We Have Seen The Lord! Easter March 23, 2008

(First, read the text for this sermon: John 20:1-18)

Early on the first day of the week, while it is still dark, Mary Magdalene is about to be shaken to the core. She’s been horrified and agitated over the past three days. Those feeling will now be multiplied! And she will share that stress with Jesus’ other followers – those who are in hiding.

Here’s what we read in the story: Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him."

This is a terrible, terrible thing! And it comes on top of the frightful events of the past three days: Jesus’ arrest; his being tortured; his execution on a cross as a political prisoner. Mary Magdalene and Jesus’ other followers have reached the end of their post-traumatic stress disorder rope. Mary Magdalene runs to tell Jesus’ followers in hiding. Peter and another disciple run to the tomb. They then believe Mary’s report that the tomb is empty. But they do not yet understand the scripture, that [Jesus] must rise from the dead. And so, in bewilderment and confusion and distress, they simply return to their homes.

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. This is a very moving story. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white….They said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She said to them, "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him." When she had said this, Mary, blinded by grief turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?" Supposing him to be the gardener, (I love that!) she said to him, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away." Jesus said to her, "Mary!" And then Mary knows that it is Jesus, in some sort of a risen bodily form – when he calls her by name. And so Mary is off again, running, to find Jesus’ followers who are in hiding. "I have seen the Lord!" she says to them, as she tires to catch her breath.

Does the news of the resurrection shake you, as it does Mary and Peter and the other disciple? Does it change you? Does it transform the way you live?

For many of us, instead, life will go on as it has before, when we leave this place. Many of us have domesticated the resurrection! Many of us limit the resurrection to what it means for us as individuals, and we limit its significance to an afterlife. The news of Easter becomes: “Jesus is raised! Now I’ll be able to go to heaven!”

But notice: that is not the way it is in the story! For Jesus followers, their Lord’s resurrection has significance for this world, for this life! And so, when Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, "I have seen the Lord"; it is a nearly-unbelievable message of joy and hope because God has taken action to contradict this world’s powers who think that the way to solve problems is to kill people. The resurrection is God’s vindication of human life according to Jesus’ model. The resurrection is God’s condemnation of those who try to dominate through violence.

“I have seen the Lord!” is the witness of the first apostle – Mary Magdalene. And it is the beginning of the Christian community, because the message immediately becomes, “We have seen the Lord!”

We have seen the Lord alive, not dead! God’s hope for new life is alive on earth! That’s the good news of Easter. It is the fundamental message, still, proclaimed by those in the Christian community. We have seen the Lord!

Of course, this gospel message is foolishness to many! (Indeed, it is foolishness to many who are sitting in worship spaces on this day.) In First Corinthians, St. Paul calls it “the foolishness of our proclamation.” Paul writes that “the message about the cross is foolishness” to those who do not see or who cannot see or who refuse to see the Lord!

Certainly, there is much that causes blindness. There is our idolatry of self-sufficiency. That derails us from even opening ourselves to the risen Jesus who comes to us in those who want to help us through rough patches. There are the idolatries of celebrity and self-promotion that deform us to be selfish and competitive, rather than humble and interdependent. These days, dire economic anxieties – some real, most imagined – threaten to deform us to be fearful, believing that there is scarcity.

But, if we are formed instead in God’s truth (in a resurrection community of resistance to these lies), then we know that life is not about hunkering down and submitting to limits. Instead, we are called to the life of resurrection. And that means living according to the peculiar model of our resurrected Lord – that model that God has vindicated.

For instance, Jesus, an observant Jew, modeled the daily life of prayer and worship. And so, people of the resurrection consider what we are doing right now to be the most important thing we can do each week. Of course, that is foolishness, according to what the culture values, because the time we spend in worship does not produce anything! We are not accomplishing anything! According to the criteria of production and efficiency, what we are doing now is a waste of time! But people of the resurrection are very strange. We are drawn here, in resistance to all of that, to be fed in word and water and bread and wine. This is not an option. It’s essential. In the word and water and bread and wine we see the Lord! All of our other peculiar and foolish resurrection behaviors grow out of this that we are doing, as we are formed to follow the model of Jesus the Christ.

We have seen the Lord! And so, according to the model of Jesus the Christ, we know that we receive life only by drowning our self-centered selves. We know that we become rich only by giving away our selves and our money! According to Jesus’ model, we become ourselves authentically only in humility. We become strong only when we reveal our weaknesses and ask for help. We become strong only when we are interconnected. We become free only when we let go of self-righteousness and anger; when we receive forgiveness and when we pray for our enemies.

