Category Archives: Sermon

A Laying Down Life Kind of Love – A Sermon on 1 John 3:16-24 and John 10:11-18; Easter 4B

Posted on April 29, 2012 | 9 Comments

The collect and readings for the Fourth Sunday of Easter (Shepherd Sunday) may be found here. The following sermon is based on 1 John 3:16-24 and John 10:11-18.

Mosaic of the Good Shepherd,
Mausoleum of Galla, Ravenna, Italy
First half of the fifth century

She died about two weeks ago. She was young, only in her forties. Her mom, Lupe, is one of the housekeepers for the church and our school. I persuaded Lupe to take some time off and stay home. “Don’t worry about your job,” I said. “Everything will be okay.” A couple of days later I learned that one of our teachers was staying after school to sweep out the classrooms and clean the bathrooms. She didn’t want to be paid. This was for Lupe and her daughter. She was laying down her life that Lupe might have some time for tears, memories, rest, and prayers. It was a gift of love.

So often we think love is about emotions, feelings, and sweet words. There’s nothing wrong with those things and they can be a legitimate part of love. We all want to be told we are loved. We want to feel that warmth, security, and tenderness that comes with love. At some point, however, love, if it is to be real, must become tangible, revealed not only by words and feelings but by actions. In this case a broom, a bucket, and rubber gloves were the signs and means of love. “Little children,” John writes in his first letter, “let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action” (1 John 3:18).

So what does this have to do with Easter, resurrection, and the Good Shepherd? Everything. It has everything to do with Easter, resurrection, and the Good Shepherd. God’s love for humanity became tangible in the life, death, and resurrection of his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. God enacted love.

“We know love by this,” John tells us, “that he laid down his life for us” (1 John 3:16). In laying down his life Jesus chooses us. He is not the victim of another’s power or agendas. If he is a victim at all, he is the victim of his own all consuming divine love. His life was not taken from him, it was given to us; a choice and gift he freely made. That is what makes Jesus the good shepherd.

The hired hand trades time for wages. He transacts business. He cares nothing about the sheep. The good shepherd, however, lives and dies for love. He lays down his life for his sheep. He knows them and they know him, just as the Father knows him and he knows the Father. The very same relationship that Jesus has with his Father we can have with Jesus. This relationship of knowing is one of intimacy and love; between the Father and Jesus and between Jesus and humanity. Jesus is the revealer of God’s life and love.

This intimate love is at the heart of resurrection and the resurrected life. Resurrection is about a laying down life kind of love. Four times in today’s gospel Jesus says that he lays down his life. Four times he says to us, “I love you.” Four times he describes the pattern for our lives. John’s letter is explicit about this pattern: “He laid down his life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for one another” (1 John 3:16).

For Christ, love is lived; and how we live is always a choice. It is a choice driven by our recognition of, compassion for, and willingness to do something about the life and needs of another, whether they are in our own families, this parish, or on the other side of town. We cannot claim to believe in Jesus if we are unwilling to lay down our life for another, regardless of who he or she is. If we believe, we will love. If we do not love, neither do we believe.

Our belief in Jesus cannot be separated from how and whom we love. Our belief in his name is revealed in laying down our life for another. Even if we never say the name “Jesus,” laying down our life for another reveals our belief in that name.

Whenever we lay down our life for another we proclaim that resurrection is not just an event in the past. It is a present reality, not just a historical remembrance. Laying down our life makes Jesus’ resurrection tangible and real. The only reason we can ever lay down our life for another is because Jesus first laid down his life for us. The shepherd never takes his sheep somewhere he is unwilling to go. He never asks of his sheep something he is himself unwilling to give. Every time we lay down our life in love for another we remember Jesus’ death and proclaim his resurrection even as we await the day of his coming.

The opportunities for a laying down life kind of love are everywhere. You don’t have to go far. They are the family and friends we see everyday. They are the people of this parish and of this town. They are the strangers who pass through our lives. They are the anonymous ones talked about as issues of poverty, hunger, homelessness, education. The opportunities for laying down life love are not just circumstances. They are people, human beings created in the image and likeness of God.

We need only be present, open our eyes, listen, and pay attention to know how and where love asks us to lay down our life for another. A laying down life kind of love means we will have to change our usual routines. It is no longer business as usual. The life and well being of “the other” now sets our agenda, guides our decisions, and determines our actions. That sounds a lot like how the good shepherd lived and died.

