Signs of Spring

John 20:1-18

This year, Easter is the second latest Easter could ever be, and yet, we find ourselves here Minnesota at the end of April, still dealing with a few scattered dirty melting snow piles, (at least until this morning), still unable to put away the winter gloves or turn off the heat. 

The craving, the yearning for new life is so great; I can’t remember longing for Spring before with as much intensity as I have this year. 

Maisy has been pointing out “signs of spring” for the past two months. “Mommy!" she’ll gasp, stopping on the sidewalk next to a 2 foot high mound of snow, “There’s some grass peeking out! It’s a sign of Spring!”

“Mommy!” pointing into a brown and frozen garden, “There is one purple flower! A sign of Spring!”

And slowly, more gradually than usual, it seems, Spring is creeping in, and because of her eyes, I have noticed it and drunk in each little glimpse. 

We hunger for life, we crave it and need it and know it when we see it.  Because we were made for it.  We yearn for what should be.  We are drawn to life, we long to live fully.   We grab onto it and it slips through our fingers, our children grow up, our bodies break down and all things are in a perpetual, irreversible march from life to death.  And we get that trajectory; it makes sense to us.  We know how to endure it, how to accept it; we know how to live with death, if not comfortably, then at least submissively.

What we don’t understand, what we can’t even begin to grasp, is resurrection.  That something would move from death to life defies logic, physics, experience and reality itself – if it were true, it would change everything. If resurrection is real, then nothing is as it seems.

Early in the morning, while it is still dark – before anyone could be around to talk to her, because Lord knows, the last thing she feels like doing is talking to someone - she slips out of the house, into a dewy world that is somehow still there, crickets still chirping and first birds awakening, absolutely oblivious to her pain.  The walk feels good; the air is chilled and moving her body brings her some sense that she is still alive, though inside she feels shattered and raw. 

He’s gone. 

Each step seems to pound out the reality that is still only beginning to sink in, he’s gone, he’s gone, he’s gone, he’s gone.

She’s lost people before. She’s no stranger to death.   That emptiness that follows the tears, when you feel like a spent shell, hollow, dead, that incredulity that the world would keep moving, life offensively plodding along, not even pausing to acknowledge the loss, these are familiar feelings. 

But it’s different this time.  The shock seems to make every part of her hurt. 

She longs to retreat to the place she had carved out within herself years ago, the place where she lived as though dead, where nothing could touch her.  Nothing made her cry then, or laugh, for that matter.  The years she had lived her life waiting for death, uncaring, unconcerned for what happened around her or to her, one day bleeding into the next and she, moving languidly through them like a disconnected observer of other people’s joy and suffering. 

But that place has closed up, it scabbed over and healed shut because of him.  He had woken her out of her slumber and she’d felt the shell fall off of her like a cicada.  He had seen her, past everything she’d done and all that she despised, he had seen to the core of her, and forgiven her.  His words, his love and friendship, his being in the world that moved unafraid and open… he had given her life, new life, her own life in a way she had never known, where she felt full and free and whole. 

And she had seen him do this for others, she had been there when the whole crowd, mesmerized by his words, had been fed on the small boy’s lunch; she’d seen the blind man leap to his feet and cry out in astonishment when he opened his eyes to the faces around him.  She had held the child in her own arms when he had called her from the dark recesses of sickness back into life.   And she had felt her own life reawakened, connected to those around her, remarkably feeling their pain, astonishingly sharing their joy. 

She had watched him move in the world like life-energy, the very breath of God, animating and awakening those he met, reconnecting them to one another and replanting them in their worlds, calling out of them their fullness as deep calls to deep, and they responded, like flowers lifting their heads and opening to the sun when showered with water, they had breathed and grown radiant.

But now he’s gone. And the emptiness in the world is greater than any she has ever known.  She feels as though the trees themselves are aching.  It has hollowed her out, scraped her clean, and where before she may have retreated into a numb fog, a cold, comfortable despair, this time it’s sharp and awful, this time she has feels everything.  She’s too awake, way too awake, and so she flees the house while it is still dark.

She arrives at the garden, eager to sit alone, just to sit, as close to where his body is as she can. She has no plans from here.  This is what she will do today, at least until other people show up, and then she’ll leave and come back again tomorrow.

