Loose Ends

Easter Sunday, Year B
Text: Mk 16.1-8

“So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” What a terrible ending for a story. Imagine you were watching a movie that just cut right at the most dramatic scene and rolled to credits. Wouldn’t you feel a little disappointed or angry? We don’t want women running away in fear, but running joyfully to the disciples with the good news. We don’t want to leave Peter weeping in the courtyard, we want to see him reunited with his friends and forgiven for his denials.

We want to know that all the details are worked out and the loose ends tied up. We don’t want an empty tomb, we want want to see the risen Jesus. But Mark gives us none of that. Instead, the story simply dead-ends in fear with nothing saying anything to anyone about what they have seen.

What’s So Good About Good Friday?

Good Friday
Text: Psalm 22; John 18.1-19.42

Why are we here? Good Friday is a paradox. If our faith is meant to give us strength and hope, Good Friday seems to take those things away as Jesus is tried and sentenced and executed. If we worship to have ourselves filled up, Good Friday is an emptying. If we come here to see God, Good Friday is a vision of God crucified, of God abandoning God’s own Son. There seems to be nothing good about this day, and yet we persist in calling it “Good” Friday. Why is that? On this darkest day of the Church’s year, why have you come?

I want to make a point of what we are NOT doing today. We are not here to delight in an innocent man’s death. We are not here to be entertained by his suffering. We are not here because we enjoy the darkness, the sadness, the death. If we do not enjoy this, why are we here?

Snakes in the Grass

4th Sunday in Lent, Year B
Texts: Num 21.4-9; Jn 3.14-21

I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that everybody here has heard John 3:16 before, right? I’m going to bet that a lot of us could even recite it from memory. But if you were going to explain what that verse meant to someone who wasn’t a church person, someone who had never read the bible, how would you do that? What would you say?

It’s interesting here to read how Jesus explains it; he explains it in the context of this bizarre story from Numbers that we just read. The Hebrews are wandering in the wilderness, and they start complaining against Moses, accusing him of bringing them out there to kill them with thirst and starvation. Moses is taking them the long way through, and they are impatient. Why can’t they just go where they’re going? Do you remember why God had Moses lead them through the wilderness for 40 years?

In order to become who God was creating them to be, they had to leave Egypt behind. They had to wait for the “sin” to dissipate, for the Egyptian way of being to fade from them so they could be Israel, not Egypt, when they got to Canaan. They wanted a quick, easy way through, but that wasn’t possible. God needed them to wait. And so they complained.

More Than Commandments

3rd Sunday in Lent, Year B
Texts: Ex 20.1-17; 1 Cor 1.18-25; Jn 2.13-22

When I was in 7^th grade, my class did a fundraiser for… something, I don’t really know. All I remember was that we had to sell t-shirts. I hated fundraisers because I was shy: I was not the kid who went door-to-door or set up a table outside the grocery store. That meant I was limited to family and friends; so I took my box of t-shirts to where all my friends were: I set up a display table in the narthex of my church.

I remember sitting there when Pat came up to me and took me aside. Pat was a good family friend, someone we’d spent a lot of time with. He was very upset that I was “turning God’s house into a marketplace,” like in the story we just read. I loved and respected Pat—I still do—and the fact that he was so upset about this made me feel terrible. Not only did I think I had committed some sin, I was also worried that Pat was angry at me, that he wouldn’t love me anymore.