The measure of a life

Acts 9:32-43

My favorite uncle learned this week that he has a 5-inch tumor in his lung.  He has just retired and is building a house, just like his father, my grandfather, who died rapidly of cancer 36 years ago this week.  My uncle has three recently launched kids, and a 3-year-old grandchild.  When he heard the news he wept, and said, “I have so much to do!”  

Life doesn’t give us a blueprint, or a timeline in advance. We make our choices, each day, each season. We live our circumstances, waking up each morning and doing that day, and then laying down at night, satisfied or not, to do it all again.  One day it ends.  Our life is summed up and the verdict is rendered.  What will we leave behind us; what will our story have been?

There are people who make an impact in the world.  People whose kindness and goodness shapes those around them.  Their presence seems to leave a wake, or carve a path for others to follow, for us to emulate.  They make their world a better place.  When their story is told, it is that they were a good person. They lived a good life. It is what we all aspire to, perhaps, and secretly wonder if we’re getting there.

Tabitha was one of these people. She was a respected leader, referred to with the title disciple- the only feminine use of that noun in the whole bible.  We are given her Aramaic name, Tabitha, which means ‘grace’ and her Greek name as well, Dorcas, which means ‘gazelle.’  Giving us both names means she may have been widely known, she spoke more than one language, perhaps traveled between communities. 

In any case, Tabitha was deeply treasured and greatly respected, so much so that when she dies, they send two men to Peter, to ask him to come. He should know she's gone.  Really, she’s too good a person to let go.

Peter gets up, he arises, and goes.  And when he arrives the room is filled with grieving people. They’re holding up tunics and clothing she made for them, displaying tangible proof of her impact and care.

It was a big deal to make a piece of clothing in those days. Rare and labor intensive, there was even a law that if you borrow a tunic you return it by sundown – it might be the only one someone owns.  And here the whole room is filled with them. Tabitha was a busy, productive, good and impactful person.  A benefit to her community; a blessing to the world.  She was a model follower of Jesus.  She’s become a saint, in fact, she is now St. Tabitha the Widow in the Greek Orthodox church, her feast day is October 25.  The Catholics commemorate her as Dorcas, and Dorcas societies, which provide clothing for the poor, are named after her.  Protestant churches commemorate her together along with Lydia in January.  Tabitha was without doubt an exemplar disciple.  

Rewind the story to the first person Peter prays and asks Jesus to heal.  

The text names this man too: Aeneas.  This man is paralyzed. He’s been confined to his bed for 8 years already, and will, presumably, remain there until he is transferred from his bed to his grave.  If he is known in his community, it is not for his contributions, but for the burden he is.  Everything that he needs, others must do for him.  Bathing, dressing, bathrooming, eating.   His story went quiet years ago.  His possibility quenched.  Any chance Aeneas had of living a good life, making an impact on the world, being productive and contributing things of value, are long over.  

Death is the absence of life.  She has died.  Her life is over. The ink is dry; the hourglass empty.  In effect, he has too.  He is living in death, waiting for death.  

And then the word, a command that interrupts their death with life, Anesthi!

I once spent six months in West Africa on the volunteer hospital ship, The Anastasis, which is Greek for resurrection.  Children, women and men with tumors, twisted limbs or cleft palates were brought aboard. They were laid down in the hospital wing, and put under for surgery, and when they awoke, when they arose, they had moved from death to life.  A new life opened before them, a life with hope and possibility that had been dead to them before. God interrupted their story with a different story, and their lives became a witness to the love of God, a window to God’s grace.

Get up! Peter tells Aeneas. Anesthi! Arise. Get up and make your bed.  You make your bed when you leave it, when you wont be in it but will be out and about in the world.  Instead of a bed for sickness, Aeneas, make yourself a bed for rest.  Move from death into new life, Aeneas. 

Immediately Aeneas gets up, and his arising becomes the story that turns the hearts of all those in the region to Jesus, witnessing to God’s love, giving a window to God’s grace. 

Aeneas, the man God healed, Aeneas, the risen one.

Back to Tabitha of the tunics. 

She mattered so much to so many. Her life mattered.  She was a good and faithful disciple of our Lord Jesus Christ.  The evidence of her goodness, her faithfulness, her worth, is all around her in her death. On display in the very room. See how good she was? See what an impact she made? 

