Sunday, March 31, 2013

Looking for the Living: An Easter Message


The Incredulity of Saint Thomas by Caravaggio



Why do you look for the living among the dead?
Because this is where we left him-? 
Wait, why are we looking for the what
I am not getting the question here...

That’s kind of a jerky way to announce the resurrection, don’t you think?  Sneaking up behind them, saying something like that...  
How about a little “fear not?” 
That’s an angel’s usual, helpful, first line, isn’t it? 
How about a little, We don’t mean to startle you ladies, but you might want to sit down for this…

No, instead it’s a kind of sarcastic and unanswerable question.
Why?
I hate these kinds of why questions. My husband can tell you that. 
Why did you put that down bag right where I was going to sit?  Why did you leave the car on empty? 
My kids hate that question too.  
Why did you leave your coat on the floor?  Why didn’t you put your shoes in the mudroom?  How can you answer these types of why questions?
Because I wanted to be in your way.  
Because I was trying to get in trouble.  
Because I evidently wasn’t thinking.  
Because, clearly, I am an idiot.

Sometimes why questions are real questions, but sometimes why questions are facetious, they’re meant to prove a point. If you tried to answer them really, you’d just feel dumb. 

Why do you look for the living among the dead?
The simple answer is, as you know, angels, they weren’t.  
They were not looking for the living at all.  
Who in their right mind, at that moment, would be looking for the living? They were looking for the dead! Obviously! 
Jesus was gone! The revolution was over, the promise came to naught, their hopes had come crashing down in flames and they were merely coming to show their respect, and to care for the body of the one they had loved and lost.  Nobody around here was looking for the living
They came for the one dead guy, buried here where the dead belong with all the other dead.  There is no reason in all the earth why anyone in their right mind would come here looking for the living.
They didn’t want resurrection. They didn’t even know to hope for it. They wanted comfort in the ritual. They wanted to grieve their loss and one day move on.  They wanted to remember him as he was, as is only natural.

The question itself must have thrown them off kilter, because the question itself throws everything they had ever known about anything off kilter.
 “He is not here, but has risen.  Remember how he told you, while he was still back in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again." 
(These snarky angels), Yeah, thanks, now I remember!  
Wait, he meant that literally? 

Now what? What if death isn’t what we thought it was?  
What if life wasn’t what we thought it was? 
What if everything is different than we thought it was? 

But the angels’ question haunts me.  Why do you look for the living among the dead?
And after turning it over and over this week, I finally realized why the question bothers me so much.  It’s because, I think, even thought we know the story, we’re the same as the women.

We’re not looking for the living Jesus either, actually.  
What in the world would we do with a living Jesus? 
Or more to the point, what in the world would a living Jesus do with us?

Instead, we generally do the opposite, you and I.  We look for the dead among the living.  What would Jesus do? We ask ourselves. 
Let’s try to be like him, follow his example.  
Let’s learn his teachings and tell the stories about him in Sunday school, and on Easter we will all sit here and sing about how he died and rose again and everything is fixed now,
and then, we’ll go home and eat our ham and change out of our fancy clothes, and we’ll go back to real life, with real, living people, who are doing the best they can with what they’ve got, most of them, who are living and loving and hurting and falling and failing and getting back up and doing it all again in a world that sometimes seems to be falling apart at the seams, and when we’re paying attention we will try to be like Jesus out there among the living.
We’ll stand up for the things Jesus stood for, and we’ll try to be good people and we will strive to be holy, or work for justice, and we’ll go to church, now and then, at least, and we’ll pray for the sick, and we’ll wonder if, in all of this we are doing enough to honor the memory of Jesus, and we’ll feel guilty that we are not doing more. 
So we’ll continue looking for the dead among the living, and then, if we’re lucky, we’ll get old and die peacefully, and we’ll meet Jesus in the sky, when we too are dead like him. 

But Jesus alive?  
That’s just crazy. 
That is so messy; so uncontrolled. 
If that’s true, then God could be anywhere, doing anything.

I don’t like it. 
I like my martyrs dead, so I can decide what I like and don’t like about them. 
So I can decide what I believe and don’t believe about them. 
So I can decide which teachings make sense for me to follow and which ones must have been said on an “off” day.  
It’s much safer, and more sensible to look for, and speak for, and act for the dead among the living, and not have to risk running into the living God right here among the living.