She approaches the tomb from the side, touching the cold stone walls to catch her balance as she inches around it in the half-light to reach the front. When she does, she stops cold and her heart starts racing. The boulder is moved away. In front of her, in the semi-darkness, is a gaping, open hole – the tomb has been opened.  
Fear is instantly overtaken by rage, the heat boiling inside her and spilling out in a cry that breaks the morning air, “WHY!?!?” How could they have done this?  Haven’t they done enough to him already?  Why can’t they leave him alone?
 

She turns on her heels and stumbles back to the path, her head buzzing, the hot tears flooding her eyes and rolling unbidden down her cheeks. And she begins to run, as fast as she can, her feet keeping time to the desperate, angry beat, he’s gone, he’s gone, he’s gone, he’s gone!

When she reaches the house where Peter and John and some of the others are sleeping, the door locked, she bangs on it frantically, furiously.

A face at the window, the bolt sliding open,

“They’ve taken the Lord out of the tomb and we don’t know where they’ve laid him!”

Their scramble inside, and then the two, bursting out of the house into the breaking dawn, picking up her agitation and beginning to run.  She follows behind them, her lungs searing and legs aching, until she reaches the tomb once again.

When she arrives, she sees them emerging from the tomb. They look stunned.

“He’s gone.” Peter says, his voice tinged with amazement.  They stand a moment and then turn to go. 

She leans her hot cheek against the cold stone, panting to catch her breath, watching them walk away.  She stays there a moment and closes her eyes, feeling them leave, feeling once again, alone.  The tears well up again and she begins to sob, all the confusion, rage, and sadness rush out of her.  After a few minutes, she gasps and gulps, wipes her face with her hands and looks over at the hole.  It’s lighter now, the garden has come to life and she can see outlines within, so she inches closer, and peers inside.

Her heart stops. 

Sitting where his head should be and where his feet had been, are two figures. Without question or wonder, she knows them to be angels. 

“Why are you weeping?” one asks her. 

“They’ve taken away my Lord and I don’t know where they’ve laid him.”  she whispers.

Then a sound, behind her, a movement. She turns around and someone is there, in the garden; she’s no longer alone. 
Her anger returns.

Woman why are you weeping?  Whom are you looking for?

“Please sir! If you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away!”

Mary!

Her name. His voice. Impossible.  But happening.  She lifts her head and sees him.

Teacher!

And life begins.

“Don’t hold onto me, Mary; you can’t hold onto me.” Jesus says to her. “But go and tell my brothers…”  So once again she runs. This time in joy.  Life racing through every cell.  Her feet hammering the astounding message in time with her heart, “he lives! he lives, he lives, he lives!” She reaches the house and throws open the door on the startled mourners, her face shining and her voice strong, “ I have seen the Lord!” she cries.

In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Through the Word God breathed all life into being and nothing lived without it. 

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, as one of us, sharing absolutely every aspect of life and humanity, until the world created through him strung him up on a cross and crucified him. 

But the Word was God. And the Word did not stay dead.  
The Word lives again, and in him is newness of life, life reversed, life bent back to God. In him things move from death to life, from despair to hope, from fear to joy.  In him the whole world – while it appears at first glance to continue its relentless death march, is actually headed irreversibly back to the Father, and one day all things will be fully and utterly redeemed. 

 This week someone let loose in a rant on a blog, asking why we perpetuate the lies of Easter. Why do we talk about death being defeated when people still die all around us? Why do we talk about justice, or hope, or joy, when clearly life is still filled to overflowing with injustice and pain, despair and situations that will never ever get better?  Easter is a farce, he said.  And really, it is worse than that, a shallow, religious lie, and all of us sitting here today, in our dressy clothes with our hams in the oven and our tables set with the fancy china are either fools or fakers.

Perhaps.  
Except that I have heard the Risen One call my name. I have felt the love of God in my darkest times, in emptiness and sorrow, in the love of someone next to me when I didn’t think I would see the light again. I have seen life come out of places in me that were dead.  I have seen inexplicable hope and incomprehensible love in the world around me.

And in a thousand ways every day, if my eyes were opened to it, I could see signs of Spring.  I could see the resurrection leaking in, see people standing in for one another, justice prevailing, forgiveness happening, hope being born.  If I watched, I could see Life, pulsing underneath the surface, promising life everywhere, in all things.

I don’t deny that there is plenty of darkness still, so much that I could be persuaded, and often nearly am, that death is still in charge of things, that the march goes on, and God knows, the world will work relentlessly to convince us of this. 

