Second Sunday of Easter
April 12, 2015

¹⁹When 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 Jews, 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.”
²⁴But 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.”
²⁶A 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.”
³⁰Now 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. – John 20:19-31

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples…

But signs for John are not mysterious omens or vague coincidences that must be interpreted by leaps of faith. Signs, in John’s gospel, are miraculous but always very concrete, physical events. Water is changed into wine that the people actually drink. The royal official’s son and later the paralytic and the man born blind are healed – their bodies experience a transformation visible to all around. 5000 are fed, eating bread and fish multiplies. Jesus walks on the water, feet physically stepping on the waves. And then Lazarus is raised, physically pulled from the tomb and unwrapped from the graveclothes. Seven signs that could be felt, seen, smelled, heard, and tasted.

Seven, of course, is traditionally the number of completion – a week’s worth of signs. But now the disciples are trying to make sense of reports that seem to indicate that there has been one more sign! Mary has seen and touched the risen Jesus, but the disciples are scared and confused, locked away in fear. You see, we tend to think of God and even Jesus as divine beings, capable of defying physical space and our earthly realities. The idea of resurrection is central to our faith, and belief in God for us is often discussed more as intellectual assent to stated dogma or an emotional relationship with an unseen God. But for these scared and confused people, Jesus is a physical being with flesh and blood. Jesus can be felt and seen and heard. If this is really is the eighth sign, then it’s going to have some physical implications.

All of which is perhaps why history has been so hard on Thomas. For generations of believers who came later and did not feel and see and hear Jesus, the harder part was believing the incarnation, believing that God took flesh and lived among us. Easier for us to identify with the other disciples who were astonished but went along with the idea that the resurrected Jesus could pop through locked doors and stand in their midst. They thought Thomas ought just to go along with their life-changing story. But Thomas is the one who stays grounded in the flesh. He has been witness to the signs. Perhaps he tasted some of the water turned to wine or some of the fish and loaves multiplied for the crowd, perhaps he was one of the first people the blind man saw when his eyes were opened. Perhaps he was in the boat when Jesus walked to them on the water. Maybe he helped unbind the risen Lazarus from his graveclothes. Thomas has been touching, tasting, hearing, seeing, smelling the presence of God this whole time. This is how he knows God. And that is all he asks, is for God to continue to be touchable.

And so we often say, with Thomas, I want to see to believe. I want to be able to touch and know that God is real. I want to be able to see and touch, smell, taste, and hear it. But we ought to be careful what we wish for. Because Jesus is quick to oblige Thomas’s request. While there is a suggestion that believing without seeing is admirable, Jesus makes the invitation to Thomas to touch the wounds. Not simply to shake his hand or embrace as old friends, but to put his finger into the wounds, to reach in and feel the tissues pulsing with blood and the rough edges of the scabs forming around the wounds.

And so in response to our prayer to see Jesus God invites us to touch the wounds of the world. To touch and see and hear and smell and taste God in the woundedness of the world. To look the person panhandling on the street in the eye. To hold the hands the sick and the dying. To stay in relationship with one another, committed to seeing the presence of Christ in the other when we disagree. To take concrete action through service or advocacy toward changes in the systems that wound the poor, the abused, the elderly, and the young.  To put our hands on the things that move us toward healing for the earth – not just in words but in real, tangible things. Or maybe simply to get in touch with the wounds inside ourselves, to sit with them in silence.

God’s actual invitation to touch and feel may not always be as pleasant as we imagine, because the incarnate presence of God is almost always a little on the messy side, even the resurrected Christ and the resurrected world still bear the marks, still have the wounds. The incarnate and resurrected God is rarely the cleaned up version we often imagine. But if we’re going to be an Easter church, a community of people transformed by the resurrection of Christ, we’re going to need these signs, however uncomfortable they may make us at first. If we don’t allow ourselves to place our hand in the wounded places, if we don’t allow ourselves to feel the breath of peace washing over us, if we don’t taste and see and feel and hear and smell the risen Christ, we are likely to remain locked away in our dark rooms of fear. If we cannot find a way to get in touch with, literally, the body of Christ, then who we are as church becomes empty, merely a place to socialize or a business to run.

But every week we have a new opportunity to receive Jesus’ invitation to see and touch and smell and hear and taste. “This is the body of Christ given for you,” we hear. We see the bread held out. We smell the fresh, floury smell of it. We take it in our hands, feeling that it’s real. And finally we taste it. The body of Christ, for you. Faithful or doubting, we need the presence of the broken body of Christ.

For it is there in this Easter meal, in the continuation of the 8^th and greatest sign that we are given the power to burst forth from our locked rooms of fear and reach out to all the other wounded places in the world. It is in this meal, in touching, seeing, hearing, smelling, and tasting Christ, that we are transformed into the same wounded body for the sake of the world. It is here in this meal that we find the power to touch the wounds of others with the same life-transforming compassion and healing. It’s here in this sign, at this table, that we become forever the wounded body of Christ for one another and for the world.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Resurrection of Our Lord
April 5, 2015

When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him.  ²And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb.  ³They had been saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?”  ⁴When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back.  ⁵As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed.  ⁶But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him.  ⁷But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.”  ⁸So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. – Mark 16:1-8

Alleluia! Christ is risen!
Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Easter is such a full day! The service is full of music, prayers, and shouts of praise. Our sanctuary is full with flowers and banners and balloons and people as we all gather to celebrate. Many of us just came from Easter breakfast in the Parish Hall with stomachs full of wonderful foods. Perhaps at home some of you have Easter baskets full with candy and treats and that horrendous substance we call Easter grass. So full. And yet, Mark’s gospel on this full Easter Sunday is so very…empty.

After a long winter, a long and at times heavy season of Lent, and the retelling of the events that led Jesus to the cross, we come this morning wanting an encounter with the risen Christ. But Jesus is not in Mark’s Easter gospel. Instead we only have the women who in their terror and amazement run away and tell no one. What we have is simply an empty tomb, an empty cave, an empty hole. Empty.

