Holding onto the Garments for Dear Life

An anatomy class model in a dumpster

Acts 9:36-43
Now in Joppa there was a disciple named Tabitha, which, translated, means Dorcas. She was full of good works and acts of charity. And it happened in those days that she became ill and died. They bathed her and put her in an upstairs room.
Since Lydda was near Joppa and they had heard that peter was there, the disciples sent to two men to him pleading, “Please come to us without delay.” So Peter rose up and went with them.
Upon arriving they led him into the upstairs room. All the widows approached him, crying and showing him garments and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was still with them. Peter sent all of them out, got down on his knees and prayed. He turned to the body and said, “Tabitha, rise up!”
She opened her eyes, looked at Peter, and sat up. He gave her his hand and raised her up. He called to the saints and the widows and present her alive.
Now this became known throughout the whole of Joppa and many came to believe in the Lord. Then he remained for some days in Joppa with a certain Simon, a tanner.

I’ve got a confession to make this morning and I know that some of you are going to be a little put-off by it. The confession is this: I have a pretty low tolerance for craft materials. Now I recognize that I have to keep that to myself most of the time. I live with some very crafty people and I know that there are some very crafty people in this church. You can do amazing things with craft supplies and it’s because I know this that I just kind of bite my tongue about this feeling of mine. But the truth is…I have a hard time seeing the potential in craft materials.

The first time I went into one of those big craft supply stores – Michael’s or some such place – I thought to myself, “The people who came up with this place are genius. They’re making money by just selling aisle after aisle of junk!” Suzanne, of course, fell in love with the place.

But that feeling has never really left me. So I have to check myself on those rare occasions when I get into clean-up mode. I’m liable to throw out some very valuable Styrofoam or knick-knacks that would otherwise make their way into a great creation.

I guess what I’m saying is: When I see something like this clump of yarn my first impulse is not to see a prayer shawl but a hairball. It takes the eye of someone who knows the potential of this yarn to help it become what it should be. Something beautiful is in here.

There’s a message in that for us today. You came in here today with a few hairballs on your mind. You came in here thinking that there are a few places in your life or a few places in the world that God just hasn’t quite sorted out. You came in here thinking that those places might best be left alone because as much as you profess to believe in life, you just don’t know how God can do anything with them.

“What’s God going to do with a car bombing in Iraq? What’s God going to do with the grief of a parent who lost a child on the Tech campus last week? What’s God going to do with this disease I’m fighting? What’s God going to do with this addiction I can’t control? What’s God going to do with this bad habit I can’t break? What’s God going to do with this deep longing in my heart? What’s God going to do with this fixation in my mind? What’s God going to do with this emptiness in my soul? What’s God going to do with my parents, my boyfriend, my girlfriend, my kids? What’s God going to do with all of that? It’s best not to show that here. It’s best not to pull that out because it’s just too messy, even for God. It’s best not to talk about it because I don’t know if I can trust God with it. I’ll just play it safe today. I’ll just be guarded today. I know it’s a healing service, but, hey, let’s be realistic. What’s going to change if I let God have this hairball to work with? I’ll just keep it to myself.” Oh, have I got a message for you today.

And it all begins at a seaside town on the Mediterranean. Joppa. The Hebrew word for beauty. Thirty-five miles west of Jerusalem, this is one of the oldest port cities in the world. Today it is a place of sidewalk cafes and boardwalks along the waterfront, but in ancient days it was the place through which Solomon brought the cedars of Lebanon to build his temple to the Lord. It was the place to which Jonah fled to catch a ship for Tarshish so that he wouldn’t have to follow God’s calling to be a prophet. Jonah had a whale of a time.

But there is another Bible story about Joppa. It seems that in this beautiful seaside town there was a disciple of Jesus by the name of Tabitha. We don’t know much about her. The book of Acts tells us that she was full of good works and acts of charity. Obviously something within her had been responding to Jesus’ call. Her life had been transformed. We know this much about her. We also know that she was a maker of garments.

So one day Tabitha became ill and died. The women who knew her and loved her followed the custom of the day. They bathed her body and placed it in an upstairs room. The body wouldn’t be there long. The custom was to bury the body as soon as possible. Probably by sundown they would lay her to rest.

But there were some other disciples living in Joppa who weren’t content to let the story end according to custom. That might be the way it had always happened before, but they were now living on this side of Jesus’ resurrection and they couldn’t shake the idea that maybe now things should be different. Word had started to spread through Joppa that Peter was in the area. He had just healed man up the road in Lydda – old Aeneas, who had been bedridden for eight years. He had just said to the man, “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you! Get up and make your bed.” And just like that the man had done it. His bed was rolled up in the corner now.

So these disciples decided to go up to Lydda and get Peter. If anybody represented the power of Jesus Christ it was Peter. Peter may have denied Jesus three times, but he was also the one whom Jesus had singled out and said, “Peter, you are my rock, and I will build my church on you.” Peter was the one who ran to the tomb on that Easter morning to see if the rumors were true. Peter was the one whom Jesus had taken aside and said, “Feed my sheep.”

