The Context blasting Holy Spirit

+Context. I just spent three days with Episcopalians from across the country, Anglicans from South Africa, South America, Scotland, Wales and New Zealand, representatives from our partners in faith-- the Lutheran, Moravian, Presbyterian and, if you can believe it, Disciples of Christ churches. The consultation, as it was called, was a conversation about the liturgy and support materials, adopted by our church, for the blessing of a life long covenant, otherwise known as the liturgy for same gender weddings.
From the start, we were encouraged to remember the context from which each of us spoke. The point was clear: we’re informed through our context—our culture, our point of view, our situation.
Pentecost was a Jewish holiday long before it was the birthday of the church, long before the Holy Spirit decided to make her appearance in that upper room. But hardly anyone knows that-- we just assume, from our Christian context, that Pentecost is called that because the Holy Spirit arrived 50 days after Easter. But Pentecost, derived from the Greek for fiftieth day is another name for the Jewish holiday of Shavu’ot which occurs on the 50th day after Passover.
OUR Pentecost context is simply one of many.
So, acting through their Jewish context the disciples have gathered in that upper room on  Pentecost, Shavu’ot, to share a meal and utter the familiar prayers of their previous context while adjusting to their new context of a life following a Jesus who was no longer there. Everything was different.
Different is, challenging. Some differences intrigue us, but very often different scares us. We use our context to understand and interpret and when someone behaves in a way unfamiliar to us, when they operate out of a context different from ours, we often become afraid and resistant. It was fear that caused the crowds to shout “crucify him,” it was fear that caused Peter to deny, Judas to betray and everyone but a very few to flee.
Fear is at the root of most of humanity’s worst behavior. Wars and massacres, genocide, discrimination, hatred and exclusion can all be traced back to fear. Fear stems from a lack of understanding, fear comes when we don’t “get” another’s context.
The temple leadership didn’t understand the context of these Jesus followers, and the disciples didn’t understand the context of the temple authorities. Yet, as is often the case with differences, they weren’t all that different!
 Jew and Christian alike, as well as Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and many  others, strive for a very similar goal: loving the God of their understanding with all their heart and soul and mind.
Of course, intolerance of differences, fear of unfamiliar contexts isn’t only in our history books—it lives and moves through our life today—as members of this parish, as Episcopalians, as Anglicans, as WNYers, as Americans, as citizens of the world, male and female, white, black and brown, gay, straight, bisexual, transgendered, republicans and democrats, Yankees fans, Red Sox fans; misunderstanding one another’s contexts  disrupts, erodes and at times destroys our unity.
That is unless…..unless we make room for and listen to the Holy Spirit. That is the point of this day.
On that Pentecost 2000 yrs ago, the disciples were juggling two contexts; the old familiar context of Shavu’ot observance and in their new context of all that Jesus had taught them. They gathered betwixt the old and the new, they gathered unsure of just what their context should be.
It was into this confusion that the tool of tolerance, the tool of insight arrived in that wind blowing, fire burning Holy Spirit.
Once the Holy Spirit entered them, the disciples looked at the world differently, they heard the world differently, they saw each other differently.
And we can too.
I saw it happen this past week as I attended the Consultation on same sex marriage. Some of us want to push the church farther into marriage equality to eliminate the separate and unequal rites of marriage and rite of blessing a life long covenant, others of us don’t want to lose the ground we’ve gained. Instead of forcing our contextual-laden opinions on each other, we prayed together and we listened to the nudgings of the Holy Spirit. Instead of directing the process, we let ourselves be part of the process. Instead of leading the charge, we opened ourselves to let the Spirit lead us to places we never ever thought we could go.
There is great hatred, incredible intolerance, and mounds of fear pulsating through our world. Sadly, WNY was put in the national spotlight of context issues this week with the hate-filled rant of a woman in Cheektowaga. I suppose it’s easy to call her a crazy racist and leave it at that…but such vile behavior comes from some place deep and fear-laden—what in the world was the context of that woman that led to such a place of hate?
We need the Holy Spirit in all that we do, all that we want and  all that we hope —we need her Wisdom, her guidance, her fire and her wind to blow into and out of us, leading us into the world, spreading the good news, striving for justice and working for peace.
The good news of today is this:
As suddenly as the gust of wind, as fast as the raging fire, as encompassing as Jesus' embrace, the Holy Spirit is within each and every one of us. And when we let the Holy Spirit have her way us, we will understand one another-- not just those who look like us, not just those who sound like us, not just those who think like us, but everyone.
The Holy Spirit turns the walls of context from stumbling blocks of hate and intolerance and fear into building blocks of understanding,  acceptance and Love.
From the crib to the ministry, from the despair of Holy Week to the brilliance of the empty tomb from the discombobulation of the Ascension to those tongues of fire, it all comes down to this ---the Holy Spirit, when given the room to move within us, through us and between us,
 will bring us all into that one context of our Creating, Redeeming, Sustaining and always Loving God.
Yes, we have work to do, we have understanding to spread and we have contexts to appreciate. So let’s get busy, rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit, Alleluia, Alleluia. Amen.