At first this feels like a let down. The women who have come with their spices have nothing to do to keep their hands busy in their grief. There is no body there to mourn. There is only the same emptiness we encounter all the time: the empty bowls of those who hunger for even the simplest of food, the empty bowls merely sign of their empty stomachs. The empty place beside us where loved ones once were, their lack of presence a sign of the emptiness in our hearts. The emptiness of depression and other forms of mental distress, which lead to isolation and despair. The emptiness of meaning that comes sometimes from the relentless daily rhythm of life without pause for rest and renewal. The emptiness of “I don’t have enough time. I don’t have enough money. I am not enough.” The empty tomb does not feel like good news in our world of emptiness.

After all our waiting and longing to be filled, it seems we deserve more than a simple nameless messenger pointing us back to the place from which we came. We long to be filled by the resurrection hope, the power of Jesus, the breath of life, the presence of Jesus himself.

But sometimes I fear that our Easter shouts of joy and the trumpeted choruses might have the effect of trying to shove away the despair and the doubts, the terror and even amazement that we experience along with the women at the tomb. As if somehow Lent is over and with it must go our darkness and despair. But an Easter joy that negates Jesus’ experience on the cross and the days of waiting in the tomb, or an Easter joy which negates our experience of pain, injustice, and seemingly endless waiting in grief – that kind of Easter joy merely covers over our experience. So perhaps it is with great wisdom that Mark provides us with an empty place, one that before could hold only death but which, because of its very emptiness, can now also hold the possibility of life alongside it. Mark’s gospel does not force belief or erase doubt, but rather creates for us space for mystery and wonder.

What if when we peer into the emptiness of the tomb with the faithful women who gathered that first Easter morning, we saw not the limitation of a space meant for death, but the expansive room that God makes for us and the full breadth of our experience? What if we saw in the empty tomb the portal to God’s ever-growing container for our ever-changing lives in all their great complexity?

Perhaps the empty tomb is exactly the point, after all. Because empty things are full of possibility. Empty things are places into which we might pour both our hopes and dreams and our doubts and despair. Perhaps in an empty place there is room enough for both to live side-by-side – doubt and belief, fear and boldness, despair and joy, death and life.

Perhaps the empty tomb can become a sign for us of the place in God that is large enough, expansive enough to hold our Easter fear, our Easter doubt, our Easter terror and amazement, right alongside our Easter joy. And maybe the empty tomb allows us to name the death that we experience in our lives all the time in little and big ways. To name it and lay it in the tomb where Jesus has been – not to remove it from our lives but to place it next to the promise and power of resurrection.

We will have plenty of Sundays in Easter to encounter the Risen Christ, to wonder at this gift of Christ’s risen presence among us. But this Easter day let us remember that we live in a world that is still catching up to the resurrection. Make no mistake, Jesus is risen, and he has already gone ahead of us. But as we dwell now at the empty tomb with Mary, Mary, and Salome in their terror and amazement, we shout our Alleluias into a world that is still catching up to the work of God’s transformation to new life. We shout our Alleluias into the dark and empty places of death. We shout our Alleluias into our hearts still holding our pain and grief and despair.

And by the power of water and word, bread and wine, God opens up a space to hold every deepest part of ourselves in the mystery of the resurrection. God opens up God’s very self to receive our whole beings. God opens up a place large enough to swallow up death forever and large enough to hold our lives raised up with Christ today and forever.

Alleluia! Christ is risen!
Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Easter Vigil
April 4, 2015

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb.  ²So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”  ³Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb.  ⁴The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first.  ⁵He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in.  ⁶Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there,  ⁷and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself.  ⁸Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed;  ⁹for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.  ¹⁰Then the disciples returned to their homes.
¹¹But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb;  ¹²and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. ¹³They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”  ¹⁴When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus.  ¹⁵Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”  ¹⁶Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher).  ¹⁷Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'”  ¹⁸Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her. – John 20:1-18

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

Christ is risen, indeed! Alleluia!

Holy Saturday is all about waiting. The in-between time after Jesus’ death and before his resurrection. The pregnant pause as the world holds its breath. So many of our stories tonight involve waiting. The unformed chaos waits for God’s words to shape it into something new. Abraham must wait three long days carrying with him the burden of what God has asked him to do before they reach the point where God steps in. Isaiah describes a waiting feast with food and drink without price, waiting for banqueters to come. Wisdom cries out, longing for her hearers to come to life and wholeness. Dry bones lie waiting in the valley for someone to come prophesy life and breath into them. And Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego wait for the salvation that comes to them only once they enter the fiery furnace. And finally Mary Magdalene and Peter and the other disciple, while it was still dark, were waiting in their grief.

And that is where so much of our lives seems to exist – in that liminal space between death and resurrection. Some of that waiting is the way we put things on hold, waiting until the right time or things are just so before we act, ceasing to live our lives for the sake of something that is coming later. But so much of the waiting is out of our control. The waiting for the end to winter and the final arrival of spring. The waiting between the termination of a job until the finding of a new one. The waiting between the time we are able to envision a solution to a problem and the time we are able to make that solution come to life. The waiting between the test and the results. The waiting between a diagnosis and the cure or perhaps between a terminal diagnosis and the end. Waiting for the pain, grief, violence, and fear to cease. Waiting.

That waiting sometimes occupies more time and space in our lives than we want. And even when it doesn’t the waiting itself seems to stretch out time. And yet we gathered tonight to wait, to wait by the tomb, to keep vigil, to tell ourselves the stories of those who have waited before us. And we did so this night because of the story we knew was coming at the end of all those great and wonderful stories of people who waited for God’s mercy.