So when I’m tempted to forget it, will you remind me?  
And when the darkness threatens to overtake you, I will remind you.  
And together we’ll practice looking for signs of Spring and pointing them out to each other, and announcing them to the world.  Together let’s practice hoping and trusting and really living – bravely and openly and generously, and let’s share our stories of times when we’ve heard the Risen Lord call us by name, and let’s help each other listen for his voice. 

And the more we do it, the better we’ll get at hearing his voice, and telling the story, the more we do it the more adept we’ll become at recognizing resurrection as it breaks in around us, and in us, and between us, and through us.  
Because Christ has risen, and that changes everything.

May we watch for resurrection with all the life-yearning within us.  And when he speaks our name, may we recognize our Risen Lord, wreaking resurrection havoc in the world, even this very day. 

Happy Easter.

Resurrection thoughts

Each year, around Easter, the folks over at Patheos invite responses to a question about the Resurrection.  Last year's question was, "Why do you need the Resurrection?", and this year's question was the more elemental, "Is the Resurrection for Real?" (e.g., Is it physical or spiritual?)

Various folks answered these two questions, in 100 words or less. For some reason, 100 words or less is an odd format that works for me, and I found the exercise really intriguing and thought-provoking.  Last year, it helped me to shape my Easter sermon, and both times it has forced me to enter into the story, and my story, more fully.

Here are my answers with links to the other responses.

I need the Resurrection

because my sister is sick

and can’t afford insurance,

because I’ve told a weeping Haitian mom,

“No, I can’t take your son home with me.”

because I’ve been rushed off a Jerusalem street

so a robot could blow up a bag that could’ve blown up us.

because I’ve exploded

in rage

and watched their tiny faces cloud with hurt.

because evil is pervasive

and I participate.

I need the Resurrection

because it promises

that in the end

all wrongs are made right.

Death loses.

Hope triumphs.

And Life and Love

Prevail.

(From the collection, Why I Need the Resurrection)

It had better be real.

As real as the contractions that ripped new life from my body.

As real as the rattle that strangled life out of his.

I’ve no use for a spiritual resurrection.

If Hope

for the drowned, damaged, disfigured, disowned,

is emotional ease,

if the pain of flesh and bones

is answered with mystical comfort,

if Guns are stronger than god,

then count me out.

But tell me that Death Loses,

tell me that Life Prevails,

and not in the abstract,

but in pulsing blood, flowing tears, thumping heart,

then the Resurrection

is Hope

for us all.

(From the collection,  Is the Resurrection for Real?)


If you'd like a Holy Week spiritual discipline, a way to wrestle with the meaning of Easter in your own life in these next few days, I invite you to sit down for a few minutes (at a computer, with a "word count" tool!) and consider the first question, and your life laid open in front of you, and see what comes of it.  
And so I ask you, in 100 words or less, Why do YOU need the Resurrection?

The Easter Minister's (Mom's) Dilemma

Remembering this feeling... repraying this prayer, so reposting this post. 
All you ministers, moms (and dads) out there - May your Holy Week preparations be a blessing to you!


This is a strange time of year to be a Minister.
It's Monday of Holy Week, and I am trying to get my mind into Easter mode so I can write THE sermon, but Maundy Thursday and Good Friday are still on the horizon, and I am a huge proponent of intentionally living in each day of Lent and really experiencing the journey.  Also, today I bought like a carload of easter basket crap, two dozen eggs and some dye, and all the ingredients to make my famous white chocolate lemon Easter Cake to bring to Aunt Sue's for the big get together on Easter afternoon. And I have to make sure my daughter has tights for her new Easter dress, and we can find my son's dressy shoes from Christmas (and that they still fit), so they can be all adorable for church and the egg hunt and the family photos. So I guess being a mom takes as much thinking ahead, and makes it equally hard to live deliberately on the journey.
Lent is certainly easier to observe than Advent, and it's nowhere near the chaos of Christmas, but there is so much "stage setting" you do, so that others can encounter each moment, that you don't really get to meet the moments yourself.  So that they get the magical experience/full glory of Easter, you are the one who buys the candy, fills the baskets and hides the eggs / plans the worship, pays the trumpeter and writes the sermon.  And there are a lot of expectations and pre/mis conceptions that arise around these high holi/holy days, so you do a lot of explaining to little and big people alike about what the traditions and rituals mean.   At the same time there are things you do every year that mean nothing but you do them anyway, because somehow they've come to mean something all on their own.  Like the "egg bake" breakfast before worship, or the easter basket we hide for the dog (or easter baskets of any kind, if we're honest about it).  It's your job to make sure they happen.  Because things wouldn't be the same without them.

