RCL Year C, Proper 10

I can’t think of a parable more familiar than this one we just heard, the Good Samaritan. It is a story that has become so much a part of our common culture that we even have so-called ‘Good Samaritan laws’ protecting those who help others from being held liable for any harm that might happen along the way. We usually read it in a pretty straightforward way, as a call to us as Christians to be altruistic and universally kind in taking care of other people. The parable of the Good Samaritan is all about helping other people, in other words, and so we are reminded in hearing the story again today that helping people is a good thing. You can all stop reading now.

But, like all parables, this one is not really all that straightforward. Parables are complicated. They’re not simply allegories with a pithy moral at the end – they tend to take the assumptions and beliefs of their listeners and turn them on end. Sometimes they’re frustrating or even enraging. A parable that leaves us feeling comfortable, in other words, is a parable we haven’t listened to very well. And the Good Samaritan is no exception.

First of all, it pushes our buttons about actually acting instead of just discussing. A lawyer comes up to Jesus and asks him a question to test him, but not, it seems because he really wants to know the answer and follow the advice. It’s easier to debate ideas than to act, after all. But Jesus doesn’t let him do that. To the lawyer’s first question, ‘What must I do to inherit eternal life?’ Jesus simply asks a question in return, ‘What do you see written in the law?’ The lawyer answers with the famous summary, ‘Love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.’ And Jesus says, ‘Right,’ and turns to go. But feeling frustrated in his attempt to ‘get’ Jesus somehow, the lawyer pushes further: ‘Well, then, who is my neighbor?’ And so Jesus answers with the parable, and at the end of it, reverses the lawyer’s question by asking, ‘Who was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?’ The lawyer is forced into answering that it must be the Samaritan, ‘the one who showed mercy,’ and Jesus responds, ‘Go and do likewise.’ One wonders whether the lawyer really does anything of the sort.

But the other problem is, the parable doesn’t really answer the question, or not the one the lawyer is really asking. The lawyer wants to know what a good Jew should do, and he wants it clearly spelled out to whom he should do it. If he’s supposed to love his neighbor, then he wants to know how far that neighborhood extends. But Jesus’ parable is tricky: he begins with the victim who falls into the hands of robbers, so our sympathy is of course with this person at first – and we react to the heartlessness of the priest and the Levite who walk by without turning aside. Typical clergy, Jesus’ listeners might mutter. But then along comes the Samaritan, one of the despised half-breeds of the north, a people the Jews love to hate. And subtly, the telling of the story shifts so that we begin to identify with that person as he stops, comes to the man, and rescues him from the ditch. The Samaritan, we are told, is the one who acts like a neighbor. Jesus says, go and do likewise.

Well, wait a minute, the lawyer must be asking. Do likewise? like whom, exactly? I asked how to follow the law, and you tell me this disgusting Samaritan who doesn’t follow the law should be my model? Or are you telling me that I’m supposed to take the man lying in the ditch as my model?  Who is it that I am supposed to be in this story?

But there is no answer to the lawyer’s confusion. Who is my neighbor? Literally speaking, a neighbor is one who is near, one who is close by. So we are to love the one who is close by to us. In the parable, the priest and the Levite don’t come close – they pass by on the other side of the road, far away from the beaten man. But the Samaritan has pity and comes near. The despise[...]

Guest Preacher: The Rev. Jim Edwards

RCL Year C, Proper 5

Last week we had a curious gospel reading, the story of a Roman centurion who sends to Jesus to heal his servant. The centurion is a Gentile, part of the oppressive Roman regime occupying Israel – and also a friend and benefactor of the Jews. The centurion doesn’t ever talk to Jesus face to face or seem really to want to. He doesn’t profess Jesus as Messiah. There is no sign that he becomes a follower of Jesus, either. And yet Jesus commends him for his faith. So I talked at the early service about the understanding of faith conveyed in this story, the idea that God can act in people and lead them to right action and faithful living even when they don’t outwardly meet all the usual qualifications. In other words, you don’t have to say you’re Christian, or be identified by others as Christian, to be a follower of Jesus. It’s a pretty big idea.

