Tag Archives: Easter

Empty Tomb and Resurrection: A sermon for Easter, 2023

Posted on by
Reply

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

“Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb.”

During the lockdown, I began walking with some regularity in Forest Hills Cemetery. It’s not far from our home and in those months when we were especially concerned about social distancing, I joked that most people I encountered there would remain more than six feet away, safely buried underground. Over the years, I’ve watched as people spent time at the graves of their loved ones, grieving, or tending the plantings. I’ve noticed graves that were unattended, the dead who lay beneath them long forgotten. There are graves with many ritual objects on and around them. 

The reality is that for most twenty-first century Americans, whose lives may not be tied to particular places, cemeteries have lost the kind of meanings and associations they held in the past. 

We’ve lost most of the rituals and duties surrounding the deaths of loved ones. Few of us have touched the body of loved one, fewer still prepared a body for burial which was, up until a century and a half ago, something taken for granted, a crucial part of what it meant to care for a family member or loved one. 

We see that concern expressed, the roles played out in the gospel accounts of the resurrection. While it’s often assumed that such tasks were the responsibility of women, in the Gospel of John, it is two men who prepare Jesus’ body for burial. Joseph of Arimathea asked for Jesus’ body, Nicodemus brought 100 pounds of myrrh and aloes, and together they buried Jesus in Joseph’s tomb.

So why did Mary Magdalene come to the tomb that morning? Knowing the other gospel accounts, we might not even think that was a question, for in all of them, we’re told the women brought spices to anoint Jesus’ body for burial. 

Consider it. Mary has come with Jesus to Jerusalem. We don’t know how long she had been following him, whether she had come with him from Galilee or met him along the way. She had heard him teach, amazing the crowds, filling her and the other disciples with hope. She had seen him heal the sick, give sight to the blind, even raise the dead. She had been part of that strange demonstration, waving palms and shouting “Hosanna!” as he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, a procession full of royal symbolism.

And then, she had seen it all come crashing down. The betrayal by one their own, the arrest, and finally, the crucifixion. Everything she had hoped for, everything she had believed, crumbled to ashes and dust, her heart empty, overwhelmed by grief and despair.

I wonder whether she came by herself early that morning because she wanted to mourn in the silence and the dark. I wonder whether the feelings that overwhelmed her compelled her to seek solitude, time to be alone with her thoughts, to try to pick up the pieces of her life and figure out what she might do next. She had abandoned her own life, whatever it was, abandoned her family and friends, to follow Jesus, and now, here she was. Alone, with her dashed hopes, her shattered faith, and a meaningless future.

These are feelings we all know well. We have all been on a walk like Mary was that morning two millennia ago. Whether because of a broken relationship, the death of a loved one, a lost job or career, or simply the heavy weight of the world’s violence and suffering, we’ve all been at that spot, a dead-end, where we can’t go back, and where there seems to be no way forward, a spot very much like a tomb or a cemetery.

But the tomb was empty, and in her confusion and worry, she ran to tell the others. Peter, and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, race to see for themselves, they look in, enter, and their curiosity fulfilled, go back home. But Mary stays behind. Instead of reassuring her, allaying her fears, answering her questions, the empty tomb only added to them, raised more questions. 

And then, in an instant, all those questions were answered. In an instant, Mary’s life changed; the world changed. The tomb was not the end of the story; her hopes were not dashed; her faith was not in vain. When Jesus called her by name, she knew her Lord.
         For us though, it may not be so simple. In the last two thousand years, in spite of Christians claiming through all the centuries that Christ has been raised from the dead, that he has conquered evil and the grave, things look very much the same. There is still hatred, and violence, and suffering. We still have doubts and uncertainty. We still mourn the loss of loved ones. We still know the anguish of the painful chasm between the way things are and the way things ought to be. 

But in the midst of our tears and grief, as we cast our eyes on the tomb, Jesus calls us, and if we turn to him, everything changes: sadness into joy, despair into hope, doubt into faith. The tomb is there, but it is empty. Christ is alive! There is no reason to linger there, for he is risen and goes before us.

We come to this place today, carrying the weight of the world and our lives. There are the private disappointments, doubt, despair, the pain inflicted on us by a cruel word; fears for family, for the future. There is all that is going on in the world, war, injustice, a broken political system. There is, yes, pandemic, with a continuing toll both in lives lost and lives changed. But in the midst of that whirlwind of evil and suffering, in the still, center point, there is Christ, calling to us, calling us by name.

Easter changes everything and nothing. Tomorrow will come and with it, all of the problems that were here yesterday and the day before and last week. The scent of the lilies will dissipate; the memories of a full church and with choir and hymns and brass will slowly fade. Life will go on.

But Jesus calls us by our name and he goes out before us, beckoning us to follow him into the future, away from the empty tomb. He calls us into relationship with him. He calls us into new life and into hope. With Mary, may we turn away from the empty tomb and toward the one who calls us by name, who wipes away our tears and embraces us with his love.

