Preached on April 13, 2008, fourth Sunday of Easter, at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, UCC
Psalm 23 Acts 2:42-47
Dedicated to the glory of God.
In the novel The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck told the story of the Joad family from Oklahoma who lost their farm in the dust bowl and the depression. They bought an old truck (it barely ran), loaded it with their family of thirteen and the few possessions they had left, and drove toward California, the promised land of fruit trees and plenty of work for every man who was willing.
It was a long journey, and they shared the road with many others in desperate situations. Spending all their savings on gasoline and a bit of food, they would camp at night with fellow travelers on the side of the road. The Joads clung to life on a razor’s edge, and you might think that in such straits they would hoard what food they had among themselves. But they did just the opposite. When they had food and others were without, they made their portions just a bit smaller. They shared with others, knowing that there might come a time when they would be without and would depend on the generosity of strangers. The only way for anyone to make it was for everyone to watch out for each other.
If you can picture the Joads, then you have begun to understand the life of Israel at the time of the 23rd Psalm. Just like the dust bowl, the Middle East could be an unforgiving landscape. Many people were forced to travel, either seeking a new home or leading their animals to find pasture. But when you traveled from your hometown, away from where your people had a well and crops in the field, food and water could become dangerously scarce. Just as in The Grapes of Wrath, there was a code of hospitality in the Middle East. If a stranger or a traveler came by your home, you were bound to offer food, water, and shelter, even if the stranger was from a rival tribe or nation, even if the stranger had wandered far from home, among his enemies. Even so, you provided; the stranger showed respect to you by accepting. And if ever you were a stranger in need, the same fabric of hospitality would guard your life.
The psalmist must have thought that this quality of generosity was a way for us to know and understand the character of God. The 23rd psalm asks us first to understand God the way a shepherd cares for his sheep. Again, there is the image of providing food and water: green pastures, and still waters, which are, incidentally, the only kind of water sheep will drink - they don’t trust a moving stream. But then in verse 5, the imagery of the psalm changes to desert hospitality. “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows.” The hospitality for travelers in a strange land and hostile land is the care of God for us in our travels, even in the midst of danger and suffering. A prepared table shows us the character of God.
In today’s passage from the book of Acts there is a brief summary of the Christian community in the first century. It says that they devoted themselves to four things: the apostle’s teaching, prayers, fellowship, and the breaking of bread. Eating is listed right along with prayers and the teaching as the important aspects of Christian community.
We are not very different. We share Sunday meals for breakfast and lunch here in fellowship hall. We meet in small groups to sup with seven, getting to know each other over a meal. Women’s fellowship gathers over meals; youth fellowship has a regular lunch, and meals are important parts of lock-ins and retreats. Often we have a meal following a memorial service, and this congregation shows up with food for the families and friends of the one who has died, even when most of them may be strangers to us.
Through the Social Action Board, we take meals to serve at our sister church on Miller Ave. in Akron to their neighbors, and many of you have volunteered with that outreach. You also prepare meals for homeless families who are staying in Tallmadge with the Interfaith Hospitality Network.
Three weeks ago, our youth group helped to serve lunch at the Gennesaret Soup Kitchen in west Akron. We’ve been doing this four times a year for almost three years now, and it is always an intense experience. There are two rooms, maybe the size of our narthex, and they are filled with as many tables and chairs as possible, I actually think there are too many. But that’s part of the message of a place that says we want there to be room for everyone, and we will not turn anyone away. We carry trays out from the kitchen, squeeze between the crowded tables and then feverishly reset the places where people have finished so that those who are still waiting can have a seat. Just as we say about the communion table here in the sanctuary, there is a place here for everyone to share the meal.
This point is made very clearly in a story from Abraham’s life in the book of Genesis. Abraham and Sarah are advanced in age, childless, and living in their tent near the great oaks of Mamre. One day, three strangers approach the tent where they have made their home. Abraham, following the code for hospitality with great care and thoughtfulness, welcomes them and gives them water and rest while Sarah begins to prepare food and a servant kills a calf for dinner. There’s that desert hospitality! It is only after the food has been served that the three strangers reveal that they are messengers of God, and have come to bring a message that God will provide Abraham and Sarah with a child, even in their old age. Perhaps with this story in mind, the book of Hebrews, in the New Testament, reminds us to always “show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so, some have entertained angels unaware.”
