Redemption

While It Was Still Dark

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Lectionary Scripture Text: John 20: 1-18

20Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. 2So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” 3Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. 4The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. 6Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, 7and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. 8Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; 9for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. 10Then the disciples returned to their homes.

11But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; 12and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. 13They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” 14When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 15Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” 16Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). 17Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” 18Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

The women who walk to the tomb in the pre-dawn morning knew what they would find.  After all, they were there at the Cross.  They saw what had happened.  Jesus had died.  All hope for something more was gone.  All dreams of the world somehow turning around and emerging from the darkness in which they lived had ended at that cross.  They were able to quickly get his body and they had buried him, hastily laying him in a borrowed tomb so that the authorities would not find the body and take it as proof of his death.   And then sundown came all too quickly before they could prepare the body.  They had to stop what they were doing and observe the Passover Sabbath. 

So, they come early, before the rest of the world was awake to finish what they needed to do, to properly prepare Jesus’ body for burial.  They knew what they would find.  But when they came around the path by the tomb, they were stunned.  The heavy stone, the one that had taken all of them to roll over the hole, was no longer covering up the entrance.  So, Mary takes off running.  She ran to Simon Peter.  He would know what to do.  You can imagine his response: “What do you mean he’s not there??? That’s crazy.  That doesn’t even make sense!”  So, Peter and one of the other disciples went to see for themselves, running faster and faster down the pathway, surely knowing but probably dreading whatever they might find at the end.  It was all there—the tomb, the linen wrappings, the cloth that had covered his head.  Everything was there but Jesus.  The Scripture says they believed.  I don’t think they fully grasped it, though.  They believed he was gone.  But where did he go?  And in that moment of not knowing what to think, not knowing what to do, not knowing where to turn, suspended between despair and hope, their faith journey truly began.  This was the point where faith had to replace making sense of things.

But Mary Magdalene, distraught yet again with grief over what seemed to be yet another loss, just looking for ANYONE that could explain what happened or maybe just listen, mistook Jesus for the gardener.  It wasn’t until he spoke that she knew who it was.  It wasn’t until he spoke and she heard his voice in the darkness that she knew that she had seen the Lord. 

Yeah, they had it all figured out.  It was clear to them, until it wasn’t.  Perhaps part of the message of Easter is that there’s always more to the story than what we know or what we have figured out or the limits around which we have constructed our very lives.  So, in the darkness of Easter morning, our faith journey really begins.     

But there’s something we often miss in this story.  There is no sunrise service where Jesus rises with the Light.  In fact, this particular Gospel account doesn’t even have any light at all.  It takes great care in pointing out that it was early in the morning, while it was still dark.  All of this happened in the darkness.  But more than that, all of this REALLY happened before anyone showed up.  Under cover of darkness, while the rest of the world was sleeping and grieving, before the women came, before the world started stirring, while Creation was still groaning under the weight of that Friday, God began doing something new.  While it was still dark, God was recreating Life. God had done that before.  God had come into the dark void and spoke Light and Life into being and Creation had begun.  And, here, God does it yet again.

We speak of those that came to the tomb that morning as “witnesses” to the Resurrection, but, truth be told, there WERE no witnesses.  No one actually SAW Jesus rise.  There was no one there to document it for us.  Everyone who saw Jesus alive again saw him after.  Whatever happened between the hours that Jesus was laid in the tomb and that moment when the grave cloths were found discarded on the tomb’s floor, whatever happened between the beginning of the Sabbath and the morning of that third day, happened in the dark.  We tend to begin our Easter morning with shouts of alleluia and beautiful Easter lilies offset by brightly streaming light.  But that’s not really the way the story goes.  Everyone who believes actually came into a story that was already going on, even those that were present that day at the tomb.  Believing is not about seeing it happen but rather coming into the work that God has already begun and knowing that it is Truth AND that it is your story.  Our journey of faith begins in the dark.   

Maybe THAT’S the Resurrection story—that God does not wait until the world cleans up its act, that God does not wait until we are who we should be, that God does not wait until we believe to actually show up.  Maybe the story is that God is working all the time to resurrect, to re-create, to reconcile all of us so that even in the dark, no, ESPECIALLY in the dark, we know that God is there.

