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HOW IT ALL BEGAN (1st Sunday after Easter)

4/24/2022

Last week I spoke of the people who lived with Jesus and followed him through his last three years here in human form. I spoke of the women who followed Jesus to the very end and of the men who hid behind locked doors in fear. I spoke of Mary Magdalene who actually was the first to meet and speak with the risen Christ, and of the men who didn’t believe her story.

But later that same day Jesus himself appeared to the men in their locked room and showed them his wounds and proved to them the women’s story was absolutely true. He was risen and he was right here in that small room with them once again.

It would take a very long reading even to summarize all that happened next. After spending some time with them again, assuring them it was all true, Jesus returned to his home in heaven, leaving his own spirit with them. Those men who once hid themselves in fear, now newly filled with the Holy Spirit on Pentecost Day, moved out into the world again and started preaching Jesus’ story to the world.

Peter and John were arrested once for teaching the resurrection of Jesus, but they were released since the authorities had no real charges to hold against them. They and those who now followed them took to gathering in Solomon’s Portico, a portion of the outer court of the Temple.

They did not preach there, but miracles happened where they gathered and the people began to talk. Not only talk, but they brought their sick there and laid them on the ground in the hopes that Peter’s shadow might fall on them and they would be healed.

With people even coming from surrounding towns to be healed, the authorities finally moved against them once again. They arrested the apostles and tossed them into prison – but in the night an angel of God came and set them free. When the priests and Sadducees gathered the next morning to discuss what to do with these troublemakers, they were told that the prison doors were still locked, but there was no one in the cells. In fact, the men were back at the Temple teaching about Jesus. And this is where our reading for today picks up the story.

Acts 5:26-32
The captain went with the temple police and brought the apostles but without violence, for they were afraid of being stoned by the people. When they had brought them, they had them stand before the council. The high priest questioned them, saying, “We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and you are determined to bring this man’s blood on us.”
But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than any human authority. The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.”

This response by Peter enraged the council and they wanted very badly to order the men killed, but one of their number, Gamaliel by name, a Pharisee, counseled them against any such action, reminding them that others before them had claimed to heal in God’s name and had gathered followers for a time, but given time, they had been proven frauds and faded away. “Let them alone and let them prove themselves frauds and not chosen by God and the people will abandon them. And if, by chance, they are blessed by God, it will be well that we did them no harm.” Seeing the wisdom of this counsel, they flogged the apostles as an example and then set them free again. They went out from there and returned to their teaching about Jesus, and more and more people began to follow them.

And this is how it all started. In a world so very different from ours. One that spoke a different language and celebrated a different history. One that had never heard of “church” in the sense we mean today. I’ve wondered if Jesus were to appear today if his message would survive or if TV pundits and internet trolls would destroy his words before they ever had a chance to be heard.

And yet, different as our worlds are we are in many ways the same as those who first came to gather in Jesus’ name. We, just like they, may not even have been looking for a messiah, a leader at first, but what they heard Jesus say – or later, what they heard the apostles and disciples say they had heard Jesus say – those words touched some need in them as they do in us. Some need to believe in something greater than the world around us. Something bigger than the banality of living just for oneself.

We, and they, heard that there is a God who loves us. When we can look at ourselves and see nothing special to be loved, it is a heady thing to be told that the God of the universe loves us.

We hear a message of loving each other rather than hating and scorning each other. We hear a word that says we are all sisters and brothers in God’s love. We are not alone.

We hear that this world is ours to care for and not just use up and throw away. And that there is no such thing as “throw-away” people. That life matters – plants and waters and creatures and people of all kinds -- because all life is a gift of God’s love.

All of this is the gift of those extraordinary everyday people from so long ago – the ones who kept teaching and telling the stories and repeating Jesus’ words all the way down through 2000 years – so that we would one day hear them and feel them deep in our own hearts. And we – quite ordinary people ourselves -- would be moved to say, “Yes”. And to say, “Thank you for all your blessings!”. And even moved to say, “Here I am, Lord. Use me.”