That was last week’s sermon. So why am I repeating it again today? Well, because the idea that you do have to look orthodox to be a real Christian is a stumbling block for a lot of people. It’s one of the blocks people have about believing in God – they think they do have to toe the line to be fully accepted. Intentionally or unintentionally, the church has sometimes put up that barrier; intentionally or unintentionally, it’s become an idea that people carry in their heads about God. And there are many such barriers. So for the next few weeks I want to talk about some of those barriers, those wrong ideas that infect people, us included, with doubts and reluctance to believe. One priest I know, when people tell him they don’t believe in God, says, ‘Tell me about the God you don’t believe in – because I probably don’t believe in that God either.’ So indeed: what do we not believe about God?

As last week’s gospel makes clear, we don’t believe in a God who condemns you if you don’t believe the right way. And this week we have a story that provides us with another one:  We don’t believe in a God who punishes our sin with suffering. Our Old Testament reading tells of a tormented encounter between Elijah and a poor widow, in Zarephath, outside of Israel. First Elijah comes to her in a famine and demands her last morsel of food, but then miraculously extends it to be enough to feed them and her son for many days. But then her son dies, and the widow in her agony rails at Elijah, saying, ‘What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance, and to cause the death of my son!’ Some sin or wrongdoing in her past, she is convinced, has brought this calamity upon her child – somehow this prophet in her house, suffused with the power of God, has called down judgment upon her and killed her son. Elijah seems to think like this too – when he takes the boy upstairs, he cries out to God, ‘O LORD my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I am staying, by killing her son?’ He doesn’t seem to think it’s the widow’s fault – instead, this is somehow related to him and his prophecies, or his behavior, or something. But God heals the boy and he comes back to life. Despite what Elijah and the widow think, this child’s suffering is not something God has sent upon them. God’s intentions are for life, not for death and suffering.

That theme comes out even more clearly in the gospel story where Jesus raises the widow’s son. And many places in the gospels, Jesus directly tackles the idea that God sends suffering on purpose. And yet this idea that God punishes us is an idea that has such staying power that we still struggle with it. It has staying power in part, of course, because we can find scriptures that suggest it’s true, that God really does punish people and their children for sins committed. Some of those scriptures are in the Old Testament stories, which is part of why Christians sometimes wrongly say, well, the Old Testament God was just like that. But some of those scriptures are in the New Testament, when Jesus gets angry a[...]

RCL Year C, Trinity Sunday

I was the very last of four kids in my family, and came along much later than the other three. So by the time I was 8 or so, I had the house and my parents to myself. Only every now and then, when one of my siblings came back from college or to visit, did we have other family members in the house. So on the one hand, I was sometimes lonely as a kid, pestering my parents to play board games and badminton with me when they just wanted to tend to their own things. But within one day of my siblings’ return home, I would be counting the days till they left. Because them being home meant I had to share my bathroom, and sit in a different place for breakfast, and generally have my life routines upended. Being kind of an only child, I didn’t take to this all too well.

As my husband will tell you, it’s taken me a while to learn to share space in my home easily. (He might tell you I haven’t quite learned it yet.) But I have worked especially on being more open to guests. When we lived in New York, we had a steady stream of people coming to take advantage of our guest room, and I learned to relish the flow of different people through our home. But it didn’t come naturally, as much as I wish it did – and now that we don’t have quite the same flow of people (San Jose seems less popular than Manhattan), I find myself relapsing into my old ways. That’s my teacup! Do you have to talk to me right now? Can’t you see I’m writing my sermon? Why do you need a towel now? I try not to show it, but well, I don’t think I’m always successful.