So, think about it.  Have you ever noticed how quietly Easter arrives?  There are no angelic choirs making announcements of Jesus’ coming.  There are no foreign visitors bringing gifts.  There aren’t even any ordinary folks that come in from the Shepherds Fields to see what has happened.  There is no voice thundering from heaven or Old Testament characters showing up on queue.  There’s no drama of parting waters or chariots of fire or burning bushes or mountains shrouded in cloud.  The sounds of the Resurrection are quiet, almost fearful.  They seem uncertain what will happen next, a little reticent at going forward in a new way.  And yet, there is a certain peace to Easter, a peace that begins in the quiet of the darkness and then allows the Light to begin to peek into the scene.  It’s as if Jesus rises just for Mary and calls her by name.  Maybe that’s what Jesus does for each of us.  In the quiet darkness, Jesus comes and rises before we get there and then when we are listening, says our name.  And we begin to follow wherever Jesus goes.  We just have to pay attention.

Some of you may remember this, but twenty-seven years ago, an F4 tornado hit Goshen United Methodist Church in Piedmont, Alabama.  It was Palm Sunday and the younger children’s choir had just finished presenting a pageant and were all seated on one pew.  Rev. Kelly Clem was in the pulpit just beginning her sermon when the tornado struck, immediately lifting the roof off and toppling several of the church’s walls to the floor, crashing down on top of the pews and the congregation.  The tornado killed nineteen people and injured eighty-six others that day.  Over the next few days, all through Holy Week, the pastor performed one funeral after another, including one for her four-year old daughter, Hannah, who had been part of the choir.  Toward the end of the week, she began receiving calls from members of the congregation.  Given the death of the pastor’s daughter and the destruction of their sanctuary, they asked, “Reverend Clem, are we having Easter this year?”  Her response?  “Easter is coming.”

That Sunday morning, two hundred people gathered in the front yard of the destroyed facilities at Goshen UMC while it was still dark.  And as the sun began to rise, Rev. Clem, with a bandaged head and her shoulder in a brace and a heart broken with grief, stood up in a makeshift pulpit, opened her Bible and read from Romans 8: “Nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

THAT’S the Easter message.  It’s not that God put light where there was darkness; it’s not that despite all the darkness that is inflicted onto us by circumstances or by other people, God always comes out on top.  The message is that while it is still dark, God is working, recreating, resurrecting, raising us up.  The truth is, we call ourselves “people of the cross”.  I’m not sure if that’s really it.  We’re probably more “people of the empty tomb”, “people of what happened after”, “people of what God is doing now”.  And more than that, if we read this story as something historic, something that happened nearly 2,000 years ago that we just make sure we read once a year surrounded by Easter lilies, we have missed the point.  This day is about Jesus’ Resurrection, the one NOW.  That’s why most of our words for today are in present tense.  “Christ the Lord is risen today…”  And it’s also about OUR resurrection, OUR re-creation, OUR reconciliation with God.  It’s ongoing.  Even while at times it seems dark, God is there, recreating and resurrecting and making us something new.

It’s not just looking on the bright side of life and ignoring the darkness as if it doesn’t exist; it’s not a promise that nothing will ever go wrong or that God will put everything back in place at some point if we just hold on.  To be honest, that’s just bad theology.  Easter is not about replacing the bad with the good; In fact, I will tell you that Easter makes a whole lot more sense when you go through Holy Week and Good Friday, when you travel through the wilderness.  Because the truth is, we are not out of the wilderness (ARE YOU KIDDING?).  Life is a wilderness.  And God shows us not the way around, but the way through.  In fact, God walks with us through the wilderness showing us The Way.  That’s it.  God takes our hand while it is still dark, calls our name, and shows us The Way. 

So, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord.”  Because, Easter does not merely change death; Easter changes life.  Easter shows us the Risen Christ.  And once we’ve seen the Lord, once we’ve peered into the darkness and have caught a faint vision of Light, even if we don’t really know EXACTLY where it is, once we, too, have heard our name and Risen, there is no going back. He is Risen!  He is Risen indeed!  And so are we—even in the wilderness.

And not that [this] story is told, what does it mean?  How can I tell?  What does life mean?  If the meaning could be put into a sentence there would be no need of telling the story. (Henry Van Dyke) 

We made it through the wilderness! (Well, not really!) The wilderness is where we are, where we travel, where we find God. So, remain in the wilderness. It will be your place of resurrection! I’ve so treasured this time in this wilderness season, even as I traveled in my own wilderness–loss, grief, packing, storing stuff, moving, arranging, unpacking….more unpacking…still unpacking. The wilderness is always with us. Thanks be to God! I will go back to posting at least weekly and maybe try to do some other things. In the meantime, thank you for traveling with me!

Grace and Peace,

 Shelli

The Light in the Wilderness

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Scripture Passage:  Psalm 22: 23-31 (Lent 2B Psalter)

You who fear the Lord, praise him! All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him; stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel!  24For he did not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted; he did not hide his face from me, but heard when I cried to him. 25From you comes my praise in the great congregation; my vows I will pay before those who fear him. 26The poor shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the Lord. May your hearts live forever! 27All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him. 28For dominion belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations. 29To him, indeed, shall all who sleep in the earth bow down; before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, and I shall live for him. 30Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord, 31and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it.