We knew tonight we would hear that into the lives of the women keeping vigil for Jesus, into our lives of waiting, that Christ was breaking in tonight. To the waiting formless void, creation emerged day-after-day until God saw that it was very good and capped it off with a day of rest. To the aching heart of Abraham God appeared with the sacrificial animal. To the waiting feast we come tonight. To wisdom waiting for her hearers, people began to see God’s foolish wisdom. The dry bones took flesh and breath and lived. And the three men were saved from the fire to call all of the people to worship God. And tonight, this night, God breaks open the tomb that those who wait might hear their name called by the risen Christ.

We gather tonight because it is in the waiting that resurrection happens. Did you notice that in our reading? Resurrection happened in the night, before anyone knew anything about it. Mary, Peter, and the others were still waiting, still grieving, still longing. In their waiting they were still unaware that Jesus was already risen! It is in the long slow days of plodding through, in the longing for peace and justice, in the hoping for something new that God’s resurrection sneaks quietly into the waiting night. In fact by the time we discover God’s amazing outpouring of grace, it’s already happened beneath our feet. In the middle of the night while we were looking the other way, the stone is gone, Jesus is alive!

That is the life of the baptized. For Brennan, newly washed in these waters, and for all who are called to Christ’s work through baptism, we have died with Christ. The promise of new life with Christ is certain. And yet we walk, dripping wet, through long days of waiting, through ups and downs and along wandering paths. We walk sometimes more conscious of the pain, the injustice, the presence of death. Filled with grief and despair. But we gather together this night and every time we gather as people of God to remind one another of resurrection. To help each other to see the risen Christ already walking in our midst, to hear the voice of the risen Christ calling out our name in the waiting. Early, on the first day of the week, while it is still early, we gather to grieve at the tomb only to discover God’s promise already fulfilled.

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

 

 

Good Friday (Immanuel’s evening service)
April 3, 2013

On Good Friday, we read the Passion narrative according to John.

Just a few short months ago we gathered here to tell the Christmas story. In that story from the beginning of Jesus’ life, we are eager to find ourselves in the story. Eager for young and old alike to don costumes to be kings or shepherds, Joseph and Mary, perhaps even the adorable animals that play a part in the story. Jesus’ life begins with such promise, with new life, with hope, with a future. It’s not without its difficult parts, but by and large we are eager to hear it.

But today’s story at the opposite end of Jesus’ life does not have the same draw. We are, by-and-large, not so eager to claim a role in the passion narrative. Few are eager for the role of Pontius Pilate, a somewhat minor character in the whole drama remembered forever in our creeds as the one under whom Jesus was crucified. Few people are lining up to be Judas, or the High Priest, or even the usually beloved Peter, unless one’s eagerness is a bit of dark humor. We are uncomfortable when the reading tonight puts us in the place of the crowds shouting, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” And this is certainly not a night when anyone wants the part of Jesus.

It is not an easy story to hear or to be a part of. And it hasn’t been helped by so many depictions that have drawn attention to the gorier details. And yet, we find ourselves in this story so often.

We find ourselves, like Peter and the other disciples turning away from the Jesus we know and love, as we turn our faces from the poor and vulnerable, from those experiencing homelessness or mental distress. We turn away and deny the one who comes seeking hospitality – our next door neighbor or our neighbor from other countries.

We find ourselves in a world where we betray the ones closest to us, sometimes for financial gain. When we get stressed we turn on those closest to us. We sell ourselves short when we bury our lives in the seeking of success.

We find ourselves in the story of a world plagued by political, religious, and economic leadership which too often misses the prophetic challenge of those who, like Jesus, cry out on behalf of vulnerable people and on behalf the earth that longs for healing.

We find ourselves in a story in which the ones who often remain to the end are the ones society too often ignores. We find ourselves in a story in which we too often get swept away by the mentality of the crowd around us.

And sometimes we even find ourselves the one marked for suffering. Sometimes it is suffering more than we can bear. Sometimes it is quite literally to be beaten or killed at the hands of others.

We resist entering the story of the passion, perhaps because we know that it is the story of our world today as much as it is the story of 2,000 years ago. And yet, God refuses to shy away from entering our story. The heart of the goodness of Good Friday is the God who does not turn away when the worst we have to offer is unleashed.

The mystery of the cross is that the story of our world that we lament, the story we are loathe to confront, the story that is marked primarily by the power of death, in the cross that story is transformed into a story of life. By the cross, God enters the heart of our suffering such that it will never be the same again, such that through Christ’s victory over death this day, our death might also become a victory because there we find the God of life. And in doing so, God sweeps up every last character in the story – the disciples who betray, deny, and flee, the authorities who get it all wrong, the crowds who condemn, the soldiers who carry out horrible things, the weeping and grieving friends and family, the many others who were killed alongside Jesus in guilt or innocence – every last one of them are swept up in God’s story that carries us from weakness, suffering, and death into the glory of new life.

That Jesus enters this our story of pain, cruelty, injustice, and death is the heart of our salvation. That God’s love, mercy, compassion, and justice are so steadfast as to endure our profoundly ugly response gets at the center of what the cross means for us. As God had been doing from the beginning and has continued to do ever since, God bears the cross in order that we might live no longer in our story but in God’s story. And God’s story does not end with death.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Good Friday Ecumenical Service
April 3, 2015

At our ecumenical service this year, we read the passion story according to Mark’s gospel. Each of six pastors took a portion of the reading and preached a homily. Then we sang and prayed together. This is the first of the six:

^14:26[After the Passover meal,] when [Jesus and the disciples] had sung the hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. ²⁷And Jesus said to them, “You will all become deserters; for it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.’ ²⁸But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee.” ²⁹Peter said to him, “Even though all become deserters, I will not.” ³⁰Jesus said to him, “Truly I tell you, this day, this very night, before the cock crows twice, you will deny me three times.” ³¹But he said vehemently, “Even though I must die with you, I will not deny you.” And all of them said the same. ³²They went to a place called Gethsemane; and he said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” ³³He took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be distressed and agitated. ³⁴And he said to them, “I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here, and keep awake.” ³⁵And going a little farther, he threw himself on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. ³⁶He said, “Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want, but what you want.” ³⁷He came and found them sleeping; and he said to Peter, “Simon, are you asleep? Could you not keep awake one hour? ³⁸Keep awake and pray that you may not come into the time of trial; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” ³⁹And again he went away and prayed, saying the same words. ⁴⁰And once more he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy; and they did not know what to say to him. ⁴¹He came a third time and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? Enough! The hour has come; the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. ⁴²Get up, let us be going. See, my betrayer is at hand.” – Mark 14:26-42

 

What difference does it make? What difference does it make if the disciples stay up to watch and pray?