The book of Acts says of the Christians in Jerusalem that “Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” You see, when we prepare a table, when with glad and sincere hearts we share our meals with everyone who will come, God is at work in that. The table is a place of the love and generosity of God, and that is how we welcome each other. That is how people discover the character of God
I would guess that everyone here can think of times in your own lives when you have known the love of God in the simple experience of a shared meal. I think of my grandparents’ home for special dinners: Christmas, birthdays. I remember once when I was home from college for Easter weekend, I stopped by my their home on Saturday evening and I noticed that my grandmother had already set the dining room table with the china, the centerpiece, the name cards at the places, welcoming each of us by name, our place at the table thoughtfully chosen. “You prepare a table for me.” A glimpse of the love of God.
Jesus certainly thought that a shared meal was a way of knowing God.
· Jesus saw that the crowds were hungry and fed them with a few loaves and fish. Every gospel tells at least one version of this story, some two. This is such a powerful symbol of the abundance and fellowship in the kingdom of God that in the first centuries after Christ, it was not the cross but the loaves and fish that were the central symbols of the church.
· Jesus shared meals with sinners: prostitutes and tax collectors. People criticized him for his table fellowship, but Jesus said “no, everyone is welcome at my table.”
· Jesus went to the wedding at Cana and made sure they didn’t run out of wine for the guests who gathered to celebrate.
· Jesus told parables about a king throwing a banquet and telling his servants to invite anyone who would come, including the poor and the lame and many who usually did not get invited to banquets.
· Jesus told about a father who has a feast when his prodigal son returned.
· Jesus showed up on the beach when the disciples were fishing, made a fire, and fixed them breakfast.
· Jesus said that the ones who know me are those who saw someone hungry and gave food, or saw someone thirsty and gave a drink, especially for the least of his brothers and sisters.
· Jesus said I am the living water – no one will go thirsty.
· Jesus said I am the bread of life.
· Jesus took the broken bread and the cup and said this is me, given completely to you.
After that breakfast on the beach, when Peter told the risen Jesus that he loved him, Jesus said to Peter, “feed my sheep.”
The prepared table is a way of knowing and understanding the character of God, God whose hospitality and generosity sustains us even when we wander into strange and foreign stages of life, even in the presence of our enemies. And the prepared table is one of the ways that we show others what God is like, the God who loves us, who makes us whole.
Let us eat together, with glad and sincere hearts.
Monday, April 28, 2008
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Preaching Makes the News
It has been a long time since a major story in the news originated from the words of a minister preaching in the pulpit. It used to be that city newspapers would regularly print the entire text of a sermon or homily delivered at a prominent church on a Sunday evening. This was back in the time of two Sunday services. The morning service would focus on the relationship between God and the faithful, while the evening service would speak directly to the issues of the day, the life of the city, nation, and world. But those days are gone. The message from the pulpit rarely makes news outside of the congregation.
But that all changed a couple weeks ago, when the words of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the former senior minister at Trinity United Church of Christ in south Chicago, made the news. Sadly, all the news centered on very short, incendiary excerpts that were pulled apart from their context, and the reason for all the attention is the presidential candidate, Senator Barack Obama, who is a member at that church. I am saddened by the way all of this was handled for several reasons. The issues of Christian faith are more complex than a brief sound byte can handle. We should be having responsible conversations about these issues, instead of oversimplifying them. I have listened to a longer portion of two of Rev. Wright’s sermons, and I can tell you that he was not justifying or condoning the attacks of September 11, 2001. He spoke unequivocally against violence against innocent people, but he also extended this message to a difficult self-examination. Worship should call us to honesty such as this. I can also tell you that when Rev. Wright pronounced God’s judgment on the wrongs that our government has committed (and I join all those who wish he had used different words), it was in the context of a sermon that proclaimed God’s faithfulness and righteousness which does not change, even as we, God’s people, have failed to live up to it. We need a larger context.
I thought that Mike Huckabee, Baptist minister and former presidential candidate, was insightful in a recent news commentary. He spoke about how statements are often lifted out of the context of a larger sermon. “Sermons, after all, are rarely written word for word by pastors like Rev. Wright, who are delivering them extemporaneously, and caught up in the emotion of the moment. There are things that sometimes get said, that if you put them on paper and looked at them in print, you'd say ‘Well, I didn't mean to say it quite like that.’” He also reminded us of the larger context of the history of race in this country: “I grew up in a very segregated South. And I think that you have to cut some slack…to people who grew up being called names.”
There is at least one more frame that we need around those words that made the news, and that is the context of a congregation that has never been content to sit back and criticize others. Trinity United Church of Christ is a leader in outreach programs to encourage individual responsibility toward the issues of family, work, crime, disease, and education.
There is a place to faithfully disagree and to call on our Christian leaders to do things differently, but first we need to have a complete understanding, so that we don’t react to an incomplete story. The tradition of the United Church of Christ and the Congregationalist Church is of a place where we realize that we have different views and different experiences, and we are in covenant to be in honest, respectful relationships together. We worship God as one, and God holds us together.
