SSJE Sermons

1 John 5:1-13

“Give me liberty, or give me death!” Patrick Henry’s famous words take on extra resonance these days, as we begin celebrating the 250th anniversary of the founding of our nation …and as we’ve got an administration who is actively redefining long-held norms of American freedom and liberty. Yep, guys, we’re diving right in…what does it mean to be free?

Let’s go back to 14th-century England, where two of my favorite women from history present us with fascinating – and contrasting – perspectives on that question.

Julian of Norwich wrote the earliest book in English that can be attributed to a woman, called “Revelations of Divine Love.” She was an anchoress, meaning she lived in small cell attached to the church in Norwich. She was “anchored” to her cell – the rite of consecration as she entered the cell resembled the funeral rite – she was essentially dying to the world, and would be permanently sealed in her cell until her death. Anchoresses had to rely on outside folks to give them food and provide for their needs, while they dispensed wisdom to visitors through a small window. Through another window, they looked in on the church and received communion. They spent their time in prayer, meditation, reading, writing, and even … digging their own grave with their hands.

Julian’s writings, as the title suggests, are full of love. Her most famous quotation, “all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well,” is a deep reassurance coming from a woman living in a chaotic world of plague, uncertainty, and upheaval, a woman whose response to all that chaos was to seal herself into a living tomb.

One day, a visitor came to Julian’s window. She was, in many ways, the complete opposite of Julian. Her name was Margery Kempe, and she had quite the resume. She was married, a mother [she gave birth to 14 children], a businesswoman [she ran a brewery and a grain mill], she spent years on pilgrimage to the Holy Land and other places in Europe, she was tried for heresy several times, got in trouble for preaching [which of course, women weren’t allowed to do], wrestled with postpartum depression and an abiding love of sex, saw visions, and was afflicted by constant, loud crying which she called “the gift of tears.” Essentially, she visited Julian to ask: Am I crazy?

No, Julian said. Your devotion is genuine. Just make sure you keep the focus on God and your neighbors, not on yourself.

How do we know this encounter happened? Because Margery wrote it all down, in what is considered the first autobiography in the English language.

Margery’s colorful, bold life seems like the complete opposite of Julian’s. I’m not the first person to note the extraordinary contrast between these two women. But the more interesting thing to consider is how these two women were actually quite similar.

They were both seeking freedom.

Interestingly, neither woman was attached to a religious order – neither became a nun or took religious vows. That wasn’t unusual in those days – the church had wide scope for various ways a person could express devotion through their way of life.

Even today, some of us are still called to a religious life that isn’t ordination, or becoming a monk or a nun – we are called to live by a rule of life that is alongside those who are ordained or who have taken religious vows. Our call is distinct – it isn’t “monk-lite,” the “same taste, less filling” version of the professed life. It is Julian or Margery – finding our way in the world according to a rule of life grounded in scripture, introspection, prayer, and study.  A rule that may be based in other formalized rules, but that is our own.

I have intentionally chosen this path, as have many of you in this room.

For me, this life takes shape in ways inward and outward, and in some ways that are very hard to explain. I do certain things, like daily structured prayer, study scripture, and partaking in the Eucharist regularly that the world might expect of a practicing Christian. I do other things, like run my business, interact with the environment, steward my resources, honor my body that expressly do NOT square with what popular culture – or even popular “Christian” culture – expects.

Living counterculturally can sometimes cause pain, and sometimes cause joy as I dig deeper into what they mean for my life with Christ. But it does bear fruits … eventually. I’ve just got to keep living it, sitting in it, wrestling with it … and eventually it will make sense.

Maybe a bit like our reading from 1 John today. When I first looked at this passage, I thought, oh nooooo really? That’s what I have to preach on?

“Whoever doesn’t have the Son of God does not have life.” Yikes. I remember having those words used as a cudgel against my young, curious mind, by those who saw that curiosity as a form of heresy.  I’m sure others in this room can relate. These “exclusionary” passages are hard to hear, and don’t seem to square with Jesus’ message of open acceptance and love.

Or do they? Can we look past our own histories with texts like this, and the ways they’ve been used to exclude and hurt people, and see something new, something more radical, something more Christ-like?

God gave Jesus to us – all of us – not because we asked, or because we finally had done enough to deserve Him, or because we passed some test – but because God DID. God just gave us Jesus. “Whoever doesn’t have the Son of God” – that’s no one, because God gave Jesus to all of us. What we choose to do with that gift is our own choice. God gives us that choice, as God gives us many, many choices.

And like many other choices in our lives, it is not a one way, one time choice. We choose every morning when we wake up, again. The choosing is constant. Just like maintaining the relationships that matter to us, or habits that matter to us, or ways of living that matter to us. Ask anyone who has taken a vow, or dedicated themselves to training for a marathon, or is in recovery from addiction. It is active, ongoing choosing.

It is a choice to accept God’s gift or not. The gift is always there, always on offer. We can stray or fight or wander or resist or ignore but God is our patient shepherd of us wayward lambs, who looks and looks and looks for you until you are found, who throws a big party when we come home as prodigals in need of healing love and full acceptance for who we are, who God created us to be. But our choice matters – we choose to turn our feet and our eyes toward home, we cry out in the wilderness as a lost, vulnerable lamb, a whimper of longing from a place in our souls too deep for words. And we are heard.