Laying down our life is not, however, the end of life. It wasn’t for was Jesus, nor will it be for us. It is, rather, the beginning of a new life, a more authentic life, a life that looks a lot like Jesus’ life. It is the life in and by which we hear the voice of the good shepherd call our name and we follow where he leads. Call it what you want, Easter, resurrection, the good shepherd; it’s all the same, a laying down life kind of love.

Icon of the Good Shepherd

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“You are Witnesses” – A Sermon on Luke 24:36-48; Easter 3B

Posted on April 22, 2012 | 6 Comments

The collect and readings for the Third Sunday of Easter may be found here. The following sermon is based on Luke 24:36-48.

Jesus' Appearance While the Apostles are at Table
by Duccio di Buoninsegna (1255-1319)

It’s not enough that the tomb is empty. It’s not enough to proclaim, “Christ is risen!” It’s not enough to believe in the resurrection. At some point we have to move from the event of the resurrection to experiencing the resurrection. Experiencing resurrected life begins with recognizing the risen Christ among us. That is the gift of Easter and it is also the difficulty and challenge described in today’s gospel.

Cleopas and his companion are telling the other disciples how Jesus appeared to them on the road to Emmaus when Jesus, again, shows up out of nowhere, interrupting their conversation. “Peace be with you,” he says. They see him, they hear his voice, but they don’t recognize him. They “thought that they were seeing a ghost.” They know Jesus was crucified, died, and was buried. They know dead men don’t come back to life. This can only be a ghost, a spirit without a body. The tomb is open but their minds are closed.

They are unable to recognize the holiness that stands among them. They are continuing to live, think, and understand in the usual human categories. They have separated spirit and matter, divinity and humanity, heaven and earth. Whenever we make that separation we close our minds, we deny ourselves the resurrected life for which Christ died, and we lose our sense of and ability to recognize holiness in the world, in one another, and in ourselves.

With Jesus’ resurrection, however, God shatters human categories of who God is, where God’s life and energy are to be found, and how God works in this world. Resurrected life can never be comprehended, contained, or controlled by human thought or understanding. Jesus’ resurrection compels us to step outside our usual human understandings of reality and enter into the divine reality.

That new reality begins with touching and seeing, flesh and bones, hands and feet, and broiled fish. Jesus said to his disciples, “Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” Then “he showed them his hands and his feet.” After this he ate a piece of broiled fish in their presence.

Flesh and bones, hands and feet, and broiled fish are the things of creation, the natural order. Mary, a woman created by God, gave Jesus his flesh and bones and his hands and feet. She also gave him the stomach that would eat the fish God created. The very same flesh and bones, the very same hands and feet, appeared to Cleopas and his companion on the road to Emmaus and then “vanished from their sight” (Luke 24:31), and now show up unannounced and unexpected in the midst of their conversation with others. In last week’s gospel Jesus’ hands and feet, his flesh and bones, passed through walls and locked doors.

The resurrected life of Christ, it seems, is revealed in and through the created order. It is not, however, bound by the created order. Rather, the resurrected body and life of Christ unite the visible and invisible, matter and spirit, humanity and divinity. On the one hand Jesus has a real body. On the other hand it is not subject to the natural laws of time and space. It’s not one or the other. It’s both. It is a new and different reality.

The degree to which we have allowed ourselves to be bound by the created order is the degree to which are unable to see resurrected life and holiness in this world. We bind ourselves through our fears, our sorrows and losses, our runaway thoughts and distractions, our attachments and addictions to things, people, and even beliefs. Sometimes it’s our unwillingness to allow or trust God to grow and change us. In binding ourselves to the created order we lose recognition of and the ability to live in the sacred. That’s the very opposite of resurrected life.

The resurrected life of Christ reveals that all creation and every one of us are filled with God, holiness, divinity. Nothing can bind or supersede the grace that is given us through resurrection: unconditional love, unconditional forgiveness, unconditional life. That is, I think, one of the most difficult things for us to see, believe, and live into. It is, however, the divine reality into which we are invited, not at some future time and place but here and now.

Christ our God longs and desires to open our minds to understand the scriptures, to understand all that has been written, spoken, and revealed about him in whatever form that happens and has happened. That’s what Jesus did for the disciples and it’s what he does for us. This is not an academic or intellectual understanding. That the disciples are witnesses does not mean they now have all the answers. It means they now have the life Jesus wants to give them. They are witnesses based not on what they know, but on who they are, how they live, and their relationship with the risen Christ.