This psalm is probably more meaningful in its entirety.  The beginning verses (which are not included in our psalter for today) bear an agonizing pain by the Psalmist, one who is feeling lonely and desperate.  The writer is surrounded by enemies and is sure of God’s abandonment.  It’s kind of like how we usually think of the wilderness.  You can imagine standing in the Judean desert with the winds whipping around you and the sands stinging your eyes.  You just want it to end.  You’ve resolved that you can’t go back but you want this desperation and pain to be over. You want to see something up ahead.

And then, almost abruptly, the threat is gone.  The Psalmist is no longer surrounded by enemies but is aware of the surrounding community, a community of worship, a community of God’s people stretching out for generations.  God has heard the cries of the children and despair has been replaced with blessing, lament has turned into praise.  And the psalmist knows that God is everlasting, that even future generations will know of God’s presence.

This Psalm is also read on Good Friday.  You can understand why.  It is the story of one forsaken who ultimately encounters blessing and redemption.  But it’s a good psalm for our wilderness journey through Lent.  I mean, it’s hard to wander through the wilderness and always know that God is there, always know that you have not been abandoned.  Sometimes we need to be reminded and, let’s face it, sometimes we just need a good old pity party before we are again able to remember God’s promise that the beloved Creation will never be abandoned.  I think God knows that.  We are made to be human.  We feel pain.  We feel despair.  We feel abandonment.  Stuff happens in our lives.  Sometimes the wilderness seems to have no end. 

And, then, just as suddenly as our despair overtook us, we are able to see again.  Maybe the winds have shifted.  Maybe the sands have calmed.  Or maybe, we are finally ready to encounter the One who walks with us through it all.  And God is there.  And, like the Psalmist, we feel joy once again.  But I don’t think joy comes and goes.  It’s not like happiness.  Happiness is fleeting.  But joy is deep and abiding.  It never really leaves once we have it.  But sometimes, sometimes we have to be reminded of it.  And it’s OK if we have to wander in the wilderness a little while to remember.  God is patient even if we need a little pity party now and then.  God is patiently waiting for us to remember yet again that we are a son or daughter of God with whom God is well pleased. 

Here is the God I want to believe in: a Father who, from the beginning of Creation, has stretched out his arms in merciful blessing, never forcing himself on anyone, but always waiting; never letting his arms drop down in despair, but always hoping that his children will return so that he can speak words of love to them and let his tired arms rest on their shoulders. His only desire is to bless. (Henri Nouwen, from “The Return of the Prodigal Son”)

Grace and Peace,

 Shelli

Staring Into the Face of Resurrection

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

Well, as if we weren’t having enough problems in this wilderness! It seems that all through the Scriptures, there is always lots of complaining going on in the wilderness. The people complained because there was no food, so God gives them manna enough for an army. They complained that there was no water, so God tells Moses to strike the rock and the waters supposedly gushed forth. The complaints continued. Nothing was ever enough. Nothing was ever right. The one here always sort of cracks me up. “There is no food and no water!” “Oh wait, there IS food but we don’t like it.” (OH, that’s the REAL story!) But, regardless, this is the oddest passage. Without its mention in this week’s Gospel passage, chances are we would have avoided including it in the Lectionary altogether.

But in their defense, the wilderness sometimes seems to be unending torturous despair. The people are weary; they are frustrated; and they are no longer convinced that their leader really knows where he’s going at all. So, of course, the group that doesn’t like change, that wants to go back, becomes louder and more influential. I don’t know. I’ve always thought that perhaps the poisonous snakes notion might have been a little over the top. I mean, sure…complaining…bad, poisonous snakes all over the place…REALLY bad. You know, there is just something about a snake that commands your attention.

So God comes up with the oddest solution. Make a serpent of bronze and put it on a pole and when someone is bitten by a snake, have the person look at the snake. Well, that is very strange. Essentially, God’s antidote for the snakes is a snake. So, let me get this straight. The more we look at our fear, at our evil, at those things that invade us, at those things that plague us, the less hold they have on us. I think the point is not the snake; the point is what God does with it.