Sometimes I wish I was a kid again, and could wander downstairs in my pjs and find the basket waiting for me, could spot that elusive egg way up on the door frame that nobody remembers hiding there, and take a week to eat my chocolate bunny, starting with the ear.  And sometimes I think I would love walking in on Good Friday, finding a seat and soaking it in.  Then leaving with goosebumps at the crash of the Tenebrae darkness, and returning to the bright Alleluia! celebration of the Resurrection two days later in my Easter "frock" with a ham in the oven at home and a lily in my hands on the way out the door.

But actually, probably not. I would probably wish I had something to do with making it happen.  In fact, it's one of the most enjoyable parts of being both a minister and a mommy.  That I get to create the experiences that they explore, design the encounters that open their eyes or hearts, plan the events that shape their memories or meaning.  That I get to set the stage and prep the ground for God to meet them.  It really is an amazing thing to be part of.

So God, please prep the ground and set the stage in me today. Meet me now and reveal the glory of the Resurrection a little early, if you wouldn't mind.  Grace my own topsy-turvey journey through these days of Holy Week.  Open my eyes and heart to the power of your hope and the promise of new life, even as I seek to live aware of your suffering and surrendering to death.  Amen.

It all starts with a parade...

Throughout Lent, at LNPC we are exploring the Biblical Stations of the Cross.  We have the stations up in our sanctuary, and the congregation is doing a Lenten Worship Project, bringing in images that we find in media, our lives, art, etc. and helping to construct one of the stations during worship each week.  This week, our project continues, and all the pieces come together as our Palm Sunday Prayer.

(Australian tree fern, photo by Ann Scull of Mustard Seeds)

Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29

Matthew 21:1-11

Lenten Worship Project: Palm Sunday - Ashes & Cross

It all starts with a parade.

We used to live in Pasadena, and every year, we would wake up early on New Year’s Day, walk a few blocks from our apartment and stake our spot along the curb to watch the Rose Parade. Now THERE was a parade. People camped out all night for the good seats – youth groups did fundraisers to hold spots for people who would arrive the next day just in time for the parade to start. When the sidewalks were full and people were all settled on their balconies the whole thing would kick off with fighter jets leaving a trail of smoke overhead, and the floats would begin to appear.  Stunningly gorgeous floats that took years of planning, covered in bright flowers, beauty queens and cowboys waving at the crowds, marching bands and acrobats, and all streets swept clean and homeless people kicked off their corners and hidden away for the big event.

So for Jesus' big visit to Jerusalem, his last week on earth,  this is how it begins. With a parade.

Really? A parade?
And his was no Rose Parade either; this soirée sounds like it was pulled together at the last minute.  People lining the street with their cloaks and yelling as he passed by, Jesus atop a borrowed donkey, waving to his fans.  Coming to the end of the road and stopping; everyone dispersing and heading home for the night. 

Makes me wonder, what’s the point?

What is God up to here? Why in the world would God let this pageant happen, this poor man’s version of a royal procession, this frivolous show which seems inappropriate to kick off such impending misery as the cross, but also just as unsuitable for announcing such an important cosmic event as the Resurrection that follows it?  What is God saying here with this Palm Sunday nonsense?

For our 40 days of Lent we’ve been living in Holy Week.  

We’ve been lingering in the dark moments with Jesus that come after this day we reach today.  We enter Palm Sunday already smudged with ashes,

from dust we came, to dust we shall return, blessed be the name of the Lord.

Unlike the passersby who have to pass their question down the line of gathered friends and strangers, who is this guy? Why are we celebrating? What’s the hoopla about?  

Unlike them, we know who he is.

But we’re also unlike the disciples who raise their voices in celebration, who wave their palms in expectation.  They love him desperately and have pinned their hopes on this moment; unlike them, we know what’s coming.

When they say, Hosanna! They say it with a naive hope, untested, untrusted - they say it with all the desire in the world for things to be made right and the belief that it soon will be. 

Or they just say it because it is what everyone is saying and they’ve no inkling whatsoever what they’ll end up shouting at him in a few short days.

But when we say Hosanna today we say it as people who have lingered in Holy Week.  We say it knowing what lies ahead, as it all seems to unravel before their eyes in the coming days – we’ve immersed ourselves in those moments these past weeks. Even as they stand with their palms in the air and their hearts on their sleeves we know what they’re about to walk into:

- The pleading and sorrow of Jesus praying in the garden, tasted in our own pleading that things be fixed, that we be spared, that pain pass us by and hardship avoid those we love.

