Sunday, April 27, 2014

Because It Was Impossible

Team building exercise on our Cross-Community Trip to South Africa with Northern Irish teens in July of 2005.
April 27, 2014

Acts 2:14a, 22-32
14aBut Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them,
22“You that are Israelites, listen to what I have to say: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did through him among you, as you yourselves know — 23this man, handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law. 24But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power. 25For David says concerning him, 
     
‘I saw the Lord always before me, 
         
 for he is at my right hand so that I will not be shaken;
  26  therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced; moreover my flesh will live in hope. 

27  For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, 
         
 or let your Holy One experience corruption.
 28  You have made known to me the ways of life; 
          
you will make me full of gladness with your presence.’

29“Fellow Israelites, I may say to you confidently of our ancestor David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. 30Since he was a prophet, he knew that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would put one of his descendants on his throne. 31Foreseeing this, David spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, saying, 
     ‘He was not abandoned to Hades, 
        
  nor did his flesh experience corruption.’ 
32This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses.


Sermon: “Because It Was Impossible”

It was a dusty, winter’s day in July.  A group of Protestant and Catholic teenagers from Belfast were gathered in a large room at a camp in the middle of the bush outside of Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.  We had worked with these teenagers for ten painstaking months, working first in “neutral spaces” outside of entirely Protestant or Catholic territories of Belfast, building relationships. 

Eventually, there was enough trust to walk these former enemies around their own neighborhoods, pointing out this place where they played as children, and that place where a family member was tragically killed for being Catholic instead of Protestant or vice-versa (I should say Catholic meant Irish and Protestant meant British, these were cultural and not religious labels).  We thought we’d come really far with these kids.

Until that warm winter’s day in South Africa.  The task was simple: take this lump of clay, make something that will help tell your story, and then tell the rest of the group your story. 

The first teenager took that lump of clay and roughly balled it in his fist.  He spoke, “This is to represent a rock, like what was thrown at us when we were peacefully protesting at Bloody Sunday in Derry and you Prods – no offense – attacked us for no reason.”

That clay might as well have been a real rock.  The teenagers erupted into the us-and-them we had worked so hard to overcome:
“You Prods attacked us first!”
“You Teags (Catholics) threw bricks at British soldiers – they had to defend themselves!”

As the tension in the room escalated rapidly, exposing just how fragile that Northern Irish peace really is, we leaders stopped it.  We told all the kids to go outside – separate from each other – while we discussed what to do next.  As leaders we said that it was quite possible that this would destroy all the progress that had been made.  What if these kids came to blows, in the middle of the South African wilderness?  What would we do then?

Ultimately, we agreed:  God is in this thing.  God has been here these past ten months and we have to trust that God is somehow in this process, no matter how scary it seems.  So we invited those kids back in.  And we let them vent.  Angry, bitter, vengeful words were passed back and forth about events none of them had even been alive for, but had heard about all of their lives. 

Finally, a new kind of anger arose.  These kids stopped being angry at each other, and realized they had been force-fed half-sided histories their whole lives.  They found they had a common anger at having been fed hate and fear for so long, at never knowing what really happened. 

It could have gone very differently that day.  But it didn’t.  God showed up.  And we let God move in ways that were terrifying and risky. 

I tell you this story from my time in Belfast and South Africa several years ago because it’s one of those moments in my life when I’ve seen God do something completely impossible, take kids whose families had been at odds for generations and bring reconciliation. 

We hear about another impossibility in our reading from Acts: that Jesus was unjustly killed, but that God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power.  Death could not hold Jesus, no matter how hard it tried. 

Death could not hold those kids in Belfast in their half-true histories of violence, no matter how hard it tried.  The reality is, though, that sometimes it feels like death might just win.  It’s why we stopped those kids that day, because we thought that, hard as we had tried, maybe it was just impossible for them to know reconciliation at a deeper level.  Maybe superficial peace was the best we could hope for, where they never actually got to the level of their deepest pain and fear.  Deeper healing was impossible.