But before Peter prays for her, he banishes all of that from the room. All the people, and the tunics, and the grief, all the stories of her faithfulness, the symbols of her value, and the signs of her impact. 

Now, Peter kneels down and prays. 

Then he turns to the body and says, Get up. Anesthi! Arise!

Tabitha opens her eyes and sees Peter. She sits up. 

He reaches out his hand and helps her get up.  

Calling back in all the people, he presents her to them.  Alive.  And this story spreads just like the last, and just like the last, turns people to Jesus, a witness to God’s love, a window to God’s grace.

The Christian story celebrates a good life lived. 

We should all aspire to a life like Tabitha’s. We should help each other be disciples.  

But Tabitha is not resurrected because she has lived a good life.  

Tabitha is resurrected and given life because Jesus is the resurrection and the life.

Aeneas has no value that society could affirm; he makes no impact.  He is no model disciple or productive contributor.  He’s certainly not changing the world. His life already over. To some he might be considered worthless. 

And yet, God resurrects him too.  

Tabitha is trying to live a good life inside the story of Jesus Christ. But the story of Jesus Christ is so big that it even comes to those who don’t live a good life.

Remember when we talked about self-righteousness? How insidious the temptation is to try to earn or prove our own place? How Saul was the perfect follower of God, stomping out dangerous corruption and shutting down those who would pollute the true faith? And how Ananias, a faithful follower of Jesus, questioned God’s instruction to go to Saul?  And remember how God crucified both their stories and gave them a new story, one of finding the risen one and new life in the presence of their enemy?  It wasn’t their own goodness and faithfulness, but the act of God through one they despised that became their window of grace.

We might be tempted to believe Tabitha has earned the right to resurrection.  But that’s not how it works. God’s resurrection is so generous and promiscuous, that it comes also to the ones who can’t possibly earn a thing. And even though she is a model disciple whom we should strive to emulate, even so, Tabitha too needs God to act for her. 

When Aeneas dies, they wont hold up what he accomplished. They will hold up what God did for him. And the same is now true of Tabitha. She is no longer defined by what she has accomplished. That died with her first death.  Now she too is defined by what God has done for her.  Their stories were interrupted with resurrection. Rise up, get up, and live.  Anesthi! 

I’m willing to bet that in this room we all want live in a way that when we die, they will tell stories and hold up examples and symbols of what a good life we’ve lived.   But even when circumstances act to make it impossible to live the kind of life that would earn us that, God’s act reaches us, comes to us, and gives us new life. 

Because that is who God is. That is what God does.

Before anything even happens, this story is already subversive; the gospel always flips the cultural script.  The one who has lived a good life and is a respected leader and a true disciple is a woman.  This woman has done so much for everyone.  The one who can’t do anything for himself is a man.  He has no good acts to commend him, for 8 years he’s been nothing but his need.  And the story of Jesus’ incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection gets played out equally in both their lives.  They both become part of the story of the church, shared and treasured, alongside each other.  

Because it is is Peter who comes to them, Peter through whom they are healed, Upon this Rock…! The foundations of St. Peter in Rome are built on their stories.  

In the name of Jesus Christ, to the paralyzed man, Peter says, Arise! Get up! Anesthi! 

To the dead woman, in Jesus' name, Peter says, Arise! Get up!Anesthi! 

And both of them do.

Their story speaks the Easter message: the resurrection of Jesus changes everything.  Death does not get to have the last word.  Not when it comes to us as suffering, or injury, or loss of mind or mobility, or the end of a dream or plan, and not when it comes to us as a life ended, and our accomplishments on display amidst our weeping loved ones.  

One of my very most favorite parts of being a pastor is doing funerals.  I don’t know if you’ve noticed on the bulletins at these things, but we don’t actually call it a funeral, a memorial service, or a celebration of life.  We call it “a service of witness to the resurrection.”  And all the loved ones who want to tell stories of their person, how good they were, what an impact they had, that is good and lovely.  It’s inspiring to see someone’s life defined by discipleship or charity, marked by goodness and kindness.  

It’s beautiful and important to celebrate a life well lived. 