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

The Garden of Resurrection: A Sermon for Easter Sunday, 2022

Posted on by
Reply

Easter

April 17, 2022

“Oh God, take our minds and think through them, take our lips and speak through them, and take our hearts and set them on fire. Amen.”

In the summer, my wife and I spend most of our evenings on our screened-in back porch, enjoying our views of the garden we have created over the years. It has taken a lot of hard work, a lot of money but over those years, we have created a sanctuary of beauty for ourselves that offers us respite from our busy and stressful lives, and offers our cats an endless supply of squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits, and birds to frustrate them. 

And there’s always more work to be done. A Norway maple on the border of our neighbor’s property came down during a storm last summer, so we are having to fill the vacated space with new plantings and an expanse of fence. As we’ve grown older, we have come to rely on others to do much of the heavy work that we once did, but we still spend time weeding and clearing and trying to keep the yard as beautiful as possible.

Gardens. Places of beauty and serenity in the midst of busy worlds, combining the beauty of nature and the work of human hands, human creativity and ingenuity alongside the beauty and endless diversity of God’s creation. Gardens are places of beauty and hard work, places of respite and toil.

Our gospel reading takes place in a garden. “Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark”—For some of us, this mention of first day and darkness may take us back to the beginning, to the story of creation, of light coming into the darkness, and the first garden, the garden of Eden planted by God at creation and in which God placed the man and the woman to care for it, to husband it.

Here, too, there is a woman, and a man, or at least one mistaken as a man.

The tragedy of the first garden, disobedience, expulsion, an angel at the gate to prevent the first couple’s return to it.

The tragedy of the second garden: the death and burial of the one beloved by his followers and disciples. Two angels, not preventing entry but asking her a question, “Woman why are you weeping?”

It’s strange how John tells the story. The angels ask a question with an obvious answer but there’s another question unspoken, unanswered. Why had Mary Magdalene come to the tomb? It’s a question John doesn’t ask, nor does he answer. We’re only told that she came to the tomb. Not to embalm him; remember Jesus had been anointed for burial by the other Mary, Mary of Bethany, a week before. And Nicodemus had brought 100 pounds of burial spices to the tomb. So she didn’t come to do anything, except to grieve. 

She came to the garden, to grieve, to reflect, to process all that had happened. Her beloved teacher had died; the one she had believed to be the Messiah; the one on whom she and the other disciples had pinned all their hopes; the one they had seen offer abundant life to others, who healed, and taught, and transformed lives, including their own. 

She came to the garden and her grief was suddenly compounded with horror. The tomb where she expected to grieve and reflect had been desecrated, robbed. She didn’t even stoop down to look in. She ran back to tell the others and the three of them ran back. Peter and the other disciple, Jesus’ beloved disciple, raced to the tomb. They saw the linen wrappings; Peter, then the other one entered, and we are told that he “saw and believed.”

The two of them had seen enough. They went back to the house where they were staying while Mary stayed back. And where could she or should she go? She had come to the garden to grieve and whatever emotional turmoil that had brought her here was only intensified by the fact of the empty tomb.

But suddenly, her tears were interrupted. She saw the gardener, and then it wasn’t the gardener. He spoke her name, and in that moment, she knew her Lord. Sorrow turned to joy; mourning and grief were gone. Her world had changed.

Suddenly, the garden was no longer a place of respite and grief; and even as she sought to process all this, no doubt as she wanted to linger, to ask questions, to understand, she was sent outward and away to share the good news. Jesus told her, “Don’t hold on to me.” Her very human, all too human desire to understand, to rejoice with the risen one was overwhelmed by another desire, another task: to share the good news.

And so Mary Magdalene became the first to share the good news; the apostle to the apostles. It was she he told the others that Christ had risen from the dead; that he had conquered sin and evil, and changed their world; changed the world.

Vilas Memorial Window, Grace Episcopal Church

One of the many things I love about Grace Church is the Vilas window, to my right, with its depiction of this very scene in the garden, Mary encountering, and recognizing the Risen Christ. In the late afternoon on a sunny day, if the nave is dark, the deep reds of the window suffuse the entire church, bathing it in ethereal light. I have preached and ministered under that window for thirteen years, thirteen Easters and it still has the capacity to take my breath away. A detail from that window is reproduced on our Easter bulletins and while it can’t do justice to the refracted light of a stained glass window; it still captures something of the beauty of the image, and the beauty of that moment.

Churches are refuges: buildings like ours are places of beauty and serenity where time seems to stand still and we can sense God’s presence. We have felt the loss of this sacred place over the last two years and the opportunity to gather on Easter to worship, to hear the story, to sing the familiar hymns, to experience joy is an amazing gift.

Gardens are refuges; places of beauty and serenity that provide us with spiritual sustenance in difficult times. Gardens, for all their hard work, can be escapes from the challenges of our daily lives; from the constant pressures we feel; a balm to our emotions scarred and wounded by the world’s events. For us, sitting on our porch in the evening, nursing a drink, watching the antics of our cats frustrated by the screens that prevent them from chasing rabbits or squirrels, or birds or chipmunks, All of that discracts us from the pressures of our busy lives, brings smiles to our faces, and the occasional laugh.