Ascension Sunday Sermon preached at St Paul's in lewiston June 1 2014

What just happened? Jesus was here and now? He’s off to heaven on a cloud?
Within the 50 days of Easter there are three days of special significance: Easter Sunday itself, Ascension Day and the Day of Pentecost. Ascension Day was, technically, on Thursday—40 days after Easter Sunday, but we are commemorating t today, 43 days after Easter Sunday. For forty days we adjust ourselves to Resurrection living—for forty days we try to wrap our brains around Jesus being dead then not being dead. It takes 40 days to realize that death has, once and for all, been defeated. Death is dead.
Jesus needed forty days too. It took 40 days for him to reach the doubters, the deniers the disbelievers. It took 40 days to make one last pitch for His message of uncompromising Love and never-ending Peace.
So, after 40 days, just as our adjustment to Resurrection Life seems almost complete, just as we’ve adjusted to the brightness of resurrection life, there is another Divine surprise: Jesus leaves. He physically and boldly rises to heaven perched atop a cloud. Now we can debate whether Jesus’ leaving happened exactly like this, but doing that just distracts us from the effect Jesus’ ascension has on us.
In his remarks immediately before the ascension Jesus promises that if we’re patient, if we wait, the advocate will come and we’ll be “furnished with heavenly power.” The arrival of the advocate, the instrument through which we are all divinely empowered, will come next Sunday—the day of Pentecost.
This begs the question---what purpose is served in making us wait again—after all , we waited in uneasy emptiness from Good Friday until Easter morning, and now we have to do it all over again? Why another period of limbo? Why doesn’t Jesus leave on one train and the Holy Spirit arrive on the next?
Because there’s something very holy in the waiting…something very spiritual in the waiting… something important—very very important in the waiting.
Brother Curtis Almquist is a monk with the Society of St John the Evangelist, an Episcopal monastery in Cambridge MA. He has written a poignant, moving meditation on this period of waiting, this period between Jesus’ departure and the Holy Spirit’s arrival.
He writes:
“Ascension Day follows the high drama of Holy Week: the palm-waving crowds, the betrayals, the scourging, the crucifixion and resurrection.  All of those days are full of interpretation and meaning.  But Ascension Day is rather vacuous of meaning.  Jesus says to his followers, ‘Stay here.  Wait.  Wait until you have been clothed with power.’  Why the wait? “ Well, Br. Curtis continues, ”I think God is waiting for us, for me and for you, to say ‘yes’ with our own lives: our read­iness or at least our willingness to co-operate with God for what God has in mind for our own lives…
God is waiting for us to say Yes to our lives, which will [then allow] God’s power [to] work within us and through us. ”
Ok, now I understand why we spent all that time this Easter season reading John’s Gospel accounts of the first Holy Week….because the utter and complete absence we experienced then we experience again now… because this week is another week of emptiness.
An emptiness that we felt so deeply as we read the account of Mary and the other women taking that long sorrowful walk back to the tomb on Easter morning; they were completely and utterly spent, completely and utterly void, completely and utterly EMPTY, only to reach the tomb and find that it too is empty, it too is vacant.
There’s great poignancy in the abundance of emptiness on Easter morning. It’s into that space, that empty broken, bereft and spent space that the Love, the Peace and the Joy of the Resurrection takes hold. And so here we are, with another period of waiting, of emptiness, of disorientation and loss.
This waiting period between Ascension and Pentecost isn’t because God needs time to get God’s ducks in a row, the waiting period isn’t because the Holy Spirit has a time management problem. The waiting period isn’t for God in any of God’s forms.
The waiting period is for us.
It’s for us to become receptive. It’s for us to become open. It is for us to become instruments of this Holy Power. The waiting period of this next week is for us.  For us to accept, to say yes to the forgiveness Jesus offers us for our mistakes, our blunders, our less than stellar moments.
The waiting period is for us.
For us to accept that God’s Love, that inexplicable, overpowering and never ending Love, is ours for the taking, it’s ours to receive,
it’s ours to accept, it’s ours to make room for.