For some people, hospitality comes naturally – some people are that wonderful sort who always make dinner stretch and be plenty for whomever sits at their table, who seem to have inexhaustible supplies of goodwill and conversation for whoever drifts through their kitchen. For others of us, we have to work at hospitality like we do other disciplines. It’s nice to have people over, but not for very long – guests and fish smell after three days, as the saying goes. And we want guests on our own timetable, when it’s convenient. We may not always like hosting and hospitality, but we know it is the right thing to do. Hospitality means welcoming other people, which is what Jesus tells us to do and demonstrates in his own ministry. Hospitality keeps us from stinginess, holding onto our stuff and our territory as if it only belongs to us, rather than being given to us to take care of and share. Hospitality means being open to other people and the gifts they might share with us, allowing them to give. And hospitality opens us to the Spirit’s activity in our lives, God’s voice and love through others. For these and many more reasons, hospitality is simply good for us. Just like prayer, fasting, and giving alms, hospitality is not just a nice thing to do – it’s a spiritual discipline.

I’m repeating an image again on our bulletin cover this week, the famous Rublev icon of the Trinity. Because, of course, it’s Trinity Sunday. But what I hadn’t realized before was that Rublev himself titled the icon ‘The Hospitality of Abraham.’ It depicts the Trinity as the three strangers who visit Abraham at his tent under the oaks of Mamre. Abraham rushes to provide them hospitality along with his wife Sarah, preparing meat and cakes for them. Before they leave, the three men tell Abraham that his wife Sarah will bear a son, the long-awaited promise of God. Without knowing it, Abraham has hosted God in the form of these three strangers.

Choosing to show the Trinity in the form of this story, Rublev is making a profound theological statement. We encounter God not simply in our own personal prayer and meditation, me and God alone together; we encounter God in and through the practice of hospitality to the stranger. The Trinity itself is a community of three, deeply united in love – we, too, Rublev seems to be saying, share in God’s community when we extend hospitality to the stranger.

But Rublev brings in one mo[...]

RCL Year C, 6 Easter

I’ve mentioned before one definition of stewardship I found compelling: ‘Stewardship is… everything I do after I say, “I believe.”’ In other words, stewardship, what we do with what God gives us, is all about our response to God. It’s how we live out our faith. Today in the readings we have a great story about just that – following God’s lead and all the people and places it might take you to.

In the church calendar story line, at this point in the Easter season, Jesus is getting ready to leave. This Thursday is Ascension, 40 days after Easter, the feast of Jesus being taken up to heaven and disappearing for good after the resurrection. Two weeks from today is Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit comes upon the gathered disciples and turns them into the church. So after all the stories of Jesus’ passion and death and resurrection, and all of those resurrection appearances, this is the part of the story where the disciples again ask, what do we do now? This time, Jesus really is gone, and the Spirit is alive – and they’re wondering just what will happen next.

Good thing Jesus gave them his peace, because they need it now more than ever. Do not let your hearts be troubled – but hold on.

One set of answers for those early disciples to ‘what do we do now’ is all the stories in the book of Acts. First there was a lot of debate and argument about who was part of this new community, and some pretty amazing visions and spiritual epiphanies that showed everyone it was bigger than they’d thought – not just Jews, but Gentiles too. And then the missionary work really got underway, and Paul, the new and zealous convert, took off on his voyages to the Gentiles. Which brings us to that curious little story we heard today, an unexpected twist to Paul’s second trip abroad.

The lectionary doesn’t include the three verses before this passage, so I’ll read them to you now:

They [that is, Paul and Silas] went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. When they had come opposite Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them; so, passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas.

(If you’ve ever had an experience of really wanting to do something and it just not working out, where every door seems to shut in your face even though you were convinced it was the right way to go, then you’ll feel for Paul and Silas.)

While they’re in Troas, Paul has a vision of the man from Macedonia calling for their help, so off they go to Macedonia. You might need to stop for a moment and visualize a map of the Mediterranean here (assuming you’ve got one in your head), but what’s happening is that instead of going to Asia, they’re redirected into Europe. As one commentator noted, for us, descended from the European church, this is our origin story. So Paul and Silas come to Philippi, the main city of the area, presuming that that’s the most likely place to start. And then several days go by, and they don’t seem to do anything. God brought them to Macedonia and now here they are, and they have no idea why or what to do. So they go to worship, and there they do not meet a man from Macedonia like in Paul’s vision. Instead they meet a wealthy woman from Thyatira, which is where? Asia, where they wanted to go in the first place.  And this woman, Lydia, hears their teaching, and God opens her heart to listen. She is baptized along with her whole household. And the first thing Lydia does upon being baptized is to invite Paul and Silas over to stay.

