Sermon for August 13th, 2023

Readings:

1 Kings 19:9-18
Psalm 85:8-13
Romans 10:5-15
Matthew 14:22-33

A year ago a company called the Barna group released the results of a survey they performed among US protestant pastors. One of the questions that pastors were asked was this: Have you given real, serious consideration to quitting being in full-time ministry within the last year? Real, serious consideration to quitting the ministry. The answer: 42% said yes. 42%. Close to half. And what is remarkable is that that number had jumped up 13% from the last time the survey was conducted only a year before. What were the three main reasons these pastors gave for wanting to quit? The immense stress of the job, feeling lonely and isolated, and current political divisions. 

Now I am not sharing this with you as any sort of plea for sympathy, because although this job is a lot more stressful than many people realize, there are plenty of people who have stressful jobs. And I am not trying to scare anyone into thinking that I am a part of the 42%, because I’m not (let’s be clear), but I do understand the temptation to quit and the frustration that pastors go through. I get the stress, and the isolation, and the exasperation at the maddening, ridiculous politicization and polarization of everything right now. I get it, but none of those things are new. Stress isn’t new; isolation isn’t new; and political division isn’t new. And the temptation to quit serving God isn’t new either, and the clergy aren’t the only ones who feel it. 

In our passage from first Kings this morning we find the prophet Elijah at a low point in his ministry. The evil Queen Jezebel wants to kill him. He is running for his life. Despite all his efforts, people are still turning away from the one true God and worshipping false idols. Elijah has not been able to change or fix a thing. Society is still a mess. He wants to quit. He is so despondent he doesn’t want to eat, but God forces him to eat. He heads out into the wilderness, completely alone, a dejected failure. God asks him: “what are you doing here Elijah?” Elijah tells his sob story. God says “go outside” and before Elijah can even make it out into that terrifying world he hears a great wind, and then an earthquake and then a fire, but he can tell that God isn’t speaking in those great, cataclysmic things, but finally in the silence he can hear God’s voice. Elijah knows that God is present, and he covers his head and face out of respect. And God asks again: “what are you doing here Elijah?” And again, Elijah tells his sob story. This job is hard, I’m the only one, and everyone is against you and your prophets, oh and did I mention they are trying to kill me? And God offers Elijah the kind of pastoral advice that only God can give: Get back to work!

Go! Get back to work. Here is what you are going to do. You are going to minister to this political faction; and then you are going to minister to that political faction. You shouldn’t be doing this alone, so go and get Elisha to help you, but trust me to do the final sorting out. I know who has worshipped an idol and who hasn’t, and there will be faithful people in the land. There is going to be war and division. God says that plainly to Elijah. Fixing the world is NOT a burden that God has put on Elijah’s shoulders. Elijah has work to do, but that work requires him to have more faith in God and what God is doing than he does in his own abilities. Elijah had imagined that success in ministry would look like popularity and huge numbers of converts, and billions served like the hamburgers on a McDonalds’s sign. But what he learned is that true success is just being faithful to what God has called you to do. 

There is a pressure on religious leaders and religious communities right now to try and do everything, and be everything, and fix everything. In a world that is so broken, simple faithfulness is no longer praised or prized as much as innovation. We want entrepreneurs. We want social justice warriors with a superhuman zeal to go out and right every wrong. We want visionary leaders who will go out and change the world putting an end to disease, war, poverty, racism, ignorance, inequality and the list goes on. We want pastors who can walk on the water in the midst of stormy seas. And this pressure to go out and do everything and be everything, it comes from our leaders as much as it does our congregations. Maybe for some, it even comes from some place deep within. We want to save the world and somewhere along the way many of us discover that we can’t even save ourselves, so we want to quit. When we discover that we actually can’t walk on water, or transform the world into some utopian dream 42% of us want to quit. 

And if this is true for pastors, I imagine that some of this is true for people in the pews as well. If you think that the point of having faith is fixing the world, if that is what you think religion is about: a program for social transformation, then you are likely to get a little frustrated when you look around and see the world on fire in every direction. Perhaps you wonder: what’s the point? Stress, loneliness, political division, these things don’t just affect pastors, they affect all of us. All of us can be tempted to give up: give up on God, give up on ourselves, because we have created an unrealistic expectation of what success looks like. But what if true success is really just a matter of simple faithfulness to the call we have received? Not ingenuity, not creativity…just simple, stubborn faithfulness. How much good has been done in this world by the people who just showed up? Faithful people, not trying to fix the whole world, but just trying to follow Jesus as best they can. 

It was Jesus’s command to come that gave Peter the ability to walk on water, not his own power. As soon as Peter took his eyes off Jesus he sunk and realized very quickly that he still needed a savior. The same is true for us. The moment we take our eyes off of Jesus and what he is actually calling us to do; the moment we become more concerned about fulfilling our own agendas than faithfully following him, we sink. And we will drown if we don’t learn to grab onto him again. Jesus can give us the power to do amazing, impossible things, but it is his power, never ours. Elijah was called to minister to people on both side of a political divide, but that was God’s idea, not Elijah’s. The ministry is God’s; it isn’t ours. He is the one who calls, he is the one who sends, and ultimately he will decide what success and failure look like. Our job, whether we stand in the pulpit or sit in the pew, is to be faithful to the one who calls us. 

When that same survey that the Barna group sent out asked the pastors that had NOT considered quitting, what it was that made them want to keep working, what made them stay, they said two things overwhelmingly: that they believed in the value of their ministry, and that they felt that they had a duty to fulfill their calling into this ministry. Not self-confidence, not renewed vision, not growing churches. Belief in the value of your ministry and a sense of duty and calling. That is what keeps pastors showing up, and I think it is probably what keeps Christians showing up as well. A belief in the value of what you are doing, no matter how small it is, even if it is just showing up to pray. And a belief in, a faith in and a sense of duty to, the one who call us all: Jesus. Those two things can be summed up in one word: faithfulness. Faithfulness is something we should spend a little more time celebrating.

Sermon for July 16, 2023

Readings:

Isaiah 55:10-13
Psalm 65: (1-8), 9-14
Romans 8:1-11
Matthew 13:1-9,18-23

In the year 1701, Jethro Tull, the eighteenth-century British farmer and agriculturalist, NOT the 1970s rock band, invented a thing called a seed drill. It was a device that allowed farmers to plant seeds precisely: in rows at the proper depth, exactly where the farmer wanted them to go. It was really a revolutionary thing, because before that time the most common way of planting seeds, especially for field crops like grains, was called broadcasting. You took a handful of seed and you scattered it across the newly tilled soil. There are even manuals from the Tudor period in England explaining to farmers exactly how to do this. You take a step, and scatter. Another step, scatter. Step, scatter, step, scatter, on and on until you have covered your field. This was the way that planting was done pretty much as far back as anyone could remember. It was effective, but it wasn’t efficient, because you couldn’t control exactly where the seeds went. Inevitably some seeds would wind up on your footpath, in untilled soil, and of course you always had to worry about things like weeds and birds. Before Tull’s invention of the seed drill this was simply the life of the farmer. It was the way that things were. You knew that some seed would be wasted and you accepted that because you also knew that a lot of it would grow. Broadcasting wasn’t efficient, but it did work. 

