Meditation of the Week
Even Through Locked Doors

A sermon preached at The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on April 28, 2019.

#pcusa

Keywords: Resurrection is Not an Argument, Five Sermons, Evidence, Peace, Bad Language, Persistence, Doubting Thomas

Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
1 Peter 1:3-9
and John 20: 19-31

Every year, the week after Easter,
we consider some of the first reactions of the disciples
upon learning about Jesus raised from the dead.

This morning, to that end, we’ll read from the Gospel of John.

Last week, on Easter morning, we read Luke’s account of the empty tomb
but things aren’t all that different here:
John tells us Mary went to the tomb early, while it was still dark
to help tend to Jesus’ corpse.
He had died too late on Friday, near the sabbath,
for it to be done properly
so she came when the sabbath was over,
the next business day, as it were.

But Mary found the tomb open.

So she ran back and told the disciples
(there is a lot of running in John,)
and two of the disciples ran to see what was going on,
and they found it just as she had said:
tomb open, no Jesus, cloths-that-he-had-been-wrapped-and-buried-in
all folded up just so
and they saw it, and they went back home.

But Mary stuck around,
sad, weeping,
and the angels try to console her
and the gardener tries to console her
only its not the gardener,
its Jesus!
and they share this deeply moving moment
where he calls her name,
and she hears it, and she knows, she just knows
and she calls out to him, Rabbouni, my teacher,
and he tells her not to hold him back,
but to let him be what he now is
risen, alive.
And so she goes back to tell the others:
I have seen the Lord.

That’s John.

And then the text continues.
It presumes we’re interested in the next chapter,
as if we wouldn’t be on edge for it.

What about the others?
How did they react?
Surprise. Worry. Adulation? What?

Now, ours is a culture that loves cliffhangers,
that delays Season Eight of the Game of Thrones for more than a year
just to hype what happens to Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen,
That ramps up the final Avengers movie so much
that it is poised to sell almost a billion dollars in tickets worldwide,
this weekend alone.

To their credit, the stories that show and movie tell are quite moving, poignant.

And so too, I dare say, is the Easter Gospel.
More so, really, though the Gospel is not designed to be imagined in CGI
the way computer graphics conjure up the fanciful.

They’re meant to be experienced with the same sort of awe that Mary felt
her whole world turned upside down
at the possibilities that the risen Lord is offering to her
possibilities that she can’t hardly process in that short amount of time
possibilities that would turn the world around
and help us find a new way of being in this world of ours, this Easter world.

Here’s that next chapter, according to John:
19 When it was evening on that day,
the first day of the week,
and the doors of the house where the disciples had met
were locked for fear of the Jewish authorities,
Jesus came and stood among them and said,
‘Peace be with you.’ 

²⁰After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side.
Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 

²¹Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you.
As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’
²²When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them,
‘Receive the Holy Spirit. 
²³If you forgive the sins of any,
they are forgiven them;
if you retain the sins of any,
they are retained.’

24 But Thomas (who was called the Twin),
one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 
²⁵So the other disciples told him,
‘We have seen the Lord.’

But he said to them,
‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands,
and put my finger in the mark of the nails
and my hand in his side, I will not believe.’

26 A week later his disciples were again in the house,
and Thomas was with them.
Although the doors were shut,
Jesus came and stood among them and said,
‘Peace be with you.’ 

²⁷Then he said to Thomas,
‘Put your finger here and see my hands.
Reach out your hand and put it in my side.
Do not doubt but believe.’ 

²⁸Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ 

²⁹Jesus said to him,
‘Have you believed because you have seen me?
Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.’

30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples,
which are not written in this book. 
³¹But these are written so that
you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, 
the Son of God,
and that through believing you may have life in his name.

May God bless to us our reading,
and our understanding,
and our applying of these words, to how we live our lives.

Amen.

///
I want to be honest with you,
I feel very fortunate to be a pastor.

I get to walk with people through important moments in their lives:
births and baptisms,
marriage and partnering,
graduations and transitions (good work, Kate!),
new jobs or life changes that cause people to move away,
care of loved ones in the hospital,
funerals and holy goodbyes.

These are holy moments,
because God is there in the middle of them.

Sometimes I get to evoke God through Prayer.
Sometimes I just get to feel God, working on the edges,
prodding people to ask deep questions,
stirring our spirits when we get too settled,
comforting us when we’re afflicted.

Pastors have to remind ourselves
that we are constantly looking out for holy things,
these holy moments,
and that, sometimes the rest of the world
isn’t looking around with the same glasses,
not working with the same vantage point.

Part of what we do, as pastors, is help encourage that perspective,
that strategy, that effort among our people.