And get this, when the women run back and tell the rest of the disciples the news that Jesus is alive, the people closest to them, the people closest to Jesus, the ones most likely to believe them about what they had just witnessed, the disciples themselves said, bullsh*t
Literally. 
Bunk, malarkey, absolute rubbish.  
That is a load of crap, they said. You are off your rocker. 

The very first preachers to stand in the pulpit on Easter Sunday had their message called crazy made up garbage.  Let’s face it, not a single person, in all four gospels, believes in the resurrection right away.  Nobody.  
In John’s telling Mary thinks Jesus is the gardener.  
In Mark, they run away terrified and tell nobody, (an ending later scribes try to soften out and clean up because it doesn’t inspire much confidence).  
On the road to Emmaus the disciples think Jesus is a stranger, and Thomas has to put his hands right into Jesus’ side, and not a single person says on their own, Check out that empty tomb! Oh yeah, he’s risen! He said that would happen!

But then, after Mary and the other Mary and Joanna and the other women deliver their message, two things happen.  
First, Peter wont take their word for it, he has to go and see for himself. On his own, he goes to the tomb and comes back wondering.
And second, a shift occurs in the way the disciples are known in the text after that – in that one moment, of receiving the news that in fact Jesus is not dead, but living, they go from being called “the eleven and the rest”, which is to say, the followers of the dead guy, or rather, the ones who remain of the ones who followed that guy who isn’t here anymore, to “the apostles,” in the very next sentence, which means, “sent, those who are sent on a mission.” Their identity shifts to ones sent into the world by the living God.

And then they each meet the Living One for themselves.  
And nobody has the same experience of the Risen Christ – they all have their own encounter, different for each one. 
Jesus tenderly calls Mary by name, and he breaks bread once again in the presence of some of the apostles, and he teaches two others along the road to Emmaus, and stretches out his hand to Thomas and invites him to touch his wounds, and calls out from the shore to Peter and the others in the boat to cast their nets to the other side and lets the sopping wet Peter who swims ashore in his heavy coat tell Jesus he loves him and answers, “then, Peter, feed my sheep.”

And then, for each of them, the resurrection itself is just part of the story of the living God who meets us and loves us, who joins us in this life completely, and is right now as we sit here constantly and everywhere about the business of loving and saving the world.

So who cares if you believe he is risen? – nobody does at first!  
And when they finally do believe, they never say “Jesus has risen.” like some fact they’ve chosen to accept.  
No, it becomes a confession, “I have seen the Lord.” 
They say “My lord and my God!” 
They say,”Weren’t our hearts burning within us while he spoke?” 
They say, “Teacher, you know that I love you!”  
They are met by the living One, the Resurrection and the Life who knows them, who calls them by name, and sets them free, and sends them out into the world to love and serve the world that God loves and is saving.

And so the story of it all goes this way: 
God is so passionately, relentlessly for us, and seeks to be so very with us that the final barrier that separates us all from those we love, death itself, would not, could not, separate God from us.  God would join us completely, and live among us, and take on all the hatred and division and brokenness and evil that the world has to dish up, and absorb into Godself everything that divides us from love, everything that keeps us from life and steals our hope, and carry it into the very heart of God. 
God would die to be with us, and by rising from the dead the Living One meets us in the world, infusing the world with hope, claiming the world for love, inviting us to notice, inviting us to join in, sending us out again and again to love one another, until the day when all will be redeemed and made whole, and death itself will be no more.
 Wherever people are broken and suffering, Jesus is there. 
Wherever people offer forgiveness and reconciliation, Jesus is there.
Wherever there is love and hope, and people bearing each other’s burdens and sharing each other’s joy, Jesus is there.
Wherever two or three are gathered, in all their confusion and doubt and questions and disbelief, and longing, Jesus is there. 
Wherever there is Life, shared, abundant and free, glimpses of the life eternal, there is your God.
And when you can look into the eyes of your neighbor and recognize your common humanity, loved by God, when you feel your heart burn within you at words you know to be true, when you feel set free from a burden, when you hear love call you by name, you have seen the Lord.

A Living Lord is a lot riskier than a dead martyr, and it makes you a lot more vulnerable.  If you let him, Jesus will likely try to recruit you into his mission of love and redemption.  He might try to convince you in all sorts of ordinary and extraordinary ways, that the whole world is in God’s care, and God is moving all over the place, and we get to witness it, and be part of what God is doing. 