If you look at this method of farming through modern, enlightened eyes, you are liable to think, as Jethro Tull did, that this is a problem that must be fixed. This is wasteful. This is inefficient, which in our modern world is just about the most horrible thing ever. God forbid something should be inefficient! We must find a way to stop scattering seeds in places where it is unlikely to grow. We must fix this problem. That is what Jethro Tull saw when he saw seeds being scattered in the field. A problem that needed to be fixed. But Jesus saw something different.

Jesus and all of his disciples would most certainly have been aware of how fields were planted. They would have understood how broadcasting worked. But what Jesus saw in the practice of scattering seed across the field was not just a farmer planting his crops; Jesus saw an image of how God works. Jesus saw in the sower a symbol or an image of God and God’s kingdom. And that is what he wants his disciples to see. This is what Jesus does all the time; he takes an everyday symbol, often from farms and fields, and he uses it to help his followers see God at work, in their everyday lives. 

How is God at work in the world? God is like a sower scattering his seeds across his field. God’s word, God’s grace is being cast all over. Is it landing in soil that is rough and rocky? Yes. Do enemies encroach? Yes. Is that seed, that word, that grace always going to produce the fruit that it could? No. Is every poor sod that gets a seed or a kernel deserving of such? No. But God goes on sowing. He keeps scattering seed relentlessly, even on pieces of ground that don’t deserve it and where it isn’t likely to produce much fruit. Why? Is God a fool? Does God need a seed drill to make sure his grace and his word is neatly and efficiently planted? What does Jesus want us to do with this image of God that he is sharing with us?

What does Jesus want us to do? Well my suggestion to you is this: nothing. Jesus isn’t asking us to do anything in this lesson today. I know that is hard for some people to hear. Especially if you are the sort of person that is a fixer, or if you have spent so much time in corporate performance improvement that you can’t look at any process without trying to make it more efficient, but it may just be possible that Jesus is simply revealing a truth to us. That this is, quite simply, the way things are. God scatters his grace broadly, but it doesn’t always bear fruit every place it lands. That is a reality that we are probably not going to change. Jesus isn’t telling us to do anything about it. Now Jesus has never been shy about telling his disciples to do something when he wants them to do something. The gospels are filled with Jesus giving specific instructions and commandments. But he doesn’t do that here. The only instruction that Jesus gives here is “Listen!” Listen. In part of the passage that gets cut out, Jesus tells his disciples that they need to know some of the mysteries of the kingdom and that is why he is speaking to them in parables and helping them to understand and see and interpret the symbols of God’s kingdom. Jesus isn’t looking for action here; he is looking for understanding. But he also tells the disciples quite plainly: some people won’t get it. Some people won’t understand, but Jesus wants his disciples to understand. So he uses symbols to reveal to them God’s kingdom.

God is like that man in the field casting his grain seeds. The seed is good. The seed has life within it and can bear fruit. It always has the potential to grow, but sometimes it doesn’t. Whether the seed lands on hard soil, or whether it is consumed by weeds and birds, sometimes it just doesn’t grow. But sometimes it does. Much of the time it does and bears fruit abundantly, and that is enough to keep the sower sowing. The sower doesn’t seem too concerned about the seed that lands on the path. God sows his word, his grace in this world, knowing, knowing that some of it is going to land on hard soil and won’t grow, or won’t grow for long. But he keeps on sowing. Some of God’s grace lands in place where it simply can’t bear fruit, but he keeps scattering it anyways. Why? Well, perhaps because some of it does bear fruit, and that is enough. It is enough for the sower to know that some of the seed will bear fruit. Some of it will grow. To the modern mind this is foolishness and inefficiency and waste. But to our Lord this is the mystery of the kingdom.

It is a human tendency to want to try and fix this system of wastefulness, to make all of the seeds grow, but Jesus isn’t asking us to do that at all. Not here. The thing is, I don’t think we are always very good at knowing how to prepare the soil or what helps things grow or not grow. That was actually one of Jethro Tull’s problems. He couldn’t fathom how manure could be good for growing anything, but it is. Manure actually helps crops grow. So you see, even if we are clever enough to devise a tool to control where seeds go, we don’t always know what is good soil and what is bad. Jesus doesn’t ask us to make God’s kingdom more efficient. Jesus will eventually send his disciples out with instructions to preach, baptize, heal and forgive, they would be sent out to sow God’s word in the world and to show people his grace, but Jesus also repeatedly makes clear to them that much of their work will not produce the fruit they desire. Some people will outright reject them, some people will convert and backslide, some will just wander away. Jesus tells them and makes it very clear, that this is the way that it is. It is not a sign of failure; it is not a sign of not working hard enough; it just is. We go on sowing seeds knowing that some people won’t get God. Some people won’t respond to grace. When you accept that, when you accept that some seed just isn’t going to land where it can grow and when you stop worrying about it and making it some personal failure, then you can get on with the scattering and that’s more important because much of the seed that you scatter does grow. 

We work very hard to try and sow the seeds of the gospel here. But some people have no interest in the story we tell. Some people seem enthusiastic and want to sign up for everything and then disappear two weeks later. Some people just drift away, finding one excuse after another to come less and less until they forget why they ever came at all. Frustrating, yes. But on the other hand, some people come here and find this place to be part of the bedrock of their lives and the people here become family and Jesus’s story becomes their story and their lives do indeed bear much fruit. You can never be too sure how people are going to respond. This is how God’s kingdom grows. Not in neat and efficient little rows and not always in the places that we expect. 

God’s method of spreading his kingdom isn’t always efficient, but it is effective.

Sermon for July 2nd, 2023

Readings:

Jeremiah 28:5-9
Psalm 89:1-4,15-18
Romans 6:12-23
Matthew 10:40-42

There is a battle going on in this morning’s Old Testament lesson, only the excerpt that you heard was so short that you aren’t likely to appreciate everything that is happening, so I want to fill in some of the details for you. There is a battle or a duel taking place in public between two different prophets: Jeremiah and Hananiah. One of these prophets has a message of good news, and one of them has a message of bad news and the people need to decide which one of these prophets to put their faith in.

You see, it is a critical time for the Kingdom of Judah and the people of Jerusalem. There has been corruption, and bad leadership in the kingdom for some time now. Bad kings, faithless priests, questionable prophets. People have wandered away from the covenant, worshipped foreign Gods or pretended to worship God of Israel while they really just did whatever they wanted. Some people didn’t even bother to try and follow the commandments. Society is a bit of a mess. And now, a foreign king, the king of Babylon, has invaded, looted the temple and hauled some of the kingdom’s elite off into exile. It is a critical time and people are wondering what to do and what comes next. They look to their prophets for answers, but then they get two very different messages. 

One prophet has a message of good news. He tells the people this present suffering is going to quickly pass away. Two years, tops! Happy days are coming soon. King Nebuchadnezzar will soon see the error of his ways, or God will somehow correct him, the holy vessels will be returned to the temple, our exiles will come home, we will be set free from the Babylonian yoke and there will be peace and prosperity in the land. Two years. Just wait, this will all soon be over.