Jesus, God’s very self in human form, is distressed and agitated according to Mark’s account. If Jesus, who most of the time we consider to be fairly calm and collected, or at least fully in charge…if Jesus is agitated and distressed, what good is it going to do for the disciples to pray with him, to pray for him?

And to the extent that Jesus in his humanness knows what might be coming, what good will it do for the disciples to keep watch? They are fishermen and tax collectors, mostly from rural Galilee. They likely have little with them in the way of defense, though other gospels mention a knife. Their keeping watch will not prevent what is about to happen to Jesus. Their keeping watch will not save the world, or Jesus, or even themselves.

Don’t we sometimes wonder what good our watching and praying might do for us and for this broken and hurting world? If we truly believe that God’s heart already aches – that God’s very self is distressed and agitated at the injustices of the world, what good will our prayers do? For refugees pouring out of Syria and Iraq, for all of us under renewed awareness of the possibility of nuclear war, for 147 students and others killed in Kenya, for people of color who live with daily micro-aggressions and too often even worse, for people denied basic rights. For people who are unjustly killed, as Jesus was, for people without access to food and water. For these things God is already distressed and agitated. Will our prayers somehow move God to swift and heavenly intervention? Will they somehow invite the deus ex machina solution for our world’s ills?

And sometimes we even begin to wonder what power we have in the face of so much that needs doing to bring in the reign of God. Against the powers of corporations bigger than we can fathom, and governments that sometimes turn more slowly that we might like, against the powers of wealth – our own or others’, against the pervasive and systemic injustices that lead to so much pain and heartache. It seems even a lifetime of effort sometimes yields only small changes. Against all that, what are we, as disciples of Jesus, able to do even if we manage to keep watch for a few hours as Jesus cries out in anguish?

And yet. And yet in the garden as this whole passion narrative begins to unfold, as the very salvation of all the cosmos rolls toward the cross and empty tomb, Jesus asks the disciples – asks us – to watch and to pray. Jesus asks a group of people he has just confirmed will desert and deny in a matter of minutes to hours at the most – Jesus asks them – asks us – to watch and to pray.

Because in the foolishness of God’s wisdom, God invites us into the story. In the upside-down world of the cross, the very people who will betray, deny, and desert are the ones God asks to watch and pray. Because God refuses to be God without the company of broken people who cannot hold it together even for an hour, even when it counts the most, even with reminder after reminder. God refuses to leave us behind because of our failure and incompetence.

And even more, through what is about to come God chooses us to be the body of Christ in the world. Through all that is about to unfold from this garden, God chooses the lost, the broken, the hurting, the lazy bystander, the sleepy disciple, the betrayer, the denier, the deserter, the soldiers who preside over crucifixions – God chooses us to be the hands and feet of God in the world. God chooses us to be the ones to carry forward the work of justice, peace, and mercy.

So let us watch and pray together, as the body of Christ, not because in doing so we will save Jesus. And certainly not in doing so will we save the world or even ourselves. But let us watch and pray in joyful response to God’s repeated invitation to us, broken and imperfect as we are, to be the body of Christ. To be the hands and feet of God moving our broken and hurting world toward the reign of God that is already assured for us and for all by the power of Christ’s victory over death.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

Maundy Thursday
April 2, 2015

Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.  ²The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper  ³Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God,  ⁴got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself.  ⁵Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him.  ⁶He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”  ⁷Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”  ⁸Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.”  ⁹Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!”  ¹⁰Jesus said to him, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.”  ¹¹For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, “Not all of you are clean.”
¹²After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you?  ¹³You call me Teacher and Lord — and you are right, for that is what I am.  ¹⁴So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.  ¹⁵For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.  ¹⁶Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them.  ¹⁷If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.  ^31b“Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.  ³²If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once.  ³³Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’  ³⁴I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.  ³⁵By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” – John 13:1-7, 31b-35

 

Tonight I’m going to ask you to move a little bit, to get into your bodies. Just for a moment. You might close your eyes if it helps you feel a little less self-conscious. First, sitting in your pew, slump your upper body forward a little. Lean your chin down to your chest, hunch your shoulders forward and round your back. Take a breath there. Notice how that feels.

Now pull your spine up straight, and your shoulders back, lift your head up tall. If you have room beside you, you might even pull your arms back. Imagine a string pulling your heart up and forward. Take a deep breath there. Notice how that feels.

Ok, you can relax now. For those who have practiced yoga, you might know what a heart-opener is. In short it’s a pose in which you lift forward your physical heart, making room for air to enter the lungs and counteracting the postures that many of us find ourselves adopting as we sit for long periods of time.  Many who practice yoga also consider these heart-opening postures a way to open our hearts metaphorically, to make room for compassion and for a type of strength and power that comes from that vulnerable opening of the heart.

You may or may not have felt any of that just now as you moved your bodies a little in the pew, but that’s been my experience of these physical postures as I’ve practiced yoga: that I find not only a physical strength but also a spiritual and emotional strength in doing them. But I also feel quite vulnerable when I do. With the heart exposed it is vulnerable to attack, vulnerable to pain.

But that has also been my experience of the physical postures we assume in these holy three days as we tell the story of Christ’s dying and rising in our own lives.