What would be like, I wonder, to be the people who are always looking for the Living One among the living?

Jesus is risen.
But don’t take my word for it.
Go into the world and see for yourself.

Sunday, March 3, 2013

A matter of life and death




I made a close friend in 6th grade named Meenal.  She was Indian, and Hindu, and she had been born with two chambers in her heart instead of four, and had surgeries as a baby that divided it into three, but as a result she was much smaller than your average sixth grader. 
But other than her size, which she dismissed with a flick of her hand and a sentence about her heart, there was nothing to reveal that anything was wrong with her.  Meenal was funny, and killer smart.  She lived a few blocks from me and I can remember lip syncing to cassette tapes we’d recorded off the radio in her bedroom while her little brother peeked in through the crack in the door in disgust, trying on her sticky dots on my forehead in her bathroom mirror, and eating meals at her family table across from the painting of the god Vishnu on her living room wall. 

Meenal and I went to junior high together and our friendship continued. We were always partners for projects and I can still see her pushing her glasses up her nose, flipping her braid over her shoulder and collapsing in hysterical laughter over something. 
Towards the end of 7th grade, Meenal got sick.  She had to go in to the hospital, and I didn’t know much about what was going on.  I got the flu for a few days, and wasn’t able to visit her there.  Then I got better, and she was, for some reason, still in the hospital, and I still didn’t go see her for a while. 
The day I finally was to visit Meenal, my mom picked me up early at school so that we could go to the hospital from there. I had notes from friends to Meenal to bring with me.  The school nurse offered to call ahead and make sure it was a good time to see her, and I pulled on my coat and zipped my backpack shut and plopped down on a chair in the office while my mom signed me out at the front desk.  After a minute, the nurse came out of her office and came over to me with a strange expression on her face.  She looked at my mom and me and said, “I am so sorry.  Meenal died this morning.”

The biggest emotion I had for the next several weeks, besides just disbelief and deep sadness, was guilt.  Guilt that I didn’t go see her, what kind of a friend was I? Regret at having missed the chance to say goodbye.  But the more insidious and heavier guilt that kept my crying at night was the thought that Meenal had died before I told her about Jesus.  That was my responsibility – I had been her friend for two years, and had never told her about Jesus.  She knew I was a Christian and had been at our dinner table when we prayed, just as I knew she was Hindu and had shared her table.  We had talked a little about our religions, but I had never helped her to know Jesus, and she had died before I had “the talk” with her.  Which meant, to my 13 year old broken heart, that Meenal had gone to hell and it was my fault.

Grief and regret tortured me mercilessly day after day.  One night lying in bed I cried until I was utterly exhausted, apologizing over and over to God, begging God to hear me, to see her, not to blame her for my downfall, appealing to God’s love to do something to make the situation right.  “She’s just a kid!” I pleaded.  “I’m so sorry!” 

And then, in the darkness I heard, almost audibly, a clear voice completely separate from my desperate pleadings, words that broke through mine, interrupting them and seeming in my minds eye to wrap around Meenal’s tiny body in warmth, the voice said, “I’ve got her. She’s ok.  She is mine.” 
And I sobbed with relief.  I didn’t understand it – it didn’t make sense at all to what I believed – and in fact I could not explain it for years afterward - but it was so utterly real that immediately I was flooded with peace – like water washing through me.  “She is mine.”

God doesn’t play by our rules and religion.  God doesn’t step in and save those we think should be saved, punish those we know deserve punishment, or honor our clear cut system of choices and consequences, penalties and rewards, earning and losing.  God doesn’t keep little girls with half a heart from dying, or send them to hell for what they do or don’t believe. 

When the people ask Jesus about those that had died in a terrible tragedy, Jesus tells them as much.  It’s not because of anything they did. Bad things happen, death is capricious and merciless.  Disasters strike, sickness comes, terrible things happen to people all the time, and they are not fair, not earned, not brought on by people’s thoughts or choices. Sometimes awful things just happen.
And it would be nice if he had stopped there.  But he goes on to say, but unless you repent you’ll die like they did
Thanks, Jesus, you’ve really cleared this up for us.

Then he tells this story about a fig tree that isn’t producing any fruit. It isn’t showing any signs of life.  Maybe it should just be cut down.
“Give it another year,” the gardener says. “Let me put manure around it.” The Greek word Jesus puts in the mouth of the gardener, which is so politely translated as “manure” here is actually the vulgar word for excrement, in other words, in Jesus’ story the gardener says, “Let it sit in shit for another year and see if it doesn’t start living.”

