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RECOGNIZING JESUS ... RECOGNIZING OURSELVES

4/30/2017

Luke 24:13-35 (The Message)

That same day two of them were walking to the village Emmaus, about seven miles out of Jerusalem. They were deep in conversation, going over all these things that had happened. In the middle of their talk and questions, Jesus came up and walked along with them. But they were not able to recognize who he was.

In gathering my thoughts for this message I skimmed the writings of many people, and someone, unfortunately I can’t remember who to give them proper credit, pointed out that in Luke’s gospel “leaving Jerusalem” always means leaving the teachings of Jesus, turning away from what they were shown and taught. If that is the case, Luke is making it clear from the beginning that these two men are already losing the narrative of hope and faith that Jesus gave them and reverting to the easier narrative of hopelessness and failure.

He asked, “What’s this you’re discussing so intently as you walk along?”
They just stood there, long-faced, like they had lost their best friend. Then one of them, his name was Cleopas, said, “Are you the only one in Jerusalem who hasn’t heard what’s happened during the last few days?”
He said, “What has happened?”
They said, “The things that happened to Jesus the Nazarene. He was a man of God, a prophet, dynamic in work and word, blessed by both God and all the people. Then our high priests and leaders betrayed him, got him sentenced to death, and crucified him. And we had our hopes up that he was the One, the One about to deliver Israel. And it is now the third day since it happened. But now some of our women have completely confused us. Early this morning they were at the tomb and couldn’t find his body. They came back with the story that they had seen a vision of angels who said he was alive. Some of our friends went off to the tomb to check and found it empty just as the women said, but they didn’t see Jesus.”

"The tomb is empty, all right, but no one we know actually saw Jesus – and we did see him die – so we guess it’s just all over now.” The narrative of failure and hope forlorn proves itself, over and over, to be so much easier and more comfortable for us than maintaining the narrative of hope and trust.

Then he said to them, “So thick-headed! So slow-hearted! Why can’t you simply believe all that the prophets said? Don’t you see that these things had to happen, that the Messiah had to suffer and only then enter into his glory?” Then he started at the beginning, with the Books of Moses, and went on through all the Prophets, pointing out everything in the Scriptures that referred to him.

Rob Bell, in Jesus Wants to Save Christians, points out something that should be obvious to us all – Jesus could not possibly have really taught them everything in the scriptures that referred to Messiah’s coming – there is simply too much there to cover in an afternoon’s walk. So the tantalizing question is “just what did he say?”
He could have talked about the exile and all that means to the Jewish people. Or maybe he referred to himself as the “new Adam” come to undo the harm caused by the original.
Or maybe he spoke of the price that had to be paid for their wandering astray and their recurring breaking of their covenant with God. Did he remind them of the Suffering Servant?

They came to the edge of the village where they were headed. He acted as if he were going on but they pressed him: “Stay and have supper with us. It’s nearly evening; the day is done.” So he went in with them. And here is what happened: He sat down at the table with them. Taking the bread, he blessed and broke and gave it to them. At that moment, open-eyed, wide-eyed, they recognized him. And then he disappeared.

Whatever the stranger taught them as he recalled the scriptures for them, they apparently still did not recognize him until the moment the bread was broken. At that moment their eyes were opened, their hearts were opened and they knew who it was who had spent the day walking with them.

Back and forth they talked. “Didn’t we feel on fire as he conversed with us on the road, as he opened up the Scriptures for us?”

I’m sure the two disciples were feeling rather foolish at this point. How could they have spent the better part of the day with Jesus and not recognize him? How could they be so blind? Rob Bell (again) makes the wonderfully ironic statement that “In Jesus’s day, people could read, study, and discuss the scriptures their entire lives and still miss its central message. In Jesus’s day, people could follow him, learn from him, drop everything to be his disciples, and yet find themselves returning home, thinking Jesus had failed.” People could do this is Jesus’ day ... and we can do it just as easily and just as blindly today.

They didn’t waste a minute. They were up and on their way back to Jerusalem. They found the Eleven and their friends gathered together, talking away: “It’s really happened! The Master has been raised up—Simon saw him!”
Then the two went over everything that happened on the road and how they recognized him when he broke the bread.

