Easter 4 - C - 2010

Hearing the Voice

If I got you to remember back to an old vinyl record company, RCA, and asked you what the logo of that company was, could you tell me? It is one of the most familiar logos of all times, the figure of a dog sitting beside one of those hand crank record players, staring in wonder at the speaker. The caption told it all: “He hears his master’s voice.”

Obviously, this classic advertisement relied on the common knowledge of dogs and their relationship with owners. Whenever an owner calls a dog, the animal will begin to wag its tail and squirm and jump in eager anticipation of being petted or scratched or fed or taken outside.

You could get the image instantly – and understand the point – the recording sounded just like the master….

That, by the way, is also how Jesus taught. He was always conjuring up an image, engaging the senses, and explaining his philosophy and spirituality by using something familiar.

Today we have a reading in which he is trying to convey to his disciples just how much he loves them, and exactly what their relationship in like. He uses the imagery of a shepherd; and in doing so He characterized who and what he was for them – and who he is for us.

To Jesus and the people of his day, tending sheep was a familiar activity that meant many things. The shepherd led the sheep to good pastures, looked after the strays, exercised responsibility for protecting the sheep (which often meant risking life and limb against wolves), and served as midwife for the birthing of lambs, and paid special attention to the little lambs, the most vulnerable of the flock. The shepherd knew each of his sheep and valued the life of every one. The shepherd was deeply devoted to his flock.

I am not sure we can ever completely get back to feeling it the same way the disciples did – but can you see how powerful and image that is? What if I told you I would get you what you needed, protect you no matter what, act as a midwife for all your dreams, take care of you when you were most vulnerable, remember everything about you, and seek you out no matter how far away you roamed?

Sometimes we balk at the idea of being sheep, of following mindlessly, but that was not the point, the stories are all about the Shepherd… all about God…

Now, Jesus didn’t really make this up; he was playing on an image much more ancient and powerful - We recited it in our psalm today – a hymn of confidence offered by one who knew not only great depth of loss and fear, but also knew within his heart that God would lead him through the other side.

Sometimes I think this is too obvious, too clear to even bother talking about – we all find ourselves in dark valleys, we all find ourselves unable to discern the way forward, we all long for someone to set that table, to help us overcome our enemies, and to lead us out the other side…. We get the 23^rd Psalm; we would love it if Jesus was the good shepherd…

In fact, I would argue that the 23^rd Psalm is the most loved and beloved passage of the entire Bible, most of us even have it memorized, and memorized in the King James Version to boot:

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures;

He leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul;

Now, here is the question…

Is it powerful simply because we have all walked those dark valleys? Or is there something else? Is there a sense that we so need to believe that God cares for us, that God loves us, that the very possibility that this might be true, that God leads us and walks beside us, is enough to move us to tears?

How come? What are we missing that we don’t just KNOW this stuff?

Is it that we don’t recognize God’s presence in our lives because we are not looking? Is it that we are distracted by ‘other’ shepherds, other things that lead us away from the safety of the sheepfold?

Probably it is all of those things and more….

I think one of the great dangers for us is in not recognizing that voice; like sheep not hearing the voice of the shepherd. It is very easy for us to fail to discern God’s will because we can’t separate his voice from the many others clamoring for our attention. That is our reality; everywhere we go, there are voices calling out – voices that say “buy this” or “do this” or “say this” or “go this direction” or “act this way” or “don’t tend to that need.” There are voices competing with one another, vying for our attention, seeking to gain control of our lives in big and little ways.

So, we Christians must keep our ears tuned to the voice of Jesus, our good shepherd, calling out in the midst of those other voices.

I also think that what we think about ourselves gets in the way. We are unlovable, we are evil, we are too dumb, we aren’t pretty enough, and we eat too many brownies…. I don’t know, you might have your own thoughts like this too – I don’t want to make it all about me….

The thing I love about the Psalms is that the people werte aware of their thoughts, they were aware of their limitations… but they knew, KNEW, that God was not subject to those limitations – God loves us completely despite ourselves, God knows the right way even when we wont listen, God can make all things work for the good… there was never any question of that…

Over the weekend I was in meetings all day Friday and Saturday discerning the core values of the United Church as a hierarchal institution…

The moderator of the United Church, Mardis Tindal, said something very, very wise…

She said, “It is not God’s Church in the world looking for a mission… It is God’s mission in the world looking for a church.”

