John 10:11-18

Christ is risen!

Christ is risen, indeed!

For the past few weeks, since Easter to be exact, we’ve been reading Gospel accounts of Jesus’ post resurrection appearances.  Today is different.  As you may have noticed, there’s no story of Jesus appearing suddenly in a locked room, joining in on the disciples’ potluck.

Today we go back a little in the gospel of John to hear some words of Jesus describing himself as the “good shepherd”.

Well, that’s very nice.  We all like to imagine Jesus the gentle shepherd, his long, wavy brown hair blowing in the afternoon breeze, his blue eyes twinkling with mischief, his robes swaying as he picks up a little fluffy white lamb and puts it gently on his shoulders.

Yes, that’s all very nice, but it doesn’t help all that much with this post resurrection situation, in which we find ourselves shaking our heads, wondering what just happened, trying to get our minds around resurrection.  What really did happen, and how does life change for us in the light of the unbelievable?

Today the lectionary leads us back to a story about Jesus’ ministry, and part of our work today is to try to figure out why.  It could be an oversight by the planners of the lectionary, right?  Or we could be reading this for a reason.

It was St. Ignatius, founder of the Jesuit order and Spanish knight who lived in the mid 1500s who reminded us to, “think with the church,” and so today we will trust that the planners of the lectionary had a reason for leading us today to the good shepherd passage in John’s gospel.

Maybe we misunderstood the first…or second or third time, or, like most in the crowd, shook our heads in disbelief when we heard Jesus’ teachings.

But now, now everything changes.  In the light of the resurrection, how can we think with the church, as Ignatius said, to understand a little more clearly what Jesus really meant?

And so today we follow the rest of the Christian church (like sheep…) to the words of Jesus long before he was crucified and resurrected, in John chapter 10.

If there’s anything I learned growing up as one of five children, it was a fool-proof strategy for Easter egg hunt dominance.  Since I am the oldest I had a natural advantage, but that didn’t stop me from discovering and perfecting some tried and true strategies.

For example, to dominate at Easter egg hunting, preparation is key.  Clear advantage number one: take off those shiny, pinching church shoes and put on sneakers.  You can get around the yard much more quickly and effectively in sneakers!

Make sure you have a big basket with lots of room—it won’t help anything if the eggs you find fall out of the basket.

Scout out the search site ahead of time.  Offer to help your Mom water the plants…or take out the garbage…or feed the dog.  It’s worth your parents’ suspicion to gain a few advanced minutes in the yard.

Plan your strategy ahead of time.  Will you dominate by quickly appropriating the easiest eggs, or will you leave the most obvious ones for the amateurs and go instead for those second tier eggs—the ones everyone can find with just a little effort?  Will you grab the colorful ones first, and hope the green ones blend in until you can get back to them?

Point your opponents in strategic directions.  That is, “helpfully suggest” to the littler kids that you saw an egg “over there”—away from the mother lode.

Run faster, look harder, grab quicker…whatever it takes.

And best strategy ever: offer to help your parents hide the eggs.

It took me very little time this week to remember some of these genius strategies I perfected in the dog eat dog Easter egg hunts of my childhood.  That fact in itself is rather troubling, as I now am pretty sure that, in the light of resurrection, dominance and exploitation of those who are weaker might not have been the true message of Easter.

And maybe something like that is key to why the church reads passages like the good shepherd passage during the weeks following Easter.  In case we missed the point…in case we thought Easter was all about us…in case we thought of resurrection as a get out of jail free card, in case we sit back relieved that we’re finally and totally off the hook…we hear again Jesus’ words about being the good shepherd, and they remind us one more time that resurrection is a reality that changes all of us in the here and now, that moves us from indifference to the fate and wellbeing of others, to an interdependence that reminds us our lives are tied together…that we belong to each other…and that all of us belong to God.

Faith is not a competition to see who gets to the end first.

Who wins is of no consequence to God, even in Easter egg hunts.

Dog eat dog is nowhere to be found in our life together.

In the light of the resurrection, everything changes, and we are moved from indifference to interdependence, a reality in which my wellbeing and yours are critically intertwined.

If we go back to look closely at Jesus’ words we must read them within the context in which they were preached to hear the deeper message.  Turn with me in your Bibles to our Gospel passage today, John 10:11-18, on page 872 of your black pew Bibles.

The parable of the good shepherd comes after repeated, frustrating attempts at conversation between Jesus and the Pharisees.  The Pharisees were some of the ruling religious party in the temple, remember.  They were the pious ones, in charge of making sure everyone followed the rules.  They were the overachievers, the ones who had worked for years to perfect the best strategy for getting to the front of the line, the top of the pile, when it came to relationship with God.

Right before the parable of the good shepherd, Jesus had been teaching in the temple, as was his custom.  He and the Pharisees got into discussion after discussion about who Jesus was, exactly, and conversation got so heated—the misunderstandings so intense—that Jesus had to run and hide—they had picked up stones to throw at him they were so frustrated with what they were experiencing.

Outside the temple, things got even more confused.  As Jesus was passing along the road he ran into a man who had been blind from birth.  Jesus healed the man, but the day happened to be the Sabbath, and in the eyes of the Pharisees Jesus had broken the law.  Arguments ensued—Jesus was accused of violating religious rules; the Pharisees just couldn’t understand why Jesus would break the law.  Jesus just couldn’t understand why the Pharisees didn’t put the wellbeing of one of their weaker members above everything else.

And so, it was into that context that Jesus told the parable of the good shepherd.  When he did, you could hear that he was presenting a completely different paradigm than the standard by which all of them were living by up until that point.  It was radical.  It was different.  It invited them to change…everything.

In Jesus’ parable, he talks about a herd of sheep.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t often interact with sheep.  The closest I have ever come was a year that I lived inNew Zealand and worked for a few weeks on a sheep farm during the season of shearing.  That experience was enough to teach me that it takes a real calling to be in charge of a group of sheep.  Their care and upkeep is not for the faint of heart (or nose).

You and I don’t know much about sheep, but everyone listening to Jesus talk that day surely knew what it took to manage a herd of sheep.  While those listening would certainly have been a mixture of tradespeople, they lived in a society in which sheep were very important.  Their milk, their wool, their meat, their use as sacrifices in the temple, their presence on the hillsides of Galilee…everyone was acquainted with the reality of sheep, and so they surely caught the differentiation Jesus was making when he talked about the good shepherd and the hired hand.

The good shepherd, Jesus pointed out, lays down his life for the sheep.  He is not like a hired hand—someone who is hired to care for a flock.  Oh, no, no!  The good shepherd would do anything for the sheep—it is his duty to insure their well-being and good health, safety and nourishment.  Why?  Well, because, the good shepherd owns the sheep.  He invests everything he has in those sheep because he and the sheep depend on each other.  The hired hand, by contrast, does not.  And since the hired hand has no investment in the sheep, the last thing he’d be willing to do is to lay down his life for them.  The hired hand is there to make a buck; he is there to do a job and nothing more.  The shepherd and the sheep belong to each other.  Do you see the difference?

“I am the Good Shepherd,” Jesus said.  In the new reality of God’s kingdom, we belong to each other…we depend on each other.

I wondered this week about how mutual investment changes relationships.  By coincidence, I’ve been wondering for awhile about the Capital Bikeshare program, especially since a new rack of bicycles was installed last year right across the street from Calvary’s front door.  You know those red bikes that are all over the city?

So I called John Lisle, head of media relations for the DC Department of Transportation.  He proudly let me know that DC was the first city in theUSto launch a bikeshare system in 2010.  The collaborative qualities of the program, he bragged, are countless.  Not only is the entire idea built on the idea that people pay into a system and share responsibility for and use of the bikes, but now the system is shared with Arlington and soon with the cities of Alexandria and Rockville.

I tell you, John Lisle is the perfect person to be doing media relations for the DoT, because when he talks about Capital Bikeshare he’s almost giddy.  He calls the program “genius” and claims that when people pay an annual membership they seem to have some ownership over the bikes—so much so that incidences of vandalism or neglect are very, very low.  People like the convenience of having a bike where and when they need it, and so they take care of the bikes.  And with mutual investment, the city can afford bikes all over—enough for everyone who wants to ride.

It’s striking to me that we followers of Christ, people who live in the light of the resurrection, have a powerful metaphor for how our lives now change…right across the street from the sanctuary.  The Capital Bikeshare models a little bit of exactly what Jesus was talking about when he explained the difference between the good shepherd and the hired hand.

Because, don’t forget, in the light of resurrection, everything changes.  We are not followers of the one who rose to overcome death just so we can get what we want or climb to the top of the pile at the expense of others.  No, in the light of resurrection we see that we follow the one who models a relationship in which he cares so deeply for us he would even give up his very life for us.