I don’t know how this happens. I can’t give you a set of instructions or a to-do list. That would be like giving you a set of instructions on how to fall in love. The resurrected life is not acquired it is received. It happens when we risk unbinding ourselves from the usual ways of seeing, living, and relating. This is not a rejection of the natural order. It is allowing the natural order to open to and reveal something more. That’s what happened for the disciples with Jesus’ hands and feet, with his flesh and bones, and the broiled fish. The saw and recognized something about Jesus and in so doing they saw and recognized something about themselves; holiness. It happens for us too.

Think about a time in your life when you lost track of time. I don’t mean you forgot what time it was, but that you were so awake, so present, that you entered a new world. Think about a time when life seemed more real than it ever had and you touched or tasted life in a way never before. Recall a moment when your heart opened, softened, and you knew you were somehow different. Remember that day when you sensed something new was being offered you; possibilities that you did not create for yourself. They just opened up. Reflect on that moment when you realized that you were ok and could again start to live. Those are the moments when Christ opens our minds to understand. They are moments of awe and wonder that leave us in sacred silence. They fill our eyes with tears. We weep, not from sorrow or pain, but the water of new life. They are the moments in which we say, “I never want this to end. I don’t want to leave this place.”

In each of those moments the one who is fully alive and risen, the Christ, is calling us to see and recognize him, to join him, and to discover our new life. This is the authentic self we long to become, the self that we already are, and the self we are becoming. This is resurrected life.

Let’s not lose this moment. Let’s not put this text behind us. It is much too easy to come here each Sunday, listen to the gospel, hear, for better or worse, whatever I have to say, and then return to life as usual. Don’t let that happen. Your life is too important to let that happen. Carry this text with you over the next week. Let it open your eyes, your heart, and your mind to the life Christ is offering you. Let it be the voice of Christ opening your mind to understand. Sit with it. Pray with it. Wrestle with it. Trust it. As soon as you catch a glimpse of the risen Christ and your own resurrection leave a comment, call me, e-mail me, drop by and tell me about it.

“You are witnesses of these things,” he says to us. Tell it. Live it. Become it. The resurrected life is yours. You are witnesses. You are witnesses.

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Seen and Touched – A Sermon on John 20:19-31 for the Second Sunday of Easter

Posted on April 16, 2012 | 5 Comments

The collect and readings for the Second Sunday of Easter may be found here. The following sermon is based on John 20:19-31.

Icon of Jesus and Thomas

I’m not exactly sure why, because I usually say no, but yesterday I agreed to participate in a telephone survey about politics. In response to one of the demographics questions I said that I was a priest. At the end of the survey the woman said, “You being a priest and all, can I ask you a question?” “Sure,” I said. “Do you believe in once saved, always saved?” she asked.

I could have given a quick one word answer but she wasn’t really looking for an answer. I could hear in her voice, her question, and our conversation that she stands behind some locked doors. I don’t know what they are but beneath her question was the longing to unlock those doors. She wanted to hear a good word; a word that said, “Everything is ok. You are ok. You can unlock the doors.” She wanted to know she could live a different life and be a new person. She wanted to know there is hope; that all is not lost.

Christ is risen, the tomb is empty, but the doors are locked. Resurrected life, it seems, does not come easily.

One week ago God rolled away the stone from the tomb. The seal of death was broken and Mary Magdalene saw Jesus alive. That night, despite Mary’s good news, the disciples were hiding behind locked doors. Today, a week after the resurrection, the disciples are again in the same room with the same locked doors. Not much has changed. They have traded a tomb for a house and a stone for locked doors.

It’s not just the disciples, however. I suspect we all know about those locked doors. Sometimes it seems that God opens the tomb and we follow behind locking the doors. God opens the tomb and declares forgiveness and we continue to live behind the locked doors of condemnation of self or others. God opens the tomb and defeats death but we still live as if it is the final word. God opens the tomb and offers new life but we lock the doors and live in the past. God opens the tombs and declares we are loved and we lock ourselves out of that love. The locked doors of our lives are not so much about what is going on around us, but what is happening within us: fear, anger, guilt, hurt, grief, the refusal to change. There are a thousand different locks on the doors of our life and they are always locked from the inside.