But that all changed a couple weeks ago, when the words of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the former senior minister at Trinity United Church of Christ in south Chicago, made the news. Sadly, all the news centered on very short, incendiary excerpts that were pulled apart from their context, and the reason for all the attention is the presidential candidate, Senator Barack Obama, who is a member at that church. I am saddened by the way all of this was handled for several reasons. The issues of Christian faith are more complex than a brief sound byte can handle. We should be having responsible conversations about these issues, instead of oversimplifying them. I have listened to a longer portion of two of Rev. Wright’s sermons, and I can tell you that he was not justifying or condoning the attacks of September 11, 2001. He spoke unequivocally against violence against innocent people, but he also extended this message to a difficult self-examination. Worship should call us to honesty such as this. I can also tell you that when Rev. Wright pronounced God’s judgment on the wrongs that our government has committed (and I join all those who wish he had used different words), it was in the context of a sermon that proclaimed God’s faithfulness and righteousness which does not change, even as we, God’s people, have failed to live up to it. We need a larger context.
I thought that Mike Huckabee, Baptist minister and former presidential candidate, was insightful in a recent news commentary. He spoke about how statements are often lifted out of the context of a larger sermon. “Sermons, after all, are rarely written word for word by pastors like Rev. Wright, who are delivering them extemporaneously, and caught up in the emotion of the moment. There are things that sometimes get said, that if you put them on paper and looked at them in print, you'd say ‘Well, I didn't mean to say it quite like that.’” He also reminded us of the larger context of the history of race in this country: “I grew up in a very segregated South. And I think that you have to cut some slack…to people who grew up being called names.”
There is at least one more frame that we need around those words that made the news, and that is the context of a congregation that has never been content to sit back and criticize others. Trinity United Church of Christ is a leader in outreach programs to encourage individual responsibility toward the issues of family, work, crime, disease, and education.
There is a place to faithfully disagree and to call on our Christian leaders to do things differently, but first we need to have a complete understanding, so that we don’t react to an incomplete story. The tradition of the United Church of Christ and the Congregationalist Church is of a place where we realize that we have different views and different experiences, and we are in covenant to be in honest, respectful relationships together. We worship God as one, and God holds us together.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Sermon - Faithful Doubt
Preached March 30, 2008, the Second Sunday of Easter, at The First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, UCC
I Peter 1:3-9 John 20:19-31
Dedicated to Senator Barack Obama, with gratitude for his recent speech regarding race in America; and always to the glory of God.
Jesus says to Thomas “stop doubting and believe,” and I believe that the risen Jesus may bring the same message to every one of us in a particular moment of revelation along our journey. “Stop doubting and believe.” But to understand this story, I think that we need to understand what it means that Thomas was doubting, because there are different kinds of doubt. Thomas had what I call faithful doubt. This kind of doubting is good, even essential, and Jesus was not critical of it. We all need faithful doubt.
Listen to these voices that see faith with clarity.
The author Jose Bergamin wrote that “a belief which leaves no place for doubt is not a belief; it is a superstition.”
The theologian Paul Tillich, who did his most important work during the volatile times of the 2nd world war and the beginning of the nuclear age said that doubt is not the opposite of faith, it is an element of faith.
And finally, Frederick Buechner put it very succinctly. He told us that doubt is the “ants in the pants of faith.” It keeps us from getting too comfortable, or complacent.
Faithful doubt is that part of us that knows we don’t know everything. It allows us to have questions, and to re-examine even the things that we already think we know. I hope that when we reached the age of 25 (or will reach it), we don’t have the same view of God or of the world, or even of ourselves as we did at age fifteen. And I hope that our understanding is always growing, year by year. We can only do that if we have some faithful doubt about the views we used to hold.
Faithful doubt contains a humility about our own knowledge. It allows us to say, “I could be wrong.” And we need to say that. Think of this in terms simple things like lost keys or a remote control. When you say “I know it’s somewhere in this room!” saying “I could be wrong” is the first step to finding what you have lost. Now think in terms of family arguments, especially those that have dragged on for months and years, if only someone would say “I could be wrong.” Think of political, partisan battles: “I could be wrong.” May we always have enough humility, enough doubt, to say “I could be wrong.”
When doubt is absent, we are dangerously close to humanity’s darkest side. When the rabbi Sheila Peltz went to visit the site of the concentration camp at Auschwitz, where so many of her fellow Jews had been tortured and killed, she understood the importance of doubt. Listen to her words. “As I stood before the gates, I realized that I never want to be as certain about anything as were the people who built this place.”