That’s why we’re here. To listen for those words and to let them move our hearts and our hands.

And that is why I say that we are what Easter is all about. We – us – all of us here today. Just as it was about those living in the 600’s or the 1500’s or whenever – all of us who have heard those words, those teachings, those stories – and had our hearts moved by them.

And even more importantly – maybe even most importantly – Easter is about all who have not yet heard -- those still waiting to hear that they are loved and that it is possible for us all to live in peace together. Waiting to hear that they can put hatred aside and start to care for others – to “Love one another” as Jesus told us to do so long ago.

There are still people waiting, and the only voices here today to speak those words those lost one are waiting to hear...are ours. Just as those everyday people long ago told and retold the stories of Jesus – just as they told the waiting ones that they are loved by God – it is now our task to tell others, to let them know they are not alone in this universe. They too can know that they can love others and care for them and help us all to build a world without hatred and fear.

One of the last things Jesus told his followers was to “Go to the entire world and share my Good News in all creation.” It can sound daunting. I’m reminded of a quote attributed to St. Francis: "Start by doing what’s necessary, then do what’s possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible." What we are called to do does sound frightening at times. But with news this good, how can we not share?

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"Las Tres Marias" (The Women Who Stayed -- EASTER SUNDAY

4/17/2022

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Luke 24:1-11
On the first day of the week, at early dawn, the women came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.

Today is Easter – the day of the Resurrection. After all the drama and grief of the latter days of Holy Week, today there is an empty tomb, and angelic messengers, and finally, a risen Lord. And perhaps even more importantly for those who had followed Jesus all along, those who lived with him and shared meals with him — there is a risen friend.

Because Jesus wasn’t just a character in a holy story, or even the Promised One they knew from scripture. Jesus was the man they had traveled with, eaten with, surely occasionally joked with – Jesus was their friend – someone they loved as a person, not just as “Lord”.

And the people around him were not just stock characters thrown in to fill out the storyline. They were real-life humans, with feelings – worries and hopes, joys and griefs. And they were Jesus’ friends in return.

Human beings, just like any of us – and like any group of us today, they had reacted to his death in different ways – all of them grieving, but some crept away to hide themselves in fear while others stayed as close to him as they could manage.

According to the gospel accounts, it was the men who hide themselves and the women who followed as close to Jesus as they could get. The women who followed him to Golgotha. The women who stood at the foot of the cross to the last minute, And the women who came the next morning to tend to his broken body.

Now, in all fairness to the men, there was a reason it fell out this way. Jesus had been executed on a count of sedition – stirring the people up to rebel against the Romans. This was a lie concocted by the Jewish authorities, but the Romans didn’t care. They would have wanted to stamp out any possibility of any Jesus followers who might have still felt the same way.

And in that time, and that place that would only have meant the men. The women would most likely have been over-looked as harmless. As long as they kept quiet and out of the way, it would have been relatively safe for them to stay close to Jesus – as safe as anyone could be when the Romans were thumping their chests and showing off their power.

They were only women weeping, after all. They could follow him and watch him die, and they could even show up publicly in the morning to prepare him for burial, but the men would have been in grave danger to publicly associate themselves with the accused seditionist.

So the men hid out in a room with locked doors and the women went to the gravesite – Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary, the mother of James. And because of this, they were the first to find Jesus missing – the first to speak to angels – and, in Mary Magdalene’s case, the first to actually see and speak with the Risen Lord.

They were also, the first to tell the Good News to others – the first evangelists. We know that Mary Magdalene is called that because she ran back to tell the men, but Luke’s reading today tells us that ALL the women ran back to tell the men.

The men may have scoffed at the women’s story, but I would be very hard put to accept that it stopped there. I’m pretty sure the women then immediately told the other women of their households – who in turn, told others. Why would you keep such wonderful news to yourself?

It is interesting that the four gospels do not all give the women the same names. Women tend to be nameless scripture so it’s interesting that they are given names at all. Mary Magdalene is always there, but the others vary, as if all women are interchangeable. Sometimes there is a Salome listed instead of Joanna, sometimes other Marys, identified by their relationships. But there are always three.