A rule of life gives us a lot of practice at continual choosing, and what it feels like to choose even when you really, really don’t feel like it. As Christians, what matters is that we continually choose, not that we are constantly perfect. The gift is not rescinded for bad  behavior, and it is our joy in that grace that is the motivator, not fear of retribution or punishment or God standing over us with a clipboard and a checklist.

That is the paradox of freedom for a follower of Christ. If we open ourselves and quiet ourselves enough to hear the whispers of the Spirit, we find greater freedom than we ever imagined, but it doesn’t really look like “freedom” according to the world. Jesus is really good at that – turning things on their heads, getting us to see truth in ways that are polar opposite to what the world says truth, or freedom, is.

What I can say is this – the fruits of choosing – every day – to follow a rule are sometimes so slow growing that it’s hard to see the point. I’m going through the motions for months or even years at a time. The metrics of the world – invitations received, pounds lost, money earned, steps registered, accolades gathered, customers satisfied, social media followers gained – are so easy to track, so seductive in their quick hits of success and validation. It’s easier. It’s also not bad, right? Steps are good! It’s good to keep my clients happy! Those things aren’t wrong?

No, says Julian, but if they take you away from what really matters – God and your neighbor – they are.

The rule – like the walls of Julian’s cell or the constancy of Margery’s tears – isn’t just there to provide affirmation in the good times, or lead us to a perfect, pain free life, or to gain us God’s “approval.” It is there as a natural response of joy to God’s grace and God’s gifts.

It is also there to give us something to cling to when the doubt, anger, boredom, pain, irritation, or frustration sets in. We WILL turn to something in those moments. We can’t do it on our own. I have realized, and I have decided, that I don’t want to turn to alcohol or money or sex or power or my own intellect or logic or reason or education or privilege or health or any of it. It will all fail me. I need something bigger. We all do. The rule gives me something to cling to – and strive towards.

That paradoxical, countercultural freedom of Christ – the freedom that is grounded in the biggest love the world has ever known, that freedom that is grounded in our continual choosing, that freedom that is grounded in turning away from the traps and lies of the world, that freedom of Julian’s cell and Margery’s tears – THAT is the freedom we seek by living by our rules of life.

So in true Jesus-style, Patrick Henry’s words get turned upside down … he says, “Give me death, and I will give you liberty.” Jesus shows us what true freedom is – it is up to us to live with joy in manner in which we can access that freedom.

Mark 16:15-20

Have you ever had the experience of speaking with another follower of Jesus from a different tradition within the church, with whom you could not agree?

Yes, of course you have. So have I – many times!

This is an incredibly common experience between people who nonetheless all claim Jesus as their teacher and savior, especially in the United States.

I will not attempt to explore here the range of issues over which Christians of equally deep faith and genuine good will disagree. But I will note that many of them find their roots in our respective relationships with Holy Scripture: our understandings of the diverse collection of texts we call the Bible, and the ways diverse Christian traditions have appropriated the sacred work of biblical interpretation.

But I could ask the same question in a different way:

Have you ever had the experience of speaking with someone you love – anyone to whom you are bound in relationship, family, or community – whose perspective you found challenging, even impossible to understand?

It could be an in-law who lives in a very different region of the country; or a grandparent, whose basic values were formed by a different era in history; or a friend since childhood whose professional or personal path reflect very different priorities than yours. And yet: you are committed, you are faithful, to the relationship. You have discovered that when you breathe and remain present to disagreement, pockets of tenderness open – and your heart is stretched in unexpected directions, and for the better.

I think of some books of the Bible – or at least certain passages of certain books – like that in-law, grandparent, childhood friend…or brother.

As monks, our lives are permeated with Scripture – it is truly the air we breathe and the water we swim. Amid this ambient exposure to God’s word, there are two sets of questions that must be faced again and again:

How might we take these questions into a prayerful response to this ending to Mark’s gospel?

First, there is a simple fact we sometimes lose sight of: there are four canonical gospels. Not one, but four. The evangelists Matthew and Luke relied upon their own faithful conversation with Mark to produce the gospels that bear their names. They contain both resonant similarities and striking differences. The early Church quickly intuited that this synthetic portrait of Jesus’ words and deeds enriched its capacity to speak to a diversity of disciples.

Second, there are the endings of Mark’s gospel: there are two, the one we just heard being the longer ending. Why? Mark’s original gospel famously comes to an abrupt and arresting conclusion: “The women went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” This ending was probably elaborated upon orally in the gathered assemblies of disciples listening to Mark’s witness: No, the story did not end there, and those who had known and heard the Lord Jesus could give voice to their diverse testimony there and then. Later disciples in the community of Mark felt the need to set that further conversation down in writing – and the details they added were shaped by the resurrection appearances we have come to associate with the gospels of John and Luke. In other words, verses 9-20 of Mark 16 are almost certainly not the work of Mark the evangelist: they are a canonized response to Mark’s witness.

With all these pieces held in play, the facet of this passage that leaps from the Word when I listen to the evangelist today is that strange list of signs that will accompany those who believe that Christ is risen: “by using my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new languages; they will pick up snakes in their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”

I notice it says these signs will accompany believers. Faith – the continual act of placing one’s trust in the crucified-and-risen Jesus – is the point. The signs are powerful but secondary marks that God is doing in the disciples the same new thing done in and through the faithful obedience of Jesus.

What would your own list of signs-that-accompany-faith look like?

Speaking in new languages and laying hands on the sick to heal would definitely be on my list. Snakes and poison aren’t things I need everyday protection from. Whatever they are, I think of these signs as the marks of Christian street cred that everyone picks up on. These are the things any creature might respond to in a follower of Jesus who is the real deal, that cut across all other marks of identity. They accompany someone who is…

grounded; open-hearted; calm in the face of the world’s pressures; tapped into joy at its eternal source; shrewd at unmasking the lies and disguises of the enemy; and ready to look foolish in the eyes of the world if it makes more space for the kingdom of God to break into this moment.

These are qualities that the earliest disciples encountered in Jesus as surely as you and I. These are the signs of a gospel worth placing our trust in: yesterday, today, and in the coming reign of God.

John 20:19-31

“This joyful Eastertide, away with sin and sorrow! … now is Christ arisen, arisen, arisen!”[i] Perhaps you sing this with confidence. If so, give thanks! Perhaps you find this hard to sing because life still feels full of sin and sorrow. Triumph or “death’s flood hath lost its chill” doesn’t ring true. Death and cruelty, sickness and sadness remain in the world and weigh on your heart.

Remember the Jesus’ friends. They didn’t wake up singing alleluias. They were confused not confident, shattered not excited. They often didn’t recognize Jesus. Mary thought Jesus was a gardener. On the road to Emmaus, he seemed a clueless stranger. While fishing, the disciples didn’t realize it was Jesus on the beach.

Jesus’ friends were behind locked doors because of the most frequent description of the first Easter: fear. Fear of what the authorities might do. Fear of what might happen next. Fear along with the grief and trauma, disorientation and overwhelm by loss, shattered assumptions. They were face-first with death, grief, and fear.

Resurrection is not easy to accept. Earlier that day, Mary Magdalene had gone to the other disciples and said: “I have seen the Lord.” They needed to be shown, not just told. Jesus came through the locked door, stood among his friends and said: “Peace be with you.” Embodied encouragement and consoling words are graced gifts. My peace, my wholeness, my shalom is yours. Amid your fear, grief and denial, I love you. Peace.

“After he said this, Jesus showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.” Jesus shows his wounds. Jesus is not simply alive, nor simply God. Jesus is human and divine, crucified and risen, not magically whole but alive with wounds.

But Thomas didn’t see. Thomas wasn’t there. Again, just hearing wasn’t enough. The group didn’t believe what Mary said. Thomas didn’t believe what the group said. Each needed an experience of the risen Christ in person, in flesh. Thomas also asks—on behalf of all of us—for more: “Unless I put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” Jesus comes and offers what Thomas needs, invites him to touch the wounds. Touching wounds changes Thomas, and he proclaims: “My Lord and my God.”

In resurrection, Jesus continues to unexpectedly meet us in the hard. Continues as Jesus was born Word Made Flesh born poor and obscure. Jesus taught an upside down kingdom and died a cruel death. Resurrection comes amid tears in locked rooms, to people face-first with death.

In our loss and grief today, we may believe God is with us, that resurrection is true, and we may not feel it. If you are afraid or grieving, listen to good news. You are not alone. That’s how the first Easter was and how they are for many still. Jesus comes in the midst with peace and love.

Like Thomas, speak your truth. Pray your need for first-hand experience, for touch. Name what gets in the way. Imagine what more Thomas and the others said together in that locked room. Like them, express and be specific about your grief, loss, and limitation.

Like Thomas, speak your truth to and stay in community. Don’t go off alone. Thomas told his companions: this won’t work for me; I need more. Then he waited, and they waited with him … at least another week, which may have felt like ages.

If you are waiting for new life, struggling to imagine hoping for new life, tell a trusted companion or group your experience and let them wait with you. Together, wait and weep to witness the resurrected Christ.

As Jesus comes—and Jesus keeps coming—Jesus looks with love, seeing our lack, sorrow, and fear. “Peace be with you,” Jesus says. “Put your hand in my side.” Consolation, love, and surprising, graphic touch that echoes Holy Week. Remember Jesus reassuring on Maundy Thursday. Jesus washed frightened feet and said: “Love one another as I have loved you.” Jesus taught and showed love with touch. Love by washing feet.

First, let yourself be loved. Like Thomas, show your feet, your need, your imperfection, limitation, your hopes, dreams, doubts, and grief. Be real. Show your wounds to a safe companion. Let yourself be washed, witnessed, loved.

Having received, then take the pitcher and towel yourself. Wait and weep with others. Wash feet. Witness and touch wounds tenderly. Put your hand in her side. Listen to your companion’s pain, doubt, and fear. Speak consolation, encouragement, and grace: Peace be with you.

Slowly, surprisingly, not as expected, we will be shown love alive with wounds, Jesus with us again in our need. We will touch and say or sing: Alleluia! Alleluia! Amen.

[i] Our opening hymn, #192 in The Hymnal 1982.

Acts 4:13-21

For the past few days, we’ve been making our way piece by piece through a single story from the book of Acts – the story of Peter and John healing a lame man in the temple courtyard. Each installation of the story has been paired with gospel accounts of post-resurrection visits from Jesus.

Oftentimes during a worship service such as this, we listen first to a passage from the Hebrew scriptures and then to a gospel account about the life of Jesus. First the old, and then the new, a journey echoing the familiar pattern of linear time.

But not so this week. The order of the readings is reversed from linear time. The events we heard first in the retelling of the book of Acts occurred *after* Jesus was crucified, died, and rose again that Easter morning. It’s as if we’re glimpsing a flashback into Peter and John’s earlier life as we take in the post-resurrection visit from Jesus recounted from Mark’s gospel.