We need a bit of faithful doubt, to keep us honest, to keep us searching. In fact, to keep searching is what makes this kind of doubt faithful, and makes it different from what I would call cynical doubt. Faithful doubt keeps asking questions and searching for answers, while cynical doubt raises objections and offers dismissals. Cynical doubt leaves no room for being wrong, or to be convinced by new discoveries. If you have a difference of opinion with a cynical doubter, there’s no use talking to them except to waste your time. The only thing you can do is to just show them kindness and love, which is never a waste of time.
Thomas is a faithful doubter. He says that he needs to see Jesus himself, to see his wounds. He says that he does not believe that Jesus has been raised, but even so, he sticks with the disciples for seven long days, which is how long it takes before Jesus returns to see them again. That must have been one long week. A cynical doubter would have said “I’m not going to believe what you say and I’m not wasting my time waiting for proof that will never come. I’m out of here.”
To the cynical doubter in each of us, I would say this. Don’t just doubt your belief. Doubt your disbelief. When you disbelieve that praying will get you anywhere; when you disbelieve that going on a mission tour to repair just a couple of homes in all of Appalachia will make much difference, or that an extra ten dollars a month in your offering will do much good; when you disbelieve that anyone could really love you unconditionally just as you are, with everything you have done; when you disbelieve, get some doubt. Say “maybe I’m wrong about that.” Maybe I’m looking to prayer for the wrong results; maybe I’m calculating the value of my service and offering too harshly; maybe God really is as close to us as Jesus proclaimed. You have to ask yourselves, are my reasons for disbelieving really any better than the reasons to believe? Or is disbelief just easier?
I read an article about the world of modern magicians, the ones who do tricks with their hands right in front of you, the ones who ask you to pick a card, write your name on it, and when you have put it back in the deck they pull it out from the pocket of your friend’s coat. What the magicians said is that the point of their magic is not to trick you into believing that magic is real. We all know, when we watch them, that there is some technique to the trick. The hat has a false bottom; the card was up their sleeve. And so the effect is that we watch them work, we know it is some kind of trick, and yet our minds cannot conceive of the way the trick is pulled off. They lead us down a mental highway to which there are no exits, and at the end of the trick, the effect is not that we believe the playing card was magically teleported somewhere, the effect is that we have been made aware of the limits of our own understanding. We are reminded that in life, there are some things that our minds cannot fully grasp, and yet we do know one thing: Yes, that is my card.
How much do you need to know about God in order to believe, in order to give more of yourself to God in worship, thanksgiving, prayer, and service? What do you need to see before you can say “yes, that’s my card.”
Thomas said he wanted to see and touch the wounds that Jesus received when he was killed. And what does Jesus do with Thomas, who refuses to take their word for it, who refuses to believe what his fellow disciples are telling him, who sets these conditions on his belief? Jesus comes to him and offers him what he needs. “Here,” he says, “see the places where I was pierced, put your hand here and touch these scars.” But Thomas doesn’t need to touch them anymore. Thomas proclaims “my Lord and my God.” In all of the gospel of John, Thomas is the one who finally, and most clearly states the identity of Jesus Christ. “My Lord and my God.”
But what about the rest of us? Thomas saw Jesus and saw his wounds. But then Jesus said “blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” I think that John was very careful to include that line, because he was writing his gospel about 60-70 years after Jesus had risen, and he must have known many people who believed in Jesus without ever seeing his wounded body. How did they come to believe? It was not be because God made all their wishes come true, and it was not because God saved them from the pain of life. Believing in God isn’t about a shortcut to a carefree life. So how will we come to believe?
Think about Thomas again. He wanted to see the wounds of Jesus. In one sense, he may have been looking for proof that this man who claimed to be Jesus was really the same one who had been killed. But maybe the wounds were more than proof that the resurrection wasn’t a trick. Maybe the wounds were the evidence he needed to see that death had really lost its hold on us. With the wounds of the cross, Jesus suffered judgment, punishment, and death, but when the risen Jesus shows Thomas the wounds that no longer hurt him, we know that he has freed us from judgment, freed us from the system of punishment, and freed us from death. The risen Christ shows us that grace will make each of us whole.
Isn’t that what we are looking for, the way to be made whole? After all that we suffer, after all that we have done wrong, after every mistake or misguided path, God can make us whole. When we see that, then we can believe. In the meantime, let our doubt be faithful, let us hold our questions before us as we search together. It turns out that in our searching, God will find us.
I Peter 1:3-9 John 20:19-31
Dedicated to Senator Barack Obama, with gratitude for his recent speech regarding race in America; and always to the glory of God.
Jesus says to Thomas “stop doubting and believe,” and I believe that the risen Jesus may bring the same message to every one of us in a particular moment of revelation along our journey. “Stop doubting and believe.” But to understand this story, I think that we need to understand what it means that Thomas was doubting, because there are different kinds of doubt. Thomas had what I call faithful doubt. This kind of doubting is good, even essential, and Jesus was not critical of it. We all need faithful doubt.