- The shame and regret that floods Peter when he denies having even known Christ, mirrored in our own shame that locks us in moments of betrayal, regret that defines us forever by our failure that make us feel alone and condemned. 

- The hopelessness and despair of the thief on the cross in his last conversation on earth, touching our own despair at the impossible burdens that we carry with us, pain for the world and ourselves and the things we can’t control.  

- The crosses we bear and the crosses we share, like Simon of Cyrene, shoved into this terrible story without warning, they way life sometimes thrusts upon us or those dear to us a sentence never anticipated or asked for, and we bear it together.

- And, finally, the way his own mother and close friend are joined together in Christ’s last moments, and how we too are given to one another in his death, family to each other and the world, responsible for one another as a burden and a gift.

This is where we’ve already been when we wander into this carnival scene with our palms in our hands, and this is where they all are about to go.  So we can’t help seeing that this journey that starts with a silly parade ends with the death of God.  And there is no more final, or terrible, thing in all of time and possibility – then the breath of life leaving of the one that breathed all of life into being. 

When Luke tells the story, he says:

 When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen:    “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”  “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!” “I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”

The words that the angels proclaimed at his birth, when the God of the cosmos was just entering the world as a squalling, shivering newborn, coming to share the life the Word breathed into being with the ones made in his image, those angelic messengers’ words are echoed in the cries of the clueless crowd – “Glory to God in the Highest, Peace in heaven!”  and blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!

Tell them to be quiet! They don’t know what they are saying!  Ah, it doesn’t matter if they know what they are saying. It is so profoundly true, and so must be said, that if they don’t say it the very rocks themselves will shout it out. 

It is so profoundly true, and so must be said – that this one before us, dragging his feet in the dirt on the back of a baby donkey, this one before us that looks nothing like the kings we’d recognize, is, in fact, the God of all creation, the king of highest heaven itself who shaped this very dirt into human form and set this very earth on its course in space -  It is so profoundly true, that no matter what comes next, no matter what lies ahead, nothing, not even death itself, can silence the sovereignty of this One we hail right now.

It must be said. No matter who says it, or even if they know what it is that they are saying.

The people didn’t know, they called him a prophet and enjoyed the parade. The disciples didn’t know, they loved their teacher and thought this was his moment to lead. 

But if the rocks had shouted, oh then, if the earth had proclaimed its tremulous praise, and the wind had held its breath in delight, if the trees themselves had been allowed to bow down their branches and touch their tops to the ground as he rode by, all of nature would have hailed her King, with vibrant quivering joy greeted her Creator, then the power of this moment may have overwhelmed them all.

As it was, the people shouted their innocent optimism and the rocks remained silent.  As it was, Creation’s King went incognito, disguised as a peasant disguised as a king.

So when we shout Hosanna today, we do it differently than they did. 

We do know what it is that we are saying. 

Our king has come, riding on a donkey, sure, born in stable, yes, but the king nonetheless, and the staggering grace of what he is about to do does not pass us by, the enormity and significance of what is about to happen does not go unnoticed by us, and it will not go unspoken.

We know the cross is coming.  And we know it is our hope.  As inconceivable a thing as this is, as terrible a twist, and as much as we would never ask for it and can barely accept it, it is the way God chose to do things… Death is part of God’s story now, just like it is each of ours.  And all these things we bear: sorrow, pleading, shame, regret, hopelessness, despair, impossibility – these are God’s story now and God bears them all the way into death. With us. For us.  As far as the east is from the west so far have you separated our sins from us…

Today we wave our branches in defiant hope, because the promise of the Resurrection rides by.  We know that even as we watch him pass, eternal events are set in motion and the End’s end is rapidly approaching. 

We will look in on these things that threaten to tear us apart, these terrible and insidious things that break down our world and shred our very souls, and we will wave our palms at them in reckless celebration and say, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Glory to God in the highest heaven! Peace on earth and HOSANNA!”

Easter is coming, people, and we will celebrate with eyes open. We know the journey from here to there, we have seen that the path between mindless celebration and true hope is paved with the stones of death, and we walk it with him as he walked it with us; we couldn’t come to resurrection without it.

But in God’s way of doing things, it all starts with a parade…

And so today, with hope tested and trusted, and with all the desire in the world for things to be made right and the belief that it soon will be, we celebrate.

Salvation is coming, and don’t you forget it.

Thanks be to God!

