Sermon preached on April 22, 2007 at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge
John 21:1-19
Third Sunday of Easter
Dedicated to the memory of all those who lost their lives on the campus of Virginia Tech this week, and always to the glory of God.
It is one of the mysteries of scripture; that it can speak to us with new meanings when the situation of our lives demands them. I believe that the Holy Spirit stands between us and the text to give us a new understanding of these eternal words. I have spent this week with the Bible in one hand, and in the other hand, along with people of all ages and faiths, I held the newspaper, not knowing how to cope with the reports from Blacksburg, Virginia. Not knowing how my heart could hold the horrible images, the names and faces of those who died, and the stories of their lives stopped short.
In the face of suffering, I believe that God is weeps with us. In the words of the Reverend William Sloane Coffin, “God’s heart is the first of all our hearts to break.” People around the country and abroad have responded with tears and heartfelt silence, and it seems to me that in doing so, we make God’s presence real. We become an incarnation of God’s word of mercy and compassion. This is true for the tragedy of the murders and suicide at Virginia Tech, and it is true for the tragedies of our own lives. I have seen the people of this church respond to each other in times of grief with the grace of God, not always knowing the perfect thing to say, because there isn’t anything to say, but simply being present with honest empathy.
As I thought and prayed for the communities at Virginia Tech and many home towns, I turned to the Bible in my other hand, to the passage for this Sunday in the season of Easter, and there I began to see what comes after the tragedy, and after the holy silence that is kept with tears. There I found the risen Jesus, and the scars that he still bore from his death reminded me that God knows the great pain of this world. There is no place so dark or so lonely that God cannot go with us, does not go with us. God was on that campus, in those classrooms, just as God is in our hospital rooms, homes, and anguished moments. The wounds remind me that this is true. We are never alone.
The risen Jesus returns to the land that killed him, to the disciples who abandoned and denied him, to a world that must have felt like it was falling apart in the way that it still often feels that it is breaking into pieces around us. And to this world, to the disciples, he offers food.
Jesus sits on the beach over a fire pit with grilled fish for these tired and hungry fishermen. “Hasn’t he risen for something more important?” we might ask. Hasn’t he come back to astound the crowds, or to put all those who turned against him in their place? Evidently not. The risen Christ is just like the man he had always been. He’s interested in giving love, not on a grand scale with fireworks, but grand love on an intimate scale in direct relationships, the kind of relationships that move our soul and change us from the inside out. He doesn’t come with proclamations, sermons, or even an “I told you so.” He comes with food.
It reminds me of all the times in my life when food has been a symbol for deep love and care, not unlike the food on the communion table which always points to something greater. I think about coming in on a cold day to hot chocolate, grilled cheese and tomato soup. I think about the smell of pancakes, my favorite, on a lazy Saturday morning. I remember when a family member had died, and I have gone to a service at a church where I have never been before, where people I have never met provide a grand meal for those of us who cannot think past the next hour. I think about when I was sick and staying home from school and mom brought chicken noodle soup at just the right temperature: comfort food, soul food. It satisfies our hunger but it also fills our heart.
Our teenagers read J.D. Salinger in school, but they only read Catcher in the Rye. I like his other stories, particularly Franny and Zooey, in which Franny comes home from college, feeling sick in body and mind, and lies weeping on the couch in the midst of a crisis of faith, refusing both food and company. Her brother Zooey calls from another line in the house and tells her “if it’s the religious life you want, you ought to know that you’re missing out on every single religious action that’s going on around this house. You don’t even have the sense to drink when somebody brings you a cup of consecrated chicken soup – which is the only kind of chicken soup [mom] ever brings to anybody.”
It seems to me that we are so often like Franny, so caught up in our own distress that we refuse the gifts of grace. We don’t see the love that is offered to us. Perhaps the gifts seem too simple, too inadequate. How God must yearn to open our eyes and our hearts to receive the boundless love that loves us just as we are, that comes to us as a gift, freely given!
It’s not difficult to receive the gifts of God. It’s simple, and yet the simplest of journeys must often pass through our own histories of feeling undeserving, unwanted, and unloved.
Having fed the disciples he pulls Peter aside. Perhaps he pulled them all aside one by one, or perhaps Peter needed special attention because his downfall, after he had strenuously pledged never to deny Jesus, had been the most heartbreaking. The three questions echo and provide a mirror for the three times that Peter had been asked, while Jesus was on trial, if he had known Jesus and followed him, and the three times that Peter had denied Jesus.
This story, more than any other, shows, once and for all, that God is not interested in getting back or getting even. God is not interested in handing down punishment. When we have done something to harm ourselves, or someone else, or something in this world, God doesn’t come to bawl us out. God comes to restore what was broken. Jesus shows up on the beach, pulls Peter aside, and asks him “do you love me?” God knows there is inside every one of us is not only the capacity to deny that God’s will is relevant to us, to deny God’s love for a fellow human being, to deny God’s mercy for ourselves, but also, inside every single one of us, the capacity to return love for the one who loves us beyond all our brokenness, our wrongs, our denials.