“Peter,” the two men sent from Joppa said to him. “Peter, you have to come now. There’s no time to lose. Please.” And the three of them were off.

It was such a familiar scene. The prophets Elijah and Elisha had faced this one before. A dead body in an upper room awaiting resuscitation. Jesus had faced it before. Going into the room where a young girl lay dead, he had sent out everyone but the parents and commanded the girl to get up, which she did. You just know how this story is going to end when Peter shows up.

But it doesn’t make the scene any less poignant. A group of widows had gathered, a group familiar with death and used to the rituals of mourning. But Luke, the gospel writer who also wrote Acts, gives us a detail that is new. The widows are not just weeping, they are passing around garments and clothes that Tabitha had woven. “Here, Peter, look at this. See how skillful she was.” “Here, Peter, look at this. Look at the weave here, how much care she took to get it right.” “Here, Peter, look at this. Look at this beautiful cloth. Oh, Peter, it’s all that we have left.” You can see them running their fingers over the clothes…their fingers which are instruments of memory, recalling the life of the woman who wove and wore these clothes….they hold onto these garments as if for dear life.

You can hear the echo of the voices that spoke to the father of the little girl who came to Jesus for her healing. “The girl is dead…why trouble the teacher further?” Tabitha is dead. Why ask Peter for more that what we have? Why ask God? What we have is this cloth. What we have are these threads.

Peter is not content with the cloth, though. He doesn’t even seem to be interested. He sends the women out and he gets down on his knees beside the lifeless body. He prays. Maybe he prays loud prayers of deep anguish. Maybe he is silent, remembering other cloth. Those linen wrappings rolled up in the place where Jesus’ body lay. Aeneas’ bed rolled up in a corner. The curtain of the temple ripped in two to symbolize God’s holiness unleashed in a world of death, no longer contained in the expected places.

Whatever he prays, he finally turns to the body and says very simply, “Tabitha, get up.” And because the world is a different place now…because life is something that the disciples have come to expect now…because Jesus has walked out of the tomb…because the tomb is empty now…because when God desires it even death cannot be obeyed…because Tabitha has things yet to do and the world has wonders yet to see…because of all of these things, Tabitha opens her eyes, looks at Peter and sits up. No shouts. No fuss. The miracle is not for her. Tabitha had already been experiencing the eternal life Jesus promised. The miracle is for those in the next room. Peter takes her hand and helps her stand.

Then he calls in the others – the saints and the widows, Acts says – and presents her alive. Walter Brueggemann, the great biblical scholar, makes a great deal of who this audience is. “The wonder is witnessed and attested only by saints and widows,” he says. “What a pair! The saints are those who did not flee from the smell of death. The widows are those who live every day in their vulnerability, at the edge of death. They are the only witnesses. The non-saints, the ones who fear death, were gone and did not stay to see the miracle. The anti-widows, the ones who work death on the weak, were not there. It takes a certain kind of witness to see the newness! They stayed in the chamber of death and were there for the surprising gift of new life.”[i]

Do you see what’s going on here? New life is breaking out because the church – Peter – was not content to live out of the old ways…the expected ways. The church – Peter – was not going to hold back anything from God’s power for fear of looking foolish…for fear of being disappointed…for fear of being caught up short. Who does what he does here? Who goes into a room with a dead body and expects new life? Who looks at leftover clothes and expects that they might still have a purpose?

Nobody does this. Nobody who lives in the world you and I live in. But when the church has been at its best it has always believed that the rules of death and destruction and dissipation do not apply to God. And when the church has believed that it has been at the center of history, transforming the world, reconciling people to God, and bringing new life where there was none.

Who would have believed that a motley group of disciples who scattered at the death of their teacher, and huddled in fear behind locked doors as he lay in the tomb would, in the space of a generation, rock the foundations of the Roman Empire? Who would have believed that Irish monks living on the edge of the world would climb into boats made out of animal hide and sticks and cross the waters to bring the message of Jesus Christ back to Europe when the Dark Ages fell across the land? Who would have believed that the strong walls of racial prejudice would fall across the United States because of white and black people riding buses together and sitting at lunch counters many of them because they had heard a different message in their Bibles than that being professed by the enforcers of segregation? Who would have believed that Methodists, traveling on horseback and meeting in small groups would transform the wilderness regions of this country, even places like the Eastern Shore, into places where God’s word would be heard? Who would have believed that farmers at Franktown Church would hear a challenge from a visiting preacher and challenge him back so that the Potato Project of the Society of St. Andrews would be started and feed hungry people throughout the country? Who would have believed that we’d be sending people to Russia, mosquito nets to Africa, money to cancer research, prayer shawls to the sick, and baby supplies for Hispanic migrant families all at the same time? Who does these sorts of things? We do, brothers and sisters! When Christians see an empty tomb they have to stop believing that there are places that are off-limits to God. When Christians see a Risen Lord they have to stop thinking that there are places God won’t go. When Christians see that dead people are walking around they have to believe that maybe they can to.