Already tonight many of you came forward to receive words of forgiveness. Words that acknowledge brokenness in every one of us and God’s love for us as broken people. The words spoken are not fundamentally different from the words of God’s forgiveness that I am called, no, commanded to proclaim to you most Sundays. But something, at least for me, in the physical touch, in the laying on of hands, is different. I feel it differently. It is me who is broken. It is me who is forgiven. In this physical posture in relationship with one another and in relationship with God, our hearts are opened for compassion and for strength through vulnerability.

In a few moments you will be invited to wash one another’s feet. For those who participate, it is a posture of vulnerability. Like Jesus we stoop to the place of the servant. We put ourselves in a physical posture of weakness. We put ourselves in a posture of compassion and care for another. But first we put ourselves in an even more vulnerable position of baring our own feet to be served. Our upper bodies may stoop over in the process, but washing feet and having one’s feet washed are heart-opening poses. They embody God’s opening our hearts for compassion and for strength through vulnerability.

And tonight we share a meal, as we do so often. We stand with empty hands extended as beggars at the table. We admit our need to receive. To receive the body and blood of a God who was made vulnerable to us. In an intricate dance between God’s vulnerability and our own, we feast together with hearts opened to compassion and strengthened through vulnerability by this meal.

And these three days will offer more opportunities for heart-opening postures, as we bow and kneel at the cross, as we gather around the new fire, as our ears are filled with the stories of God’s people, as the waters wash over all of us as we witness a baptism, and finally as we run forth from the empty tomb with the good news that awaits.

But all this is only possible because at the very center of these holy three days is the God who accepted the ultimate heart-opening posture. Having taken on a physical human body with a heart that is both powerful and vulnerable, God goes to the cross, opening arms wide and heart forward. In response to our violence and injustice, Jesus opens his heart to us. Full of compassion and strength through vulnerability. And so we are touched by the power of God to reach into our hearts, be they open or closed, to draw us up not just from fear to compassion or from weakness to strength, but in the end from death to life.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Fifth Sunday in Lent
March 22, 2015

²⁰Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks.  ²¹They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”  ²²Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus.  ²³Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.  ²⁴Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.  ²⁵Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.  ²⁶Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.
²⁷Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say — ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.  ²⁸Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.”  ²⁹The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” ³⁰Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine.  ³¹Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out.  ³²And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”  ³³He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die. – John 12:20-33

“We wish to see Jesus.”

These are the words of the anonymous Greeks who have come to Jerusalem for Passover. With no explanation of their motivation or intention for their request. We do not know how they heard about Jesus, the teacher, prophet, healer, miracle-worker. We do not know if they came with an intellectual curiosity or a spiritual longing or a desire for debate. But they wish to see Jesus.

People, Greek and otherwise, are searching for answers to all kinds of questions. People are longing for healing and transformation, longing for a spiritual transformation. People are looking for community. Looking for love. Looking for connection. Looking for happiness and peace and joy. Looking for relief from fear, pain, anxiety. People who are looking for social change or for lack of change. Looking for more money, better stuff, more security. Looking for more time. Looking for reconciliation. Looking for life now or life after death. Sometimes people identify their search quite openly, but most of us tend to keep our longings deeper inside. Often we haven’t been able to quite put words to our longings for ourselves. We don’t know why the Greeks wished to see Jesus. Maybe it was some combination of a few of these things I’ve just named, or perhaps it was something else.

When any of us come looking for Jesus, I wonder if we don’t often get our search all mixed up with the other things in our lives that we are seeking, if Jesus doesn’t become the catch-all, the answer to our search if only we could pin him down for once. If only we could just see him, just to have a place to go with our longings. Some kind of longing draws us to church, I suspect. And we find ourselves in a community of people who together wish to see Jesus.

Strangely, we don’t know if the Greeks ever did get to see Jesus. Because they tell Philip and Philip tells Andrew, and together they tell Jesus, and Jesus gives a lengthy response, followed by a voice from heaven which requires explanation with the gathering crowd, followed then, a few verses after we stopped reading, with the words, “Jesus departed and hid from them.” For a man whose end goal is to draw all people to himself,  hide and seek does not seem an appropriate strategy.

So where are we, as a community of searching people, to look for Jesus. Here is where Jesus’ response is quite helpful. Because Jesus’ response to people seeking him is to point, once again to something so ordinary that most people had probably missed it entirely. Look in the dirt he says. Look at the seeds that are planted. Dig up a plant and see if you can identify any longer the seed from which it came.

For a plant to grow from a seed, the seed must cease to be. For life to sprout and grow the seed must crack and burst. Parts of it must die away. Parts of it must grow and change. It must be transformed beyond recognition if it is to be any use at all. You wish to see Jesus? Then you might start looking in the dirt. For it is there, Jesus says, hidden away in the earth that you will find what Jesus is all about. It is there you will find seed after seed planted to be transformed into something new and life-giving. That is where you will find Jesus, in the dirt, dying and rising again. You wish to see Jesus? You might do well to start there.

Which is all well and good as a nice metaphor for the coming Easter, which we who know the story are beginning to see on the horizon just two short Lenten weeks away. But what are we to do as a community of people who are searching for all kinds of things, Jesus included? How are we to be a garden community of sprouting seeds, rich soil, and attentive gardeners?

I think we have to start by remembering that Jesus isn’t just here when things are working out the way we want them to, but that Jesus is in the dying. In dirty, messy garden before plants begin to sprout, when the growth is still silent and hidden. That Jesus is present when we disagree and when we are challenged by our neighbor and when we make big mistakes and when we fail completely. Jesus is present in our dirty, messy gardens, in our silent and hidden growth. As a church we are called to remind one another where to look and to be a community garden of sorts, a place where dying and rising can happen again and again.

We are called to be a people of deep and abiding prayer. When we really engage in prayer, when we genuinely come seeking Jesus, we give something of ourselves up in order to make room for God’s work. We may come with our list of longings and very genuine needs, but in prayer we make room for the action of God in a small way dying in order to make room for God’s raising us up again, each prayer planting ourselves in the soil to be broken open for new life to emerge.

