Among Easter people, stigmatic pain precedes strategic planning (sermon from Sunday, April 28, 2019)

Reading: John 20:19-31

The story of "doubting Thomas" is one of the more familiar stories of the resurrection of Jesus -- maybe because it helps us be accepting of our own doubts and questions.

When the other disciples tell Thomas they have seen Jesus risen from the dead, what he needs to know is that it's really Jesus they have seen.  Before his death Jesus warned that people would put forward all kinds of false messiahs, and would try to picture and present him as something he really isn't.  So Thomas needs to know this is really Jesus, and he knows what he needs to look for.

No doubt the temptation to picture Jesus the way we want him to be, and to offer that kind of Jesus to the world, is just as common today.

I like to fix things.  I also don’t like to fail at what I do or what I think others expect me to do.  So when something or someone is broken or hurt in a way I can’t fix I often find myself feeling uneasy and hungry for an easy answer.

And I don’t think I’m alone in this.

Last year – especially through the summer and fall, Japhia was very sick.  She suffers a chronic disorder and week by week, month by month it led her into increasing weakness, malnutrition and fragility. 

Through this time I worked really hard to fix it – fix her and make her better.  I took control of things – more than usual, of her care, our routines, her diet, her meds and her every activity.  I got really naggy, even badgering. 

And when nothing changed or got better, out of my own fear of failure and inadequacy and an inability to accept and live creatively with powerlessness, I fell at different times into one of two ways.  One was to be blaming and angry, and impatient with Japhia for being so sick as though discipline and will-power were all that was needed to make her better.  The other was at other times to just back off completely and withdraw because I couldn’t deal with not being able to change things.

Neither of which, as you might imagine, was helpful to either her well-being or our relationship.

Others too did what they knew to try to make things better.  Through that time – especially during the two or three really terrible weeks in the hospital last summer, Jake and Amy on several occasions offered, and came to pray with Japhia for her healing.  In the hospital, at our house, and at their house at different times and for different stages of ill-health they used the tools and the power they were familiar with, that they counted on to make things better.  And when nothing got fixed, there were difficult feelings and conversations – including questions of doubt and disbelief to work through there as well. 

When I read the story of doubting Thomas (and aren’t we and isn’t much of the world these days in Thomas’s place?) I wonder what it really was that the first disciples most valued about Jesus?  Why they followed him as far as they did?  And why exactly they were so glad to have him back, raised up by God from the tomb?

On one hand, we have such firm and fixed and constantly reinforced notions of the power of God – of divine omnipotence, and the power to bend whatever is wanting to God’s good and perfect will. 

But we really do wonder, then, at the evil in the world.  And even if we don’t, the rest of the world does.  The cruelty of humanity and the increasing evil we have seen ourselves falling into over the past century.  The coming apart of social contracts and global community.  The sufferings of children and of women, of the poor and the vulnerable, and the indifference we allow towards it.  And now clearly the degradation of Earth itself – the unravelling of the very fabric of creation as we have known it.

Not to mention the more personal day-by-day and year-by-year crises in our own lives, the lives of our families, and in the homes of neighbours and strangers all around us.  The sad stories of victims often literally down the street from us that appear more days than not on the front page of The Spec.

How can we, how can our neighbours not doubt the presence, the good will and maybe even the continuing existence of God?  Famously Eli Wiesel in his book on the Holocaust called simply Night relates how in a terrible descent of the dark he saw his God murdered along with a child hanging on a gallows in a concentration camp.  For many others, God – the God who has the power to fix things that need fixing, has been killed more slowly but just as surely by the thousand cuts of daily life and the ongoing, seemingly unfixable disaster we call the modern world or even just our own personal lives.

Is there any hope?  Any good news for people around us to hang their hat on?  Any god of true and universal life to follow, other than that of our own individual survival and personal happiness?

Which is why I wonder about the story of doubting Thomas.  Why they were so glad to have Jesus back, raised up by God from the tomb?  How did they know it was him?  And what did they really feel themselves called to, as they recommitted to following him?

Was the resurrection of Jesus all about God being able to fix things?  Make everything good and heal every ill and every weakness of body and spirit?  And is that why they followed Jesus in the first place – because he was able to channel the power of God in heaven to make everything okay on Earth?

Or was it, perhaps, something else about him, and something else he gave and did?  Was it maybe, perhaps, more simply and more powerfully that he walked among them and with them, right where they were?  That he understood and embraced them as they were?  That he cared about them and cared for them even in their brokenness and imperfection.  That he loved them and touched them – and yes, healed some of them.  But that was the effect, the fruit of something even more fundamental, more primary and more deeply life-changing both for them and for Jesus – which is that in love and compassion, he more simply and deeply identified with them, took on their sorrows and brokenness, and made them his own regardless of what might or might not come of it.  Regardless of what might or might not come of it.