A whole body of folklore has risen up around these three – Las Tres Marias. In certain Latin American countries they are said to have been the original girlfriends of the Three Magi. Other places, the three stars that form the belt of the constellation, Orion, are called Las Tres Marias. Somehow these three women, whichever three they were, have found a place in human consciousness.

Out of this larger cast of characters it is, of course, the men with whom we are the most familiar. Again, in all fairness, these same men, once the Risen One appeared to them, found their courage – found a new meaning for their lives – and they left that locked room and they went out into the world and spoke their truth and changed the world forever.

They spoke freely about the things Jesus had told them. Some stayed near Jerusalem, others traveled far and told their stories to people who had never heard of Jesus. There are wonderful folk-tales of some of them ending up in distant lands – India, and Spain, and Joseph of Arimathea, a follower, if not a disciple, went as far as the land that would be England, carrying the Holy Grail. While these may sound fantastic, and quite likely they are, we do know of Paul’s travels through the near East and southern Europe with the others who traveled with him.

But it was not just the men who did this work. We know their names because their names were given and recorded. The women – being just women – often were not named – but they were there. When the men spoke in a new location, new communities of Jesus people formed and these were often led by the unnamed women.

It's Easter Sunday and I have hardly mentioned Jesus here so far, which seems odd, I know. Because on Easter Sunday, Jesus rose. Through his love and his faithfulness, and his trust in the God he called Abba, Jesus rose from that grave and lives among us still. Whether we read that story as literal fact or metaphor, Christ lives with us still.
I have spent time today discussing this extended cast of supporting players – the men and women of the early church – because the story of Easter is actually less a story about Jesus than it is a story about them. Just ordinary men and women – sometimes getting it right, often wrong. Just human people, beloved of God.

Yes, Jesus rose, but when he rose from that grave all those humans who loved him and believed in him, rose with him – all of those there that day and in the days to come, down through the centuries – all the way down to us.

We rose from fear and we rose from slavery and we rose from death itself because Jesus showed it could be done. Jesus, leaving that tomb, was the catalyst for what really matters about Easter – that we rose with him, and we still rise today. And that was always the reason he came to be with us. We are the reason for Easter.

Jesus didn’t just come and live and die and live again to show us that he could do it. He did it to show that we can do it. Not that we are “saved” from an angry God by his rising, but that we have been lifted into being the fully realized creation that God sees when God looks at us.

We are risen, just as Jesus is. We must look at that and accept it for the reality it is. Stop just trying to make it a nice story shoved into the pages of our bibles. We are a Risen people. We do not need to live in fear or guilt or subservience. Instead, we can live freely, in love and caring and hope for all of us – not fighting for scraps of God’s love, but accepting that it is all ours and always has been.

Christ is Risen ..... and so are we. Alleluia. Amen.

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TELLING LIES & CALLING NAMES (Palm / Passion Sunday 2022)

4/10/2022

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Luke 19:29-36   When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, saying, “Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it.’” So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them.   As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?” They said, “The Lord needs it.” Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it.   As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road.

Luke 22:14-18   When the hour came, he took his place at the table, and the apostles with him. He said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; for I tell you, I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he said, “Take this and divide it among yourselves; for I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.”

Luke 23:1-5   Then the assembly rose as a body and brought Jesus before Pilate. They began to accuse him, saying, “We found this man perverting our nation, forbidding us to pay taxes to the emperor, and saying that he himself is the Messiah, a king.” Then Pilate asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?” He answered, “You say so.” Then Pilate said to the chief priests and the crowds, “I find no basis for an accusation against this man.” But they were insistent and said, “He stirs up the people by teaching throughout all Judea, from Galilee where he began even to this place.”

Luke 23:44-46   It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, while the sun’s light failed; and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” Having said this, he breathed his last.

Today is the first day of Holy Week and a whole lot is going to be crammed into a few short days. It is much too much to try to read it all in one reading. We are using Luke’s gospel this year and the readings I just read aloud cover four full chapters worth of events.