Mary came to the garden to grieve and mourn, and she left, full of joy and the power of the gospel, ready to share the good news. Similarly, we have come here, many of us after long absences to be strengthened, for an infusion of hope, to hear the good news, for reassurance, to encounter the Risen Christ in word and sacrament. But like Mary, the Risen Christ who tells us, “Don’t hold on to me, don’t stay.” He sends us out like Mary, to share the good news to share Christ’s love, the promise of new life; the certainty of resurrection. May we go from this place into the world, our hearts on fire with new life in Christ; our hearts on fire with faith and love. 

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

He is not here, he is risen: A Sermon for Easter, 2021

Posted on by
Reply

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

The Lord is Risen indeed, Alleluia!

The traditional Easter acclamation rings hollow in empty churches today. Whatever joy we may feel on this Easter is tempered by the reality of our celebration. Instead of a church packed to the rafters, with most of us dressed in Easter finery; instead of brass, choir, and the voices of hundreds singing “Hail thee, festival day” and “Christ the Lord is risen today” we have soloists, recordings, livestreamed worship. Most of us are sitting at home, on our couches or at a kitchen table dressed in comfortable clothes or even, perhaps pajamas, with a cup of coffee instead of a hymnal in our hands. 

Yet all around us are also signs of new life and reasons for hope. As the pace of vaccinations continues to increase, we can glimpse and begin to plan for life after pandemic, and lockdowns, and isolation. Spring seems to be on its way. The bulbs in our garden are beginning to show flowers, and there’s clump of daffodils blooming in the courtyard garden here at the church. We are also beginning to make plans to return to public worship in the near future.

Still, the waiting continues and many of us remain anxious about the present and the future, even as we chafe at the continued restrictions and limits on our activities. It’s a difficult time, an in-between time, a time of waiting. 

The gospel of Mark was written in just such a time of waiting and anxiety; written for a community struggling to find a way forward in uncertain times, in the midst of violence, and as the old faith that had brought them into being as followers of Jesus was running up against new realities and new challenges.

The challenges facing Mark’s community are symbolized by the gospel’s ending, here, at the empty tomb. Mark leaves us hanging with the sentence: “And the women fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid.” 

Now, this is no way to end a gospel, no way to tell the story of Easter and of resurrection. If you go to your bible and look up Mark 16, you will see that in most English bibles the Gospel of Mark doesn’t in fact end with v. 8, but has 8 additional verses, often set off in brackets or with asterisks. For while the earliest and most reliable manuscripts end with verse 8 and the women’s silence and fear, very quickly editors and copyists sought to provide a more suitable ending to the gospel, one that included appearances of the Risen Christ to the disciples.

But imagine those women as they came to the tomb. Mark tells us that they had come with Jesus from Galilee, that they had walked with him and the other, the male disciples, learning from, watching him as he healed the sick and cast out demons. Mark says that they had ministered to him along the way. They had heard him proclaiming the coming of God’s reign. They had been among the small group that had staged what we call “the triumphal entry into Jerusalem” casting their coats and tree branches on the road as Jesus entered the city riding on a donkey, a clear allusion to the Davidic monarchy.

They had watched as he turned over the moneychangers temples and silenced his opponents with clever debating tactics. And then, had they been there at the last supper? Mark doesn’t tell us, but they were at the crucifixion, watching from afar. 

All their hopes were dashed; their grief at the execution of their beloved teacher and friend overwhelming. And like Jesus, they were probably alone. The male disciples, easily distinguished by their Galileean accents were laying low, probably trying to figure out how to escape the city and Roman troops without notice. 

But the women came to the tomb, as women have done for millennia; to grieve, and to once again, minister to their loved one, to prepare his body for burial. It was probably a mourning ritual they had done before for other loved ones, but likely none was done with the grief and despair that accompanied them this morning.

And then, an empty tomb, a man clothed in white telling them that Jesus had been raised from the dead, that they were tell the others and go meet him in Galilee. 

Why wouldn’t they be afraid? The tomb had been robbed of their loved one’s body; they received a strange, incomprehensible message, they were to take the risky journey out of their hiding place in the city and go back to Galilee. 

Mark leaves us hanging with this grief and fear. He leaves us frustrated, unsatisfied. Why did he tell the story this way, why doesn’t he end it on a high note with all of the blockbuster special effects we’ve come to expect?

I’ll leave you to ponder that question, to go back and read through the gospel again, full of mystery and ambiguity, to wonder and imagine what he might want his readers to know about “The good news of Jesus Christ, son of God”—a gospel that begins with certainty and ends here, in fear, terror, amazement, silence.

We are like those women, peering into an empty tomb. We are looking back, in fear, despair, disappointment, and anger. More than a year of disrupted lives, suffering, isolation. Two Easters now observed, I won’t say “celebrated” with live-streamed worship. More than a year since many of you have tasted the body of Christ in the sacrament; a year away from friends, family, the body of Christ gathered in community.