“By his wounds are we healed.” 

“In life, in death, and in life beyond death, God is with us.  Thanks be to God.” 

Coming near and walking with us not just and not always to fix, but always to share and to bear the pain of being human and all that that involves, including all the things we wish could be changed.

Has it ever struck you as odd, for instance, that in his resurrected body raised up by God from the tomb, animated with true, divine and eternal life, Jesus still bears the wounds of suffering and dying?  The piercing of his hands and his side by his enemies?  That these are not healed or undone?  Not fixed, even a week or more later.  Maybe never.

I wonder if this is the God the world needs to see?  If this is the image of God the disciples of Jesus are called to live out, and live into?  If this is what really underneath everything is most attractive and meaningful and redemptive in what we do as disciples and as a church?

So often we imagine that we need to operate from strength.  From a place of power.  So we can fix things for people and make them better.  So we can make our plans, organize our assets, and minimize the chances of failing. 

But is there another way that we naturally follow as children of God when we don’t stop to think of it?  And that maybe it would do us good to do more intentionally and consciously?

To see passion, not power as the basis of our mission and our following of Jesus?  To let compassion rather than calculation be the way we decide what to do and where to spend ourselves.  To be attentive not so much all the time to our assets and plans and strategies for doing what we think we can succeed at, but more simply to be open to the pain and sorrow of the world around us, let it speak to us and call us, and then go out to walk as best we can with those who suffer.  Feeling with them what they feel.  Suffering with them what they suffer.  Letting ourselves be wounded as they are wounded.  Regardless of what may or may not come of it.

Japhia and I watched a delightful little movie the other day in which one of the characters at one point realizes that you know you’re really an adult when you allow yourself to fail at something you really care about. 

I wonder if this means as well that we know we are mature children of God – real human beings on the face of the earth, when we allow ourselves to be hurt and wounded by caring about things we can’t entirely fix or make better.  And if that’s the mission, the calling that the resurrected, wounded, redeeming son of God has for us.

We already do it in so many ways as individuals and as a church.  And the more the world sees that in us – the more others see this way of life and of God and of Jesus being lived out through us, the more they may find themselves able to say like Thomas, “My Lord and my God, I believe.”

From Easter morning (Sunday, April 21, 2019)

Reading:  Luke 24:1-12 

The four Gospels tell four different stories of the resurrection of Jesus, each highlighting different parts of the experience.  All agree on one thing, though – the utter amazement of the followers of Jesus at his resurrection, and the time it took for them to comprehend and to share in the new life into which Jesus invites them.

Death and resurrection.  And trying to figure it out.   

That’s what this week – Holy Week is about.  It’s what the season of Easter is about.  And really it’s what all of our life and all of human history are about.  Trying to figure out, and to live within the God-given gift of death and resurrection.

It is a gift of God.  The disciples on that first Easter morning thought Jesus was dead.  It seemed the powers of the world had won, Jesus was dead in the tomb, and now instead of being followers of a living lord they were just curators of a body and guardians of a legacy.

Except God was not content to leave him there, let him stay dead where his followers had laid him, and let them off the hook that easily.  God was not content to see Jesus wrapped in a shroud for the rest of history, preserved by the disciples as they last knew him.

There was too much to do.  Places to go.  People to see.  A kingdom of justice and right relations to keep bringing to the world’s attention.  So many ways yet to live out God’s good will for all the Earth, God’s desire for reconciliation, God’s special care for the poor and the weak, God’s vision of shalom within and for all creation.

It’s like what Jesus told his disciples the night before he died.  In my Father’s house, he said, are many dwelling places, and I am going to prepare a place for you.  On one hand we read this a comforting promise about a new home with God after we leave this life, and we read it at funerals and gravesides.  But it also helps point us to the fact that the work and life of God and Jesus in this world are not finished with his crucifixion in Jerusalem, that there are and always will be more places yet in that time and all times for people to see him and walk with him in holy mission and ministry.

Things do not come to an end.  There are many dwelling places of the holy and of the kingdom in this world.

Dwelling places of the holy.  All over the world.  All the time.

We all know in a very short while – maybe just a few years, what the headlines will be about the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris, one of those dwelling places.  When they start the rebuilding, restoration and renewal, it will be lines like “Rising from the Ashes,” “Like a Phoenix” and “The Resurrection of our Lady of Paris.”

