He Is Risen!

Scripture Lessons: Psalm 114 and Matthew 28: 1-10 Sermon Title: He is Risen! Preached on April 12, 2020 Today is the most important day of the Christian Calendar because today we celebrate Christ’s victory over death, but today also brings with it one of the most challenging claims Christianity makes. Namely, that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. Not everybody believes that. Thomas Jefferson didn’t. He was what some would call a cafeteria Christian. Like going through the line at Piccadilly, picking and choosing, he took his Bible and his scissors and he left in the teachings of Christ he most admired, literally cut out the parts of the story he couldn’t believe and made for himself what today is known as the Jefferson Bible. Of course, this version, called the Jefferson Bible leaves out the resurrection. Not everyone believes in a bodily resurrection. Not everyone believes in it today, not everyone did back in 1776, and even on Easter morning 2,000 years ago, not everyone believed that Jesus would rise from the dead. Certainly, the disciples didn’t. You can tell from how our Second Scripture Lesson began, that the disciples did not believe he would rise from the dead on that Easter morning nearly 2,000 years ago and we know that they didn’t because they’re nowhere near the tomb, they’re nowhere near anything having to do with Jesus at this point, because they were sure he’d been killed by the Romans and were afraid that any one of them could be next. It’s only these two brave women who go to the tomb. And do you know why they went? They went, not to greet a resurrected Lord, but to anoint a dead body for burial. Now why would that be? Why would those who followed him and listened to him and knew him by name, the men who left their boats and their families to go fish for people, the crowds who saw him give the blind their sight or multiply loaves and fishes, his closest disciples whom he told: “I will die, but will rise again,” the women who knew he had raised their brother from the dead, why would they not have been waiting right outside his tomb on the 3rd day to greet their resurrected Lord? Why? It’s because they, like so many of us, hold the power of God captive by our own minds, our own meager expectations, our own fear, and our own understanding of what is possible and what isn’t. We get so good at thinking we know, that we fail to take God at his word, which is a strange thing to do. Strange, because it’s not as though we don’t have imaginations. It’s not as though we only act based on what is certain and sure. Thomas Jefferson had faith enough to believe that 13 threadbare colonies could defeat the British Empire, which must have sounded impossible at the time. Not three weeks ago our President declared that our churches would be full by Easter Sunday, though the experts told him it was impossible. And today, everyone guards themselves from a virus that they cannot see yet talk with them about the Resurrected Lord and many are like the Disciple Thomas saying, “I’ve got to see it to believe.” We don’t have to see everything to believe, so I wonder, could it be that we are better at fear than faith? Both fear and faith are based on what is not seen. Only we’re so well versed in worry and so uncomfortable with hope that people talk about a leap of faith rather than a leap of fear, as though being negative were any more material than optimism. Mark Twain once said, “I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.” I’ve hoped for a lot of things that never happened too, but still I worry, still, I fear. I’ve been locked away in my house like those disciples, not expecting the moment when the anti-virus is discovered or the cure is found but instead, preparing myself with a store of dried beans for the moment when it’s no longer safe to even go to the grocery store. Here’s my confession: I’ve been filling in the gaps of my knowledge with negative assumptions. Pessimistic fairy tales. I do it even when I’m up here, in this pulpit. I can’t hear you laugh, so there’s a part of me that has assumed my jokes aren’t funny. Someone suggested we pipe in a laugh track like those old 80’s sitcoms. Maybe that would help? Maybe we’ll do that. I’m just kidding. That was a joke, but I can’t tell whether or not you can tell that was a joke because I can’t see your faces, I can’t tell where my words are landing, and after preaching to this empty room for weeks at some point in the sermon I assume you’ve wandered from the live stream to shop for toilet paper on Amazon.com. What’s wrong with me? Because I’m out of the circle I assume I’m being left out, which is like thinking that because no on is coming over to the house, no one likes us anymore. That doesn’t make any sense. Does it? So, I tell you, we can’t just question our faith. We also must scrutinize our fears for