Red Tail Lights: An Ascension Meditation

Image courtesy http://www.cruzblanca.org/hermanoleon/

When I left home for bootcamp in 1989, my family quoted this song to me in a card:

“Daniel is traveling tonight on a plane

I can see the red tail lights heading for Spain

Oh and I can see Daniel waving goodbye

God it looks like Daniel, must be the clouds in my eyes.”

And for whatever reason, whenever Ascension Sunday rolls around, I cannot help but think of Elton John.  My pastor and mentor once told me that on some Ascension Sunday before he retires, he’ll have the church sing “I’m leaving on a jet plane.”  

All of this is to say the Feast of the Ascension is one of those holy day festivals in the life of the Church that is important, for a majority of people, due to its theological significance, but otherwise, we aren’t exactly sure what to do with it.  

It’s in the Creed, in one form or another; the Nicene Creed says:

“He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.”

and usually when the Church takes the time to include a portion of Scripture as a creedal statement, we want people to know it’s a foundational piece of what the Church believes.

That being said, it’s not so important that, like Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, we create festivals of lessons and carols around it, or, like Easter, ensure that it’s always on the Lord’s Day, a Sunday.  

The Ascension happened 40 days after Jesus rose from the dead.  The actual Feast Day was this past Thursday, but because those of us who follow a liturgical calendar believe it is important, we option the last Sunday before Pentecost as either the 7th Sunday of Easter or Ascension Sunday. And 40 is a theologically significant number throughout Scripture: 40 days/nights of rain, 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, 40 days of fasting for Moses, Elijah, and Jesus.  40 days of continued teaching after the resurrection.  There’s so just based on the number of days we know there’s something worth paying attention to.  

So what do we make of this particular passage, this foundational piece of our faith.  Is the Ascension of Jesus important only because it provides a transition from Jesus to the Holy Spirit?  Is it important only  because it gets us from earth to heaven?  Or is it only about looking and waiting for Jesus to come back for his own?

As you might imagine, I have some thoughts on this...and they come from one particular sentence: “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?”

Think for a moment about where the Disciples have been, what they have been through.  Jesus called them from ordinary lives of family and the family business to an itinerant ministry of healing and preaching.  Then in an unexpected twist, he is arrested and executed, taken from them and just when they thought it was back to the ordinary life again, Jesus is back, raised from the dead.  As unlikely and truly miraculous as it seemed, there he was.  Teaching them again, going from place to place, showing the victory of God against the power of death.  It was kind of like when the Eagles reunited in the mid 1990’s except Jesus’ resurrection was a true conquering of Hell and Death.

So there they are again.  Just like the good old days: Jesus and the Twelve--actually the Eleven because Judas hasn’t been replaced yet.  It’s almost like nothing really changed. Until the 40th day when he leads them out to a mountain top, commissions them one final time, and rises from earth to heaven.

How do you not stand there watching the red tail lights headed for Spain?

You start by remembering that Jesus told you something important before he rose to heaven.  You remember that he gave you a mission, a purpose.  And as long as you are standing there, looking at the sky, you aren’t living your purpose.  

Luke moves us in the Acts narrative from his Gospel’s focus on the 2nd person of the Trinity to the work of the 3rd person, the Holy Spirit.

With the Ascension we are moved from passively waiting for Jesus to come and fix things to actively participating in the work of the Holy Spirit here and now.

The thing is, lots of folks in the church are still just looking up at heaven waiting passively for Jesus to do something.  A lot of us are missing out on the purpose that Jesus gives to us.

I follow Ricky Gervais on Twitter.  He’s a comedian, an actor, and an atheist and a critic of the Church.  He sent out a tweet a few weeks ago that said something like, “I think I’ll save myself lots of time, energy and money and just pray that the all world’s problems will go away.”  Another one said, “Do something? No, I think I’ll just pray about it instead.”

As hard as it may be for some of us to consider advice from an Atheist, sometimes we need to listen to what people who are not part of us have to say about how we conduct ourselves and show that we are precisely NOT what they say we are.  Prayer is seen, in the eyes of Ricky Gervais and many critics like him, not as actively working with God, but just waiting on God to do something for us.

Richard J. Foster has this to say about prayer: 

“Certain things will happen in history if we pray rightly.  We are to change the world by prayer.”