The other prophet has a much more sobering message. There’s a long road ahead. Seventy years, he says! The king of Babylon isn’t going anywhere soon. There is going to be more suffering and hardship. There will be more exile. We are going to be taken places that we don’t want to go and we are going to have to serve rulers that we don’t want to serve. And, yes, our God is going to redeem us and restore us to the promised land, we believe that, but that is a distant vision and it is going to happen in God’s time, not our own. It will take at least a generation. God’s time is not our time. We need to be prepared to be in this for the long haul. We need to be playing the long game, because that is how God operates. God plays the long game. Well that is less good news. It’s not a very compelling message. Who to follow?

Better to follow the prophet of good news, right? I mean, he has positive energy and a vision. He sounds optimistic and confident. Let’s go with him. The problem is only one of these prophets is actually telling the truth. Only one is a true prophet, and it’s not the one most people want. 

In our passage from the Book of Jeremiah this morning, the prophet Hananiah has just been telling people that their national distress is going to be settled and resolved in two years. Hananiah says in two years this crisis will be over, the temple treasury will be restored and everyone will be back where they belong. Two years! Well a public figure saying two years sounds a lot to me like a contractor saying two weeks. Don’t worry, this job will be done in two weeks! Contractors are like lawyers, many of them are professional liars, and sadly a lot of prophets fit that description too. Maybe not outright liars perhaps, but some so-called prophets often have a tendency to let their own hopes and dreams and wishes interfere with the message that God is actually giving them. 

Hananiah makes this great prediction of two years and Jeremiah chimes in and says: Amen! Hallelujah! Let it be so! I hope you’re right. I hope that is a word from God. BUT, and this is a big but, all those other prophets that came before us, they all seemed to predict that there would be hard times. Do you have a better connection to God than they do? Then Jeremiah says sarcastically, look if peace comes, then I will know you really are a prophet and that you really did get a message from God, but not until then, because God didn’t tell anyone else that it would be that easy. Jeremiah never found that promise in God’s word, so he wasn’t ready to put any of his faith in a quick fix. He would love to see it, but it’s not what his hope is founded on. 

That’s where our passage ends this morning. The battle continues for a little bit afterwards, and then Hananiah drops dead. I guess it is an occupational hazard for people who claim to speak in God’s name. Watch what you say! The true prophet in this story was Jeremiah who was saddled with the burden of telling people an unpopular truth. Jeremiah knew that the problems throughout the kingdom that he had been calling out for years, he knew that they have deep, deep roots and that they aren’t going to just go away before God does some radical pruning. There usually aren’t simple solutions to complex issues. Maybe God is going to use this Babylonian king to make us into something new, something better than we are right now. Jeremiah knew that there were painful times ahead, but he still had faith that God could and would work out something wonderful through it. That wasn’t a message that most people wanted to hear. People want simple, uncomplicated answers to complex problems. People want quick fixes and easy solutions. But that is not Jeremiah’s message. It was Hananiah’s message, not Jeremiah’s. But Jeremiah was the one who told the truth.

This is an unpopular truth: it is usually only bad things that happen quickly. Bad things happen quickly; good things take time. Sometimes a very long time. Maybe there are a few exceptions, but the world doesn’t often run on our schedules and we humans are an impatient lot. We want the world fixed now. But God doesn’t promise us quick solutions. Humans promise that; God doesn’t. Jesus, who had the power to raise the dead with a word and heal the sick with a touch, he didn’t tell his disciples that following him would be easy. He didn’t promise them quick solutions. If you’ve been following along in the gospel readings for the last few weeks, then you will know that he promised them just the opposite. Not peace, but a sword. Not unity, but division. Not acceptance, but rejection. Jesus promised his disciples that following him would be a long and hard road and that some people would reject them just like he was going to be rejected and just like the prophets like Jeremiah had been rejected long before him. Many people would reject their ministry and their message, but not everyone. Some people would welcome them, some people would receive their message, just like some people did receive the prophet Jeremiah’s message, as much as it sometimes seemed like bad news. And those people would be blessed. Blessed, because their hope was resting on truth and not on a lie. Blessed, because they were believing in God’s promises and not the empty promises of man. 

Jesus knew about the prophet Jeremiah. He quotes him and imitates him sometimes; we sometimes find Jeremiah’s words in Jesus’s mouth, so maybe Jeremiah’s message wasn’t actually bad news after all. It wasn’t the message people wanted, but it might have been the message they needed. As Christians, our hope, our faith needs to rest on truth, not on a lie. It needs to rest on God’s actual promises, not the fantasies we invent. And our faith and hope need to address the situation we are actually in, not the one we wish we were in. True Christian hope is rooted in reality. It is rooted in the world we live in and in the lives we live.

 In the next chapter of the book of Jeremiah, after Hananiah drops dead, Jeremiah writes a letter to some of the people that are already living in exile and this is what he tells them:

 Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. ⁶ Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. ⁷ But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. 

Jeremiah’s advice: get on with life. Live today. Plant, eat. Have babies, enjoy your family. Do the best you can. God’s grace can be found all over this broken world. You don’t need to wait for some glorious future day to experience God’s love and to see his promises fulfilled. You can experience that now. If you are waiting for the world to be a happy perfect place, before you find God in it, you may be waiting for quite a long time. But if you can learn to look past your broken dreams and shattered expectations, you just might find that God is in your life now. When you look at it that way, Jeremiah’s message might have been better than Hananiah’s. Maybe it was the good news all along.

Sermon for June 18th, 2023

Readings:

Exodus 19:2-8a
Psalm 100
Romans 5:1-8
Matthew 9:35-10:8(9-23)

God doesn’t want slaves. That is not how God’s grace works. That is not how God’s love works. God gives us life, God gives us freedom, but God doesn’t force us to follow him. God doesn’t force us to obey him. God does not force us into a relationship with him. God does not force us to serve him. That is not the kind of relationship that God wants with his children. God wants us to be able to choose him, because that is when the relationship becomes really powerful and real. True love is a choice. That is where real love happens, when both sides freely choose the other. It’s true that God loves us before we know how to love him, but God still wants us to love him, and to love him freely. We already belong to God, but God wants us to choose him.

Last Fathers’ Day was my first experience as an actual father and of course it is a joyous and wonderful thing to hold your newborn baby in your arms, but you know what I think might even be better than that? When your toddler chooses you over a bowl of cheerios. Seriously, when you have a child that is starting to really get around on his own and explore this mysterious and wonderful world, and that child is starting to make choices, and in a moment decides that he wants to come to you not because he is hungry or frightened or wants something, but just because he wants to play or give you a hug, well that is a whole ‘nother level of joy. It is one thing to feel love, but to feel that love returned to you is even more powerful. To rank over cheerios, even if it is just for a moment, that is winning. It’s a win because you know in those moments that the love IS love; it is sacrificial and self-giving and not just an instinct of survival. It is a little glimmer, a reflection of the love of God.