These post-Resurrection appearance stories begin to ask us to do that:
Where have you looked and seen Jesus Christ alive these days? [Read more…]

Sermon of the Week
Dawn Breaks on a Weary World

An Easter sermon preached at The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on April 21, 2019.

#pcusa

Keywords: Easter, Dawn, Look for the Living, Tone, Laughter, Resurrection

Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
Isaiah 65: 17-25
and Luke 24: 1-12

The best parts of these holy days are told in song.
We preachers know who truly draws a good crowd.

Way back at Christmas, we sang O Holy Night
a song about the gift of the birth of Jesus.

Do you remember?
“A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices
for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn….”

God seems to prefer the dawn to do the momentous things.

The bible contains four different stories about the life of Jesus
each gospel unique in its own way.

A couple share stories of his birth,
they all tell about his life and about his death,
but each one also talks about his resurrection,
how death could not contain him.

And in each story, each gospel,
the resurrection happens at dawn
Easter morning: a new and glorious morn unlike any other.

Here is how Luke tells this story.
Listen for how dawn breaks on a weary world…

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn,
the women came to the tomb,
taking the spices that they had prepared. 

²They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 
³but when they went in, they did not find the body. 

⁴While they were perplexed about this,
suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. 
⁵The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground,
but the men said to them,
‘Why do you look for the living among the dead?
He is not here, but has risen.

⁶Remember how he told you,
while he was still in Galilee, 
⁷that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners,
and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.’ 

⁸Then they remembered his words, 
⁹and returning from the tomb,
they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. 

¹⁰Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna,
Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them
who told this to the apostles. 

¹¹But these words seemed to them an idle tale,
and they did not believe them. 

¹²But Peter got up and ran to the tomb;
stooping and looking in,
he saw the linen cloths by themselves;
then he went home, amazed at what had happened.

And may God bless to us our reading,
and our understanding,
and our applying of this word
to how we live our lives. Amen.

///
There’s so much that these stories say,
and, at the same time, so much that goes unsaid.

I wish that we had video to accompany the narrative,
so we could see with, our own eyes, what was going on.

When the two messengers in dazzling clothes
asked Mary, Joanna, and the other women:
“Why do you look for the living among the dead?”

…What was their TONE of voice, do you think?
Was it SCORN…or TESTING…or maybe BLUSTER…
…how did that question sound to the women there, at the tomb?

“Why do you look for the living among the dead?”

On the face of it—I can understand WHY
they went looking for the living among the dead.

Sometimes I am just as guilty of a fruitless search.
Sometimes I can be found carefully tending dead ideas or commitments
I sometimes cling to former visions of myself, or of people I love.

Can you relate?

Sometimes we choose to stay with what
we know in our hearts to be dead,
because it is safe.[1]

My friend Mark once told me about
growing up watching the “Twilight Zone”[2]
which was before my time, but I remember seeing reruns of it myself as a kid.
It was a somewhat hokey horror show…
Alfred Hitchcock in profile, the fascinating audio track…
Jordan Peele is taking a crack at remaking the show for a modern age.

Back in the original series, they once told a story about a town in the Old West,
where a stranger happened to visit.

He was a snake-oil salesman type—
–only in this horror story,
the salesman was selling something much more intriguing than tinctures and colas.
For ten dollars, he would raise someone from the dead.

Of course, the stranger became the talk of the town.
SOME were curious enough to risk the money, to have someone raised.
ONLY THEN, as the story goes on, there’s a curious twist….
…people start secretly coming to the stranger at night—
people snuck up to him, when they knew of his powers,
offering TWICE the money
if only he would NOT raise certain people from the dead!

///
Easter is many things—but it is always disruptive.
We often DON’T WANT any more disruption…

I was reading this week about a celebrated preacher named Edmund
who was working on a sermon for the day before Easter.

We call that Holy Saturday, and he was working with a reading
from the book of Lamentations, that read:
 “God’s mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning.”

As he explored this passage, Edmund quipped:
“At my age, this promise of newness every morning
is at best a mixed blessing.

I have come to the point in life
when I really don’t want ANYTHING new in the morning.

I want my slippers right beneath my bed
where I left them the night before,

I want my orange juice and bran flakes for breakfast, as normal.
In my advanced years,
I can do without a lot of newness,
especially in the morning.”[3]

///
The announcement of Easter’s reversal—LIFE, not DEATH—
–includes this startling, disquieting proclamation:
that whatever you are clinging to…
…you have to let go of
if you want to experience God’s Easter.

You have to open yourselves up for the dawn.

And so the women are confronted with the question:
“Why do you look for the living among the dead?”

Again: What was the TONE to that question?
What that question asked to SCOLD?
To TEST?
Was it a word of DREAD or FEAR?

Well, it wasn’t SCOLDING. I know that.
…Because God does NOT scold. [Read more…]