Easter Day 2011

+Jesus called Mary Magdalene by name and when he did, she recognized him and everything seemed ok.

Everyone likes to be called by name.

On Friday I mentioned to my friend Alison that I still needed to write my Easter sermon and that, frankly, I was struggling. Do you write a sermon for the folks whose name you know, the regulars, the stalwarts? Or do you write a sermon for the occasional visitor the face you recognize but whose name you just can’t remember? Or the strangers, the folks who have walked in here for the first time ever, the folks who are unfamiliar to us and we to them?

I want to call everyone by name, to say something that will make each of you feel spoken to, to feel heard.

I want to say something that will make whatever weighs on your heart today more bearable--I want to make everything ok.

But the only way I can make anything better for anyone is to allow them to get to know Jesus the man and Jesus the Son of God.

Several years ago a young girl asked me, on Good Friday, why we did this every year? Why did we put ourselves through it when we know how it ends?

Why do we slog through Lent, trudge through Holy Week, agonize with Jesus in Gethsemane, cry out with Jesus on the cross, and weep with Mary at the tomb. Because by doing this, we get to know him. He already knows us, but this our chance to really get to know him.

We all want to be known by name even Jesus.

To truly celebrate the Resurrection is to know the one who was Resurrected. To know the one who is Resurrected is to care about him. And caring about him is what this Lent and Holy Week is all about.

Why should we care that this 1st century Jewish Prophet walked into Jerusalem at a time of great tension and upheaval knowing that the authorities didn’t want him there, knowing that they’d lost patience with this so-called messiah who, if he really was the messiah, would be one of them, one of the elite instead of one of “those people,” the vagabonds, the sinners, the poor, the smelly, the weird. the different?

We should care because we’ve all been, at one time or another, on the outside looking in; we’ve been ignored, belittled and doubted. Some of us have even been despised…for how we look, for whom we love, for the color of our skin, the size of our bank account, the issues we choose to fight for, the candidates we support or the choices that we’ve made. We’ve all been on the outside, looking in.

Why should we care? Because at other times, we’ve been on the inside, fearful and resistant to those on the outside who want to come in, despising the one’s who think differently than us, who disagree with us, who wants us to change how we think. We should care because we’ve all been part of the crowd who just can’t seem to get out of their own way to listen to reason, to consider another way.

Why should we care that Jesus just wanted his friends to stay awake with him all night, waiting for the betrayal he knew was coming?

Because we’ve all had those times when we’ve felt alone and afraid when really all we needed all we longed for was a silent witness to our pain, someone to just sit with s in our grief, someone to be there with a shoulder to cry on, someone to offer a hug, a smile, a pat on the back. We know what it feels like to be alone with a heavy heart.

Why should we care that Jesus was betrayed by one of his closest confidantes, one of the inner circle, one whom he loved? Because we’ve all had love gone astray, we’ve all freely given our trust to another only to have that trust abused and abandoned. We all know what it feels like to be let down, to be cheated, and to be lied to.

Why should we care that Jesus suffered on the cross, that he endured great physical pain, that he screamed out in agony, wondering why? Because we all have had or will have pain which feels unbearable, agony which tears at our very core, losses that just seem to much too take.

Why should we care that Jesus died? Because we are human, just like Jesus was human and we are terrified of what it minas to stop being this---to stop being a living, breathing person walking the earth, that everything in our physical makeup is designed to keep us from dying…because death is the one thing all of us will experience and it is one thing which is, eventually, irreversible.

Why should we care that the tomb is empty, why should we care that Jesus Christ is Risen today? We should care, it should matter to us, because there is NOTHING Jesus experiences which we too won’t experience---because we are all promised resurrection. We all will rest in peace and rise in Glory. We will all shed our human shell we’ll leave behind our lifeless corpses to live in an eternal bliss where the love of all for all forever is not the hope, but the reality.

God, among us through the person of Jesus, lived a life.

A life not unlike ours. He enjoyed things, he loved people, he was hurt by people, he had hopes he had dreams and the absolute worst things happened to him, the absolute worst things imaginable he endured…and by walking out of that tomb this morning, by calling out Mary Magdalene’s name, Jesus is saying to us, I have been there……anything this world throws at you, I have been there and I have defeated it….I have some through it, I have come out the other side and guess what? If you take my hand, I’ll lead you out the other side too.