When Jesus’ disciples, those who abandoned him actively and those who silently did so, watched the Son of God be killed by the State through a people whipped into a frenzy by fear, I imagine they thought death had won.  That perhaps the peace they’d received on earth walking beside and learning from Jesus was the best they could hope for.  Anything more would be impossible.

But the thing is, God loves a challenge!  God takes what we call impossible and instead of cowering in fear or defeat, says, “Okay, trust me, and watch this.”

And if we’re able to let go of our need to control everything, of our preconceived ideas about how God is and is not supposed to work, sometimes something remarkable happens.  We call that “remarkable something” resurrection: when God takes what we have called ‘impossible’ and says that the only impossibility in that situation is for God to do nothing.

This is why we are Easter people – not because we prefer it to the horror of the cross and not because it has a nice ring to it.  We are Easter people because this season of Easter is when God reminds us that it is impossible for the forces of death to keep us from God’s new life, just as it was impossible for that grave to contain Jesus.

There’s a lot of letting go required to allow God to do the impossible.

This letting go looks like, in our busiest and most stressed-out times, instead of doing more, stopping, praying and giving God space to re-order our lives.

It looks like sitting with the painfully raw conversations with someone we have hurt or who has hurt us, and refusing to leave them and settle for superficial peace, but talking and even more, listening, until we reach resurrection on the other side.

It looks like refusing to let the expectations of others define who we are, or who we have to be, but listening to God as our conscience and guide above all else.

It looks like answering God’s call to become a lasting part of an imperfect family – as Sarah and Bronson are doing today – saying that we need each other to follow God, and this world needs us to reach out together.

It looks like getting out of our cars and into the woods, out of our calendars and into a conversation with a child, and listening to the Risen Lord who walks with us always.

God is doing the impossible – whether we witness it or not.  But let’s not miss it – let’s be brave enough to let go and open our eyes and hearts to the One who brings new life in risky and powerful ways.  Alleluia!  Amen.
  

Rolling Stones

April 20, 2014 - Easter Sunday
Matthew 28:1-10
1After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. 2And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. 4For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. 5But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. 6He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay.7Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.’ This is my message for you.” 8So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. 9Suddenly Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. 10Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”

Sermon: “Rolling Stones”

We’ve heard the resurrection story from Matthew so many times, right?  We know it backwards and forwards don’t we?

It goes like this:  2 guards hang out by Jesus’ cave grave.  Mary Magdalene and another Mary go to see the tomb early in the morning.  Suddenly there’s an earthquake, a blindingly bright angel descends from heaven, the stone is rolled away, and that angel has a seat on it.  Then Jesus is raised from the dead.  The ladies see him and he tells them to go and tell the others.

Pretty much how we remember it, right?  So I can just wrap this sermon up now?

Well, no.  You see, that’s not actually what happens in Matthew.  All of those dramatic events we hear about: earthquake, angel swooping in, stone rolling away, are not preludes to the resurrection.  They’re postludes.  They happen after Jesus has already been raised in this text.  The angel speaks to those faithful women in past tense, “He is not here, he has been raised.” 

And when that stone rolls away, Jesus doesn’t come walking out.  That tomb is already empty!  The women don’t even see Jesus until after they leave the tomb, and are on their way to tell the good news that Jesus is alive, purely on faith (without having witnessed him alive for themselves).  Only after they’ve taken such a faithful step does the risen Christ appear to them.

So why all the drama?  Why does the resurrection need the dramatic effects: the earthquake, the glowing angel, the rolling stone?

Full of these questions about all of this smoke and mirrors stuff in our story, I did the obvious thing: I asked a magician friend of mine.  (He also happens to be a Presbyterian pastor.)  And no, don’t worry, I will not at any point this morning be saying that the resurrection was some sort of elaborate magic trick by God.  But I do wonder how drama serves to help us grasp the impossible, or believe the unbelievable.

My magical friend said this:
Sometimes, a flash/bang device is used for distraction, and sometimes it's just used for dramatic emphasis.  It can be used to direct someone's attention AWAY from something, but it can also be used to direct someone's attention TOWARD something - as if to say in dramatic fashion, "Hey!  Look at this!  This is really important!"