God doesn’t come to beat up the part of us that denies. That never does any good. I don’t think that anyone has ever become a better person because someone told them how bad they are. God comes, not to that part of ourselves, but to the part, even if it is buried way down, that loves. “Do you love me?” Jesus asks.
There is a Native American tradition, that when an adolescent had rebelled and broken the code of the tribe, rather than receiving the people’s wrath, he would be brought to the center of a large circle made up of all the people in the tribe who have always known him. One by one, they would remind him of his worth and value.
After his death, Jesus comes with the simple gift of food, consecrated, holy food, and reminds us that despite the evil in this world, the world is loved by God. All of it. All of it is loved. And Jesus sends Peter off with the message to offer the same grace. To feed God’s sheep with consecrated chicken soup, or with whatever we can provide. Will this love of God be enough to address a world that seems to be falling apart? It will, surely it will. Just as one lit candle drives all the darkness from a blackened room. As we receive and give the love of God to a broken world, we proclaim that there is something deeper than violence and loss. We proclaim the risen Christ.
Monday, April 23, 2007
Thursday, April 12, 2007
I want to share with you one of Rainer Maria Rilke’s poems from Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, in which he writes of a longing to know God as fully as possible. To do this would be to become fully awake, and for one of those magical moments to glimpse the wonder of God.
If only for once it were still.
If the not quite right and the why this
could be muted, and the neighbor’s laughter,
and the static my senses make-
if all of it didn’t keep me from coming awake-
Then in one vast thousandfold thought
I could think you up to where thinking ends.
I could possess you,
even for the brevity of a smile,
to offer you
to all that lives,
in gladness.
At the end, he writes about possessing God, but it is not a selfish possession, like an acquisition. The purpose of fully knowing God is for us to offer God to others, to all that lives, with an ease and gladness. And there is also the awareness that we cannot fully know God, but we can know God to the fullness of our own finite limits of understanding. We can think God up to where our own thinking ends, and still, God will be more.
If only for once it were still.
If the not quite right and the why this
could be muted, and the neighbor’s laughter,
and the static my senses make-
if all of it didn’t keep me from coming awake-
Then in one vast thousandfold thought
I could think you up to where thinking ends.
I could possess you,
even for the brevity of a smile,
to offer you
to all that lives,
in gladness.
At the end, he writes about possessing God, but it is not a selfish possession, like an acquisition. The purpose of fully knowing God is for us to offer God to others, to all that lives, with an ease and gladness. And there is also the awareness that we cannot fully know God, but we can know God to the fullness of our own finite limits of understanding. We can think God up to where our own thinking ends, and still, God will be more.
On The First Day - Sermon for Easter
Sermon Preached on April 8, 2007 at the Easter Sunrise Service in the historic church on the circle in Tallmadge, Ohio
Luke 24:1-12
Dedicated to my wife, Betsy, who helps me to see Easter, and always to the glory of God.
In all of the gospels, even though they tell the story of Easter morning in different ways, they all agree it all happened on Sunday, on the first day of the week. The women didn’t visit the grave on Saturday because that was the Sabbath, but Sunday is the beginning of a new week, and like our Monday, it is the day to get back to normal life. So it is that Mary Magdalene and the others go out to visit the tomb in the morning on the first day.
Before we go on with the story, I want to stay with those very first words we read in the gospel, “on the first day,” because I believe that these words speak a truth about you and me. Today is the first day. And if today is the first day, then it implies that there will be more days to follow, it implies that Easter may not be a one-day experience that demands an immediate understanding, or an instant conversion from grief to joy. Rather, Easter is a journey of many days, weeks and years of deepening faith, and growing trust in this God who is always greater than we can understand.
I can remember the first days of school, or the first days at a new job, before I knew anyone’s name, before I knew how to get from one room to another, before I really knew what I was doing and wondered how I would ever learn and get through it. Or, the first day may be for you the first day after retirement, after moving to a new home, or the first day after someone has died. Sometimes we finish the first day overwhelmed, confused, and exhausted. The only way we can go on is that part of us knows it won’t always be like this. As we go on, things will become clearer and we will find our place and we will begin to feel at home again. The promise of Easter is to come home to a home like we’ve never known, the home where we are loved and made whole, the home where all is well.
We come to celebrate Easter on the first day.
Some of us come on Easter already believing a lot.
Some of us come believing a little bit.
Some of us come because the only way to get the big Easter meal is to go to church with family. That’s ok - not a bad way to come.
Some of us come not believing much but wanting to believe it is true.