Listen to these voices that see faith with clarity.
The author Jose Bergamin wrote that “a belief which leaves no place for doubt is not a belief; it is a superstition.”
The theologian Paul Tillich, who did his most important work during the volatile times of the 2nd world war and the beginning of the nuclear age said that doubt is not the opposite of faith, it is an element of faith.
And finally, Frederick Buechner put it very succinctly. He told us that doubt is the “ants in the pants of faith.” It keeps us from getting too comfortable, or complacent.
Faithful doubt is that part of us that knows we don’t know everything. It allows us to have questions, and to re-examine even the things that we already think we know. I hope that when we reached the age of 25 (or will reach it), we don’t have the same view of God or of the world, or even of ourselves as we did at age fifteen. And I hope that our understanding is always growing, year by year. We can only do that if we have some faithful doubt about the views we used to hold.
Faithful doubt contains a humility about our own knowledge. It allows us to say, “I could be wrong.” And we need to say that. Think of this in terms simple things like lost keys or a remote control. When you say “I know it’s somewhere in this room!” saying “I could be wrong” is the first step to finding what you have lost. Now think in terms of family arguments, especially those that have dragged on for months and years, if only someone would say “I could be wrong.” Think of political, partisan battles: “I could be wrong.” May we always have enough humility, enough doubt, to say “I could be wrong.”
When doubt is absent, we are dangerously close to humanity’s darkest side. When the rabbi Sheila Peltz went to visit the site of the concentration camp at Auschwitz, where so many of her fellow Jews had been tortured and killed, she understood the importance of doubt. Listen to her words. “As I stood before the gates, I realized that I never want to be as certain about anything as were the people who built this place.”
We need a bit of faithful doubt, to keep us honest, to keep us searching. In fact, to keep searching is what makes this kind of doubt faithful, and makes it different from what I would call cynical doubt. Faithful doubt keeps asking questions and searching for answers, while cynical doubt raises objections and offers dismissals. Cynical doubt leaves no room for being wrong, or to be convinced by new discoveries. If you have a difference of opinion with a cynical doubter, there’s no use talking to them except to waste your time. The only thing you can do is to just show them kindness and love, which is never a waste of time.
Thomas is a faithful doubter. He says that he needs to see Jesus himself, to see his wounds. He says that he does not believe that Jesus has been raised, but even so, he sticks with the disciples for seven long days, which is how long it takes before Jesus returns to see them again. That must have been one long week. A cynical doubter would have said “I’m not going to believe what you say and I’m not wasting my time waiting for proof that will never come. I’m out of here.”
To the cynical doubter in each of us, I would say this. Don’t just doubt your belief. Doubt your disbelief. When you disbelieve that praying will get you anywhere; when you disbelieve that going on a mission tour to repair just a couple of homes in all of Appalachia will make much difference, or that an extra ten dollars a month in your offering will do much good; when you disbelieve that anyone could really love you unconditionally just as you are, with everything you have done; when you disbelieve, get some doubt. Say “maybe I’m wrong about that.” Maybe I’m looking to prayer for the wrong results; maybe I’m calculating the value of my service and offering too harshly; maybe God really is as close to us as Jesus proclaimed. You have to ask yourselves, are my reasons for disbelieving really any better than the reasons to believe? Or is disbelief just easier?
I read an article about the world of modern magicians, the ones who do tricks with their hands right in front of you, the ones who ask you to pick a card, write your name on it, and when you have put it back in the deck they pull it out from the pocket of your friend’s coat. What the magicians said is that the point of their magic is not to trick you into believing that magic is real. We all know, when we watch them, that there is some technique to the trick. The hat has a false bottom; the card was up their sleeve. And so the effect is that we watch them work, we know it is some kind of trick, and yet our minds cannot conceive of the way the trick is pulled off. They lead us down a mental highway to which there are no exits, and at the end of the trick, the effect is not that we believe the playing card was magically teleported somewhere, the effect is that we have been made aware of the limits of our own understanding. We are reminded that in life, there are some things that our minds cannot fully grasp, and yet we do know one thing: Yes, that is my card.
How much do you need to know about God in order to believe, in order to give more of yourself to God in worship, thanksgiving, prayer, and service? What do you need to see before you can say “yes, that’s my card.”
Thomas said he wanted to see and touch the wounds that Jesus received when he was killed. And what does Jesus do with Thomas, who refuses to take their word for it, who refuses to believe what his fellow disciples are telling him, who sets these conditions on his belief? Jesus comes to him and offers him what he needs. “Here,” he says, “see the places where I was pierced, put your hand here and touch these scars.” But Thomas doesn’t need to touch them anymore. Thomas proclaims “my Lord and my God.” In all of the gospel of John, Thomas is the one who finally, and most clearly states the identity of Jesus Christ. “My Lord and my God.”