That’s the Jesus we celebrate today a man whose name we know, a God whose name we praise. Alleluia, Jesus knows my name and I know his. +

Maundy Thursday

+Remembering, washing and loving. These are the themes of tonight’s liturgy.

Our first reading sets the stage. As millions of Jewish people across the globe this week remember the first Passover, we here the Hebrew scriptural instruction given to the Exiled Jews in Egypt. In order to protect themselves from the tenth plague, they were given precise instructions. Now, while most modern day Jews don’t slaughter lambs and place the blood on their doorframes, they do re-enact many of the details in their Passover Seders. They do this so they’ll never forget---so that they Remember. 2000 years ago, as Jesus and his friends settle into the tumultuous atmosphere of Jerusalem during Passover, they too are preparing to remember…preparing for the festival—their Passover observance. Jesus and his followers are getting ready as well---getting ready, unbeknownst to them, for something completely new.

Jesus plans on taking the familiar and with a few words turn the whole thing inside out and upside down.

So he takes, he blesses, he eats and he tells us to always remember—to never forget—that he is with us and that his dying on the cross is a necessary defeat…Necessary because only when one is seemingly, thoroughly and utterly beaten, can one surprise, shock and transform us…..because only when our guard is down, only when we are stripped clean of expectation, only when our false hope is wiped away, can we receive the Good News of New Life. Jesus knew that

remembering the utter defeat would be absolutely pivotal to relishing the eternal victory. So we remember…not only the glory of Sunday but the pain of Thursday Friday and Saturday. We remember.

Washing.

We wash feet, we strip the altar area of all ornamentation, we remove the sacrament. We wash away all of the old---the good old, our sacrament, our beautiful linens and silver, and we wash away the weary old---the symbolic dust and dirt of our feet and we wipe clean the old order.

Jesus says: “Do you know what I have done? I have set you an example, that servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them.” I wash the feet of you so that we all remember that to truly live as Jesus lived means we must get down on our hands and knees and serve those who have no one, we must reach down a helping hand to the downtrodden, the despised and the destitute. Because only when we wash others, do our waters of baptism mean a thing. Because only when we serve others, will we be recognized as followers of Jesus… because to follow Jesus means to walk with him…. and walking with him means touching the untouchable and loving the unlovable. So we wash.

Loving. Tonight’s Gospel reading ends with Jesus giving us a new commandment (for this is where we get the word Maundy, it derives from the Latin word for Mandate) And Jesus’ mandate to us is: that we love one another just as he loves us.

It all comes down to this, doesn’t it?

When we take and eat, we are performing an act of love.

When we reach out to those in need, by washing their feet, by feeding them, by clothing them, by working for their rights as citizens of this world, by respecting them as children of God, we are performing an act of love.

And when throughout this night, we sit with Christ, waiting with him, watching with him, crying and praying with him, we are performing an act of love.

Maundy Thursday is about taking and eating, remembering and digesting. It’s about bending down and reaching out, realizing that until the entire world is treated with dignity and respect then any dignity or respect we are granted really doesn’t mean a thing.

Maundy Thursday is about stripping ourselves of everything: all the pretense, all the colors, all the sound, exposing ourselves to just one thing…. love. … A Love which is so strong and so enduring that nothing, not even the deepest and most piercing betrayal, can break it. A love that, if we sit quietly enough with it, will serve us well.

This is one of those nights where there’s nothing else to say. So, I invite each and everyone of you to listen and really hear, to wash and be made clean, to take and eat, and to wait and watch, for the Son of God is about to take everything we know, turn it upside down, shake it up and present it to us fresh and sparkling new on Easter morn. +

Palm Sunday Yr A April 17, 2011

+What in the world just happened? Can you imagine being completely unfamiliar with Christian tradition yet finding yourself in a church on Palm Sunday----seeing glory laud and honor, festive marching, waving palm branches, and triumphal joy suddenly transformed into a horrific scene of mob violence? Watching and hearing the very people who cheered their redeemer turn on him, urging the oppressive power of Rome to kill the one they’d just hailed?