So here are two things we learn about ‘what do we do now’ – God’s Spirit will guide us, although it won’t always be clear where we’re going and what we’re doing. And when our heart is opened, we give of our selves to welcome others.

One great thing about these stories from Acts is that there’s such an immediacy and intensity to them. Just as in the gospels when Jesus comes around, people give their whole selve[...]

RCL Year C, 5 Easter

Love one another. I’m assuming this won’t be a new idea to you.

It probably wasn’t a new idea to Jesus’ disciples either, of course. But it did become a pretty central piece to their community after Jesus was gone. We hear a lot about that in the book of Acts, stories of what those early disciples were doing as they began to figure out just what it meant to be a follower of Jesus without Jesus around. But of course, all of these stories about the early church were told by, well, the early church – the writer of Acts (possibly Luke), and also Paul in his letters. There are a few other sources to draw on, however, letters and histories written by both non-Christians and Christians. And indeed, from these other sources, it appears that at least when positive things were noted about Christian communities (which wasn’t always), the early Christians were known for two things: the brave, faithful way they approached death in the persecutions, often singing as they were tortured and killed; and the way they loved and took care of one another – regardless of social class and usual boundaries. So it seems that the early church was already pretty good at following Jesus’ commandment to love one another.

Jesus seemed to have taught about love a fair bit, and showed it a powerful way through his life and death. And he was remarkably broad-minded about whom he loved, eating with and gathering a community of tax collectors and sinners. It took a little while for the early church to start living into this inclusiveness after Jesus was gone – Peter in the Acts reading today has to learn the lesson that the old boundaries don’t apply, and then to try to convince his fellow Christians of that as well. ‘What power do I have to stand in God’s way?’ he says. The early church was realizing that God wanted this mission to extend to all people. Of course, this doesn’t seem like a new idea either, especially for all of us Gentiles – though it’s nice to hear of how through a series of visions from God and encounters with other people, we got included in the church, of course, it all happened quite a long time ago. Later the whole balance of power shifted, and the church became all Gentile – and pretty anti-Semitic, ironically. So in a way, the story of how the Gentiles got included is pretty moot. But hearing these two readings together, the commandment to love one another and Peter’s coming to terms with who was going to be part of this community – it does make us stop and wonder: Have we yet learned the lesson? Do we love one another? And who is ‘one another’ anyway?

One hint is to remember what the context is of Jesus’ commandment. This is at the last supper, during which Jesus has washed his disciples’ feet, and told them to do the same to remember him. And then, after this love he shows each one of them, Judas leaves to betray him, setting in motion the events that will lead to Jesus’ death. After he leaves, Jesus tells them to love one another, just as he has loved them. Peter asserts how much he loves Jesus and is ready to die for him. Jesus says, well, nice words, Peter, but – before the cock crows, you will deny me three times. And not much longer after this, Peter does just that. It’s a heck of a time to be talking about love, in other words. This commandment to love is not about having nice feelings in happy times. It’s something pretty radical, not something soft and cozy.

So what, again, does it mean to love as Jesus loves us?  Jesus, it seems, loved with a strong, abiding, faithful, to-the-end love, expressed in action. He doesn’t seem particularly sentimental in the gospels – usually he’s pretty intense, wanting them to understand who he is, urgently preaching and spreading the news of God’s kingdom as much as he can. The love Jesus shows is not a feeling – it’s the enduring, abiding will to do whatever God sends him to do. So it’s something like that that we’re supposed to do as well

We need to get more specific[...]

RCL Year C, 4 Easter

 

Well I confess, it’s a confusing Sunday to try to be preaching to you all. There’s good news and bad news, you could say. The good news is that today is the day we welcome 8 new individuals and families to our congregation, people who have decided to throw their lot in with this community as we travel forward on the path. They’ll commit to us and we’ll commit to them to support each other and be family to one another. It’s a day for celebrating.