But what about the rest of us? Thomas saw Jesus and saw his wounds. But then Jesus said “blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” I think that John was very careful to include that line, because he was writing his gospel about 60-70 years after Jesus had risen, and he must have known many people who believed in Jesus without ever seeing his wounded body. How did they come to believe? It was not be because God made all their wishes come true, and it was not because God saved them from the pain of life. Believing in God isn’t about a shortcut to a carefree life. So how will we come to believe?
Think about Thomas again. He wanted to see the wounds of Jesus. In one sense, he may have been looking for proof that this man who claimed to be Jesus was really the same one who had been killed. But maybe the wounds were more than proof that the resurrection wasn’t a trick. Maybe the wounds were the evidence he needed to see that death had really lost its hold on us. With the wounds of the cross, Jesus suffered judgment, punishment, and death, but when the risen Jesus shows Thomas the wounds that no longer hurt him, we know that he has freed us from judgment, freed us from the system of punishment, and freed us from death. The risen Christ shows us that grace will make each of us whole.
Isn’t that what we are looking for, the way to be made whole? After all that we suffer, after all that we have done wrong, after every mistake or misguided path, God can make us whole. When we see that, then we can believe. In the meantime, let our doubt be faithful, let us hold our questions before us as we search together. It turns out that in our searching, God will find us.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Sermon - The State of Confusion
Preached Marrch 23, 2008, Easter Sunday at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, Ohio, UCC at the sunrise service.
Mark 16:1-8
Dedicated to my wife Betsy; and always to the glory of God.
Years ago in Disneyland there was an attraction called Circle-vision which showed movies on a 360 degree screen. Before the show, a host would point out to the audience the state flags that were hung on the walls. One by one they were lit up to see if the audience could identify it, and to welcome anyone who was visiting from that state. After awhile, the light would shine on a very unusual flag covered with strange symbols, and the host would say “and what state is this?” Silence. “This flag,” he said, “is for the state of confusion.”
The state of confusion: what a terrible place to be. We don’t like confusion. We want to know where we are and where we are going. Confusion is not something that we can settle into for very long.
The gospel according to Mark, like all ancient writings, was copied by hand in order to be reproduced and circulated, and we have several copies from early centuries. The ending of the gospel presents us with a puzzle. The women come to the empty tomb, where they learn from an angelic messenger that Jesus isn’t there, that he has risen. He tells them to “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.” Then, Mark tells us, “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.”
That’s how the gospel ends in the earliest manuscripts. No appearance of the risen Jesus. Nothing about the women ever speaking up. No further mention of the disciples, who fled when Jesus was arrested in the garden and haven’t been seen since, except for Peter who followed long enough to deny that he ever knew Jesus. Mark just ends with the message of Easter being proclaimed to these women, and them fleeing the tomb in terror and amazement, not saying a thing.
That’s not a comfortable ending. If that ending showed up in Hollywood, the studio would make a new one. And, in a way, that’s just what happened. When we read manuscripts that come from later decades and centuries, another paragraph follows the confusing ending we just heard. In this ending, the risen Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene, to two disciples on a country road, and to the eleven disciples gathered at a table, which is kind of a summary of the stories from the other gospels. We can’t go back and discover exactly why the extra ending began to appear in copies of Mark, but a prevailing theory, the one that makes most sense to me, is that someone was too uncomfortable with the confusion caused by that ending. What was the risen Jesus like? What did he say and do? How do we explain what happened? And, if the women were afraid to speak, then how did anyone learn their story in the first place?
Someone wanted a cleaner ending, and we may want a cleaner ending. We may want Easter to just make sense, to have clear applications for our lives. But there us a danger to oversimplifying our lives. Life is too complex and unpredictable to be boiled down to easy lessons, or simplistic definitions right and wrong, good and bad. I think we need Mark’s telling of the Easter story because it leaves us in the state of confusion. It leaves us in that tension of not being able to understand exactly what Easter means, not knowing exactly what we are supposed to feel, or think, or do about it. And that’s ok. There is a blessing in the state of confusion.
The psychologist M. Scott Peck, who wrote that great book The Road Less Traveled, and many others, remembered people who would come to him for counseling, and when he asked them what was troubling them, they would say “I’m confused!”
Scott would say “congratulations, that’s wonderful!”
That’s not really what you want to hear from your counselor.
“It’s not wonderful – it’s terrible! I don’t know what my life has meant, or what I’m supposed to do next. The things I thought were important haven’t worked out and I have nothing to hold on to anymore. I’m confused, and it is painful and difficult!”
