Month: April 2009

Easter 3, Year B, 2009

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

I love watching footage of Publisher’s Clearinghouse winners or housewives who get surprised by Oprah’s cameras.  We can watch an entire story playing out across their faces as they are told they have won a million dollars or are about to meet Tom Cruise.  At first they are embarrassed to be caught in their bathrobe.  Next, they are suspicious that they are being scammed.  Then they just stare blankly, usually with their mouths partially open, thinking.  Finally, the news sinks in and they start jumping up and down and screaming like crazy people.

Any life changing news, whether good or bad, takes a while to filter through the human brain.

We celebrate Easter for a full 50 days, representing the time that lapsed between Jesus’ resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. God gave the disciples a nice, long time to absorb the news of the resurrection before throwing the curveball of the Holy Spirit at them.

Our Gospel lesson today is from the Gospel of Luke.  You’ll remember from our time together at Easter that the Gospel of Mark does not contain any post-resurrection appearances, so the creators of the lectionary are borrowing from the Gospel of John and the Gospel of Luke this year.  In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus makes two post-resurrection appearances.

First, Jesus appears to two disciples walking along a road to Emmaus.  They don’t recognize him at first, but he says a few elusive things and then breaks bread with them.  In the act of breaking bread, they suddenly realize who he is.

The second appearance-the one we read today-happens when all the disciples are gathered together, discussing the first appearance.

Jesus materializes suddenly, out of nowhere, and the disciples are-here’s that word again-terrified.

Jesus understands their fear, Jesus understands that it takes our small brains time to absorb new information.

Jesus’ response to their fear tells us so much about God and the kind of love and patience that God has for us.  Rather than getting down to the business at hand right away, Jesus gives them time to absorb the experience of being with the risen Jesus.  He invites the disciples to touch him.  He invites the disciples to view his wounds.  He invites the disciples into this intimate moment of connection to reaffirm their bonds and reassure them of his identity.

Throughout all the resurrection appearances, eating is a theme.  The resurrected Jesus almost always eats something within the stories where he appears to the Disciples.  This story is no different.  After giving the disciples a chance to touch his resurrected body, Jesus then eats a piece of fish in front of them.  Eating the fish not only proves that Jesus is no ghost, but must have evoked many memories for the disciples.  So many important moments in Jesus’ ministry happened around food.  When the disciples saw Jesus eat the fish, they must have remembered the final Passover meal together, and the time Jesus fed 5000 people with just fish and bread, and the meal during which Mary poured oil over Jesus head and feet.  The extraordinary resurrected Jesus chooses to do something extremely ordinary to help root his disciples in the reality of the present in a gentle, calming way.

Jesus does not delve into bible study or instruction until all those introductions are out of the way.  Only when the disciples have come to understand that he is, indeed, resurrected from the dead, does Jesus begin to teach them about the implications of his resurrection.  He helps them to understand that their mission is to go out and teach others about repentance and God’s forgiveness of sin.

The church year also gives us time to gently absorb the news of Jesus’ resurrection.  We have all of Lent to focus on repenting and then 50 days of Easter to focus on the fact that our sins are forgiven.

And even with these 50 days of Easter, I don’t know that the good news really ever fully sinks into our hearts and minds.

I wonder what would happen if each of us took the next few weeks of Easter to really think and pray about how the forgiveness of sins affects each of us.  The phrase “forgiveness of sins” has sort of a stern Catholic-school connotation.  We don’t easily jump up and down in joy over the image of a stern God solemnly wiping our slate clean while giving us a one eye-brow raised nod.

But the forgiveness of sins is not about a schoolteacher God judging us and reluctantly changing our grade from an F to an A.  The forgiveness of God is about the gift of an abundant, loving relationship with our Creator. Through Jesus’ death and resurrection, God forgives us of our sins. Because Jesus mediates between us and the Father, we can be in a close relationship with God. Jesus modeled this kind of intimate relationship that is now available to us through his relationship with his disciples.

Jesus’ relationship with his disciples was marked by breaking bread together, walking together, and teaching.  While Jesus occasionally rebuked or got frustrated with his disciples, his relationship to his disciples could not be characterized as stern or cold.  Jesus loved his disciples and his disciples loved him.  Jesus reaffirms this warm relationship with disciples by continuing to break bread with them after his resurrection.

Experiencing a relationship with God can sometimes feel abstract and frustrating.  God does not literally walk with us or break bread with us.  But, our relationship with God is just that-a relationship.  The relationship is dynamic and intimate, just like Jesus’ relationship to the disciples was dynamic and intimate.  We may not experience God in a palpable manner, as the disciples were able to do, but if we lead lives of prayer we do occasionally get a strong spiritual sense of God’s presence and a very powerful sense of God’s love for us.

Maybe this Eastertide, as we slowly absorb the reality of God’s powerful love for us, we’ll have a moment of insight about just how incredible this intimate relationship with the divine really is and we’ll start  jumping up and down and screaming like one of those Publisher’s Clearinghouse winners!

Even for us staid Episcopalians, that would be an appropriate response to the Good News of God’s love for us!

Amen.