He is wholly invested in who we can become; he will act ever and always in our best interests and for our highest good.

And in the light of the resurrection, so may it be with us, among one another.  We are followers of the one who would lay down his life for us, and as such we claim ownership for each other.  We must care for each other as we’d care for ourselves.  We must nurture and love each other as if we had a stake in each other’s wellbeing…because we do.

There is no more independence and walled off indifference.  We belong to each other, just as we belong to God.  We rise and fall together; our lives are predicated on the investment we make in the success of the other.

Indifference to interdependence.  This can be a hard word to hear, especially in our society of fierce, independent, private individualism.

But in the light of resurrection, everything changes.

When we experience again the one who would lay down his very life for us, we begin to hear even more distinctly the radical call to live our lives for others.

In the light of resurrection, we belong to God; and we belong to each other.  May it be so.  Amen.

Sermon Audio

Everything Changes: From Confusion to Clarity

I’ve been thinking a lot about travel fatigue this week. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about those long flights people make on a regular basis across oceans. If you’ve ever been on one of these flights, you know how it goes- you usually end up at your destination confused about date, time and even where you are in the world.

This week, I watched as a friend left for Panama. And I celebrated as another friend arrived from Rome, Italy to attend school here in the states. And what both of them said upon arrival was: I’m so tired.

I remember one time, specifically when I traveled to Rome, myself for the Global Baptist Peace Conference with a few other Calvary folks. After a few airport changes and of course a few airport delays we arrived in Rome. I remember nothing. I felt like a walking zombie. I also know that you should always try to make yourself stay awake so that your body can adjust to the time change. So, I can honestly tell you that I remember nothing about how I got from the airport to the hotel that February afternoon! I was confused and I was tired.

My body had been awake for over 24 hours at that point and everything seemed to have a haze in front of it. St. Peter’s Basilica did shine in the sun that afternoon, but I felt like I was walking around in a dream. Jet lag gets me every time. I always feel like I’m missing something because my body is so confused about exactly where I am and what I’m doing.

I think on Easter night, those closest to Jesus must have been feeling a bit of fatigue themselves. As Luke tells us in our Gospel passage today, we revisit Easter evening with a bunch of really tired, confused people. Sure, they were physically fatigued, but I think they must have also been theologically confused. What had just happened?

Our passage from last week was from the Gospel of John when Jesus appeared to the disciples in the locked room and in fact, it was also on Easter evening. Our passage from Luke today parallels that Easter evening, but Luke includes this extra story about two people on the Road to Emmaus before he includes Jesus popping up and wishing the disciples peace.

So let us join with those two Jesus followers on the road to Emmaus. We are on a dusty road, on Easter afternoon a few miles outside of Jerusalem. Cleopas, one who was a disciple of Jesus, but not one of the 11 and his walking companion who apparently is nameless were walking toward Emmaus, a smaller town. We do not know why they were going there and where Emmaus was exactly, but that was their destination.

I imagine as followers of Jesus, ones like the women who were close to Jesus, but not part of the 12, they were rolling over the details of the weekend as they walked along. You know when something traumatic or extremely confusing happens and we examine it from all angles.

Somethings made sense now:

• Like when he said one of the people at the table was going to betray him that Thursday night. By that point, Judas had betrayed Jesus and hanged himself.
• It also made sense that whole conversation Jesus had with Peter about denying him—Peter had denied Jesus three times.

But there were many other things that just didn’t make sense:

• Like, how they thought Jesus was the Messiah- he was supposed to be the one to deliver them from Rome, from all evil and he didn’t do it. At least it didn’t appear he had done it.
• Like how the women had come running back that very morning, out of breath with tears streaming down their faces telling the 11 and the others gathered around that the tomb was empty! And two men in dazzling white had asked them why they were even looking for him- Jesus had risen from the dead!
• The 11 and the other disciples didn’t believe the women- said they were just telling an idle tale. It was confusing and remember no one had slept—they were sure that the women were just seeing things.

Maybe most of all, their grief was just too much to bear. Cleopas and his walking companion were talking about all of this and discussing it with heavy grief-filled hearts on the Road to Emmaus when someone walked up behind them.

As they were on a busy road, they didn’t think much of it, but then the man came a little closer and asked, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?”

Cleopas and his walking companion just stood there, pondering the question. They kicked some pebbles on the dusty road, looking at their sore, tired feet, choking back the lumps that was rising in their throats.

What the two travelers did not realize was that the man walking beside them and asking them questions was Jesus himself. For whatever reason, they did not recognize Jesus.

As Cleopas and his friend pulled themselves together, Cleopas decided to answer Jesus and said, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place in these days?”

Jesus replied with a question, “What things?” Now, if I was Jesus, I would want to know exactly what one of my followers had to say had happened. I think it is not an exaggeration to say that he was not really pleased with what Cleopas had to say.

Cleopas answered Jesus by saying, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. But…we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is not the third day since these things took place. Moreover, some women were at the tomb this morning and they didn’t find his body there. Then they came back and told us about visions of angels who said he was alive. Some of the disciples went back to the tomb and found it just like they said, but they didn’t see him there.”

I’m thinking Jesus took a step back, rubbed his chin and crossed his arms across his chest. Maybe he even shook his head a little bit. Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer and then enter into his glory?”

Now, if I was those two on the road, this is the type of person I would slowly back away from. I would also question his motivation for creeping up behind us on the road, questioning me in my confused state, only to yell at me upon telling him why I was upset. Maybe that’s just me.

Apparently Cleopas and his friend didn’t have a chance to really respond because then Jesus interpreted everything as they walked along—everything all the way from Moses to the prophets and everything that he had said too during his ministry.

When Jesus had finished his lecture and the three travelers were truly exhausted, they started to hear some noise off in the distance. They were finally approaching the town of Emmaus. Jesus walked ahead as if he was going on and the two travelers, somehow awake and alert enough to invite him, invited him to stay with them. They urged him strongly saying, “stay with us because it is almost evening and the day is nearly over.” Jesus agreed and went in to the restaurant with them, sitting down at the table.

The three men sat down, probably happy to be off their feet for the first time in a long time. The two men were especially exhausted having just been through what they had been through and Jesus, well, we know what he had been doing for the past three days.

When the bread was brought to the table, Jesus picked up a piece of bread, and he blessed it, and he broke it. Then he held it up for a minute, the crumbs falling on the table. His eyes pierced theirs. Even in physical and theological confusion and exhaustion, the two travelers knew.

As he looked him in the eyes, he held out the piece of bread. They each reached up, hands trembling, tears streaming down their hot cheeks. Their fingers brushed against his as he handed them the bread and then as soon as they had reached up and held the bread in their own hands, he was gone. He had vanished before their tired, exhausted eyes.

They sat there in silence for a few moments. Because then, they knew. When he lifted up the bread, they had seen the wounds. His words were familiar too, but as he had lifted up the bread, his garment fell down a little bit and they saw his wounds on his wrists.

Those wrists had taught them many times before. And now those wrists, covered in wounds, although no longer bleeding wounds, offered them the bread of life. And they knew in an instant that it was Jesus. Suddenly, it all made sense. They had to go back to Jerusalem!

They rushed out from the restaurant, gathered their belongings and they TOOK off for Jerusalem. Remember how it was almost evening? They had been the ones to urge Jesus to stay with them! And now they were the ones who were taking off, on the dusky, dangerous road to Jerusalem.

I bet they ran the whole way. And I bet the whole way they were saying—the women were right! He’s not in the tomb anymore because he is with us. They moved from confusion to clarity in an instant. His broken body and that broken bread moved them from confusion to clarity.

The two travelers, now long-distance runners arrived in Jerusalem, with chests heaving, completely out of breath as they got to that locked room that John’s gospel told us about last week. It’s still Easter evening, remember.

The eleven disciples, as Luke relays it, were gathered together in the room and Cleopas and his friend busted in. I’m sure the disciples thought it was the authorities coming for them.

But Cleopas and his friend, out of breath and excited were telling them, “The Lord has risen indeed! He came to us on the road to Emmaus and then he explained all the scriptures to us and then he sat at the table and broke bread with us. It all makes sense now!”

While Cleopas and his friend were telling them this, the disciples had gathered around them listening to their story. No one noticed when the man showed up in the back of the room. But, not one had noticed him earlier that morning either when the women were telling their story. After that visit, he decided he needed to go take a walk- he couldn’t believe that the disciples hadn’t believed the women.