Any reasonable human being would call us crazy. How we can go from cheering a hero with songs of love, to tossing epitaphs at him, all in the course of one short morning?

Of course what happens on Palm Sunday—the Sunday of the Passion is a Reader’s Digest version of Holy Week.

Many people just don’t or can’t take the time to walk the whole of Holy Week in segments---the triumphal entry of today leading to the betrayal, last meal, anguished lonely wait in the garden of Thursday, the arrest, trial and death sentence of Friday morning, the crucifixion, suffering, denial and despondency of Friday afternoon and the silence of the dead on Saturday so it gets crammed in to today so that when those of you who can’t be here all week don’t miss a thing.

But by doing that it all gets either watered down or too amped up---I’m not sure which—leaving preachers and (and no doubt newcomers to the faith) in a bit of a quandary: preach an entire Holy Week sermon or just focus on the events of the first Palm Sunday? Well if the purpose of a sermon is to take the stories as told through our scripture readings and interpret them for our daily life then I need to do a little of both.

This message of triumphal entry transformed into an exit of agony, humiliation, betrayal and denial, this story of a fall from grace, this stripping a hero until he is nothing but a bum, is very human. It is human nature to look for heroes—leaders—to rescue us. But, regardless of who they want to be, who they intend to be, who they really are, we tend to place them on a pedestal, on some pre-conceived notion of what type of hero they should be. And when they don’t? Well, we toss them aside, proclaiming their failure and rarely—if ever—realizing that perhaps we made the mistake. Maybe the hero we’d been seeking wasn’t the hero we needed. Perhaps the hero we’re looking for isn’t a hero at all and perhaps the victim we’re so quick to pity or mock is, in fact, the hero.

This is what happens on this Palm Sunday of glory turned into the Sunday of Passion.

Jesus isn’t the King of the Jews, he is the King of Heaven, the prince of peace. He is the ruler of all that is good and gentle and right in the world.

He just didn’t fit into the image those crowds of first century Jerusalem had of their messiah, their hero. So they turn on him proclaiming him an imposter, a blasphemer, a fraud, kicking him off the pedestal they’d forced on him. A pedestal he repeatedly refused, a pedestal he denied, a pedestal he begged them—begs us-- not to use.

But they didn’t listen—mobs rarely do---they just turned on him. One or two at first, then ten and twenty, then hundreds. People who were afraid, afraid of the Roman rulers, afraid of the crowd-- afraid to break away, to speak against the status quo, to risk that maybe, just maybe, the king they were looking for, the messiah they awaited was not the king, the messiah they needed.

In Holy Week we walk alongside Jesus as he faces the humanity of betrayal and denial, of power run amok. We must accept that we’re all players in this drama. In Holy Week we discover that we’re Peter: denying who are, we’re Judas: turning on the one we love, regretting it after it’s too late. We’re Pilate: bewildered by what he sees, disagreeing with what’s happening but too afraid of the crowd to stand up to them. We’re the disciples: who still wanting to pick up the sword instead of the plowshare.

But we’re also Mary….loyal, brave and wondrous Mary walking the entire walk with her son, having her heart pierced at that cross watching her dear sweet boy die.… and we’re also Jesus….afraid and alone, lashing out at our Creator God wailing why why why?

We’re all the players in the drama of Holy Week because all of us have betrayed, all of us have denied, all of us have wondered all of us have wailed and all of us have had our hearts pierced.

This Holiest of Weeks isn’t easy, and it isn’t pretty, but it is necessary and it is glorious. For what we learn is that even when behaving at our very worst, even when full of denial and doubt, rage and terror, betrayal and hate Jesus is still with us, loving us.

You can call us crazy, but we’d prefer if you just called us Christians.+

Dirty Spitty Love Makes Grace

Dirt ‘n spit ‘n love. This is how Episcopal Priest Rick Morley describes today’s Gospel. Dirt ‘n spit ‘n love --it’s a great description of Jesus’ life isn’t it?

DIRT-- born in a barn, amidst the animals and the straw, the dirt and the mud.

SPIT—The spit of Jesus’ detractors, disgusted by his message of forgiveness. Their hatred turned on its ear as Jesus replaces their water of darkness with a water of light and life---A Living Water given to all, forever.