Hosanna in the Highest!

Amen.

PRAYER & LENTEN WORSHIP PROJECT

We come here smudged in ashes and holding our pain in our hands right next to our palms, symbols side by side of anticipating the resurrection, yearning for it with both honest anguish and audacious hope. 

So as we go into our prayer time, I would like to invite you to pass the ashes from Ash Wednesday, those made from the burning of last year’s palms, the ashes that mark us as mortal, that remind us that death still has a hold on us and we see it and feel it every day.

I invite you to take them when they come to you and to smudge some on the palm of your hand.  And as we proceed into our prayers, I invite you to look at and touch this spot marked with ashes as a reminder of this journey we’re on, the one we step into again this week as we move toward the resurrection. I invite you to consider the places in your own life, and in the world, that need resurrection, the places that need life spoken again, that need hope and healing.

For five weeks we’ve carried into this space images of suffering that we’ve pulled from the news, from our lives, from the world around us, faces, stories, situations and reminders that reflect our need for a savior. And today we bring them all to the cross.  Today they are answered with the hope that salvation is coming, that God comes and bears all of these things for us.

As we bring forward each piece, we will pray for what it represents.  I will introduce each piece and pause, inviting you to find within yourself the prayers this piece represents for you, and to hold them in silence as we pray together, and then we will end each piece with our prayer response, God in your loving mercy, hear our prayer.

(SORROW, PLEADING)

Loving God, we bring before you all the places within our own souls of yearning and deep grief…

We bring before you those people we know and love who find themselves in heartache and pain, or filled with fear...

Christ Jesus, in those places of gutwrenching sorrow you show us that that real prayer is sometimes shameless pleading, sometimes it’s wide open, helpless honesty, just like you prayed when you faced the fear of what was ahead.   

Give us the courage to pray that way. 

Jesus, you needed people beside you in those places, and we do too.  Help us invite others to share our sorrow, and to stay alongside others through their own.

God in your loving mercy, hear our prayer.

(SHAME, REGRET)

Forgiving God, we hold before you those places within ourselves of betrayal, where we’ve sold out someone we love… 

We lift up the places where we’ve turned on what we’ve believed in, become something we despise, and found ourselves drowning in the darkness of our own making…

Christ Jesus, in those times of crushing shame and unbearable regret you show us that God covers our shame, and meets us in our regret, and when we dare to live in our brokenness, the Holy Spirit moves with astounding grace, restoring us piece by piece to wholeness.

Give us the bravery to live honestly in our brokenness, and the strength to wait for you there.

God in your loving mercy, hear our prayer.

(HOPELESSNESS, DESPAIR)

God-with-us, we hold before you the places within ourselves and in the world where we despair of things ever being made right…

We lift up the relationships we cannot fix, the people we cannot help, the circumstances that seem beyond all hope…

Christ Jesus, in those places of utter hopelessness and despairing impossibility, God joins us in our suffering, and in the most lost of situations, you are right here.  You show us that despite everything we’ve done, we don’t get what we deserve, and this is not the end, not even close.

Help us to trust you.  Help us to see you, as your Spirit moves even in the places of impossibility, bringing life out of death.  May we always seek to join you there.  Please let us be part of your ministry on earth.

God in your loving mercy, hear our prayer.

(HERE IS YOUR MOTHER, HERE IS YOUR SON)

God of all, we belong to you.  You made yourself one of us, and gave yourself to us; and you draw us to you by drawing us together.  You’ve given the world to us and given us to one another.  In Christ, we are connected. 

We lift before you now those we love and cherish, those we feel inextricably connected to, whose burdens and joys we carry as our very own…

We lift before you those for whom our hearts ache, those who feel kindred because of their suffering…

We lift before you those we feel disconnected from, those we don’t understand and can’t relate to, the people we’re divided from by distance, politics, generations or culture…

Christ Jesus, by connecting us to each other you give us a place to see and encounter you.  We belong to you. And so we belong to one another.

Give us the openness to stand by one another in times of suffering and in times of joy. 

May we sense, ever deeper and stronger, this connection we have, that we are family in Christ.

And may your Spirit work in between and through our bonds, that barriers would be broken down and chasms closed up, that people would be brought together in love and healing.  Bring healing to our world, Oh God.  And let us be part of that.

God in your loving mercy, hear our prayer.