So, the disciples had their backs turned to the man—to Jesus and all of a sudden a voice washed over all of them. He said, “Peace be with you.” One by one, as the hair stood up on the back of their necks, they turned around. And then one by one a startled and terrified look went over their faces. Well, for everyone except Cleopas and his friend. They were grinning about as big as they could. Because they knew. It was Jesus.

But Jesus, a bit more gracious this time than he had been with Cleopas and his friend said, “Buddies, why are you frightened? And why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” As he was saying this, he held up his hands again, his garment slipping back a little bit, his wrist wounds fully visible. No longer bleeding, but they were still there.

Upon realizing it really was Jesus, the disciples were rejoicing. Confusion was falling away and his wounds were healing their wounded hearts.

What happens next is possibly one of my favorite Jesus moments in all of scripture. As the disciples are jumping up and down, hugging Jesus and one another, Jesus, turns to them and says, “Hey guys, do you have anything here to eat?”

I think it is hilarious that Jesus, like anyone else gets to his friends’ house and he is hungry. After all, he disappeared before he could eat the last meal with Cleopas and his friend! I’m sure they were a little caught off guard too, but they tossed him a piece of broiled fish and some bread. Remember when Jesus had fed them with that?

Those wrists had taught them, had fed them many times before. And now those wrists, covered in wounds, although no longer bleeding wounds, asked them for the bread of life.  Now, they were the ones feeding Jesus, the Christ with bread and fish, healing his broken body with sustenance.

After Jesus had eaten, he taught the disciples in the same way he had spoken to Cleopas and his friend. He told them that his love had been real—all that he had been saying was true and now it was up to them. They were the ones to go and be the witnesses of what they had experienced.

The disciples had to get out of that locked room now that they had moved from confusion to clarity. And Jesus made sure that the breaking of bread and the sharing of wounds was central to his message. His wounded hands had handed them that bread.

And their wounded and broken selves were now the ones to hand the bread of life back to him, and out to the world.

This long gospel passage today tells some of the most powerful stuff in all of the gospels. This was the beginning of a group of Jesus followers figuring out what the heart of the gospel message was. Jesus had walked on the road with them. He had taught them and he had broken bread and given it to them.

And this is our calling too. We live as Jesus’ disciples in this world. We have walked the road with him, whether we knew it was him or not. And we have learned his ways, moving from confusion to clarity.

“This is the promise of the resurrection — not that we will no longer be wounded. No, we will always be wounded. Between hunger and poverty, war and terror, abuse and hate, our world will make sure that none of us escape unscathed without wounds that do not heal.

But as people of the resurrection, our promise is that our wounds will not always and forever bleed. The promise of the resurrection is not the assurance of a life without wounds but a life in which our wounds, even if they define us as they do Jesus, do not bleed us. The promise of the resurrection is that, eventually, after the bleeding stops, our wounds, while they won’t ever heal, might just begin to heal others.” [1]

So, Jesus took the bread, his garment falling back exposing his wounds, and he blessed the bread. Then he broke it. And he gave a piece to you. And a piece to me. And then we gave it to one another so that all the wounds of this world might be healed. This is how everything changes. This is why we live as resurrection people. May it be so.

John 20:19-31

Sermon Audio

Christ is risen!

Christ is risen, indeed!

Well, everything changed for us last week, didn’t it?

For one thing, we got the alleluias back in worship, something over which Harold Robinson is clearly extraordinarily relieved.  We heard the most beautiful music and we worshipped with the scent of the lilies wafting through the sanctuary.  Brunch was amazing and, at least based on what I could see from my vantage point near the dessert table, folks were really celebrating.

And for good reason!  Last Sunday was Easter, we were marking the resurrection of Jesus…and in a world where death is inevitable, that is no small thing to celebrate for sure.

This week we realize, however, that someone forgot to send a memo about the celebration to Jesus’ first disciples, whose lives we are able to shadow through the written memories of the gospel writers.  All of the Gospels talk about what happened to the disciples and Jesus’ other followers and friends on the day of resurrection and into the week following Jesus’ resurrection, and I think it’s safe to say that what they were doing was not celebrating.

No, I think the word for it is more: cowering.

On the day that the women ran to the tomb in the early hours of the morning to tend to Jesus’ body, that day they discovered, much to their shock and amazement, that his body was not there in the tomb and, in fact, he was no longer dead at all.  Depending on which account you read, the women either ran into an angel who told them the news or into Jesus himself, disguised as the gardener.  Either way their world was shaken to its very core and they tried to make sense of this new set of circumstances.  As you recall from Mark’s account last week, the overall news about the women was: they were afraid.

Cut to the male disciples, who did not go with the women to the tomb but instead were sequestered away, hiding behind locked doors, scared for their lives.

And, even more than the women, the men had good reason to be scared.  After the events of the past few days, the entire city was up in arms.  The temple leadership had done everything in its power to get rid of Jesus, stirring up the crowds and orchestrating a PR campaign for the record books.

Still, so much dissention reigned that the Roman government had had to get involved and Roman governor Pontius Pilate placed guards at the sealed tomb to make sure the rebellion was squelched, once and for all.

The men should have been afraid.

If they were publicly recognized as followers of Jesus, not only were they in danger from the rulers of the temple, now the Roman occupation leaders were involved, too.  And if the women were right…if somehow the stone had been rolled away and Jesus’ body was missing…then they surely would be recipients of the wrath of both the temple leaders and the Roman rulers; people would think they’d stolen the body to continue the rebellion.

I don’t quite know to what kind of resolution the men thought hiding in a locked room would eventually lead, but they were scared, and their fear kept them hidden, unsure what would happen next.  Jesus had died—they’d seen it with their own eyes.  They’d given up everything to follow; they’d put their families at risk.  They had given up their professions; they’d thought he was the one to overthrowRomeonce and for all.  But as they sat there huddled in fear, listening with disbelief to the reports of the women, all they could see flashing before their fear-filled eyes were those images of his crucifixion, images burned onto their brains, images that totally changed the vantage point from which they each saw the world.  When death and tragedy are the lenses through which you see the world, see your own life, well then fear is a reasonable response, don’t you think?

I recently had to have my eyes examined.

I explained to the eye doctor at my appointment that I thought something was probably wrong with my glasses.  I have been having a hard time seeing things clearly, especially at night.  Sometimes I can’t focus well, and as of late preaching has been a little more challenging (thank goodness for easy font size changes!).  I thought perhaps it’s the type of glasses I’ve been wearing or maybe I needed a slight adjustment in prescription.

The doctor was so kind to me.

Choosing his words very carefully he explained that sometimes, as we age, the lenses in our eyes lose their elasticity.  This means they do not focus as quickly or as accurately as they used to.  It’s not really a problem that can be solved with an adjustment to the prescription, he told me.  Instead, it’s time to start thinking about: bifocals.

Yes.

A minor adjustment to the eye’s normal focusing power is not going to cut it anymore.  Instead, I will need two separate lenses, one for work like, say, preaching, and one for tasks like driving at night.

The exam proceeded then to the part when the doctor makes you look through the lenses and starts all this flipping action.  Is it better with number one or number two? One or two?

As an aside, I hate this experience more than anything, as I am one who worries constantly about getting the right answer.  I’ll get so nervous that I won’t be able to tell, really, which lens is clearer.  1?  I’ll say hesitantly.  If all I hear from the doctor is silence then I’ll say, “Okay, maybe not.  2?”

After a lot of lens-flipping, the doctor finally settled on the right two lenses.  One would help me see far away and one would help me see close up, for tasks like preaching.  And it will take awhile, he explained, for me to learn how to navigate the double prescription.  One lens will help see the world more clearly in some instances; the other lens will work under different circumstances.

Think about this metaphor of lenses when you think about the disciples huddled in that locked upper room for that week following the Jesus’ death.  They were seeing their world through the lens of the crucifixion, which understandably left them filled with fear.  And when you’re filled with fear, a very normal response is to stop…to stop and to cower, to become incapacitated because the fear with which you see the world is so intense.

It’s into this kind of situation, one where the disciples were frantically thinking about what their lives would look like now that Jesus was dead, that Jesus showed up.

John’s account tells of two of Jesus’ appearances, one to the group of ten disciples minus Thomas, and then again a few days later to the whole group.  Poor Thomas gets a bad rap here, known throughout all of Christendom as the fateful doubter, but we know from reading the other Gospel accounts that the same was true for all the disciples.  The women had run to tell them, but all of the disciples were so afraid, they were viewing the world through the lens of fear, that they adamantly insisted they would not believe the women until they saw for themselves.  All of them, not just Thomas!