Because the love of God is a sacrificial and self-giving love. It is a love that God gives us freely, without any merit on our part, and really the only way that we can respond to that love is by giving and showing the same love in return. We can choose to love God and to love others the way that God chooses to love us. God doesn’t want slaves. God wants our relationship with him and our relationships with each other to be based on true love, not coercion, not brute force, and not manipulation. God does not HAVE to love us, or save us, or even live in relationship with us, he chooses to. And God gives us the choice to love him in return. We are free to embrace God and we are free to walk away. We have a choice.

In the Book of Exodus, after the Israelites have been freed from slavery in Egypt, they travel for about three months and then come to the base of Mount Sinai. It is there that God gives them a choice. Now mind you, he has already saved them. God has already set these people free, but now God gives the Israelites a choice: you have seen my love for you, now you can follow me, live in a special relationship with me, follow my commandments and treasure me the way I treasure you, or you can go on your way. God gave the Israelites a choice. And they chose God. With one voice they proclaim: “everything that the Lord has spoken, we will do.” Now you may think, of course they chose God, they are in the middle of the desert, what else are they going to do? But there are actually several times in this whole story where the people are seriously tempted to turn back and go back to the Egyptian way of life, even slavery, and there are several times when the people reaffirm their commitment to following God, even when they are living comfortably in the promised land. But each and every time, they are free to choose. They are free to choose, because God doesn’t want slaves.

When Jesus sent out his disciples he told them to proclaim, cure, raise the dead, heal the sick, cast out demons, give freely without expecting anything in return. Jesus told them to love and bless people, and if that love was returned to them, then well and good, but if that love wasn’t returned, if the disciples weren’t received, then Jesus said, just move on. He didn’t say drag them kicking and screaming to church; he didn’t say pound them over the head and badger them; Jesus invites people to follow him, he doesn’t put them in chains. God invites people to his banquet, but he doesn’t force them to come, because God doesn’t want slaves. 

God gives us the choice to follow him or not. God gives us the choice to love him or not. And God gives us the choice to love LIKE him or not. Sadly, because we humans are sinful, broken creatures, loving like God is very often NOT the choice that we make. God doesn’t want slaves, but we often do. Because loving like God is hard. It’s risky. Giving people freedom and letting them make choices is hard because they might make the wrong choices. It is so much easier just to force people to do what you want, and it’s much more profitable. The Egyptians knew that. Humans throughout history have known that. My ancestors knew that. Picking cotton is hard. If you’ve got the power and the money, let someone else do the hard work. 

 Tomorrow is Juneteenth, the celebration of the end of American institutional slavery. Needless to say, it is a good thing to celebrate, but we need to remember that American slavery was not a one-off or a unique episode in world history. It was yet another example of what human beings will do to one another in the name of money and power. It is another reminder of just how unlike God we can be. God sets people free, and we keep putting them back in chains. God sets US free, and still we keep turning back to Egypt. We turn back to the very things that enslave us. God gives us the choice to follow him, but very often, we don’t.

Juneteenth and the freedom of American slaves is something to celebrate and remember, just like the freedom of the Israelites is something to celebrate and remember, but if we think that slavery is only to be found in history books then we are deluding ourselves. It changes its name, it changes its shape, but it’s still around throughout the world in subtle and insidious ways. The root of it lies within our own hearts. If you have the power to make someone do your will, it is so tempting to use it. That is how humans behave, but we are reminded throughout the scriptures that that is NOT how our God behaves. Men give you chains, but God gives you choices. Humans want slaves, but God doesn’t want slaves. God wants love. Love that is freely given. Love that is sacrificial and self-giving. Love that is a choice that we make. Love that says you matter to me more than cheerios. That is real love. God has already shown that love to us, but how we respond to that love is our choice. If we want a world with less slavery and less suffering we must make the choice to follow God, love God and love like God each and every day. It is a choice. God doesn’t force us to love him, because that love wouldn’t be real. God wants real love. God doesn’t want slaves. Our Father wants us to choose him.

Sermon for May 21, 2023

Readings:

• Acts 1:6-14
• 1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11
• John 17:1-11
• Psalm 68:1-10, 33-36

Anyone who promises you a life without suffering is a damned liar.

Seriously, anyone who says that you can have a life of unmitigated happiness, without pain, without suffering, without struggle, that person is a liar and I say damned liar very intentionally because that message doesn’t come from God. It comes from someplace or someone else. And it is a message we hear all the time. 

Politicians, clergy, journalists, activists, ad executives…there are good people in all of those professions, with good intentions, but they are all prone to falling into the devil’s trap, and the trap is this: confusing making the world a better place with making the world a perfect place. They confuse alleviating suffering with eliminating suffering. Alleviating suffering and eliminating suffering may sound like similar goals, but the truth is they couldn’t be more different. Because one of them is a commandment of God and the other is a temptation of the devil.

In our epistle this morning, Peter says to the church “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ’s sufferings.” Do not be surprised that you are suffering Peter says. Do not be surprised. Jesus told us that we would suffer. If we didn’t have any suffering or any struggle in this life, then Christ would be a liar and our faith would likely be in vain. Don’t be surprised. Especially if you are following a crucified man, don’t be surprised to find some crosses in your life. That’s the bad news, but the good news is that if we are sharers in Christ’s sufferings then we are also gonna be sharers in his glory. Christ does not promise us a life without pain or struggle, but what he does promise us is the Holy Spirit. Having the Holy Spirit means that we never have to struggle alone. We are never abandoned by God when we have his spirit. That spirit is his presence with us in the midst of suffering. It is his spirit which gives us strength and patience. It is the spirit that heals us. And it is his spirit that gives us wisdom and courage to respond to suffering when we encounter it. That is why Peter can say that if you are feeling rejected and reviled right now, especially if you are being rejected for being a follower of Jesus, you are still blessed, because you have the Spirit of God resting on you.

But, Peter has more to say, and as usual the lectionary tries to cut all the good bits out. Immediately after Peter says you have the spirit of God resting on you, he says: “But let none of you suffer as a murderer, a thief, a criminal, or even as a mischief maker.” Some suffering we bring on ourselves and some suffering just happens. Now, I am not a believer in Karma, which is the idea that people get what they deserve. I am a believer in grace, which is the idea that people don’t get what they deserve and that that is a very good thing. But still I do believe in a world of cause and effect, and sometimes we do cause our own suffering. There is a difference between suffering for trying to follow the commandments and suffering because you’re not trying to follow them or can’t be bothered.  Like Peter, I think that it would be a very good thing if you weren’t the chief cause of your own suffering. Now you may be thinking that you’re not a murderer, a thief, or even a criminal, but I will warn you that mischief maker is a pretty broad category that not many of us are going to escape. Because we are all sinful humans, we are all gonna have some of both types of suffering in our lives, we can all be mischief makers from time to time, and I trust the Lord to forgive and judge righteously, but we need to be careful not to blame God when we are suffering for our own bad behaviour, and dare I say, stupidity. And we should try to avoid that as much as we can. But there is plenty of suffering we are never going to be able to avoid. 