But even those who’ve lived a good life, that’s not the totality of who they are.  There is the darkness too, inside all of our stories. The pain we’ve caused, the pain we hide.  The failures and struggles we’ve never overcome.  Sometimes it feels like there’s an invisible scale held up, and we feel the need to pile up our good on one side against the bad on the other and hope it tips us enough in the right direction in order to have been considered a worthy life.

But what about the life cut short? The life misdirected? What about the secret sins we hide, the failures we fear ever letting out into the light in case they cement our unworthiness around us? 

When we gather, the final word spoken over us is witness not to the goodness or worthiness of our lives. It is a witness to the resurrection of our Lord.  That each of our lives, in myriad ways, reveals the grace of God that comes to us in our places of death, and brings new life.  That each of us is a unique window into the story of the Divine who joins us and redeems us, and connects us in love to God and each other.  

No matter how worthy or worthless, well-lived or wasted, impressive or depressing, productive or paralyzed, no matter what proof there is of goodness or lack of opportunity to try, each life is a witness to the love and grace of God. 

My uncle doesn’t even know his diagnosis or prognosis yet.  He’s stuck in the horror of waiting and dread.  (Lord, have mercy, O God, draw near!)  But none of us knows our trajectory or our end, really.  We get the chance to live as good a life as we can.  And we should help each other do that.  But we should also know this: we will not be measured by how well or poorly we accomplished that.  

When this life is over, we will be mourned and missed, and we will be embraced and welcomed by the God who took on all sin and death so that nothing might ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.  The value and worth of our lives is already declared over us by the God who claims the world in love, and names each one, Beloved, child of God.  Everything else is the canvas on which that story is painted, the paper on which that portrait is written.  

When all is said and done, the infinite grace of God shines through the windows of our lives, witnessing to the limitless love and resurrection power of the God who repeatedly and continuously interrupts death with new life, Anesthi! Arise, Get up and live!

Amen.

The story of your life

Acts 9:1-22

According to a study conducted by political scientists at Louisana State University and the University of Maryland,  

"Just over 42 percent of the people in each party view the opposition as "downright evil." “Nearly one out of five Republicans and Democrats agree with the statement that their political adversaries “lack the traits to be considered fully human — they behave like animals.””

But their line of questioning did not stop there.  They continued by asking, “Do you ever think: ‘we’d be better off as a country if large numbers of the opposing party in the public today just died’?”

 And some 16 percent of Republicans (or 7.9 million voters) and 20 percent of Democrats (that translates to 12.6 million voters) do think on occasion that the country would be better off if large numbers of the opposition died. 

(As reported in the NY Times)

Every human being is living out of a story. 

Saul had a story. Saul’s story was that the Israelites had been corrupted by bad ideas. They had been tarnished by interaction with the wrong kind of people. Saul has the pure ideal  - what you believe matters a great deal. How you live matters. 

For Saul, it was crystal clear. The right way of life is threatened by these bad people, who worship not the true God, but a man, a criminal killed by the death penalty. These people are are not just wrong, they are evil. They are warping the truth and leading good people astray.  They must be stopped.  Saul is a righteous man. He is full of righteousness. He is morally right, his cause is just, he is virtuous and true, upright and worthy. And he gets lots of props for it.

Nobody decides to be self-righteous.  But we live out of stories that perpetuate it.  I am this so I am clearly not that. I identify with this group, so by default, and sometimes gradually, I agree to abhor that group.  I hold to this ideal, am guided by these good and right principles, so how can I associate with those who do not hold to what is good?  I am confident of my rightness, bolstered in it, secure beyond doubt by all the things that keep reinforcing my story, and therefore I am dead certain of their wrongness. 

Left to our own devices we will all seek to justify ourselves at the expense of others. This is, by the way, sin. Disconnection from God and each other.  Left to our own devices we will seek righteousness at every turn; we are so very tempted to be right.  We will make enemies faster than friends, and they’ll last longer. 

Saul is going to Damascus with a story. 

He’s a zealot for the faith, drawing on the stories in Hebrew scripture of those whose holy zeal pleased the Lord, and who turned Israel away from their sin and corruption and back to God. He is fanatical and relentless, invested and dedicated,and has become a rather famous heretic-hunter. A few chapters back he held the coats and watched while the Jesus-follower Stephen was stoned to death. Because with evil spreading like this, perhaps it might be better if large numbers of these folks just died.

Saul had a story, and his life had one mission: to stamp out evil and stand up for what is good and right and true. Imagine if Saul had had a Twitter feed.  All that he could accomplish today!

We are almost through our year on grace, friends. And our theme right now is grace infinite – grace that comes to us, and through us, and keeps going, never running out. Grace is the way God interrupts our story and gives us a new one. God either meets us in our places of death and nothingness, or requires that something in us die and we face our nothingness, so that we might find real life. 

Saul is on his quest for God, guided by his story, firm in his ideals, righteous and true.  And it’s all going as planned when suddenly, in a blinding light and voice from heaven, he is confronted by voice, who calls him by name.  Saul, why are you persecuting me? 

Who are you? He answers. 

And God, the great I am, answers him with a name.

I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. 

Get up and enter the city and you’ll be told what to do.

And Saul is thrown into an identity crisis. 

An identity crisis is when the story you are living no longer works for you. 

All you thought made the world make sense no longer holds up.  

A person in an identity crisis is a person without a story.

Saul’s story is taken from him. He is a person without a story.

Directionless and helpless, he is led by the hand into the city like a frightened child. For three days he lives in darkness, confusion and fear, unable to eat or drink. 

Then the voice of God calls out again. 

But this time it’s Ananias, one of the community of Jesus-followers, whom God calls by name. 

Ananias. 

Here I am, Lord. He answers, all faith and eagerness, just like the prophet Isaiah, Here I am, Lord, send me!

Everyone has a story, and Ananias is no exception. 

He is a follower of Jesus the Christ.  He is ready to do as God commands. He also knows who Saul is.  And he and his community have every reason to despise and fear him. 

Saul is the enemy. His ideology is wrong, his beliefs are dangerous, and, if the rumors are to be believed about what he has done, he may even be lacking the traits to be considered fully human — he behaves like an animal, after all.

God tells Ananias to go to this certain street to a certain house and find this certain man, Saul of Tarsus. This man is praying and has seen a vision of Ananias coming to lay hands on him so that he regains his sight. 

But Ananias balks. Perhaps he hasn’t heard correctly. Perhaps God is not informed as to exactly who this person really is, what evil he’s done. Certainly God cannot mean for Ananias to help this man. He’s the enemy.  

Our stories are very, very powerful.

‘Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem; and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name.’ 

But God says, Go, I have chosen him to be an instrument to bring my name before Gentiles and Kings and the people of Israel, I myself will show him how much he is to suffer in my name. 

So Ananias goes, even though it could be a trap. Even though this person is someone he has good reason to fear and distrust, in humility he goes to share in Saul’s death experience. 

He goes in the ministry of being with someone in an identity crisis.

Ananias arrives and finds Saul in his paused state of weakness and waiting, a man without a story.  Ananias places his hands on Saul, and touching him, he calls him, “Brother Saul” and says, “the Lord Jesus Christ, whom you met on the road, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” 

And when they encounter one another, it’s Jesus they meet.  

No idea will save you.  No rightness or righteousness will save you.  Only encounter with the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus did not give Saul an ideology, a superior insight or a moral high ground. He gave him a person: I am Jesus. 

I am Jesus whom you persecute. 

I am Jesus whom you now meet in the touch and ministry of another.  

I am Jesus who crucifies your story and gives you another in its place. 

And from there Saul finds himself welcomed into the community of Jesus- followers, that just a few days earlier he had intended to destroy.  And they find themselves welcoming in this one they knew as their oppressor who had been intent on their destruction.  

And the grace of God meets them all in the person of the other. 

When Saul comes to the Damascan community of Jesus-followers, he is no longer the invincible warrior for God, fighting for what is right. His self-righteousness is gone. His upbringing, education and training in reason or argument cannot bolster him.  His undisputed faith or stellar reputation are now meaningless. His legendary courage and rock solid conviction of purpose are worse than worthless here. 

All of Saul’s somethingness has been stripped away.  

He comes vulnerable. He comes in his nothingness.  

He comes only as a person, among persons.

And they receive him. 

They release their idea about him and receive him as a person.  

They give him a bed, and meals, and friendship. They tell him the resurrection stories and talk about their own trust and transformation.  Instead of revenge or retaliation for the death of Stephen, instead of fear and shunning and self-protection, they see him and receive him as a person and love him.