Someone was reminding me this week of the story of a church in a small town that was very upset when a bar opened up right next door to the church. Right away the church began to pray that God would do something about this problem – that a place that could lead people astray would be taken away. Every week they prayed that God would burn the place down.

Then one night, the bar burned down. Everybody in the church was joyful. But the owner of the bar sued the church. Took them to court. The judge thought it was an unusual case, but he accepted it. The judge asked the bar owner why he had brought suit and he said, “Well, they prayed that my business would burn down and then it did.”

The judge called the representatives of the church up and they said, “Judge, you can’t hold us liable for this. All we did was pray. We didn’t set a match to the place.”

The judge finally threw out the case but when she did she chastised the church. “Seems to me,” she said, “that the bar owner believed in the power of prayer more than the church did.”

That’s who we are at our worst. When the church holds back because it is afraid of being fully implicated….when we live our lives as if God can only be trusted with what we can’t handle by our own reason and our own abilities…when we see parts of the world or parts of our lives that seem broken beyond repair and we hide them away and do not offer them to God…when we think, despite our best words to the contrary, that there is no ultimate hope, no ultimate redemption, no ultimate transformation…when we doubt that love is truly the engine at the center of the universe…when we go through the motions of faith…when we ask for God’s blessing but don’t really expect it…when we look at our wounds full on and decide that they’re just too deep for even God to handle…when we sit with the mourners and handle the clothes and admire the weave but notice all those holes…well, then we are holding out on God and denying the victory that Christ has won.

I will admit, because it happens to me, that there are times when I keep saying the words because I don’t know what else to say. There are times when I say, with the man who spoke to Jesus, “Yes, of course, I believe, but God, help my unbelief.” There are times when I doubt and times when I hold out and times when I shrink from the promise and fall back on the reasonable way that the world works. It seems much safer that way. Why risk being disappointed? Why risk putting myself on the line? Why risk appearing foolish or naïve or Pollyanna or weak or any of those things we sometimes wonder about?

I admit to all of that just like I admit to looking at craft supplies and seeing junk. Like I admit to looking a ball of yarn and seeing only a jumbled bunch of thread. But God does not look at us or the world that way. God looks at us and the world and says, “I can do something with that.” God looks at us and the world and says, “I can redeem that.” God looks at us and the world and says, “Yes, it’s a mess but I can’t make it beautiful. Yes, it’s vast and devastating and heartbreaking, but it is also rich, and amazing and fearfully and wonderfully made. There is no part of that person or that earth that I did not create. There is no wasted spot and there are no spare, leftover pieces. There is no gift that will not be used and there is no hurt that will not go unhealed. There is no being or person on the face of that planet that I do not love and value with all of my heart. I have given them everything I have. I have given them life and breath and I have given them a future by giving them myself, but giving them Jesus Christ.”

We have been given the gift of Jesus. We have been given the gift of Jesus! We have been given the gift of a God who did not withhold from us anything – including God’s own self. Did you know that you were loved like that? Did you know that the ruler of the whole universe came into the world for you? Did you know that Jesus didn’t hold anything back? That he wasn’t afraid to look weak or foolish or naïve? That he believed that whatever we ask for in prayer God will receive? That he heals? Still.

So why are we holding back? Don’t you know that you are loved and gifted beyond all measure and reason? Give those hairballs to God. I can’t say what God will do with them. But I know that there is potential even there. Thanks be to God.

[i] Walter Brueggemann, “Blogging toward Sunday,” The Christian Century 4/24/2007, http://www.theolog.org/blog/2007/04/blogging_toward_1.html

Breakfast on the Beach: Overcoming Mondays

John 21:1-19 (NRSV)
After these things Jesus showed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias; and he showed himself in this way. Gathered there together were Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples. Simon Peter said to them, "I am going fishing."
They said to him, "We will go with you." They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.
Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach; but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, "Children, you have no fish, have you?"
They answered him, "No."
He said to them, "Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some." So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish.
That disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, "It is the Lord!"
When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked, and jumped into the sea. But the other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, only about a hundred yards off. When they had gone ashore, they saw a charcoal fire there, with fish on it, and bread. Jesus said to them, "Bring some of the fish that you have just caught."
So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, a hundred fifty-three of them; and though there were so many, the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, "Come and have breakfast."
Now none of the disciples dared to ask him, "Who are you?" because they knew it was the Lord. Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. This was now the third time that Jesus appeared to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.
When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?"
He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you."
Jesus said to him, "Feed my lambs."
A second time he said to him, "Simon son of John, do you love me?"
He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you."
Jesus said to him, "Tend my sheep."
He said to him the third time, "Simon son of John, do you love me?"
Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, "Do you love me?" And he said to him, "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you."
Jesus said to him, "Feed my sheep. Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go." (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, "Follow me."