Then Scott would say something like this: “life is confusing. The fact that you recognize your confusion is a blessing, because it is spurring you to the important work of spiritual growth and discovering who you should be.”
When we try to shoot past the complex questions and issues of life and just get to an answer that feels comfortable, or a plan that doesn’t ask too much of us, then we have missed the blessing.
I remember Gilda Radner, from the first years of Saturday Night Live - the sketches she did with Bill Murray, Dan Akroyd, and the rest. She was not only fall-down funny, but just full of warmth and light. When she was just two years married to Gene Wilder she was diagnosed with cancer, and during her illness she wrote a book about her life. At the end of the book she wrote this: “I wanted a perfect ending, so I sat down to write the book with the ending in place before there even was an ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. My life…is about not knowing, having to change.” She wrote that life was “delicious ambiguity.”[1] I think God can work with that.
Dick Howser played baseball in the major leagues and went on to manage the Yankees and the Royals. His wife Nancy used to say “it doesn’t matter whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.” I remember learning that myself as a child. And Dick would say to her, “that’s very nice, but in the real world, you’ve got to win.”
Then he got two brain tumors, and had to resign from baseball, and life wasn’t so certain anymore. Looking back, Dick and Nancy saw that the real world had taught them “blessed are those who believe in themselves for theirs is the kingdom of success. But two tumors taught him that “the gospel of self-sufficiency needs to move over and give room to divine dependence.”[2]
The events of good Friday and Easter morning, the death of Jesus and his resurrection, break apart the easy answers we knew before and leave us in a state of confusion. What will happen next, we wonder, as the women leave the tomb, speaking to no one?
But the answer is right here. The conclusion to Mark’s gospel answers that question, not with words printed on the page, but in the very act of our reading and hearing it at all. We wonder if they were ever able to share their story, but we are hearing their story, which means that they must have told it, and it means that you and I are a part of it. We are the answer to Mark’s cliffhanger, because here we are, on Easter Sunday, and now we are a part of the story. We must wonder what will come next for us.
Saint John Chrysostom, the bishop of Constantinople in the 4th century, invited people to be a part of Easter in this way:
“Whoever you are, come, celebrate this shining happening, this festival of life.
Let everybody, therefore, crowd into the exhilaration of our savior.
You the first and you the last, equally heaped with blessings.
You the rich and you the poor, celebrate together.
You the careful and you the careless, enjoy this day of days.
You who have kept the fast and you that have broken it, be happy this day.
The table is loaded. Feast on it like princes, because no one need fear death, for our savior himself has died and set us free. He confronted death in his own person and blasted it to nothing.
Poor death, where is your sting? Poor hell, where is your triumph?
Christ steps out of the tomb and you are reduced to nothing.
Christ rises and the angels are wild with delight.
Christ rises and life is set free.
Christ rises and the graves are emptied of dead.”[3]
[1] Gilda Radner, It’s Always Something, 1989, page 190.
[2] Quoted by Dr. Richard Wing, sermon titled “The Fifty-first State”
[3] Quoted by Rev. James Wallace on Interfaith Voices radio program, March 19, 2008.
Mark 16:1-8
Dedicated to my wife Betsy; and always to the glory of God.
Years ago in Disneyland there was an attraction called Circle-vision which showed movies on a 360 degree screen. Before the show, a host would point out to the audience the state flags that were hung on the walls. One by one they were lit up to see if the audience could identify it, and to welcome anyone who was visiting from that state. After awhile, the light would shine on a very unusual flag covered with strange symbols, and the host would say “and what state is this?” Silence. “This flag,” he said, “is for the state of confusion.”
The state of confusion: what a terrible place to be. We don’t like confusion. We want to know where we are and where we are going. Confusion is not something that we can settle into for very long.
The gospel according to Mark, like all ancient writings, was copied by hand in order to be reproduced and circulated, and we have several copies from early centuries. The ending of the gospel presents us with a puzzle. The women come to the empty tomb, where they learn from an angelic messenger that Jesus isn’t there, that he has risen. He tells them to “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.” Then, Mark tells us, “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.”
That’s how the gospel ends in the earliest manuscripts. No appearance of the risen Jesus. Nothing about the women ever speaking up. No further mention of the disciples, who fled when Jesus was arrested in the garden and haven’t been seen since, except for Peter who followed long enough to deny that he ever knew Jesus. Mark just ends with the message of Easter being proclaimed to these women, and them fleeing the tomb in terror and amazement, not saying a thing.