The waiting period is for us. For us to accept the Peace that surpasses all understanding, the peace that Jesus showed on the cross, the peace that Jesus showed in the upper room, the Peace that Jesus showed in all he did and said.
The waiting period is for us to realize that Jesus has left this world and taken the fullness of the human experience into the realm of the Divine. The waiting period is for us to begin to understand that the human condition is no longer a concept to God, it is part of God.
The waiting period isn’t about us waiting on God, it’s about God waiting on us—not waiting on our ability to accept the Spirit, but on our availability to receive the power of the spirit, our availability to say yes to being Christ’s Body in this world.
And so we have another Holy Week. Another span of time where we need to adjust and readjust to the new ways God moves in and through our lives.
May we spend this week adjusting our eyes to the brightness of God’s glory given to us in the Risen and Ascended One, Jesus Christ. May we spend this week preparing to receive the power promised to us, and may we spend this week shouting Alleluia Alleluia, Death is Dead, Love is in charge and joy is ours now and forever. Amen.

Easter 4 May 11, 2014 The Sheep Fold is as Varied as the Stars in the Sky

+The Parable of the Good Shepherd, the first ten verses of which Pete just read as today’s Gospel, is, when you give it a careful and thoughtful read, a challenging text. But, because the image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd is so familiar to most of us, it’s hard for the more challenging parts of the story to come through.
Yes, Jesus is the Good Shepherd and we are his Sheep-- no matter how lost we get, no matter how tangled up in the bramble we get, He will always seek us, find us and bring us home. It is a nice image and Jesus does do all of that, BUT, there’s more to this story than cute little lambs and a gentle, loving and committed shepherd.
All that imagery comes in the middle of the parable and we don’t get the middle this year, we only get the beginning. And in the beginning, well in the beginning we hear a lot about the gate. It sounds, at first listen, that Jesus is saying there is only one gate that there is only one way into the arms of God that anyone who doesn’t follow this way, His way, is out of luck.
Now, while I agree that Jesus is the way and the truth and the life and that my salvation is gained through my belief and trust in him, I don’t believe that the way we know Jesus, the way we access God, is the only way God is reached nor do I believe that it’s the only way God reaches out to us.
I believe that God reaches out to humanity in various ways, ways that look very different to us but ways that, I think, all lead to the same place: the one sheepfold of God, the one kingdom of God. As Jesus says elsewhere in John’s Gospel, My father’s house has many dwelling places. Many dwelling places that are all under one roof.
Am I saying that you can get into heaven even if you don’t believe as we believe?
Absolutely. And I think Jesus is saying that too.
Now, before we go one, there are a couple of things you need to know about this story.
When Jesus talks about the gate of the sheepfold he is talking about the Shepherd. You see, as shepherds pasture their flocks they cover a lot of territory …sheep eat a lot of grass so they must keep moving along the country side to avoid overgrazing …so… when it’s time to stop for the night they have to create a sheepfold—a corral of sorts—along the way. Nowadays some shepherds carry lightweight portable fencing with them, but back in Jesus’ day they stopped for the night when they found a cave or some other enclosure to use as a sheepfold. The shepherd would get all the sheep in the cave and then would stretch out over the opening to keep the sheep in and the thieves bandits and wolves out. So, quite literally, the Shepherd functions as the Gate.