But, what is prayer? What does it means to pray rightly?  He goes on to say:

“Prayer involves transformed passions. In prayer, real prayer, we begin to thinks God’s thoughts after him; to desire the things he desires, to love the things he loves, to will the things he wills.”*

In short, to pray is to align our will with the will of God.  If we pray rightly, we aren’t just waiting for God to act, we begin to act WITH GOD.

Pastor and Author Dan Kimball says:

“The Church was born for this very mission.  Jesus didn’t just call his followers to believe in him as their Savior; he sent them out to follow him and serve the world on his mission.  Jesus didn’t tell his followers to sit around, attending church meetings and singing songs, just waiting to die and then go be with him in heaven.  Instead, Jesus told his followers to go into the world and with the power of God’s Spirit, live as a people on a mission from God, bringing the love and message of Jesus to others...the Church was created not to be an inwards (or upwardly) focused group of passive people but a Church with an outward focus, on a mission to serve others in the world.”**

Or in the immortal words of Jake and Elwood:

“It's a hundred and six miles to Chicago, we've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses...Hit it.”

Like I said, Ascension is a funny kind of feast day. Not ha ha funny but strange funny and we don’t know what to do with it.  But at the core of the Ascension is a promise of presence.  And at that, we can begin to sing a song that our Jewish sisters and brothers sing at Passover.  “Dayenu” is the song.  Dayenu (pronounced "Die-yay-new") means, basically, “It would have been enough for us.”  The stanzas recognize the depth of grace in each action of God on their behalf.  But each stanza also builds on the previous one, acknowledging that God is never satisfied with “enough” when it comes to His children.

To give you an example, the song sung at Passover begins: ”if God had brought us out of Egypt but not carried out judgments against them it would have been enough...Dayenu.  If God had carried out judgments against them and not against their idols...Dayenu...”

Our version might say:

If God had come in person, to redeem our human nature but not raised him from the dead...Dayenu...it would have been enough. 

If God had raised Jesus from the dead, to destroy death’s power over us but not lifted Jesus up...Dayenu...it would have been enough. 

If God had lifted Jesus up from earth, to open heaven to us but not given us his Spirit...Dayenu...it would have been enough.  

If God had given us his Spirit to provide a means of grace and hope but not given us a mission...Dayenu...it would have been enough.***

-----------

* Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline. (HarperOne, October 1988)

** Dan Kimball, Adventures in Churchland:: Discovering the Beautiful Mess Jesus Loves (Zondervan, June 2012)

*** I owe a huge debt of gratitude to a sermon by Rev. Joshua Bowron from whom this section of Dayenu is inspired and paraphrased.

Earth Day, Cigarette Butts, and Epiphanies

We recently celebrated Earth Day with a base-wide clean up.  

As in previous years, the agency organizing the event held a contest between different groups on base with regard to weight of trash brought back to the recycling center.  Whenever there is a contest, people bring out the heavy items.  They get creative in terms of weight by scooping up wet leaves, a few small items in a shovel full of dirt or sand.  It is entertaining to watch the level of innovation that people will put into their efforts when they have something to gain.  (I think it’s akin to the late Eddie Guerrero’s tag line, “I Lie! I Cheat! I Steal!”)

At one point during the morning I was off on my own, relishing a bit of solitude, and I wandered up to this section of fencing that partitioned one parking lot from another.  All along the fence line there were hundreds of cigarette butts.  I'm an ex smoker so my initial response to these types of finds is usually anything but charitable.  But I stooped down and began picking up small butt after small butt, and I knew that my bag of trash wasn't going to be heavy, but that area of the parking lot, in that small area of our base, was going to be clean.

And it was right about then, as I was crouched down, scooping up cigarette butts that I had an epiphany.  Not an "aha moment" epiphany, but a God speaking to me with absolute clarity epiphany. “This is the most important work ever.”

How many people ignore the cigarette butts?  How many people see them and say, "I ain't picking up those nasty things!" ( I only say that because I have heard those exact words from others.) We're very interested in the big items that have lots of weight and offer chances for recognition and we bypass the little cigarette butts but picking up the small things is vital work.  