Imagine how the scene from Acts might look if it unfolded on a movie screen:

Peter and John stand before the assembly of the temple authorities – a group of 70 distinguished men of great learning, power, and influence. The two disciples’ clothes and hair are rumpled and dirty, for they’d spent the previous night in jail.

It is a public trial, with onlookers watching the proceedings with interest. One of the onlookers, one who stands close by, is the healed man, not on trial himself but testifying through his visibly healed presence.

Threatened by the temple authorities, Peter and John meet the intimidation with their simple but powerful response: “We cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard.”

But had they seen and heard?

This, here, is where the flashback to the gospel passage from Mark is inserted into the movie plot.

It’s a flashback to Peter and John gaping at their risen Lord, appearing to them in the flesh as the group of eleven disciples huddled together in fear and bewilderment. That is what they had seen and heard, that is the truth whose power could not be contained.

But why does that flashback matter? Because these men, who now so boldly proclaim that they cannot keep from speaking about what they had seen and heard, had not believed in accounts of the resurrection at first.

Because in the gospel passage from Mark, we hear that first Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene, yet the disciples didn’t believe her.

Because then Jesus appeared to two followers of Jesus as they left Jerusalem for the countryside, yet the disciples didn’t believe them either.

Finally, a third time, Jesus eliminated the middlemen and showed up himself. This time, finally, the disciples saw and truly believed that their Lord had risen from the dead.

Jesus didn’t give up on them because they didn’t have it all figured out right away.  Even amidst their unbelief, Jesus still revealed himself.

He came to them, and then sustaining belief followed.

That was the hinge moment in the disciples’ story, when they went from being grieving followers of a deceased rabbi to apostles commissioned and sent on a mission. Jesus sent them out to proclaim his good news to the whole of creation, and they obeyed. And, we read, the Lord worked with them and confirmed their message by the signs that accompanied it, by the formerly lame man who leaped with joy when his legs were healed.

Just like the disciples, we don’t have to have it all perfectly figured out for Jesus to reveal himself to us.

We might be filled with questions. With fears. With doubt. We might be stuck in our own locked rooms of confusion or grief. But Jesus comes to us anyway. He shows up in the midst of our messy lives and invites us to follow him.

Are there places in your life where you feel like you’re waiting to have it all figured out before you move forward?

Trust that Jesus our Risen Lord is present there, in the midst of the mess.

John 21:1-14

They are back home at the Sea of Galilee – Peter and six other disciples – after the nightmare of Jerusalem: the betrayals, the trial, the crucifixion, and the terror about what would happen next. Here a seaside breakfast cooked over a charcoal fire would have been both familiar and comforting to these distraught fishermen.

A charcoal fire is mentioned only twice in the entire New Testament, both times in relationship to Peter.[i] Back in Jerusalem, when Jesus had been arrested and taken to the courtyard of the high priest, Peter was with a group standing around a charcoal fire as they warmed themselves. It was there that Peter was identified as a follower of Jesus, something which he publicly denied.[ii] Now we read of a second charcoal fire, this along the Sea of Galilee. The Gospel writer, John, is clearly making a connection, and Peter knows it. What happens next is a conversion. Peter is converted. The Greek word for conversion is literally a turning around or turning in a new direction. We witness a conversion, yet another conversion in Peter.

Everyone is in a state of conversion, for better or ill, their entire life. No one of us is ever fully formed… which could invite our patience, and compassion, and humility as we deal with our own selves and with others. Everyone is in a state of conversion, for better or ill, their entire life. Jesus, here along the Sea of Galilee, explicitly addresses the disciples as children: “Children,” he says to them. It is the only time, anywhere in the Gospels, where Jesus explicitly addresses the disciples, these grown men, as “Children.” The disciples are as children, in such a vulnerable and needy state. It is such a disarming turning point, a conversion, for Peter and for these other hopeless, hapless disciples.

So for us all. We all, regardless of our age, are children of God. We are all, always, in a very vulnerable, needy state. Everyone is in a state of conversion, for better or ill, our entire life. In the mean time every one of us shows up poorly in life, at least some of the time, as Jesus knows, and as we should remember.

[i] John 18:18; 21:9.

[ii] John 13:37.

In Luke’s account, we hear a gradual unfolding of the mystery of the Resurrection. First, the empty tomb and two men in dazzling clothes, the witnesses’ accounts initially disbelieved. Then two disciples joined by the Risen Lord, who walks with them on the road, opens their hearts to the scriptures, and vanishes from their sight after blessing and breaking bread. The mystery is gaining physical force.

Today, this physicality, the reality of Jesus’s bodily resurrection, is the focus. The disciples think at first that they are seeing a ghost; Jesus has them touch him. They still disbelieve; Jesus eats a piece of broiled fish in front of them. Crucified, dead, risen—this is the core of the mystery of Christ, the “good news” that the apostles come now to realize, and to proclaim.

I am struck by a curious phrase in the middle of Luke’s account today: “in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering” (Lk 24:41). Jesus the Risen Lord appears to them in a physical body; they exclaim in joy—and yet, there’s a part of them that reserves some doubt, some questions. As though they want this so much that they wonder if they are maybe fooling themselves.

In the high emotion of our own Easter joy—amid the organ and flowers and candles and singing—how many of us nevertheless harbor our own doubts, our own reservations? Maybe not about Jesus’s resurrection, but rather what this great mystery of our redemption—of the world’s redemption—means? We are joyful, but are we fooling ourselves? Is the joy we feel perhaps like a false face when we step outside the doors of our church and back into a world teeming with wrongness simply held in abeyance by our celebration?