In his opinion the angel and corresponding earthquake and stone rolled away were pointing to the more important thing happening: that Jesus was raised from the dead. 

So, I can’t help but re-read this familiar story from Matthew in this way:

The resurrection had already happened.  It happened sometime before those women arrived at the tomb, it happened while those guards were completely unaware, perhaps catching a pre-dawn nap.  It happened quietly, invisibly, actually.  No one seemed to notice it at the time.  But when there were people who God wanted to recognize what happened, God pulled out all the stops, like how a magician trys to draw attention to something really important.  Angel descending, earthquake, rolling stone – Jesus didn’t need these in order to be raised from the dead.

But those women needed the flash/bang effect.  They needed the drama so that they wouldn’t miss what God had already done.  And they needed the angel to tell them those six words of what Easter is really all about: “Do not fear! Go and tell.”

And in the going, to do the telling, they caught up with the resurrected Christ, who was already going on ahead of them.  He echoes those same essential six Easter words, “Do not fear!  Go and tell.”  And those two women do just that.  And because they do, millions of people gather this day to celebrate the good news that Jesus is alive, including us.

But though we gather to celebrate this good news, we do not do it because the resurrection happens just today, or because it happened once-upon-a-time over 2,000 years ago.  We gather because resurrection is still happening, over and over again, often before we even realize what God is doing, many times in such quiet, subtle ways it’s easy to miss.  But God knows that we human beings aren’t so good at quietness and subtlety when it comes to faith. 

We like the drama – we crave the glowing heavenly being, the foundations of the earth shaking, the rolling stone.  I don’t think we crave this resurrection drama because we’re addicted to high drama television and having our senses be constantly over-stimulated by technology (though we of course are). 

I think we need a dramatic resurrection because the forces of death are so very dramatic in this world: there is nothing quiet or subtle about war, hunger, poverty, cancer, bullying or broken relationships.  The forces of death are loud. 

And so we need the forces of resurrection – of new life – to be even louder.  Give us the smoke and mirrors, give us the ground shaking beneath our feet, give us the tangible presence of heaven, give us the impossibility of a weighty stone rolled away so that we might believe that new life is also possible.  We do not want a whispering Easter, we want a Rolling Stone Easter, that sings over and through all that deals death in our world and our lives, overpowering all of that noise. 
Sometimes, like those women that day, we are lucky.  Sometimes, God brings resurrection with all the fanfare so that we realize that something really important has happened, and we can’t miss it.  We awake one day and suddenly find that all of our anger and bitterness has been rolled away from our hearts like a stone we thought would never budge. 

But I think just as often, God brings quiet resurrections, resurrections we might not even fully see until we let go of our fear and go tell someone the good news we are so desperate for ourselves.  Those women were prepared to go and tell of the resurrection before they actually saw it.  So must we.  For still, it is in the going and the telling (not in the sitting and the pondering) that we really encounter our Risen Lord.

However Easter comes to us, quietly or loudly, we do know this: it comes first.  God’s resurrection power is already at work, already bringing new life, already defeating the forces of death in our midst.  Because the Risen Lord is still going ahead of us, leaving resurrection in his wake. 

And he is still speaking those same six Easter words to us, speaking into our worries and doubts, into our illness and exhaustion and anger: “Do not fear, go and tell.”  Whether those resurrection words of hope are loud and obvious or subtle whispers, we can be sure of this: even whispers of God’s resurrection have more power than the loudest shouts of death in this world. 

Even hints of new life through Jesus Christ are enough to fill the darkest places of grief and fear with glorious light.  

Even echoes of Easter are enough to roll away our heavy stones of worry and despair. 

Christ is risen! Do not fear, God and tell.  Alleluia! 


Amen.