We are, these days, somewhat attuned to hearing the news in quick sound-bites and so I chose four bits from those four chapters in an attempt to compress them into one shorter presentation.

We began with the triumphal entry into Jerusalem with palm fronds waving like flags and laid out before Jesus as if he were indeed a king.

Then we move to Jesus trying to explain that this will be his last meal with his followers, at what we today call the Last Supper, as well as the institution of the Eucharistic meal we will share here a little later.

The drama intensifies with Jesus arrested and hauled before Pilate for judgment. I’ll be talking more about this segment in a minute.

And the last, of our readings is, of course, the death of Jesus on the cross. This is Holy Week.

Attempting to create a coherent timeline for the events of this week is almost impossible because the four gospels present events in differing order. For example, last week we discussed the anointing of Jesus by Mary, which Luke, whose version we read last week, placed in the time when Jesus was moving toward Jerusalem but had not yet arrived. But both Mark and Matthew place this event sometime in the space between Palm Sunday and Holy Thursday.

I don’t believe that any of the gospel accounts actually claim that all these events occurred in the span of one week. That is an artifact of the early church trying to create a single narrative out of bits and pieces of stories. Whether it was one week or two or three is irrelevant. What matters is that each event moves us closer to the cross.

What matters the most are the happenings encapsulated in the four brief readings with which I began today. At some point, Jesus entered Jerusalem, surrounded by his followers and being hailed as their king. However, while they praised Jesus and sang psalms of rejoicing, others were huddled together plotting his downfall and death, busily poisoning the minds of those around them.

By Holy Thursday, or the day of the Last Supper, when Jesus gathered his disciples to eat one last meal with him, the plans of the plotters were in place. There he foretold his betrayal by one of them there present. There he gave them last minute instructions on what he expected from them once he would be gone from them. And there he gave them and all of us down through the centuries, his greatest gift of himself – his broken and poured out self.

And there, after the meal was over, he was indeed, betrayed, and arrested and hauled away to appear before those who felt it was their right to judge him. The ones who feared he would disrupt their power status. The ones who told lies about him. The ones who did their work in secret so that it looked as if it were all the idea of the Roman state and nothing to do with them.

And from there he was taken out and nailed to a wooden cross and left to die. It’s a gut-wrenching story, but not a new one, nor is it actually unique. We’ve known this story all our lives – this story as it happened to Jesus.

But we also see this story every day of our lives down through the centuries to here and now. The story of what happens when the poor rise up against those who see themselves as divinely ordained to rule the world. The story of what happens when the voiceless find a voice and insist on speaking out for themselves.

The version of the story we are currently most familiar with is happening in Ukraine where people are being brutally murdered every day for the crime of wanting to remain a free people. This one is on our news every night. And as much as this is a war of bombs and bullets it is also a war of lies and denial of the truth.

But there are other countries as well whose endless wars are bloody and tragic. Our news media covered them for awhile but then grew bored and moved on to other stories so we don’t hear about them anymore. But whether we see it or not, the carnage continues. Countries like Syria whose endless civil war is probably the most bloody in recent centuries.

Or Mexico, whose conflict our political machines label as just “local drug wars,” when in reality they are just as much acts of political repression as Jesus’ murder on the cross. They are lies and they are violence.

Wars are built on lies and narratives that declare that certain peoples are not worthy of living. It’s the oldest story around.

We look at the Romans who did the actual killing of Jesus and see them as monsters, yet there are monsters aplenty in this world today. And people crying out for justice every day - today. And people dying every day - today.

When we read the events of this Holy Week, we cannot just shudder and turn away, denouncing the violence. We must listen carefully and pay attention to what they really say and realize they are not just “bible stories” as if that is some special category which has no connection to our lives today, but are, instead, stories of human suffering worldwide – then and now. And then we must pray – and work -- for Easter to arrive – for all people, everywhere,

Amen.