But the bad news is that this week has been a scary one, with the bombings in Boston, the poisoned letters to government officials, the explosions in Texas, the gun control efforts not getting anywhere, and then finally the video and capture of the bombers. People have been feeling jittery and jumpy, in need of comfort and assurance. It’s not an easy week just to rejoice and celebrate together in community.

You might have noticed the theme coming through clearly in our scriptures and hymns today – it’s Good Shepherd Sunday, the day when we hear and focus on the idea of God as our shepherd, on Jesus as the good Shepherd and us as the sheep. That familiar psalm dear to so many, ‘The Lord is my shepherd – I shall not be in want.’ The reading from Revelation, with, ‘The Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and wipe away every tear from their eyes.’ The words of Jesus, saying ‘No one can snatch them out of my hand.’ These are all of them words and images we often hear and use at funerals and memorial services, times when we need comfort and assurance. So it’s good timing for this image – we need that reassurance this week of God carrying us over the thorns and through the rocks, taking us to springs of water and to safety.

Many of you called or emailed me Monday, knowing I’d been at the Boston marathon last year and might know someone there this year, and I thank you for that. As we had to do together so recently after the Newtown shootings, we instinctively came together in grief and horror and prayer, checking in with one another about how we all were. Runners all over the country did that this week, pledging to wear their race shirts to work on Tuesday in solidarity. The city of Boston went through an intense kind of community experience, finally celebrating together in the bars on Friday night. The town of West, Texas went through another kind, caring for each other in the aftermath of the explosion. On social media and in all kinds of communities, people tried to walk each other through these new tragedies. One Facebook post that got shared repeatedly was remarkably good – from the comedian Patton Oswalt, of all people. He pointed out,

You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out… the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evildoers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak…So when you spot violence, or…hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, “The good outnumber you, and we always will.”

It was a reassuring reminder of what people do together in community, so much of the time. We here today at church together are doing all of that too. Here as in other communities we try to support one another, to rejoice together, to grieve together, to care for one another. We’re a force for good against the evil. We try to shepherd one another, in other words. And rather than try to summon it all up on our own, we do it with God’s help. So I guess today’s Good Shepherd Sunday welcoming is about that: welcome to the flock.

We’ve talked before about the idea of stewardship, more than just a church word for giving money. A steward is one who cares for something on another’s behalf – the owner gives something into the care of the steward, and trusts the steward to care for it as if it were his own. A bad steward doesn’t do that – doesn’t care enough to take good ca[...]

RCL Year C, 3 Easter

Many people tell me that coming to church on Sunday gives them a chance to refuel spiritually – to stop and reflect, sit back from the regular routines and reconnect with God. In Christian tradition and old calendars, Sunday is the first day of the week, but in many business calendars it’s the last day of the week. Really, it’s both– the end of the weekend, the cusp of a new week. When we stop for a bit and meet God here, it’s a good chance to look back over the week before. Sometimes it’s a big week, with events that leave a big impact – this week, that has been true for some in our community. More often our week is less dramatic, just a week of everyday life. So stop and think for a moment: how did your week go?

There are different ways to answer that question, of course. My family and I were just down in Monterey for a week, taking some time to be together as family away from school and work and the usual routines. We bought some postcards and sent them off to various family members and friends. Dear so-and-so, we wrote: We’re in Monterey for a week’s break. The weather started stormy but now it is sunny and warm. We went to the aquarium and saw the sardines being fed. We went to play at Dennis the Menace park. We went tidepooling. We drove down to Big Sur and went hiking. We had the best almond croissant ever at the Paris Bakery Café. Wish you were here. Love, Kate, Jim, Frances, & Benji.

That’s one way to tell about your week – the postcard report. Here’s what we did. Here are a few details to make it sound interesting. That’s it – the end.