I’d like to point out here that you’ll notice how everything changes.  It doesn’t change from doubt to faith, it changes from fear to faith.  Of course the disciples had doubts—wouldn’t you?  All of them had to see for themselves and even after they did you have to know they sat around in that room, rubbed their blood shot eyes, and stared at each other incredulously.  Was that really Jesus?  You mean he really meant what he said about spreading the Gospel message in the world?  You mean this is more than just a political campaign?  You mean he’s really (gulp!) the son of God?

Are you sure?

And you know they were having a hard time, because when Jesus appears the first thing he says is: “Peace be with you.”  Can you imagine?  All those disciples, crowded into that upper room, scared to death?  The physical affects of fear are real and very intense.  Although I am fairly sure I could have come up with these myself, I actually looked them up:

Difficulty breathing

Racing or pounding heart

Chest pain or tightness

Trembling or shaking

Feeling dizzy or lightheaded

A churning stomach

Hot or cold flashes; tingling sensations

Sweating

Fear…it was real and it was palpable, and, understandably, they couldn’t seem to figure out what came next.

Jesus must have known that a group of fear-filled disciples who could only see the world through the limited lens of their own fear would never, ever change the world.

The lens needed to change; resurrection needed to become real for the disciples to embrace the promise of what was ahead—a whole world that would be changed by the Gospel message.

So Jesus shows up.  And when they see him—both the 10 disciples the first time and Thomas the second time—a little click occurs.  Like seeing the illuminated letters on the wall in the darkness of my eye doctor’s office, it was like the correct lens was finally put into place and the disciples could see again.  Jesus was alive, and so fear—heart-stopping, life-crippling fear—was miraculously transformed into faith.

And so faith was born.  It may have been small at first…tentative and weak.  But faith is what fear became when everything changed, when the truth of the resurrection became real in the lives of the first disciples.  With the perspective of resurrection to change the way they looked at the world, the disciples were incapacitated no more.  They were miraculously able to move from fear—utter, disabling fear—to faith.

And that faith was just enough faith to lead them to unlock the door to that upper room and head out intoJerusalem.

It was just enough faith to turn insecure, unsophisticated fishermen into bold proclaimers of Jesus’ Gospel.

It was just enough faith that they gave up their very lives, so convicted that this Jesus, this resurrected one, had the words of eternal life.

It took a little while, but when the truth of the resurrection had sunk in, finally, everything changed.  The disciples saw the world in a whole new way; their perspectives radically shifted; they moved from fear…to faith…and everything changed.

In the light of resurrection, what has changed for you?  Is fear still nipping at your heels, keeping you from stepping out in faith to whatever is next for you?

Well, I have to tell you that Christ is risen…and because Christ is risen, everything changes.

Unlock the door, come out of hiding, embrace the promise of the Gospel in your life, move from fear to faith.  Look around, through the lens of Jesus’ resurrection, will you?

When you do you will see that everything has changed.

This season ushers in changes in every relationship of our lives. We cannot live in the light of resurrection without everything changing. This Easter season, we journey with the first Christians and examine how resurrection in their lives and ours means… everything changes.

Mark 16:1-8

Sermon Audio

Christ is risen!  Christ is risen, indeed!

Today it’s Easter, everyone dressed in finery, the sanctuary decorated unlike any other time of the year.  The music is bigger, the program is bigger, everything is ramped up to celebrate.  It’s the biggest day of the year, and I don’t know about you…but I need it.  I need a reminder that life comes in the face of death, that God wins in the end, that even the most unbelievable thing can happen—has happened—and has changed the whole world.

Some of you know my friend Stan Hastey.  Stan remembers a sermon he heard just a few days afterEaster in 1968.  He was a student at Southern Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.  Martin Luther King, Jr., had been assassinated two weeks before.  Race riots had broken out in Memphis, and in this city, and in others.  A dark shadow had fallen across the American landscape.  The students who gathered for chapel on that April day needed to hear an encouraging word.  They looked up hopefully as the Reverend Charles Boddie, an African-American preacher from Nashville, Tennessee, made his way to the pulpit.  They shifted in their pews and then waited, expectantly, for Boddie to speak.  When he did, his voice was little more than a whisper.   Pointing back to the Sunday before he said, “Easter, this year, came just in the nick of time.” (Thanks to Jim Somerville for this recounting.)

It came just in the nick of time…when darkness still covered the city and the disciples were huddled in hiding in fear and the women were making their way toward the tomb…something happened.  God kept a promise.  God kept a promise that God would not leave, that death was not the end, that there would be something more.  Just in the nick of time.

We may not be sure it happened, if we’d only had the Mark passage from this morning to go by.  Mark leaves us hanging a little bit this morning.  You’ll recall that our Gospel reading ends rather abruptly in Mark chapter 16, verse 8.  The verse reads: “they (meaning the women) went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

Honestly, if I had a few minutes to chat with Mark I would like to tell him that this not a very nice way to end his story of Jesus.  All the other Gospel writers put in some nice post-resurrection appearances of Jesus that help to tie everything up as neatly as a bow on an Easter bonnet.  But Mark ends here, almost as if he’s been interrupted and the story is not quite done.

In fact, this ending of Mark is so troubling that those who came after Mark amended his memoirs by adding on the remaining verses we find in our modern texts.  The language of verses 9-20, commonly known as “the longer ending of Mark” is so very different from grammar and tone of Mark’s Gospel that most would place their addition to the text some 200 years after Mark finished writing.

And, we can understand why!  We didn’t work so hard to dye those Easter eggs, slave over favorite recipes or dress up extra nice to be left hanging!  We’ve just been through some of the darkest days of the Christian year, days where we pondered over and over again the pain and sorrow of our sin and the horror of Jesus’ death on a cross.  We came to church this morning for resolution—for a nice, tidy wrap-up of the story so we can get on with our lives, thank you very much.

We’ve been talking during this season of Lent about God’s promises to us.  Story after story after story shows God making promises and keeping promises to people who could never seem to keep their promises to God.  Today we celebrate the best promise of all, life in the face of death, and the only thing we can think to do is to join the women, who saw once and for all God’s conquering work…and were afraid.

We need all the help we can get to believe that this man Jesus died . . . dead and crucified, spirit given up and gone, dead, dead, dead, just like we die, and then defied the grave and rose again.  But the way Mark leaves things, well, it’s not that easy, is it?

On this, the most triumphant day of our faith, the day in which we embrace what we believe to be a divine conquest over death and pain, I think it might be worth it to consider that perhaps Mark intended to end there.

Perhaps a trailing, open end, with what we know was certainly true—that Jesus’ followers were so desperately afraid for their lives, so confused and so bewildered by this turn of events that they ran away—is really the BEST way to end the story.

Why?

Because that wasn’t the end.

If that early morning 2000 years ago was the end, what we would have here is a very nice story about a great man who challenged a political system, loved and healed people and rose from the dead in a way that defied the laws of nature as we know them. What we would have would be a nice fairytale to tell our children at bedtime, a lovely little folktale to use when teaching culture and tradition. What we would have would be a static, encapsulated piece of historical lore that could be pulled out once a year, dusted off and read one more time, then carefully tucked away until next time.

Mark knew that this was not the end of the story. In fact, in order for it to be believable at all, this better had be . . . just the beginning.

The only way those fearful followers believed . . . the only way they came to finally understand that their friend Jesus was, in actual fact, who he said he was, the only way the unbelievable became real to them was . . . by keeping their promises to follow…to keep following…until the story could reach its way into their lives and changed them, until they could summon the courage to believe.  That empty tomb was their wake up call—it was what compelled them to get up and finish the story with their very lives.

And today, this Easter, that empty tomb better jar us into awareness, too.  The invitation to you and me is clear: we’re going to have to finish the story of resurrection ourselves.

What difference does the risen Christ make in your life? This is not about new clothes for Easter or ham or Easter eggs. This is not about lilies or candles or even beautiful music. This is about the fact that life is hard, that death and pain and uncertainty and fear, injustice and war are tangibly here. Right here, part of our lives all the time. What good is it to go around once a year retelling a fairytale if it doesn’t mean anything?

Well, let me tell you. We’re not here because we want to recount every post-resurrection appearance of Jesus, to try to bring back to life the accounts of those first disciples. We’re not here to try to image a Galilean man in rough burlap robes and rustic sandals making his way into our sanctuary. We’re not here to uncover archeological evidence of resurrection.

We’re here because we’re human and we hurt; because we want hope for our lives; because we believe, we know, that to finish this story means to keep our promises to God, to wake up to possibilities and hope we never imagined before.

We’re here because in our humanity we have turned from the tomb in utter defeat and crippling fear and, despite that, have the end of this story to tell.

We’re here because we have seen the living power of the resurrected Christ in our lives and in our world, and what was once so strangely unbelievable has now become an urgent proclamation, not of a dusty ancient text, but of our immediate, 21^st century lives.