That is, I believe, what Thomas was struggling with when he said, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” It earned him the name Doubting Thomas. Jesus, however, never accuses Thomas of doubting. That is how we have translated and interpreted the Greek. Rather, Jesus, says, “Do not be unbelieving, but believing.” He could just have easily said that to the other disciples. After all, one week after seeing Jesus’ hands and side they are still in the house behind locked doors. Every time we lock the doors of our house we deny the resurrected life of Christ.

Thomas’ unbelief is not in his question. He didn’t ask to see more than the other disciples saw a week earlier. His unbelief, and theirs, is in being stuck in the house with the doors locked. Belief in Jesus’ resurrection is not a question of intellectual assent or agreement. It’s not about evidence or proof. It’s not about getting the right answer. Belief is more about how we live than what we think.

Resurrection is not just an event or an idea. It is a way of being and living. It is the lens through which we see the world, each other, and ourselves. Resurrection is the gift of God’s life and love. Living resurrection, however, is difficult. For most of us it is a process, something we grow into over time. It is neither quick nor magical. Resurrection does not undo our past, fix our problems, or change the circumstances of our lives. It changes us, offers a way through our problems, and creates a future. Christ’s resurrected life inspires us with his spirit, invites us to unlock the doors, and sends us into the world.

I have to wonder, one week after Easter, is our life different? Where are we living? In the freedom and joy of resurrection or behind locked doors? What do we believe about Jesus’ resurrection? What doors have we locked? If you want to know what you believe, look at your life and how you live. Our beliefs guide our life and our life reveals our beliefs.

Resurrected people know that faith and life are messy. They ask hard questions rather than settling for easy answers. They don’t have to figure it all out before saying their prayers, feeding the hungry, forgiving another, or loving their neighbor. They trust that what God believes about them is more important than what they believe about God. Resurrected people are willing to get out of the house. They unlock doors even when they do not know what is on the other side. They believe even if they don’t understand. They may never see or touch Jesus,  but they live trusting that they have been seen and touched by him.

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Life Unburied – A Sermon for Easter; Mark 16:1-8

Posted on April 8, 2012 | 11 Comments

The collect and readings for Easter may be found here. The following sermon is based on Mark 16:1-8.

Icon of the Myrrh Bearing Women:
"He has been raised. He is not here."

Several years ago a woman told me that her great-grandson asked why she had so many wrinkles on her hands. “I’m old,” she told him. “Do you know what happens when you get old,” he asked. “You die and they bury you in the ground.” Before she could say anything he added, “But that’s ok; God comes and unburies you.”

What more is there to say? He’s just told the Easter story. It’s that simple. We get buried by the circumstances of life and God unburies us. Over and over God comes to the tombs of our lives and unburies us. That’s Easter. That is the power and love of God. It is as true as it is simple.

That truth speaks louder than the reality of our burials. There are so many ways in which our life gets buried: sorrow and grief, death and loss, fear and anxiety, perfectionism, anger, guilt, regret, resentment, self-hatred, the things we have done and the things we have left undone. Those are the stones that block our way. Those stones mark the many in ways in which we have suffered death, whether physically, emotionally, or spiritually.

With each stone we ask, “Who will roll away the stone? Who will do for me what I cannot do for myself?” That’s what the three women are asking as they walk to the tomb. It’s not really a question as much as it is a statement about their life and what they expect. Their life has been buried in loss, pain, and death. And they expect it to stay that way. They expect a stone of death too big, too heavy, too real for them to do anything about.

I wonder how often we live not only expecting to get buried but expecting to stay buried. We too quickly forget that for every burial there is an Easter. That’s what the women discovered as soon as they looked up. The stone of death, the stone that blocked their way, had already been rolled back.

That’s why we show up this day, year after year. We want to know that the stones of our tombs have been rolled back. We want to hear the story again and be reminded that the tomb is open and empty. We want to know ourselves as unburied. We want to hear one more time, “Christ is risen!”

“God unburies you,” he told his great-grandmother. The young man in the tomb told the women, “He has been raised. He is not here.” The Church proclaims, “Christ is risen!” However it is said, it is the good news we want and need to hear. Those are sacred words; words of hope, life, and resurrection. Everything has changed. We are a new people.

Recall the stones that have blocked your way.
Christ is risen and they are removed.