Where were you on Monday when you heard the news? It’s likely to be one of those moments you won’t forget. Like that day almost six years ago when Suzanne called me on the cellphone and said, “A plane has hit the World Trade Center in New York and they think there’s been a bomb at the Pentagon.” I remember exactly where I was.

This time the kids were out of school. They came with Suzanne and Deborah Lewis, who was still here visiting. We were going to lunch in Onancock after a meeting of the District Committee on Ordained Ministry. And Rachel said, “Did you hear about Virginia Tech?” It was only the beginning.

Before lunch was over we had already called back to the church to start planning for a service here in the sanctuary that night. I didn’t know what else to do. What is the correct thing to do when a young man fighting so many demons takes the lives of 32 of his classmates and professors? What is the right thing to do when your children, who are looking to you to make sense of this crazy world that we live in…when your children are watching the news with you and are asking the same questions that you are…“How? What happened? Why? God?” What do you do as a Christian when there are Mondays like this week when nothing seems to make sense and the message that seemed so good on Sunday morning starts to quiver and to shake?

You go to church. You sing a song in the gathering darkness. You read the Bible. You light some candles. 33 candles. Way too many candles. You pray. And you hold the hands of the people in the pew next to you and remind yourself that Jesus is the Risen Lord on Sunday and Jesus is the Risen Lord on Monday. Jesus is the Risen Lord on Tuesday and on Wednesday and on Thursday and on every Black Friday and every Saturday and on Sunday all over again. Jesus is the Risen Lord.

But I wasn’t sure of all that five minutes before I left for the church on Monday night. Five minutes before I left I wondered if there was anything appropriate to say on a day like that. Then I got a phone call. It was my friend Laurence in Scotland. It was late in the evening there, but they had seen the news and heard the place and he felt he had to call. It was a very brief conversation. Little more than, “We’re thinking of you.” But it was enough. If the bonds that hold us together across the oceans didn’t disappear because a troubled young man took up a gun last Monday, then maybe those words that tell us the bonds of love are not broken even by death were trustworthy and true, too.

Today’s message was supposed to be another Easter message. We are still in the 50 days of Easter – still celebrating and remembering Christ’s victory over death and the grave. And the story we read from the gospel today is one of those post-Resurrection appearances of Jesus. I’m a great believer in the power of the Holy Spirit to speak in many ways, and I wandered over to the text again this week and asked God to speak through this story about a breakfast on the beach. I asked God to speak to a people who knew Mondays like last Monday.

It is the end of the story now. Or maybe it’s the beginning. Jesus has already appeared to the disciples twice since his resurrection – once to the large majority of them as they sat in a locked room in fear – speaking peace and giving them a ministry of forgiveness. Then again he came to the one who had not been there at first. He came back to visit Thomas and we heard that story last week. Jesus tells him, “Blessed are those who don’t see and yet believe.” And in that phrase we all get invited in.

But the disciples are still not launched out into the world. They have gone back to Galilee – back to the place where it all began – back home. As seven of them were gathered there, Peter decides he can’t take the standing around anymore. He doesn’t know what to do, so he goes with what he knows best. Jesus might have promised to make him fish for people, but for now he was going to fish for fish. The other disciples join him and they go out onto the Sea of Tiberias.

All night long they fish and they catch nothing. The sun starts to come up and they are not to far from the shoreline. There on the lakeshore is a man who looks a little familiar. Beside him there is some smoke from a small charcoal fire. The man calls out to them, “Children!” Interesting that he should call them children. They were grown men. Who would be so familiar as to call them children? “You don’t have any fish, do you?”

“No,” they answer back. This guy must have had bad luck on the waters, too.

“Cast your net out on the right side of the boat. That’s where they are.” This was in the days before the Fishfinder 535 with the Big Screen LCD and 320 vertical pixels, so the disciples did what the man said. After all, there was something very familiar about this man and this scene. The result was a net so full that they weren’t even able to haul it in.

“It’s the Lord!” one of them called out. Simon Peter didn’t even wait. He abandoned the net, threw on his clothes and jumped into the water, swimming in ahead of the boat. When he got there, Jesus was waiting by the fire where there was a fish and bread. He asked them to bring more fish from the big catch and then he said, “Let’s eat breakfast.”

Then he took the bread and broke it and gave it to them. “Take, eat.” It was so natural for him to do this. So natural for them to receive it. The disciples didn’t even need to ask who he was. There was no need for words. The food and the sharing was enough.

This week I spent some time talking with Jeanne Torrence Finley who lives in Blacksburg. She is a United Methodist minister and a former campus minister who has been helping to organize the response of churches to the Virginia Tech tragedy. If you listened to National Public Radio news on Tuesday afternoon, you might have heard her because they interviewed her about what the churches were doing. Of course there were services and phone calls to student families who were worried about their children. But what Jeanne talked about was preparing food.