Peter says, “let those who suffer in accordance with God’s will entrust themselves to a faithful creator, while continuing to do good.” Trust God and do good. That’s the answer. Whether you are suffering or not, trust God and do good. Trust God, not yourselves. Don’t be too confident that your suffering is from your good behavior and someone else’s suffering is from their bad behavior. Don’t be proud or arrogant. Trust God, do good, but be humble about it. Peter says “all of you must clothe yourselves with humility in your dealings with one another, for God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

I think the idea that we, through our own good choices and our own good deeds, are someday going to completely eliminate suffering, appeals to our pride. We want to save the world and somehow we keep getting this idea that God has somehow promised us a life without suffering. We think it is an achievable goal. We think it is a right. But Jesus doesn’t promise us that. He promises us the Holy Spirit, he promises us grace, he promises us his love and protection in the midst of our suffering. But we will suffer. Here is the problem with mistaking alleviating suffering with eliminating suffering: one of them is something that all of us can do, and one of them is something that none of us can do. One of them is achievable, the other isn’t. 

You can alleviate suffering by handing someone a glass of water. A kind word, a thoughtful gesture, showing love, compassion and mercy, these things alleviate suffering and we all can do them. They alleviate suffering, but they don’t eliminate it. If your goal is eliminating suffering, small acts of compassion and love won’t really help. So why bother with them? That’s the problem with trying to eliminate suffering: the goal is too big. And we end up focusing so much on achieving the impossible that we usually end up neglecting the possible. It is the same with every type of suffering we try to eliminate: poverty, racism, sexism. We all have the power to make someone’s life better through small acts of compassion, mercy and kindness. We can all do some good, and even if there isn’t much we can do, we can be present with people who are suffering and even that does some good. But if the only way we think we can be victorious in this fight is through the complete elimination of suffering, then we are setting ourselves up for failure. We will give up on the little acts of kindness altogether if we don’t see in each one of them a little victory over the evil and suffering that is present in the world. That is how we truly fail. This is how some revolutionary regimes end up perpetrating some of the greatest evils on the world. People become convinced that a perfect, suffering-free world is achievable and then somehow it doesn’t matter how much suffering has to be inflicted to make it happen. But Jesus didn’t command us to fix the world. What he commanded us to wash one another’s feet and to love one another.

We are all going to suffer in this life. Our Lord told us that that would be the case. And you never know how someone might be suffering, because it doesn’t always show on the surface. There is deep physical pain, there is psychological pain, there is always stuff going on in people’s lives that you know nothing about. Our job as Christians is to respond to suffering when we encounter it with mercy and grace. Our job is to alleviate suffering when we can, doing what we can, but not being overwhelmed or distracted by the misguided desire to fix everything or everyone and not falling prey to the false notion that God’s people are ever going to be able to eliminate suffering from their lives or the lives of others. Following Jesus will not eliminate suffering from your life, so we don’t need to be surprised when it comes along. But the cross is always a reminder to us that we don’t suffer alone. Our Lord is with us in our suffering and promises us grace and glory on the other side of suffering. 

Redeemed and alleviated suffering is the promise of Christ. Eliminated and avoided suffering is the someone else’s lie. 

Sermon for the Coronation Evensong

May 7th, 2023

There is only one true priest in the church. I have said this many times. We have only one great high priest and that is Our Lord Jesus Christ. And yet, hear I stand and there Father Matt sits, two individuals that have been each ordained as priests to serve God and his church. But you see, our priesthood is really just a sharing in Christ’s priesthood. It is his words that we proclaim, his offering that we offer, his blessing that we share. It is his example and teaching that we each seek to follow, although perhaps feebly and falteringly at times. All the power in the ministry of the priesthood belongs to Christ, it is not our own. The same thing can be said of the glory: the fancy robes and the attention we sometimes get and the respect that is often afforded us, it doesn’t belong to us as individuals, it belongs to Christ. We don’t deserve any of this. When we are ordained we are given the opportunity to share in his priesthood, but make no mistake, it is his priesthood. We are called, ordained or set-apart for a special vocation, but it’s not because there is anything individually extraordinary about either one of us; what really matters for priests is our ability and willingness to serve the one who truly is extraordinary. 

Now everything that I have just said about priests could, I think, equally be said about Kings and Queens. There is only one true King in this world. There is but one King of the Universe and that is our Lord Jesus Christ; the king of kings and lord of lords. There may be many different kings and queens that serve in his name, but kings, like priests are at their best when they are truly aware of who the real king is, and who they are truly serving. Kings, like priests don’t really deserve the honor and glory they are given, but then at the end of the day it isn’t really being given to them. It is being given to the one they serve. That is really what the pomp and circumstance is all about. 

Have any of you ever been to the ordination of a priest? If you go to a priestly ordination, it more or less goes like this: the candidate is first presented, then the candidate makes solemn vows and affirmations, there are prayers and symbolic acts of humility, scripture readings and a sermon, then the candidate is touched by the bishop and anointed with holy oil. Then the priest is vested according to his or her office with fancy robes, and is often given symbolic gifts that remind them of the work that they are to do. Then the eucharist is celebrated and finally the new priest is sent out to do the work that God has called him or her to do. If this order of service sounds vaguely familiar to you, it may be because this is quite similar to what you will have witnessed at yesterday’s coronation of King Charles III. For good reason.

To be an anointed king is to be set apart for a special vocation. We don’t often think of kings and queens as being ordained in the sense that priests are, but there is nonetheless something quite holy about the work that they are charged to do. Serving others is holy work. Living your life as a symbol that points people to a higher power, and sacred ideals and timeless values is holy work. Serving the king of kings, even as a king, is holy work. Which is why the coronation service only really works in the church in the context of Christian worship. Kings, like priests, need to be reminded of where their power comes from and who they truly serve. The work that they are called to do is holy work, and because it is extremely difficult work, kings and queens deserve our prayers. 

There will always be those who look at all of this and say “why bother?” There are people who think that monarchy is unsuitable for the modern age and a waste of time, money and resources. Oh well. There are people that don’t see the point of kings, just like there are people that don’t see the point of priests. Often these are the same people. Some people just don’t want to believe that there is a king of kings or a great high priest, much less that he calls ordinary men and women into his service. Oh well. You can preach your best sermon, and some will still remain unconverted. Oh well. If you want to live a drab life, without glory or majesty, without spectacle or reverence, without honor and duty, without beauty and mystery, then go right ahead, but its not the life for me. And as I think we witnessed both with the spectacle of the late queen’s funeral and with the majesty of yesterday’s coronation service, it isn’t a life that many people truly want. We need the majesty and the pomp and circumstance. We need holy oils and sacred rituals. We all need to be reminded, kings, priests and lay folks too, we all need to be reminded that we serve a majestic, higher power, and that through that power we can do amazing things, not in serving ourselves, but in serving God and others. We have all been anointed by the one whose very name means “anointed”: Christ. 

Today we give thanks for the coronation of King Charles III. May it be a reminder to all of us that we too have been anointed to serve the same king that he does. 

Readings:

• Acts 7:55-60
• 1 Peter 2:2-10
• John 14:1-14
• Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16

I think that it is critical for Christians always to remember that the head of our faith, the head of the church, the individual that we hold and believe to be God incarnate and the savior of the world, is someone that the world rejected. Rejected. The founder of our faith is someone who was rejected. You would think that the cross would make that clear to us, but it is amazing how often we forget it. We forget that Christianity hasn’t always been popular. Jesus hangs on the cross because he was rejected. When the people had a choice, they chose Barabbas. 

Sure, Jesus had a following for a while. He had known popularity; thousands had flocked to hear him preach or to be healed by him, but on the day that it really mattered, on the day when people were asked to choose, they chose Barabbas. When we got to choose, we didn’t choose God. We have to remember that, because as people of faith we are called to be concerned with the will of God. Things like right and wrong, that should matter to us. God’s will for our lives, God’s will for the world, that should matter to us. We should care. Maybe we will never be perfect; maybe we will always make mistakes, but we still need to be able to recognize that they are, in fact, mistakes. God, and God’s will should matter to us. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. 

But the cross should be an everlasting reminder that sometimes, many times, God’s will is not popular. God is not popular. Jesus was not always popular. Jesus was rejected. 

But Peter says that “the stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.” The cornerstone, the bedrock of our faith, is a stone that had been rejected by others. Thought unworthy, useless, flawed, maybe even weak. It was examined and cast aside by mortals, and yet it was precious in God’s sight. Peter didn’t make that line up though, he’s quoting from Psalm 118. Peter was writing his letter to share the good news of Jesus, but the fact that humans often reject God and God’s will, that was old news. Because you see this human tendency to reject and dismiss things, including individuals, that God values and treasures, this wasn’t a new phenomenon in Jesus’s day, this was human nature right from the get-go. Right from the beginning there has been this huge gap between what God wants and what we want. We have a long history of making bad choices, not just as individuals, but as entire societies. So what that means for us is, and what we must always remember, is that discerning the will of God is NEVER as simple as figuring out or following what is popular. What humans gleefully choose is often the opposite of God’s will. Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be that go in thereat. You just can’t trust opinion polls. Just because something is popular, doesn’t mean that it is good. 

Now that has always been a challenge for humans, but I think it is an even bigger challenge for us now in the 21^st century in the age of social media, because we are constantly polling everyone, instantly, all the time. Everything is measured in likes and shares. People treat surveys like they are divine oracles. We are surveyed on everything. And we are constantly told, in subtle and not subtle ways, that might makes right. Millions of people can’t be wrong can they? Or can they? 

Every week when we pass through the doors of this church, we step out of a world where popularity is everything, and we come face to face with a God who was rejected. Jesus was rejected. So that should always give us some perspective on popularity. At least popularity among us humans. In God’s eyes and in God’s kingdom, human popularity doesn’t mean anything. God can take rejects and turn them into a chosen race and a royal priesthood. 

That’s the good news: you don’t need to worry about being unpopular, or having an unpopular religion or unpopular beliefs. Being rejected by the world does not mean that you are rejected by God. That’s the good news.

But here’s the bad news. The bad news is that that means that you actually have to do the work of discerning and learning God’s will. And when you have done that you must find the will and the strength to do what is right and to be faithful, even if it means going your own way and taking an unpopular path. You can’t just go along with the crowd. You have to think and decide for yourself. That’s hard. 

But the cross is also a reminder to us that even though the world has a very long history of casting down things that are truly precious, God has an equally long history of raising them back up again. The resurrection, which we celebrate at every service, but most especially at this time of year, is not God’s seal of approval on our good judgements and opinions, but quite the opposite. It is God taking a stone that we had rejected and thought unworthy, and making it the chief cornerstone of a grand new temple and kingdom. 

Sermon for April 16th, 2023

Low Sunday

Readings:

• Acts 2:14a,22-32
• 1 Peter 1:3-9
• John 20:19-31
• Psalm 16

In the original version of the movie King of Kings, not the 1960s film with Jeffrey Hunter, but the 1920s silent movie directed by Cecil B Demille, we get one of the most brilliant introductions to the character of Jesus in the history of Jesus movies. It was also, fittingly, one of the earliest depictions of Jesus in film. In Cecil B Demille’s movie, the first time we ever see the face of Jesus is through the eyes of a blind little girl that he heals. We hear about Jesus. We meet his disciples and even his mother, but his face is revealed to the audience through the eyes of a blind person as the screen transforms from darkness into light, and in the midst of the light, there is Jesus, for the first time. 

That one little scene was an inspired triumph of Demille’s. Brilliant. What better way to meet Jesus than through the eyes of someone who cannot see without him? The little girl is blind. She cannot see at all without Jesus. She needs help. She knows that she needs help. She is looking for help. She is looking for Jesus. The disciples and Mary give her a hand, they guide her and bring her to Jesus, but only he can heal her. And he does. His power gives her sight. And when her eyes are opened, this little girl instantly knows that this is her saviour, literally at first sight. But here is the little twist: she doesn’t believe in Jesus because she sees him; she sees because she believes in Jesus. She believed in Jesus before her eyes were opened, before she ever saw him. Her belief in him didn’t come from something she saw; it didn’t come from an examination of the evidence; it came from someplace deeper. Her heart was open to belief, her heart was open to God, before her eyes were. She doesn’t believe in Jesus because she sees him; she sees because she believes in Jesus.

In stark contrast to this blind little girl are the Pharisees and the scribes and the temple authorities, all of whom can see with perfect vision. They can see Jesus just fine. We are told actually that they are watching Jesus. They aren’t searching for Jesus, they are watching him. What are they watching for? A mistake. They are using their eyes to judge Jesus. Is he going to heal on the sabbath? Is he going to observe the law the way we think he ought to observe the law? Is he up to our standards? That’s what they want to know. Is he worthy enough for us?! Their hearts are so closed to Jesus, that even when they see him perform miracles, right in front of their eyes, they don’t believe. 

So the movie begins with a blind girl who believes in and trusts in Jesus before she ever sees anything, and a bunch of folks who never believe in or trust Jesus no matter how much they see. Believing doesn’t come from seeing. It comes from a disposition of the heart. It comes from someplace within. It is worth mentioning, or worth remembering, that I am talking about a film here, and a silent film at that. Who is Demille’s audience here? Who is he talking to? Well I would venture to say that it’s not the blind. This is a visual medium. Demille is talking to sighted people and he is reminding them not to put too much faith in what they see. 

You can’t always believe what you see and you don’t always need to see in order to believe. It is a message that we find woven into John’s gospel. A few weeks ago we heard a story about Jesus healing a little boy who was blind from birth and at the end of that story Jesus says “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.” 

It is dangerous to put too much trust in what you see. Sometimes your eyes can deceive you. And it is possible to have perfect vision and to be completely blind to the spiritual realities of the world around you. You don’t need to see Jesus in order to believe in him. We are reminded of that again in today’s gospel which we always get the Sunday after Easter. Thomas didn’t see the risen Jesus on Easter Sunday, and he doesn’t want to believe the report that he is being given by the other disciples. He doesn’t trust them. He wants to judge for himself. He does see the risen Christ. He sees the marks of the nails in his hands and the wound in his side. But he is reminded by Jesus that you don’t need to see him in order to believe in him. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe. 

As the good news of Jesus’s resurrection began to spread throughout the region, it was only natural that the next generation of believers would be people who never saw Jesus in the flesh and never witnessed the Resurrection. Peter was aware of this too in his letter this morning when he writes “Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” From the very beginning there have been people who saw Jesus and didn’t believe in him and people who believed in Jesus without seeing him. Belief is more about the heart than it is the eyes. 

A few weeks ago I sent out with our weekly parish email a recording of one of my favorite Fanny Crosby hymns My Saviour First of All. Now if you don’t know the story of Fanny Crosby, you should. She was one of the most prolific hymn writers ever, composing something like 8,000 hymns. She was born in 1820 and died in 1915. Think about that for a second and everything that happened during her life. That was the entire Victorian age, plus the Edwardian age and a little more to spare. She wrote some of our favorite hymns: Blessed Assurance, To God be the Glory. She was a woman of profound faith who memorized vast passages of the scriptures. She was also blind her entire life. In her entire life she never saw one crucifix or stained-glass window or gilded icon or friendly sepia-toned Jesus picture. She never watched a movie about Jesus’s life. She never saw him with her eyes. At one point someone asked her how she would know Jesus when she got to heaven. That night she sat right down and wrote a hymn as an answer:

 When my life work is ended, and I cross the swelling tide,
When the bright and glorious morning I shall see,
I shall know my Redeemer when I reach the other side,
And His smile will be the first to welcome me.
I shall know Him, I shall know Him
And redeemed by His side, I shall stand.
I shall know Him, I shall know Him,
By the print of the nails in His hand.

I think of that hymn every time I hear this passage from John’s gospel and Thomas’s request and insistence to see Jesus’s wounds. Do we need to see them first in order to believe like Thomas, or can we like Fanny or the blind little girl in Demille’s film, can we choose to believe first and then through believing receive a more glorious vision than our earthly eyes could ever behold? 

I don’t condemn Thomas at all; he’s like so many of us. It is easy to only trust yourself and what you see with your own eyes. Jesus doesn’t condemn him for his skepticism and neither do I. And if the risen Jesus can get through locked doors maybe he can get through locked hearts too and convert the most recalcitrant souls. But still, I think it’s better if he doesn’t have too. 

Fanny Crosby knew that you could have life in Jesus’s name long before you ever meet him face to face. She didn’t believe because she saw, she saw because she believed.

Sermon for Easter Sunday 2023

Readings:

• Acts 10:34-43
• Colossians 3:1-4
• John 20:1-18
• Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24

The world looks pretty dark for Mary on her way to the tomb. Who is going to save her now? Who’s going to change this evil world? What hope does she have for the future? Jesus’s followers have good reason to despair on their way to the tomb. Mary Magdalene, the other Mary, Peter and John, they have good reason to despair; they have every reason to feel downcast and hopeless. What did they have to hope for? How were things ever going to get any better? What could they do? Nothing!

Jesus was dead. Jesus their teacher, their leader, their loved one, their friend…he was dead. 

He had been put to death a few days ago by a tyrannical and oppressive government. He was basically beaten to death and humiliated first and then they stripped him and nailed him to a cross on the outskirts of town. Horrifying. This was Roman justice; this was the Roman idea of good government. What hope did the disciples have now of life getting any better? What could they do to change this situation? Nothing. Every attempt to overthrow these horrible, corrupt leaders ended up failing. Throughout history it had been this way. If the Hebrew people managed to offload one despot, before too long there would come another. 

Despite most of what Jesus said and taught, some of his followers had still harbored a hope that he would be the one who would help them to finally overthrow the Roman oppressors and build a more just society. He would fix things, or at least lead them to fix things. Well where was that hope now? It was dead. Sealed in a tomb, behind a heavy stone that was being guarded by a couple of Roman guards. Even in death the Romans were still keeping them under their thumb. Guards outside a tomb! There was a chance that the women heading to the tomb wouldn’t even be able to anoint Jesus’s dead body. The Roman soldiers certainly weren’t going to give them a hand. Who would help them now? Who would lead them?

Herod? Don’t be ridiculous. He was just a Roman puppet. He was worse than the Romans because he colluded with them to oppress his own people. He’s got Jesus’s blood on his hands as much as Pilate did. Then what about Barabbas and the other violent revolutionaries that wanted to spill Roman blood? Would that work? Well those methods would be tried, but they wouldn’t end well. Jesus had predicted that there would be suffering and bloodshed and that the temple would be torn down and he was right. That is how Barabbas’s methods ended: violence and complete destruction. The politicians weren’t making anything better. The revolutionaries just made things worse. It was a hopeless situation.

What light was there in Mary’s world? What hope did the disciples have? Could they trust the clergy? Of Course Not! The priests and the religious leaders were mostly corrupt, crooked, or incompetent. They were the ones who had arrested Jesus in the first place. There were some good, faithful ones, but they weren’t capable of saving Jesus. What could they do now?

Even Jesus’s friends and followers had turned their back on him when things got tough. John was at the foot of the cross, but where were the other men? Hiding, that’s where. And I am sure that Peter was still in his own agony on this dark morning, realizing that he can’t even trust himself to do the right thing when the chips are down. When it mattered, Peter had turned his back on the Lord and denied ever knowing him. But all the disciples had failed to save Jesus. 

What does Mary have to hope for in this dark world? Good government? No. Competent religious leaders? No. Faithful friends of Jesus? Not even that. No the world can be a very dark place when evil surrounds you and you feel powerless to make a difference or to make a change.

But when they got to that tomb they discovered that the stone had been rolled away. The stone that was sealing the tomb was gone. Who had done it? Was it the Romans, the government? No. Was it the priests and the religious authorities? No. Was it the disciples? No. Was it a random gardener? Not even that.

God rolled that stone away. God rolled the stone away. This was the work of God, not the work of man. Jesus rose from the grave without any help from the Romans, the priests, the disciples, or even from those faithful women who went to anoint him. He didn’t send out any surveys, or ask for anyone’s opinion. He didn’t ask for a helping hand to get up off that stone slab. He didn’t wait for his disciples to get their act together. 

The resurrection was not a carefully devised and packaged program for evangelization. It wasn’t some kind of group therapy or mass hallucination. There was no Kool-Aid being served up at the Last Supper. Jesus Christ rose from the dead through the power of God alone. His power. The Romans didn’t help. The priests didn’t help. The disciples didn’t help. Mary didn’t roll that stone away and neither did I and neither did you. God rolled that stone away. God transformed death into life. God proved that this is still his world and that he will be the one who has the final say. 

God rolled that stone away, and in doing so he is the one who transformed hopelessness into hope; he transformed darkness into light; He’s the one who’s gonna change this world; He’s the one who’s gonna save it. When Mary hears Jesus say her name in the garden, hope comes back into her world like a flash of light, but it isn’t hope in mankind it is hope in God. God can still be victorious even when men fail. In a world filled with injustice, incompetence, corruption and lies, God still keeps his promises. God can be trusted. 

Our hope as Christians is NOT in our own faithfulness, it is NOT in the plans and schemes of mankind; our hope is in the power of God. We don’t roll the stone away on death, God does. We don’t save the world, God does. Our roll, our task as Christians, is to do as a great old gospel hymn proclaims: to “go to a world that is dying, his perfect salvation to tell.”

Turn your eyes upon Jesus

Look full in his wonderful face

And the things of earth will grow strangely dim

In the light of his glory and grace.

You know, sometimes the world we live in doesn’t look much brighter for us than it did for Mary and the other disciples on the way to the tomb. Corrupt government, faithless clergy, war, injustice, lies, sin and death. It is easy to look around and wonder how we’re going to fix this. If I thought that it was up to me, or up to human beings, to roll the stone away on this dead and dying world, I would despair indeed and I would have good reason to despair. But Mary didn’t have to roll the stone away. Peter and John didn’t roll the stone away. The roman soldiers didn’t roll the stone away. Jesus got out of that tomb and saved the world without any help from us and that is good news and that is reason, good reason, for hope in a dark world. God isn’t waiting on us to figure things out or get our act together.

God rolled that stone away. 

Sermon for March 26th, 2023

Readings:

• Ezekiel 37:1-14
• Romans 8:6-11
• John 11:1-45
• Psalm 130

The face of Jesus is shrouded from us today. The images of our Lord which are so familiar and beloved to those of us who worship here week by week, those images, those statues, those faces, are covered in shrouds. And not just Jesus, his mother too. These faces which we know so well and gaze at so often, these symbols of people that we dearly love, they are hidden from us today, and for the next couple of weeks. As we enter the church on this Fifth Sunday in Lent, knowing that we are nearing Holy Week and Easter, knowing that the annual remembrance of our Lord’s death and resurrection is coming soon, as we enter and gaze around today the symbol that we see before us, all around the church, is the very prominent symbol of the shroud. The body of our Lord is shrouded; the body of his mother is shrouded; even the cross is shrouded. 

And as we enter and see these shrouds this morning and perhaps wonder about their significance and meaning, at the same time, we hear in the gospel about another shroud. There is another shroud in the room this morning, it’s in our text, only this shroud isn’t covering a lifeless statue, it is covering a lifeless body, or perhaps I should say it WAS covering a lifeless body.

When we meet Lazarus in the gospel this morning he is covered in cloth. He is veiled. He is shrouded. It is his death shroud. Death shrouds are used in our culture far less nowadays, but I think we still more or less understand their use. They are used to cover the dead. You want your loved one to have dignity even in the grave, so you carefully cover them. It is a custom that provides respect to the dead and comfort to the living. Lazarus was wrapped in cloth, most likely by his sisters Martha and Mary, because he was dead. When Jesus arrives at the tomb of his dear friend he is dead; he has been dead for days. The reality of that death is evident to anyone who passes by. You can smell it. 

You probably know what happens in this story. Jesus speaks a word clearly and loudly. Jesus says “Lazarus, come out!” And Lazarus who had been dead moments before walks out of the tomb wearing his death shroud. But it wasn’t covering a lifeless body anymore. Lazarus was alive. Not as a spooky mummy or ghost, but the old Lazarus was alive again, in the flesh. And Jesus says “unbind him and let him go.” He doesn’t need that death shroud anymore, take it off of him. And the shroud is removed. 

This is resurrection. This is what resurrection is. Death being transformed back into life. This is an image, a vision, a foretaste of the Christian hope. Not cherubs strumming harps in some cloudy heaven, but dead bodies coming back to life. There are many who would say that this is a foolish and ridiculous hope. Crazy even. Bodies can be resuscitated, they can be brought back from near death, they can be healed, maybe even miraculously healed, but once a body is dead, it’s dead. That’s what the world wants us to believe. Even in the ancient world. The people standing outside Lazarus’s tomb, they believed that Jesus had the power to heal Lazarus, but they didn’t believe that he could bring him back from the dead. Only God could do that. 

Now there were plenty of Jews who believed that God would do that, someday. Someday, at the end of time, there would be a general resurrection, when the dead would be raised back to life. God’s people had had glimpses of that. The prophet Elijah brought a widow’s child back to life; the prophet Elisha brought two dead bodies back to life; and then of course there is that famous vision of the prophet Ezekiel that we heard just a moment ago, when the prophet is shown a valley of dry bones. Bodies that are completely dead; absolutely no chance of resuscitation. There isn’t even any flesh on them. And Ezekiel is asked: “Can these bones live?” Well the only reasonable, rational answer to that question is: “Of course not!” Dry bones don’t come back to life; dead bodies don’t come back to life. We know that. People in the ancient world knew that too. But the prophet says: “O Lord God, you know.” And the Lord showed Ezekiel a different future.

You heard how that story ended. Ezekiel saw the dead raised back to life. Ezekiel had a vision of a future day when God would raise the dead back to life and that vision, along with various other visions and scriptures and miraculous events became a source of hope for God’s people; hope for a future when death would be no more and shrouds would become obsolete. 

But it was a distant hope and a far-off day. But now that hope was standing right in front of Martha outside of her brother’s tomb. 

Jesus told Martha that her brother would rise again, and she agreed with him. Someday, on the last day, on that resurrection day we all long for, he will rise. But Jesus tells her, I am the resurrection. I am that day you are longing for. I am the one who transforms death into life. And Martha wants to believe him. She wants to believe. She proclaims that Jesus is the messiah, but she doesn’t quite understand or can’t comprehend that he is about to call her dead brother out of the grave, because when Jesus tells them to roll the stone away she protests: “It has been four days! There will be a smell.” She doesn’t understand Jesus’s power just yet, not completely, but she will soon. 

Can you imagine her joy in helping to rip off the burial shroud that just days before she had lovingly, but painfully wrapped around Lazarus’s body? The joy that Martha and Mary felt watching that shroud come off of Lazarus, that is Christian joy. It is, no doubt, the same joy and wonder that was felt by Mary Magdalene and Peter and John and the other disciples who all saw Jesus’s shroud on the floor in the tomb on Easter Sunday morning. On the floor, not covering a body but cast off, thrown away, being trampled into the dust like death itself. That is resurrection. Bodily resurrection. And that brothers and sisters, is the Christian faith. We believe in the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. We believe in it, because we have seen it. Jesus showed us what resurrection was all about, and we have been promised that his resurrection will be ours too. Yes, we still believe in a general resurrection at the end of time, a great future day, but we can start living that resurrected life now, because we already live in relationship with Jesus who is the resurrection. That is the hope that drives the church.

But, my friends and fellow Christians who I hope share this hope with me, as we approach Holy Week and Good Friday and prepare ourselves to hear again the story of our Lord’s passion, I want to challenge you for a brief moment in time to imagine, looking at these shrouded bodies around us today, imagine what it would be like if these shrouds never came off. What if the shroud of death still clung to us like it clung to Lazarus? What if no stone was rolled away? 

As we approach Easter and the glorious, joyful proclamation of resurrection from the dead, it is worth pausing and reminding ourselves of just how precious this hope is. Thank God that we have it, but you know, much of the world doesn’t. It is worth contemplating, for a little bit, just what life would be like if we didn’t have this hope, if we didn’t have resurrection, if we thought that the shrouds were forever. So we will sit with the shrouds for a while, but don’t worry, they’re coming back off.