If we think the faith we confess can be boiled down to an easy system, with simple answers, a cause and effect type of arrangement with God, then we are off base.  And if we think confessing the right kind of belief can guarantee long life, or salvation, or freedom from suffering, we are wrong.  We cannot find easy blame for the tragedies that happen in life, no formula for avoiding them or preventing them from happening to us. 
Death can happen any moment, Jesus says to his questioners, and unless you repent, you will die like they did.  One moment here, the next, gone.  So it begs the question, how will you live your life?

Repent. he says. 
Repent is not a moral word, like we like to make it. It isn’t about what we do, or being good or bad. It’s not feeling really badly about what we’ve done.  Repentance in the biblical sense is a complete reorientation.  It is a 180 - turning from death to life.  Sometimes it is used as something that happens to you, rather than something you do.  One biblical scholar says, “It can be more about being found than about finding oneself.”[1]

I repented that night about Meenal. I was found by God.  I was reoriented from death to life.  I was deeply conscious of my shame, my weakness and precariousness, I felt the fragility of life and the nearness of death, and above and around these things and right up next to them, I was caught in the overwhelming and astonishing awareness of God’s mercy and love that holds us all.  I could now see the whole of our friendship as a gift, and not as a failure; I saw Meenal now laughing and talking a blue streak at God’s own table.  

And my own life was redeemed and given back to me, no longer captive to guilt but a gift, every day one more day than she had.
 “What about my friend?” I had asked.
“She’s gone and it’s not her fault, and it’s not yours either,” God had answered.  “But what about you?” How will you live? Repent. Turn to me and live.”

This business of life and living is not about what you earn or squander, being deserving or unworthy.  It is not about right and wrong, or good and bad.  It’s more urgent and elemental than that – it’s about life and death.  This is the paradigm shift Jesus is trying to impart to his listeners.

Death comes, and tragedy and suffering strike often without warning.  But how will you LIVE?  Will you live toward life or toward death?  What will define you?  What will your life confess? 
Will you participate in death? Will you let your life be run by fear – seeking to preserve yourself at all cost, even over against others?  Even at the expense of your own well-being and wholeness? Will you let the same force that takes lives in senseless violence or horrible disasters be what you live for, whether you serve it or avoid it, always keeping your eyes on it and letting it dictate your actions?  Hiding your shame, protecting your pain, living in self-judgment or isolation?  Will you live as though your life is of no value, a waste of soil, failed expectation, trapped in regret? Will you live toward death?

Or will you repent and live toward life? 
Will you turn away from death to God – whatever suffering and tragedy may befall you, and participate in life, the life that defies death and our structures that serve it?   Will you confess the abundance that invites all to come to the table and eat – money or not, the life that doesn’t pay you back by what you earn or deserve, or by what circumstances you’ve landed in, but by the grace and love of God alone, the life that seeks wholeness and connection, fullness and love? The life that hopes all things, believes all things, endures all things?  Will you live in the life you were created for?

And if you need help getting there, Jesus adds, why not sit in the shit for a while?

Because if you do, you may find that it awakens repentance. You might notice that it nurtures awareness of your fragility and reality, prompts confessions of honesty about your circumstances, forthrightness about your state.  And after a time a shift begins to happen within you from death toward life – you are found, you are reoriented, the warmth of the sun and the cool of the rain penetrates your thick skin and nourishes you deep within.  And, you may begin to see brand new life coming from death itself; out of the stagnancy and even the stench is born beauty, strength and fruit.

Life is fragile, and it is short. And there is a lot about it we can’t control.  And we do a lot within it that serves death, breaking down instead of building up.   We confess that.  But by the grace of God, life is also a gift.   And we also confess that God brings life –new life, full life, life unexpected and glorious that changes us and makes us live differently, that makes our very living into a confession of enduring hope.
 
And Christ calls us, again and again, to repent, to be reoriented back to the life for which we are born, and into which we are called.  God’s grace invites us all to the banquet table of the life that overcomes death, saying, “2Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
and your labor for that which does not satisfy? 
Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. 
3Incline your ear, and come to me;
listen, so that you may live.”
May we listen and live.



[1] Matt Skinner, commentary on Working Preacher

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