they’re not rooted in facts either. We are not connected, but does a lack of connection feel the same as rejection? When you don’t have all the information, do you jump to conspiracy? In a moment when you’re not able to do what you usually do, do you assume that it’s not getting done? Do you imagine that if you’re not there no one will be? The disciples didn’t know where he was, so they assumed he was dead. The two Mary’s went to a tomb, spices in hand, to anoint a body for burial assuming they would find a corpse. When it wasn’t there, they assumed someone had stolen it. When they felt the earthquake and saw an angel, they assumed they should be afraid. The assumptions are piling up now, yet a pile of assumptions doesn’t equal a single fact. Why would we be people, who live our lives dismissing hope while acting on our fear, when all we really need to do is take God at his word? The angel told the two Marys: “He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said.” Too often we are these women, who at least are better than those disciples. In this time of isolation and social distancing, who hasn’t been afraid or downcast? What are we hoping for? What are we expecting? To anoint a body for burial? To get through another day? To scrape by, accept our lot, throw up our hands, give up and get used to it? If you are erring on the side of the negative, I ask you, “did you hear the words of the Psalm?” when Israel went out from Egypt they were met by the sea and assumed they were as good as dead, yet the sea fled before our God and they walked through on dry land. Why is it, O sea, that you flee? It is because ours is the Lord, whom the earth trembles before. Ours is the God who turns the rock into a pool of water. We must be bold to say that Ours is the God who bridges gaps, set prisoners free, and works out his purpose in the midst of a viral pandemic. Just look. Look at the empty tomb. There we see that God, as God always does, gives to his children, not the greatest gift that they can imagine, but the gift that he promised us which is so glorious that we wouldn’t dare imagine it. Don’t guess, don’t fear. Look into the tomb and see that he is not dead but risen. Notice the cloth thrown to the side, for up from slumber he rose to new life. And we will rise too. We have to remember that. He has risen that we might rise too. If there is one word we might use to describe this day it is resurrection. A resurrection hope that when the sun sets on this strange season, a new day will dawn when we’ll actually appreciate the chance to see people we love. Hope that when we don’t have to be social distant, we’ll strive for unity rather than division. Hope that rather than apathy we will take on purpose. Not despair, but joy. That we will no more take what we used to call normal for granted, when every day is a gift and every moment precious. When I see your faces again, I don’t know what I’ll do, but because today is Easter, I know that I will see you. I know that a new day will dawn. How do I know it? For he is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia. Amen.

Who Is This?

Scripture Lessons: Psalm 118: 1-2 and 19-29, Matthew 21: 1-11 Sermon Title: Who is this? Preached on April 5, 2020 The Gospel Lesson for today, and the general spirit of this today, Palm Sunday, reminds me of so many movies or books where something happens: a magic lamp is rubbed, a map is discovered, or a spaceship is boarded and it lifts the characters from their normal lives into adventure, hardship, and eventually triumph. For Jesus it was a donkey and not a spaceship. He gets on the donkey and first there’s adventure: a cheering crowd, then hardship, eventually triumph, but it all starts with this donkey. According to the Gospel of Matthew it was both a donkey and a colt. Once he’s on them everything changes. That’s what’s on your bulletin cover. On the cover of your bulletin is painted Jesus’ view as he begins his journey into the city of Jerusalem. He’s standing on the cliff. His next step sets him on a course where everything will change, for him and for the world. Now, because we have heard the story before we all know what awaits him, and considering his fate, knowing he rides toward the Cross, there’s a part of me that wishes he could right now turn around. When I was a kid, I had that same feeling watching this cartoon movie called An American Tail. Do you know that movie? The word “tail,” in the title is a homophone. Someone listening to this sermon just said, “I can’t believe he knows such a big word,” but I do, and I had to do something to redeem myself for using a children’s cartoon as a sermon illustration so I’m using this big word: homophone. In the title it’s spelled “t-a-i-l,” because this movie is about a little mouse who immigrates from Eastern Europe to America in the hopes of escaping the oppressive