This is the discordant reality that we must face—that the Resurrection happened and that we still live in this world marked by so much suffering.

So how are we to respond to the way the Risen Lord meets us, here and now? Our primary response, in bearing witness to the Resurrection, is to be transformed—to recognize ourselves as having passed through death with Christ into a new life, a life marked by mercy, peace, love, truth, and hope. To believe that this joy we feel is real, and not just us fooling ourselves. And to hold this fact as primary, and thereby to meet all the wrongness and all the suffering that surround us as a transformed, Easter people.

Amen.

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

And so it is that we are gathered here on this beautiful spring morning, to praise God for the Great Victory won for us on the Cross and in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Alleluia!

This, friends, is the bedrock of our hope. As St Paul says, “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died…. for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.”

Because we have been “made alive in Christ,” we no longer live “for this life only.” No more do we set our hope on the things that this world values: wealth, power, success, beauty, material possessions, honors, titles and distinctions. These things, as valuable as they may be, are passing away. We have a far more precious possession: a citizenship in heaven, where Christ now reigns with God in glory. In the words of St Paul: “…if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God.” We who have been baptized into him, have died with him and now share his risen life.

It was this same hope, this same confidence, that infused the disciples of Jesus following the Resurrection.

“One of the reasons for the remarkable rise of Christianity in its earliest centuries,” writes Timothy Keller, “was that it offered resources for hope in the face of the numerous urban pandemics that were devastating the Roman world.” Keller quotes historian Kyle Harper, who was asked how Christianity kept thriving and growing in the bleakness of those times:

“For [the early Christians,]” Harper replied, “[Christian faith] was a positive program. This life was always meant to be transitory, and just part of a larger story. What was important to the Christians was to orient one’s life towards the larger story, the cosmic story, the story of eternity. They did live in this world, experienced pain, and loved others. But the Christians of that time were called to see the story of this life as just one of the stories in which they lived. The hidden map was this larger picture.

That ”larger story” – the story of what GOD had done and was doing – gave them hope, a hope that sustained them in their own individual journeys. The biblical word is elpida, translated in English as the weaker word hope. Elpida means profound certainty. This “larger story” gives us a hope – a profound certainty – that is rooted in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In today’s gospel lesson we hear the story of how this elpida, this profound hope the early Christians offered to others, came to be. “On the first day of the week, at early dawn, [a small group of women] came to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body.” They had witnessed Jesus crucified and buried. Now they came to the tomb bearing spices, hoping to properly embalm the body for permanent burial. But the tomb was empty! The body wasn’t there!

The empty tomb doesn’t in itself prove the resurrection. But it is a crucial piece of evidence. Added to it is the witness of the women. Within the tomb they encounter “two men in dazzling clothes” who say to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” Then the women remembered Jesus’ words and ran immediately to tell the disciples.

Repeated encounters with the Risen Lord solidified the message and offered further confirmation: Jesus was alive! Not just one person or two, not just the chosen twelve, but “a large number of people, across a diversity of circumstances, testified that they had seen the risen Jesus.”

Further evidence is offered by St Paul, just fifteen to twenty years after Jesus’ death, when he writes to the Christians at Corinth,

“I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive… Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all… he appeared also to me.”

There are hundreds of eyewitnesses still living, Paul says. If you doubt our testimony, speak with them.

We have the witness of the empty tomb. We have the testimony of hundreds of eyewitnesses. And we have the witness of completely transformed lives! At one moment, the disciples of Jesus are in hiding, utterly defeated, confused and broken-hearted, and terrified that the authorities who put Jesus to death will now come after them. A few days later, they are standing in the Temple and in the marketplaces and in the streets, proclaiming that Jesus has risen from the dead! Boldly, fearlessly, willing to suffer whatever consequences might come their way. And many of them would pay a very steep price, even giving up their lives, for the truth they proclaimed.

What accounts for this boldness? It is one thing, says St Paul, to know the resurrection; it is another to live in the power of the resurrection. That is what they are doing: living into the larger story, the great story of how God gained the victory over sin and evil and death through the death and resurrection of his only Son.

For some Christians, this larger story is primarily about our continued life with God in heaven after death. But, in fact, it is about much more than this. It is not just about us as individuals or even as communities of people. This larger story encompasses the entire universe, every living creature, all that God has made. It promises that God is at work, making the whole creation new! In the same way that God brought life out of death on the Cross, God is renewing the entire created order. There will one day be a “new heaven” and a “new earth,” where there will be no tears, no pain, no suffering or loss. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is a foretaste, the “first fruits,” of that promised renewal.

Can you imagine yourself living daily within this larger story? Can you imagine trusting God to bring about God’s purposes in God’s time and as God wills? When we choose to live within that larger story, we can view our fears and worries from an entirely different perspective. We will continue to work tirelessly on behalf of God’s kingdom, protecting the weak and vulnerable, loving our neighbors and our enemies, making peace and promoting justice. But our efforts are only a small part of God’s larger story. Our hope is in God.