Something happened after that morning at the tomb. The women left, the text says, too scared to say anything to anyone. But in less than 50 years the entire world had been transformed by the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus. His radical mandate to love each other, his offer of direct connection to God, the healing grace of his death and resurrection changed the women at the tomb . . . and changed the world, because those women had the courage to keep their promises to follow, the courage to finish the story.

And it didn’t stop.  No, the story continues. The story of new life and relationship with God is a story that is lived out over and over again in my life, in your life, in the lives of people all over this world who will follow the one who proclaimed that death is not the end, that there is more to this story, and that it is our job to gather our wits about us, our hopes and dreams, our fears, failures and grief, and turn from this incredible sight to live out the ending . . . that death is not the final word and that we have new life in Christ.

“He is not here; he is risen,” the man at the tomb said, but that was only the beginning of the story.

Can we keep our promise to God?  Can we gather the courage to turn from the empty tomb, maybe fearful and maybe unsure, and allow the power of the resurrected Christ to enter our lives and transform them, until we are absolutely, positively compelled to finish the story . . . starting right here, in our own hearts?

We can.  And, by the grace of God, we will.  Because God has kept God’s promise…because resurrection is here…and it has come just in the nick of time.  Amen.

Hebrew Lesson

Sermon Audio

Promises, Promises: Whoever Believes

Numbers 21:4-9

Sermon Audio

Lena Paahlsson’s wedding ring was designed especially for her.  It was a white-gold band, set with seven small diamonds, and, as most wedding rings are, full of sentimental value in addition to being very pretty.

Paahlsson lost her ring, though, in 1995, one day when she and her daughters were doing some Christmas baking in the kitchen.  It seems she took the ring off her hand and put it somewhere on the work surface, but it disappeared.  No matter how hard she looked, she couldn’t find the ring.  She and her family did everything they could think of—even pulled up flooring—to try to find it.  No luck.

It was not until 16 years later when Mrs. Paahlsson was pulling up carrots in her garden that she noticed a carrot growing with the gold band fastened tightly around it.  You guessed it.  It was her wedding ring.

She doesn’t know exactly what happened, but she thinks maybe the ring fell into a sink back in 1995 and was lost in vegetable peelings that were turned into compost or fed to their sheep.  When asked if she was surprised to find the ring, Paahlsson said: “I had given up hope,”

Stories like these make the news because all of us know what it’s like to wait and wait and hope and wait some more, then finally surrender hope.  We do it all the time.  And so it was with the Israelites.  While they’d believed God’s promise and followed Yahweh out of Egypt, forty years had passed—forty years—and they had given up hope.  Despite the evidence of God’s provision all around them, they were tired and they didn’t believe anymore that the promise would come.

Today we read another covenant story, another chapter in the long tale of the relationship between God and the Israelites.  This story of the covenant between God and God’s people comes after times when they were desperately thirsty, lost in the desert and sure they would die, only to be saved by God’s provision of water…and that the time that they got tired of waiting for God and pooled their jewelry to manufacture a golden calf, a new god for themselves.  Remember those?

Covenant, the making and keeping of promises, is predicated upon, of course, relationship—that mutual sharing of life and trust with another, the belief, even in times of discouragement and pain, that a promise has been made and that promise would be kept, and the practice of living believing in the promise even when all evidence points to the contrary.  God was in covenant with the Israelite people.  They had made promises to each other.  And in today’s passage they are, once again, living through a testing of those promises.

I often say that it’s tricky for us to read the Bible as we do—one passage here, one passage there, all carefully selected and organized according to theme.  When we do that, it’s like sitting in a little café, out on the sidewalk, listening to someone talk on a telephone.  By listening to the conversation we certainly can get some sense of what’s going on. However, we can never get the whole picture, the full details, if we only hear part of the conversation.

And so it is with reading the Bible—particularly the passages we’ve been reading lately, the Hebrew text telling of God’s relationship with the people, of all the dramatic incidents that made up their life together.  One commentator calls it the story ofIsrael’s long, hazardous journey to understand God.  Each week as we hear parts of the story, little pieces of the whole, we have some sense of what’s going on but not the whole picture—not by a long shot.  And that’s certainly true of today’s story.  You recall what happened.

It seems the people are headed back toward theRed Seain this part of the story.  The text says they had grown impatient with Moses and angry at God—again.  They complained by asking why God had taken them out of Egypt in the first place…just so they could die out in the desert—they said all that, again.  For there was no food and no water, they complained, and, they said, “We detest this miserable food!”

Do they sound like unhappy children to you?  Me, too.  The Israelites have been complaining bitterly for the past few weeks in every narrative we’ve read.  It seems that getting used to desert living was proving hard for them, we might think…except for the fact that when we read this passage out of context we are not getting the full picture of what’s going on.

All the worry about food and sweet drinking water, all the concerns over the rule of law and the order of their society, their uncertainty about where to go and how to worship God…well, that was kind of understandable last week, when we were reading out of the book of Exodus about the state of the Israelite people in the months immediately following their dramatic rescue from Egypt.

But if you read about today’s incidence of complaint, you might not immediately realize that the people are complaining bitterly about God and Moses, but now almost 40 years have passed.  When we read today’s passage in the context in which it was written—after years of waiting for the promise—we can see that the Israelites were still having trouble faithfully following Yahweh.  They’d had trouble at the beginning of their journey, but it seems the hard lessons of life as followers of Yahweh had yet to sink into their hard heads…either that, or they were tired, so tired, of waiting for the promise to come.

The book of Numbers comes fourth in the Bible, three books behind Genesis and the story of God’s covenant with Abraham and Sarah, and two books behind Exodus, the story of the Israelites’ delivery fromEgypt.  Scholars agree that Numbers has two distinct sections, and these sections are divided by the reports of two censuses of the Hebrew people.  The first census is in chapter one of Numbers, where everybody in the current band of Israelites was named and counted.  The second census, in chapter 26, names the generation that will be poised on the edge ofCanaanwhen the book reaches its end.  The names are different.  It took a long, long time, many, many years of wandering and waiting and hoping for the promise, the people still hadn’t learned that God was with them in the middle of their waiting, that God was perpetually inviting them to believe…to believe that the promise was on its way.

One of my favorite things to do when I was in Texas in college was to go water tubing.  Those of you who hail from that part of this great country know that theGuadalupeRivercuts right through the middle ofNew Braunfels, Texas—just north of San Antonio.  The river is the perfect size and speed for tubing, and theTexasweather makes it an utter relief most summer days.  In the oppressive heat of aTexassummer it’s pure heaven to jump into an inner tube and meander your way down the river, surrounded by that refreshing water.

Those of you who have done some tubing or rafting in the past will know that the whole experience is an exercise in trust.  You get dropped off at the edge of the river; you leave behind everything you brought with you; you enter the water with only the inner tube to support you.  And there you are, several miles up river from the point at which your guides have promised to pick you up, floating in the cold darkness of a powerful body of water.  You lean back on your inner tube and you float, trusting the integrity of the tube, the buoyancy of the water, and the word of your guide.  And with those three assurances you set out to float down the river.

Living in covenant with God is filled with waiting but it’s also filled with trusting like that sometimes—during the waiting.  We don’t always see the promise laid out in front of us, neatly packaged and on a mutually agreeable timeframe.  No, instead, living in covenant with eternal God means often being tempted to give healing and hope up for lost.  And, on the days that you don’t throw in the towel altogether, you can manage somehow to lean back in a trust that defies logic, to rest with the tenacious assurance that God will not leave, that the covenant promise will come to be.

Forty years had passed.  Forty years since they’d set out with a certain degree of terror and uncertainty, toward the incomprehensible situation they faced, straight through the middle of the fear that surrounded them, with nothing to hang onto, nothing to buoy them in the middle of the dessert, nothing to keep them going except the promise—God’s promise that he would be their God, that they would have what they needed to survive, that God would create a future for their people.

But it was taking so long.  Too long.  They’d leaned into the promise that God had made them when they were slaves inEgypt; they’d hung on for dear life through all sorts of situations.  But they got tired.  The promise wasn’t coming to be fast enough.  They were getting worried and sometimes they didn’t believe anymore.

It was too hard to believe when what they’d envisioned was not coming to be, when life was hard and hope was absent, and signs of God’s presence were coming too few and too far between for anybody’s preference.  They gave up hope.  They forgot to believe.  In the middle of the long, long journey they questioned their initial belief that God would show up, that God would hold them safe and cared for, that God would come through on God’s promise to save them.

But he did.  Again.  Forty years and countless experiences later, God showed up again to heal them.  They were in desperate circumstances yet again, unsure of the promise of God altogether, doubting their own logic and wondering when, if ever, they would see the promise come to be.  And God showed up.