In my time in the Church, and I still consider my extension ministry being “in the Church” regardless of what others say or believe, I’ve noticed the enthusiasm that folks have for the large scale projects that earn recognition; maybe it’s because large scale projects only require short-term commitment. But when it comes to the daily work of “just picking up cigarette butts,” work that doesn’t get a kudo or a Bravo Zulu, work that doesn’t have some easily noticed, measurable metric attached to it, we just don’t have the attention span or the level of commitment that the work requires; we get frustrated by it because just when we think we have them all picked up, dammit there’s another one!  And--in the end--we just don’t don’t want to deal with “those nasty things.”

As for me, I’ll keep going on with the most important work.

Famous Last Words

If you knew you had 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes of time to speak to the world, what would you say?  If you knew you had you parting shot, your moment for “famous last words,” how would you use it?  What would you say to those by whom you want to be remembered?

Maybe you’ve thought about what you would say to the commander of a unit as you’re getting ready to check out and you know you’ll have the opportunity to give honest assessments.  I often think of the need to say something absolutely profound and important as I’m leaving a church community.  I wonder, “What words do I want them to remember?  What is most important?”  By what last words would you like to be known?

Jesus gives us eleven words: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.”

One writer says: “Simple enough for a toddler to memorize…profound enough that most mature believers are repeatedly embarrassed at how poorly they comprehend it and put it into action.”

For the most part, we are probably thinking, “Yeah Jesus, right there with you.  Got it; Love one another.”  And then in walks the last person on earth you want to see, she sits right next to you, and you think, “But not her.” And then you’re walking about town and you bump into someone else and you think, “Not him.” And then you hear about this group, or that group, both of which make you angry beyond belief, and you think, “Oh please, Jesus, Not them.”  On the whole, we’re doing okay on loving one another, until it gets real and love stops being easy, and then we feel the burden of the fact that Jesus said, “I give you a new commandment.”

And Jesus, being a savvy kind of guy, looks at the disciples…the same ones who argued about greatness, the same ones who were about to make dust and abandon him as he gets arrested, the ones who would deny knowing him, who would forego testifying on his behalf, the ones who would let the stress of his final hours destroy their relationships with one another…Jesus looks at them and adds, “Just as I have loved you, you also must love one another.  By this the world will know you are my disciples.”  

Just as we think we have an out by saying, “But Jesus, I couldn’t love right there because I was too stressed out, too freaked out, too betrayed, too angry.”  He says the way we love isn’t within our own standards, but within his.

Maybe he knew we’d remember his command to love God with all we are and to love our neighbors as ourselves, and then say, “But I don’t love myself so much right now so…’no love for you!’”

Jesus is aware of how self defeating we can be, of how by the book we can be, so he makes the plumb line of loving one another the love that he has for us.

A portion of this passage is read on the Thursday before Easter, Maundy Thursday.  And every year I preach on the washing of feet and the new commandment.  This year I came to a conclusion that when Jesus says, “Do what I do. Love like I love. Follow my example.” It’s not so much about the actual washing of feet.  It’s about giving the grace behind it.  Jesus takes on the willingness to deal with our dirt so that we will follow his example and deal with the dirt of others.  He gives us his grace, not for our sake alone, but so that we’ll give it to others because the love we share, the grace we give it’s not our love, our grace, our forgiveness; it’s Christ’s.  

And maybe it’s good that he gave this teaching around the table where we would eventually gather in living memory of his sacrificial love; because when we gather, we know that the playing field is leveled; we all need grace, we all still need saving, and as we look around the room of everyone who is gathered at the feast of grace, we see just how big and how welcoming the love of Christ is.  And just as he welcomes, so should we.  Just as he loves, so do we.  Not because we are obliged, but because we know how great it feels to be loved.

Hands of the Shepherd

The Text for this week is John 10:22-30--

To be the king of understatement, it's been a pretty crazy week.  And it light of the craziness that has unfolded, I thought it important to look at some specific portions of the text this week that relate to our identity.  We may be inclined to focus on fear or hatred or pride or a need for vengeance disguised at justice when things happen like what happened this week.  But our identity is so much more than those emotions; out identity is so much more than a specific geography or nationality or ideology.  So today I zero in on verses 27-30:

“My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father who has given them to me is greater than all, and no one can snatch them out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.”