Name your loved ones who have died.
Christ is risen and they are unburied.

Count your sins.
Christ is risen and you are forgiven.

Stand before God.
Christ is risen and you are loved.

Removed, unburied, forgiven, loved. These are God’s Easter words to us, not just today but everyday. God has been enacting words of salvation, hope, and love to God’s people from the very beginning. It happened when we were created in God’s image and likeness. God’s Easter words parted the Red Sea and drew the Israelites into a new land and life. Those same words transplanted in humanity a new heart, a new spirit, and made us God’s people. Ezekiel stood in the Valley of Dry Bones watching God open graves and breathe life into dead skeletons. It never ends.

In just a few moments God will again enact those words of life and love in the baptism of GK. We will witness little GK be buried in the baptismal waters of death, be unburied, and made a new creation in Christ. I want you to look at him and see his life: the innocence, the possibilities, all that might be, the love, the beauty, the goodness. Those are not just about GK. He is a mirror of your unburied life. What are the very best hopes and prayers you have for him? Name them. They are the same hopes and prayers Christ has for you.

Today Christ offers GK, you, and me his unburied life. One day you look up and see that the stone of death has already been rolled away. Christ is risen. The unburied life comes to us in a thousand different ways. You overcome bitterness and anger, reconciling with another person. That is life unburied. You feel the presence of a loved one who has died but you weren’t even thinking about him or her. That is life unburied. You look at the world and weep with compassion for its pain. That is life unburied. You respond to another’s harsh words or actions with forgiveness rather than your own harsh words or actions. That is life unburied. You love without fear, holding nothing in reserve, offering all that you are and all that you have. That is life unburied. You feel a new sense of Jesus’ presence, a reality and connection that move beyond beliefs. That is life unburied.

Life unburied always presents itself as a new creation. So it is that the women in today’s gospel go to the tomb on the first day of the week, the day creation began. Everything is being made new. The sun has risen. It is the dawn of a new day declaring that the Son has risen. If Christ is risen then so are we. This new day is also our day, the day of the holy and unburied people of God.

So I wonder; what will we do with our new and unburied life?

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Life on the Edge – A Sermon for Holy Saturday; Matthew 27:57-66

Posted on April 7, 2012 | 3 Comments

The collect and readings for Holy Saturday may be found here. The following sermon is based on Matthew 27:57-66.

Jesus is dead. His body is in the tomb.

We weren’t there that day, but we know what it is like when life takes us to the edge. It is a border where you know you cannot go back to the way things were. Life has changed. A loved one has died. A relationship has ended. A dream has forever been shattered. The life we so carefully planned has fallen apart. The walls of our security have been breached. What used to be is no longer. There’s nothing to go back to. This is life on the edge. The disciples knew that edge. So do we.

The Church calls life on the edge Holy Saturday. On one side it is bordered by Good Friday; on the other by the hope of Easter life and resurrection. But it’s not yet Easter and in the midst of profound loss and grief Easter can seem a long way off.

Holy Saturday is a time of waiting for the third day. It is a time of not knowing. It is a time of silence. The women in today’s gospel say nothing. They do nothing. They just sit. Joseph of Arimathea asks, for the body, cares for it, and then leaves. There’s not much else to do or that can be done.

We know we have to move on. But how? The way forward is not clear. There’s no where to go. Our entire world, it seems, has become a tomb and the tombs of our lives always look so secure.

They are secured not so much by sealing the stone and posting guards but by our own overwhelming sorrow, pain, and despair. Those things tell us nothing is getting out of the tomb. The silence of Holy Saturday says there are no good words to be spoken. The waiting of Holy Saturday says nothing is happening. The unknown of Holy Saturday says there is no future. Those are, however, illusions. Beneath the silence and stillness of Holy Saturday death trembles and hell cries out in fear.

No matter how secure we have made our tombs, they can never be secured from the love of God. The depth of God’s love is every bit as deep as our tombs. In the Holy Saturday of life Christ descends into the depths of our tombs, into the hell of our lives, breaking the bonds of death, and setting the captives free. His love fills the tomb, permeates its walls, and transforms it into a womb of new birth and life.

Christ’s triumph is not apart from death, but within death. On Holy Saturday Christ is trampling down death by death and giving life to those in the tombs. All and only for love’s sake.

Icon for Holy Saturday:
The Harrowing of Hell

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