All of his teaching, all the scriptures he quoted had failed to reach them, but this simple, homely act of sharing food with them, breaking bread with them reminded them of the bond that had been forged among them and broke through their blind denial of hope. To break bread with others is to break through the fences we erect between us, the walls we build. We become, in Paul’s words “not Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female,” but simply children of a loving creator. When we break bread with each other we are able to once again reclaim the narrative of faith and hope that Jesus gave us.
Only here, in this simple act of sharing food and life, it seems, can we recognize each other, but perhaps even more importantly, we can recognize ourselves. In recognizing Jesus we can finally see ourselves through the eyes of God. We know Jesus and we know ourselves.
When we are fed with the bread of life and hope we can look at the strangers among us and see our brother and sisters. We can see God walking the world with us.
Thanks be to God.

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CHOOSING TO BELIEVE

4/23/2017

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John 20:19-20, 24-29

Later on that day, the disciples had gathered together, but, fearful of the Jews, had locked all the doors in the house. Jesus entered, stood among them, and said, “Peace to you.” Then he showed them his hands and side.....

But Thomas, sometimes called the Twin, one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples told him, “We saw the Master.” But he said, “Unless I see the nail holes in his hands, put my finger in the nail holes, and stick my hand in his side, I won’t believe it.”

Eight days later, his disciples were again in the room. This time Thomas was with them. Jesus came through the locked doors, stood among them, and said, “Peace to you.”

Then he focused his attention on Thomas. “Take your finger and examine my hands. Take your hand and stick it in my side. Don’t be unbelieving. Believe.”
Thomas said, “My Master! My God!”

Jesus said, “So, you believe because you’ve seen with your own eyes. Even better blessings are in store for those who believe without seeing.”

Thomas was absent when Jesus made his first big appearance and on his return to the group is met with the news that Jesus had just dropped by.

Now, Thomas, just like the others, had seen Jesus die, but he had also been one of the disciples all along. He had lived with and traveled with this group of guys for three years or so – the ones who were now trying to sell him this incredible story, and yet he is not at all ready to just accept their story at face value. He chooses not to believe what his fellows tell him. He wants to see for himself – better yet, he wants to touch Jesus’ wounds to be sure it’s not some weird trick.

So Jesus returns again and this time Thomas is there. He gets to touch the wounds for himself and then, finally, he is willing to believe. Jesus doesn’t make a huge deal out of it but he does gently chide Thomas for not being more willing to believe the word of his fellow disciples – and more, for not expecting this to happen, for not having listened to Jesus when he tried to tell them, and therefore not having faith to believe it when he was told by the others.

Yesterday was Earth Day, an annual day instituted in 1970 to remind us that this is the only earth we have and that we need to take better care of it if we are all going to survive. This year for the first time, the day was marked by “Stand Up for Science” marches all around the country – actually, around the world -- where people showed up to express their support for actual science and to repudiate pseudo-scientific beliefs that seem to exist apart from any actual research or proof, and only to support what some person or group wants to believe in the first place.

Science is real. Facts do not go away just because they don’t fit tidily into our preferred beliefs. But a great many people choose not to believe that statement and they appear to believe that by dismissing facts they are somehow making said facts go away.

Most of the science denials come, ultimately, from fundamentalist Christians and from a bad translation of the Book of Genesis – specifically verse 1:28:

God created human beings; he created them godlike,
    Reflecting God’s nature. He created them male and female.
    God blessed them:
        “Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Earth! Take charge!
    Be responsible for fish in the sea and birds in the air,
        for every living thing that moves on the face of Earth.
(this translation is from The Message)

Many of the more modern translations use this language speaking of humans being “responsible” for creation or charged with being “good stewards”. However, the King James version, the version used by most fundamentalists, reads thusly:

Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

It’s that “have dominion over” that causes all the problems – “dominion over” as in take what you want and trash the rest – it’s OK. There is a terrifyingly large number of Christians who now call themselves Dominionists. Like Thomas, these dominionists choose to believe what they want to believe. They are working very hard – and much too successfully – to recreate the United States into their idea of what “dominion” calls for – and caring for the earth is no part of it.

I was once told, by a young avid Christian I know, that there is absolutely no reason we should bother with conservation of any sort because Jesus is coming back any minute now and he is going to take us all somewhere else and destroy this earth, so why bother? And she was dead serious.