“Students were saying they would like to have food brought to them or to be with people who have non-cafeteria food, food that’s cooked at home…comfort food.”[i] So that’s what they did. They opened the doors and had home-cooked food there. It’s the most natural impulse in the world. When you don’t know what to say at a time of grief, what do you do? You take food to those who are grieving. When you’re a fisherman and you’re not sure what to do with yourself because the savior you followed is no longer there, what do you do? You fish. When you’ve gathered together with the Risen Christ again with fish and bread, what do you do? You eat as you have eaten so many times before.

Maybe that’s why Jesus tells Peter, “Feed my sheep.” Yes, feeding means guiding them, teaching them, caring for them, loving them. But it also means feeding them.

Jeanne Finley also told me that when her church, Blacksburg UMC, got together for a second time on Wednesday night. After the meal, they went into the sanctuary and they sang. They sang, “Be Still, My Soul, the Lord is on your side.” They sang, “This is My Song, a song for every nation.” They sang, “Here I am, Lord…I will hold your people in my heart.” And because the killer had just been identified that day, they also sang a Korean song from the hymnal because they knew how the Korean-American community would be feeling and they wanted to affirm that though evil may have been done by someone with a Korean name, God still speaks Korean, too. Jeanne said, “Students liked the service because it connected them to other faith communities in other places and times saying there is a life beyond this one.”

So that’s what we’re doing today. We’re doing the things that we know how to do. We’re reading scripture and praying and singing and keeping the door open because it is what Jesus told us to do. We are gathering together as a Christian family because it is what Jesus told us to do. We are lifting up the names of those who have died because the scriptures tell us that “precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of God’s faithful ones” [Ps 116:15]. And we are praying for Cho Seung-Hui and his family, not because we are heartless or because we are neglectful of what he has done, but because it is what Jesus tells us to do.

I talked to a UVA student this week about what was happening on campus there and he said, “This week has given us Christians a chance to step up and show who we are.” The thing he pointed to that made Christians stand out, he said, was that we not only prayed for the victims but we also prayed for the perpetrators. Because this is what God does. God’s greatest threat to those who would separate themselves from the love of God is not that they will be excluded but included. God is continually bringing broken pieces together and making them whole. God is continually seeking out lost coins, lost sheep and lost children and celebrating their return. And God is continually reminding us that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

There is a word of witness to be spoken today to Seung-Hui Cho’s family. They are living in hiding in fear and shame. You could hear their anguish in the statement released by the family on Friday. “We are humbled by this darkness. We feel hopeless, helpless and lost.”[ii] Their grief is our grief. I’m reminded of how the Amish community responded to the family of the man who killed so many of their school children in Pennsylvania last fall. They took food and offered forgiveness because they knew that family grieved as well. I pray that Cho Seung-Hui’s family can go back home to Centreville and that people will take them food and sit with them and forgiveness can happen.

Finally, I want to say a word about hope. Because that is also what we are commanded to do by the scriptures. In the face of darkness, we are to light a candle because we know that the darkness cannot overcome the light ultimately. There was hope in the Hokie cheer and the strains of “Amazing Grace” rolling across the Drillfield at the candlelight vigil last Tuesday night. There was hope in the maroon and orange shirts and ribbons we saw on Friday. There was hope at the baseball game at Tech on Friday evening when the University of Miami team brought a check from their school for $10,000 to be used for a memorial fund.

But there was also hope in those classrooms on Monday. We heard the story of Liviu Librescu, a professor of aerodynamics at Tech. He was born in Romania in 1930 and as a Jew he faced the insanity of the Nazi Holocaust during World War II. His father was deported and he and his family were sent to a labor camp in an occupied area of the Soviet Union. He survived the war and the communist government that followed it and finally ended up in Israel. In 1985 he came to teach at Virginia Tech and became a very well-respected teacher.

On Monday he was teaching a class as usual in Norris Hall when the sound of gunfire broke out down the hall. He went to the door and held it shut as Cho tried to break in from the other side. He told the students to go out the windows and they did. He was shot five times and died in the classroom but he probably saved many lives. Monday was Holocaust Remembrance Day, but his students will always remember it as Liviu Librescu Day. One of his students, Caroline Merry, said, “He’s a part of my life now and forever. I’m changed. I’m not the person I was before Monday.”[iii]

There’s a lot of truth to that. We’re not the people we were before Monday. But it’s not because we’ve learned that there is evil in the world. We’ve always known that. The death of 33 people happens each day in places like Baghdad and Darfur. But it shouldn’t be surprising that evil lurks even here in Virginia.

No, what has changed is that we are little more aware of our vulnerability, a little more aware of our need for a God who is strong enough to take on death and suffering and bring a resurrection victory, a little more reliant on hope, self-sacrifice, and the deep goodness at the heart of the universe. So we’ll do the things we know to do and pray that we don’t have Mondays like the one we’ve had this week. We’ll sing together and eat together. And we’ll scan the beach when it seems the waters have nothing for us for the face of a savior who has many more fish for us to catch and many more blessings for us to receive. Thanks be to God.