Our yearnings are clear, we can feel them in the marrow of our bones. If not to go back to the way things were in 2019 but an intense desire to return to this place, to public worship, to singing, and fellowship.

You are peering into an empty church as those women peered into an empty tomb. The same message resounds: “He is not here, he is risen!” 

We are being called not to return to the past, but to make our way into the future, to meet Christ, not at the empty tomb or in the empty church, but out there, in Galilee, in the streets and neighborhoods of our city, in the world. We are called to imagine a new church, a new community, inspired by the risen Christ helping to heal and rebuild our city and the lives of our neighbors. 

We are called to meet the risen Christ who is going before us into the future. There we will see him, for he is risen. There we will encounter the risen Christ in the new life and new world that is emerging through his resurrection.

That Christ is risen gives us hope. That Christ is risen reminds us that the powers of evil, Satan and his forces, do not have the last word, will not vanquish. That Christ is risen shows us the possibility and reality of new life, of new creation, of God’s reign breaking into our lives and into our world, making all things new, remaking us, in God’s image.

That Christ is risen  gives us strength and courage to imagine a new world emerging, new community where God’s justice reigns, where prisoners are released, the hungry fed, the naked clothed, where the barriers that divide us crumble. 

That Christ is risen gives us hope and courage to build a new community, to rebuild our neighborhood justly and equitably. We see signs of that already in the recent announcement that the boys and girls club will be our neighbors on Capitol Square, a symbol that this neighborhood belongs to our whole city, not just the few.

May we have the courage and hope to heed the call to go out and meet the Risen Christ where he is; and in our encounters with him, may our hearts burn with love and hope as we are healed and as we work toward the healing of our city and world.

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

They knew their Lord: A Homily for Easter Evening, 2020

Posted on by
Reply

The gospel reading is Luke 24:13-35

Could you imagine an Easter as strange as the one we’re experiencing this year? Empty churches, live-streamed worship, virtual choirs. All of the things we associate with this day—new clothes, Easter lilies, brass accompaniment, packed churches—all of those things seem remote memories, more the stuff of fantasy than of the reality we are experiencing. And those memories can be gut-wrenching. As I was looking through photos of Easter at Grace from over the last few years, I found myself grieving that we couldn’t be together as a congregation, that our normal services, the Great Vigil on Saturday night, the contagious joy and happiness of gathering on Easter Day, our voices joined in singing the great familiar hymns of the day, would not take place and that we would struggle to find other ways of observing the day—by joining live-streamed worship from the diocese, or the National Cathedral, or, well, any number of other places. But I’ll be honest with you, even those live-streamed services seemed less joyful and more a reminder of what we’re missing this year, than they are a celebration of Christ’s resurrection.

It’s fascinating that we are gathering virtually this evening for Evening Prayer, doing something I doubt any of us could have imagined doing two months ago, or let’s be honest, something that would be unimaginable under ordinary circumstances. It’s our custom to worship on Sunday morning, and on Easter, after that worship to celebrate with family and friends, and have no thoughts to gather for prayer or worship later in the day.

Maybe, just maybe, our gathering like this invites us to see deeper connections between our celebration of Easter this year and the first Easter. Many have observed that the first Easter wasn’t accompanied with brass choirs and large crowds, and joyous celebration. Easter began with women coming to the tomb, in fear and grief, to do what women did—care for the bodies of their dead loved ones.

 

That first Easter ended in much the same way. In John, we’re told that the disciples were gathered behind locked doors, because of fear. In the story we heard from Luke’s gospel, we hear of two disciples returning to Emmaus from Jerusalem at the end of the day. They were full of grief at Jesus’ death and disappointment that whatever they had hoped would occur when Jesus entered Jerusalem ended instead with Jesus’ death.

And here we are. Perhaps not behind locked doors but in lockdown. We are waiting, and wondering, and worried. Think of those two disciples on their way home, trying to make sense of what they had experienced in the past few days, and longer over the months that they had accompanied Jesus. They hadn’t heard the news of the empty tomb and the message that Christ was raised. So they were living in the same fear and uncertainty they had been living in since Jesus’ betrayal and arrest. They might have talking to each other about the things Jesus had done and said. They might have expressed how excited and hopeful they had been. Now, they were probably wondering how to pick up their lives after all that, whether they could return to normalcy, what normalcy even was.

As they made their journey at the end of that day, at the end of that eventful week, they came across a stranger who knew nothing of what they had been through, or what had happened. And so they told him the story, and in response he told them where they really had been and where the history of the world was going.

Kind wayfarers that they were, they invited the stranger to come to their home, to eat with them, relax, perhaps spend the night before continuing his journey. Suddenly as bread was blessed and broken, their eyes were opened and they saw their Lord.

Suddenly, the world changed.

Suddenly grief was joy, sadness hope.