LOVE---Love for God, love for ourselves and love for our neighbor. That’s Jesus in a nutshell isn’t it? Dirt and spit and love.

As a matter of fact, it’s creation in a nutshell too. As Eucharistic Prayer C puts it: “At your command all things came to be: the vast expanse of interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses, and this fragile earth, our island home.”

The vast expanse of creation---all of this and all of us---- made out of dirt ‘n spit ‘n love.

Our Lenten journey begins with the reminder---We are dust and to dust we shall return. …a reminder that we are nothing without God. Oh we might have our bodies, the earth, a life of sorts, but during Lent we are reminded that a full life, a life of light, a life of living water, a life of love is only gained by and through the grace of God. That’s the message of these past few Sundays, that without the dirt and spit and love of God as given to us through Jesus Christ, we don’t live, we exist. Without the dirt and spit and love of God our eyes may be open but we don’t really see. Without the dirt and spit and love of God we may hear the noise, but never listen to the message. That without the dirt n spit n love of God our thirst—no matter how much water we drink-- will never be quenched.

The past few weeks we’ve heard John’s stories about the darkness of Nicodemus, the thirst of the woman at the well and this morning, the man, blind from birth. As Jesus is walking he sees this man, he notices him. The man isn’t asking for healing, he isn’t, as far as we know, drawing any attention to himself. Nothing we read today tells us that this man, in any way, was seeking Jesus out. All we know is that Jesus realizes it’s a healing moment… a teaching moment … a ministry moment. Now Jesus could have healed the man without the mud, without the mask, without the command to go to the pool at Siloam and wash. ……all he needed to do was say the word and the man would have been healed. So why get muddy? Why pick up the desert dust and spit in his hand to make mud? Because loving us as God loves us, is a messy business.

The disciples begin this encounter by asking a numbskull question about whose sin caused this man’s blindness---as if any of us deserve to be blind, or deaf, or disabled in any way. Instead of rebuking them directly, for assuming that God is some sort of spiteful hateful God—Jesus says, “watch, listen, learn.” For what happens to this man is what needs to happen to everyone--- that the world, through the Son of God will be cured of it’s blindness, that the lost will be found, the thirsty will drink and the unlovable, will be loved

So Jesus prepares his mud paste, with dirt ‘n spit ‘n love applying it to the man’s eyes, sending him to the pool to wash, where he receives his sight. He can see. Of course, the dirt didn’t heal him. It wasn’t the mud which allowed him to see, it wasn’t Jesus’ touch, it wasn’t even the man’s desire to see….it was something else.

Something unquantifiable, indescribable.

What happened was beyond the blind man’s comprehension, it was beyond his neighbors’ comprehension, it’s beyond our comprehension. It was astounding and no one really knew what to make of it---some were sure it was the work of a crazed heretic; others assumed it was a miracle of God, that this Jesus was indeed, the messiah. And for Jesus, this was the exact point---for to him, sight is for believers, blindness for disbelievers—and the miracle of the man who once was blind and now could see, the miracle of that dirt n spit n love of God which Jesus formed into a healing paste was in a word, Grace.

An amazing powerful, grace.

Grace, it’s what’s been coursing through our readings these past few weeks. An amazing, limitless, grace.

It’s what gave Nicodemus the courage to go and see Jesus, it’s what gave the woman at the well a voice to be heard, a charisma to convert those who once shunned her, a thirst quenched by Living Water. It’s what caused Jesus to see the blind man, it’s what carried the man to the pool where he was washed free of darkness, where he was bathed in light.

It’s what makes firefighters run into a burning building, police officers answer a call, rescue workers risk their life for another. It’s what allows us to forgive those who’ve hurt us so deeply,

What causes us to reach to out to those with less, what creates the longing we feel for justice, what makes us fight for causes others have long forgotten, what keeps us pledging our time, talent and treasure to this place, it’s what makes us be better people than we ever thought we could be.

Grace. It takes us from blindness to sight, from wretchedness to worthiness, from darkness to light, from lost to found.

The work of God, the work of Jesus is full of dirt ‘n spit ‘n love, which, when mixed together, into that divine paste, makes Amazing Grace. A grace which when we believe it, when we trust it, when we embrace it, will always lead us home.

Amen.

[turn to Hymn 671]