I infinitely prefer another way of looking at our relationship with this world. Theologian Sallie McFague, among others, has posited another way of seeing things by recognizing that this world is God’s body. After all – when God created all that is, what did God create it from? Regardless of whether you prefer the 7-day version or the big-bang-billions of years version, there was still a point when there was nothing but God, and therefore, as McFague states, we must all have been created from God’s own self. Everything that is, is made up from God-stuff. God literally put God’s self into this incredible act of creation.

If we view the world – and all that is contained therein – including us – in this way, how can we do anything else than cherish and care for creation? God put God’s self into us – and into the trees and birds and fish and mountains and rivers and the air we breathe and the food we eat and the very earth we walk on. Into all that is.

We all choose to see what we want to see and believe what we want to believe. Thomas chose to believe his own eyes instead of his faith.

Dominionists believe that by trashing the world until it somehow leads us into WW III, they can force Jesus to come back for the second coming and take them all to heaven – right now. Apparently they feel their schedule is better than God’s and they're not willing to wait, so they're working to hurry it along. And their numbers are growing in alarming fashion.

I choose to believe in a God who loves - a God who is love. Not a God of destruction. I believe that a God who daily imbues this world with such a passion of creativity and beauty is a God who calls us to take care of the world and each other.

Scientist Jane Goodall is quoted as saying, “You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”

So what kind of difference do we choose to make? I know what I choose – I choose to live and act in support of life and love and caring -- and loving God's Body, this beautiful, fruitful, life-filled creation.

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GETTING TO HALLELUJAH!

4/16/2017

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John 20:1-18

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

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

Today is Easter morning. Today is a day for rejoicing. Christ is risen! Hallelujah!

And yet, I’m finding it hard to get into the spirit of the day just yet. It feels as if my heart is still stuck back there on Good Friday. My brain knows it is Easter but my heart … my heart is still hurting from what feel like repeated attacks on our humanity. My heart is a little slow with catching up to resurrection.

For many of us it has been a brutal year with too much personal lose. And then the news of our world has been so bloody awful lately. The first attempt to dismantle the Affordable Care Act failed, but there are more coming, and the poor, as usual, are going to suffer. States have just been given the right to cut off access for the huge majority of poor women who use Planned Parenthood as their only source of medical care. Food programs are being threatened. Social Security is under siege.

Arkansas, in some grand orgy of self-righteous blood-lust, is fighting in the courts for the right to kill 8 men, right now, in assembly-line fashion, with a drug that has been proven to cause massive suffering – basically torturing people to death. And no matter how you stand on the question of capital punishment, is that really what you want?

I know am not anyone’s judge. Jesus told us quite clearly that is not our job. And I, for one, do not want to have to look at myself and see someone responsible for doing that to any other living soul. And I’m pretty sure Jesus, having been executed himself, is not ever going to advocate for it. It seems especially bizarre that this is happening at Easter. [Note: Since my first writing, this has been, at least temporarily, stayed by the courts]

And then there are the bombs. And most depressing of all, there are the people cheering because we are dropping said bombs. “Bombs! Yay!” And so, if, maybe, you too, are having trouble feeling like rejoicing right now, just know you’re not alone.

But – it is unquestionably Easter morning and even if I haven’t quite gotten to Hallelujah, I will … I know I will. Because the sun has come up; the tomb is unquestionably empty. And because I have lived with grief, off and on, often enough to know that my hesitations will pass.

Still, it is a weird sort of comfort to me that even Mary Magdalene herself didn’t recognize the risen Jesus right away – her broken heart could not be healed quite that fast.

Peter and John went into the empty tomb – but after seeing that Jesus’s body was gone – somewhere – they simply turned around and went back home – they didn’t burst immediately into loud hosannas. They didn’t seem to be able to process just yet what they had seen.

In the next few weeks we will hear various stories of the disciples, hiding out in an upper room, afraid to go out for fear they’ll be caught and punished, like Jesus. Or the one about the two men who walked along home to Emmaus without recognizing Jesus walking right there with them. And the final story of the disciples, weeping, as they tried to go back to their fishing – tried to go on with their broken lives and their broken hearts – before coming upon Jesus, unrecognized yet again, waiting for them on the beach, asking about breakfast.