Sunday, April 13, 2014

The Landscape of Lent: Palms

April 13, 2014 -- Palm Sunday

Image Source

Matthew 21:1-11
21 When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, 2 saying to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. 3 If anyone says anything to you, just say this, ‘The Lord needs them.’ And he will send them immediately.” 4 This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying,
“Tell the daughter of Zion,
Look, your king is coming to you,
humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”
The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; 7 they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. 8 A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9 The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David!
    Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!”
10 When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?” 11 The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”
Matthew 26:14-16
14 Then one of the twelve, who was called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests 15 and said, “What will you give me if I betray him to you?” They paid him thirty pieces of silver. 16 And from that moment he began to look for an opportunity to betray him.


Sermon: “The Landscape of Lent: Palms”

Prophecy is a funny business.  These days, if someone prophesies the end of the world as, say, next Tuesday, they’re generally seen as few ice cubes short of a glass of sweet tea.  If I were to, while shaking your hand as you leave today, tell you that you should really avoid that seafood supper this week because it won’t end well, you’d look at me like I was insane.  And then you’d probably avoid Bay Breeze for a week, just in case.  Prophecy is not an integral part of our society.

Not so in Jesus’ day.  Much of his life and ministry happened in a very precise way, fulfilling ancient prophecies about the Messiah.  Both texts from Matthew we read this morning –  Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem with palm branches waving and Judas’ betrayal of Jesus with palms full of coins – were actually prophesied by the same prophet: Zechariah.

Zechariah was a prophet around 520 BCE, over 500 years before the birth of Jesus.  He was the son of Berechiah, son of Iddo (what a name).  The people of Judah who were exiled returned to Jerusalem and were given special permission to rebuild the Temple, but they faced pressure from the Persian Empire.  So, Zechariah spoke over and over again about one thing: the restoration of the people of God, linked with the restoration of the Temple.

Now, if you think I’m about to skip ahead to present day and tell you this is speaking about what we know as the current state of Israel needing to rebuilt the temple before the Messiah comes back, I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed.  I don’t believe that the biblical people of Israel are the equivalent of what we know as the nation of Israel today, because those Jewish people were scattered throughout the world in the diaspora. And I don’t think this text translates quite that directly to current day.  But it does translate very clearly to our Matthew readings.  So let’s look at those parallels.

At the beginning of the triumphant entry story, Jesus begins his procession on the Mount of Olives.  Zephaniah said the Messiah would appear there.  Jesus rides in on a colt, he “borrowed” from someone in the village, saying “the Lord needs this.”  (I’m not sure “The Lord needs this” will work if we try to take someone’s new golf clubs or laptop!)  But it worked for Jesus, and he rode in on a colt, because Zephaniah said he would. 

Palm branches were waved, coats strewn upon that dusty road and the crowd shouted with one voice “Hosanna to the Son of David!  Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!”  Okay that’s actually the prophet Isaiah quoted there, not Zechariah.  Even as many praised Jesus as the Messiah, others asked “Who is this?”  The answer they were given: a prophet from Nazareth.  Prophecy mattered.

And then we switch gears, to Judas, perhaps the most hated and relatable character in all of scripture.  I love Frederick Buechner’s take on him:

Nobody can be sure, of course, why Judas sold Jesus out…he already had a reputation for dipping into the poor box from time to time so the cash may have been part of it.  If, like the other disciples, he was perennially worried about where he stood in the pecking order, he may also have been reacting to some imagined slight.  Maybe he thought his job as treasurer to the outfit was beneath him.  Another possibility is that he had gotten fed up with waiting for Jesus to take the world by storm and hoped that betraying him might force him to show his hand at last.  Or maybe, because nothing human is ever uncomplicated, something of all of these was involved.

Whatever his motivations, Judas did betray Jesus, for 30 pieces of silver.  Why 30 pieces?  That’s quite specific, isn’t it?  Well, 30 pieces of silver was the cost a slave owner would receive if their slave was gored by an ox (really, that in Exodus).  But that amount of money pops up elsewhere in the Old Testament, too.  Can you guess where?  Zechariah. 

Zechariah speaks of himself, saying, “on behalf of the sheep herders, I became the shepherd of the flock doomed to slaughter.”  He asked the sheep merchants for his wages, 30 pieces of silver.  And then he threw them into the treasury in the house of the Lord – literally meaning the ‘potter’, an act symbolizing God’s displeasure with these people.