As a community of people searching for Jesus, we also need to grow into a community that trusts God at work when the time comes as it always does that we have to let go of ways of doing things or ways of being together or even whole ministries that have been a part of our congregation for a long time. Searching for Jesus calls us to plant those ministries, that the core of what is beautiful and productive, indeed the core of what is holy to that ministry, can sprout new form and new life. It can be scary for all of us to bury in the dirt things that are precious to us, but it when the time comes, doing so can be the key to experiencing new life for the church and finding the Jesus we seek.

This is also the core of our healing practice. We come whether to anointing for healing, which we offer today during communion, or in conversation in the hospital, or simply to the kind of healing we seek in our everyday interactions with others as we share our ups and downs, we come seeking Jesus. And here in this community we trace the sign of the cross made at baptism. In doing so we name our burdens, our hurt, our fear, our illness, our grief as places where Jesus dwells. And in doing so we find the courage to bury our very lives in the ground that Jesus might bring forth life. And we trust that the growth is there even if it is so slow that we do not see it above ground in our lifetimes.

So if you came today wishing to see Jesus, you will have to look in places you might not expect. Perhaps more than anything in the fruit of the earth that has grown from seed and been transformed into bread and wine. For there the resurrected Christ is always waiting for us. That in joining together around the table a seed might be planted in us to sprout and grow and call us today and always to new and abundant life.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

 

4th Sunday in Lent
March 15, 2015

⁴From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; but the people became impatient on the way.  ⁵The people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.”  ⁶Then the LORD sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died.  ⁷The people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned by speaking against the LORD and against you; pray to the LORD to take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people.  ⁸And the LORD said to Moses, “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.”  ⁹So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live. – Numbers 21:4-9

¹⁴And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up,  ¹⁵that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
¹⁶For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
¹⁷Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.  ¹⁸Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.  ¹⁹And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.  ²⁰For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed.  ²¹But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.” – John 3:14-21

A child climbs onto the kitchen counter to reach the cookie jar and accidentally knocks over a favorite glass bowl, which promptly shatters into several pieces. And an adult comes in and says, “Just look at what you’ve done!”

A messy cook like myself, makes an elaborate dinner and takes a step back at the piles of dirty dishes in the sink, the flour and pieces of vegetables on the floor, and the spills on the counter. And he says in desperation “Just look at this mess! I’ve got to get things under control.”

Someone comes into the house having been outside playing or out working and is covered in mud and dirt and grime and who knows what else. And someone exclaims, “Just look at you! What are we going to do with you?”

If we just take the time to look around, we’ll find plenty of messes to stare at. Plenty of things to wish were different, plenty of things to work on fixing. Being asked to look at them can instill a sense of shame or guilt.

We are human people living in human communities, full of broken relationships and missteps with one another. We are people who live with conflict and often the inability to transform it into something creative and life-giving. Look at the mess we’ve made of our world.

The situation of refugees fleeing war-torn Syria and northern Iraq and the situation of refugees fleeing the poverty and violence of Central America. The situation of two peoples laying claim to the land we call Israel and Palestine. The situation of racial injustice and the violence that accompanies it. Look at what a mess we have made!

Sometimes the messes are fully beyond our control. People in the Pacific Islands are reeling from a devastating storm. People walking through what was their home saying, “Look at what a mess it all is.”

In the book of Numbers the Israelites had a complaint against God. God had delivered them from slavery, yes. God had parted the sea to save them from Pharaoh’s army, yes. God had been giving them free food every morning for the last however many years of desert wandering, sure. They did in the first few verses of this very chapter just defeat a whole tribe of people by God’s intervention. But at the same time, they were in the middle of a 40-year wandering in the desert and eating the same food over and over again year after year and finally said, “Just look at this, God! You call this food? You call this quail and manna a feast? You’ve got to be kidding. You just brought us out here to die alone and afraid.”

God had been dealing with this back and forth for a while, so in a rather interesting and unorthodox manner of discipline, God send poisonous snakes which bite and kill them as a reminder to call their attention to the one who delivered them and the one who has promised them a future.

And rather quickly as people start dropping dead, the people cry out to Moses again. “Ok, we get it. We were wrong. What can we do about these snakes?” God’s response is not to remove the snakes. Had it been, this whole incident might lead us to see a cruel God who punishes rather than disciplines, who kills rather than brings to life. But God’s response is to put the image of a snake in the center of their community, and God tells the Israelites, “Now you just look at it!” Having been bitten, the person who looks on the bronze serpent will live.

At first this seems odd, even magical or idolatrous. It might even appear cruel or at least intentional shaming to be forced to look at the very thing that is causing them to die. But God’s point is never that they should die for their complaining. God’s point was that they should look at the very things they see as a disaster and see in them instead healing and life. To see in them the power of God setting them free and leading them forward.

This is what Lent calls us to do – not punishment and denial of self, but to look fully at ourselves and the world. To look deeply at who we are. To stop our denial and avoidance and the sugar-coating of our reality and stare the darkness right in the face. And it may very well kill us. It may cause us great pain. It may rise up to bite us with poison. But it’s the only way we will come to see God there. Looking at the source of our pain and brokenness with honesty and courage is the only way we will see the life being offered to us.

For me it somehow all makes sense when Jesus compares his own coming death with the serpent lifted up in the wilderness. We are called to look, to see the cross for what it is. To see the in it the pain and cruelty. To see in it the brokenness of the world. To see in it that which ultimately demands our life from us. And not to turn away but to look long enough, to see deeply enough to recognize the presence of God transforming our death and pain into new life. “Just look!” says Jesus. “Just look and see there the love God has for the world.”

We can deny its presence for as long as we want, but we live in a world where we are visited by pain and death and at the very least a mess that needs cleaning up. And the longer we pretend everything is alright, the longer the mess remains untransformed in our eyes, the harder it becomes to find the courage to stare it in the face.  And the longer we avoid it, the more we miss the wisdom it has for us about ourselves and even more the wisdom our dark places have to teach us about God’s love that comes in the most unexpected places and the most unexpected ways.