And this will be the Easter story that will finally bring my heart up to date and allow me to experience the joy of a risen Lord. It is such a Jesus kind of story. It makes my heart smile…and I can recognize Jesus there … and here, among us now.

If those closest to him didn’t always recognize him right away – especially after they had watched him die – maybe we can be forgiven for being a little slow to recognize the risen Christ here in our midst, in this oh-so-messy-so-often-ugly world. But honestly -- hungry children, sick people without care, self-righteous judges, and bombs falling – where else should we even think to look for Jesus?

And so – maybe you are among those who whole-heartedly and joyfully greet the risen Christ today – or maybe your heart, like mine, is a little slower to get to rejoicing. It’s OK either way, because Jesus indeed does live, and death loses, and love wins – as love will always win.

I know this as surely as I know my own name – I have always known it – and because as I was preparing this message, as I was feeling down and discouraged by a world that seems to be growing uglier by the minute – God sent me a reminder, as God often does, and I “accidentally stumbled” on a quote I had at some point tucked away for future reference and forgotten. It is from Dag Hammarskjold – who, those of you old enough may remember, was Secretary-General of the United Nations in the early 50’s and a rare thinker. This is what he had to say:

“I don't know Who — or what — put the question, I don't know when it was put. I don't even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone — or Something — and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal.”

We are here because somewhere in our lives we answered that same question. We may be a little fuzzy as to who asked the question or why – but it was asked and it was answered. We surrendered. And because we surrendered, we believe. And because we believe, we rejoice in the Good News that Jesus lived among us to tell us and show us. Including the fact that love can never truly die. Even in those times when, like the disciples themselves, we stumble and bumble around a bit because it takes us awhile to figure out what the heck is going on – there is still Good News.

And we always have lots of opportunities – Easter is not a “once and done” affair. Somewhere in the world we crucify Jesus every single day, and somewhere we live for a while in the darkness, and then – glory be to God – Christ rises again and lives in us and among us again and death and hatred and greed are defeated one more time.

And love wins.

This I believe.

Christ is risen. Hallelujah!

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HOW DRY ARE THOSE BONES?

4/2/2017

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Ezekiel 37:1-14 (The Message)

God grabbed me. God’s Spirit took me up and set me down in the middle of an open plain strewn with bones. He led me around and among them—a lot of bones! There were bones all over the plain—dry bones, bleached by the sun.

He said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” I said, “Master God, only you know that.” He said to me, “Prophesy over these bones: ‘Dry bones, listen to the Message of God!’”

God, the Master, told the dry bones, “Watch this: I’m bringing the breath of life to you and you’ll come to life. I’ll attach sinews to you, put meat on your bones, cover you with skin, and breathe life into you. You’ll come alive and you’ll realize that I am God!”

I prophesied just as I’d been commanded. As I prophesied, there was a sound and, oh, rustling! The bones moved and came together, bone to bone. I kept watching. Sinews formed, then muscles on the bones, then skin stretched over them. But they had no breath in them.

He said to me, “Prophesy to the breath. Prophesy, son of man. Tell the breath, ‘God, the Master, says, Come from the four winds. Come, breath. Breathe on these slain bodies. Breathe life!’”

So I prophesied, just as he commanded me. The breath entered them and they came alive! They stood up on their feet, a huge army. Then God said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Listen to what they’re saying: ‘Our bones are dried up, our hope is gone, there’s nothing left of us.’

“Therefore, prophesy. Tell them, ‘God, the Master, says: I’ll dig up your graves and bring you out alive—O my people! Then I’ll take you straight to the land of Israel. When I dig up graves and bring you out as my people, you’ll realize that I am God. I’ll breathe my life into you and you’ll live. Then I’ll lead you straight back to your land and you’ll realize that I am God. I’ve said it and I’ll do it. God’s Decree.’”

We are coming to the end of Lent. Next Sunday will be Palm Sunday, followed, the week after that, by Easter. One more week from today and we will be deep within the grief and death of Holy Week. We are heading into the darkest part of Lent, and yet … today’s readings are stories of resurrection. We just heard the Old Testament reading for today, from the prophet Ezekiel. Today’s gospel reading is the story of Jesus calling the dead and buried Lazarus out of his tomb and back into the world of the living.