And they won’t be wrong.  For many in Paris, in France and in much of the Western world, the burning of the cathedral was like a death.   People quietly watched on their TV’s, and on streets near the cathedral people stood in silence for hours – a silent crowd sharing shock and grief as the structure was consumed by great spiraling flames.  Some began singing hymns of faith that maybe they had not sung for years.  Many prayed.

A few days later a French cultural historian spoke of the cathedral fire as “a brutal wounding” of “one of the beating hearts of France, of Europe, and of Christianity.”  Just think, he said, of how celebratory events  were made all the more magnificent by it; how none of the brutality and stupidity of humanity that swept through France in the last century seemed to touch it; how the cathedral stood as a testament to the presence, the strength and the persistence of light in the world.  So right from the start, the question is not if or whether the cathedral will be restored, but only when and in what way it will be raised again. 

Also last week there was a BBC story on Facebook (thanks, Val, for posting it!) about Afghani scholars and craftsmen working to reconstruct as many as they can of the 1200 statues of the Buddha that the Taliban destroyed in Afghanistan – literally smashed to bits.  The destruction of those statues is as deep a wound and as tragic a grief, and their restoration as fervent a hope to the people of Afghanistan and others around the world, as the death and resurrection of Notre Dame is to us. 

Death and resurrection is what it’s about.  In so many ways darkness resents and rails against light and tries to overcome it.  Light suffers injury and accident; that’s the way of the world – crucifixion of God’s light and love.  Yet light persists and endures, and not only endures but is strengthened, deepened and widened; that’s the work of God and the spirit of God in us – resurrection always in some way of the truth, the way, and the light of God’s love.

And it’s more than just rebuilding and restoring of what was.  That first Easter morning was not just a simple reunion of Jesus and his followers.  Not just a happy reconnection of teacher and learners, and then simply carrying on from where they’d left off with nothing changed and nothing different. 

No, first there was nothing but emptiness and wondering.  A mysteriously opened and tragically empty tomb.  “What does it mean, and where on earth is he?  He’s not where we thought he was.”

There was the linen cloth left behind, discarded.  “Huh!  I guess he didn’t need the shroud we got for him.  Maybe doesn’t want to be tied up and limited by what we thought he needed.”

And then for a while nothing more than just a reminder of the promise that sometime somewhere they would see him again, that he would meet them and walk with them again, somewhere beyond the dying and the destruction. “Really?  And just where and how will that be?”

The gift of resurrection is not always easy, like the United Church in Newmarket found out.  For who knows how many years the church there was a sprawling, grand heritage building and sacred space to many people and groups in the community.  A little over five years ago, it burned to the ground – a terrible grief.   And now it is resurrected – an eventual joy.

And being resurrected, it’s not just restored.  Not just remade the way it used to be. There’s the same foundation of faith in God and God’s Christ, and the same sense of mission and ministry that inspired and animated the old structure.  But there was also an intense time of self-examination and growth and change, so the structure now is vastly different in form and function from what used to be, and is ready to live out God’s age-old will for the new and different life now ahead of it.  Rather than just waiting for Christ to come back to join them again in a fixed-up tomb, they left the tomb themselves and went to where he was waiting for them in the world of their new day.

As will be with the cathedral of Notre Dame.  When it is rebuilt it will not just be a replica of what it used to be.  In the same way as 12^th and 13^th-century monks and scholars, stone masons, wood-workers, architects and artists were inspired by the divine among them to create the first cathedral, in our time todays’ architects, masons, artists and big and small sponsors and patrons will join together to raise up a work not just of simple restoration but of inspired resurrection.

And the statues of the Buddha will not – cannot, be the same as the old.  They will be restored as much as possible, but they will also bear marks and scars of their brokenness, and signs of their re-creators’ work and craft.  And this is what makes them grow in power and meaning, to be resurrected and not just replicated.  They will stand as a sign of living and ongoing commitment, the expression of a community of faith and inspiration as strong today as was the community that first brought them into being.

So it is with all churches and communities of faith, all believers and persons of holy spirit who know death and dead ends, and live into and towards resurrection and new life. 

And maybe here we get really to the heart of what death and resurrection are about.  Not buildings and statues and structures, but believers, persons of holy spirit like you and me and others in the world who make of the world what it will and what it won’t be. 

In a way, death and resurrection are not even so much just about Jesus, as about us and whether we find our way into the story or not, know death and resurrection in our own lives or not, open ourselves to be dwelling places of the risen Christ in the world right now or not.

It’s about the opening of the tombs we make and find ourselves in. 

The rolling away of the stones we put in place. 

The casting aside of the linen cloths and burial shrouds that we think we need, that just tangle us up. 