Because it is in looking deeply into the darkness that we see God is a refugee, that God is the land being fought over and the victim of violence on every side of war, that God is the broken bowl and the child who feels terrible about breaking it, that God is in the mess than can surround creativity in the kitchen or elsewhere, that God is hiding in the dirt that builds up on our skin and in our hearts. And from the pain, the brokenness, the darkness – from the cross – God looks back at us, and says, ”For God so loved the world, that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send the son into the world to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved through him.”

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

Third Sunday in Lent
March 8, 2015

¹³The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.  ¹⁴In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. ¹⁵Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.  ¹⁶He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!”  ¹⁷His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”  ¹⁸The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?”  ¹⁹Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”  ²⁰The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?”  ²¹But he was speaking of the temple of his body.  ²²After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken. – John 2:13-22

See also the first reading, which is the giving of the 10 Commandments: Exodus 20:1-17.

Many of you may know CS Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. Four young children find their way through the back of a wardrobe into the fantastical land of Narnia, and find themselves in the midst of a land aching for release from the snow and ice kingdom of the white witch. (It’s not a stretch for us to imagine the desire to be liberated from a seemingly eternal winter!) The Christ-figure who will guide them and be their strength is a lion named Aslan. When the two young Pevensie girls are preparing to meet him for the first time they are asking questions of their new friends Mrs. and Mr. Beaver. They start with the assumption that Aslan is a man, and Mr. Beaver responds:

“Aslan a man? Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-beyond-the Sea. Don’t you know who is the King of Beasts? Aslan is a lion — the Lion, the great Lion.”

“Ooh!” said Susan. “I’d thought he was a man. Is he — quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”

“That you will, dearie, and make no mistake,” said Mrs. Beaver, “if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.”

“Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy.

“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver. “Don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about being safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

One has to wonder if the Jesus we meet in today’s gospel is altogether safe. Overturning the tables of money changers and sellers of animals for sacrifice and generally causing a riotous uproar in the courtyard of the temple, Jesus is capable here of creating quite a disaster.

There was a standard system in place. People came to the temple, they exchanged their currency for temple currency, they bought the appropriate animal for sacrifice, and went to the priests to perform the required rites. These sacrifices were not just acceptable, they were part of what God asked of the Israelites. It was part of what they were expected to do. It was below the 10 commandments, but definitely a huge part of the other 603 commandments in the Torah. The Hebrew word used to cover all the different religious sacrifices is from the root word that means to draw close or come near. This was the system designed to draw near to God. And whatever dishonesty had entered the process by way of human control of it, John’s gospel actually downplays that part.

This is Jesus, coming into the center of their religious practice and reminding them that this business of drawing near to God is not, in fact, altogether safe. This was the message of the prophets before him who told the people over and over again that completing the sacrifice did not in fact complete their obligation to live lives of justice and mercy. The sacrifice was only the beginning of drawing near to God. The thing that so many seemed to have forgotten, the thing that we most of the time forget, is that drawing near to God was not a simple transaction – buying the appropriate animal and doing the appropriate task. Drawing near to God meant living in the company of a dangerous lion.

Perhaps we, too, like to simplify our religious practice to a transaction. Take the 10 commandments. I think we are too often guilty of assuming they are about transactions. I do and don’t do these things and I get blessings for doing the right thing. Or I do and don’t do these things and God will love me more. Or maybe most subtly and therefore most deceptive of all, I do and don’t do these things and I am more worthy of God’s love. Jesus himself was clear that he did not come to turn the tables on these 10 commandments, though I’m intrigued by the question of how many commandments Jesus broke, if any, in his little rampage through the temple courts. But I do think Jesus intended to overturn any misguided ideas that following these laws was about getting something out of it or getting something from God by doing it. Instead I think they call us to a radical life of turning the tables on our economy which is largely based on coveting our neighbors and their stuff, a radical life of caring for those who are hurting or injured, a radical life of taking rest from the busyness of life and setting aside the idols we cherish as a community and society. To live out these commandments in their fullest expression would overturn a good bit of the world around us, a calling that is far from safe.

And we apply the same to our spiritual lives and our relationships with church. Perhaps if I deepen my spiritual practice I’ll find myself more at peace and happier in my day-to-day life. If I could give a little more or do a little more I’d probably get closer to God. Perhaps if we could just manage to do everything right we could sit comfortably next to God in a pleasant and peaceful existence. But what happens when God reaches into our lives either through those attempts we manage or through something else altogether, is that we do find ourselves suddenly closer to God but that God is not at all what we had expected we’d find. Instead we find ourselves seated next to a lion. Not one who has plans to consume us, but one who certainly has the power to do so and more to the point the power to encourage us to do things that might scare the heck out of us.

It seems to me that more than anything, this table-turning riot was at least as much about reminding people that at the heart of the temple where they stand is a God who is just a little bit unstable. A God who might just do something like destroy the temple and rebuild it again in three days. A Christ who might just destroy himself and rise again in three days.

And it’s that Christ who offers himself to us at this table. I warn you, though, that as good as it might be, it is not altogether safe to approach this table. Because we take into ourselves this somewhat unstable, table-turning prophet. We take into ourselves the call to the cross. We take into ourselves the power of the one discomforts us and sends us out to upend things in the world around us.

To eat at this table is to take into our very being this table-turning gospel. It is to reject an economy that is based primarily on giving and getting. It is to reject that human beings or that any other part of creation are commodities to be offered and exchanged. It is to reject that we can control God or ourselves with simple back and forth transactions. It’s to be fed with an insatiable hunger for justice and mercy, to be unsettled and turned-upside down. It’s to be sent out to be table-turners and justice seekers, offering ourselves to one another.

So, no, it isn’t at all safe. But it is good, because the one at the center who turned everything upside down with the cross and the empty tomb, that one draws near to us and will fiercely lead us forth through our wilderness into life.