In the breaking of the bread, they encountered the Risen Christ

Suddenly, he was gone, and they were going—back to where they had been. Back to Jerusalem, back to the other disciples, to tell them what had happened to them. In their telling, they were told, of the empty tomb, of Peter’s encounter with Christ, of the promise of faith, and victory over death.

The extravagance and noise of our Easter celebrations often distract us from seeing the silence and uncertainty of resurrection, of simple, profoundly personal encounters between disciples like Mary Magdalene or the two unnamed ones on the road to Emmaus. Disciples who weren’t quite sure what or who they were seeing’ disciples who came to know when they were named by Jesus, who called Mary by her name, and in that moment she knew her Lord.

Or disciples, who in the casual and common blessing and breaking of bread, suddenly knew their Lord who at table three days earlier had blessed, broken, and gave bread, saying, “This do in remembrance of me.”

This is a quiet, confusing, domestic Easter, shared with close friends and family around tables, or virtually via modern technology. But this Easter, our Lord comes to us as he came to Mary at the tomb and to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, intimately, lovingly, touching our lives and our hearts, giving us hope, strengthening our faith. When we see him, recognize him, open ourselves to that encounter with him, our lives change, and our world changes.

 

Christ comes to each of us, calling us by name, offering us sustenance, filling us with hope. The risen Christ has conquered death. His love breaks through all lockdowns and locked doors, binds up our wounds and heals our bodies and souls. May the power and love of the Risen Christ bring hope and healing to us and to the world.

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

The Spirit, the bride, and all the people say, “Come”: A Sermon for 7 Easter 2019

Posted on by
Reply

We are nearing the end of Eastertide. It’s a long season that sometimes feels to me as if it drags on a bit longer than necessary. In all there are 50 days—counting from Easter Day which was April 21 this year and continuing through next Sunday, the Feast of Pentecost. The further away we get from Easter itself, the less we focus on the specifics of Jesus Christ’s resurrection from the dead and the more we look at the ways Christ continues to be present among us and also all of the ways that his presence among us differs from either his earthly ministry or his presence among the disciples after his resurrection. Continue reading →

Easter Encounters, Easter Relationships: A Sermon for Easter, 2019

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve long been fascinated with cemeteries. When I lived in Massachusetts, I loved to walk through old graveyards—the Old Granary Burying Ground in Boston, or the old graveyard in Newburyport. They are places of history and witnesses to the lives of those who are buried there.

As a priest, I’ve buried people in family plots in almost forgotten cemeteries in Greenville, SC, or in rural cemeteries throughout Southern Wisconsin. But increasingly, as our culture changes and we are less connected to family and to place, we find other ways to remember our loved ones and the notion of visiting a cemetery to mourn or remember a dear friend or family member is increasingly uncommon.

Not so in the first century. Mary Magdalene came to Jesus’ tomb while she was still raw with grief. The other gospels offer an explanation for the appearance of the women at the tomb—they come to anoint Jesus’ body with spices and ointment for burial. Mary Magdalene came to the to grieve. Her grief is the grief shared by humans everywhere at the loss of a loved one. It’s a grief we’ve all experienced. No doubt, some of you carry such grief in your hearts this morning.

But her grief is especially familiar to those who have lost friends and family members in an untimely fashion, and especially those who grieve the deaths of those they love because of the violence, oppression, and hate of other humans. No doubt, in her grief is also fear, and anger, impotence and rage.

Imagine her surprise, her horror when she discovers that the tomb is empty, a final indignity to her friend. He couldn’t even be allowed to rest in peace. In fear and anger she runs to her friends, to tell them what has happened, to share the outrage. Peter and the other, the beloved disciple run to see, look at the empty tomb, see the discarded grave clothes and leave.

Mary stays behind, lingering in the garden, lingering with her fears and doubts, lingering with her dashed hopes. The angel tells her what has happened—but she cannot take it all in. She can’t understand the meaning of his words. And so she turns. She sees the gardener, deciding to ask him where Jesus’ body was taken.

And in that moment, everything changes. He calls her by name; the mist of incomprehension is cleared from her eyes, and she knows him, “Rabbouni, Teacher,” she cries out. Suddenly Mary, and all of us, experience the world, our lives made new in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The risen Christ transforms her grief into joy. In his presence, she experiences the power of God’s love.

I’m not expecting you to understand or make sense of the resurrection. I am asking you to believe it, to experience it. I’m hoping you’ll experience it like Mary Magdalene did, in that moment that Jesus called her name. I’m hoping you’ll experience that flash of recognition, suddenly knowing Jesus Christ, knowing yourself, and knowing the possibility of resurrection in your own life.

For the resurrection is not just about an empty tomb and a two thousand year old story. It is about relationship, with God in Jesus Christ. It’s experiencing a God who overcomes death, a God who created us and the world, a God who in Jesus Christ is making a new creation in ourselves and in the world. It is a story about a God who doesn’t give up, a God who doesn’t abandon us to our own devices and desires. As Rowan Williams has said, “the resurrection is at least in part about the sheer toughness and persistence of God’s love.”