When Judas receives his 30 pieces of silver – the worth of a killed slave – he later regrets this.  Well, that’s a bit of an understatement.  When he finds out Jesus has been condemned, he rushes into the house of the Lord and throws down his 30 pieces of silver, begging the religious leaders to reverse the decision.  They refuse, call the money what it is, “blood money” and use it to buy a field.  More specifically, they use it to buy the potter’s field, as a place for foreigners to be buried.  The prophetic connections of Judas’ betrayal with Zechariah trying to bring restoration to a sinful people are powerful, and obvious.

So what does all of this prophecy mean?  What does it matter than Jesus started his parade at the Mount of Olives, or that his parade ‘float’ was a colt, or that Judas would be paid 30 silver pieces to betray him, and throw that money down in the house of the Lord, or that this money would later be used to buy a potter’s field?

The temptation is to say that this shows God had a simple plan from the beginning and Jesus and Judas dutifully played their roles like toy trains chugging down pre-laid tracks by some divine Railroad Engineer.  That is the easy way to understand these prophetic connections, and maybe we’d prefer it. 

But prophesy, you see, is never easy.  That’s where we get it all wrong these days.  Prophets of old tore their clothes, married people who were impossible to love, shattered pottery into pieces, bought and sold fields, planted and ate crops, all in a dramatic effort to reveal the demanding covenant love of God, often giving their lives to get that message across. 

Those who call themselves prophets today often aren’t.  They’re not suffering for their message, they’re profiting from it.  They’re not speaking of the covenant love of God, they’re speaking of the bitter hatred of God, not on them, but on those they disagree with.  If you call yourself a prophet, you probably aren’t one. 

If you are willing to die to get the message of God’s love for all across, like Oscar Romero or Martin Luther King, Jr., or the assistant principal at Franklin Regional Senior High School this week who threw himself over a student stabbing other students to stop him, you probably are.  True prophets are rare these days.

I don’t actually think many of us can really be like the prophets of old or the prophets of today.  But we can learn from them.  Maybe Jesus’ big triumphant entrance was as preordained as his horrific exit a week later.  Maybe the lure of money and the familiar made Judas’ betrayal of his Messiah inevitable.  We do not have the answers to those questions, because prophets never really seek to answer questions.

Instead, they guide us to ask deeper ones, questions I hope we will each allow to stir in our hearts and souls this Holy Week:

·      Are we waving palms of praise or are we too preoccupied filling our palms with money that will prove worthless in the end?

·      Do we still wait for a Messiah who comes to take the world by storm, and miss the ways he is already entering the world again and again, not by force, but by grace?

·      Will we leave this space of worship and find ourselves forgetting the Savior we met here in a day or two as the mob mentality of worshipping busyness takes hold?

·      Do we believe that God still speaks through prophets, true prophets, showing us – not telling us – about the covenant love of God?  Will we listen to them?

·      Do we believe this week is about more than preparing for family meals and the Easter bunny, that Jesus’ death and resurrection actually did something – and still does something in a world where death seems so powerful?

·      Are we willing to enter into that story once more, the horror of the cross and the hope of the empty tomb, to discover why sacrifice and resurrection matter, not just over 2000 years ago, but today?

Thanks be to the God whose plans for redemption always come to pass, to the Messiah who walked that path not as a puppet, but willingly and selflessly, and to the Spirit who speaks through prophets of old and those rare prophets of today.  Amen.

Sunday, April 6, 2014

The Landscape of Lent: Cave

April 6, 2014 -- 5th Sunday in Lent
John 11:17-44

17When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. 18Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, 19and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. 20When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. 21Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” 23Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” 24Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” 25Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, 26and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” 27She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”
28When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” 29And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. 30Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. 31The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. 32When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” 33When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. 34He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” 35Jesus began to weep. 36So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” 37But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”
38Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. 39Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” 40Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” 41So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. 42I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” 43When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”


Sermon: “The Landscape of Lent: Cave” 

As you know, I spent this last week at the Next Conference in Minneapolis, where Presbyterian folks from across the country asked the question of what’s ‘next’ for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).  After three days of what can only really be described as an exhausting and invigorating family reunion, I found myself in the Minneapolis airport with a head full of thoughts, a Lazarus resurrection story in front of me, and a blank document on my laptop.  It was what I like to refer to as “sermonating time” (and, in case you’re concerned, I never call myself The Sermonator!). 

