Sunday, April 21, 2019

The Living




I have always hated the question Why?
Not as in, Why is the sky blue?  but as in, Why did you leave the car on empty?
Why? can sometimes be less of a question and more of an indirect way to make a point.  

Why are we having that for dinner?
Why didn’t you turn in that assignment? 
Oh no! Why did you break that? 

Trying to answer these why questions only makes you feel like an idiot.

Because I wanted to make life harder for you. 
Because I was hoping to disappoint you, and I succeeded! 
Because I was trying to get in trouble. 
Because I obviously wasn’t being careful and probably shouldn’t be trusted with valuable things.

So I think that the angels’ choice to announce the resurrection with a Why question is both kind of terrible and pretty awesome. 

Why do you look for the living among the dead?, they ask the terrified women.

The simple answer is, as you know, angels, they don't.  
They are not looking for the living at all
Don't pretend you don't know that they are looking for the dead. 

They are looking for the body of their friend whom they had loved and lost. As far as they know he’s buried here, with all the other dead.  They came for the ritual, the practice, the pattern, the next and final steps in his story.  
They came to put spices on his body and to grieve their loss. 
They came to say their final goodbye and bury him properly.

And it was the right thing to do.
Jesus was gone. 
The revolution was over, the promise came to nothing, their hopes for the future he’d promised had collapsed when he hung on that cross, and disappeared when he breathed his last,  Now they were coming to show their love and respect, and to tend to the body of their dead friend and teacher.  
Nobody around here is, as you say, “looking for the living.”  
This story is over. Nobody comes back from death. 
This is how this story goes. 

This is how the story is going, until strangers in dazzling clothes show up, and ask,Why are you looking for the living among the dead? 
And suddenly, the story is torn open, interrupted by a completely different story. 

This seems to be how God operates. God interrupts. 
God breaks into the story we’re living and introduces a new story. 
The bible is full of these sorts of shenanigans.  
A baby in a basket rescued by a princess. 
A bush that burns without being consumed. 
A widow with her last bit of flour and oil. 
A shepherd boy in the field about to be anointed king. 
A couple far too old to have a baby. 
A peasant girl in Galilee and a carpenter happily engaged to be married. 
Some fishermen going all night without a catch.
A tax collector up in a tree to get a better view. 
A leper living as an outcast from his community.  
A woman hemorrhaging for twelve years. 
A father whose son is trapped by terrible fits.  
They were each living their story. And as content or miserable as they may have been, their stories at least made sense. They were familiar and known, and, if not tolerable, at least understandable. Then God interrupts their story. 
And it its place God gives them a completely new story. 

So why did these women who loved and followed Jesus come to the tomb, as you say, angels, to look for the living among the dead?
They didn’t. That’s not why they came.  That isn’t their story. 
But these messengers are about to make it their story.  God interrupts what they thought was their story, to give them a completely new story.

It wasn’t that Jesus hadn’t told them this was coming.

The angels go on to say, "He is not here, but has risen.”
And then they add that helpful, and not at all snarky, frequent follow-up word to the Why question, Remember? As in, 
Remember I told you to fill up the tank before you got home? 
Remember how I am always saying how much I hate turkey burgers?  
Remember I reminded you to turn in that paper this morning? 
Remember I told you that cup was an irreplaceable souvenir and to be careful with it?  

"Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again?"
Oh yes! He did say something like that, quite often in fact. But those words didn’t really mean anything in the old story. They made no sense then. 
But now, now they hear his words all over again as though for the first time. And in this story, these words are everything.

So these women, now living in a new story, run back to tell the rest of the disciples about it.
And of course, the disciples do what everybody does when they’re confronted with a new story: they resist it. 

Here’s another part of Luke’s resurrection story that makes it my favorite this year. When the women arrive breathless and shaken, and announce to the rest of the disciples the news that Jesus is alive, the text says the disciples consider it to be complete bullsh*t. Literally. Bunk, malarkey, absolute rubbish.  That is a load of crap, they say, You are off your rocker.  
Peter, at least, is willing to go investigate further. 
The rest just stay put and shake their heads.

These are the people closest to Jesus, the ones most likely to believe them about what they had just witnessed, because they too had heard Jesus’ words about this very thing. But like the women, those words had meant nothing in their old story. And, for now at least, they are still in the old story. 

The disciples are not stupid. They know how stories go, and it’s not like this.  In fact, in all four gospels, there is not a single person who 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!
If you scan all four gospels for the feeling words at this moment, there is no joy or happiness or confidence and trust. There is: fear, confusion, amazement, terror, bewilderment, wonder, and disbelief.
This is how we react to interruption.  This is how we greet resurrection.

We all live inside the stories we have. We’re pretty attached to our stories. They make sense, and have served us well.  And in our stories, people don’t come back from death.  These followers of Jesus had seen political upstarts crushed by the Romans; they knew the pattern. They’re living in a familiar pattern. He’s dead. He’s buried. Prepare the spices. Rest on the Sabbath. Go the next day for the last time to care for the body.  Figure out how to move on with your life. That’s what comes next. That’s the story. 

We all live inside the patterns we know, patterns shaped by the forces around us, and the experiences behind us. We’ve learned some things about how the world works, about how life works, and relationships and rules, and we base our choices on what we’ve learned. 
Maybe we’ve learned that some people are more important than others. Or not to speak up or you’ll get shot down. Not to wish for things so you wont be disappointed. Not to count your chickens before they’re hatched. Maybe we’ve learned how to hit first, or how to guard your heart.  How to assess situations and calculate the risks. Certainly we’ve learned how to compete and compare, and gain and lose, and earn, and lie, and protect, and survive.  
We are all living, sometimes content and sometimes miserable, inside our stories, inside our own patterns. They are familiar and known, and if not tolerable, at least they’re understandable. 

But a disciple is someone whose story has been interrupted by God.  And in its place God gives them a completely new story.  Now their story is told inside the story of Christ. Now their story begins again, with life coming out of death, and hope born from their places of despair, with unbreakable connection and belonging to God and to others at its center.

Sometimes we call this a testimony, the telling of our story from the place it begins anew, which gives a whole new understanding to everything that happened before. 
“It was in this place of utter hopelessness that God met me.” 
“It was here that my life was transformed.”  
A disciple’s whole story – from the first breath to the last, is now seen through the lens of the interrupting God.  

That’s how we remember.  Remember …?
And then words and experiences and encounters that didn’t really mean anything in the old story are now seen again as though for the first time. In this new story, these moments that were nothing before become everything, because the presence of the one who comes in bringing life is recognized doing that all throughout our story.

The women come to the tomb to end the story. This was the last chapter. 
Instead, it’s the whole new thing.

When we return to the dead places within us, it usually to bury them properly.  We return to the places of pain and heartache for resolution and closure. We go to those tombs to grieve and let go. To make our peace and move on.  We don’t look among the dead parts of ourselves to find new life there.  But that’s what God does. That’s where God goes. 

Remember this Lent, how we’ve been talking about going toward our nothingness instead of fleeing from it? Going toward whatever it is that we fear will take our lives from us, toward our death, our impossibility, our weakness?  We go there to die to whatever we think makes us safe, or strong, or secure, or protected. We go to die to whatever it is we believe will give us life, so that we can find there the God who brings life out of death. 

Our world is so filled with suffering and brokenness; there is so much pain and struggle.  Death is an ever-looming threat. We need a savior who has been through death, been into our places of nothingness and the world’s too, and who has come out the other side with life.  We need the Jesus who is doing something right now about the death inside of us, the death between us, the death in the world. We need a living God.

Christ goes where there is death.  The One who lives is there now, in our places of death, starting a new story for us.  The new story will not look like anything we recognize – it’s not a continuation of the old story. That one has died. It’s a completely new story, unexpected, unprecedented, unfolding before us in ways we can’t anticipate.  It often requires that we trust and step into something we don’t understand and can’t necessarily explain or make sense of.  And this new story will be filled with remember moments that redeem the past as well, and reveal interruption all along the way.
This is salvation.  God goes into our places of death to bring new life.

And when that happens, when resurrection happens, it looks different for each of us, as it does for the disciples, when they each encounter the living One for themselves.  
God meets us in our places of death, and our deaths are unique to us. We share the same human story; Jesus shared that story with us too. But each human story is unique; only we know what it is to be inside our skin. Only we have felt death’s sting the way it has come to each of us.  So the new life that comes from our places of death is also distinct. 

And it is from these experiences of transformation, these moments where life has been breathed into the dead bones of us, and hope has sprung from the despairing soul of us, it is from here that we are called to minister. It is out of our dead places and our new beginnings that we go to others in their places of death. And we go as minister, that is, to be with and for others as Jesus is with and for us. We are those who live in this world from our weakness and not from our strength. We live this life from vulnerability and truth. This is our new story as disciples.  

Run to your tombs, beloved, and look there for the living One. 
Look in your places of death for the One who brings life.  
God, who interrupts death with life, starts our stories over again.  
Imagine Forgiveness… 
Imagine Healing...
Imagine Hope… 
Our stories are meant to be interrupted and rewritten.  
That is who God is. That is what God does. That is grace.

It turns out maybe the angels weren’t just being difficult and provocative.  
Maybe they were onto a real question after all.  And maybe it’s one we can answer.

Why do you look for the living among the dead?
We look for the living among the dead because that is where Jesus goes.  That is what Jesus does.  We should all be looking in our places of death for the living one. 
This is what it means to follow the Risen Lord.  This is what it means to live in resurrection.

Amen.

Sunday, April 14, 2019

This Unsafe Life


 (This scripture text includes the four verses following the typical Palm Sunday pericope)

Last week, a mile from where Andy and I sat sipping rum punch and looking at the beauty of the ocean, a professional snorkel cruise guide and her husband got caught in riptide and drowned.  Vacationers gathered on the balcony of the Sheraton to watch the helicopter retrieve their bodies from the water.

If a trained person whose life work is to be in the ocean can drown just like that, why should any of us dare risk going in?  

This weekend, in an act that is almost unfathomable, on the third floor of the Mall of America a stranger picked up a 5-year-old child and threw him over railing to the marble floor below.  

How are we to live a human life? 
How can we exist in a world where this kind of senseless, evil thing could happen?  

Forget the ocean, the mall is too dangerous.  Plane crashes, car accidents…death is a real possibility, for all of us, at any moment. Maybe we are safer if we never leave our own homes, where the risks contract to carbon monoxide or lead poisoning, break-ins, tornadoes, falls, identity theft or grease fires?

It feels these days like fear is lurking around every corner.  At every moment there is something to be afraid of.  Every choice we make feels weighty and risky.  And total destruction at the hands of enemies doesn’t have to mean bodily. It can be done with a a WiFi connection and that poisonous cocktail of good intentions and no mercy.  

The earth itself is simultaneously erupting in earthquakes, forest fires, and mid-April thunder snow, hovering perpetually on the brink of catastrophe.  Hate is breeding, governments are crumbling, and people are starving, and when they flee to seek a new home, we turn them away as threats to our safety. The stock market is shakey, and politics feel alarming nearly every second.

And on top of sudden illness, we’re vulnerable to random violence, freak accidents and bad decisions. Human beings are just so weak and susceptible to all of it.  
So, let’s be real here: Fear is a very sincere and ever-available option to us. 
And fear helps us. Fear is not a bad thing; it’s a warning thing. It keeps us alive, (for a little while, at least). 

But avoiding death is an abysmal way to live.  
With our heads down and our arms raised in self-protection against the risks this life dishes out at every turn, we lock ourselves into a tedious, fear-driven half-life that makes us unable to recognize God in front of us, or our neighbor beside us, or to share deeply in anything truly good – like love, hope or joy.
Instead of being alive, our goal is to be safe.

But safety is a terrible life-goal.  
When we have it, it is momentary and fleeting, and it can be taken away in a second by an unlimited variety of things or people, whether accidentally, maliciously, or even with the best of intentions.  But mostly, safety is an illusion and we only ever think we have it.  So we spend our life pursuing something that we will never attain or keep.  

In all our evolved consciousness, we’ve somehow reached a state of masterful delusion that equates the pursuit of peace with the pursuit of safety.  
Peace and safety are not the same thing.  
In fact, they might even be considered opposites. 
Peace is the resonance of the true connection of all things- belonging to God and each other.
Safety is the guarding from risk and harm.
If the point of human life is to be both physically and emotionally safe, you will never have peace.  

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in the midst of the horrors of Nazi Germany, wrote:
“There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared. It is itself the great venture and can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to want to protect oneself. Peace means giving oneself completely to God's commandment. Wanting no security, but in faith and obedience laying the destiny of the nations in the hand of almighty God. Not trying to direct it for selfish purposes. Battles are won not with weapons, but with God. They are won when the way leads to the cross.”  (from his speech in Fano, Denmark, quoted in Renate Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Brief Life). 
There is no such thing as peace that comes with safety.
Jesus knew this. 
He knew he was going to die in Jerusalem. 
He went anyway. 

On Palm Sunday we wave our palm branches and shout “Hosanna!” to welcome in the savior of the world.  But I recently learned that some churches have historically also reenacted the rest of what this same crowd shouts a week later, “Crucify Him!”  
I get a pit in my throat imagining all of us shouting that together. 
It feels unseemly, dark, a little too real, perhaps.  
It testifies to the fact that it takes almost nothing for praise to turn to condemnation, for a crowd to become a mob.  

God-with-us came into our fear, into our risk, into the randomness and the violence and the isolation and the blame.  God came into this unsafe life to bring peace -  the resonance of the true connection of all things - belonging to God and each other.

Instead of waving palm branches and shouting Hosanna, when Luke tells the story of this day the people repeat the same thing the angels sang when God first came to be with us, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!  Glory in the highest heaven!”
The crowd doesn’t know they are saying the same thing that was proclaimed at his birth, but the angels do. The stones do.  The very cosmos can hear the literary echo from the time of God’s arrival among us.  From the moment he drew his first baby breath, God’s choice to come into this human life meant coming under the sentence of death.  
God came to make himself unsafe alongside us.  
God brings peace by taking on all that is unsafe.

Peace on earth! The angelic choir proclaims to the shepherds when God arrives.  But the script shifts slightly in the mouths of the cheering crowd, Peace in heaven! the people shout at their peasant king. Keep the peace up there.  Down here, we’d rather have safety.

Glory to God in the highest heaven! The angels sang. 
Order them to stop, teacher!, some religious leaders say urgently to Jesus when the crowd takes up the song. This is the time of their visitation from God!  Their experience of peace is right at hand! And the leaders ask him to shush the people because what they are doing feels a little bit dangerous. 
Jesus answers, If they didn’t say it the stones themselves would.  

Glory to God!  This is the truth that cannot not be said.  It has been said in a myriad of ways since the beginning of time.  There are stones that do speak of God’s glory.  I’ve stood in the hushed magnificence of the stunning Chartes cathedral where stacked and intricately carved stones have preached to pilgrims for nearly a thousand years of the glory of God.  
The island my family visited last week is still being formed of stone; it bursts molten hot from the earth’s core.  When it runs down into the cool ocean water it explodes into brand new sand, forming new land where there was none five months ago.  As the Psalmist sang, The earth itself proclaims the glory of the Lord!  
Jerusalem was supposed to be a place where the stones spoke of God’s glory, the city on a hill, a shining symbol of peace.  The temple of stones within the city was built to be the place where people draw near to God. But Jerusalem has become a symbol of oppression and corruption, stark poverty and opulent wealth on daily display amidst the distraction and commerce of religion.  Tomorrow, he will overturn the tables of the moneychangers in the temple. But right now he is weeping for what should have been. ‘If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! 
It is right in front of you and you are missing it.