Presbyterian pastor and teacher Timothy Keller tells us that the New Testament speaks of two kinds of hope:

“When it comes to hoping in human beings and ourselves,” Keller writes, “our hope is always relative, uncertain. But when the object of hope is not any human agent but God, then hope means confidence, certainty, and full assurance… If I believe in the resurrection of Jesus, that confirms that there is a God who is both good and powerful, who brings light out of darkness, and who is patiently working out a plan for his glory, our good, and the good of the world (Eph. 1:9-12, Rom. 8:28). Christian hope means that I stop betting my life and happiness on human agency and rest in God. Our hope is not based on what we have done, but on what God has done.”

This Easter Day, lift up your eyes to see the larger story of which your life is a small part. Let that story fill you with hope, with profound certainty! Trust that the God who raised Jesus from the dead will bring you and the whole of creation to a perfect end. Christ has been raised from the dead, and with him you have passed through death and have been raised to newness of life. This is the foundation of our profound and certain hope.

Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed!

I Corinthians 15:19-22

What are you all doing here this morning?

Waiting in the dark, watching, looking, longing; being drenched in holy water and smeared with chrism; sweating under heavy silk vestments…

What are we hoping to find here this morning?

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ, of course.

But what is that?

Is it a poignant metaphor, a beautiful idea, a sophisticated allegory, or a universal archetype?

The Resurrection will not fit into any of these boxes,

Metaphor, idea, allegory, archetype

But The Resurrection is the naked Reality to which they point,

The Resurrection is the parent: they are her children.

Metaphor, idea, allegory, archetype:

They do not add up to Easter hope.

Only our trust in a living person

This we have come to believe. This we hold fast, this we cherish, this is the Light by which we see the world, one another, ourselves, and our God. We: the fragile, pilgrim church, bearing the Paschal flame.

Eastertide is a season that invites our varied responses to the many facets of one Resurrection truth. This truth cannot be received in an instant like the flipping of a light switch, the opening of a curtain, or the jangling of a bell. We are swept up in the turning of a cosmic tide, from sorrow to joy, but it is a joy so wondrous and so strange that the Church gives us fifty days, and a lifetime of Eastertides, to receive the mystery.

This Easter morning we have heard Luke’s account of this Mystery. Dawn rises on the first day of the week, and we behold an empty tomb: an absence that calls for interpretation. Luke presents us with three responses of those closest to Jesus: the women who had come with him from Galilee; the eleven apostles; and Peter.

The women “who had come with him from Galilee” are there first. They are there with a concrete task. There had not been time before the Sabbath began to complete the full preparation of Jesus’ body for burial, and so they arrive with aromatic ointments to anoint the dead body of their Teacher. Significantly, the women went into the tomb, and “two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them.” Though these are angelic messengers, their appearance recalls the Transfiguration, when Moses and Elijah stood beside Jesus in glory, speaking of his death and resurrection. But rather than Peter, James, and John, who were present at that moment, it is now Jesus’ female disciples.

While some have argued or assumed that Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them could not have been initiated into Jesus’ teachings about the kingdom in the way his male disciples had, Luke’s gospel provides evidence to the contrary.

At the prompting of the angelic messengers, “they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and all the rest.” To remember the words of Jesus, they must have received them from Jesus. What is more, they do not remain silent in fear (as in Mark’s gospel); nor is it a directive from an angel or the risen Lord himself that prompts them to tell the eleven (as in Matthew’s gospel). In Luke, these faithful women at the tomb go to tell the eleven and the rest of their own volition. It is as if they cannot not share this wondrous experience.

Then, there is the response of the eleven apostles – who have not gone into the tomb themselves, not even visited yet, but receive the report from their sisters. “But these words seemed to them an idle tale (literally nonsense or delirium) and they did not believe them.” The reality of the Resurrection will break through to the eleven, but not on Easter morning.

Finally, there is the response of Peter. Something clearly touches, animates, captivates Peter in what the women at the tomb have shared. Peter gets up, he stands again, the same word for resurrection. He runs to the tomb. Though he does not go into the tomb, he does stoop down and look in through the low door, to see the linen cloths by themselves. Then Peter goes home, amazed, marveling within himself at what had happened. Peter does not yet believe, but the makings of belief have ignited in Peter’s heart.

Peter stands again as the risen Jesus has. He also stoops down, not only to look into the tomb, but he bends in humility by swallowing his pride just enough to consider that the words of the women may be true. It is an opening just small enough for the risen Christ to enter in.

With which of these responses do you most identify this Easter morning?

When I was undergoing clinical pastoral education training in a hospital, there were plenty of interactions that went something like this:

“Hi, I’m Keith – I’m a chaplain from the spiritual care department. May I come in? Would you like to talk?”

And I’d hear:

“Not interested!” Or sometimes, “Can you bring me someone who can actually help?” In other words, “Idle tales! Nonsense! Delirium!”

I did seem to have a knack for working with older white men whose spirituality was a good bit like Peter’s at the empty tomb. Amid the crisis of illness or dying, these were men responding to unfinished business: the business of attending to the amazement within themselves that God may yet be real; that with God, impossible life may yet spring out of diminishment and death; and that it is not yet too late to respond to that reality in love and in faith.

But then there were the patients in whom I knew, beyond a doubt, I had witnessed the crucified-and-risen Jesus. These were people who remembered the words of Jesus; knew his ways from the inside; had anointed his dead body with their own hands. They had already died and risen with him many times. Frankly, the vast majority of these were women of color, most of them dying, but upheld by a spiritual vitality that could only come from God. As I left their presence, they would press my palm with withered fingers exclaiming, “God bless you, young man! Praise him! Today is the day to do the work of Jesus! If you forget that, you come right back here tomorrow!” And if I had even one of those conversations, I could face an entire week of “Not interested!”

