An Idle Tale That Changed the World

What kind of story do you tell in a graveyard? I ought to have some experience at that. We preachers get called upon to speak words in many a graveyard. And it’s all based on what happened in the graveyard on Easter morning. Today is the day that gives us something to say at the time of death.

The story is told about a young preacher who was called upon to do a service for a pauper who had no family. He was new to the area and wasn’t sure where the cemetery was so he got lost along the way. Finally, an hour after the service was supposed to begin, he pulled up to see that the hearse had already left. A backhoe was standing at the ready and there were two men waiting to fill in the hole. The vault lid was already on.

The young preacher felt very guilty and he decided he should say a few appropriate words for the man. So he put on his robe and launched into an impassioned sermon about the resurrection and new life, he read Bible verses and said a wonderful prayer. As he returned to his car one of the workers leaned to the other and said, “I’ve been putting in septic tanks for twenty years and I ain’t never seen anything like that.”

What kind of story do you tell in the graveyard? There has been such a contrast of things going on here at Franktown these last few days. We’ve had a steady stream of services since Thursday night and the consistent theme of them has been darkness and pain and sorrow and confession and the gory details of Jesus’ death on a criminal’s cross two thousand years ago. And in the midst of it all – an Easter Egg Hunt. I know we kind of jump the gun on that, but it almost seems a kind of relief. When we’re talking crucifixion I often wonder whether it’s appropriate for children. When we get into the whipping and the nailing and the piercing and the dying, what does this say to our kids?

I don’t worry too much because I know children are resilient and for centuries we have been telling our kids scary stories to help them come to terms with the terrors of this world. Hansel and Gretel is just one of many tales that remind us that there are dangers around us. The witch in the gingerbread house is a stand-in for all the ways in which evil can lead us astray. Children do need some conditioning to prepare them for living in the world. Much as we try to protect them from it, they will face monstrous things in their lives and best that they should know the character of the world. But we also usually include a happy ending to remind them that the world is more than predators and nightmares. It is also filled with beauty and hope and goodness overcoming evil. That’s more than we can say for the evening news which never gets past the nightmares.

All the same, I wonder what sort of message we are telling about the world when we talk about Jesus and his death and resurrection. In the midst of pastel eggs and iron spikes and empty tombs are we telling a story that helps our children (and us) know the truth about this world? Or are we telling something that seems to the world an idle tale?

I don’t know about you, but I could use a story that is more than an idle tale. We have way too many idle tales. Movies have predictable plot lines that run from revenge fantasies to underdogs overcoming adversity to boy meets girl. But maybe you’re like me and you hunger for something deeper, richer, more. We want a story that is going to not only touch our hearts but transform our lives.

Avatar has been the top movie of the winter and it seems to promise that kind of story. It will take you to a whole new world and immerse you in the story with 3-D effects that are stunning to behold. And it is a beautiful thing to watch. But by the end of the movie I felt let down. All these hundreds of millions of dollars and the story ends up being about a showdown between a rebel on a righteous mission and a thug with a big machine? How many times have I seen that with the same predictable outcome?

I want a story that is going to tell me something about who I am and where I’m headed. I want a story that’s going to deal with the deepest fears and longings in my heart. I want a story that’s going to tell me why I’m here and what it is that I’m supposed to do with my life. I want a story that’s going to tell me who God is and what God is about in this world. Come to think of it, I want more than director James Cameron can give me. I want a savior.

Maybe you want that, too. Maybe that’s why we’re here. Easter is one of those days when people make a special effort to go to church. If you’re one of those folks who have been away for awhile and are back because it’s Easter, welcome back. It is a good day to be here, because this Easter story is the most important thing we have to say as Christians. And it’s a story we should never get tired of telling.

Easter is different from Christmas, too. James Miller wrote a column for Slate magazine a couple of years ago in which he noticed that we don’t commercialize Easter like we do Christmas. The culture has kind of adopted Christmas, but Easter, despite the Cadbury eggs and peeps, is not the culture holiday that Christmas is.

Miller says:

“Even agnostics and atheists who don't accept Christ's divinity can accept the general outlines of the Christmas story with little danger to their worldview. But Easter demands a response. It's hard for a non-Christian believer to say, ‘Yes, I believe that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified, died, was buried, and rose from the dead.’ That's not something you can believe without some serious ramifications: If you believe that Jesus rose from the dead, this has profound implications for your spiritual and religious life—really, for your whole life. If you believe the story, then you believe that Jesus is God, or at least God's son. What he says about the world and the way we live in that world then has a real claim on you.