Jesus, by saying “very truly I tell you anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit,” is telling us that the only right way to get into the sheepfold is through the gate. He’s saying that he’s the gate, so the message is clear, right: You get into the sheepfold of God only when you enter the sheepfold through Him, through Jesus?
Well I don’t think so…
Here’s another thing you need to know about shepherds in the time of Jesus. They were despised by everyone except other shepherds. Their work was dirty and they were transient, so they had few friends and family… they had no real home village to speak of…. The shepherds had their sheep, and other shepherds…that was their community. Therefore, because they only had each other, it wasn’t uncommon for several flocks to gather in one cave for the night. Several flocks led by several different Shepherds meant the shepherds would take turns  being the gate throughout the long, cold night.
 So is the only way to God through the gate of Jesus, as we know Him?
No.
I believe that the sheepfold of God is immense and that the gatekeepers of the sheepfold are as wide and varied, as unique and as numerous as the stars in the sky.
And I think it’s why Jesus mentions the sheep knowing their own shepherd’s voice it suggests that more than one flock was in each sheep-fold-
It’s right there in verses 3-5:
The gatekeeper---the shepherd—opens the gate, calls His or her sheep and they Hear their shepherd’s voice. They recognize their shepherd and respond to their shepherd.
It’s the same message we’ve heard throughout Easter. Mary Magdalene hears Jesus’ voice and realizes that it isn’t the gardener at all, it is her beloved teacher, Lord and God. Thomas denies that Jesus is raised until such time as he hears Jesus’ voice and looks into his eyes and realizes that this man, this teacher is indeed his Lord and God. It’s what we heard last week in the Emmaus story---the disciples hearts burned as the stranger spoke to them and then, in the familiar act of sharing a meal they realize, they recognize that this is no stranger at all, but their friend, their teacher, their Lord, their God.
Jesus, as experienced through our sacred scripture, our worship and our traditions is our shepherd, we hear his voice and we recognize him.
This doesn’t mean that other sheep don’t hear another voice that they recognize and follow.
They do. Jesus tells us they do. He says: They will not follow a stranger, because they don’t know the voice of strangers. Right here, smack dab in the middle of the cozy little story about sheep and their shepherd, Jesus tells us that there are many ways to know God, to worship God, to love God. The issue isn’t how we do it, the issue is that we do it.
So my fellow sheep, my fellow shepherds, may we come in and out of God’s incredible sheep fold to find the lost and bring them home to live that life of abundant joy, promised to us by God, through our Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ.
Amen and Alleluia!

Easter 3, May 4, 2014, Knowing the Easter Story

An Easter Poem

We believe that God is alive.
then God meets us on the road and opens our eyes.
And we know that God is alive.

We believe that God is Love.
Then we are loved beyond all reason.
And we know that God is Love

We believe our faith is food indeed
Then we are fed
And know that Faith is Food.
Indeed!

We believe
And then we know

It's called living our faith.
It's called doing our faith
It's called being our faith.

We believe.
We know.
We do.
We are.