There are other manuscripts with translations of verse 29 which say, “What the Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand.”

We belong to Christ.  We belong to God.  Jesus is saying, either, “We are so great a treasure to God that he would never, ever let us get snatched away” or he is saying, “There is nothing so powerful, not even death, that can snatch us from our Abba’s hand.”  Good news no matter what, don’t you think?

One song writer pens these words: 

Save your sermons for someone that's afraid to love.

If you knew what I feel, then you couldn't be so sure.

I'll be right here lying in the hands of God.
I am in love with nothing less.

Tear drops of joy runs off my face,

I will rise for someone that's afraid to love.

If you knew what I feel, then you couldn't be so sure.

I'll be right here lying in the hands of God. 

What might it mean for us to live out of the confidence and trust that we are in the hands of Christ and cannot be snatched away?

And if you think that’s old knowledge, if you want to say, “Tell me something I don’t know, Chaps,” then I have to wonder if you’ve let that little nugget crawl up inside your heart and really change you the way God wants it to change you.

One author says:

“When I become so sophisticated that ‘Abba’ is old hat, then the Father has been had, Jesus has been tamed, the Spirit has been domesticated, and the Pentecostal fire has been extinguished. Evangelical faith is the antithesis of cozy, comfortable piety. Faith means you want growing intimacy with Jesus Christ. Cost what it may, you want nothing else. The moment I conclude that I can now cope with the awesome love of God, I am dead.”

What might it mean for us to live like we can’t be snatched away from our Daddy’s hands?  Maybe it means that we want nothing more than to stay there in his embrace; maybe it means that being in the presence of Jesus gives us more joy than anything else; maybe in means that we want to be in his presence the way an addict wants a fix.

I quit smoking in July of 1996, tossed the better part of a pack of Marlboro Light cigarettes into a trash can at a rest stop in Mendocino County on my way to a new life in Eureka.  1996 is the year I quit smoking.  For whatever reason, a few weeks ago, in the year 2013, I felt like it had been less than 24 hours since I quit smoking.  I was literally pacing the floor, figuratively climbing the walls of my office.  In the years since I gave up smoking, I’ve never experienced anything quite like it.

A few days later, I found myself craving the presence of Christ more than I was craving that cigarette and it was such an awesome feeling.  David in the psalms writes about longing for God like a deer longs for streams, and I have experienced that in the area of spiritual thirst from the dry and desert place, probably you have too, but in the midst of plenty there I was yearning to have Jesus with me in every moment, or to be with him in every moment.  I wanted to ponder him, more than just in a mystical or contemplative sense, but to find out how I could make him as real to those around me as he was to me in that specific moment.

Maybe you’ve noticed that we have a very particular tradition and liturgy with the children.  It involves the Bible and this phrase, “I believe I can be everything it says I can be; I’ll never be the same in Jesus’ name.”

Look at Romans 8:14 and following and I’ll show you why we say this; Paul says, “All who are led by God’s Spirit are God’s sons and daughters. You didn’t receive a spirit of slavery to lead you back again into fear, but you received a Spirit that shows you are adopted as his children. With this Spirit, we cry, “Abba, Father.” The same Spirit agrees with our spirit, that we are God’s children. But if we are children, we are also heirs.”

So we have them say, “I believe I can be the adopted Son or Daughter of God.”  I believe I can be in the hand of Jesus’ Abba and my Abba, and never, ever be snatched away.

This isn’t just a navel gazing way of life, or a pie in the sky in the sweet by and by understanding of the Gospel.  It means something right now, today, and applies every single day.  You want the gospel to be relevant? It can’t get any more relevant than our core identity as Abba’s Child.

I may be going out on a limb, but I bet everyone here has made some kind of decision, some sort of mistake, that—even if you don’t explicitly regret it—you would seriously reconsider if you had the chance to do it all over again.  Everybody makes mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes impact our lives and the lives of those around us.  Depending of the gravity of the impact, we may be inclined to carry the weight of that mistake around with us day after day after day.  The worst mistake we could ever make is to be owned by our sins instead of by our Abba.