It was shortly after today’s Hebrew text that the Israelites made their way into Canaan, into the Promised Land, home.  For so many years they had wandered the desert, and in those years of darkness, misdirection, and pain, they had begun to see only the difficult circumstances that surrounded them.  They did not remember the promise.  They forgot they were living in covenant.  They did not have the courage to believe.

And who can blame them?  We know a little of what they must have been feeling.

None of us has been delivered from slavery, but all of us have been delivered from something.

None of us has ever been lost in the desert for forty years, but all of us have waited for a promise to come to fruition.

And none of us has ever been named a special nation chosen by God, but all of us have been invited into covenant with God through Jesus Christ.

Our challenge today is to consider, in the face of all of this, whether we will believe that the promise will come to be.

Thousands of years after the Hebrews had these problems with snakes, Jesus Christ came to earth.  He talked about life lived in relationship with God.  He taught about God’s relentless concern for our salvation.  He told stories about God as a great shepherd who cared tenderly for his flock.  He said that God the shepherd would carefully count all of his sheep and, upon finding one was missing, he would go out and search and search and search until he found that one lost sheep.  And when he did, he would hoist it up on his shoulders and carry it home.

Ever wonder how it felt to be the sheep?  Out there in the cold, all alone, separated from the rest of your flock, alert to any and every noise that broke the night air.  All alone, vulnerable, in danger…wondering where the shepherd was, if the shepherd would ever come to save you.  It must have felt something like the life of a Hebrew slave inEgyptwho gave up everything to follow this god Yahweh through harrowing circumstances in the hope of finding a way home.  The longer that precarious insecurity remained, the harder it was to believe that the promise was true…that God would, in fact, lead them home.  It was so hard to believe.

Today the story of the Hebrews and the Gospel of John remind us that it is in just these most desperate circumstances that God does, finally, show up.  The God of the covenant will not leave us, no matter how bleak our circumstances.  We are not left on our own, and we are not left to our own devices.  God will save us, if only we believe: the promise is on its way.

Amen.

Exodus 20:1-17

Sermon Audio

In 2003, Chief Justice Roy Moore was removed from his seat on the Alabama Supreme Court.  The judicial ethics panel voted unanimously to remove Chief Justice Moore from his seat because he had refused repeated orders to move a 2.6 ton granite monument of the Ten Commandments from the state Supreme Court building. Moorefelt that the monument of the Ten Commandments was an appropriate way to acknowledge God in society, and that it was especially appropriate for the state Supreme Court building.  After hearing the unanimous decision of his colleagues to remove him from his seat on the Supreme Court,Mooresaid; “God has chosen this time and this place so we can save our country and save our courts for our children.”

Since his removal,Moorehas begun a nonprofit called The Foundation for Moral Law.  He travels all over to speak about his convictions, and has been known to cart the monument with him on the bed of a truck—all 5,280 pounds of it, which, as you can easily figure out, comes to a little over 500 pounds per commandment.

The Ten Commandments.  Isn’t this granite monument a great metaphor for the way we often think about them: a list of heavy requirements, put down in stone, enforced by God, and whose compliance is required of all of us?  I don’t know about you, but I had to learn them all from memory inVacationBibleSchool.  I remember my parents especially liking the honor your father and mother part.  We learned them then and we often understand them now as a list of heavy rules we dare not break or else.

But for the Israelites, the Ten Commandments could not have been further from a list of legalistic mandates meant to keep people in compliance of the rules.  Instead, they were a covenant of life-giving relationship, with God and with each other.  Remember where the Israelites were when they received the Ten Commandments?

It had been only three months since the great Exodus fromEgypt.  After crossing theRed Seato escape from lives of forced labor and slavery, the people suddenly found themselves in the middle of the Sinai desert.  The three months of travel had been full of drama, which you will remember included a lot of worrying and wondering if they would have good water to drink or anything with which to feed their children.  God provided with manna and quail and sweet water, but by three months in you have to know the people were struggling.

After leaving the oppressive society of Egypt, they suddenly found themselves in a brand new society, a way of living that found them freed from Egyptian constructs but still, of course, in need of some rules, some standards by which they lived life together.  They were free, it’s true, but free doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want…that would be chaos for all involved, for sure.

And so it was that the Israelites found themselves in the desert at the foot of Mt. Sinai, and Moses climbed the mountain to chat with God, a chat in which he received God’s direction for the people…in the form of ten “words” the Hebrew says—the Ten Commandments—a law that fully encapsulated the whole levitical system of law that came to be as the people learned to live together.

In the ancient world the purpose of law was to place limits on human behavior so that equity and justice would be the order of the day and so that peace would prevail in society.  Always, in the ancient world, law was given by a divine being; it was seen as divine will sent to order human life and, by extension, the whole world.  One commentator explains that the giving of the law in the ancient world was actually an extension of the understanding of creation: just as the world was created with natural limits, so a law given by God sets limits on human behavior…and as creation was a source of life, so the law is a life-giving instrument for people.  With the law, people can enjoy long lives in harmonious relationship with each other.

In other words, the Ten Commandments were not meant to be heavy rules by which God could catch us being bad.  No, they are meant to free us to live in healthy relationship with God and with each other, to give us guidelines for living in community governed by a covenant of care for each other and for our world.  A divine law like the Ten Commandments makes us live more intentionally and more healthily together.

I had the occasion this week to visit with a friend who is an Orthodox Jew.  I mentioned that I was studying the Ten Commandments passage this week and asked her to tell me about her community—a community built and maintained with a strict list of rules and guidelines.  When I asked her to tell me why she lives in a community with such strict guidelines, she explained that the rules are not meant just for the sake of having rules.  Instead, they are meant to bind the community together in mutual dependence, to teach them how to live together.  For example, she explained, since they observe strict kosher rules related to food, they must cook for each other.  Imagine what happens when a member of their community gets sick or is unable to cook?  They must take care of that member, because they share the certain standards about their food.

And nobody in their community drives on Shabbat, or uses electronics, or even talks on the telephone.  What results?  Time—lots of time spent together, building relationships, learning how to live in community.  The rules of their community bring them together.

And so it is with the Ten Commandments.  A divine rule given by God, they give us guidelines for life together, a way to make our relationships with each other deep and interdependent, life-giving and life-maintaining.

We’ve been learning these past weeks about covenants: about Noah and about Abraham and Sarah.  In these covenantal relationships, it’s God who does the covenanting.  God promises never to destroy the earth with a flood.  God promises descendants for Abraham and Sarah.  It’s God who makes and keeps the promises.  In today’s covenant, we’re invited into the story.  It’s almost as if God is saying: I’ve shown you by now how I will treat you.  Now, I want you to live in relationship with each other in the same way I live in relationship with you.  The covenant today, framing the Ten Commandments, is God’s declaration: I will be your God.  I will give you what you need to live together.  I will offer you a divine standard.  I will show you how to live and to love each other.  Not rules you have to follow or else, but life-giving, covenantal guidelines to help you live healthy lives and build lasting community.

I have to say that I am a pretty good bowler.  This is due largely to sixth grade PE class, during which our whole class would walk to the bowling alley and spend the afternoon learning to bowl.  You can imagine the chaos of a bowling alley filled with sixth graders learning to bowl.

Thank goodness, then, for the gutters.

Learning to bowl, for our group anyway, involved the flinging of heavy bowling balls in many various directions as we tried to perfect a strategy that would result in pins down and high scores.  As you might imagine, especially at the beginning of the year, many bowling balls ended up veering off to the sides, rolling down the gutters into the ball return machines.  The gutters kept our balls in our lanes, gave us parameters as we learned strategies for bowling, and kept us all safe from each other’s errant pitches.

And so it is with the Ten Commandments.  They are a covenant that reflects God’s way with us so that God’s way with us might be our way with each other.  I will be your God, God says.  Now you…be my people.

The Rev. Abby Thornton, pastor of Broadneck Baptist Church in Annapolis, Maryland, has rewritten the Ten Commandments in a way that she imagines God hopes that we hear them.  I’d like to share her version of the covenant of the commandments with you today.

God says: “I am the one who has set you free.  I have done it.  Now work with me to remain in this place of freedom, and to spread this good news of liberation from earthly powers that oppress to all of your neighbors.  Here’s how it can be done:  Have one single loyalty:  me.  I am the only God who is for this community—others will only hurt you. 

Know that I am a God beyond your imagination, so don’t try to craft images of me that limit me– you cannot figure me out; freedom is known in the mystery. 

Know that I am not the means to some better end, but the beginning and the end in itself—so don’t use my name for your own purposes and take me lightly, as peripheral rather than central. 