This Easter, whose witness to the reality of the Resurrection do you most need to hear?

If the world discounts the value or the truth of your gospel; your basic worth and dignity; if you receive subtle or not-so-subtle messages that discount your spiritual authority because of your gender, your race, your age, the ways your body expresses love or your brain accomplishes tasks, the witness you most need to hear may be your own: Christ crucified-and-risen in your own life, your own flesh, your own heart. Listen to it this Eastertide, and then please, ask yourself how you can share it with the rest of us.

If you find that power, privilege, abundant competence, or high visibility have marked your life, ask how these defining experiences may subtly shape your experience of the Easter message. In the way of Jesus, the message of God’s victory is first made plain to those who are “strangers to success and power as the world defines them” – and to those who have stooped down and looked into the empty tomb alongside them.

In either case, you are probably intimately familiar with suffering and even death.

The Resurrection does not take these experiences from us. You know this. I know this. It does not exempt us from the suffering that is the lot of every human being, the suffering that was the lot of Jesus in sharing our humanity. The Resurrection is the unbreakable pledge that our suffering can become like his.

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is, in the words of Rowan Williams,

Death presents to the world a final door that is locked and sealed forever. The crucified-and-risen Christ has wrenched that door from its hinges, so that we may pass through it, as he did, into the heart of God.

Beginning today. Beginning now.

Alleluia, Christ is Risen. Amen.

What we’ve just heard is the drama of Christ’s passion and crucifixion, the great story of his death. “Drama” is an appropriate word, as, like much of John’s Gospel, this telling is almost begging to be dramatized. Characters enter and exit with clear lines of dialogue, the setting shifts between scenes, it’s genuinely like a stage show. And in this telling, in this story, in this drama, I find myself very intrigued by the figure of Pontius Pilate.

I’m not the only one. Christians for many centuries have been interpreting Pilate, his character, his motives, and his ultimate fate. Some have regarded him as a cruel persecutor, an evildoer cursed to bear the great burden of his sin. Others have regarded him as a basically well-intentioned man with his hands tied, neither so evil as to deserve special condemnation, nor so good as to deserve praise. Others have seen, within his proclamation of Christ as King, a budding Christian, one who would later fully convert and be changed by this brush with Jesus.

All of these interpretations have precedent in Church tradition. So why is Pilate so simultaneously interesting and divisive? I suspect it’s because it’s quite easy to read him in this retelling in different ways. Is he a man concerned with justice, trying to judge rightly? Is he a tyrant, a prince of this world conspiring against God’s reign? Is he just a confused foreigner, disturbed in the middle of the night to hear a theological dispute he has no context for understanding, and may even find boring or ridiculous, at least until he hears that this man claims to be the Son of God, a concept perhaps more easily accepted by a Roman polytheist? They’re all valid ways to read the story.

There’s one line in particular that can be read many ways. It is famous. Pilate asks Jesus, “What is truth?” Jesus does not respond to the question. The dialogue continues on, but eventually, Jesus remains silent altogether. “What is truth?” could be coming from a lot of different places. Maybe it’s flippant, a dismissive response to a strange and bothersome man. Maybe it’s angry, what is this truth you’re yammering on about? Maybe it’s an opening for debate, a way to enter into rational argument. And maybe, it’s genuinely curious; maybe Pilate is sufficiently intrigued to think something noteworthy might be going on here.

It’s a rather important question. Jesus sets it up as the keystone of his mission, of the whole Incarnation, “for this I was born, for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.” He argues that we can “belong to the truth,” and that those who do listen to his voice. Maybe Pilate finds this whole thing vexing and silly. Or maybe this question, “What is truth?” is the first baby step on the road to listening to that very voice.

Now, I do not know the soul of Pontius Pilate. I barely know my own soul very dimly. But if there is any chance, any chance, that Pilate is seeking to listen here, then I think we would do well to listen too. Because, whether Pilate expected an answer or not, Christ did give him one. What is truth?

Truth is the silence that endures when the torrent of heaped-up words reaches its end.

Truth is humanity, on the sixth day of the week, given lordship of all the earth, and seeing again on this, the sixth day of the week that such lordship finds its truest expression, not in power over others, but in humility and self-sacrifice, a king enthroned upon a cross.

Truth is Holy Wisdom, she who fashioned the worlds, loving so fully all that she has made that she allows herself to undergo the unmaking of death, knowing she will be vindicated by her deeds.

Truth is a body so gravely wounded that Thomas could not accept as true anything less than the scars of the all-sufficient sacrifice.

Truth is the bread, the flesh, that gathers the scattered grains from across all the cosmos, the wine, the blood, that spills over its brim to flood all days past and yet to come.

Truth is a just man, prepared to die.

What is truth? Behold. Behold. Behold.

One of the hazards of living closely together, as we brothers do in a monastery, is that if one brother catches a cold or flu or Covid, it spreads very quickly, along the corridors, up the stairs, and soon, one by one, most of us get infected. But it is not just physical illnesses that can infect us. We get infected by each other’s moods and feelings.  You probably know that in your own lives. Maybe one day you get out of bed on the wrong side, you’re tired and in a bad mood, and the first thing you do is pass it on. So you are rude to someone in your family, and they get annoyed with the first person they meet, and they pass it on. Your bad mood has spread, rather like ripples, after throwing a stone into a pool of water. The writer William Golding said, ‘People cannot move without hurting each other.’