If you are in a place where you are carrying around the guilt or the shame or the spiritual and emotional burden of having messed up somewhere along the line, please, please forgive yourself.  And by forgive yourself, I mean know that nothing can snatch your from the hand of the Shepherd; nothing can snatch you from your Abba’s hand; you are too precious of a treasure, and God is too powerful for anything to stand between you and Him.  You are Beloved and you are forgiven, so let it go and let yourself be loved.  

I counsel too many people who cannot forgive themselves, or who cannot believe that God will forgive them for this mistake or for that mistake, because that’s what it means to not forgive ourselves.  To not forgive yourself means you don’t trust that God forgives you, and if there is one thing my past has taught me it is the Truth that there is nothing, absolutely nothing that God won’t forgive. Or as Paul says, “For I am convinced that (nothing) will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

So let me end where I began; with the words of Jesus: “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father who has given them to me is greater than all, and no one can snatch them out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.”

Loaded Questions

I am not a fan of loaded questions.  More specifically, I am not a fan of being on the receiving end of loaded questions; I know for a fact that I am incredibly guilty of asking loaded questions of my children, but that doesn’t make me a fan of them.  I don’t like loaded questions because the one who asks the question already knows the answer: “Where did the last bagel go?” The child looks at the floor, pokes at it with her toe and says, “Umm, I ate it.”  I know you ate it because you have cream cheese all around your mouth and little bits of chocolate from the chocolate chips in the bagel.  “So why did you ask me?”  Because you needed to know that I knew so that you could apologize for eating the last bagel. I really don’t like loaded questions.

So this week I’ve been pondering the loaded question that Jesus asks.  I had written a completely different sermon on how the Church, like Peter, so easily defaults to life as usual after the resurrection.  But this passage isn’t about Peter; this passage isn’t about the Church; this passage isn’t about our comfort zones or our love of the familiar.  This passage is about Jesus and his loaded question: “Do you love me?”

Jesus is waiting on the shore for the disciples.  After he gave them a miraculous catch of fish after a fruitless night of labor, he’s standing on the shore with breakfast, and a loaded question: “Do you love me?”

I may be wrong, but I don’t get the impression that Jesus took Peter aside to ask this question.  I don’t think he asked it in front of the others because he wanted to shame Peter;  I think he asked it in front of the other disciples, because he wanted them to think about that question too.  They all left, they all jumped on the bandwagon of the familiar, they all need to dig deep and answer this question: “Do you love me?”

It’s a choice that we all get to make; much like Morpheus offers Neo the red pill or the blue pill, Jesus asks us a question that carries similar consequences: keep on living life as we know it, or go into the resurrection rabbit hole and never look back.

But Jesus asks not because he already knows the answer, but because he wants us know what lies behind his asking of the question.

Do you love me?  Do you love me more than these?  Do you love me more than your boats, more than your nets, more than your 153 fish, more than your friends?  Peter, do you love me?  The choice is yours but you need to know something; the truth of the matter is I am crazy about you.

That’s what makes Jesus’ question a loaded question.  “Do you love me? Because I am crazy about you!”

One of my favorite authors and pastors died on Friday. I cannot begin to say how great of an influence he had on me.  I have read very few words that were as permeated with grace as the writings of Brennan Manning.  The man was radically in love with Christ. He had a saying, “Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion.” 

This is why we need to know what lies behind the question that Jesus asks.  He wants to know if we love him because he is deeply, deeply in love with us.  Like John Cusack’s character in Say Anything, Jesus is standing at the end of our driveways with a radio over his head, blaring Peter Gabriel’s In Your Eyes, all because of his love for us.  And he asks us, “Do you love me?” Because I am crazy about you.

And here’s the thing I hope somebody out there understands.  Peter didn’t understand the Romans Road to Salvation; he didn’t get any particular theory of atonement; he didn’t understand the mystery of the resurrection…all Peter knew was Jesus.  And Jesus was standing there looking Peter in the eyes asking this question: Do you love me? 

And I guess that’s where we fit in, too.  We don’t have to “get it” to get Jesus or to receive his grace.  We don’t have to have complete knowledge or fullness of faith—all we need to do is trust that we are loved by him; more deeply than we could possibly imagine, we are loved by Jesus and he desires nothing more than for us to love him back.