Easter, Year B, 2009

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Today is the most celebrated, exciting day of the Church year.  Easter represents the core of what makes Christianity unique.  The resurrection of Christ offers endless possibilities for our own redemption and our own new lives with God.  The resurrection is all about experiencing unbridled hope and joy where there was no room for either.

So, why then won’t Salome and the two Marys get on board with the program!?

In every other Gospel account of Jesus’ resurrection, the women who find the empty tomb are terrified, but they dutifully trot off to tell the male disciples the news.  In the original ending to Mark’s Gospel however, the women are so freaked out by everything that has happened that they run away and tell no one.

This ending of Mark is completely unsatisfying!  This ending is abrupt and unresolved.  We are left not with an image of a victorious, risen Lord, but with three shaken women, who cannot integrate this good news into their lives.

This ending reminds me of the ending of Jean Cocteau’s 1946 film version of Beauty and the Beast.  At the very end, when the Beast morphs back into the prince he had been before his curse, instead of looking thrilled, Beauty looks disappointed.  Cocteau refuses to deliver us the neatly wrapped up ending we want.  David Chase did the same thing when he ended The Sopranos so abruptly, in the middle of a scene.

While neither the ending of Beauty and the Beast nor The Sopranos was completely satisfying, in retrospect, both are considered pretty brilliant, poetic endings.

Real life does not deliver neat endings, wrapped up with a satisfying bow.  Real life is complicated and messy.  Real life does not have endings the way a piece of literature does.

So, I would argue that this ending of The Gospel of Mark is a brilliant piece of writing that acknowledges the messiness of real life and intentionally leaves us in tension.

By leaving us in tension, Mark drives two points home.  First, Easter Sunday cannot be celebrated independently from Good Friday.  Second, God does not need humans to get their ducks in a row before he acts.  The resurrection happened whether the women at the tomb were ready or not.

Easter Sunday is a wonderful, celebratory day, but it cannot happen without Judas’ treachery, the insecurity of Pilate, and the murderous crowds.  The resurrection cannot happen without Jesus’ painful death, and Jesus’ abandonment by all of his closest male friends.  The Good News does not come without the terrible news of the death of God and the abandonment of hope.  The resurrection is redemptive, yes, but not even the resurrection cannot erase the horror that came before.

And this is like life, too, isn’t it?

People have rich second marriages after the death of a loved spouse or a difficult divorce.  Some go on to have children after miscarriages or still births.  There are those who start a new, exciting job after being suddenly laid off from a previous one.

Our lives go on after painful events, but we don’t ever forget those tragedies.  We don’t forget the way grief shaped us.  We don’t forget the people who are no longer with us or who might have been.  We don’t forget feelings of rejection and shame.

Instead of ignoring the past, we integrate the past into who we are.  We are not thankful for bad experiences, but we do acknowledge how they shaped us and made us more complicated, sometimes better, people.

Those painful experiences help us treasure the good in life even more-help us to feel in our guts how lucky we are to be loved, to be safe, to be employed, to have friends.

In the same way Mark’s Gospel, by not prettying up the resurrection, helps us to feel the power of the resurrection in our guts.  Jesus was dead.  Dead, dead.  He was not sleeping.  He was not impatiently waiting in the tomb to jump out and surprise everyone.  Jesus had died.  And so, when Salome and the Marys find the empty tomb, of course they are terrified.  Dead people are supposed to stay dead.  As much as I miss my mother, who died nine years ago, if I suddenly visited her grave and found it was empty, I would be completely unsettled and afraid.  The women who come to minister to Jesus’ body will one day see Jesus’ resurrected body and be comforted and amazed and astonished, but for now they are just scared.  So they run.

And this leads me to my second point-Jesus does not need the women to have an enthused reaction.  He does not need Peter to stay loyal to him.  Jesus does not need to have all of his disciples sitting vigil for him.  God does all the work of the resurrection.  The resurrection is for the redemption of humanity, but God does not need humanity to make the resurrection happen.

Jesus’ resurrection happens despite the fear of the people who had been close to him. In the same way, God takes initiative with us.  God pursues us, loves us, forgives us even when we are afraid, freaked out, and incompetent.

There are those who truly believe that in order to be a Christian you have to meet a long list of requirements-including holding very specific theological and political beliefs.  But, I guarantee you that Mary, Mary and Salome had no deep theological understanding of the empty tomb. I also guarantee you that Jesus did not hold their reaction against them!

Jesus’ resurrection is good news for all of us.  Jesus’ resurrection is for us when we are filled with faith and when we are filled with doubt.  Jesus’ resurrection is for us when we are able to live how we want to live and when we disappoint others and ourselves.  Jesus’ resurrection is for when we are feeling blessed and when we are feeling forsaken.

Jesus’ resurrection and the new life it offers us is all about God’s overwhelming, powerful, all encompassing love for us, not about how good or deserving we are.  Jesus tells us that the entire motivation behind God becoming incarnate in Jesus is that love.  God wanted to find a way to be in full relationship with us. Since we are unable to live a perfect life, he chose to do all the work for us, to become like one of us, die like one of us, but then break the power of death over us, so that we might be in relationship with God forever.

And whether this news makes us shout for joy or makes us want to run away in fear, God still loves us and invites us to relationship with him.  And that is Good News.

Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.