But I could also tell about my week in more depth: The wind blew so hard those first few days that the kids were scared at night, and Jim got scoured clean with blowing sand on his run. The seagulls were hardly able to fly in it. I felt like all the cobwebs of my head and heart were being blown out of me, raking out all the accumulated layers of tension and irritation and stress. It took several days, but I finally did settle down and really start to relax – about when it was time to come back.

That’s another way to tell it – the way you talk to a friend who really cares, who wants to know what life is like for you on the inside. Here’s what I felt like, here’s what this made me think of. You might cover less of the actual events, but you go deeper in what you do tell.

Still another way would be even more honest. If I were to really stop and reflect, I might tell you of the moments of resenting having to cook meals and wipe noses on my vacation. I might confess long-simmering disagreements and difficulties. I might tell you of periods of loneliness, or of sudden joy and the euphoria that signals God’s presence to me, or of the sense of God acting through us to reach out to other families in little ways, or other ways I saw and didn’t see God this week.

That’s the way I might write in my journal, if I took the time. Or the way I might pray to God on my run, in between distractions. Of course, maybe I just wouldn’t be aware of those things at all, too caught up in the activity of a family on vacation to look for what God might be doing, and to be truthful about my own thoughts and motivations.

Three different ways to reflect on our lives. Most of us, I think, stay in the postcard place a lot. We narrate our lives to others, and sometimes to ourselves, as a sequence of events and anecdotes, things that don’t reveal too much or require much reflection from us. Sometimes, some of us might tell our spouse or a close friend the deeper stuff of feelings and emotion, what goes on under the outward events. But we may not ever tell anybody what we experience of God, or the things we do or feel or think that are the most unflattering and unlovely parts of us. We may not even tell ourselves those things. And when we do stop to reflect on that level, that’s exactly where God is likeliest to meet us – or rather, where we are likeliest to recognize that God is already the[...]

RCL Year C, 2 Easter

 

The Sunday after Easter tends to be the Sunday of the faithful few. And it’s too bad, because in the schedule of readings we hear, this Sunday is the day we get invited into the story. The gospel we just heard, the story we often call Doubting Thomas, is the same one we hear the Sunday after Easter every year. It’s a resurrection story that invites us in, and challenges us, in our own lives today.

In the Eucharistic readings for this past week, we’ve had a whole lot of resurrection appearances. If we all came together for Eucharist every day of Easter week we’d get the chance to really dwell in the experience those early followers of Jesus had of his new risen life. As an aside, one of the gifts of the Lenten meditation book we did this year was that it got many of you doing spiritual reading, and even reading scripture, every day – but that book ended before Easter, and you may not have kept up the practice. Even after Lent is done, it’s still worth the time, however – so starting this week, I’m going to make the next Sunday’s readings a little more prominent in the midweek email bulletin, and give you a few questions to chew on as you read them – maybe that will inspire you to more.

At any rate, every day of Easter week a different resurrection story is read, and we still don’t get through all of the stories. The Road to Emmaus, the breakfast on the beach, Mary and the gardener, and a whole bunch of other less famous stories round out all the different ways Jesus appears to his disciples after the resurrection. It’s a good thing to go to the ends of each of the four gospels and just read through all the different resurrection accounts – there’s a surprising similarity to them all, and a similar eerie strangeness to them as well. Jesus is familiar and yet not – and he pretty clearly has an intention and a purpose in appearing over and over again.

But each one of them we could be tempted to read as being about what happened to other people 2000 years ago. Today, however, we truly have a story about us. Now, scripture is always really about us, and about God – that’s what makes it shine and shimmer differently than other books. The stories aren’t just stories – they’re there to lead us into deeper relationship with God and with each other. But the story we just heard makes it explicit that we’re really a part of it all. After Jesus comes back and appears to Thomas, he very specifically offers a blessing to all those who will believe without seeing –not the disciples gathered there right then with him, who are seeing and believing, but all the rest of us, all the generations of us who came along after those 40 days. John finishes his gospel off praying that we might come to believe and have life, just as those early folks did. All those thousand of years ago, Jesus is blessing us, and John is writing for us, to strengthen our faith. It kind of gives you shivers, doesn’t it?