But it’s Ezekiel’s story we’re going to try to look into this morning. Ezekiel was a prophet, born in Judah when the rule of the all-powerful Assyrian empire, which had governed the Near East, including Judah, for years, was finally declining and falling apart. Over the next 25 or so years of political chaos Judah kept trying to reassert its independence, but without the power to back up its desires and without the understanding that the world had changed around them and they could not go back to the way it had been, it most often ended up being nothing more than a puppet state for one foreign regime or another as wave after wave of conquest swept through.

Eventually Babylon rose to the top of the heap and became the major power player in the area, resulting in, among other things, the Babylonian exile of the Jews. Ezekiel was called to prophesy while he was living in Babylon, one of the exiles himself. He was married there and apparently settled in Babylon and scripture doesn’t tell us if he ever returned to Judah or if he lived out his life and died there, far from what had once been his home.

While Jesus’ raising of Lazarus is the story of an individual’s return to life, the Ezekiel story is a promise that an entire people – the Sons and Daughters of Abraham – will be brought back to life. Once sitting at the pinnacle of wealth and political power, David’s kingdom had fallen into something perilously close to non-existence. Politically they were powerless and even religiously the people could only fight among themselves. They had, as a people, effectively died, leaving nothing behind them but dry bones. As much as they wanted to put it all back together again, they had reached a point where they were simply not able to do it. They could not themselves bring their dead bones to life.

Ezekiel’s dry bones story is so fantastical that we can easily overlook its relevance to us in our world today. Surely, it’s a fairytale – a good story, but not terribly helpful.

And yet … how often in our lives have we felt dead and lifeless? A much cherished plan falls apart; things change in ways totally out of our control; sickness intervenes and throws everything off kilter; a future we had taken for granted disappears right in front of our eyes? It happens to us in our personal lives much too frequently. Many of us are feeling something close to this in our national life right now.

This is also the plaint I hear from mainline churches everywhere. The numbers are falling off and nothing they try seems to help. Many church-goers feel that coming back to what they recognize as life is impossibly far beyond them.

Perhaps it’s time for us to take Ezekiel’s story much more seriously. In his vision, Ezekiel is given several instructions by God. The first instruction tells him to look at the devastation around him – really see it – see and accept how hopeless it is, in human terms.

Next, he is told to speak to the devastation – speak, and then stand back and watch God work. Implicit in all this, of course, is trusting what God says. Walter Brueggemann, one of our greatest biblical scholars, puts it this way: "The promise is cast in a series of first-person, powerful verbs: I will cause breath, I will lay sinews, I will cause flesh, I will cover, I will put breath. The text gives no hint about how this happens. It is the power of God. God intends it and clearly will do it."

And God does do it. Right before Ezekiel’s eyes, sinews and flesh appear and the newly reborn bones arise – but something is still missing. They are still hopeless and helpless.

Once again Ezekiel speaks words he is given, and this time breath enters the risen bodies and they become fully alive. The word used here for ‘breath’, ruah, is also the word most often translated as “spirit.” It is not mere physical breath that comes to them here – it is God’s own Spirit that enters them and revives them.

And this is the key to understanding Ezekiel’s vision. This is the ‘breath’ we need when we feel almost dead and destroyed … when we have given up … when we have admitted we cannot raise ourselves up. When the burdens of life are just too heavy, but we have to find the means to pick them up anyway. When the puzzle before us is just too complicated … in our personal lives, in our work, in our communities, in our churches, this is the spirit-breath we need to revive us. If we attempt to rise up without having God’s own Spirit in our rising, we will fail. We will remain the lifeless bones of what we once were, what we yet again could be.

God’s Spirit of love and of caring; God’s passion for justice and truth for all God’s children; God’s spirit of humility and service. Without this Spirit, whatever we seek, whatever life we attempt to restore will wither and fail. With it, there is nothing we cannot bring to life.

In the words of the prayer from today’s meditation reading: O God of resurrection power, summon the winds that I may breathe the breath of life and rise to meet the challenge of repairing the ruins and rebuilding. Amen.

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RECOGNIZING JESUS ... RECOGNIZING OURSELVES

CHOOSING TO BELIEVE

GETTING TO HALLELUJAH!

HOW DRY ARE THOSE BONES?

Rev. Cherie Marckx

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