It is notable, too, that nothing is said to imply that God destroys the snakes.  Essentially, God does not destroy the enemy—God recreates it.  Isn’t that an incredible thing?  You see, we need to recognize that the traditional Jewish reading of the “Garden of Eden” story differs from the classical Christian version.  While the snake has often been identified in both faiths as Satan (or satan), the Jewish understanding is not that of something or someone outside of God’s command or a rebel against divine authority.  Rather, it’s sort of a prosecuting attorney, entrusted with testing, entrapping, and testifying against us before the heavenly court.  It’s part of God’s way of maintaining order.  It’s part of God’s way of showing us a mirror to look at ourselves.  So, from that standpoint, these snakes or serpents are not enemies but, are rather a part of ourselves, a part of who we are, the part that we would rather not see. (And, yes, now we would rather they all be snakes rather than that!) Redemption is free but it is not given freely; one has to be willing to surrender the part of oneself that we’d rather not see. That is the only way that it can be healed.

So, did you see what has now happened to the story about “the dress”? (You know the blue and black that sometimes looked white and gold that brought the internet, social media, and the news world to its knees as people argued over the color of the dress.) Well, the Salvation Army in South Africa has come up with a stupendous global advertising campaign to raise awareness for domestic violence. There is a billboard in England that shows a picture of a bruised and battered woman that also employs the use of facial recognition technology. Each time a person looks at the billboard, the camera will take a picture of their face and the battered woman will heal a little bit more on the billboard. How incredible is that? If we look, the healing begins. (http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/new-anti-domestic-violence-campaign-features-the-dress/17wrjfdwt)

That’s the crux. If we look at the snake, if we look at the billboard, if we look to the Cross, the healing begins. Redemption does not happen by ignoring evil or turning one’s eyes away from that which is uncomfortable; it happens by staring it square in the face and seeing God’s Presence come through as it is re-created.

Nature doth thus kindly heal every wound. By the mediation of a thousand little mosses and fungi, the most unsightly objects become radiant of beauty. There seem to be two sides of this world, presented us at different times, as we see things in growth or dissolution, in life or death. And seen with the eye of the poet, as God sees them, all things are alive and beautiful. (Henry David Thoreau)

FOR TODAY: Open your eyes. Look it square in the face and encounter God in a way that you never have before. Encounter redemption; encounter re-creation; encounter resurrection.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Return to the Waters

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man under waterfallScripture Text:  1 Peter 3: 18-22

18For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, 19in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, 20who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water.

21And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you—not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 22who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.

In this season of returning, here the writer of this general letter known as First Peter dispenses with any talk of being “saved” as it relates to salvation.  Instead, the promise lies in our re-creation, our renewal, our resurrection (the “little r” one), our being made into a new Creation.  It is a reminder that in our baptism, in that moment when the waters covered our body, or covered our head, or when drops of the stuff clinging to another’s hand somehow, some way, landed on our head and brushed our forehead and became the sign of a cross, in THAT moment, we were made new.  It wasn’t just washing away of sin and it certainly wasn’t some sort of something that made us sin no more (although, let me tell you, that would have made this life thing a little easier!)  In that moment as the waters touched us, we were made new, suddenly swept into a new way of being, and our life in Christ began.

Now baptism is not some sort of magic potion that makes everything perfect.  After all, we are not robotic churchy beings.  We are human–messed up, sometimes sinful, sometimes without hope, sometimes without direction, sometimes overwhelmed, but always, always, Beloved children of God.  For those to whom this was written, the words were a reminder that whatever chaos and peril life now holds, it is not permanent, that beyond what we know, beyond what we can imagine, the God of all Creation is working on us even now, creating molecule after molecule, so that when the flood waters of life finally subside, we will remember who and whose we are, a Beloved Child of God with whom God is well pleased.  And no matter what we do, no matter how much we mess up this life that we’ve been given, no matter how much the world’s chaos swirls around us beyond our control, the promise is true.  God is always there beckoning us to return to the waters, to return to where we began and begin again.

This season of Lent is not a season that merely calls us to clean up the mire and muck of our lives.  It is not a season to finally become good and obedient boys and girls.  It is not a season that promises to get your life together (or organize yourself or lose weight or some other thing you think you need to do disguised as a Lenten discipline).  Lent is a season that calls us to return–to who we are called to be, to what gives us life, to God.  It is a season to return to the waters of your baptism, not just for 40 days, but forever.

Do you remember the old version of the Apostles’ Creed, where we proclaim that Jesus descended into hell?  Well, this is the passage from which that notion may have started.  It claims that Jesus proclaimed to those imprisoned spirits; in other words, Jesus entered hell and blew the gates off.  See, you can always begin again.  You can always return to the waters. You just have to be willing to try out some newness.

One cannot step twice in the same river, for fresh waters are forever flowing around us.  (Hereclitus of Ephesus, 535-475 BCE)

FOR TODAY:  Remember your baptism. Now begin again.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli