Left Hanging

Delivered at Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church, Swift Falls, MN. Easter Morning, Year B.
Texts: Acts 10.34-43; 1 Cor 15.1-11; Mk 16.1-8

The end of Mark’s gospel is kind of anti-climactic, isn’t it? We are used to hearing the Easter story from Matthew, where Jesus appears to the disciples and sends them out to “make disciples of every nation, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit,” or Luke’s account where Jesus meets Cleopas and his friend on the road to Emmaus. John’s report is more exciting still: a weeping Mary Magdalene mistakes the risen Jesus for a gardener and doesn’t recognize him until he speaks her name. But Mark’s gospel just stops, almost mid-sentence: The women see the empty tomb, then run off, too afraid to say anything to anyone.

We are left wanting to hear the end of the story, like in the other gospels. We hate to be left hanging in suspense. That’s why all the blockbuster movies have a love interest and a happy ending, and all the best-selling novels have a climax and a resolution. In our culture, we are used to being filled up. When we feel like something is missing, somebody is there to fill in the blanks, or there is something we can buy or a specialist we can see who will fix the problem.

We are a culture of neatly wrapped up narratives, a culture of holes filled by money, possessions, power or activities. Our society tries to sell us on the idea that this one more gadget will make us happy, that all we need to do to be successful is to know “the secret.” There is an answer for every question, a pill for every ill. Yet here we are, on the highest, holiest day of the year, left with only an empty tomb, three scared women and a lot of unanswered questions.

Mark’s is the first gospel written. If you look in your Bibles, you’ll notice that there are three endings to the book of Mark. First is the one we just heard. Then there’s a shorter ending that describes the women telling the disciples and how Jesus himself sent out the gospel through the apostles to the ends of the earth.

Finally, there is a longer ending in which Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene and then to all the disciples and sends them out to preach the gospel before ascending to heaven. These longer endings were added by early Christians who, just like us, wanted to know the rest of the story, so they took details from the other gospels and filled in the holes. However, most scholars agree that Mark’s gospel in its original form, ends here at verse 8, with the women running terrified and silent.

Mark’s abrupt ending reflects the world as it really is. We may live in a culture that praises and encourages fullness, but it does so because so often life leaves us empty. The empty tomb is recognition that the boy doesn’t always get the girl, that sometimes the villain gets away, that we don’t always get our fairy tale ending; that sometimes we are left hanging. Across the world, people suffer and die, people face oppression and violence, wives are abused by their husbands and children are conscripted to fight in wars.
Many of us in this country are able to insulate ourselves from the ugliness and emptiness of the world. Here in Swift Falls, MN, we do not worry about war or famine or oppression. We know that regardless of who wins the Republican nomination to run for President, our lives will mostly go on as before. Our main concerns here are paying the bills and making sure the fields get seeded on time.

But even here, tucked away snugly from the perils of the great, wide world, we sometimes catch tiny glimpses of that emptiness. We see it when one of our friends is sick and there’s nothing we can do, when we end up in a traffic accident, when a crop fails or a payment gets missed, we see it when a loved one dies. Even here, we try to seal ourselves away from the emptiness. If we only get the crops planted, if we only get that raise at work, if we only get the new thing, everything will be better.

But the truth is that there is nothing that can fill the emptiness. Because of that fact, it is so appropriate that Mark’s gospel ends with an empty tomb and no risen Christ to reassure us. Today we gather to with these women at the tomb and we are faced with the emptiness and the unanswered questions, and we see our selves and our lives reflected in that vacant cave; yet somehow, instead of despair or sorrow or sadness, instead of the terror and fear that the women felt, we experience instead a rising warmth in our hearts; because along with that empty tomb, we hear the good news: Alleluia! Christ is Risen! [He is risen indeed! Alleluia!]

This is the good news of Easter: even that emptiness, even the desolation of our lives is not beyond the reach of God’s love. In Christ, even the bleakness of a hole in the ground becomes a wondrous miracle, a cause for celebration! This is not just good news for Jesus’ friends and disciples who mourned his death. This is good news for everyone out there who has stared that vast emptiness in the face and drawn back in fear. The empty tomb is a sign that even when there is nothing else, there is God. Even in life’s darkest, filthiest, meanest, craziest, barrenest moments, God is somehow present, somehow alive and moving and creating something from nothing.

Those of us gathered here know what it means that Christ rose from the dead. We know that it means forgiveness of sins, reconciliation to God, and the promise of eternal life. But there are some who do not know these things, who know only the sorrow and pain that life has to offer. Some of them have never heard about Jesus. Some of them simply can’t believe that a loving God exists when there is so much evil in the world. Some of them think that religion is nothing more than superstitious nonsense that drives people to commit horrible acts in the name of God. These are the people who stare at the empty tomb and see bare rock and nothing else. No body, no message, no belief.

This morning we, too, see what isn’t there, but this story reminds us that sometimes it’s what isn’t there that matters most. What isn’t there is the dead, defeated, rotting corpse of God’s Son, lying silent with the untold story of God’s love. What isn’t there is the fact that evil wins over good. What isn’t there is proof that nobody cares about you.

If you look in your Bibles again, way back to the first chapter of Mark, you see that the first words of the book are “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” These words aren’t referring to Mark, chapter 1 verse 1. This whole book, all of Mark’s gospel, is just the beginning—that’s why it cuts off mid-thought. When the women leave the tomb that Sunday morning, the story isn’t over, it’s just begun. We know that, because here we are today, listening to this old familiar story. Today as you hear these words, remember that just like that day at the empty tomb, the story isn’t over.

The wondrous acts of God transforming this broken world into a place of dignity, harmony and justice only began with a man walking out of a mausoleum. Alleluia! Christ is Risen! [He is Risen Indeed! Alleluia!] and God is just warming up. The story is not over, and so we give thanks for an empty tomb and a missing Christ and unanswered questions, because it means this story of God’s love is just beginning.

Life is full of emptiness and empty people, but the resurrection is the first word of God’s promise to bring fullness—real fullness, the kind you can’t buy online or find in a bottle—to all humanity, to all of creation. Alleluia! Christ is Risen! [He is Risen Indeed! Alleluia!] If you believe that, if you know it in your bones to be true, if it gives you joy and hope that you cannot explain and that cannot be overcome by the worst life has to offer, then don’t run home and say nothing to anyone and leave the world hanging. This story is just beginning.

A Wafer of Bread, A Drop of Wine

Audio recording of “A Wafer of Bread, A Drop of Wine” recorded during worship. (12:39)
Delivered at Evangelical Lutheran Church, Mt. Horeb, WI. Easter 3, Year A. Mother’s Day
Texts: Acts 2.4, 36-41; 1 Pet 1.17-23; Lk 24.13-35

As we listen to these scripture readings today, we notice that there is a theme that runs through the lessons. It is a theme of separation, of isolation, of division. In the reading from Acts, we hear about Peter preaching to the people of Jerusalem about the death of Christ. They realize their own part in Christ’s death, and they are “cut to the heart,” they feel separated from God so that they ask Peter, “What should we do?” In Peter’s letter, he writes to a group of people who have been separated from their families and their society. They are still living in their own land, but they live there as exiles, foreigners. And, of course, we hear the story of the two disciples sadly making their way to Emmaus as they grieve the death of Jesus.

In this story of the road to Emmaus, only one of the disciples, Cleopas, is named. Some scholars believe that his traveling companion remains unidentified so that we when we hear the story might put ourselves in the shoes of that unnamed disciple, walking sadly along, grieving the crucified Lord, feeling alienated from and abandoned by God. I know that I have seen myself in that disciple. Like so many of you, I have my own story of isolation from God.

In 1991, my mother was diagnosed with cancer. She struggled with the disease for two years before she died. I was 10, and my sister was 7. Since we were so young, we had trouble making sense of where God was in that tragedy. Why hadn’t God answered our prayers? If God loved us, why did this terrible thing happen? My father found himself suddenly a single parent, trying to cope with his own grief and to also comfort to two young children.

During that time, we walked with Cleopas on the road to Emmaus. We felt that loneliness that comes from God being so far away, wondering where God is and if God had any power to help us. Each one of us has been walking with Cleopas at some time in our lives and have felt that separation. When we look at our world now, we see division, separation, disunity. We see the chaos in Libya, the destruction in Haiti, the stalemate in Palestine, the contention in Washington and Madison.

We are a people defined by what separates us. Republicans versus Democrats, Pro-Life versus Pro-Choice, Left versus Right, we all feel that separation from one another and from God. Week after week, we come to this place and we hear the words of Scripture and we confess that Christ is risen, but then we go back out there and we ask, “Where is God’s promise? Where is the resurrection?” The death that separated Jesus from us on Good Friday continues to reign in our world and separates us even now from that promise of God’s kingdom.

But here is the good news in that story for us today. While Cleopas and the other disciple were walking, Jesus came and walked with them, even though they didn’t recognize him. Even though they didn’t understand as he explained to them about all that had happened, he kept talking. Even though they didn’t know who they were inviting into their house, he came and stayed with them. Even when we cannot see where God is on the road, God is still with us. Jesus doesn’t wait for us to find him or invite him into our hearts or accept him as our personal Lord and Savior. Even when we can’t see him, even when we don’t know who to look for, Jesus comes and walks with us.

They didn’t recognize him when they saw him, they didn’t recognize him when he explained that the Messiah was supposed to die and then rise again, they didn’t even recognize him in the waning light as they invited him into the house. When those disciples saw Jesus, really saw him for who he was, was when he took the bread, blessed it and broke it, and gave it for them to eat. Likewise it is in that same meal that we recognize Jesus today.

It feels strange to talk about Holy Communion because on this morning we are not sharing the meal. However, in a way, that emphasizes the point. Today, as we talk about the meal, we notice its absence, just as in the Eucharist itself, we celebrate Christ’s presence, but we notice his absence. As soon as Jesus broke the bread and the disciples saw him, he was gone again. And again, they felt his absence. When we eat the bread and drink the wine, we too notice his absence. We believe that he is truly here in, with, and under the bread and wine, but he is not here how we would like him to be. He is not here to heal our pains, to encourage us with his words, or to take us in his arms.

This absence is painful. It is the same absence we feel at the loss of loved ones, like my mother. We know that there is this promise that we will see them again, that Christ’s resurrection paves the way for us to meet again in the kingdom, but though it is a nice hope for the future, that promise is not strong enough to move our lives today. Our liturgy calls the Holy Communion “a foretaste of the feast to come.” The meal is not enough to fill us, but it is enough to remind us of God’s unfailing presence.

When Jesus broke the bread in Emmaus, his disciples finally saw him, even though he had been there the whole time. It took me many years to see where God had been when my mother died. I couldn’t see at the time because death and division can cloud out hope, but looking back now, I see Jesus in my friends at school who shared their sympathies with me. I see Jesus in all those people from our church who prayed for us, who babysat for my parents, who cooked meals for us. I see Jesus in my dad and my sister and the way we consoled and supported one another. I see Jesus in my mother and her faith and love for God and her devotion to us in spite of her illness. I see Jesus in my stepmother, who became a part of our family and loved us as her own. I could not see Jesus then, just like Cleopas could not see him on the road, but in the time since, I have come to see that, without my realizing, he was there just as surely as he walked to Emmaus, wearing many different faces and speaking in many voices.

Holy Communion is a physical, tangible sign that even when we are blind to his presence, Jesus is Immanuel, God-with-us that we can taste and touch, a promise that we can hold on our tongue. Because Jesus is God-with-us in the meal, that same meal unites all of us with him and with one another. The miracle of Communion is that somehow, God gathers us all up like grains of wheat scattered on the hill gathered into one loaf of bread. God crosses all the lines and walls that divide us, crosses even death itself, and brings us together for one brief moment.

When I eat the meal, I am sharing the body and blood of Christ with my mother. I share it with my ancestors, with my descendants, with all people across time and space and with Jesus Christ in the kingdom. With all that divides us, with all that separates us from God and one another, somehow God is able to reach out and give  us union, give us com-union, in this simple gathering and these simple gifts: a wafer of bread, a drop of wine.

When God feels far away, when the resurrection seems distant and abstract, when we fail to see God in our pain, in our conflict, in our struggling, this bread, this wine, becomes for us the risen Jesus Immanuel. The meal is God’s sure and certain promise of life that God is always with us, that God walks and struggles and lives and dies with us even when we are unable to see God walking alongside us. And in this world of death and division, that is a promise that you can taste.

Porch Light

Delivered at Evangelical Lutheran Church, Mt. Horeb, WI. Easter Morning (Sunrise), Year A
Texts: Acts 10.34-43; Col 3.1-4; Matt 28.1-10

This week, we have walked with the disciples of Jesus as they went from Sunday’s joyful entry into Jerusalem, through the anxiety of Maundy Thursday and the fear and anguish of Good Friday into the despair of Saturday. Jesus, sent to be Immanuel, God-with-us, had been killed and sealed in a tomb. Even as the disciples have sunk into despair over the loss of God-with-us, we, too, grieve the absence of God and God’s promise in our lives.

Too often, our world is a dark and lonely place. Every day we face trials and difficulties: addiction, contention, disappointment, abuse, scandal, shame, death, and grief are part of our lives. The situation in the rest of the world is much worse. Life is poverty, oppression, genocide, exploitation, war, famine, and unrest. It is easy to wonder where God is in all of this. We cry out to God for an answer, and We long to see God’s promise of reconciliation and healing fulfilled. We begin to wonder if God can see what is going on.

I remember when I was a kid and we used to go visit my grandma. We’d be all packed and ready to go as soon as Mom got off work on Friday evening. The four of us would pile into the car and drive the five hours from our home in Great Falls to Grandma’s farm outside of Nashua, MT. Northeastern Montana is kind of like northern Wisconsin, only without the trees. If you are not in a town, it’s a pretty empty, desolate place. There are no people for miles at a stretch, nothing to remind you of civilization except the highway and the barbed-wire fences that run alongside it. Because we left so late and had to drive so far, it was always dark when we got there. Because there are no people around, if the stars and the moon were not out, it could be absolutely pitch black.
Grandma had this single, sunflower yellow light bulb on her porch. Most of the time, it wasn’t lit, but when company was coming, she would always leave it on. As we traveled, we’d drive through the darkness until we turned down the quarter-mile driveway to the farmhouse. Once we got close enough, we could see that porch light. In the midst of the emptiness of the Montana plains, amid the darkness all around us, when we saw that unmistakable yellow light, it was a sign. It was the promise of love and hospitality and cheerfulness inside that tiny little farmhouse alone on the giant prairie.

This is what the resurrection is for us: a porch light, a reminder of God’s presence with us and love for us. As we travel through the darkness of this world, this small light pokes a hole in the blackness and the emptiness to remind us that there is a real place and real love that lives there.

For most of our lives, this tiny light is far off and distant. We remember God’s promise only in terms of a distant future when we will be with God in heaven. But on Easter, this small, yellow light explodes into brilliance and warmth, fills our being and for a moment, all of Heaven stoops to kiss the earth and we find ourselves in the presence of the real, living, God.

When the disciples needed Jesus the most, when they were at their lowest and had no idea where to go or what to do next, he left the tomb and found them, gave them a message and a mission. He told them to go back to their home, to Galilee, and that he would be waiting there for them. And that’s exactly where he was.  Christ’s resurrection is living, breathing, walking, talking proof that our God is not a dead God sealed in a stone building, locked up in a musty book or even trapped in a distant paradise. On Easter, in the midst of the darkness around us, Christ breaks into our world and gives us the living promise that we can see and hold onto, that we can taste and eat.

On Easter morning, Jesus is once again Immanuel, God-with-us, both in death and in life. The empty tomb is proof that we do not have to wait until we die to see God, that God is with us here, waiting for us at our homes. In the resurrection, Jesus finds us, greets us, and sends us with a mission. In midst of the despair and suffering of life, Jesus invites us to be light for the world, invites us to be God’s porch lights to a people in need of hope and healing. Jesus is the living promise that God has heard the cries of the people, just as God heard the cries of the Israelites enslaved in Egypt. God has heard, and God is acting.

The resurrection is not a one-time event. Jesus’ walking out of the tomb was only the beginning of God’s continuing action of renewal in our broken world. Just as on that first Easter morning, God is still with us, beside us and within us. We celebrate today because Immanuel is here, because God has sent healing and rescue to this place, because Jesus Christ lives and breathes, and God is at work.

Peter says in Acts that “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power;” that “he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.” (Acts 10:38) This is how we know that Jesus is Immanuel, and how we know that God is still with us. Jesus Christ still goes about doing good and healing all who are oppressed by the forces of evil in this world. In our baptism, we have been buried with Christ, and this is the morning in which we are resurrected with him. The living, moving God of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob and of Jesus is living and moving in us, to do good, and to heal the oppressed.
Last weekend, we lifted our voices with the crowds of Jerusalem, with people all over the world as we cried out, “Hosanna!” which means, “Lord, save us!” Save us from danger, save us from hopelessness and despair, save us from complacency while others suffer, save us from oppression and war and famine, save us from genocide and poverty. As much as we need that blessed assurance of a future in God’s presence, God’s people need rescue from death in our world today even more.

Today, as the risen Christ meets our eyes, our cries of “Hosanna” become shouts of “Alleluia!” which means, “Let us praise the Lord!” We say this word in our worship nearly every week, and it has little meaning to us, another Greek word that is foreign to us. We speak it, and it is grey, it has no color. But today on Easter, of all days, we truly see the color of “Alleluia.” It is the color of the tears that rolled down the women’s cheeks when they saw their Lord on the road. It is the color of the sunrise on the morning of the third day. It is the sunflower yellow of that porch light. Let us not just speak, but shout and feel and dance with Alleluia today, for our God is alive, our God is with us, and our God has come to rescue us. Jesus Christ as emerged from the grave to be light for the world, a light in the darkness, a light which the darkness cannot over come. Christ is Risen! (He is risen indeed!) Alleluia!

This is the Night

Delivered at Evangelical Lutheran Church, Mt. Horeb, WI. Easter Vigil, Year A
Texts: Gen 1.1-2.4a; Gen 7.1-5, 11-18, 8.6-18, 9.8-13; Ex 14.10-31; Ezek 36.24-28; Zeph 3.14-20; Rom 6.3-11; John 20.1-18

Tonight we gather in solemness as we reflect on the crucifixion of our Lord.  With Jesus in the grave, the evil and sin of the world seem to press down on us more than ever, tonight we feel the weight of death on our shoulders. And so we come together in the evening, huddling together as in a tomb, and we share stories with one another about how God has been with our ancestors and has saved our people throughout history.

We share these stories to remember that even as we gather in fear and sadness, God has proven God’s love and faithfulness for us. God has saved us time and time again from whatever threatens to destroy us. Through the waters of the flood, God blotted out evil in the world. When Israel was hard pressed by the armies of Egypt and about to be slaughtered, God led them through the waters to safety and swallowed up the might of Pharaoh behind them. As God’s people languished in exile, God once again promised through the prophet Ezekiel to purify the people with water so that they would be clean in God’s sight, free from idols and evil.

Tonight as we gather in fear to mourn the death and defeat of our Lord Jesus, we recall the promise made at our baptism, the promise that we have been baptized into his death. Tonight we gather in the tomb with Christ, and we recall God’s power to rescue us from every kind of evil and danger and hardship. Tonight we gather and we recall that God’s promise is to rescue us even from this grave. For, as Paul writes, if we have been united with Christ in a death like his, we shall surely be united with him in a life like his.

Yesterday, Jesus hung forsaken on the cross. But his promise remains that on the third day he will rise again. It is for this reason we come here tonight, even in the midst of sadness and grief, we have a glimmer of hope. As God has delivered us before, we trust in God to deliver us again through the resurrection of Christ.

Tonight, we recall God’s mighty deeds of power, of God’s saving love, of God’s all-transforming goodness: the goodness that can transform the waters of chaos and uncertainty at the beginning of time into all of creation, which God saw was very good indeed; the goodness that can transform a terrible and destructive flood into the purification and sanctification of the whole world; the goodness that can transform an sea into a path and a terrible army into a harmless puddle; the goodness that can take simple water and words and make them into the seal of Gods’ promised salvation in baptism.

Tonight, we hear these stories and we gather in anticipation of God’s saving action in the world. God has promised that in the morning, Christ will rise, opening the way for all of us to new life, abundant life in the Kingdom of Heaven. Tonight, we recall God’s glory in times past and we trust, we expect, we yearn for God’s glory to be shone on this world again in the promised resurrection. Tonight, we sit in the tomb with Christ, and in the morning we rise with him. This is the passover of God from death in to life. This is the night!

God’s Promise in the Valley of Dry Bones

Audio recording of “God’s Promise in the Valley of Dry Bones” recorded during worship. (16:12)
Delivered at Evangelical Lutheran Church, Mt. Horeb, WI. Lent 5, Year A
Texts: Ezek 37.1-14; Rom 8.6-11; John 11.1-45

The valley of dry bones. When you think of the book of Ezekiel, this is probably the image that comes to mind, this or that crazy “wheel within the wheel” schtick. The book of Ezekiel is 48 chapters long, but these are the only two stories most people know from the whole book.

That’s because Ezekiel is dark. It’s macabre. It’s morose. Ezekiel was not a happy man. Most of the stories and images in Ezekiel are frightening or depressing. He is writing as a prophet in exile with Israel in Babylon. Ezekiel and his people had been dragged away from their homes and forced to live subjugated in a foreign land under an enemy king.
Babylon laid siege to the city of Jerusalem for two years before it fell. During those two years, thousands of people were trapped within the walls of the city. Food was scarce, space was limited, and sanitation was terrible. The people were safe from the invading army outside, but starvation and sickness skulked in the streets. Many people died before the army outside could kill them.

When Jerusalem did finally fall, the invaders destroyed houses, ransacked the city, and leveled the temple, the House of God. For the Jews, there was nothing left. “Our bones are dried up and our hope is lost—” they cried, “we are cut off completely.” Cut off from their home, from God, from their identity. Next they were lined up and marched out of their homeland to some strange place far away.

For these exiles, the ones who died in the siege and fell in battle, the ones with their bones scattered over the valley floor around Jerusalem, these were the lucky ones. This is the valley of dry bones Ezekiel calls to mind. God brings him to this place of desolation and asks a question: “Mortal, can these bones live?”

Each of our lives is like this valley. There are places that are beautiful and verdant, places were rivers flow and trees provide shade, happy places that give us joy and comfort. But there are also these places of desolation, places where the earth is scorched by pain and loss and the carcasses of dreams and relationships rot in the sun. God knows this about us. God knows that for all of the beauty and wonder life brings, it is also full of equal amounts of horror and sadness. It is in these grim landscapes of our lives that God meets us and asks us, “Mortal, can these bones live?”

When Jesus’ friend Lazarus died, Jesus arrives to mourn with his sisters Mary and Martha. Both women say to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Doesn’t this sound familiar? At one time or another, we have all come before God and cried, “If you had been here, if you had done something, this wouldn’t have happened!” As they struggle to make sense of their grief, Martha turns to her faith, “I know he will rise again on the last day.” Mary simply weeps. When we suffer, we have a deep need to know why. Maybe God has a plan. Maybe God is punishing us for something. We wonder why God allows evil to happen, wonder why God does nothing, even wonder if God is really good. We are left with questions. Questions, and bones.

Our lives are littered with these bones. Bones of personal tragedy. Bones of regret. Bones of sacrifice. Bones which are constant, painful reminders of death. Death is a part of our lives, woven into the fabric of our being. Death is part of what makes us who we are. We want desperately for these bones to have some meaning, to have some purpose. Mary and Martha asked Jesus why he didn’t come earlier. Israel asked why God had allowed another nation to come and ransack their homes and leave nothing but a valley of dried bones. We want there to be an reason for the bones, an answer, but all we get is God’s question, “Mortal, can these bones live?”

Death is inescapable. It is inevitable. It is as much a part of our life as our birth. The simple fact is that sometimes death just happens. It is random, chaotic, and meaningless. Sometimes, bones are just bones. This is why we fear it: we spend our lives striving after goals and laying plans, but death comes and makes everything pointless in the end. Life is structure, order, and progress; death is just death, just a pile of dried bones.

“Mortal, can these bones live?” God asks this like a professor asking a question he knows the class can’t answer. God is asking, “Mortal, does all this death have meaning? Is all this destruction worth anything? Or is it just a tragic accident of history?” As much as we want the bones strewn across the valleys of our lives to mean something, in the end, they are simply random misfortune. Bones are bones are bones, dead, dried and bleached: lifeless, meaningless.

We cannot deny that life is full of pain. But, it is in the valley of dry bones, the valley of senseless pain that God meets us, that God must meet us. How are we to greet God on the mountaintop of joy if God cannot be just as present in the valley of sorrow? In this valley, God performs God’s greatest miracle. It is here that God takes these lifeless bones and brings them together, bone to its bone, lays flesh and muscle on them, breathes life into them, and transforms a collection of scattered, bleached bones into living, breathing human beings again.

Tragedy is random. Death is inevitable. The power of God is not to stop death and tragedy, not to somehow lock us away safely from harm. Instead, God takes the chaos of destruction and gives it meaning. “Mortal, can these bones live? Can this senselessness make sense?” God transforms the chaotic mess of death that threatens to destroy us and transforms it into a force for structure, for growth, for order: for life. What begins as meaningless suffering God transforms into God’s own work in the world. God makes the worthless worth something, makes the unholy holy.

When tragedy strikes, and it will, in the midst of the pain, we rely on God’s promise. The promise is not that “things will get better” or that “this is for your own good” or even “God is in control.” The promise is that the tragedy of life, instead being the end, God claims and consecrates and transforms into a new beginning. In spite of the atrocity the Israelites suffered at the hands of the Babylonians, God transforms that violence and wretchedness into new life. God says, “I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel… I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken and will act.” (Ezek 37. 12-14)

This is what Jesus means when he says to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” Yes, Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead that day, but he died again. Yes, God raised up the valley of dried bones, but that was a vision, an illustration to make a point. The point that God was making in that valley, that Jesus was making at the tomb, is that the chaos, death, sin, and evil we encounter in this life will continue to scar us, but it cannot and will not destroy us. On the contrary, God claims what is most evil and redeems it, making it a force for good. As St. Paul writes, “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.” (2 Cor 4.8-10)

Jesus is God’s promise of new life in the flesh. God took the crucifixion, our ultimate betrayal and rejection of God and God’s promise, and turned what should have been our last chance into our first hope. God transformed humanity’s rejection into God’s acceptance, humanity’s selfishness into God’s selflessness. God redeemed the worst evil and used it as God’s greatest good. God’s ultimate defeat became God’s most glorious victory. Jesus is God’s promise in action. No matter what happens to us, no matter what we do to ourselves and one another, nothing is so evil that God cannot redeem it and transform it into God’s own work.

In this life, we will still experience despair, sorrow, anguish, terror, and grief.  The promise of God, the promise of Lazarus and the valley of dry bones, is that these things will not end us, and that God dwells with us in them. When all is said and done, God will heal us. We will stand up like Lazarus and walk out of the tomb, rise like the slain in the valley and live again, both now in this life, and on the last day when the trumpet sounds. Through God’s power, we flourish in all things, even that which might otherwise destroy us. That power is love; the love of God for us, the love God gives us for one another. “In all these things,” Paul writes, “we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” (Rom 8.37)

No Corpse to Anoint

Delivered as supply preacher. Easter, Year C
Texts: Acts 10.34-43; 1 Cor 15.19-26; Lk 24.1-12

It is the first day of the week, at dawn, and three women come to the tomb to remember a fallen friend. They bring ointments and spices to prepare the body for burial, as is right and proper in their tradition. They come in sorrow to say goodbye, and to remember.

So often we come to church as people coming to a grave. We come to pay our respects, to honor and remember the departed. Like the women who come with their ointments and spices to do their duty by Jesus, we gather together to sing our hymns and pray our prayers, to do our duty, and afterwards we go home and change clothes and get on with our day. We come here expecting to find Jesus where he ought to be, buried in the tomb of history, safely sealed away from our modern lives.

Humanity seems to have this need to seek for the divine. Every culture in the world has a religion that has developed as we mortals grope and search for God. However, when God finds us, we find that as hard as we struggle to reach for God, when God finds us we are able to struggle even harder to hold God at arms length, to push God away, because God wants to change us and who we are. The Israelites groaned and wailed at Moses in the wilderness, “Why have you brought us out here to die? You should have left us in Egypt!” Once in the promised land, they fell away and worshipped foreign idols. When the temple was built in Jerusalem, there was just one tiny room, right in the center, the Holy of Holies, where God dwelt. The room was closed off with a magnificent curtain, and it was forbidden to enter except once a year, a priest, having ritually washed himself, performed the proper rites and said the proper prayers, could go in and offer a sacrifice up to God with fear and trembling on behalf of the nation. So complete was our separation from God that only once a year on the highest, holiest day did anyone come into God’s presence.

In the midst of this separation, God finds us. In the midst of the wilderness, God traveled among the people in the tabernacle. In spite of our sins and faithlessness, God continuously called us back. When we were gone astray, God sent us prophets. When those prophets were ignored or killed, God still called us to repentance. Finally, tired of our denial, our ignorance and our selfishness, God determined a way to break through our self-imposed isolation, to knock down the walls we had constructed between God and us. God said, “I will come to them in a way they cannot ignore. Instead of sending a messenger to tell them about me, I myself will come down and live among them. I will become a person like they are, someone they can see and hear and touch. I will be someone they can talk to and laugh with and love.” And so God did something that God should not have been able to do: God contained the majesty and glory and splendor of Godself in a human, in Jesus the Christ, and became Immanuel, which means “God with us.”

But with God suddenly so close to us, suddenly in our midst, we were afraid. Jesus and his words threatened us; they made us realize how God intended us to live, not as a people divided by money and power, not as a people who seek our own comfort and wealth, not as a people who hold God at arms length so that we can go on about our own lives, but as the people of God, living in love and solidarity with one another, seeking to ease the suffering of our neighbors and sacrificing our own desires for the good of friend and enemy alike. This was too much for us, and so we hastily hid behind the last barrier we could find to put between us and God: Death. We took Jesus and we crucified him, we killed him on a tree because he was too much a threat to our comfort and our privilege and our way of life. After centuries of ignoring and avoiding and forgetting God, on Good Friday, we outright rejected God.

But the story does not stop there. When the women went to the tomb to remember Jesus on that Sunday morning, they did not find Jesus where he was supposed to be. Instead they found messengers who told them that in order to remember Jesus, they had to look not in a tomb but in his words. They were not to remember Jesus by performing rituals or singing hymns or praying prayers, but by listening to his words. Jesus had foretold all of this. Jesus knew when he came that his road led to the cross. Jesus knew that all of this, the suffering, the crucifixion, the death, all of it had to happen; and Jesus did it anyway. Not even such horrible pain and suffering and shame was going to stand between God and God’s people. At the moment of Jesus’ death, the curtain of the Holy of Holies, the tiny room in the temple where God was, tore down the middle, proving that no curtain, no sin, no ignorance, not even death was going to be able to keep God from God’s people.

We come here as people coming to a graveside on an anniversary, expecting to find the deceased, wrapped in linen, lying peacefully. Instead we find a promise: we will not find the living among the dead. Instead of finding Jesus where we put him, we find that once again God has done something God should not have been able to do: the ultimate rejection and defeat of God by humanity has become God’s consummate victory over our power to separate ourselves from God. Once again, God has become Immanuel, God-with-us. That is why Jesus is not here. We will not find him in this tomb where we can perform our rituals and sing our songs and pray our prayers. Instead we will find Jesus where we do not expect him: on the road to Emmaus, in the locked upper room, even in this bread and wine.

In this world of pain and suffering, it is all to easy to see where Jesus is not, where God is not. We feel abandoned in our pain and isolated in our suffering. We sense God’s absence far more pointedly than we often know God’s presence. But here in this place, this empty tomb, and especially on this day, we remember that Jesus is Immanuel, Jesus is God-with-us. God has suffered with us, God has died with us, and God has risen from the dead to be with us, because not even death, neither ours nor God’s, can keep God from us.

Today as we celebrate Easter, we remember that when we experience the agony of losing a loved one, when our communities are torn apart by conflict and resentment, when we feel hopeless and abandoned, when we feel unloved or forgotten about, we can rest assured in the promise that nothing in heaven or hell can keep God from being with us. Even when we face death itself, we know that God has already torn through that dark veil once to come be present with us. We know that whatever suffering or pain or loss we might experience now, no matter how distant God might feel, Jesus himself has known that suffering and isolation. God has experienced our sorrows and suffers with us in our trials. More importantly, we know that even now God is charging toward us, refusing to leave us alone and broken. Christ is risen (he is risen indeed!) and he is Immanuel, God-with-us, for eternity.

The New Creation

Audio recording of “The New Creation” from TLC’s radio ministry “The Connecting Link.” (8:26)
Delivered at Trinity Lutheran Church, Pottsville, PA. Proper 2, Year B
Texts: Ezek 17.22-24; 2 Cor 5.6-10, 14-17; Mk 4.26-34

Two summers ago as I worked as a hospital chaplain in Maine, I had the occasion to visit a young man recovering from surgery. He was a little younger than me, about 22 or 23. I always made it a point never to ask the patients I saw why they were in the hospital; I figured that if they wanted me to know they would tell me, but I was so curious why this young, healthy-looking guy was in the hospital, that I couldn’t help but ask what brought him in.

He told me that he was a heavy smoker, both of cigarettes and marijuana. Though his lungs were still clean and healthy, he had developed a single symptom of advanced emphysema: a bubble had formed in his lung and popped, which deflated it and almost killed him. As he told me this, I could see the old fear in his face: he had almost died, and he knew it. He reflected to me that he felt incredibly lucky that this had happened to him because, even though he could have died, for whatever reason this occurred before his lungs were severely damaged. He told me that when he got out of the hospital, he planned to give up smoking entirely because this was a wake-up call of what lay in his future if he continued down this path.

In my conversation with this young man, it did not take me long to see that I was talking with a changed person, a new man. He had stared death in the face and it had deeply altered who he was. In a sense, this young man had died when his lung deflated, and he was sitting before me in that hospital room as a resurrected person, as a new creation.

Like this young man, the new creation that Paul talks about in his letter to the Corinthians has been deeply altered by the experience of death, and can never be the same. The new creation has died with Christ and been resurrected as something completely different than it once was.

We imagine ourselves as the new creation because we are Christians; we trust that Christ died for us and that because of that we are redeemed from our sinfulness and wrong doing, but are we really new? In order to really be the new creation, the old things must first pass away. Every beginning must first be accompanied by an ending, a death. As Christians, we believe like Paul that, “[Jesus] died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them.”

Martin Luther writes in the small catechism that this death with Christ is not a one-time occurrence. Daily we must drown the old sinner and daily we rise to new life with Christ. Christian faith is a constant cycle of death and rebirth. So what happens when the cycle is stopped?

When I was very young, the Women of the ELCA chapter at my church decided that they wanted to be more welcoming to new members. They wanted to have some fresh ideas and new leadership, somebody who would revitalize the group and help them grow. Because of this, they elected my mother as president. She had the new ideas and the fresh perspective they were looking for. However, Mom quickly found out that these women were not willing to let go of the old to make room for the new. Any time she came up with a new idea or a new way of doing things, her suggestions we rejected out of hand because it wasn’t the way things had always been done. The group was not willing to experience the death of the old things in order to become the new creation.

How many of our churches are like this? How many of our church members are like this? We seek after our own needs, our own desires, our own agendas, and we hold on so hard to the old things that we refuse to let them pass away. We claim to be unafraid of death because we know that it will bring us closer to God, but in practice we fight with all our heart, all our mind, and all our strength to preserve the old traditions, the old order, the old methods.

In refusing to die, in regarding everything from our human point of view, we walk by sight, trusting in what we know rather than walking by faith in God. We prefer to remain at home in the familiar body of our old traditions and trappings and be away from the Lord. We aim to please our selves and our human commitments to the church rather than aiming to please Christ.

It is in this worldly behavior that the Church becomes a Jesus Club. We throw socials and dinners, we practice our worship and put on our activities and meet with our committees, and all because we refuse to die. We get so caught up in what we are doing that we drown out the still, small voice of the Holy Spirit calling us to take part in what God is doing. It is true that we will be spared from eternal punishment thanks to the righteousness of Christ, but when we stand before the Almighty Creator or the Universe and are asked what we as individuals and as Trinity Lutheran Church have done for God’s world, what will we answer?

We too often live as if that young man in the hospital, after his brush with death, were not changed at all, if he continued on down his self-destructive path. Who can experience death and not be changed by it? Those who have not truly died. Christ came that we might have abundant life, but in order to claim that life, we are first called to die: to die to ourselves, to our selfish desires, to our human and worldly point of reference.

Every ending is a beginning. When we die to these things, God in Christ raises us up renewed, refreshed, and reinvigorated. Instead of being driven by our own needs and desires, we are urged on by the love of Christ, the all-encompassing love which is given freely to everyone, regardless of their character, their social class, their mistakes, or even whether they return that love or not. Why should we want this new creation? Why should we seek to give up what makes us who we are to be servants for God? What is so great about having to love everyone when they do not love us in return? Why would we rather be away from our old familiar body and community and at home with the Lord?

This is a question each of us must answer for ourselves. Do we live for God, or for ourselves? Are we Trinity Lutheran Jesus Club, or Trinity Lutheran Church? Are we the old which is passing away, or the new creation in Christ? If we would truly be this new creation, we must first let go of the old things as they pass away and die, for as St. Francis prayed, it is only in dying that we are born to eternal life.

We walk by faith, and not by sight. Our sight tells us that death is the end, and so we fear it. But our faith tells us that in God, every ending is a new beginning. As we outgrow our old ways and put them aside, we make room for exciting new ways of experiencing God, we welcome interesting new people with wonderful new gifts to share. But just as each ending is a new beginning, each beginning must accompany an ending. We cannot continue God’s work in Pottsville unless we are willing to let some things die. We cannot be God’s servants unless we are willing to stop regarding people and practices from a human point of view, and regard them instead based on how they will assist God’s work.

Not Even Death…

Delivered at Trinity Lutheran Church, Pottsville, PA. Easter Morning, Year B
Texts: Acts 10.34-43; 1 Cor 15.1-11; John 20.1-18

It has been said that Pentecost is the birthday of the Church. This is because it was on Pentecost that the disciples received the Holy Spirit and began their public ministry, teaching and preaching about Jesus. It is the day on which the Church became alive and active.

Just as Pentecost is the Church’s birthday, Easter is its conception day. It is the events of Easter which define our ministry and our calling as Christians. We are an Easter people; today in not just a holiday for us, it is the very core of who we are. We see in the resurrection of Christ the powerful and amazing love which God has for us. We see that absolutely nothing can come between us and God, not even our own sin or disobedience to God, not shame of ourselves or embarrassment at God’s message before others, not even death can stand between God and God’s children. God is the raging mother grizzly who loves and protects us, her cubs, at all costs; nothing can withstand her power and determination to be with her children.

We see this because on Good Friday, Jesus’ disciples last experience with their teacher and lord was one of fear, betrayal, cowardice and desertion. They all fled when their teacher was arrested, and the last time Peter saw Jesus, he denied three times that he even knew him. When Jesus died and these disciples were robbed of their chance to be reconciled to him, they were broken. They were not only torn with sorrow, they were laden with regret and shame for what they had done.

It is in the midst of this that Jesus says “NO!—this is not the final word. This is not how I will leave you, alone, afraid and ashamed. I will not leave you helpless and hopeless; instead, I will go to your homes in Galilee ahead of you. Not even death can keep me from you.”

This is how determined God is not to give up on us. Like the psalmist writes, “Where can I go from your Spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed the grave, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there shall your hand lead me, and your right hand hold me fast.” (Psalm 139.7-10) Even after dying, God goes ahead of us to our homes to meet us. The resurrection is God’s way of saying, “What do I have to do to prove to you people that I love you? I will die for you a million times if that’s what it takes; but know this: I will rise from the dead a million and one because I will not leave you alone.”

It is because of this enormous love that God sent Jesus to us, and in spite of Jesus’ gospel of God’s acceptance, we denied God’s message and killed God’s messenger. Because God’s message for us was so radical, so frightening, and so subversive, we decided that we couldn’t let God run loose. We were afraid of God and of what God had to say, so we killed Jesus and sealed him up in stone, a place where we thought God could be safely contained, so as not to spoil plans. We needed a place to keep God where we could always know where God was.

We are not so different today. God still scares us with the radical and subversive gospel of Christ, with God’s claim of power over us and God’s all-inclusive love which extends to all people, including the ones we hate. And so, we have sought to lock Jesus up in THIS tomb, this building of stone, a place where we can keep God safely apart from us, where we can come visit Jesus on weekends and sometimes on Wednesdays.

But the end of the story is the same. When the women went to the tomb on Sunday morning, they found Christ gone; there was only a young man in white to tell them that he was risen. We find the same today. Christ’s body is not here! He’s not where we left him! Instead we come here to find a man in white loudly proclaiming that he is risen! Christ isn’t in this building, he’s out there, in the streets, in the hospitals, the taverns, the alleys and the homes. You’ve come here looking for someone who isn’t here. He’s gone ahead of you to your communities and your homes.

We have come here looking for his corpse, but we have found something better: we have found God and Christ present with us in the Eucharist. We have a place set for us at the Lord’s table where we can receive both forgiveness of our sins and strength for the work ahead. On this day in which we celebrate Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, we come here to share a meal with him; we eat from his body and drink of his blood.

When we partake of this meal, something wonderful happens. Jesus’ radical inclusion, his subversive gospel, his dangerous love, they all become a part of us. They bond to our molecules and become the materials that build our cells. They give us both physical and spiritual nourishment and become a part of who we are in body and soul.

In this meal God re-creates us as Easter people. We come here as Good Friday people, lost and confused, often misguided, looking for Jesus’ corpse, but instead we find his body and blood and this assignment, “Go ye therefore to all nations, teaching them and baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

As we go out, we do so in confidence, with faith strengthened by God’s love and grace in this meal, certain that we can face whatever lies out there waiting for us as we go out to meet Jesus. We have this trust and this certainty because we have seen today that God is our mother grizzly bear, and that there is nothing out there which can separate us from her. Shame, violence, disobedience, and death all fall flat before the charge of the mother to her cubs. Because of this, we live and love fearlessly in Jesus’ name. Amen.

The Nintendo Game of Life

Delivered at Trinity Lutheran Church, Pottsville, PA. Epiphany 3, Year B.
Texts: Jonah 3.1-5, 10; 1 Cor 7.29-31; Mk 1.14-20

When I was about seven, for Christmas my folks got my sister and me a Nintendo. I was stoked. (Actually, once I overheard my dad say that they had gotten it for the big kid in the house, meaning Mom, but that’s another story for another time.) I had played Frogger and Space Invaders on an old Atari that my parents had, but this was the new, top of the line, state of the art video game system. Too cool for words.

I can remember spending hours playing Super Mario Brothers and Top Gun and a number of other games. Practice makes perfect, I was taught, so I sure practiced on that thing. Problem was, I kept getting interrupted by my parents for really trivial things. There’s nothing so annoying, you know, as when you are in the middle of something important like finally making it to World 8 on Mario and then to have your parents break your concentration for stupid stuff like, “Wash your hands, it’s time for dinner” or “Turn that off, it’s bed time,” or “C’mon, let’s go, we’re leaving for Grandma’s.” I mean, honestly! Can’t a guy kill goombas in peace?

Obviously, looking back, I can now see that my priorities may have been a little skewed when it came to that Nintendo. Those were just games, after all. Far more important was getting enough food and rest to stay healthy, and most especially spending time with my family.

Sometimes in some situations it can be awfully easy to get our priorities out of whack. Small things like video games or hobbies become far more important to us than they really are. The same truth applies when we talk about the kingdom of God. Altogether too often, we lose sight of where our real priorities should be. As an example, I share two stories from scripture, the first of which is our gospel lesson today.

As Jesus walked along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, he called to four fishermen to come follow him. We are told that Simon Peter and Andrew left their fishing boats to follow him, and James and John stopped mending their nets and even left their father in the boat with hired hands to follow Jesus. Most striking about this story is that all four stopped what they were doing “immediately” and left after Jesus. They did not wait until they had finished hauling in their catch or fixing the last hole in their nets, they did it right away. They just got up and left.

We often think of these four as peasants; common laborers who had nothing to lose. However, the gospels record that Simon and Andrew owned a house, and we are told in this very story that James and John had hired hands. These were not poor men; on the contrary, they were well off and successful. It may not have been glamorous work, but it was paying off for them. Yet, they dropped everything to follow Jesus, even their families (remember Zebedee is left in the boat with the hired hands).

Contrast this to the rich young man in Mark 10 who wishes to know how to inherit eternal life. Jesus tells him to do exactly what Simon, Andrew, James and John did: to leave everything, burn his bridges and follow Jesus. Instead of doing that, he instead goes away in distress, because he had much.

Jesus’ first four disciples had much, but they came. The difference is not how wealthy this man was, but what he was willing to give up in order to follow Jesus. While Jesus’ true disciples recognized how important it was to heed Jesus’ call, this rich young man did not; he was too busy trying to rescue the princess from King Koopa to hear the dinner bell.

Jesus calls us to follow, but we get distracted by those other things that keep us busy. That is why Paul writes that those who are married should be like those who are not or that those who are buying should be like those who have nothing: not because these things are bad, but because possessions, mourning, rejoicing, sometimes even family can distract us from God’s call. We are not asked to get rid of these things and live as monks in the wilderness, but we absolutely need to remember where our priorities are.

We should remember why it is that we call ourselves Christians: it is because Jesus is so important, and his message means so much to us that everything else is unimportant next to it; everything else becomes like a video game, and Jesus is calling us to dinner in the Kingdom of God.

It is because of Jesus that we have everything that distracts us; our family, jobs, money, even our time are all gifts from God. If it weren’t for Jesus and his message, we would have nothing, or if we did, it would all be meaningless. That is why these four men left their fishing boats, their nets, their hired help, even their families to follow Jesus: because it was worth it, because the Kingdom of God has come near and changed everything.

And so we come to the question of the day: what are you willing to give up to follow Jesus? An hour on Sunday morning? Five dollars in the offering plate every week? Or something more? Jesus doesn’t ask us to follow when it is convenient for us. When Jesus told those fishermen to “follow me,” Simon Peter didn’t reply, “I can follow you for an hour on weekends and maybe for 30 minutes on every other Tuesday.” John didn’t say, “How about if I give you a tenth of my weekly catch instead?” Andrew did not tell Jesus, “As long as you stay in and around Galilee, I can give you evenings, but if you head south to Jerusalem, I’ll have to catch up with you later.” James did not complain that, “my father needs me on the boat, but I’ll listen to you when you come to the lake shore.”

Being a Christian is not about being in a church on Sunday morning or giving money in the plate or even sitting on different committees. Being a Christians is about being changed by God’s presence, about burning with the Holy Spirit, about believing the good news that Jesus brings and repenting.

Repenting in this gospel passage is an ongoing, recurring process, not a one time event. The word translated as “repent” means to change one’s mind or one’s way of thinking, or to have a change of heart. We are called to a life of constant repentance, constant examination of our selves and our priorities to make sure that we are indeed following Jesus where he leads us.

But in this task of repentance, we do not say, “I can do better,” because then we still try to remain in control of our lives and we do not need a merciful God, just a patient one who will wait until we get it right. Instead, as we repent, we cry out, “I can’t do any better.” It is in this confession of inadequacy that we finally die to ourselves and realize how we are utterly dependent on God for salvation.

When we realize that we are dependent on God, then we are really Christians, then we are really ready to jump out of our fishing boats, to put down our Nintendo controllers and follow Christ immediately, because we know that without him, we can do nothing. And when we immediately give up what we have and follow, an amazing thing happens. The Holy Spirit works through us and we are able to accomplish works that are truly good because they do not come from us, but from God.

It is only when we die to ourselves, when we refuse to be distracted by the things of this life, that God is able to use us as God intends. And even to do this, we need God’s help. We are dependent on God to be dependent on God. To borrow from the Small Catechism, we need Jesus to bring us the good news constantly to daily drown the sinner and raise the saint to new life.

Being a Christian is about death. It is dying to our old lives, it is putting our priorities in order and with the help of God, getting out of our boats and following Christ, no matter where that will lead us. Being a Christian is not about wearing a cross or going to church or saying “God bless you” when someone sneezes. We do those things to help us stay focused on Christ as we follow. Being a Christian is about death, and that is the good news that Jesus brings; because in death, we are given new life. Amen.

Zombies

Delivered at Trinity Lutheran Church, Pottsville, PA. Baptism of Our Lord, Year B
Texts: Gen 1.1-5; Acts 19.1-7; Mk 1.4-11

When I first read the lesson from Acts for today, I could hardly believe what I was reading. It is a story we don’t expect to hear in the Bible, a story about zombies. Okay, so they’re not exactly the George Romero type, but in a sense these men that Paul finds in Ephesus really are dead men walking. Allow me to explain.

These men were disciples of John, and they had been baptized by him. However, as Paul explains to them, John’s was a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins; it was only an admission of guilt and sinfulness with the promise of forgiveness. To be baptized with John’s baptism was like going under the water, and not coming up again; it was a death to sin.

Jesus, too, was baptized with John’s baptism. Sinless Jesus, only son of the Living God, was baptized with John’s baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. However, as we have just heard, when Jesus was baptized, something special happened. He went down into the water, and as he came up, the heavens were torn apart like a curtain, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him. God took John’s baptism and transformed it, made it into something different by entering into it and then injecting the Holy Spirit.

Recall that this is the same Holy Spirit that hovered over the formless and chaotic void at the beginning of creation. The Hebrew word for Spirit also means breath or breeze: it is the breath that God blew into the nostrils of the first human. By breathing the Holy Spirit into John’s baptism, God made it alive, made it more than just a bath in the river just as it made Adam more than just a lump of clay. Sinless Jesus died to sin in John’s baptism and was made alive again with the Holy Spirit.

So what does this mean for us? Without the Holy Spirit, we are like John’s disciples in Ephesus; we are zombies–walking dead, doomed to roam the earth filled with an insatiable hunger, not for brains, but for forgiveness, fullness, reconciliation to God; in short, for life.

But, because God has taken baptism and transformed it through Jesus and the Holy Spirit, and because it is into that baptism which we have been baptized, we are not the restless dead. Instead, we are the resurrected dead: we are whole, we are redeemed, we are claimed. Because we are baptized not into John’s baptism of death to sin but in Jesus baptism of resurrection, we are alive, more alive than we were before, because we have received the Holy Spirit, the breath of God which makes all the difference.

I also want to tell you about another transformation which God has enacted for us. At the end of Jesus’ life, he was beaten, humiliated, and executed like a criminal. At the moment of his death, Mark records, the curtain in the temple was torn in two, destroying the boundary between God and humankind, just like the heavens were at his baptism. Then, of course, three days later, Jesus rose from the dead. Just like John’s baptism, Jesus entered into death, and by doing so he changed it, transformed it into something else, something more. Like John’s baptism, death became no longer just death, but the transition between old life and new life.

Just like Jesus’ baptism changes us from the living dead into the resurrected dead through the Holy Spirit, Jesus’ death and resurrection changes us when we die from corpses into seeds awaiting new life, again through the Holy Spirit. This is why Baptism is so important for us as Christians, why it is so much more than just a public bath or a sprinkling of water. Thanks to God’s transformation of baptism from death into new life, our baptism promises us not only new life filled with the same Holy Spirit that hovered over the deep at the beginning of creation, but also resurrection with Christ at the Last Day. As Paul writes in his letter to the Romans, we are baptized into Christ’s death, so that we may be raised to new life with him.

We are not just zombies, roaming the earth seeking forgiveness for the sins we continue to commit. Because we share this baptism with Jesus, we are new people, reborn of the Holy Spirit, with a new lease on life and a new mission: to walk as children of the light, to learn from Jesus and live in the Kingdom of Heaven while on Earth.

Now comes the dangerous part. Because we have been filled with the Holy Spirit, not only are we assured of God’s presence with us and God’s love for us, but we are set on fire by God to work for justice, peace, kindness, and equality in all things. Because God has broken into our world in Christ, we are no longer insulated from God, free to be complacent or quiet. The same Holy Spirit which fills us with new life burns within us to live!

The same Holy Spirit that stirred up the deep at the first moments of creation pushes us to participate in the ongoing work of creation. Like the wind, the Holy Spirit is restless and unpredictable; it rushes over us like a raging storm and blows us about in God’s world to bring about new life. This work is good, but it is not safe. It is dangerous. If we follow this holy wind where it blows us, we will certainly find ourselves, like Jesus, at the foot of a cross, for this world, though it is claimed by God, is not friendly to God. Jesus’ entire ministry was fueled by the Holy Spirit and aimed at bringing the Kingdom of Heaven to Earth, and because God’s power was a threat to the powers of the world, he was killed. Because the Spirit fills us with the same message Jesus brought, we can expect the same treatment as he received; maybe not death, but we will certainly suffer, be humiliated, and maybe even be seen as criminals if we devote ourselves to God and do work of the Holy Spirit. But, we began this life transformed by Jesus’ baptism into something new, something better; and we can rest assured that when we come to the end of this life, we will join in Jesus’ death, which has also been transformed, and a new life again awaits us.

That is the hope we have in baptism. Jesus entered freely into John’s baptism, even though he had no sin to repent from, for our sake, so that we could receive with him the Holy Spirit, so that we could be changed and become truly alive, and so that we could freely do God’s work without having to fear the cross.