Purposeful Peace

Image courtesy of http://www.cruzblanca.org/hermanoleon/

Before I get started: I want to take a quick sidebar and clarify what John means with his term “the Jews.” This phrase comes up with regularity in the fourth gospel and what John means with this term is the religious authorities, not the entirety of the Jewish people.  It may seem obvious to state this but just to be clear: John was a Jew; Jesus was a Jew; all of the eleven are Jewish people.  They weren’t in hiding from their kin or from themselves, they were hiding from the religious authorities and specific people who were responsible for the death of Jesus.  Certain folks, historically and even today, want to use John’s phrase as a way to indict the Jewish people, and since this evening begins Yom HaShoah, the commemoration of the Jewish Holocaust, I wanted to take a time out to clarify that phrase.

I spent a lot of time in trouble as a kid.  Not in school or in juvenile systems, but at home, I spent a lot of time in my room thinking about what I’d done.  I also spent a lot of time in my room waiting for my father to get home.  You know what I mean: “Just you wait until your father gets home.”  It’s not that Mom was unable or unwilling to give discipline; no, she gave plenty.  But that particular phrase was the one that let me know I was seriously in for it.  It was a phrase that is perfectly designed to strike fear in the hearts of children.

So when I read that the eleven were locked in the room for fear of the Jews—the religious authorities, I understand what John means.  They are in the house waiting for what they feel is the inevitable; their arrest, their mock trial and their deaths. 

This is still the day of the resurrection in John’s timeline.  None of the eleven have met with Jesus; Peter and John have seen the empty tomb, the whole group has heard Magdalene’s testimony of having seen the Lord, but they themselves have not yet encountered the risen Christ and they are paralyzed with fear;  life has become frozen in a moment; they are imprisoned by what may be if they show their faces to the community.

One author writes: “On each birthday, the women of a certain caste in India add four rings of heavy brass, one on each ankle and one on each arm. By the time they reach middle age, they walk with difficulty under this senseless burden. But this is no more senseless than weighing one’s self down with inward fears of failure, of the future, of sickness, of being dependent, of the opinions of people and so on.” (E. Stanley Jones—The Way)

Into their fear-driven imprisonment and paralysis walks Jesus with these words, “Peace be with you.”  The same word that Jesus spoke to the wind and the waves which calmed them in a single moment, he speaks to those who are frozen in fear, “Peace be with you…Peace! Be Still!”  

Maybe the challenge that we face with these words is that we can choose to block their power.  The wind and the waves they respond.  We fearful humans, we hold on to questions, we wonder whether or not the peace of Jesus can truly calm the troubled waters of our souls.

But for the eleven, the word of peace sticks with them and they can see Jesus for who he is.  He shows his wounds, proof that God can transform any horror, proof that death has lost its power and they rejoice.  

But it seems that Jesus knows how susceptible we are to fear because he speaks those words again: “Peace be with you.”  But this peace isn’t about the disciples’ fear of what has been; this peace is to calm the fears of what may be.  Because Jesus follows this instruction of peace with words of commissioning: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

I’ve mentioned before, I think, the way in which my call to ordained ministry began.  I was sitting with my friend Mark and we were talking about Church and I blurted out, “I think it would be kind of cool to be a priest.”  Those words hung there between us for a few moments, and as their seriousness and their gravity sank in, I mentally began trying to pull them back.  The idea that we are called and sent to continue the ministry of reconciliation that God offers in Jesus is seriousness business.  We need to know that we have the peace of Jesus with us as we set about this work, because the peace is for us AND this peace is for others.

Jesus continues by breathing the Holy Spirit onto and into the disciples and he tells them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

Please let those words, and their implications, sink in.  If we forgive people their sins, they are set free; if we don’t, they remain in bondage.  We have been given, with the gift of the Holy Spirit, the power to set people free from the rooms they are locked in.  And that freedom comes from the words: “Your sins are forgiven, be at peace.”

And so here I am today carrying the blessed burden of needing all of you to know the Peace of Christ; needing all of you to hear those freeing words, “Your sins are forgiven, be at peace.”  Because it is in the community where those words, exchanged between those who have encountered the risen Christ, that transformation happens and people are set free.  

Empty Tombs and Meeting Face to Face

There are two distinct parts, two distinct movements, two distinct encounters to this morning’s passage from John.  I think those two encounters also have a great deal to say to the church on Easter Sunday as well.