Last night, we baptized two people; this morning we will baptize two more, Grant and Luke Flannery. They will be baptized by their grandfather, Rev. Floyd Schoenhals, who already knows them intimately and has called them by name many times. In baptism, we are all called by name by Jesus, we all enter into relationship with him, and whoever we are, whatever we have done we are made new in that moment. Called by name, recognized by Jesus Christ, marked as Christ’s own forever.

In our world, there are so many voices, so many people who try to name us, to tell us who we are, and what our worth and value is. We are bombarded by imagery and advertising that holds up impossible ideals of beauty, wealth, and success, that tells us repeatedly, endlessly that unless we do this, or buy this, or have these, we are of no worth. We live in a culture where still, the color of our skin, our national origin, our gender or sexual identity, our educational attainment, defines who we are, what our value is. We internalize those messages and sometimes we are filled with self-loathing, insecurities. Often those messages and identities shape our lives, our futures, our destinies.

When Jesus said, “Mary” he broke through all of the barriers in her life that prevented her from knowing him fully. When Jesus said, “Mary” he removed the mists of incomprehension from her eyes and from her heart. When Jesus said “Mary” he also says all of our names, inviting us into relationship with him, inviting us to know and experience him fully, inviting us to experience the wonder and persistence of God’s love.

Just as Jesus called “Mary,” he calls us, inviting us into relationship, inviting us into experiencing the risen Christ, inviting us to experience transformed humanity, the world made new by the God’s creative love. Jesus calls us by name. He tells us who we are, his beloved children, marked as his own forever.

When the Risen Christ calls us by name and invites us into relationship, the power of resurrection begins to transform us and our lives, making us new creations, remaking us in his image and likeness.

We mustn’t let it end there, however, not with our own experience of the wonder and persistence of God’s love. Like Mary, our joy should be so great, our hearts so overflowing that we want to share the good news of that love, inviting others into relationship with Jesus Christ, calling others by name as he called us by name, making present to them the transforming power of new life in Christ, inviting them to experience the power of resurrection.

Living the Easter story: A Sermon for the Easter Vigil, 2019

Posted on by
Reply

A few minutes ago, we baptized Adrian and Roland. If my math is correct, Adrian celebrated his 30thbirthday yesterday; Roland was born on January 15, so he’s just over 3 months old. Adrian has a story he tells about himself, where he came from, who he is. Roland’s story is just beginning and he isn’t able to tell it yet.

But tonight, both of them entered into another story, the story of salvation. We heard some of those highlights in the series of readings from Old Testament, beginning with Creation, the Flood, and the deliverance at the Red Sea. We heard another version of that story in Paul’s description of baptism from the letter to the Romans: Continue reading →

Poetry for Easter Monday: Seven Stanzas for Easter by John Updike

Posted on by
Reply

Preaching Grace on the Square

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that–pierced–died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of…

View original post 80 more words

Named, known, and loved by the Risen Christ: A Sermon for Easter, 2018

Posted on by
Reply

   Vilas Memorial Window, Grace Episcopal Church

 

 I was fortunate as a college professor that I taught at small liberal arts college where the number of students in my courses never exceeded 30. This was back before the age of smart phones and our department had a camera that some of my colleagues used on the first day of class to take photos of their students so they could put faces to names more quickly.

In my own experience, I learned that if I called the roll for two weeks, by the end of that time, I would know the students’ names by heart. Of course, they made it easier for me because they always sat in the same seat in the room. It would often happen that I would encounter a student on the sidewalk or in the library two or three years after I’d had them in class. I could recall where they sat in the room, what their final grade was, but often their name would be a complete mystery. Usually, several nights later I would suddenly wake up and there it was, on my lips, the name of that student.

The same thing happens at church, of course. If you’ve visited a few times, it’s likely I’m going to remember your face—but unless I see your name written out, it will take quite some time for me to remember it. There are also some people who come regularly whose name I don’t know—often, it’s because they want to remain invisible, or unnoticed. And then there’s the phenomenon of me walking into a restaurant or grocery store out of uniform, and encountering someone from church or someone I know from some other official capacity. They’ll take a second look, a puzzled expression comes on their face, and finally, I will end the suspense. Without a collar, it’s as if I’m in disguise (well, to be honest, sometimes I am in disguise).

While there are some places, and some groups, where we want to remain anonymous, there are also times when, as the theme song to the 1980s sitcom Cheers, put it: “Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name.”

That moment in John’s gospel where Jesus calls Mary Magdalene by name is intimate, dramatic, and revelatory. It’s a moment captured in the image on today’s service bulletin, courtesy of a last-minute request I made to our Communications Coordinator, Peggy Frain, a photo of one of the panels from the Vilas Window which is to my right.

But let’s step back a moment and explore this wonderful story in greater detail. The Gospel of John is wonderful, perplexing, challenging, at times, infuriating. It provides us so much imagery, so many ideas, tantalizing nuggets of information that it’s easy to get caught up in the detail and over interpret, or read too much into relatively minor points. Still, there is so much here—first, unlike in the other gospels where Mary Magdalene is accompanied by other women, and they have a set purpose in mind, anointing Jesus’ body with burial spices, in John, Mary comes alone, and for no particular purpose (Nicodemus took care of the embalming earlier).