The remembering of the promise that he comes to us and we will see him along the way, and that he calls us again to follow him.

Death and resurrection is what its’ – what we’re, about.

From Good Friday morning

Following up on the Good Friday Eve thoughts and the wonderings about forgiveness, I am struck by something Japhia and I read last night in a book called Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner and Saint by Nadia Bolz-Weber.  

From her studies in Lutheran theology and even more from her experience of it, she says grace is not a matter of God saying to us sinners, "It's okay; I'll let you off the hook; I won't hold your sin against you, and will let you into heaven."

Rather, she says, it's about God saying to us broken creatures, "I care about Earth and about you too much to let you stay so broken, so here is the way and here is the help to not stay so broken forever."

I wonder if the readings and meditation below, which with some amazingly moving music were the substance of the liturgy at Fifty this Good Friday, connect at all with what Nadia Bolz-Weber shares with us.

Readings:

Mark 14:1-2, 10-16  (Plotting to capture Jesus)

Mark 14: 17-31         (Jesus gives himself into the hands of his disciples) 
Mark 14:32-52          (Jesus gives himself into the hands of his foes) 
Mark 14:53-72          (Jesus gives himself into the hands of his accusers) 
Mark 15:1-20            (Jesus gives himselfinto the hands of the governor

Mark 15:22-32          (Jesus is crucified)

Mark 15:33-39          (Jesus dies)

Meditation: The centurion’s witness – a different kind of God (see below)

Mark 15:40-47         (Jesus is given into the hands of his followers)

The Centurion's Witness: A different kind of God

“Truly this man was the Son of God.”  At first I didn’t even know it was me speaking these words into the sudden stillness on Golgotha Hill.

How could I say such a thing?  Of such a man as this?

The Caesar, and only the Caesar is son of God.  To be honoured and obeyed as such.  Embodiment of the god’s wisdom, law, good will and good order.  And the Empire ruled by him and served by us, God’s greatest gift to humanity.  The best the world can aspire to.  Meant to be in place world without end.

So why would I call someone like Jesus “Son of God”?  This broken, rejected, powerless Galilean we have just put to death?  This opposite of everything Rome and the empire are all about?

It’s awful to see these crucifixions and the suffering of these poor, misguided wretches.  But it’s reassuring to know justice has been served.  Law still prevails.  The Caesar and the gods are still in control.  When people do wrong they are judged and punished.

Because that’s what the gods want.  And what they do.  Keep track of right and wrong, good and evil.  Keep the books balanced.  Ensure all wrongdoings are paid for one way or another. 

Otherwise how will people learn?  How else will the world become the paradise it’s meant to be?

Of course, sometimes an innocent man is put to death.  It happens.  Sometimes even on purpose when a scapegoat, a fall-guy, a willing sacrifice absorbs the punishment and gets all the others off the hook.  Justice is served and the sinners go free.  Who doesn’t love a sacrifice that works out in your favour?

But I don’t think that’s what this – what he, is about.  I don’t think he does, either.

From what I’ve heard about the way he lived and what he taught and why he got into so much trouble with Jerusalem and Rome, it seems he didn’t see god as working that way.  Demanding sacrifice.  Requiring payment.  Needing to balance the books. 

And the way he died, it didn’t seem he was just balancing any books.  Stoically heroically covering someone else’s price to meet the needs of a record-keeping god up in heaven.

No.  Right to the end he was just passionately living the way of a very different kind of god right here on Earth.  A god of love.  And nothing but love.  Love for all.  Love even for his enemies and people he was in conflict with.  Love especially for any and all who are unloved by others.

Like me.  Standing here in my armour and my power over others at the foot of these crosses.  I mean, who ever really loves someone like me, who does what I do in the world?  Some days I can’t even love myself.

But when he looked at me from the cross I knew I was loved.  Loved in spite of myself.  And for myself.  Loved without price.  No payment needed, other than being open to being loved and being free to love others the same way.

I mean, is that any way for a god in heaven and a son of a god on earth to act?  But that un-nerved me – how he so openly, freely, defencelessly just put himself in my hands, to do with as I would.  That disarmed me and made me feel more naked, more weak, more opened-up, more on the threshold of an all-new life in an all-new world, a paradise on earth, than I have ever been made to feel by all the power-addicted, honour-dependent, book-keeping, payment-requiring gods I’ve spent all my life trying to serve.

With one look of love he put himself into my hands, to do with as I will. 

Pure and simple.  Only that.  And nothing else.  Ever.

No way for a god to act. 

But what do I do now? 

What on earth do I do with this god he’s given me?