though we enjoy arguing with one another, these arguments can get quite heated. I’ll get so frustrated and say I don’t think you are listening to what I say. I get frustrated and sometimes quit, because he’s not listening to me, to only later on realize it was I that wasn’t listening. It is very easy to feel as though someone’s not listening simply because the response you get back is not the one you wanted to hear.

            In our scripture for today, we find the sisters Martha and Mary trapped in this very snare. Their brother Lazarus has become quite sick and so they sent word to Jesus asking for him to come and heal their brother,  but Jesus does not come right away.  Instead Jesus waits two days and then heads out on his journey, knowing that Lazarus has already died.  As he approaches the house Martha runs out to meet Jesus. Angry at Jesus yet still trusting in him she cries out, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”  In other words Martha is upset because Jesus did not respond immediately as she had asked for and now her brother is dead.  Jesus however tells Martha that her brother will rise again, and yet Martha doesn’t really hear it.  In her mind her brother is dead, and so Jesus is just telling her that Lazarus will rise again on the day of resurrection.  But Jesus clarifies himself, he says, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?  Jesus says, I am that resurrection, as who believe in me will. Jesus even asks Martha, do you believe this and Martha still gets it wrong. “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world."  Martha just doesn’t get it, she professes Jesus as Lord, but she sees things as she wants to see them, and fails to recognize the good news that Jesus is really telling her.

            To be fair it’s not just Martha who fails to listen. As Jesus comes to the house Mary accompanied by some of the Jews who were mourning with her came out and blamed Jesus just as her sister Martha had done before. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”  Once again  angry that Jesus didn’t respond the way she wanted him, thinking that Jesus wasn’t listening or didn’t care, she accuses him of failing the family.   We are told that Jesus was greatly disturbed and wept. So often we over sentimentalize this verse, where in reality Jesus’ being disturbed is translated much closer to anger than to sympathy. Jesus is upset that these people he’s loves are berating him, he weeps because after all he has done for them they think he doesn’t care.

            Finally we to the end of the story and Mary, Martha, Jesus, and some of the Jews are there at the gravesite, having been led there at Jesus’s request.  When they got there it had already been four days since Lazarus was dead,  and a large boulder had been put in front of the grave.  Seeing this Jesus commands some of the men there to remove the stone, but Martha objects.   At that time the Jewish people did not embalm the dead, but rather simply wrapped them in cloth and in perfume. Martha knows that the perfume had worn off and that the stench of the body would be strong. It becomes clear that Martha did not listen when Jesus told her that Lazarus would be raised, Jesus even exclaims out of frustration,  “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?  The men roll away the stone, Jesus says a prayer to God the Father and then command Lazarus to come out. Lo and behold out came Lazarus just as Jesus had told  them.

Throughout this whole story Martha and Mary had felt as though Jesus had not listened to them. Faith was not an issue for the sisters, they knew that Jesus could heal Lazarus. The issue was that Jesus did not come when they asked, Jesus seemingly had ignored them and now their brother was dead.  Jesus didn’t ignore them. Sure he waited 2 days after he got word that Lazarus was sick, but he heard their cries, he knew their fears, but he waited. He waited, and that is the real crux of it, he did not respond like the sisters wanted, even though as he told his disciples he would use this situation for the glory of God, it was too late. The sisters had made up their mind, and even when Jesus tells them that Lazarus would rise again, they did not listen.

            There are many times in our lives where we are going through something so difficult, or we feel such a void in our hearts that it seems as though there is a gaping chasm between ourselves and the Lord. That we cry out to God for help but God isn’t listening.  What we fail to see, is that it is we that aren’t listening. All throughout the Bible from the Israelites in captivity in Egypt to Martha and Mary weeping for their dying brother, God has listened. It is we who have failed to listen. We have in our hearts the way we want things to go, the way that we think things should go, and when things go according to our plan then all honor and glory to God, but when things don’t then God has failed us, God has forgotten us.  That just not how it works. We don’t tell God what to do, we listen. And sometimes if we just stop to listen, instead of being blinded by our desires, instead of getting caught up in the heat of the moment like we often do when we argue, if we just stopped and listened, we would realize that God has not abandoned us, that God has not forgotten us, that God listens.  Now, this doesn’t mean everything will be as we want, death and pain will still be a part of our day to day lives, but when we stop and listen we know that God is there. That Christ weeps for us and with us. That we may find ways even in the midst of our darkest hours in which God’s glory is being revealed. As we conclude our sermon series, we acknowledge that we acknowledge that we are broken and live in a nature of sin. We acknowledge how quickly we seems to forget God’s goodness or how easily we miss the work of God performed right in front of us. As we prepare for that feast of Easter that is ever so close, today we simply listen, listen for how God’s glory is being revealed for us today.