Easter is an event that demands a ‘yes’ or a ‘no.’ There is no ‘whatever.’”[i]

There is no ‘whatever.’ This is crucial stuff. So if we are here today because of Easter it says something about how we view the world.

The story of the first Easter is simply told. It’s different from action movies or other blockbusters because nothing really happens. At least not much cinematic happens. Especially in the version of the resurrection story that we read today – from Luke. The gospel of Matthew, at least, has an earthquake and a Roman guard falling down in fear. But Luke’s narrative is a quieter sort of thing. But just because there are no explosions that doesn’t mean there isn’t drama.

When we last left the scene, it was Friday. Jesus was dead and buried. Taken down from the cross. Sealed away in a borrowed tomb. The women who had followed him from Galilee had seen his body, seen where it was laid, but then went off to prepare spices for the day when they could return. The Sabbath began at sundown that Friday night and it would not end until nightfall on Saturday. During that time, the women did not go back to the tomb.

Then early on Sunday morning, at “deepest dawn” according to Luke, they went back to the grave carrying the spices. But by the time they got to the tomb, the resurrection had already happened. This is the part we’d love to see, but none of the gospels gives us an account of how it happened that Jesus’ lifeless body left that tomb. When Mel Gibson tried to depict it in The Passion of the Christ a few years ago, he added this scene with Jesus confidently striding out, fully restored, ready to take on the world. But the gospels leave it out.

All that the women see is the huge stone that sealed the entrance rolled away from the tomb. They look inside and see that there is no body. And then two men are standing there beside them (and, yes, this part is a little cinematic) they are wearing clothes that shine like stars.

“Why are you looking for the living among the dead?” they ask. “Weren’t you listening? Didn’t he tell you? He told you this would happen. He told you about the betrayal into the hands of sinful people. He told you about the crucifixion. But on the third day…he told you…he would rise.”

They did remember. The Bible tells us they did. But they hadn’t dared to believe. That Jesus would be betrayed – that was something easy to believe since he was causing conflict with religious authorities wherever he went. That he would be crucified – they prayed that would not be true, but it was a fate for those who ran afoul of the Roman overlords – and any Messiah would do that. They could believe that. But the rising in three days bit? It just seemed ludicrous. Outlandish. Incredible. Only now it made perfect sense.

The women, and there were many – Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, many more – they ran to the disciples, the eleven Jesus had chosen (11 because Judas had fallen away), and the rest. They spilled out the story – to no effect. They did not believe them. It seemed to them an idle tale, Luke says.

Peter was the only one who made an effort to check the story out. The only one! He ran to the tomb, stooped and looked in. No body. Not even the two men the women had seen. Just the linen wrapping that had been around his body. And he left wondering what had happened.

At this point it was only the women who had experienced Easter. It would take more appearances by the risen Jesus to convince the others. But the bare facts were now out there. Jesus’ body was gone. And the women who went to the tomb now knew that victory had come in an entirely unexpected way. Jesus had confounded them in death as in life. But he had also defeated death.

An idle tale? Some still think so. But this idle tale has changed the world. Empires have fallen. Slaves have been set free. People have faced down oppressive regimes. People have given their lives in mission to tell this story. People who have been lost have been found. People who were dead in every sense that it matters are now alive. All because of this idle tale.

The early church had an interesting way of dramatizing what was happening at Easter. On the night before Easter they would gather in darkness. During the Easter vigil they would bring in the new Christians, those being baptized after months of preparation. And they would do their liturgy as if it were all still up in the air – as if the outcome was still undetermined. As if Jesus were still lying there dead in the tomb. And they would still go on with the service, expecting that the rising sun might bring the last day of creation. Maybe this year Jesus would come to bring all things to an end.

Then they would welcome the light by blessing a candle. The baptizands would turn the west – the land associated with darkness – and they would renounce the devil and his angels. They would laugh at him and literally spit at the evil forces of this world. Then they would turn to the east – the land of the rising sun – and confess their allegiance to Christ, the coming one, the risen one.

The theologian David Bentley Hart says that “to renounce one’s bonds to these [evil] beings was an act of cosmic rebellion, a declaration that one had been emancipated from…‘the prince of this world’ or…‘the god of this world’…so the life of faith was, for the early church, before all else, spiritual warfare, waged between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of the fallen world, and every Christian on the day of his or her baptism had been conscripted into that struggle on the side of Christ.”[ii]

Is that what we signed up for? We want a word of comfort. We want a word of hope for today. And that’s what Easter is – hope and confidence that God has already determined the course and declared where it all ends. But it is also a day that reminds us that it’s not just about us. It’s about God and the great glory of this graveyard story is not just that we as individuals have won a way out of the cycle of death. The greater story is that we are swept up into what God is doing in this world – defeating evil with love, overthrowing the wrong with the right, and making us new creatures through union with Christ. If you say ‘yes’ to this story, you’re conscripted now. The kingdom of God needs every volunteer. What you can’t say is ‘whatever.’