[i] All Things Considered, NPR, 4/17/07, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9626738.
[ii] “Cho’s Family feels hopeless, AP, 4/20/07, http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070421/ap_on_re_us/virginia_tech_shooting_367.
[iii] “Professor’s Violent Death Came Where He Sought Peace,” New York Times, 4/19/07, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/19/us/19professor.html?_r=1&n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fPeople%2fL%2fLibrescu%2c%20Liviu&oref=slogin

Scared to Life

Luke 24:1-12
But on the first day of the week, in the earliest moments of dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body.
While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in brilliant clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and they bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but rather he has been raised. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Humanity must be handed over to sinful people, and crucified, and on the third day rise again.”
They did remember his words, and they returned from the tomb and told all of this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary – the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words were to them as a idle tale and they did not believe them.
But Peter got up and ran to the tomb. Stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths lying by themselves. Then he went back, amazed at what had happened.

Well, we have come through the snow and through the wind. We have started the week with palm branches and we ended it with broken branches. We have walked the journey of Lent and we have gone through the drama of Holy Week and the story of Jesus' crucifixion. And today – look at how beautiful we are – with our lilies and our smiles and the altar all decked out in white. Today must be a special day. And it is.

But the message that I want to give you today is a scary story. It's not Halloween scary, but it is scary in its own way. And what I want to say this morning is really very simple. If you lose your place while I'm speaking or if you nod off sometime during the next three hours this is really all that I have to say today: If you are sick and tired of being scared to death, maybe it's time to be scared to life. If you are tired of being scared to death, maybe it's time to be scared to life.

Now what could that possibly mean? Well, I think what we know what it's like to be scared to death. A lot of us live with that feeling for most of our lives. Fear is our constant, unwelcome companion. Fear haunts the soldiers patrolling the streets of Baghdad and Kabul, never knowing if they will be facing a roadside bomb. It also haunts the residents of those cities who go to the market, never knowing, never trusting that all is well even as they go about the daily tasks of life because it all can end with an explosion. Fear is the state of life in the Congo and in Darfur where at any moment rival armies or gangs could overwhelm your village.

But it's not always that dramatic. All it takes is for a doctor to say, in the calmest of voices, that something strange has appeared on a scan and we are gripped by fear. When you get your first driver's license, teenagers, that is not usually a fearful day for you, but for your parents...it is a scary day. When the bills come due or April 17 rolls around...when a loved one is gripped by an addiction they can't overcome...when your boyfriend leaves you...when your girlfriend dumps you...when you wonder if you can find a job...when you wonder if you're losing your touch...your grip...your basic abilities...when you feel out of control...I know you know what it's like to be scared to death.

It was a familiar feeling for those disciples that we read about in the Bible. They came into Jerusalem with Jesus hoping that he was going to turn the place upside down, but when it actually started to happen they weren't so sure they liked it. Some of them must have winced and said, “O, Jesus, don't go too far.” When it all turned and it began to be clear where this was headed – to a cross – some of them ran away, some of them denied Jesus, and when Jesus was sealed behind the stone of his tomb, they were sealed behind the doors of a locked room. The disciples knew what it was like to be scared to death. They expected it. They lived with that. They saw what happened when people tried to defy the ruling authorities. There were crosses lined along every major roadway hung with the bodies of rebels.

Death was what they spent a lot of time thinking about. What they weren't prepared for was life. And that's where this story takes a turn nobody expected.

Now first let me say that I know there's a lot of dispute about this story. It seems like every year when we get to Holy Week there are cover articles on Newsweek and specials on TV all questioning some aspect of the resurrection stories. This year was no different. James Cameron, the director of Titanic, put his money and his prestige behind a television program on the Discovery Channel that tried to prove that a tomb found in Jerusalem contained the bones of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. The evidence was very flimsy and ended up proving absolutely nothing but he attracted a lot of attention from people who still believe that this thing we celebrate every year at Easter must be too good to be true.

And really who could blame them? Maybe you're one of those folks, too. Sometimes it's me, too. What Easter asks you to believe is something that wouldn't pass muster in a history or a science class. So what makes us Christians claim that this is a story so true that it's worth staking your life on? What is it that we find here that we don't find anywhere else?

When we look at the gospels we notice something right away. They each have distinctive features that may make us wonder if they have seen the same thing. You know there are four gospels and the first three – Matthew, Mark, and Luke – generally tell Jesus' story in the same way. Biblical scholars call these the synoptic gospels. Synoptic comes from a Greek root that means to “see together” and they generally see things the same way. The baptism, the feeding of the multitudes, the crucifixion – all these are told pretty much the same in these three gospels.

But then you get to the resurrection and here the details are unique in each one. As Mark tells it, three women come to the tomb, find the stone rolled away, meet one man who tells them that Jesus has been raised, and then run away and don't tell anyone what they've seen. In Matthew, the Jerry Bruckheimer of the gospel narrators, there are all kinds of pyrotechnics. There is an earthquake, an angel descends from heaven and rolls away the stone, there are guards watching the tomb who are paralyzed with fear, there are two women who are told that Jesus has been raised and then Jesus himself appears to them.

Does it surprise you that we have such different stories. It's really not that surprising to me. After all, you know that when we are telling stories of things that are important to us the details we give are often very different from what other people remember. I took a group of college students on a mission team to the Texas-Mexico border once. What I remember from that trip are encounters with customs agents each day as we crossed over into Mexico to work on a new church, a memorable trip to the beach where I discovered that the Rio Grande didn't even empty into the Gulf of Mexico anymore since it was drained of water for irrigation before it ever got there. Those are the kinds of things I remember.

But if you ask other people on that trip they will remember different things. One student found a piece of her calling there and when she tells the story of that trip it was an encounter with God that meant things couldn't be the same afterwards. Two other students fell in love on that trip and later got married. The way they tell what happened that week is entirely different again. We were all on the same trip but if you asked us what it looked like...what it meant...even what happened...you will get some very unique stories.

But there is one thing that is the same in all of these gospel stories. And it's the fear. It's there in Luke, our gospel reading for the morning. Luke puts us in company with a number of women, at least Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James. He hints that the group was even larger. They have been waiting for a chance to visit the tomb. While the other disciples have gone into hiding, they still feel an obligation to the body of Jesus.

After his crucifixion he had been taken to a tomb donated by a man named Joseph. But because the Jewish customs of the day forbid contact with a dead body on the sabbath, the women had to wait to take spices to the tomb. So it was in the earliest hours of Sunday morning that they finally came to the tomb.

Now because it was a wealthy person's tomb, there was a large stone rolled in front of it. But the stone is gone when they arrive. Something has happened in the night. Maybe there was a theft. Or maybe something else has happened. Nobody is saying resurrection yet. Who would believe that?

So the women enter the tomb and they find it empty. In their confusion they suddenly see two men...angels they must have been. Their clothes are bright as lightning or the stars in the sky on a bright winter night. The women had been perplexed but now they are terrified. They fall down on their faces.

This is the appropriate response to angels. We know this because generally the first words out of an angel's mouth are, “Don't be afraid.” But the angels don't say that this time. Seems like they know that the women ought to be afraid.

This is the thing that Matthew, Mark and Luke tell in the same way – what it felt like to be there on the first Easter. The women in Matthew are filled with fear. In Mark they are first alarmed, then terrified, then amazed, then afraid. In Luke they are perplexed and then terrified, and later Peter comes and he is amazed. The overwhelmingly consistent message is – they were scared.

Which tells me that one of the most natural responses to the story that life as we know it has changed forever is to be scared out of your wits. We have developed some pretty good cultural coping devices for handling death. We're still trying to come to grips with life. And when an empty tomb (more so than the angel) tells us that death is not the last word to this story of our lives, that's pretty scary stuff. What do we tell the kids? What do we tell an educational system that is preparing us for a world without meaning or destiny? What do we tell our pension advisers who think that the endpoint that we have to prepare for is retirement? What do we tell our television executives who give us “Nip and Tuck” and “Extreme Makeover” and a hundred other shows that tell us, “Yes, it really is all about how you look and what you wear and, man, doesn't it stink to be imperfect?” What do we tell ourselves when we live with this still, small voice that says, “Don't expect too much. Don't get your hopes up. Don't be so crazy as to think that anything could ever be any different than it is.”

If I tell you that the whole world is wrong...is that scary? If I tell you that you've been lied to, does the earth seem to shift beneath your feet? If I tell you that we weren't able to put Jesus behind us on a cross on Friday, are you relieved or terrified? If Jesus really is the inescapable one, the one who shows us what life is all about and who we are meant to be and what God intends to do with us, how does that make you feel?

Maybe it can make you scared in just the right ways. If you're sick and tired of being scared to death, maybe it's good news to be scared to life. It means that, painful as it may be, things are going to change.

Out in Arizona there has been a lot of controversy about a new attraction that has been built on the rim of the Grand Canyon. The Hualapai native American tribe has built a glass platform in the shape of a horseshoe out over the canyon. For $25 you can walk out over the canyon and look down below your feet 4,000 feet to the canyon floor.

Truthfully, I think it's a little tacky. But I imagine what it must be like to have that view. It is impressive enough from the edge of the rim. To look down that far is to have a sense of vulnerable we are as human creatures. Our lives are so fragile. And yet the exhilaration of being in the presence of one of God's greatest marvels! Paul tells us, in talking about human beings, that we have this treasure in fragile earthen vessels, but say it another way and you know it's true that we have this treasure in earthen vessels!

In a recent article, the writer Darcey Steinke tells the story of how she struggled, as the daughter of a pastor, to make sense of the Easter story. “Since I was a teenager,” she says, “I've lived in a world mostly devoid of divinity. But now I see the sacred includes not just churches but hospitals, highways, costume jewelry, garbage dumps, libraries, the cruising area of public parks. Also pet stores, subway platforms, Ferris wheels and rain storms.” She says that she clings to her Christian faith, even in a world that is often “brutal, full of horror and violence,” because she also sees that “life is beautiful, full of passion and joy.”[i]

It is Jesus who helps us to see this about the world. Because when we leave this place this morning the things that were there before we came in will still be there. Easter morning doesn't change that. The world still turns. The wars still rage. The water still flows to the sea.

But even if things still look the same, Easter morning comes to say that they aren't. Even if some of us see earthquakes and others a hushed garden...even if some of us see angels...even if some of us hear voices and others remember promises made...the tomb is still empty. We don't know the mechanics of how it got that way. Unlike Mel Gibson, the gospels don't give us a visual of linen clothes falling to the ground and a re-made Jesus striding out the door. They're just going to show you the tomb and then show you the scared, terrified, amazed, perplexed, and overwhelmed women and then the men who saw that tomb and eventually said, “This changes everything.” And they have been giving witness to the power of this morning ever since.

You don't have to be different when you leave here this morning. But honestly, do you want to continue to live with the fear of death? Because that is a very unsatisfactory alternative. Perfect love casts out fear. That's what the scriptures tell us. And we have been given a perfect love in Jesus. And now we cannot say that there is any place on earth that is not full of the presence of God.

You don't have to be different when you leave here this morning. But you can be. You've heard the story. You've seen the community that has been formed by that story. And you don't have to believe that there's nothing new under the sun, because God knows there is. Thanks be to God.

[i] Darcey Steinke, “Something to believe in,” Salon.com, 4/7/2007, www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2007/04/07/easter_everywhere

The Cross on the Horizon

Cast of The Passion - Thursday, April 4 & Friday, April 5, 7 PM at Franktown UMC

There’s an old spiritual that we sing during Holy Week in the church. It asks, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Were you there when they nailed him to the cross? Were you there when the sun refused to shine? Were you there when they laid him in the tomb? Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble. Were you there when they crucified my Lord?”

It seems like a rhetorical question and it seems like the answer ought to be ‘no, of course not!’ How could we have been there? This story that we’ve heard…it may be powerful…I might have heard it many, many times in my life…it might feel like it has a claim on me…but, was I there? No. Jesus’ death is something that goes back centuries before I ever came along. I wasn’t there.

But we don’t keep telling this story because it makes great history or great theater – even though it does. We keep telling this story because you were there. We keep telling this story because it’s our story, too.

How were we there? Maybe you were there as Peter. You remember Peter, the impetuous one. Peter was the one who was quick to say, “I’m with you, Lord!” Peter will get out of the boat for you, first to leave his nets and his fishing career, and then to walk on water. He’s the one who says, “We know who you are, Jesus. You are the Messiah!” He’s the one who says, “If I have to go to prison, I’m with you, Lord. If I have to die with you, I’m with you.” And he’s the one who finds himself with a cold feeling even as he stands by the courtyard fire. The third denial on his lips as the rooster crows.

Maybe you were there, too. Finding your faith wanting when hard times came. Thinking you had it all under control. That you were the strong one. That you could do it on your own…until you couldn’t. Did you really need Jesus or were you just trying to prove you could make it by yourself? Yes, you were there. And Jesus was praying for you just as Jesus prayed for Peter. “Peter, I have prayed for you that your own faith will not fail, and you, once you have returned, strengthen your brothers.” He knew what you were like.

Or maybe you were there as one of the women on the way to the crucifixion. Fixated on the suffering of Jesus. Weeping for his pain. Not able to see what it meant. Just thinking, “If I can just take away some of his suffering. If I can just relieve his pain.”

But Jesus knows that they are blinded by the moment. “Daughters of Jerusalem!” he says. “Don’t weep for me, but for yourself and your children. If they do this while the wood is green…while I’m still here…what will it be like when the wood is dry…when there is no escaping the effects of the world’s brokenness. Don’t cling to the pain, women. Look for the life.”

Are you blinded by the pain in your life? Do you think that’s where you’re going to find life? Or do you need to let it go to focus on where you can find life? Maybe you were there as the women.

Or maybe you are convinced that you’re no good. That there’s no use in pretending. No use in fighting the demons. Maybe you were there as Judas.

Or maybe you just don’t want to get involved. Jesus is alright as long he doesn’t affect my position, my comfort, my family, myself. There’s plenty of Pilates in the world.

But there is one other way that you were there. You were there on the cross. Because this person who was God, who gave himself over to the worst that the world could do to him, who emptied himself and became as vulnerable as a human can be…this was the one who stood in for every one of us and for the world. Here on the cross was a life poured out…and a life that is now ours to claim.

Look at the cross and what do you see? Someone who looks just like us because he was us. Flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone. With no claim to anything majestic. In the end, with no possessions, no help, no hope except in the God who does not abandon us, but walks with us. This is where our hope is. This is where you are…where I am. We were there.

So yes, this week there is a cross on the horizon. But it’s not an old, old story. It’s your story and at the end of it is a life more abundant than any you can imagine. For you and for the world. And here’s the best news – you were there, and Christ is here. Thanks be to God.