All of us, then, are invited into belief with this story. But we’re also invited into action. It’s a story that we continue, with how we respond.

The group of disciples gathered together in that room don’t seem to respond all that well, it seems. They’re understandably fearful and hidden away behind locked doors, wondering if what happened to Jesus will happen to them, perhaps. Then Jesus appears, and says, Peace be with you. They rejoice and get excited, and he says a second time, peace be with you. He breathes the Holy Spirit into them and gives them the power to forgive and release brokenness and sin, and sends them out to continue his work in the world. As one commentator noted, Jesus gives them peace, purpose, and power – here I am with you, here’s the mission I’m giving you, here’s the means to do it…go. And then he leaves them. A whole week later, the story returns to those disciples. And where are they? They’re back in the room, and they have the doors locked again. They have talked to Thomas, trying to get him to beli[...]

RCL Year C, Easter Day: Luke 24:1-12

‘Returning from the tomb, the women told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.’

Do you believe all this? I mean really – do you BELIEVE all this??

I don’t mean this – the dresses and the flowers and the special music and the trumpet and the eggs. This happens every year. It’s wonderful. The faithful labor through Lent every year just to get to this point. The ECA folk struggle to stop saying ‘alleluia’ and finally now today they can – go on, say it! Ahhhh, does that feel better now? The friends and family members and the curious all come out on a day like this and together we rejoice and celebrate. This we can believe, all the good feeling and fizzy spring joyfulness of Easter day. On a day like this, no problem, we can believe in new life. Spring is springing all around us and it’s intoxicating and making us sneeze, and new life is everywhere. Jesus Christ is risen today, and it’s glorious.

Just imagine if Easter happened in, say, mid-January. Not mid-February when we get that warm spell and pull our shorts out, but mid-January – when it’s still raining and the evenings and the mornings are dark and cold and you can’t get out in your garden because there’s still a threat of frost and it’s not even Christmas anymore. What if I tried to get you excited about Easter and new life then? Would you believe all this then?

And just imagine if I came to you when things were really at their worst for you, as bad as they could be. The day you got the diagnosis of cancer, the day you got cut from the team or your marriage ended. The day you buried your best friend. The day when the loneliness seemed like it would go on forever – what if I came to you then on that day and started talking to you about new life and joyful Eastertide. Would you believe all this then? Or would it seem like an idle tale, lovely but useful only when everything else seems to be going all right?

There’s a story I was just told of a priest in Los Angeles. He led a congregation in a storefront church in a low-income Latino neighborhood, and part of his ministry there was to gang members. One day one of these gang members came to him and said, ‘Padre, you’ve given me a problem.’ ‘What is that?’ The priest replied. ‘You’ve given me a conscience,’ the man said. And then he went on to confess to the priest that he had murdered a member of the rival gang. The priest said, ‘This isn’t the confessional, this is a conversation, and this is not confidential – you need to go to the police.’ The man replied, ‘I don’t want to go to the police. I want to go see his mother.’

So the priest set up the meeting, and the three of them, the gang member, the priest, and the mother of the murdered young man, sat together in her living room, and the gang member told her what he had done to her son. He finished his story, and then he asked her, ‘What do you want me to do? Do you want me to go to the police?’ There was a pause. And then the woman said, ‘This is what we are going to do. From now on you will my son. From now on I will be your mother. When I need something, I will come to you. And when you need something, you will come to me. And that is how we will live from this point forward.’

That woman knew resurrection – and that troubled young man learned it too. So did the priest. Brokenness turned to life, right before his eyes. Do you believe that? Or is that just an idle tale?

In a few moments we will baptize a little baby boy, Devin Joshua with the great big cheeks. He and his family live in Los Angeles too, and he is the grandchild of ECA folks, of Edie & Gary Keck. It’s a big important day for such a little guy to be baptized on. But he’s only 8 months old – his parents and godparents will be making the vows on his behalf. On the surface, it is only tradition, a family ritual and a time for celebration, all the joy and delight of a new baby. The church u[...]