Think about that… God is there – Jesus is the Shepherd…. Are we listening?

Easter 3 2010

Get Up!

TS Eliot wrote a series of long poems called “The Four Quartets”

The last stanza of the last poem reads thus:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

Now poetry might not be for everyone I realize. I am just using this as an example that words convey more meaning than just definition – they convey emotion, understanding, and even ambition.

So, anyone want to hazard a guess at what Eliot was talking about? Okay, I want to change the background, and have you look at the picture again, so to speak: I will tell you what Eliot has in his mind when he wrote the poem, and then read it again:

The title of this fourth quartet is “Little Gidding”; it is a small town in England that is home to a monastery founded in the 1600’s... This is really a poem about religion. As he goes through the work he meditates on the meaning of our actions, and the many instances when we realize that what we called an end was just the beginning of another move, of something else, and vice versa. Birth and dying are moments of equal importance, we are born and we die, and in each is contained the seed of the other. Now, you should also know that Water is a symbol for God, Fire means the Holy Spirit and that the Rose is a symbol for Jesus, and that Eliot believes in the Trinity.

So the poem is about life and faith; it says our lives have meaning, but mostly, Eliot is arguing that we see that meaning most clearly in beginnings and endings. It is as we move from one thig to another that we find new meaning and move on. And while we keep that in mind, we have to also remember that for Eliot, God is constantly present; but he wants to express that in poetry, so water is the creative force of God the Father, and fire symbolizes the Holy Spirit and the Rose is Jesus...

Now, listen again:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

Did it mean something different because of the little bit of explanation that I gave you? Is it not much deeper, much more meaningful, when we see not only the emotions conveyed, but the thoughts behind them?

Here is a story of Easter:

“Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?"

He asked, "Who are you, Lord?" The reply came, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do."

So; You all might know this from Sunday School, but let me do the same thing I did with Eliot and give you just a glimmer of history behind the words.

Early Christianity was not persecuted by the Romans; that came quite a few decades after Jesus died, early Christianity was a revival movement within the Jewish church; and not a popular one. The traditional folks said that the way to gain God’s favour was to follow the rules, exactly – if you do everything God expects, God will love you. These people were called the Pharisees; and everyone went to their churches because it was a simple and neat solution. Wear cotton, pray five times, wash your hands a certain way, give 10%, don’t eat pork, and God loves you. (this is a stereotype, by the way, there are over 1000 rules in the Bible that the Pharisees thought you should follow to the letter of the law, and it was tough.)

Jesus, you may remember, said something different. He said you could boil it all down to a sentence; love God, Love everyone else, love yourself. If you pull that off, God loves you. Call it the spiritual approach rather than the practical approach.

Now Paul was such a good Pharisee that he wanted to stop this nonsense once and for all, arrest everyone who would not follow the rules, kick them out of the churches, straighten this mess all out. And he was good at it; he was the most feared Pharisee in the Holy Land because he was perfect, and did not tolerate one iota of deviation.

Now the one other thing you should know is that there is no word “Get up” in this passage in Greek; the word is “resurrect”

Now listen: “...suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?"

"He asked, "Who are you, Lord?" The reply came, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do."

Now here is Easter, as understood by Eliot, explaining Paul:

Everything in life ends; and in that moment we see more clearly the choice that lays before us; and it is a choice. The end is not an ending; it is simply the place where we see quite clearly what has to change. You could be searching your whole life for this; or you could stumble upon it some idle Tuesday on the road to somewhere else; and get knocked off your horse.

In that moment – in the moment of ending; of whatever ending; be it naiveté, be it youth, be it a relationship, or be it life itself, God speaks – and what God says is this: Come back to life – move on – it will become clear what you are to do next.

And as Eliot has God say, “...And all shall be well and All manner of thing shall be well...”

Easter 2 2010

Believing in Hope

I think that Thomas always gets to me.... Part of it, I think, is that I live in a world where I question too much... where I am never quite sure that I have said the right thing, done the right thing, or even hoped for the right thing...

There are days I wish I could be a carpenter... either the deck stays up and is finished, or it falls apart – either way, you are sure about something.

Life never seems so easy for me.