That’s not a comfortable ending. If that ending showed up in Hollywood, the studio would make a new one. And, in a way, that’s just what happened. When we read manuscripts that come from later decades and centuries, another paragraph follows the confusing ending we just heard. In this ending, the risen Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene, to two disciples on a country road, and to the eleven disciples gathered at a table, which is kind of a summary of the stories from the other gospels. We can’t go back and discover exactly why the extra ending began to appear in copies of Mark, but a prevailing theory, the one that makes most sense to me, is that someone was too uncomfortable with the confusion caused by that ending. What was the risen Jesus like? What did he say and do? How do we explain what happened? And, if the women were afraid to speak, then how did anyone learn their story in the first place?
Someone wanted a cleaner ending, and we may want a cleaner ending. We may want Easter to just make sense, to have clear applications for our lives. But there us a danger to oversimplifying our lives. Life is too complex and unpredictable to be boiled down to easy lessons, or simplistic definitions right and wrong, good and bad. I think we need Mark’s telling of the Easter story because it leaves us in the state of confusion. It leaves us in that tension of not being able to understand exactly what Easter means, not knowing exactly what we are supposed to feel, or think, or do about it. And that’s ok. There is a blessing in the state of confusion.
The psychologist M. Scott Peck, who wrote that great book The Road Less Traveled, and many others, remembered people who would come to him for counseling, and when he asked them what was troubling them, they would say “I’m confused!”
Scott would say “congratulations, that’s wonderful!”
That’s not really what you want to hear from your counselor.
“It’s not wonderful – it’s terrible! I don’t know what my life has meant, or what I’m supposed to do next. The things I thought were important haven’t worked out and I have nothing to hold on to anymore. I’m confused, and it is painful and difficult!”
Then Scott would say something like this: “life is confusing. The fact that you recognize your confusion is a blessing, because it is spurring you to the important work of spiritual growth and discovering who you should be.”
When we try to shoot past the complex questions and issues of life and just get to an answer that feels comfortable, or a plan that doesn’t ask too much of us, then we have missed the blessing.
I remember Gilda Radner, from the first years of Saturday Night Live - the sketches she did with Bill Murray, Dan Akroyd, and the rest. She was not only fall-down funny, but just full of warmth and light. When she was just two years married to Gene Wilder she was diagnosed with cancer, and during her illness she wrote a book about her life. At the end of the book she wrote this: “I wanted a perfect ending, so I sat down to write the book with the ending in place before there even was an ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. My life…is about not knowing, having to change.” She wrote that life was “delicious ambiguity.”[1] I think God can work with that.
Dick Howser played baseball in the major leagues and went on to manage the Yankees and the Royals. His wife Nancy used to say “it doesn’t matter whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.” I remember learning that myself as a child. And Dick would say to her, “that’s very nice, but in the real world, you’ve got to win.”
Then he got two brain tumors, and had to resign from baseball, and life wasn’t so certain anymore. Looking back, Dick and Nancy saw that the real world had taught them “blessed are those who believe in themselves for theirs is the kingdom of success. But two tumors taught him that “the gospel of self-sufficiency needs to move over and give room to divine dependence.”[2]
The events of good Friday and Easter morning, the death of Jesus and his resurrection, break apart the easy answers we knew before and leave us in a state of confusion. What will happen next, we wonder, as the women leave the tomb, speaking to no one?
But the answer is right here. The conclusion to Mark’s gospel answers that question, not with words printed on the page, but in the very act of our reading and hearing it at all. We wonder if they were ever able to share their story, but we are hearing their story, which means that they must have told it, and it means that you and I are a part of it. We are the answer to Mark’s cliffhanger, because here we are, on Easter Sunday, and now we are a part of the story. We must wonder what will come next for us.
Saint John Chrysostom, the bishop of Constantinople in the 4th century, invited people to be a part of Easter in this way:
“Whoever you are, come, celebrate this shining happening, this festival of life.
Let everybody, therefore, crowd into the exhilaration of our savior.
You the first and you the last, equally heaped with blessings.
You the rich and you the poor, celebrate together.
You the careful and you the careless, enjoy this day of days.
You who have kept the fast and you that have broken it, be happy this day.
The table is loaded. Feast on it like princes, because no one need fear death, for our savior himself has died and set us free. He confronted death in his own person and blasted it to nothing.
Poor death, where is your sting? Poor hell, where is your triumph?
Christ steps out of the tomb and you are reduced to nothing.
Christ rises and the angels are wild with delight.
Christ rises and life is set free.
Christ rises and the graves are emptied of dead.”[3]
[1] Gilda Radner, It’s Always Something, 1989, page 190.
[2] Quoted by Dr. Richard Wing, sermon titled “The Fifty-first State”
[3] Quoted by Rev. James Wallace on Interfaith Voices radio program, March 19, 2008.
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