CROSSES WE BEAR, CROSSES WE SHARE

God of the journey, we lift up to you the place we find ourselves, the path before us… the choices we have and the ones we don’t choose, the things we plan for and those that surprise us and knock us off course…

We hold before you the hopes and worries we have for those we love, and the places their own journeys may take them…

Christ Jesus, in the crosses we bear and the crosses we share – you are with us, you have joined your journey to our own and we are never forsaken, never left alone.  Help us to bear one another’s burdens, and to walk alongside each other wherever our journeys may lead.

God in your loving mercy, hear our prayer.

CROSS - (all the pieces have snapped together to form a raised cross in the center of them)

Almighty God, we cannot begin to understand your love so great that would carry all of this for us. That you would meet each of us in all of these places and draw us always and again to yourself.

Thank you for your grace so abundant and forgiveness so complete, that we can live in the promise of wholeness, and be part of your inexhaustible healing of the world that you made and love and came to save.

Thank you for your life and death and resurrection that sets us free.

As we stand before your cross, with our hands dirty and our hearts open, 

we remember again, that Great is the Mystery of our Faith.

Christ has died

Christ has risen

Christ will come again.

And from within this mystery, we will raise our voices in defiant hope and audacious celebration to our God, Hosanna in the highest!  

And Blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord. 

Hosanna in the Highest!

 (photos to come!)

Woman, here is your son...

Throughout Lent, at LNPC we are exploring the Biblical Stations of the Cross.  We have the stations up in our sanctuary, and the congregation is doing a Lenten Worship Project, bringing in images that we find in media, our lives, art, etc. and helping to construct one of the stations during worship each week.  This week, we explored "Jesus Cares for his Mother," Station 12.

"Never Coming Home" by photographer Andrew Lichtenstein

John 19:25-27

Station 12: Jesus Cares for His Mother

Lenten Worship Project words: shared pain, solidarity, mutual suffering

If you had been standing there that day, like Scrooge with the Ghost of Christmas past, a silent, unseen observer of the scene unfolding around you, amid the heat and the dust, the crowds and the horror... if you had watched closely you would have seen two dramas unfolding simultaneously. 

On one side of you are the soldiers – they’ve done their work for the day, gotten this man up on the cross, and they turn to the spoils – his possessions to divide and keep.  They decide to roll dice, cast lots, to gamble for his final belongings, the very clothes off his back, all that he had of value, all that belonged to him, his final tie to this earthly life.  So you’d see them laughing, maybe, huddled together, a winner about to be declared, the one who would become the new owner of that which had once been his.

On the other side of you is Jesus.  Naked and dying on the cross. Stripped of all that he had, all that he was, all that anyone thought he would end up being. 

And standing near the cross, unable to tear themselves away, refusing to leave him alone in these last hours, waiting with him for his last breaths, are those who love him.  His mom, his aunt, his friends Mary Magdalene and Mary, Clopas’ wife.  And his dear friend. John, presumably. “The disciple whom Jesus loved,” as he calls himself, as he defines himself.

  

As you watched, you would hear behind them, as though in another world, the soldiers’ game, competing for his belongings, and across from them you would see the people to whom he belonged.  Or who belonged to him. 

And in the middle of that moment you would witness an exchange, a giving away or a giving to, his mother, his friend – ‘Woman, here is your son.  Here is your mother.’ 

And from that hour – it says, he took her into his house. 

This week our session had an interesting request presented to us.  A former member, whose father made this baptismal font in 1968 in a woodshop in his garage, has a new baby granddaughter born across the country in Maine.  This grandmother came to us to ask whether she might be permitted to ship this baptismal font to a Catholic church in Maine for one week, so that her granddaughter could be baptized in it.  She talked about the tie to family, the link to her parents and their love and now absence. She talked about the desire to provide that sense of connection, of identity, her longing to have her side of the family represented as the baby’s other side of the family would be. 

Now, as crazy as this sounds, and as bizarre a request it is, it was an opportunity to see and hear one another in a deeply significant way.  So we said, Let’s talk about it.

We sat in this space and wrestled together with our understanding of faith, of baptism, of community, of the meaning of this piece of furniture and its absence, of our community’s desire to participate in some way. 

And in that conversation, there was one thing said that struck me as deeply profound and important:

When we are baptized, when the water covers us and we are united with Jesus in his death and resurrection, we are born into a new family, a deeper, broader, wider family than the ones of our birth, a family that spans the constraints of time and space, stretches past limits and bloodlines, denominations and state lines, we are bound to one another, brother, sister, mother, son, daughter and father, in the family of God. 

