From my Easter Sermon yesterday:

Mark’s ending, with the women running in amazement and holy fear, seems so odd that later Christian tradition felt compelled to supply additional endings to make it more appealing, perhaps with what they thought readers were really waiting for.

As it is, there is no indisputable evidence of the resurrection. There is no account of how the word got out to the male disciples, let alone the whole wide world, because it says the women remained silent. And unlike the other Gospel narratives of the resurrection, there is no account of an appearance of the risen Jesus.  We’re left wanting a lot more information, more facts to help us make sense of what’s happened.  Can’t we have St. John ‘s lovely story of the garden tomb where Jesus appears and says, “Mary,” and she responds, “Rabboni,” and then runs in joy and wonder to tell the disciples?”  That seems like a good ending.

But I want to say that Mark’s unusual ending has grown on me over the years, so much so that I think that our understanding of the resurrection would be impoverished without it.  Could it be that Mark’s account, just these short eight verses, gives us everything we need to know about the resurrection of Jesus?  Not everything we want to know, of course. Because we would sure like some more empirical details to help shore up our sometimes tentative faith.  No, Mark does not give us everything we want to know about Jesus’ resurrection, but I want to say that he gives us everything we need to know, and that might be the most powerful way to end the resurrection story after all.

Listen to the sermon here.

This joyful Eastertide,
Away with sin and sorrow!’

My Love, the Crucified,
Hath sprung to life this morrow.

Had Christ, that once was slain,
Ne’er burst his three-day prison,
Our faith had been in vain:
But now hath Christ arisen,
arisen, arisen, arisen.

My flesh in hope shall rest,
And for a season slumber:
Till trump from east to west
Shall wake the dead in number.

Had Christ, that once…

Death’s flood hath lost his chill,
Since Jesus cross’d the river
Lover of souls, from ill
My passing soul deliver.

George Ratcliffe Woodward, 1894

From my Invitation to Holy Week at Church of the Holy Comforter this morning:

Why did Jesus go to Jerusalem?

The God Jesus came to Jerusalem to reveal was a God of steadfast love, a God of compassion and mercy, a God of justice and peace, a God whose fierce love has the power to heal and reconcile our wounded hearts and our wounded world.

I think Jesus knew that love and decided to live out that fearless, fierce love, holding nothing back.  He came to Jerusalem because Jerusalem is where God’s love needed to be as well as in quiet Galilee.  I think he knew exactly what he was doing, knew the risks, and knew that he well might die. It was the strongest, bravest decision he ever made.

I have always been compelled by the power of Jesus’ decision to go to Jerusalem and what it says to us as we attempt to be his faithful followers today.  Where is our Jerusalem?  And where are we being stretched, to risk, and to go where we have never been before, for the sake of God’s fierce, just, and transforming love?  These are questions we might hold in our hearts  as we keep company with Jesus over the next seven days.

Leave me a comment on how you might answer those questions.

Full sermon here.

From my sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Lent:

We read Jeremiah’s consoling words that promise a “New Covenant.”  Prior to this, Jeremiah has outlined the people’s disobedience to the Covenant made with them when the Lord brought them out of slavery in Egypt.  They have violated the Ten Commandments of Sinai.  The wealthy and powerful have established policies abused the poor.  They have fostered an increasing dependency on weapons of war rather than pursuing strategies for peace.  Judgment has arrived with the destruction of Jerusalem and the deportation of those who were its most privileged residents.

Now they are about to be taken into exile in Babylon.  But after those days, in the not too distant future, God will establish a new relationship with his people and their sins will be forgiven.  God promises to stay with his creation no matter what. The difference is that this time, God will not write the covenant on tablets of stone, but will implant it in their hearts and minds, an internalized covenant, so that they will know and love God on the grounds of their own personal experience and stewardship of life.  God will, in the words of our Psalm today “create a clean heart and renew a right spirit within them.”

Now on this fifth Sunday in Lent we can see the horizon of Holy Week before us, and we will see just how far God is willing to go to stay in relationship with his creation, with the world that he loves.  On the hard wood of the cross, we will once again witness the mystery of an unending love that fires the universe we live in, a redemptive love that has the power to transform the human heart and make all things new.  And brothers and sisters, how desperately our world needs to see and know that love today.

Listen to the Sermon here.  How would you describe the difference between a Law externally written and one written on the heart?  What do you think about practicing justice, kindness, and humility in response to recent violent events in our country?

Here is a lovely short piece written by the British Classical Guitarist and Composer Gary Ryan.  I’m using a new guitar, an Andreas Kirmse Cedar Double-top.  Andreas is a German Luthier living in France and his guitars have exceptional warmth and playability.