Think about it. Don’t you wish you could be sure that Green Tea was good for you? Don’t you wish you could be sure you’re not missing some big deduction when you fill in the tax forms? Don’t you wish you could be sure that is the right tie to wear on your dinner date? But more specifically – since we are here in church – don’t you wish you could be sure God loves you?

Ah – there – that is the crux of our religious problem. That is why we come here week after week, for some ‘assurance’...

Our Gospel reading this morning is about “Doubting Thomas”, but here is a curious fact, the Greek word for “doubt” never occurs in this whole passage! The root word is actually pistos – which has three definitions:

• pertaining to trusting -- one who trusts in, trusting

• pertaining to being trusted -- faithful, trustworthy, dependable, reliable

• pertaining to being sure, with the implication of being fully trustworthy -- sure

The prefix "a" as in apistos, means "not" or "without". We have the same thing in English where, for example, "amoral" means "without morals" - therefore "Apistos" means "without pistos."

We could define it as “not having trust or faith or certainty."

Okay, so now you are all scratching your heads and asking – so what. Is not having certainty really any different than doubt? Well, it is when we turn it around – It is not Thomas who doubted; it is Thomas, who wanted to be sure. And, well, wouldn’t we all want to be sure? Don’t we all want to be certain?

That experience of knowing – really knowing – that Christ is alive, still able to touch and love and heal, is something we want and need, especially when times are dark and uncertain. And for Jesus’ followers in this morning’s gospel, the times feel very uncertain....

Think back for a moment – you might have to think back years, or maybe it in only months, or perhaps weeks, or minutes... what has happened in your life to make it so you can’t be sure God loves you.

I had a lot of really bad stuff happen to me when I was a kid. When you read the newspapers and say “Oh. That’s terrible,” well, I have probably been there. I spent most of my life pretty unsure if there was a God, and certainly unsure if God loved me. I spent decades actually rebelling against church... locking myself away from any proof that there just might be a God of love out there.

Which is essentially where our friends the disciples find themselves this morning; they’ve had a terrifying series of experiences. They saw Jesus arrested and led away. The ones who were brave enough to watch saw him crucified.

And then Peter and the beloved disciple saw that Jesus’ tomb was empty. An even more frightening thing than we usually imagine, because to someone living in the first-century Roman Empire, they would know that if anyone had seen them around the tomb, Jesus’ followers would have been suspected of grave robbery – a crime that carried a death sentence.

It is of little wonder that, at the beginning of this morning’s gospel, Jesus’ followers are gathered secretly, behind locked doors. As possible grave robbers, they were suspected of a capital crime; as known followers of a man brazen enough to conduct a public demonstration in the Temple courts, in full view of the Roman garrison stationed there, the disciples would be considered highly dangerous to the peace of Rome, and to the Judean leaders Rome supported…

So the question on the minds of Jesus’ followers is probably not so much “will we be next?” as it is, “how long do you think we can last?”

To reach them, breathe his spirit on them, and commission them to serve as agents of his forgiveness and love, Jesus has to come through not just the physical locked door behind which they’re all hiding – but the emotional barriers of their fear and doubt as well.

To get from here to there, they had to be SURE.

Right? All of them are in there locked up and afraid, right? Well, almost all of them are hiding. Interestingly enough, one of them is not. Thomas is not with those cowering in the locked room when Jesus appears to them. And so Thomas doesn’t see Jesus, doesn’t experience Jesus’ breathing on his followers, doesn’t receive the commission the risen Jesus gives the others.

Does this mean that Thomas is less faithful than the other disciples? I think it is actually hinting at quite the opposite. Thomas misses Jesus’ commission to the other disciples to go out into the world, forgiving as he forgives: but I like to think that Thomas wasn’t present to hear those words because he, unlike the others, was not locked inside in fear, but was already out there, in the world.

Thomas was the disciple who already understood some of the things we too often forget. For example, he knew that being a disciple was not always a safe thing to do. Way back in chapter 11 of John, Thomas is the one who says about Jesus, “let us also go to Jerusalem that we may die with him.”

SO perhaps Thomas is not afraid like the others.

Jesus appears to the first group because they need to get over their fear, they need to be empowered... so why does he come back for Thomas?

How about so Thomas can be SURE he is on the right track.

Which led to some great things – according to rumour Thomas was the only disciple who was present at the death of Jesus’ mother. He was also the one who took Jesus message the furthest, spreading into Syria, and India... all because of his certainty.