I don’t think that the first visitors to the tomb believed much of anything, or had any idea what to make of it. The women find the empty tomb and they stand there wondering. They go to tell the disciples what they have seen, and the disciples think that it’s nonsense. Peter alone goes to see for himself. And what does Peter do when he has seen the empty tomb with his own eyes? Luke tells us that he goes home with wonder. He goes home, just like you and I are going to do!
We need times in our lives when we are not trying to figure things out, not trying to see how this will apply to the future as we map out a plan, not reviewing our past mistakes and successes, but simply taking it in. Today might be one of those days. We can spend time later talking about just what the resurrection means. But today is simply a day to celebrate the resurrection, to bask in its mystery. To say: I’m still not sure, after all these years, exactly what to make of it, but I need to be present on this day to hear the story, tell the story, sing the story of the tomb that closed death in but was opened by God for life.
The writers of the gospels simply say “Christ is risen” but we may want more details. We’re educated people, we operate by getting information and making thoughtful decisions, and we want to know more than just “Christ is risen.” But to them, they had already said all that was important to say. They don’t say Christ is risen, which means that his cells rejuvenated and the blood began pumping again with oxygen from his lungs which had re-expanded.
And they don’t say Christ is risen, but now he has a new, spirit-like body that we can see like a vision. Sometimes we can touch him, sometimes he walks through locked doors, and we don’t always recognize him, it’s a different kind of life.
And they don’t say Christ is risen, and that’s a metaphorical truth about life after death, and new life following tragedy, like spring follows winter, and the sun rises after the coldest hour of night.
They don’t explain. They just say Christ is risen, and perhaps that should be enough for us.
I am afraid that Easter can be one of the worst days for the Christian church. I’m afraid that there will be a lot of explaining about how we know that the resurrection is true, that it really happened. We all have questions about Easter. It’s a very strange story. And so, in the name of Christ, many preachers who have much better things to be doing will try, on this day, to explain away all of our questions. They think: today’s the only day I’ve got to take care of all their doubts and questions, especially for those people I’m not going to see until Christmas. For them, the importance of this day will be whether or not we believe that it really happened, because it’s important separating those of us who believe it from those people who don’t. What a sorry way to spend this day that passes understanding.
What’s important today is not that we get our thinking all lined up good and orderly. It’s just the opposite. This day is about getting our thinking knocked out of joint enough that we can see the world from new angles. Instead of questioning the truth of the resurrection, we should allow the resurrection to question us. And there are at least two questions I think we might be asked.
1. Where are the places in life where you have given up hope too soon? That’s what happened to the disciples. Where have we given up hope too soon?
I’ve given up hope of ever getting along better with that person.
I’ve given up hope that I could find work that engages my heart, so I’ll just keep doing this job that drains my spirit.
I’ve given up hope of a happiness ever since that injury, or illness, or that traumatic life-changing event.
I’ve given up hope that we can live in peace with other nations and people.
I’ve given up hope that we can leave the world in good shape for our grandchildren.
Where have you given up hope too soon?
2. The resurrection might also ask this: do you treasure your life as much as God does? God treasures life so much, even death is turned around.
But do we walk around feeling dead to laughter?
Do we feel dead to our fellow human beings?
Do we feel dead to the beauty and wonder in the world?
Do we move from day to day, just trying to make it through the next hard and difficult step, or are we able to smile at the undeserved gifts of a safe place to live, food to eat, and family and neighbors who show us care?
The people who inspire me the most are the ones in their 70’s, 80’s, 90’s who have lived through tragedy and heartache, whose bodies are failing them, whose friends are dying, and yet they look at the world with eyes of wonder and joy, and make you feel good just to be alive. You know people like that, don’t you? They live by the light of Easter.
Do your treasure your life as much as God does?
These are not questions for us to understand and answer in one day, but questions to be lived out over a lifetime. Understanding can wait. On the first day, we simply take it all in with great wonder. We say Christ is risen.
Luke 24:1-12
Dedicated to my wife, Betsy, who helps me to see Easter, and always to the glory of God.
In all of the gospels, even though they tell the story of Easter morning in different ways, they all agree it all happened on Sunday, on the first day of the week. The women didn’t visit the grave on Saturday because that was the Sabbath, but Sunday is the beginning of a new week, and like our Monday, it is the day to get back to normal life. So it is that Mary Magdalene and the others go out to visit the tomb in the morning on the first day.
Before we go on with the story, I want to stay with those very first words we read in the gospel, “on the first day,” because I believe that these words speak a truth about you and me. Today is the first day. And if today is the first day, then it implies that there will be more days to follow, it implies that Easter may not be a one-day experience that demands an immediate understanding, or an instant conversion from grief to joy. Rather, Easter is a journey of many days, weeks and years of deepening faith, and growing trust in this God who is always greater than we can understand.