Thanks be to God.

Luke 12:1-12

On the first day of the week at deepest dawn, they came to the grave carrying spices they had prepared. They discovered that the stone had been rolled away from the grave, and upon entering they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.

While they were confounded with this, look, two men stood beside them in clothes that shone like stars. They became frightened and bowed their faces to the ground as the men said, "Why are you looking for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has been raised. Remember what he said to you when you were in Galilee. He said that the Son of Humanity must be given over into the hands of sinful people, and be crucified, and on the third day rise."

They remembered his words. So they returned from the tomb and reported all of this to the Eleven and to the others. These were Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary, the mother of James, and others were with them. They said these things to the apostles. These words seemed to them nonsense and they did not believe them.

Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. He bent down and saw only a linen cloth and left, wondering to himself what was happening.

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[i] James Martin, “Happy Crossmas! How Easter resists commercialization,” Slate magazine, April 2, 2010, http://www.slate.com/id/2249525/?from=rss.

[ii] David Bentley Hart, Athiest Delusions: The Christian Revolution and its Fashionable Enemies, [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009], ebook location 1500-1506.

Back to Basics: Aging

For the last several weeks we have been exploring spiritual practices that can help us deepen our relationship with God. We have been looking at things that we inherited from our Jewish ancestors and exploring how we might still learn from those practices. We have talked about difficult things – keeping Sabbath in a 24/7 world, fasting, hospitality, caring for the body. Most of those we’re not particularly good at. So today the topic is aging and you might be tempted to say – Alex, I’ve got that down pat. Wish I didn’t, but, yeah, I’ve got that aging thing down.

I’m here today to suggest that maybe you don’t.

As you might have guessed, we’re talking about something more than chronology here when we talk about aging. We’re talking about how, as people of faith, we think about aging. Because I hope we have something more and different to say than what the culture says.

The culture says that you have to be young to be valued. You have to be young to be useful. Think how often you see mature characters on television or in the movies. Most of the people you see in the media, and in advertisements that aren’t about Snuggies and Depends, are young.

Unfortunately, the church reinforces this message sometimes. What do we call churches with no young people? We call them dying churches, and as an institution they may very well be dying, but we perpetuate a connection in our heads that says aging equals dying.

More importantly, we reinforce the culture’s message about aging by separating young and old, believing that the best way to do discipleship and to grow in faith is to just hang out with people our own age. There is a place for that and value in it, but if we just have a youth class and a children’s class and ladies’ fellowship class and a Hamilton men’s class and never any interaction between the generations we are missing the great potential of the church. Look around this room. How many other places do you go in a week where there is this diversity of ages in the same place? How many other opportunities do we have for the kinds of interactions that can take place here?

One of the reasons I look forward to our confirmation process each year is the new relationships across generation boundaries that are formed. This year we have twelve young people exploring church membership through confirmation. We had our kickoff luncheon last Sunday at the Hatch’s house. Each of those young people will be meeting weekly with an elder – someone who has been walking in the faith for awhile. Who knows what’s going to happen? It’s going to be awkward and the mentors may not know from time to time if what they are doing is right and youth from time to time may be confused, but there will be important, life-changing things coming from these interactions. And it’s happening right now in our congregation.

So what do we learn from our Jewish heritage on aging? The parts of the Bible that we share tell us quite clearly that respect for elders is an expected practice. The fourth commandment of the famous ten says, “Honor your father and your mother.” I know we’ve all got complicated feelings about our parents. Some of us have had experiences with them that make it difficult to know how to honor them. But in the practice of recognizing a responsibility and a respect for our parents, we learn something about God.

Lauren Winner says, (and by the way, if her book sales don’t go up after all the mention we’ve made of her over these last few week, it will be no fault of Peter or myself!), in her book Mudhouse Sabbath, that “perhaps the most essential insight of the Jewish approach to caring for one’s elderly is that this care is, indeed, an obligation. What Judaism understands is that obligations are good things.”[i] The obligations of the Jewish community and the Christian community are built around the connections that bind young and old together. Deuteronomy talks about the special obligation that the older generation has to teach the young the story of their faith. The letters of Paul and the story of the early church in Acts talk about how the new Christians set up systems of care for widows. Jesus, from the cross, tells one of his disciples to care for his own grieving mother as if she were his own. And he tells his mother to care for him.