So how can you know it is the real risen Christ? The real risen Christ is the wounded Christ, the broken Christ, and the Christ who walks right by our side in our pain and sorrow with tears streaming down his face.

Thomas knows that if he is dealing with that Jesus, then everything he believes in is true. And he wants to make sure. Maybe it will give him strength so that he can go out there into that dangerous world, maybe he just needs to know he is not alone – but he needs to know.

Faith is the assurance of things hoped for. Faith is being sure, deep down in your heart, that God is real, that God loves us, and that there is some way in which this whole world makes sense. And I need to say it just one more time – seeing the risen Jesus, knowing what Jesus went through for love, seeing those wounds and really, really, experiencing resurrection – that changes everything.

How can you be sure? How can you encounter the Risen Christ in your life? How do you know for sure that God really matters? For each of us the answer to that question might be different. But it is available to us nonetheless – If we are open to it, we will encounter God as a very real presence in our own lives. We will be able to unlock the door on our own fear and wade out into that world with a new purpose and vision – we will be able to declare, like Thomas, “My Lord and My God!”

And at that point we have to really listen for what resurrection is all about – for ti didn’t end with Jesus appearing to the disciples, it ended with the words he spoke next to those who encountered him: You are being sent out, into the world, and specifically to the world’s brokenness. You are being sent to touch those places, to proclaim and participate in the healing that is Christ’s work in the world. You are being sent because YOU – yes you – are now the Body of Christ, Jesus’ presence at work in the world, called and empowered to do what he did, and more.

We are the risen, living Body of Christ is in the world – breathing peace, bringing healing, and going forth, in love and in power. Thanks be to God!

Easter - C

Ghost Walking...

Have you ever seen a ghost? Ever suspected you have? How about this, have you ever had one of those feelings like there is a ghost, or something... the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, your body starts pumping adrenaline with a fight or slight sort of response; and it all seems so perfectly scary...

It is a hard feeling to explain to someone else – it is hard to capture... I think perhaps that is why Stephen King is famous, he is one of the only writers who can put down on paper what it feels like to see a ghost and have us feel it too.

There are feelings that are close – I imagine... Ever broken your mom’s favourite vase? Ever put a baseball through someone’s window? Ever realize you are about three hours late for something? Ever lost your wallet?

I know, I know, not quite the same thing –

... and if someone has never done any of those things, there is no way to quite capture how you feel when you are explaining it to them.

Have you ever noticed the adjectives for Easter morning? The women, and the disciples, are amazed, perplexed, and terrified. In John Mary is even weeping and yelling at the guy she thinks is the gardener...

Those are the emotions we feel when something doesn’t make sense – when something seems unbelievable and scares us...

Those are in fact, the Good Friday emotions, but it is good to keep in mind that these are the emotions that drive the women to the garden that early morning after the Sabbath. They have lost the one they love, life doesn’t make sense, and they are alone....

If we do not start there, the story doesn’t make any sense – because again, it is impossible to get across what happens next. Although, like I said, we can tell stories that remind us what it was. It is like when your mom sees the vase, asks if you are ok, and gives you a big hug. It is like when the guy laughs and says he broke a few windows when he was a kid too. It is like when you find your wallet after a couple of hours searching and realize everything is ok.

It is the prophecy of Isaiah: “For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight.”

So what is this new thing?

You know what I love about the Easter story of the Gospel of Luke? Jesus is not in it. The closest you get is someone who might be an angel asking the question: Why do you look for the living among the dead?

So that is our question as we come once more to the mystery of Easter – why are we looking for the living among the dead?

The message of resurrection, ever ancient, ever new, is that Christ is not “here;” inhabiting the realm of the dead... he has, to quote another part of Luke, “Gone on ahead.”

And so, once more, we are summoned to live, proclaim and celebrate the empty tomb... we are called to resist all those forms of death and violence that saturate our culture.

I don’t know if any of you have ever heard a Latin Easter Mass – but there is a wonderful proclamation that just sounds – right – and poetic in Latin:

"mors et vita duello conflixere mirando”...

“Life and death are locked in wondrous struggle.”

“dux vitae mortuus regnat vivus” ...

“life’s leader, once dead, reigns as the living one.”

That is the good news. The rest is up to us.