I can remember the first days of school, or the first days at a new job, before I knew anyone’s name, before I knew how to get from one room to another, before I really knew what I was doing and wondered how I would ever learn and get through it. Or, the first day may be for you the first day after retirement, after moving to a new home, or the first day after someone has died. Sometimes we finish the first day overwhelmed, confused, and exhausted. The only way we can go on is that part of us knows it won’t always be like this. As we go on, things will become clearer and we will find our place and we will begin to feel at home again. The promise of Easter is to come home to a home like we’ve never known, the home where we are loved and made whole, the home where all is well.
We come to celebrate Easter on the first day.
Some of us come on Easter already believing a lot.
Some of us come believing a little bit.
Some of us come because the only way to get the big Easter meal is to go to church with family. That’s ok - not a bad way to come.
Some of us come not believing much but wanting to believe it is true.
I don’t think that the first visitors to the tomb believed much of anything, or had any idea what to make of it. The women find the empty tomb and they stand there wondering. They go to tell the disciples what they have seen, and the disciples think that it’s nonsense. Peter alone goes to see for himself. And what does Peter do when he has seen the empty tomb with his own eyes? Luke tells us that he goes home with wonder. He goes home, just like you and I are going to do!
We need times in our lives when we are not trying to figure things out, not trying to see how this will apply to the future as we map out a plan, not reviewing our past mistakes and successes, but simply taking it in. Today might be one of those days. We can spend time later talking about just what the resurrection means. But today is simply a day to celebrate the resurrection, to bask in its mystery. To say: I’m still not sure, after all these years, exactly what to make of it, but I need to be present on this day to hear the story, tell the story, sing the story of the tomb that closed death in but was opened by God for life.
The writers of the gospels simply say “Christ is risen” but we may want more details. We’re educated people, we operate by getting information and making thoughtful decisions, and we want to know more than just “Christ is risen.” But to them, they had already said all that was important to say. They don’t say Christ is risen, which means that his cells rejuvenated and the blood began pumping again with oxygen from his lungs which had re-expanded.
And they don’t say Christ is risen, but now he has a new, spirit-like body that we can see like a vision. Sometimes we can touch him, sometimes he walks through locked doors, and we don’t always recognize him, it’s a different kind of life.
And they don’t say Christ is risen, and that’s a metaphorical truth about life after death, and new life following tragedy, like spring follows winter, and the sun rises after the coldest hour of night.
They don’t explain. They just say Christ is risen, and perhaps that should be enough for us.
I am afraid that Easter can be one of the worst days for the Christian church. I’m afraid that there will be a lot of explaining about how we know that the resurrection is true, that it really happened. We all have questions about Easter. It’s a very strange story. And so, in the name of Christ, many preachers who have much better things to be doing will try, on this day, to explain away all of our questions. They think: today’s the only day I’ve got to take care of all their doubts and questions, especially for those people I’m not going to see until Christmas. For them, the importance of this day will be whether or not we believe that it really happened, because it’s important separating those of us who believe it from those people who don’t. What a sorry way to spend this day that passes understanding.
What’s important today is not that we get our thinking all lined up good and orderly. It’s just the opposite. This day is about getting our thinking knocked out of joint enough that we can see the world from new angles. Instead of questioning the truth of the resurrection, we should allow the resurrection to question us. And there are at least two questions I think we might be asked.
1. Where are the places in life where you have given up hope too soon? That’s what happened to the disciples. Where have we given up hope too soon?
I’ve given up hope of ever getting along better with that person.
I’ve given up hope that I could find work that engages my heart, so I’ll just keep doing this job that drains my spirit.
I’ve given up hope of a happiness ever since that injury, or illness, or that traumatic life-changing event.
I’ve given up hope that we can live in peace with other nations and people.
I’ve given up hope that we can leave the world in good shape for our grandchildren.
Where have you given up hope too soon?
2. The resurrection might also ask this: do you treasure your life as much as God does? God treasures life so much, even death is turned around.
But do we walk around feeling dead to laughter?
Do we feel dead to our fellow human beings?
Do we feel dead to the beauty and wonder in the world?
Do we move from day to day, just trying to make it through the next hard and difficult step, or are we able to smile at the undeserved gifts of a safe place to live, food to eat, and family and neighbors who show us care?
The people who inspire me the most are the ones in their 70’s, 80’s, 90’s who have lived through tragedy and heartache, whose bodies are failing them, whose friends are dying, and yet they look at the world with eyes of wonder and joy, and make you feel good just to be alive. You know people like that, don’t you? They live by the light of Easter.
Do your treasure your life as much as God does?
These are not questions for us to understand and answer in one day, but questions to be lived out over a lifetime. Understanding can wait. On the first day, we simply take it all in with great wonder. We say Christ is risen.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)