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WATCHING FOR A NEW THING

4/3/2022

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Isaiah 43:18-20 (The Message)

This is what God says:
“Forget about what’s happened;
    don’t keep going over old history.
Be alert, be present. I’m about to do something brand-new.
    It’s bursting out! Don’t you see it?
There it is! I’m making a road through the desert,
    rivers in the badlands.
Wild animals will say ‘Thank you!’
    —the coyotes and the buzzards--
Because I provided water in the desert,
    rivers through the sunbaked earth,
Drinking water for the people I chose,
    the people I made especially for myself.”

Today is the Fifth Sunday in Lent and we’re getting closer and closer to the end of Lent. We’re almost there. Next Sunday will be Palm-slash-Passion Sunday and the following week will be Easter. After next week we will still have to go through the suffering of Holy Week, but we’re almost there!

Today is similar to that third Sunday in Advent – the one where the liturgical colors change – for one day only – from the purple of waiting to the pink of getting close enough to start celebrating quietly. We’re not there yet, but we’re close.

The reading for today tells us what it is that we are getting closer to. This brief reading is the promise of Easter – and it comes from Isaiah, some seven or eight hundred years before Jesus.

The version I chose to read is the Message version, but the more traditional translations may be more familiar to you:

Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

“I am about to do a new thing.” That is what Easter is – God’s “new thing.” We’re not there yet, but this is where we are going. This is that light on the hill that keeps us moving forward.

The gospel reading for today – that goes with our old Testament reading -- comes from John’s gospel, the twelfth chapter. This is the brief story of the night that Jesus, already on his final journey to Jerusalem, stops at the home of Lazarus – whom he had recently raised from the dead – and his sisters, Martha and Mary. In gratitude, they prepared a meal for Jesus and his followers.

At this meal, Mary came in with a bottle of expensive perfumed oil and used it to cleanse and anoint Jesus’ travel weary feet, something that would have been done for any guest, but using a cheaper, everyday oil.

It was at this meal where Judas berated Mary for wasting such expensive oil that could have been sold to feed the poor – (this is the only time we ever hear of Judas being particularly concerned with the needs of the poor). But Mary knew exactly what she was doing. Mary could see the light on the hill. She knew, somehow, that God was doing a “new thing,” and that this new thing was seated right in front of her, and she was preparing him for what was to come.

Some few, like Mary, saw just who Jesus was. She may not have understood perfectly but she had an idea. She saw that light ahead. But most did not, They couldn’t see it through their limited understanding and imaginations. Even at this point – as they are literally traveling closer and closer to Jerusalem and the death that waited there, they could not make the leap from Jesus – the man they knew – to the Promised One of God’s words through the prophets.

Variations of this phrase, “I am making all things new,” are scattered throughout scripture – particularly the New Testament. But as far as a quick survey showed me, (and I could be mistaken,) they show up at least from Isaiah to Revelation, they never say “I made all things new,” as a finished and accomplished act. It is always “I am making” – an act still in progress.

This new thing that was first shown to us that first Easter morning, is still seen today by some, but blissfully overlooked by many.

Creation, as God first dreamed it, has been marred by our human brokenness – but that is the “old thing” the Isaiah reading tells us to forget. Stop lugging that brokenness around with you and allow God’s new thing to grow, because God still carries that original vision for us all, the perfection God first dreamed for us, and one day the perfect creation will come into being in its fullness. Ever if it isn’t obvious right now, we still live in the midst of that dream – that coming, in-the-making new thing – right here and now. This is how God sees this world and us.

We are still on that journey. We are still following the light on the hill – the one that points to God’s new thing.

Can you see it? Do you see where it is coming? Are you watching for it? Do you see yourself as having a role in the creation of this promised new thing? Are you awake and aware so that when you are called to play your part you are prepared to step up and say, yes, here I am?

It’s not here yet – not fully -- but it is coming. God is making it happen. Watch for it. Keep watching for it.

Amen.

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HOW IT ALL BEGAN (1st Sunday after Easter)

"Las Tres Marias" (The Women Who Stayed -- EASTER SUNDAY

TELLING LIES & CALLING NAMES (Palm / Passion Sunday 2022)

WATCHING FOR A NEW THING

Rev. Cherie Marckx

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