In the other gospels, the women come at the break of day, here Mary comes at night—which reminds us of other nights in the gospel, the night early on when Nicodemus came to Jesus; the night a few days earlier, when Judas left Jesus and the others on his mission of betrayal; the night or darkness, throughout the gospel that stands in contrast to the light of Christ. We might infer that Mary herself is coming in the night, because she doesn’t know the light…

Then there’s the footrace between Peter and the beloved disciple, a race one by the other disciple, but he waits, and lets Peter enter first. There is the careful detail describing how the linen grave clothes are arranged, and the observation that the beloved disciple sees and believes, though what precisely he believes isn’t clear.

But back to Mary. After Peter and the Beloved Disciple go home after their morning run, probably stopping for coffee along the way, Mary stays behind in the garden, overwhelmed by grief. Probably, she’s still struggling to understand what’s happened, not quite believing that the tomb is empty. For the first time, she decides to look inside for herself, perhaps wondering what the other disciples had seen when they entered. Instead of grave clothes, she sees two angels who ask her, “Woman, why are you weeping?”

Mary’s response is partly bewilderment, partly a declaration of faith. While she can’t make sense of the scene in front of her, by refering to Jesus as her Lord, she proclaims her belief that, all evidence to the contrary, Jesus is (or was) the Son of God.

In the middle of her encounter with the angels, Mary senses another presence behind her and turns. John puts it succinctly, and lets we the readers in on the secret before Mary figures it out: “…saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus.” We know it’s Jesus, and John writes it in such a way that we want to know how or when Mary will figure it out.

Jesus calls her by name and the eyes of her soul are opened. She recognizes him and calls him, “Rabbouni” Teacher. It’s a poignant, powerful moment, and it’s not just about Mary finally figuring out who Jesus is. Rather, when he calls her by name, he tells her who she is, and their relationship is restored and deepened. Mary is known and loved by Jesus and when he calls her by name, she enters into that love and knowledge.

We live in a world in which our lives are played out for the world to see. We share intimate details and photos of ourselves on facebook or instagram; we are connected to people across the globe via twitter and engage in debate and controversy with people we’ve never met face to face. Our personal details are mined for our political and shopping preferences and our efforts to maintain personal privacy rarely succeed.

Still, in all of that, the intimacy we so often desire remains elusive. Our mobility, jobs that require our attention and focus far beyond forty hours a week, the temptations of social media, mean that our relationships are tentative, often shallow, temporary. We want to hide so much of ourselves from others, out of fear or shame.

“Mary,” Jesus said. And in that instant, the veil that separated the two of them in the garden fell away and Mary saw her Lord. He called her by name, and not only did she recognize him, she also came to understand and know herself, in relationship with Jesus, and known, and loved, by him.

The Risen Christ calls us by name, knows us by name. When we hear his voice, we begin to know ourselves and are invited into relationship with him, to become his.

The Risen Christ stands before us in the garden. The Risen Christ comes to us in bread and wine of the Eucharistic feast. The Risen Christ encounters us in the community gathered to hear the proclamation of the Word. The Risen Christ encounters us in the faces of the outcast, the homeless and hungry, the widow and orphan, in immigrants, prisoners, the LGBT community.

The Risen Christ calls us by name, inviting us into relationship with him. He invites us to bring all of our baggage, all of our wounds and scars, all of our sins and brokenness. When we hear his voice, and answer his call, we become whole and healed, loved and known by him. May the sound of his voice fill you with joy, heal your brokenness, dry your tears. May we all know the joy and love of the Risen Christ. Thanks Be to God!

 

 

Silence and Resurrection: A Sermon for the Great Vigil of Easter, 2018

Posted on by
Reply

 

“… they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. (Mk 16:8)

Terror and amazement, fear and silence. The silence of the tomb; the silence of Holy Saturday, when the earth goes still, Jesus in his grave.

Silence. Think of all the ways people are silenced—witnesses to oppression or violence, their testimony quashed by the powers that protect the status quo. All the women whose experience of sexual abuse and sexual harassment has been silenced by bullying, or threats, or pay-offs. The silence of victims, whose voices were, are, suppressed. The voices of prophets, who were silenced, like Martin Luther King, jr, assassinated almost 50 years ago today.

In Mark’s gospel, there is silence. There is the silence Jesus commands repeatedly when people he has healed, or evil spirits want to declare the Son of God. There is the silence he commands after the Transfiguration, as he, Peter, James, and John come back down from the mountain after their vision of Moses and Elijah. There is the silence of Jesus, when he is brought before the Chief Priests and he is accused of blasphemy. There is Jesus’ silence, when he stands before Pilate, and Pilate asks him about the charges against him.

And there is the silence, the silence of the women, who fled in terror and amazement.

An empty tomb, a message that Jesus is not here he is risen and he will meet you in Galilee, and then the women depart in fear and amazement and silence.