In the first movement of this passage Mary, Peter, and John have an encounter with an empty tomb.  

Mary goes to the tomb and discovers that there is no body.  She reports to Peter and the “Beloved Disciple” this fact: “The tomb is empty;” more specifically she says, “They have taken the body of Jesus.”

Insult has been added to injury: we can’t even give Jesus a proper burial.

Then John tells of a dramatic footrace to the tomb.  I see it in my mind as similar to the final moments of the 1999 Super Bowl between the Rams and the Titans, Peter’s hand is reaching out for the goal line of tomb, but the Beloved Disciple beats him to it, winning the foot race.  

At the tomb the beloved disciple looks in, sees the wrappings, but does not enter.  Peter arrives shortly after John, and enters the tomb.  He sees the wrappings used to cover the body of Jesus.  The beloved disciple then enters the tomb and together they see that the Body of Jesus is no where inside.  Then John says, “They saw and believed.”

Let’s stop for a moment and consider what did he/they see and believe?  There is no body: it has been taken/moved.  This is what they believe.  They believe that the tomb is empty.  John makes a point of saying, “for as yet they did not understand the scripture…”  They don’t yet believe, know, or understand that the empty tomb means Jesus is alive and that he has been raised.

For them, in this moment, Jesus is like Moses; his body is in a place that no one knows.  The tomb is empty. Happy Easter.  And they go home, perhaps making up their minds to go back to life as they had known it.

And maybe there are a few people like this in the Church, maybe some here this morning.  People who believe that there was an actual empty tomb on Easter morning, but they’ve walked away before meeting with the Risen One.  They’re going back to life as they have known it, they believe in the forgiveness of sins, but they haven’t met the Resurrected Jesus.  If it’s you, wait a while; Jesus is here.

In the second major part of this passage we have Mary waiting alone and weeping.  She’s been robbed of her chance at closure.  She cannot complete the rituals of lamentation.

And almost, like she can’t believe it, or maybe because she thinks that if she looks in the same place one more time he’ll be there.  (You know, like when you lose something and you look in the same place over and over and over again?)  That’s what Mary does. She looks into the tomb one more time.  Maybe as a way of saying good-bye.

And as she looks in she sees to angels.  Sitting there among the wrappings that held Jesus’ dead body are two messengers there to attend to her in her grief.

And their question seems so obvious, but it’s an important question: “Why are you weeping?”

We’re taught to pay attention to the body language of people.  To look for signs of distress, not so that we can refer them to professionals, but so that we can be present with them in whatever moment of pain they are experiencing.  Aloneness in grief, makes grief that much harder to bear.  We’re invited to become messengers of hope for others, just as these angels are for Mary.

“Why are you weeping?”  They give her a place to name her pain and she takes it.

“They’ve moved the body of Jesus and I don’t know where it is!”  And she turns as if to gesture to them the barrenness of the tomb, the emptiness of the garden, and there he is.  There is Jesus.  But to her he is just the gardener; she is blind with greif.

“Where have you taken him?”  she cries.  “If you show me where he is, I will take him and tend to his body!”  To Mary he is just a gardener, and she is so blinded by grief and pain she can’t see him…until he speaks her name:  “Mary!”

I imagine like a parent comforting a child saying their name, rocking them back and forth, trying to get them to calm down.  “Mary!”

And in hearing the Risen Christ speak her name, she knows him for who he is.  And she falls to her feet in front of him.  

This is why I said to wait a while.  Jesus is here and he speaks our names: Daniel, Kristen, Alex, Matteo, Grace, Abbey, Elliot, Hajnal, Troy, Jay, Matt, Steve, Chris… He speaks our names so that we will know him for who he is.

There are lots of studies about newborns recognizing the voices of mothers and fathers based on learning their voice patters in utero.  It may not necessarily create stronger bonds, but our children know who we are.

Mary knows Jesus because he speaks her name.  Jesus speaks her name because he knows she will recognize him and know that she belongs to him.  And he speaks our names this morning so that we will know to whom we belong and so that with our words, with our actions, with our lives we will testify to his risenness.

“I have seen the Lord,” Mary told the eleven.  “I have seen the Lord…and it is so much better than just seeing an empty tomb.”