-Pastor Steven Wilco (with thanks to Dan Clendenin for the reminder about the passage from the Chronicles of Narnia)

Second Sunday in Lent
March 1, 2015

When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to Abram, and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless.  ²And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous.”  ³Then Abram fell on his face; and God said to him,  ⁴“As for me, this is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations.  ⁵No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations.  ⁶I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you.  ⁷I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you.  ¹⁵God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name.  ¹⁶I will bless her, and moreover I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.” – Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16

³¹Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. ³²He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.  ³³But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
³⁴He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  ³⁵For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.  ³⁶For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? ³⁷Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?  ³⁸Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” – Mark 8:31-38

It’s official. Churches are no longer the best place to go to learn morality.

Well, that’s not exactly the headline from the research, but that’s the gist of what some are saying after several recent studies including one from Pew Research which suggest that statistically speaking, on average, a person raised in a secular environment is actually slightly more likely to rate more highly on a scale of moral indicators. Those posting this are mostly secularists who are, with good reason, tired of Christians implying that non-religious people are without a moral compass.

But me? I’m glad to see this research. Because maybe it’s an opportunity for the church to stop pretending that our primary purpose is to make one another better people. To stop pretending that our goal as the church is to be good and nice and happy. Because I’m pretty sure that’s not what God’s call to the church is about.

Frankly, God didn’t call Abram and Sarai from the land of Ur of the Chaldeans to be a moral family with a suburban home and 2.4 children. Let’s take a moment to review where they’ve been when we meet up with them in today’s reading. Out of the middle of nowhere, God showed up and called Abram at the age of 75 to pick up his wife and family, his tents, his livestock, and his servants, and travel to a far off land in return for the blessing of land, protection, and descendants. When he gets there he has to live side-by-side with the rightful occupants of that land who don’t honestly seem all that friendly. There’s a famine so he travels even farther into Egypt. He’s afraid of outright hostility so he tries to pass his wife off as his sister to the Pharaoh, which gets them all in hot water. When he returns to the land that was promised, he has to rescue his nephew from the hands of the local rulers. Abram does get a blessing from the priest, but gives away a tenth of his wealth in return. When he starts to doubt this promise for descendents, God tells him his descendents will be as numerous as the stars, which, honestly, is a whole lot more than anyone wants to have to handle, especially given God’s delay in getting one to begin with. Then he gets a terribly dark message from God about all the terrible things these many descendants will have to endure. Finally they have been waiting so long, that sometime after Abram’s 86^th birthday, Sarai sends him in to her slave, Hagar, who bears him a son while managing to create, as you might imagine, some difficulty for all their relationships with one another.

So, are they Courageous? Absolutely. Loyal? Fiercely. Bold risk-takers? You bet. Faithful? Beyond belief. But moral? Well…some moments more than others. But God didn’t call them for that. God called them to be God’s people and to trust boldly, even stupidly at times.

You see, this was not the first or the last of God’s call to take up your cross and follow Jesus. A good 3-6 centuries before the Romans invented it, Abram and Sarai were told to pick up their cross in their own way. God didn’t send them out with the purpose of suffering, but God didn’t beat around the bush about it being a part of the journey either.  So when it’s time for the disciples to hear the same message, Jesus isn’t going to shield them from it, either. They need to know what it is they have really been called to do.

The question for us is what kind of cross-bearing is God calling us to now.

Doing good stuff isn’t easy. It’s hard to remember to serve others all the time, to be kind and compassionate in every interaction, to always respect the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual needs of self and other, to care for the earth at every turn in word and deed. It’s not easy, but it’s not cross-bearing. It’s not losing your life in order to save it.

And making the church run isn’t easy. For those involved in the work of the church – that is all of us – it’s hard work. Making sure the building and the finances are in good order, making sure the committees and sign up sheets are full, keeping peace between people and anxiety manageable – it’s all a challenge. But it’s not cross-bearing either. It’s not putting personal comfort and safety ahead of the gospel.

Putting up with minor ridicule for the faith in a progressive community isn’t great, but I’m not sure that’s cross-bearing either. Putting up with any number of ailments, difficulties, sufferings, and annoyances are downright hard, but they’re not cross-bearing either.

Cross-bearing is that calling in you that is deeper than you can identify, that call you’ve been trying to avoid but it won’t let you go, that thing that asks you to pick up all you have and all that you are and go, that thing that calls you to courage and bravery and risk-taking, that clinging to hope in the face of despair, that which calls you forward when you cannot imagine another single step. Cross-bearing is being okay with the kind of grace from God that will break you apart into a thousand tiny pieces such that you’re a whole new creation when God puts you back together. Cross-bearing is submitting to death because you trust the one who says it’s the only way to life

So what cross-bearing is God calling you to now?

Whatever it is, it’s not easy. Lectionary blogger Dan Clendenin puts it this way: “The deist god is remote, safe and silent. He won’t bother you. He won’t intervene in human history or answer your prayers. And he sure won’t speak to you or do the impossible.” The milquetoast God that we more often than not imagine, the one who sits around asking people to be good and nice and happy isn’t the God who calls us to the cross. The problem is, that God also doesn’t call us to the resurrection.

The call from the God of Abraham and Sarah and the call from Jesus is one that uproots us, challenges us, discomforts us, calls us to bold and risky things, changes our very identity, laughs at our rational excuses, and asks us to do the impossible.

So we engage this Lenten wilderness wandering together seeking to be a community not just to support one another in doing works of mercy and caring for self and other, but seeking to be a community that supports one another in taking bold risks.

And that’s ultimately a whole lot harder than being a good person. And maybe, most days not that appealing. But it comes from a God of deep love. A God of deep compassion. A God with the power to pull life from a barren woman and bodies from the grave. A God who bears the cross with us lest we bear it alone. This call comes from the only God who knows that we all end up cross-bearing one way or another and from the only God who knows that it’s the only way to resurrection.

-Pastor Steven Wilco