And nothing else. No miraculous appearance, no reassurance from the risen Christ, no sending out. Just an empty tomb, a command to go to Galilee, fear, and amazement, and silence.

Like so much of this gospel, from the very beginning right through to the crucifixion, it leaves us with few concrete answers, little certainty and no reassurance. We are left hanging, wondering. Like the women, we are fearful and silent.

An empty tomb, fear, amazement, silence.

Can you imagine those women, who had come with Jesus and the other disciples from Galilee. Women, and men, who had pinned all their hopes on this teacher. They had seen him heal people, cast out demons. They were with him along the road from Galilee. They heard him proclaim the coming of God’s reign, a new way of being in the world. They had watched in amazement as he forgave sins, ate with tax collectors and sinners, confounded the religious experts.

They may have had questions, all of them, about what it all meant, but they knew one thing, when they got to Jerusalem, something amazing, something big would happen.

And in Jerusalem, all signs pointed to that cataclysmic event. The triumphal entry, the debates in the temple with the authorities. Jesus running circles around them, embarrassing them publicly, the crowds delighted with what he said and how he bested his opponents.

Then it all came to an end, an arrest by night, a staged trial, and an execution by Rome. It was all over, except the grieving. All the men had fled or were laying low, fearful that their Galileean accents would bring them under suspicion from Roman troops and the religious authorities. So the women could stand near the cross bearing witness to Jesus’ death, and then watch as others buried him, and could come to the tomb to finish the embalming process and above all, grieve.

To this point, women had been Jesus’ most steadfast supporters. One had even been commended when she anointed him a few days earlier. Jesus said that she was doing it because she knew what was going to happen to him. Others had accompanied him, provided for him and the others along the way.

But the final mystery of the story, the final question Mark leaves is this. The women fled in terror and amazement, and told nothing to anyone for they were afraid. That’s another one of those ironic statements of which Mark is so fond. After all, if they told nothing to anyone, where did he get the story? Where did he, or anyone else hear of the empty tomb? How did they know to go on to Galilee to meet the risen Christ? Of course, they told someone, they must have, else Mark would not have written his gospel. If they had not told anyone, we would not be here!

That’s the line I’ve used repeatedly over the years—in sermons, bible studies, when quizzical, doubtful students asked me whether Mark could have ended the gospel this way, or whether those additional verses in chapter 16, verses that were clearly added later, were in fact a better ending to Mark’s gospel.

Tonight, I want to reflect on something else, on the women’s fear. Why were they afraid? Were they frightened of the empty tomb? Of the young man who appeared there?

Think about it. Whatever fears they might have had, they were brave enough to stand by publicly and watch Jesus die. Sure, they were “just” women, less threatening to Rome, but at the same time, they were his followers, his disciples, and the Romans must have known that. However afraid they may have been of Rome, of the religious authorities, they were brave enough to come out, early in the morning on the first day of the week, to come to the tomb.

We can think of this as their final act of love and devotion. They were performing their duty as Jesus’ loved ones, to perform the ritual anointing that was associated with burial. Caring for him, loving him, they came to the tomb, to do all those loving, intimate things, that human beings have done to their loved ones’ since the beginning of the species, the beginning of culture, to prepare their bodies for passage to the next life.

And then, suddenly, everything has changed. The body they were expecting to anoint and embalm was gone, and they were told, “He is risen!”

What if their fear was not about what had happened, but due to their uncertainty about what would happen next? What if they were afraid, not because of Jesus’ arrest and execution, but because they couldn’t understand the empty tomb and the young man’s words, He is raised from the dead.”

What if their fear had mostly to do not with the fact that their hopes were dashed by Jesus’ crucifixion, but by the miracle of resurrection?

We know the story; we know how it turns out, we know all the ways it’s been explained and interpreted over the centuries, and we’re all so familiarized to spectacular events by Hollywood special effects and computer generated imagery, that the otherness, the strangeness, the complete surprise of resurrection is hard for us to imagine.

To have our world blown open, our perspective transformed, our expectations upended—to have all that? Can we imagine that?

Can the cynicism, anger, and fear of our age be overwhelmed by the miracle and reality of resurrection? That the suffering of Jesus, the obedience and love that brought him to the cross, that made him just another victim alongside the hundreds of thousands, millions, perhaps who fell victim to Rome’s power, ended, not in defeat, death, and silence, but in something quite unexpected quite new.

The resurrection was so unexpected, that how could one respond in any other way than fear? It was proof, not just that God was vindicating Jesus, that God had intervened on Jesus’ behalf, just at the moment of greatest fear and despair. It was, is proof, that God is making things new, that God’s power and love are transforming the world, bringing about a reign of justice and peace.

They may have fled from the tomb in fear and amazement, and told no one, but in the end, they did tell what they had seen. Thanks be to God. Their fear was overcome by joy, and the good news burst forth from their lips. May our silence and fear also give way to joy, and may we also shout out the good news: Alleluia! Christ is Risen!