This is not the first time Jesus has cried about Jerusalem.  A few weeks ago we saw him weep, when he predicted this very moment: 
I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed away from Jerusalem.” Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” ’ (Luke 13:33-35)
And now here they are, just as he said they would be, echoing the Angels’ songs, taking the words out of the mouths of stones.

The Prince of Peace rides among us in a mock military parade, on a borrowed donkey instead of a noble steed, and when he arrives in the city, instead of claiming it in power, he cries over it.  He weeps for the people who don’t recognize the things that make for peace.  The violence they live by will be the violence they die by, total destruction at the hands of their enemies, not one stone left on another.  In their pursuit of safety and security, they do not recognize the time of their visitation by God.  

I recently heard it said, “At every moment we have a choice between safety and love.”  
Riding a donkey through that crowd that day, to the city of disappointed hopes, Jesus chose love. When he goes to the cross at the end of this week he chooses love. 
When he came into this world as a vulnerable baby he chose love.  
At every moment he was on this earth, Jesus chose love over safety. 
He did this for us. 
For our peace.  For our true connection to God, each other, and the world.

Death is all around us.  We’re flailing to keep our head above water every day, it seems, nearly drowning in the very words looming over us in these banners at this moment– injustice, fear, sin, division, shame and crisis. 
Every day we deal in death and the threat of death.  
Every day we bow to fear. 
Every day we strive to make ourselves, our children, our communities, our nation, our freeways, our computers, our borders, our bank accounts and our futures, safe from any evil. 
Every day we exchange costly love for the mirage of security.  

But peace and safety can’t co-exist.  
The resonance of true relationship is incompatible with protecting oneself from risk and harm.  
Jesus knows this.  Riding into Jerusalem that day, Jesus is preparing himself to take on the violent act of crucifixion to bring peace.  
Evil can’t be beaten by evil.  It can only be defeated by an ultimate act of love. 
Love is eternal and permanent.  It swallows evil.  
When everything else, as strong or as scary as it has been for its moment on this earth, disappears, as it will, what remains forever is love. 
When death itself is past, love endures.  
By surrendering any claim on his life and safety, God submits himself to evil, and in so doing, evil itself is consumed and beaten by love.  

You and I cannot extricate ourselves from the crowd or the mob. 
We arethe ones who say Hosanna! and also Crucify him!  
We are the shepherds receiving the good news of God’s arrival among us, and the soldiers nailing this same God to the cross.  
We are the ones who are harmed and the ones who bring harm. 
We are caught in sin, and we participate in evil, and no matter what we do or don't do, we will one day die. 
In the knowledge of that, we are often weak and worried, predisposed to fear and eager to pursue the illusion of safety.  
We are terrified to go after peace, and accept it's risky command to love other people and God.  What a dangerous way to live! 

But God has come under the sentence of death alongside us to overcome death for us.  
God is here alongside us even now.  
And we are made from love, for love. 
Love is our calling and our purpose and our end.  
If we are to recognize the times of our visitations from God, to recognize the moments where love rises up, and peace is tasted, and joy is felt, and hope floods through us, and the real connection of all things is glimpsed and shared in, then this is what it means: That despite the dangers, we “give ourselves completely to God’s commandment.” We lay ourselves, our loved ones, “and the destiny of the nations, in the hands of almighty God,” who comes willingly into our death to bring life. 

This earth is an unsafe place. 
Living is an unsafe activity.  
But we are not alone. And this is not the end.  
The way of peace leads to the cross.
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.
Glory to God in the Highest heaven. Peace on earth, and good will to all.
Amen.

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