My father tells the story, (and there were remnants of this practice even when I was young), of how on Sundays the whole extended family would gather at his grandparents’ house for Sunday dinner. There would be three tables – or three sittings. Who do you think got to sit first? It wasn’t the children, who we often rush to feed first now because we know how fidgety they can get. It was the adults – first the men and then the women and at the third table the children. It was a pretty patriarchal system, I admit. My dad talked about how much the children looked forward to reaching an age when they could sit at the adult table. We’re probably not going back to this system, but it showed the different way that age was viewed.

So there is a particular obligation that we have to honor our elders, but there is also a real beauty to this season of life. Our passage from Proverbs this morning says, “The glory of youths is their strength, but the beauty of the aged is their gray hair.” Oil of Olay and L’Oreal hair coloring will not tell you that your beauty is your gray hair, but God does! As someone with very little hair, I’ll tell you that it’s beautiful no matter what color it is!

There is a beauty to this season. I have talked before about the lesson in the autumn leaves. As deciduous trees prepare for the winter, they very often turn brilliant colors. We say they turn these colors, but in reality what is happening is that all the green chlorophyll is draining out of the leaves and exposing the true color that was underneath all along. That’s good aging – to discover who we truly are underneath the work that we do or the roles that we play and to let that true self shine through. It is one of the great possibilities of aging.

As we let that true self be exposed and let the glory of the unique light God has given to us show through, we have the opportunity to find a new life – to celebrate a life that doesn’t end. In our Gospel story this morning we find Simeon and Anna, an elderly man and woman who are there at the very beginning of Jesus’ story to give a witness. They have been waiting for the promised Messiah and when Mary and Joseph bring the infant Jesus in to the Temple, they both give a word of prophecy. Simeon takes the child in his arms and praises God. “Master, you are now dismissing your servant in peace…for my eyes have seen your salvation.” He was able to see in this child and in his journey, the promise of God.

Every stage of life is one that God can bless and use. But we don’t often talk about the blessings of aging. It is too often seen as withering or failing rather than a time of vitality. We have to fight the temptation to turn inward and away from the world.

In the movie Up, which came out from Disney and Pixar last year, we saw this story played out in a very powerful way. It is an animated story about a 78-year-old man named Carl Frederickson. In the first ten minutes of the movie we get a montage of his whole life – how he is befriended by a tomboyish girl named Ellie who has a great spirit of adventure. How he grows up to marry her and they both go off to work in a zoo – she works with birds, he sell balloons. How they dream of travelling to Paradise Falls in South America. How they get a small house and go through the joys and trials of making a life together – not being able to have children, never quite having the money to go to Paradise Falls, but fixing up the place together and sharing life. Until one day Ellie dies and Carl is left alone.

The world I changing around him. The city has grown around their house and a developer wants to get Carl to sell out, but he won’t. He has become lonely and grumpy and he spends his days watching TV in the room where Ellie’s painting of Paradise Falls is on the wall and her picture is on the hearth.

Then one day a knock comes on the door. It’s Russell, a 9-year-old boy in the Wilderness Adventure scouts who comes by looking for an old person to do a good deed for. Carl doesn’t know it, but by opening the door to Russell he is going to be walking back into life.

Eventually Carl devises a plan to escape the developer and the nursing home that wants him to come retire there. He attaches a million balloons to his house and floats away, finally going to Paradise Falls. What he doesn’t know is that Russell is on the porch when the house takes off and he is going on this adventure, too.

Russell needs Carl as much as Carl needs Russell. Russell has never really had a father figure but he has some of Ellie’s bright-eyed enthusiasm about the world. Carl needs to be reawakened to what he still has to offer.

Through the course of their adventures together, they eventually lose the house, which Carl has been dragging around like a ball and chain, just a little ways off the ground and held down by a garden hose. When it floats away into the clouds, Carl is finally free to move on and begin a new relationship with Russell that is life-giving for both of them.

The saddest thing that can happen to us as human beings is when we neglect the wonder of the place that we are and the people who are right in front of us. Because it’s way too easy to be overcome by the darkness and the desolation. At every stage of life, there is beauty, given by God to be expressed in the world. And in every person, there is worth and value. Arthritic hands and thinning hair can’t rob us of that beauty. Even terminal cancer can’t take away that worth. Our responsibility is to age well and we have the grace to do it. God will bear us up when every other home we have known is just a memory. Even when our memories falter, God does not forget. Thanks be to God.

Proverbs 20:29 (NRSV)

The glory of youths is their strength, but the beauty of the aged is their gray hair.

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[i] Lauren F. Winner, Mudhouse Sabbath: An Invitation to Spiritual Discipline, [Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2003], e-book location 764.