An Easter people.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++





I wrote this poem to use in the Ascension liturgy during Easter season. It plays off the believing vs. knowing theme that, if you have been paying close attention, has been the underlying concept of most of the sermons preached here these past four or five weeks. The idea of belief vs. knowing, or perhaps better put belief becoming knowing, was presented in the book we read this Lent: Selling Water by the River, by Shane Hipps.
Hipps says that our faith, to be relevant in our 21st century world must be more about knowing rather than merely believing. That our worship, to be relevant to the vast number of non churched people in our world, to be relevant to those people who find (football games, dinner, doing yard work) (brunch, sleeping in, a round of golf or some ice time) more appealing than anything we offer here; that our worship, that thing that fuels and propels our faith, must be less about creeds (what we believe) and more about what we know (what we do, what we experience, what we observe and how we respond), that it needs to be less about endowments and buildings and rite one vs. rite two, inclusive language vs. traditional and more about taking what we believe and experiencing it in the world so that it becomes something we know, something we do and something we are.
Our two travelers on the Road to Emmaus believed a lot. They were disciples of Christ and like many of Jesus’ disciples they had a clear creed that they held dear. They believed that Jesus was the promised Messiah. Now Messiah is a very specific concept in Judaism. the Messiah would oversee the ingathering of the exiles; the restoration of the religious courts of justice; an end of wickedness, sin and heresy; reward to the righteous; rebuilding of Jerusalem; and the restoration of the line of King David. The Messiah would accomplish all of that. The messiah would not allow himself to be arrested beaten mocked and executed.
The travelers tell this stranger who walked among them that they had hoped Jesus would have been the one to redeem Israel, that Jesus would have been the promised Messiah.
It’s what they believed, it’s what they expected, but it’s not what Jesus delivered. So, as they walk along, they’re disappointed, disheartened, disillusioned, sad and even a little angry.
And Jesus? Well Jesus, as he walked along with them, was disappointed, frustrated and angry, that these disciples of His were still seeing through a glass darkly, oblivious to the reality of resurrection, blocked from the realization that death, darkness and all forces of evil had been defeated—beaten at their own game. And so he begins to teach them, beginning with Moses and heading right through all the prophets leading up to Jesus himself, he talks, he lectures, he teaches. And he waits for them to…
Notice….
to
Accept….
to
Know….

This is our Easter story…we experience the Risen Christ and then we notice Him. We experience Resurrection and then we know it.
We take, we break, we eat and then we DO.
This is the story of us, an Easter People.
Knowing the Easter story is so much more potent than just believing the Easter story.
You see, we can believe the Easter story inside these doors, sitting in this beautiful familiar space. But believing it without experiencing it, believing it without doing it, believing it without knowing it will, as Shane Hipps cautions us, lead us quickly and unceremoniously into irrelevance and extinction.
Jesus, through his Resurrection appearances—to Mary Magdalene, to Thomas and today to our Emmaus travelers -- takes what has always been expected and turns it into something completely new. All Jesus wants us to do is move beyond belief toward experiential knowing, living and doing. He wants us to move from simple belief to incredible, astounding and miraculous knowing.
• Believing the Easter story doesn’t make Buffalo Public School students learn how to read. Living the Easter story, knowing the Easter story, Being the Easter story does.
• Believing the Easter story doesn’t change the systems of poverty that keep the poor poor and the rich, rich. Living the Easter story, knowing the Easter story, Being the Easter story does.
• Believing the Easter story doesn’t solve the problem of violence in this city, the country and the world. Living the Easter story, knowing the Easter story, Being the Easter story does.
• Believing the Easter story doesn’t take guns off of our streets, out of our schools and away from those who wish others harm. Living the Easter story, knowing the Easter story, Being the Easter story does.
• Believing the Easter story doesn’t give the elderly the respect and dignity they deserve. Living the Easter story, knowing the Easter story, Being the Easter story does.
• Believing the Easter story doesn’t give disabled people the respect and dignity that they, too, deserve. Living the Easter story, knowing the Easter story, Being the Easter story does.
• Believing the Easter Story doesn’t give those who look different, act different, believe different, love different the freedom to do so. Living the Easter story, knowing the Easter story, Being the Easter story does.

Believing the Easter story doesn’t feed the hungry; clothe the naked or stop injustice. Living the Easter story, knowing the Easter story, Being the Easter story does.

And so my brothers and sisters in Christ, your job, our job today and for as long as we take breath is to BE THE EASTER STORY to everyone everywhere, always.
If we do that, when we do that, the Kingdom of God will reign here on earth. And that, my friends is the point of this, our Easter story.
Amen.

Deacon Pete's sermon Easter 2 Yr A April 27, 2014

Nicknames are a funny thing.  And, in my family, we are experts on nicknames, all of my father’s siblings were called by names they were not given at birth.   Our history abounds with nicknames:  Wrong Way Corrigan, “Babe” Ruth,  “Wild Bill” Hickock,  Al “Scarface” Capone, “Ike” Eisenhower, “Red” Skelton…Sometimes nicknames are given fondly, sometimes with gentle sarcasm and sometimes as a description of the person’s true nature.
That leads us to today’s Gospel, the gospel of “Doubting” Thomas.  We know little of Thomas other than this episode.  His name comes from the Aramaic “Toma”, meaning twin.  And indeed, Thomas could be said to be our twin.  For in his doubts, his questions, and his concerns Thomas mirrors us,  here,  today.
“When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week” some 2000 years ago the disciples were locked into a house, frightened and unsure of what had happened and of what would happen to them.  They didn’t know what Mother Cathy reminded us of last week, that Easter is not the end, Easter is the beginning.  For the disciples, it certainly looked like everything was over; they had given up friends, families and homes to follow Jesus and now, all that they had hoped for was in ruin.  Not only was their future in question, they must also have been feeling pretty discouraged about their behavior these past few days.  After all, they had failed Jesus in some very large ways.  Peter had denied Him three times and all except “the disciple Jesus loved” had deserted Him while He hung on the cross.
They know that the tomb is empty, but “where is He”?  They had forgotten the things that Jesus said to them earlier, before He went to Gethsemane. “A little while and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me” (John 16:16-18) and “You will have pain but your pain will turn into joy.  So you have pain now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.” (J 20-22).
Thanks be to God, Jesus doesn’t stop for locked doors.  And, He doesn’t come in anger or judgment.  He immediately offers them peace.  At this point, the disciples fall into the “believers” category, they believe that the man they have followed cured the sick, raised the dead, made the blind see and the paralyzed walk, but they don’t “know” Jesus.  They don’t “know” that Jesus has defeated death once and for all, they don’t know that they are about to experience His risen body, they don’t know that they are going to be given the grace, the strength and the power to do what Jesus has appointed them to do: “go and bear fruit, fruit that will last”.
Jesus breathes on the disciples and they are given the gift of the Holy Spirit.  It is then that they move from “believers” to “knowers”.  And they make this leap in the midst of their fear, pain, doubt and confusion.
When Jesus tells the disciples that the sins they will forgive will be forgiven he is talking about unbelief, the refusal to “know” God.  He is not giving them some special power to decide whose sins will be forgiven and whose will not, He is really laying out for them what it means to be sent, to make known the love of God that Jesus Himself has made known.  People who come to know Jesus will be released from their sin.  If the disciples fail to go and tell, fail to witness, then the people will remain stuck in unknowing.
Thomas isn’t really any different than the other disciples.  Like them, he too has been a ‘believer’ but not a ‘knower.  He wasn’t in the garden with Mary Magdalene and for some reason Thomas is not with the disciples at the beginning of this story, and so Easter comes a week later for him, when Jesus again appears in the house.  Thomas gets his Easter in the way that many of us get it.  He begins to ‘know’ when he brings his questions, his doubts and his concerns to God.  He wants to see for himself, he wants to touch.  He needs his own encounter with the risen Lord before the story will be real to him, before he can trust the story.
Thomas doesn’t take ‘knowing’ lightly.  If this resurrection story is true, everything changes. No one gets to go home, to go back to their boats or their farms or their shops.  No one gets to go back to their hatred or prejudice or fear.  No one gets to hate their neighbor or even to ignore their neighbor.  No one gets to look out for himself or herself at the expense of others.  No one’s dignity is secure if everyone’s dignity is not seen and honored.   If Jesus is indeed resurrected, then the disciples will have to get to leave the house, stop hiding and get to work.  They will have to get busy doing the work of being Jesus in the world, and so will we.   And, that’s what Mother Cathy meant when she said Easter is only the beginning.
Thomas turns down the Lord’s offer to put his finger in his wounds, to reach out his hand and touch the Lord’s side.  Thomas turns Jesus down because right then and there Thomas knows, and he responds “My Lord and My God”!  Knowing is like that:  unpredictable and passionate, a gift from an unpredictable and passionate God.
The Gospel ends oddly:  “Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book”.  Aren’t you curious?  Doesn’t it mean that there is more to Jesus than we can ever find written, even in the pages of Holy Scripture?    Christ is alive! And Christ’s work can never be confined or limited to pages and creeds.  As Jesus said to Nicodemus, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from or where it goes.  So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” (J3:8). God’s spirit set the disciples free, and it sets us free; it gives us the grace, the courage and the energy we will need for the adventures ahead. It turns us from mere ‘believers’ into ‘knowers’.   It empowers us to fulfill those Baptismal promises we made just last week and it enables us to be Christ for the world.  Amen.

Easter Day 2014

+Alleluia He Is Risen!
Alleluia Jesus is Alive!
Alleluia the strife is o’er!
Alleluia, Easter has come again!
This is really big news for us, but for a lot of people across the world, the mystery of the incarnation, the miracles of Jesus’ ministry, the laments of Lent, the emotional journey through Holy Week holds little or no meaning. As a matter of fact the walk to the empty tomb was pretty lonely for those of you who attended our Holy Week offerings--- most of us skip Holy Week all together! Most of us prefer the new life of resurrection over the inevitable death that leads to this glorious day.

 So, what is the big deal? What do these shouts of Alleluia REALLY mean? What does this account of events over 2000 years ago in a land half way across the globe mean for us, here, in 2014? In Buffalo NY?  At the Church of the Good Shepherd and the Church of the Ascension?
Alleluia. What DOES it all mean?
 Well, to understand—I mean to really wrestle with this question, we need to look back. Back to that breaking dawn 2000 years ago, on a hill just outside of town, when Mary Magdalene—so long misunderstood and misrepresented---screwed up her courage and went to finish the anointing she began three days before..for the very least she could do for this man she loved, this God she revered, this leader she followed, was to give him a proper burial.
 And so through the lightening sky of the First Easter morn, she walks out of town and up Calvary’s hill to The Tomb.
 It was a foolish mission—after all, the tomb had been sealed—she’d watched Joseph of Arimathea roll the stone himself. But, Mary soldiered on, not because this made sense, but because she was compelled, driven, drawn to that tomb—against all common sense, against all reasonableness, against all propriety, Mary went. She saw. And She told.
Mary believed.
Mary wondered.
Mary went.
Mary saw.
Mary told.
Yes, Mary believed.
 THIS is what it all means. This is what we’re called to do. It’s in this—the emulating of Mary of Magdala—where we find the meaning of these alleluias, the meaning of this Easter Sunday come again:
Mary believed. All the Mary’s did—you see in all of the Gospel accounts of the crucifixion and resurrection one thing is clear: the men—Peter, James, John and countless others fled.
They left. They ran. They denied. They hid.
They even betrayed.
But the women—Mary, the mother, Mary of Magdala, Mary Clopas, sister of Mother Mary, Salome and others unnamed,  stayed. From the foot of the cross to the mouth of the tomb, they stayed. They watched, they witnessed, they waited, they wondered.
They believed.
Against all sense and against all reason they believed. The men thought theirs was a fool's errand. And , truth be told, so did the women themselves, yet, they had to do it…they couldn’t help themselves!...and so they went, to do what women have been doing for millennia: they did what needed to be done while the men hid and denied and argued, the women got to work.
They took care of business.
 And right there is the answer to the skeptic's question of “what’s the big deal about this He is Risen stuff? Who cares?
The meaning of Easter right  here and now, in 2014, in Bflo NY, in this church on this Easter morning is this:  we need to take care of business; the business of the empty tomb.
We need to follow the mandate Jesus gave us around the dinner table on that very first Holy Thursday—we are to do unto others as Jesus did unto us: we are to Love as we have been Loved.
 You see, the empty tomb isn’t just about a miraculous resurrection.
The empty tomb is about going and telling, going and doing, going and being.
Jesus tells Mary—“don’t hold onto me: go and tell my brothers”—
Go and Tell. Go and Show.
 So, my friends, I have news for you: Easter isn’t the end, it’s the beginning.
By virtue of Jesus’ death and resurrection, by virtue of our Lord’s mandate to love others as we’ve been loved, we must follow Mary’s example.
We must go and see.
We must believe and tell.
We must do what needs to be done:
Clothe the naked, feed the hungry, comfort the afflicted.
We must challenge the status quo, we must ask the tough questions, we must pursue righteousness.
We must, above all else, demand dignity for every single human being , no exceptions.
Because when we do that, we’re loving as we’ve been—as we are---loved.
Because when we do that we’re going and seeing, we’re believing and telling—
 we are doing what must be done.
Alleluia.
The Lord is Risen , indeed.+
[rerun from 2012]

Easter Vigil 2014

+ Several years ago, a 9 year old girl asked me why we go through Holy Week every year. After all, she said, we know it works out in the end! Of course we do know how the story ends and tonight we stand at the dramatic and glorious climax of the Holy Week Drama—an empty tomb, a risen Christ—but, as I told that young lady a few years ago---we must walk through the drama of Holy Week each and every year because although the story doesn’t change, we do. We need the reminder, we need the journey. To paraphrase a history professor I had years ago, why does history repeat itself? Because people change. We need the same old story to guide us in the new varied and divergent paths our lives take. We change, God doesn’t. We forget, God remembers. We stray, God remains steady.
And so we journey….from the triumphal march into Jerusalem, to the loneliness and despair of the garden, the bitter trial, the agony of the cross, the silence of death and finally, the joy of resurrection. What a walk!
Tonight we heard the story of salvation. From the first glimmer of new light we heard how God has, always and forever, saved us from our darker selves. From the Red Sea to the dry bones, from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, from Gethsemane to Calvary, from life to death and life again, God has reached out to us and for us.
Through the miracle of Easter we’ve been given, in clear and certain terms, A New Life in Christ. Well, more specifically, tonight we've been reminded of the new life in Christ given to each of us at baptism. In a few moments, we'll renew those baptismal vows, we’ll be reminded that we’re marked, sealed as Christ's own. Forever. Then, strengthened by this knowledge we’ll go out from here committed to seeing Christ in all whom we encounter.
Why do we do this every year? Why must we repeat the history of the past two thousand years, year in and year out? Because we get lost. Because we forget. Because throughout life we all experience our own personal Holy Weeks, our own moments of doubt, despair, loneliness and fear.
I tried to tell that 9 yr old this; that her life will have ups and downs and that by remembering the lessons of Holy Week, she'll be better equipped to deal with the peaks and valleys of life, I hope she remembers it.
So, my brothers and sisters in Christ, what has Holy Week taught us?
What does this journey, from Bethany to Jerusalem , from Caiphas' prison to the hill at Calvary, from denial to doubt, from cross to tomb, from the death of Jesus back to life again,  teach us?
Palm Sunday: triumph has different meanings. I don’t think anyone really knew what to expect when Jesus marched into Jerusalem. No doubt many of the disciples thought that in Jerusalem, Jesus would topple the civic and religious structure of the day. I’m not sure any of them thought victory could come from the cross and the tomb. We cannot expect that the victory of  life will always look how we think it will. Sometimes victory comes swaddled in rags, born in a barn and killed like a common criminal.
Maundy Thursday. It’s important to take time for fellowship. Sit with family and friends—break bread together. The bonds formed over the dinner table are fierce and will hold, come what may. Sometimes, words are not needed. Sometimes those we love simply need someone to sit with them, to bear witness to the pain they are enduring. We can’t take pain away from others, but we can be a silent witness. My friends, never underestimate the power of your presence.
Good Friday: There will be times when our beliefs will be challenged, when we'll  be tempted to deny what we believe to be true and right because it isn’t popular or it’s too scary to stand up for what we believe. Folks, stand up for what is right as best you can, and when you falter-- and we all falter-- remember that God stands at the ready, waiting for you—for all of us-- to come to the home of God, where forgiveness always reigns.

Holy Saturday. Where is God?
There are days when we feel utterly alone and bereft. Know that deep within that sadness, at the very bottom of the well of loneliness there’s a small still voice weeping with us and for us, sharing in our pain. You may not feel it, but know that it is there and that you can count on it. None of us is ever alone, no matter what.
Easter—the Resurrection— Just as quickly as we find ourselves in the depths of despair we will be relieved and released from the pain. Suddenly it will be gone. The sadness will lift and joy will again reign. That's the journey of Holy Week, it's the journey of our lives---we will have ups and downs. We'll have our share of Easter joys and Good Friday losses. But---and this is the most important lesson any of us can take from our Christian journey----Holy week always ends in Easter, Darkness always gives way to light, and sin always loses out to grace and truth and love. Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia ---The Lord is Risen Indeed!+