When that bawling, wet child opens her eyes, whichever bawling, wet child she may be, we say to her, Little one! Look around you! Here is your mother, here are your sisters and brothers and fathers – we are your family now, and just one piece of it! We represent the family you now are part of, you will never see its limits – saints gone before and those yet to come, languages and cultures a million miles from here that you will never lay eyes on - they belong to you and you belong to them.   In Christ, we are now connected, We are family.

And then it became apparent to those of us sitting there – that at some level, and whether this grandmother realizes it or not, this request is not about her family. This is about God’s family, and all of ours.  So we decided to let the font go there.  And we will send along a message, that as this baby is baptized we celebrate with joy a sister joining the family of God – far away in Minnesota this little part of God’s family is extending our own welcome, in wood and water, in symbol and sign, to the family of God.  That despite differences we perceive as human beings -  in faith, in the miles between us, in the theology that defines us, in the human dynamics that get in the way of real human relationships – something is happening here in this moment that we are part of (and would be even without our font standing in for us! would be even if we never even knew this baptism took place! that we are part of every time anyone is baptized!) The family of God is welcoming a sister. 

Through Jesus’ death we are made brother and sister, mother and son, father and daughter, family to one another.  To the world.  We are joined in a deep and profound way, as real and unchosen as the families we were born into. Given to one another.

The early Christians from the very beginning called one another brother and sister, through Christ’s death they were family.  Strangers and neighbors, Slaves and owners said sister, brother.   Scholar Rodney Stark explains that one of the reasons Christianity went from about 1000 people to 6 million people in less than 300 years may be in part because of this understanding of family in God. The Roman Empire went through two major plagues in that time.  When this happened most everyone who could run, ran: Roman doctors fled to the countryside and those who were not sick and dead left the sick and dead to fend for themselves. Except the Christians.  Christians stayed and nursed each other, they stayed and nursed the sick because they had a profound understanding that these were not sick people, separate from me, these are brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers.  In Christ, these are my family.  Of course, by doing so, they also developed immunity to the disease that enabled them to survive when others died. 

We are bound in our suffering, in all the ways we’ve seen on this Lenten journey are part of our humanity and part of Christ’ suffering on the cross – our sorrow and pleading, our shame and regret, our hopelessness and impossibility, the crosses we bear for ourselves and others - as Christ holds all of those in his own being what he gives us in return, in that moment, is one another. Here is YOUR mother, his mother, here is YOUR son.  By belonging to him we belong to each other. 

And so this is why we can’t not care.  If you take someone into your home, you get sick when they get sick.  You are there when they cry and you see them mad and you make them mad, and you laugh together and support each other, and you can’t help sharing life with them in the very most ordinary of ways.  That is what it is to be the family of God.  To say to the world, you are not alone, brother.  I am here, sister. And to hear those words back from those sitting next to you.

Three weeks ago we did this for Sarah and Tim.  We heard the words of Christ, who bears our suffering, we heard the words of Christ as he held out before us this family and he said, LNPC – here is your mother, grieving the loss of her son, here is your son, lost to you and to the world as he was to her. It didn’t matter whether they were “one of us” or not, they are family.  They belong to Christ so they belong to us. We belong to Christ so we belong to them.  From that hour we took them into our home.

As we gather in these weeks in the shadow of the cross, as we keep glancing in on Christ in these last moments of his life, tonight we hear behind us, as though bartering for the dead man’s clothes, the greed and the self-interest, the disconnect and division, the way that sacred things are made cheap and human life is boiled down to what we have or own, the way hope is lost and people are isolated and forgotten, left to fend for themselves,

But right in front of us is Christ, in the midst of bearing the suffering of all the world, in the midst of joining us so fully as to take on death and all its impact, holding Japan and Libya and Yemen and the Ivory Coast, holding Sarah and Tim, and little Connor’s family, and a new little baby in Maine, and he says This one is yours now, and you are theirs.  Here you are. Brothers and sisters.  Given to each other. Bound in the suffering that I bear with you. Bound to one another in my death.

Every year we celebrate the beginning of the Church at Pentecost, and rightfully so, when the Spirit of God comes upon the disciples and they speak the message of Jesus that penetrates the hearts of people from far and wide, and the community of fear becomes the community of faith.  But I think, in some way, the church also begins right here, in the shadow of the cross, with these words.

Woman, here is your son. Here is your mother.

May our awareness of our place in the family of God continue to carve room within us for the suffering and joy of others; may we step up and welcome one another into our home.

Amen.