A Sermon for the First Sunday of Lent.

 ”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” (Genesis 6:5-6).

The opening theme of this story is that the creation has refused to be the creation God has hoped for. God has called the world into being to be in partnership with him.  He wills unity, harmony, and goodness in his creation.  In the first chapter of Genesis we see God pronouncing a benediction on each stage of  the unfolding creation: “It is good.  It is very good.”  But just four chapters later, instead of a benediction we now read, “I will blot out.”  This story provides a way for the authors of Genesis to reflect on this fundamental fracture in the relationship between God and God’s creation.

We are not to read it as literal history, but more as a parable of God’s persistence in relating to his creation, and perhaps it is a parable that reveals a God who also learns and grows with his creation, so much so that God makes a covenant to stay in relationship with all created things no matter what and that this steadfast love creates the possibility for real change in our lives and in our future.

Full sermon here.

“A journey, a pilgrimage!  Yet, as we begin it, as we make the first step into the ‘bright sadness’ of Lent, we see–far, far away–the destination.  It is the joy of Easter, it is the entrance into the glory of the kingdom.” 

— Alexander Schmemann in “Great Lent: Journey to Pascha”

The words, “bright sadness,” captured my imagination this week after reading this passage in Alexander Schmemann’s wonderful meditation on the Season of Lent.  What can be “bright” about sadness?  What is it about sadness that can actually illuminate our self-awareness and longing for God? The readings for this Sunday, the Feast of the Transfiguration of Jesus, can help us form an insightful answer.

We will read the story of the departure of the prophet Elijah taken up in a “whirl of wind” to heaven (2 Kings 2:1-12).  We learn of Elisha’s close relationship with Elijah and his sadness at their impending separation. In the closing verse of the passage, Elisha sees a vision of a chariot and horses of fire coming between him and Elijah as Elijah is taken up by the whirlwind.  Elisha cries out, “My father, my father! You-the chariot and cavalry of Israel!”  All that Elisha can do is rend his clothes in grief; he has gone up with Elijah to the place of his ascension, but now he must return alone.

From my sermon for the Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany:

I suspect that most of us have a difficult time relating to the kind of biblical story we have in Mark’s Gospel this morning about an exorcism of an “unclean spirit” from a man in the synagogue and Capernaum. I have come to believe that people in the 1st century understood as do people in the 21st century, that sometimes we are caught up in forces that are not genuinely us. The road to healing lies in our relationship to Christ and to one another.

Sermon can be found here.

From my sermon for the Second Sunday of Epiphany:

Part of what is going on in the story of old Eli and young Samuel is God choosing someone outside normal channels, an unexpected, unlikely one, a very young one, to do God’s work. Samuel will become Israel’s first great prophet. That God has not called Eli or his sons, but an inexperienced child calls into question some of our assumptions about who is truly qualified to be persons through whom God works. Samuel will become Israel’s first great prophet. That God has not called Eli or his sons, but an inexperienced child calls into question some of our assumptions about who is truly qualified to be persons through whom God works.  We too, can hear the loving voice of God, and find ourselves called to new ways of participation in the healing of the world.

Sermon can be found here.

The final day of Christmas, and we must move on. The Magi at Epiphany beckon us forward. They represent that part of us that yearns for understanding, for confidence and hope, for life as we sense it was meant to be.  They are willing to take some risk, to stretch their horizons, to take the next step of faith even though they are not given a clear-cut plan.

The Magi looked to a new horizon and eventually they found horizons that were not merely physical or geographical.  Their journey did not end with the experience of finding the child born a king but continued long after. T.S. Eliot captures this thought with the Magi reflecting, “We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, but no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation.”

As we journey into the year 2012 may our steps lead us to encounter the mystery of Christ in the ordinary and unlikely places of our lives.  Like the Magi, we can move beyond the well trodden paths of the ordinary and choose to pay attention to the sacred dimension of the world around us, to the hope that stirs within our own hearts, to the joy of making a small difference in the lives of others.

Ruth Haley Barton features this lovely poem on her website today.  It captures Epiphany with eloquence.

Beckoning God—
who called the rich to travel toward poverty,
the wise to embrace your folly,
and the powerful to know their own frailty;
who gave strangers
a sense of homecoming in an alien land
and to stargazers
true light and vision as they bowed to earth—
we lay ourselves open to your signs for us…

Rise within us, like a star,
And make us restless
Till we journey forth
To seek our rest in you.

Kate Compston, Bread of Tomorrow