But if you really want to hurt somebody, it’s much more effective to get together with others – to gang up. If you were ever in a gang at school, or the victim of one, you will know that gangs thrive on the feeling of power, with passwords and jargon and particular clothing to define their identity. The tragedy is that some people never grow out of it. During the first three years after I was ordained, I spent a lot of my ministry working in Belfast, Northern Ireland, during the Troubles. I helped run summer camps, bringing together Catholic and Protestant children from inner city Belfast. I encountered gang warfare in a horrible way. In the city it was terrifying to see the lines drawn up. Cross that street and you are in the Protestant Shankill. Cross that one and you are in the Republican Falls.  Their gangs would roam the streets looking for strangers, stopping them and trying to find out which side they were on. There was the story, told with wry Belfast humor of the Indian man who was stopped by a gang and asked whether he was a catholic of a protestant, and he said, ‘I’m a Hindu.’ Yes, they said, but are you a catholic Hindu or a protestant Hindu?’  The greatest deprivation though was that children from either side of the divide never met each other. They attended different schools, different sports centers, different shops, different clubs, different churches. Each side knew just enough about the other to hate them, to fear them, to demonize them. It’s there that I first heard those words which have haunted me ever since, ‘The first casualty in any conflict is truth’.  Memories of that deeply divided and violent city continue to disturb me, not least because they raise red flags in my soul for what is happening in our nation today.

Since my days in Belfast, there have been over the decades a tragic litany of such ethnic, religious and political hatred and violence. Today, our hearts are full of sadness and pain as we see pictures of the continued horrors enacted in Ukraine and Gaza.  How could people who were living side by side, suddenly turn to such communal bloodletting?  How could people who only a week before, were waving palms and shouting ‘Hosanna’ suddenly gang up against Jesus? Jealousy? Fear? Soon the word spread like an epidemic, soon their blood lust was roused, and they were shouting, ‘Crucify him!’  What about Jesus’ ‘gang’, his disciples? “We’ll fight back!” And in the garden one of them got out a knife and cut off a slave’s right ear. ‘NO! NO!’ That’s what Jesus says. ‘NO!’  Don’t do that. This is where it stops, with me.  This terrible destructive cycle or revenge and retribution. I refuse to pass on the violence, the hatred, the sin. It stops here, in my body. I hate no person. I will not hit you back.  ‘I give you a new commandment. Love one another as I have loved you.’ …even unto death upon the Cross.

‘On the night before he died for us, THIS night, our Lord Jesus Christ took bread.’ On this holy night we take bread and do this in remembrance of him. Jesus longed for this night. He tells his disciples in Luke’s account, ‘I have longed to eat the Passover with you before I suffer.’  He longed to share this last meal with them because he loved them. Even though that evening one of them was going to betray him he loved them. Even though that evening, one of them in anger and hatred would attack a man with a knife he loved them.  Even though having spent years in his company, they were still consumed with pride and petty jealousies, he loved them.  Luke, in his Gospel tells us that even at the most sacred moment after Jesus had fed them with the bread and wine, the disciples immediately start arguing again; ‘as to which of them was to be regarded as the greatest!’ In spite of this he still loved them and he loved them to the end.’

And Jesus longs to share this Passover with you and me tonight. For despite our brokenness, our unwillingness to forgive, our stored-up resentments, our anger, our pride, our petty jealousies, Jesus loves us. On this night, before he died for us, Jesus gives us a new commandment: ‘Love one another as I have loved you.’

But he doesn’t just say the words, he shows us; shows us how to love in this new, radical way. Perhaps in response to the disciples arguing about who was the greatest, John in his Gospel tells us that he got up from table, took off his outer robe, tied a towel around him and washed his disciples’ feet. Those who had just been arguing about who was to be the greatest, are humbled by the sight of their Lord kneeling before them. He doesn’t just say the words, he shows us. The next day -tomorrow, he will show us to the uttermost how much he loves us – his robe is again taken off, this time by the soldiers. They strip him, and beat him, and mock him, and he is lifted high upon the Cross. Even now in agony and desolation, he refused to hit back, to retaliate, to pass on the contagion of evil and sin. He took it all upon himself. Instead of a curse, he uttered gracious words of love: ‘Father forgive them for they know not what they do.’

Tonight, each one of us will be invited to have our feet washed, and to wash the feet of another. And tonight, each one of us will be invited to receive our Lord in the sacrament of bread and wine.  Both of these, the foot washing and the giving of bread and wine, are powerful signs – enacted by Jesus on this night, the eve of his crucifixion.

Both these signs have the power to change us, to convert us, to give us the gift of that new, radical self-giving love and to help us pass it on to others. When you are having your feet washed, see Jesus kneeling at your feet, in divine humility, and ask him to forgive your sinful pride. When you kneel to wash the feet of another, ask for grace, that you may live your life in this way, in self-giving service to others.

When you receive the body and blood of Jesus, see the broken body and shed blood of Jesus hanging on the Cross for you, uttering those astonishing words of love and forgiveness – love so amazing, so divine.

Ask God to take away the hatred and violence and bitterness that can so easily infect our hearts. Ask for forgiveness and grace to forgive those who have hurt you.

On this Holy Thursday may God’s love truly change us tonight. Resolve not to pass on anger, resentment, bitterness to others. It stops with me.  Instead, resolve to pass on love, forgiveness, hope. That all may, through us, be drawn to and experience God’s love, love so amazing so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.’