Pattern your life after mine—work and then rest, every one of you, on the seventh day.  Your work should look like mine—not relentless, not unceasingly driven, but remembering your freedom from that endless grind! 

Show respect to all generations—honor those who came before you, because if you lose them and their stories—the ways they have seen me act–you lose your own story, and your place in it. 

Honor human life—power over it belongs to me, not you. 

Be faithful to one another—as you stick with one god, stick with one person–your connections to one another are sacred. 

Though life is not fair, you must be—do not try to take hold of that which does not belong to you, to profit at another’s expense. 

And know that your community depends on truth-telling—speak what is real and do not distort reality to one another, no matter what. 

And after all of this, let not just your actions towards one another but even your desires be for the common good—if I am the God who liberates you and provides you manna, you don’t need to want what anyone else has.  You don’t need to desire more, to live shackled fear and competition. 

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out ofEgypt, out of a life of slavery.  I am your God.”

It was thousands of years later that Jesus Christ walked the dusty roads ofGalilee.  He was surrounded by many people who had forgotten this covenant their ancestors made with God and had become preoccupied with rule-keeping for the sake of rule-keeping.  Some of these ardent religious types tried to trick Jesus into breaking the rules; they understood the rules to be methods of hurt and exclusion.  Jesus would have none of it, though.  He knew that the covenant of the commandments—that the rules—were meant to bring us together, not keep us apart.  They were not meant to hang like heavy weights around our necks (or in our Supreme Court buildings).  Instead, they were meant to help us live in covenantal community, in healthy loving relationship, with each other and the world.  The way Jesus said it was this: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16

Sermon Audio

Some of you know that I recently moved.  On one of the many days of cleaning out things I’d stored for later but hadn’t looked at in years, I came across a well-worn piece of paper that was a list of all the possible names under consideration for my first child.

When I started the list almost twenty years ago, I knew that I was going to become a parent, but I didn’t know who the little person coming to grace my life would be.  As a result I made a long and extensive list of names—all kinds of names—that might be possibilities.  Nine months later, we were down to two or three—I could tell from all of those that had been crossed out, eliminated as possibilities altogether.

Of course Hayden was meant to be Hayden…or he became Hayden…either way, I had to laugh at the painstaking effort I had clearly put in to trying to choose a name for that child.  And it occurred to me that giving something or someone a name is a very holy and powerful act.  When you give or take a name you are, in effect, entering into covenant relationship…a relationship in which you move beyond the purely contractual and into something deeper and more profound…something closely related to a very core of identity.  A name is a powerful thing.

You might remember that very recently we dedicated our newest baby around here, little Fransisco.  Marcela and Fransisco (Daddy) had to come up to the front and I asked them a series of questions.  One of those questions was, “What have you named this child?”

When we dedicate a child in this community we do not ask parents that question just to see how sleep deprived they are.  No, the bestowing of a name is serious and sacred, and as we, the community, bless and welcome a child, it’s important for us to be part of giving him his name.

It’s interesting to note, then, that everybody in today’s covenant passage gets a new name.  It’s a curious turn of events, and it must say something about the kind of relationship God is setting up with Abram and his descendants, what kind of promise God is making and what kind of promise God is expecting in return.

Remember, we’re in week two of Lent today, thinking about promises.  Lent is traditionally a time when we contemplate repentance, when we think about turning around and changing things in our lives.  Very often that act involves making and keeping promises.  It’s interesting to note, then, that the lectionary texts in the Hebrew scripture this year take us through passages in which God is entering into these kinds of promises, of covenantal relationships, with people.

Last week we remembered the story of Noah and theArk, when God made a promise never to destroy the earth with a flood again, a change of personal conviction on the part of God.  And today we read part of an interaction between God and Abram and Sarai, a lavish making of generous promises in which God enters into covenantal relationship, a relationship that demands some kind of shift on the part of Abram and his family.  And it all starts with a change of name.

In the covenant passage we read today, God comes to Abram when he’s 99 years old—with a significant number of years behind him, a place from which he certainly looked back and assessed his life.  He’d had a covenant conversation with God before, when God promised a legacy.  But in the intervening years Abram and Sarai had not had a child.  Hope was running out, if it wasn’t already gone.

99 years is nothing to God, though, who has in mind the ushering in of something completely new.  In this theophany, appearance by God, things radically change; God again makes the promise to care for Abram and his descendants, including the provision of land and offspring.  And in return, Abram and Sarai are asked to keep the covenant, to live lives of integrity that reflect more than a contractual relationship between God and God’s people, but an intimate, familial relationship.

Here, God takes a step beyond promising there will be no more destruction.  Here, God holds out a hand and invites Abram and his family into covenantal, reciprocal relationship.  And here both God and Abram take on a whole new identities to mark their new relationship.

This covenantal relationship—the offering of a hand to another to set out on a life together—is symbolized by the changing of one’s very identity: the changing of a name.

We have some friends whose dog is like a child to them.  Not you, Julie.  Recently, given what a positive experience they had had when their dogNewtonjoined their family, they decided it was time to get another dog.  They did all their research and finally decided to adopt a sweet little dog whose owner had moved into assisted living and could not keep her anymore.

Everything about this dog seemed to fit their family; she was just the right size; she had a sweet and affable personality; she got along great withNewton; she was already housetrained; everything seemed like it would work well.  Except her name.

The dog was named Daphne.  It wasn’t, perhaps, their first choice, but they thought maybe it would work.  On the first day Daphne was in their house, she escaped out the front door and set out to explore the neighborhood.  Busy roads were dangerous, so my friend ran after her.  Unfortunately, Daphne thought my friend chasing her was a spirited game, and the end result was the dog scrambling under fences and hiding in neighbors’ yards as part of the game, all the while my friend was tearing through her neighborhood yelling at the top her lungs, “Daphne!  Daphne!  Where are you, Daphne???!?”

After that experience, my friend decided a change of name was in order.  To mark the start of a new family relationship, one in which the dog was dependent on them for shelter and sustenance, and they were dependent on her for affection, it would only do to have a name that reflected their family style a little more, or at the very least that would not sound ridiculous when they found themselves tearing through the neighborhood yelling for the dog at the top of their lungs.  And so they renamed her.

In the covenant passage we read today Abram gets a new name—Abraham.  And Sarai gets a new name, too: Sarah.  Both these names can be said to reflect the shift in relationship between the two and God, the marking of a promise for their lives, a promise of offspring and future, of a great nation emerging from the unlikely barrenness they were living.  But God changes a name in this covenant story.

For the first time in the Hebrew text, God is referred to not as Elohim or Yahweh, but with the Hebrew name El Shaddai.  This name for God, El Shaddai, though popularized of late by Amy Grant for those of you who grew up listening to contemporary Christian music, is not commonly used in the Hebrew text.  Most of its use is found in the book of Job, but it first appears here, when God is entering into covenantal relationship with Abram and Sarai, promising them the one thing that has eluded them all the years of their lives on earth: descendants, a legacy, a future built on the promise of a great nation.

While translators have commonly translated El Shaddai, God’s name, as “Almighty God” or “All Powerful One,” God’s name change to El Shaddai has more to do with fertility.  The words in God’s new name most clearly relate to the Hebrew word Shaddaim, the plural form of the word for the female breast.  It makes sense, doesn’t it, that when God is entering into a new covenant, a promise of offspring and future, God’s name changes, too, to reflect the substance of that promise.  In taking that name, it’s as if God is saying: “We’re in relationship.  I will be your God—your fertility God who gives you what you desperately need.  And you, Abram and Sarai…you will be parents of a whole new nation.”  It was a covenant promise.

It’s interesting, this renaming.  It seems God has been doing it since the beginning of relationship with humanity.  We do it when we marry or give birth or even take on the responsibility of caring for another living thing.  We assign new names; we change old ones; we declare in covenant promises our deepest hopes and dreams for life together.  It’s what God does here with Abram and Sarai.  And it’s what God does with us.

Our world has a tendency to assign us names, names that we take to heart and live into, even subconsciously.  How do you think of yourself:  Accountant?  Youngest child?  Immigrant?  Minority?  Transplant?  Have you ever thought of yourself as “underachiever” or “unworthy”…”not good enough” or “unclean”…”failure” or “insignificant”?  It’s easy to take on names like these, even in our subconscious, because we hear over and over messages that we are not good enough…because we see what seems to be evidence of failure all around us…because things in our lives don’t always mirror the expectations of success that our society places upon us.  And we take these labels on as names—as identity.  Like Abram and Sarai, what we see all around us becomes our very identity.

But God has made us promises.  God has entered into covenantal relationship with us, and in so doing has changed our names.  Remember?  When all of this started and God created humankind, God looked at God’s creation and called it good, created in the very image of God.  God named us…good.