cats of his homeland. He goes with his family, but on the way across the sea he chases his hat out on the deck during a storm and he’s swept off the boat. He slips through his desperate father mouse’s fingers, and ends up lost at sea. I remember watching this movie as a kid over and over, and each time I watched it I asked: why did he have to chase that stupid hat? But that’s because I knew. Had he known where chasing his hat out onto the ships deck would lead him, maybe he wouldn’t have gone after it in the first place. Movies have to have adventure, so against my advice, the mouse chased the hat and fell overboard, and every Palm Sunday Jesus keeps riding his donkey into Jerusalem even though it is in this city that he will meet his death. What’s different between the mouse in An American Tail and Jesus is that, while the mouse couldn’t have known that chasing his hat out onto the deck would lead to him being swept overboard, atop his donkey Jesus knows. Jesus knows what’s going to happen to him as he rides into Jerusalem, and he goes anyway. He hears the cheers and sees the waving palms, knowing that they’ll soon be shouting, “Crucify him” and yet he goes anyway. He waves to the crowd, knowing that a nail will pierce both his hands, and still he rides on. He felt the gentle breeze on his skin knowing that soon his back would be whipped, his head would be crowned with thorns, and still, onward he goes. He knew you see, and had it been any of us, in knowing we would have turned around. That’s how we are. If we only would have known how challenging the journey we would have turned around. If only we had stopped travel out of China earlier. If only we had started the quarantine sooner. If only we had listened to the experts. If only we heeded the warnings. I wish we had. I wish we had done all those things, but now it’s too late, and as we journey into the unknown moving forward into the future which we cannot avoid, we only face one choice: will we face the future with fear or with faith? Will we accept our new reality or live in denial? Will we adapt or hide? Will we search for someone to blame or will we develop solutions? Will we blame God or will we see God at work? Many in Jerusalem were fearful: let’s just send him back home. Let’s put the genie back in the bottle. Forget about the adventure, they said, though there was no going back. So, When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?” That’s what everyone asks when the unplanned happens. That’s what everyone wants to know when their world turns upside down. Who is this that causes such turmoil when all we want is peace and normalcy? Who is this that gets the crowds so up in arms? Who is this that topples the tables of money changers, gives the blind their sight, raises dead men from the grave, and tells us that a new Kingdom is coming if we only have the eyes to see it? You know who he is already. He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and what he demands of us today is that we see him at work in the midst of one of the great moments of chaos that we’ve seen in a generation. He is the embodiment of Grace, and in the midst of this virus he invites us to recognize that when we are shaped and changed, purified and refined, challenged and broken down it is an invitation to be stronger than we were before. Because it is through adventures that heroes are born. Maybe you remember that the Wizard Gandalf said to Frodo: “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us,” or how Mikey yelled to the Goonies from the tunnel under their hometown: “This is our time.” And sure, I wish we had not been given this time. I wish you High School Seniors were not missing your graduation and prom. That you parents were not facing lay-offs and uncertainty. I wish that we all were not at risk. But my friends, the hero and the villain swim through the same water. Only one can emerge. Only one will rule this day, and I charge you to follow the One whom death cannot conquer like you’ve never followed him before. One way or the other he is going to lead us out of this, and if we walk beside him, he will shape and change us in his image. We will be made better for this, if we chose to see with the eyes of faith rather than fear. We will be closer as families. We will be stronger as a church. We will be more faithful Christians, as truly we are tested. You see, the school tests have been canceled to make room for a real one that our children might learn that they don’t have to go through life being afraid that something bad is going to happen, because all things are work together for good. Know it now. We are enough. We have enough. Because He is enough. “Who is this” Jerusalem asked, urging him to turn around lest everything change. My friends: we know who he is, and he knows who we are. So, let us follow him and be changed forever. Amen.