In the Body of Christ, Saul experiences the risen Messiah. The voice who called out to him from the blinding light is given hands, and faces, and names, flesh and foibles and families. They become his ministers, and they receive each other as Christ.

In the presence of their enemy they surrender their own story and receive a new one. It’s a story of healing, nurture and blessing. And forgiveness. They forgive Saul. And his story is reframed and retold, as God’s interruption of grace always does. 

Now he looks back at his life and sees the damage he has done, and the futility of his self-righteousness, and the truth of his belovedness and belonging to God and to these others.  

Who are you, Lord? 

I am Jesus, the person whom your ideas persecute. 

I am found among those you are persecuting. 

And so are you. 

Your identity is given to you, your story is restored, in the ministry of shared weakness and death, in the encounter between persons.

We don’t want to see each other as persons. Marshall Rosenberg, the founder of Non-violent communication, says, "It's hard to believe that those who are doing things far outside our value system are human beings like the rest of us. It's very challenging."   

We wont give the benefit of doubt to each other because we are afraid.  

Perhaps we’re scared of an identity crisis. 

What if we lose our story? What if this person makes me change my ideas?  

What if accepting this person is the same as accepting their ideas?  

What if their false and dangerous ideas spread to the people I care about?  

What if, by seeing them as human, equal and beloved, our story is corrupted, and we no longer know who we are?  

The human temptation is always toward self righteousness. It is always toward building our own somethingness. We are always tempted to write our own story. To build and maintain our own identity. To form our own I am from our ideas and accomplishments. 

But the Christian life is one of being knocked to the ground and given an identity crisis, and then a new story. 

Saul dies to his story of zealous righteousness, and awakens to his story of grace, experienced alongside these others whom he had seen as enemy. This experience is so transformative that it becomes his story, his life message, his purpose.  Everything he had been about up till now is seen anew through the lens of amazing grace. Throughout all the letters he ends up writing and all the places he ends up going, before the Gentiles and Kings and people of Israel he speaks to, Saul tells his story as a recovering self-righteous-aholic who has been saved by grace.

We find out a few verses later that Saul’s name is changed to Paul – which means, “Humility,” perhaps the last name that he, or anyone else, would think to give to this man. And yet, he lives into it – even up against his own reoccurring instinct toward self-righteousness, which he names, grace is the story he keeps living and telling. And it turns out Ananias' names means "The Lord gives grace."

We call this story, “the conversion of Paul.” But it’s also the conversion of Ananias, and the conversion of the Damascan community of Jesus-followers.  It’s the transformation of all of them.  To follow Jesus is to welcome Christ in the person of their enemy.  To serve God is to come vulnerably to be cared for by God at the hands of their enemy.

Everyone is living from a story.  In any other story we have about ourselves, our jobs or families, our educations or accomplishments, in what we’ve lost or survived, it becomes easy to start thinking, “I did that. I earned that. I survived that. I guess I was great.”  It’s easy to see ourselves as the good and others as the bad, easy to place ourselves above, over and against one another. 

But you can’t do that in a story of cross and resurrection. You can’t get comfortable in the rightness of your ideas in a story that keeps sending you back to your sin, back to your nothingness, to find there the person of Jesus Christ, who meets us with grace and forgiveness and belonging we can’t earn. 

You were in sin and Jesus found you.  That is the story of your life. That is the story of Saul’s life now. And we have the freedom to live now out of this story. Inside all the other stories in our lives- our jobs and our families, our communities and the things we care about and pursue, inside them now we live this story: that we are sinners saved by grace.  Like good and holy Saul, like faithful Ananias and the Jesus-followers of Damascus, we are always in need of conversion.

Where is Jesus saying to you today, I am Jesus whom you persecute?

Or, I am Jesus whom you meet in the touch and ministry of another?  

Or, I am Jesus who crucifies your story of righteousness and gives you a story of grace in its place? 

Grace comes to us, and through us, and keeps going, never running out. In grace, Jesus calls us by name and gives us an identity crisis. Then the Holy Spirit brings us to other persons, to find there between us the very person of Christ. Our story of disconnection from God and each other is crucified, and we are given a new story, of belonging to God and belonging to each other.  

May God resurrect us again.

Amen.

The Living

 Luke 24:1-12

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.

This Unsafe Life

Luke 19:28-44

 (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.