Instead of failure or unworthy, despite the messages we hear all around us, even when we can’t see any evidence to support it, God’s promise for us is like God’s promise to Abram and Sarai.  “I am a life-giving God who anticipates good and wonderful things for your life, no matter how unlikely that looks from your vantage point.  I created you good and I call you blessed, and with those names you will know for sure my love and faithfulness to you, no matter what.”

What’s your name for God?

On this day of making and hearing promises, it might be more important to remember what God’s name is for you.  For Abram and Sarai it was “Parents of a Nation”.  For you—for me—it’s something just as hope-filled and wonderful.  Why?

Because God promised.

Amen.

Sermon Audio

I will never forget that fateful day, about two years ago, at 10:45 one Sunday morning.  It was the day I sat down to print out my final copy of the sermon for that morning and somehow that I can’t figure out still to this day, managed to delete the file.

It was not a delete in the “undo edit” sense of delete.  I completely, somehow, destroyed the entire file and had no sermon on paper that morning.  In the fifteen minutes that passed between my deleting the file and the start of worship, I decided I could either run away and never come back…or wing it, which I ended up doing.

I did not intend to press the delete key (or whatever I did) that morning.  But however it happened, in that moment the entire sermon was gone.  It still gives me chills just thinking about it.  Anybody besides me remember that day?

As we look to our Hebrew scripture this morning, I think it’s clear that God meant to press the delete key.  If you’re unfamiliar with the story of Noah and the great flood, you can back up about two chapters and read the entire story, in various versions, from God getting mad, to Noah building a boat, to the animals filing in two by two.

But I’m fairly sure you know the story, as does most everyone, because it has been told and retold with cute little furry animals and an ark that looks like a Carnival cruise ship in Fisher Price’s interpretation.  In fact, you can buy stuffed toys of Noah and the ark; or wooden figurines that make up a whole set.  You can decorate your baby’s nursery with a Noah’s ark theme, or, like me, sew your kids the cutest Noah’s ark curtains for their bedrooms.  Some of you may even have received a notecard from me with a picture of Noah and his wife on the ark with the animals, and she’s saying: “Noah, don’t you think it’s time we talked about the elephant in the living room?”

But the story of Noah and the great flood is really not a laughing matter at all, and probably not that appropriate for your kids’ bedroom theme, either.  The story of the great flood is a story of fear, terror, and regret, it’s God pressing the delete key—on purpose—on a creation that had violated, over and over again, the relationship between created and Creator, that had taken the gift of free will and gone, well, crazy.

The world in Noah’s time was not what God envisioned.  It was not what God wanted when God entered into relationship with human beings.  It was a situation so bad that God hit the delete key—on purpose—and the whole world was destroyed.

Start over.

Someone asked me this week if the story of Noah and the ark was a true historical story.  Since I suspected this might be a trick question, I think I fell back on my standard safety answer, “What do you think?”

As we know, the Bible was not written as a historical record of events.  Instead, it’s a grand and sweeping story of God’s interaction with the world, of the relationship between human beings and their Creator.  This flood story is the Hebrew version, one of between 250 and 300 flood stories found by anthropologists on every continent in almost every group of people.

So since this was probably not the ancient version of CNN’s story of an actual, historical flood, we readers of the text have some deeper and more universal truth to learn about God or about ourselves through the telling and hearing of this story.  In other words, whether or not an actual historical event took place just as reported here, the story of Noah and the flood is true, and it has something to teach us about relationship with God.

Specifically, today on the first Sunday of Lent, we read this story as the first of several “covenant stories” found in the Hebrew text and think about promises.  The word covenant means promise, and as we’re embarking on a season of the church year when we are invited to take a long, hard look at our lives and think about making some changes, we’re looking back at stories of faith in which promises are made, broken, renegotiated, and kept.

Let’s review a little bit of what how things were before the story of the great flood.  The story of God’s relationship with humanity begins with the creation of the world, as you recall, but in the six chapters between that and the flood, things really start to go downhill.  There’s the whole Adam and Eve with the snake and the tree of life situation, followed closely by their banishment from Eden.  Then their sons Cain and Abel get into some trouble resulting in murder.  Things get worse even from there until, at the beginning of chapter 6, the text says: “The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.”

And so it was that God starts over, presses delete, begins again.  Of course the events of the flood changed the earth.  Populations were decimated; the whole of the earth was covered with water; only Noah and his family survived on the ark.  And did that fix the problem of sin?  Did it stop acts of human selfishness, anger, and greed?  Well?  What do you think?

No, of course it did not.  Creation continued.  Humanity rolled along as it had before.  People made mistakes and betrayed each other and disobeyed God, destroyed the earth and still cause all sorts of trouble.  Don’t think God is smiling down benevolently at our antics these days, given up on expectations since the whole flood.  I don’t think that God’s hopes for us are any less rigorous or lofty than they were then.  But it is true that something changed with the flood.

God changed.

And God changed because God made a promise—a promise to hang up the bow of vengeance and retribution, to retire from battle, to forgo our destruction no matter what.  A promise.  God’s promise didn’t change our behavior; God’s promise changed the nature of God’s relationship with us…a change from humanity getting what it deserved to an offer of grace and relationship, no matter what.  God changed when God made his promise.  We change when we make promises, too.

In 1999, Michael Ackerman was a pediatric cardiologist in training at the Mayo Clinic.  One of his first heart transplant patients was eight year old Stefani Pentiuk, who had been on the transplant list for only two days after doctor’s determined she would not live without a transplant heart.  When the call came that a heart was available, Stefani was in her hospital room with Dr. Ackerman and asked him if he thought she would live through the transplant.

Dr. Ackerman said later that no class in medical school prepared him for questions of life and death from little kids whose very lives were at risk, and he doesn’t recall what made him say it, but in answer to her question Dr. Ackerman made a promise…he told eight year old Stefani that he would be at her senior prom to dance with her, that the transplant would take and when it did, he promised to show up for a dance.

Sure enough, ten years later Dr. Ackerman was traveling from California to Florida for speaking engagements, but he stopped off in Michigan just to make an appearance at Stefani’s senior prom.  As you can imagine, there were tears all around.

Later, when interviewed on CBS this morning, Dr. Ackerman was asked why he would promise an 8 year old that he’d dance at her prom.  After all, what eight year old really spends that much time thinking about a senior prom?  Dr. Ackerman said he didn’t really know why he said what he did, other than the fact that he was thinking about Stefani’s father, and about himself as a father, and imagining that senior prom would mark a passage to adulthood that every father would want to see.  Going to the prom didn’t mean much to eight year old Stefani at the time, but it did mean something to Dr. Michael Ackerman.  It meant enough to see Stefani and her family through the transplant and then travel hours out of his way ten years later just to dance with 18 year old, healthy Stefani…just as he had promised.

In a little way, Dr. Ackerman’s experience when he made that promise to Stefani was a bit like what happened to God after the flood.  With the making of a promise, with the hanging of the bow in the sky, something changed.  God’s promise changed God—changed God’s regret over creating such sinful creatures into a resolve to love us, no matter what, to forgo our destruction no matter how and how often we miss the mark or fail to meet God’s expectations.

Promise making and promise keeping take courage, largely because they change us.  Even God faced change so profound that he had to remind himself of the difference.  In Hawaii where rainbows are a daily occurrence we learned that seeing a rainbow was a reminder to us of God’s promises.  Turns out the text says the bow is a reminder to God…because perhaps even keeping promises is not that easy for God, either.  Ancient deities are often depicted holding a bow and arrow.  For God to hang a bow in the sky is a physical reminder that God has put away battle; that destruction is no longer an option on the table; that the promise God has made has changed…God.

As we set out on this season of Lent we give thanks that God’s memory is more powerful than our forgetfulness.  God will not forget God’s promise to us, even when we forget our promises to God. Striving to keep a promise and failing: these often characterize our Lenten experience.  But, though we fail, God does not, and God’s promises to us do not fail either.

The story of Noah and the great flood is a reminder of just that.  God has hung God’s bow in the sky and put away retribution forever.  God has changed God’s mind.

Perhaps even in our human failing, if we have the courage to make promises, we will change, too.  If we examine our lives enough to promise something new, we might find that the act of promise making and promise keeping softens our hearts…that is shifts the focus of our lives from ourselves to others…that we will act responsibly in relationships and situations…that we will see the world in a way that doesn’t always require ourselves at its center…that we will change.

What signs might we need to feel the changes our promises make in us?  How can we follow God’s example in the story of Noah and let our promise-making soften our hearts and change us?

This Lent, make your promises.  And then, let them change you.  Amen.