Anyway, I was sitting near my gate, where I found hundreds and hundreds of little tables, outfitted with an ipad mounted opposite of each chair.  “Free!” it said.  As I sat in that “free” space, and proceeded to write this sermon, I suddenly had a funny feeling someone was hovering behind me, and took out my headphones and turned.

“Do you need anything” a waitress asked, not very kindly.  “No, I’m fine,” I replied.  “But do I need to order something to sit here?” I asked, noting that the only place to sit at the gate seemed to be one of the hundreds of tables with ipads mounted on them.  “Well.” she retorted, “You are at a restaurant.”  And she walked away.  I gathered my things and did the same, moving to another so-called “free ipad” table, but near a window, far from her withering gaze.

Goodness what effort they went to making the airport technologically inviting, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to offer ipads to tech-addicted folks like myself.  What a grand vision, and grander investment to back it up.  And, what a total failure in terms of welcome, all because of a snarky waitress who made it clear that nothing in this life is free, not even a chair in an airport, and that unless I paid up, I wasn’t really welcome.

At the outset, the story of Jesus and Lazarus comes off as a failure, too.  You see, Jesus was told his good friend Lazarus was sick.  He was told how urgent the need was.  He knew time was of the essence.  But he didn’t get there in time.  He failed.  Lazarus died.  Mad with grief, Lazarus’ sisters Martha and Mary state their disappointment, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died!”

He should have been there.  He wasn’t.  The Next Conference reminded me that we say this in the Presbyterian church all the time as well. 

Lord, if you had been there – at that divisive presbytery meeting, at that frustrating session meeting, at that struggling isolated church, our churches would not be dying.  Our denomination wouldn’t be declining rapidly.  If you were really here, we wouldn’t be faced with aging out, becoming irrelevant in a world of “spiritual but not religious” young people and bitter debates over theology, inclusion and polity.  Lord, if you were really here, your church wouldn’t be dying. 

We are fortunate to be in a vibrant community (which I’ll say is rare these days), where we love each other radically and worship fully, without great tension.  But we learn from our grandchildren and neighbors that we are in the minority because we see church as a “living” place.  Most do not.  Most see a place that judges them, or excludes them, or welcomes them with conditions, like that table at the airport.  A dying place.

We do not want death.  Like the Dylan Thomas poem, we “rage, rage against the dying of the light!”  We produce comprehensive plans that we hope will guarantee that we will survive forever.  We meet and meet, strategize and advertise, welcome visitors and serve others in mission.  And still, for the most part, we lack an entire generation’s participation in what we know to be church.

Sometimes, the response to this missing generation is almost identical to what I experienced in the airport: a technological flood.  We assume that screens or ipads or tweets or facebook or a fancy facility will make us relevant, and perhaps it does. 

Perhaps a weary traveler, like I was in the airport, tentatively sits in our pews.  But sadly, though we try so very hard, all it takes is one feeling of being an outsider like not knowing the words to the Lord’s Prayer or a stranger watching to see what they put in the offering plate, seeming to say that nothing in life is free, and all of those efforts fail.  The welcome proves hollow. 

The church feels like a family, yes, but one with all its own language, order and expectations that seem overwhelming to learn.   And this feels, when our churches aren’t flooded with young people, when we get strange looks for being Christian, when we intentionally keep quiet about our faith so as not to make people uncomfortable, an awful lot like failure.  Perhaps like Jesus felt in that moment he finally arrived at Lazarus’ house to find a whole community tearing their clothes with grief.

But it wasn’t a failure, despite all the evidence to the contrary (including the very real presence of death).  What it was, was a delay.  A very, very painful delay.  Sure, Jesus knew resurrection was at the end of the story, but in that moment, he was consumed with sorrow.  He wept.  The Lamb of God, the Prince of Peace, the Wonderful Counselor, the Light of the World, the Word Made Flesh bowed his head and wept at the loss of his friend.  That delay was nearly unbearable.

He came to that cave tomb and told them to roll the stone away (sounds familiar, doesn’t it?).  They did, but Jesus didn’t go in.  Maybe he couldn’t bear seeing his friend in that cave tomb and maybe he was trying to show power, but for whatever reason, he stayed put.  “God, I know you always hear me, but for the sake of these people, make it obvious, will ya?”

And then he simply said, “Lazarus, come out!”  And he did.  But the work of resurrection wasn’t over.  It was just beginning.  You see, Lazarus was still bound in the clothes of that cave grave.  Jesus didn’t remove them.  He told those gathered to do that, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

Let him go??  How could they possibly?  This friend, this brother, was dead.  And now he was alive!  How could they ever “let him go” again?  If anything, they should cling to him more tightly, keep him insulated from illness and danger and thus preserve his life.  But that’s not the work of this resurrection story.  The work of resurrection is not preservation: it is unbinding, and letting go.

After several days with weary church leaders, exhausted from trying these ‘best practices’ and those ‘outreach methods’ and seeing them fail, I can’t help but hear these words of resurrection from Jesus as his message to today’s Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and too Cameron Presbyterian Church. 

Do we want this powerful community of hope in Jesus Christ to survive?  Do we want our churches to know resurrection in the face of death?  Then we have to actually go against our impulse, just as Lazarus’ friends and family did.  When we are so tempted to preserve the church, protecting it from what are seen as ‘secular’ threats, when we want to never let it go, clinging to history and tradition and past moments of light, keeping it safe from those who most criticize or misunderstand it, we should do exactly the opposite. 

Because those temptations to insulate the church are the equivalent of rolling the stone back in front of that cave.  It will be safe, yes.  And it will die.

We are called instead to the terrifying work of resurrection: leave the caves of comfort and sorrow.  Remove the clothes of the grave – language of us and them, feelings of superiority or entitlement, bitter distrust of those who are different, habits that make us seem more like an exclusive club than a community of welcome.  Unbind the church, and let it go.

That is the only path to resurrection.  It was for Lazarus, it is for us, it is for God’s church, including Cameron Presbyterian Church.  Unbind it, and let it go. 

Loose this radical gathering of resurrection hope in a community desperate for good news and belonging.  Don’t tell them why they should come here.  Go to them and show them why God is already with them.  Go to the student struggling to read, needing to know they’re not stupid.  Go to the retired person living alone, desperate for someone to hear their story.  Go to the young mother who’s stretched too thin while her husband serves in the military abroad, whose every day is laced with worry.  Go to the skeptical young adult who thinks church will never be a place for them, and don’t teach them, but listen and learn from their understanding of God.  Unbind the church, and let it go, far beyond these walls.

All other efforts at resurrection, no matter how valid, no matter how earnest, will fall short, because they will be preservation and not resurrection.  If I drew anything from my experience at Next last week it was this: God is not embalming the church.  We often are, but God, God was, is and will always be, about so much more: resurrection. 

May we have the urgency of a grieving Martha begging for Jesus to show up, the trust of our Savior, praying for God to show up and be obvious about it (for the sake of these people), and the active compassion of a worried community unbinding this world, and even the church, from the forces of death and letting it go. 

Resurrection is risky.  It is terrifying, uncertain, beyond the control of our four walls.  But in a community that needs to know they’re not alone, in a country that needs to know church means not hate but healing, not cliques but compassion, in a world that needs to know God is still at work and has not abandoned us, we absolutely must take that risk. 


The good news is, God is already doing this.  Jesus is already showing up in places where grief and loss have left whole communities broken and fearful, rolling stones away from those dark caves and calling to us, to you, to me, “Unbind the church, and let it go.”  Will we?  Amen.