We have seen the Lord! Here’s the possibility that God holds out, in that good news: utter transformation. We Jesus people are transformed in resurrection hope, and that causes us to live in a way that other value systems brand as foolish and peculiar – but which is the only way to life and freedom and joy!

And here’s something else you know. When you and I live in these odd, counter-cultural ways, as people of the resurrection, then others see the Lord, the risen Jesus. Where? In us!

In the name of God who is Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Pastor Andy Ballentine
St. Stephen Lutheran Church
Williamsburg, Virginia

Forgiveness and Love and Humility and Servanthood Maundy Thursday March 20, 2008

(First read the text for this sermon: John 13:1-17, 31b-35)

Three months before my father died, we got him to Pawley’s Island for the last time. (For decades, my extended family has gathered at Pawley’s for an annual vacation.) Dad was very frail. To give my mother a week off, my brother and I took turns caring for Dad.

The first thing each morning was to wash him. The first time, it was a difficult thing to do – to care for my father in such an intimate way. The next time it was easier. In fact, it felt sacramental: I felt a strong sense of God’s presence in the work. It was an act of love and humility and servanthood.

Have you ever washed a loved one who has been unable to care for himself?

Three months after this experience with my father, I found myself unable to care for myself. In the hospital, I experienced what my father had – being helpless, being dependent upon others to wash me. I was very fortunate with the nurses and aides who were assigned to me. What care they showed while doing this work! I know it was their job. But it was how they did their job: in a spirit of patient servanthood.

Have you ever been washed? It was a humbling experience to wash my father’s body. It was a humbling experience to be washed, in the hospital.

It is through these experiences that I have entered into tonight’s story from John. I thought of them immediately, when I read these verses: [D]uring supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him.

Imagine Jesus’ love and humility and servanthood as he does that work. Indeed, the washing is a startling act of forgiveness, in advance of the betrayal Jesus will endure from these same disciples who will abandon him in the hours to come.

In our Lutheran understanding, Jesus is the Word of God. In our Lutheran understanding, the Word of God primarily is not something that’s on a printed page. The Word of God is something that is enfleshed in Jesus. And so, what does Jesus embody? It is forgiveness and love and humility and servanthood.

Tonight’s story from the gospel of John witnesses to a God who does not stand in judgment – but who kneels before us in servanthood! As Brian Wren puts it, in the hymn we will sing next:

“We strain to glimpse your mercy seat
and find you kneeling at our feet.”

If this does not shock you, then you’re not entering into the old story! It certainly outrages Simon Peter, who cannot imagine that this is what God is like! Here’s what we read: [Jesus] came to Simon Peter, who said to him, "Lord, are you going to wash my feet?" Jesus answered, "You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand." Peter said to him, "You will never wash my feet." Jesus answered, "Unless I wash you, you have no share with me."

God comes to us in forgiveness and love and humility and servanthood that is shocking! But – unless we know forgiveness (of ourselves in particular!) we do not know God. Unless we know how to live in love and humility and servanthood, we have not received God.

Indeed, the Word of God, enfleshed in Jesus the Christ, commands you and me to live in this way, and to treat each other in this way. (Tonight is Maundy Thursday. You may remember that the word, “maundy” comes from the Latin word for “command.”) We read this: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

“Just as I have loved you.”

Jesus is the model for you and me.

I pray that you and I will emerge from these three days of worship, at this most holy time of year, following the Christ in forgiveness and love and humility and servanthood.

In the name of God, who is Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Pastor Andy Ballentine
St. Stephen Lutheran Church
Williamsburg, Virginia

A sermon by Robin Hudson, Director of Family Ministries 5th Sunday of Lent March 9. 2008

(First, read the text for this sermon: John 11:1-45)

This may be a very unusual question to pose to you this morning, but how do you view death? I dare say that I could go around to each of you here, and depending on your age, where you’re from, how you were raised or because of experiences you’ve encountered in life, there would be many different views. Some would say that they fear death, maybe because they are young and see so much of life ahead of them still. Some may say that they don’t want to think about it, therefore they don’t. Some may say that they don’t fear death because they have lived a rich life and trust in God for the hereafter.

I must admit up until seven months ago when my mother passed away I didn’t think much about death. Even though my father had passed six years earlier, and certainly that changed things in my life, I had not given it much thought outside of death being a part of life. But by virtue of my relationship with my mother, the fact that I am now considered middle aged, and by having children of my own, recently I’ve been thinking, reading, and reflecting on this thing we call death, AND life.
What do you suppose it would be like if a person could lose his or her fear of death? What if that dark at the end of the tunnel that awaits every one of us ceased to be something that we dreaded and avoided and was looked on as a portal, or birthing, of the beginning of a new adventure?

Years ago there was a little known play by Eugene O’Neill entitled “Lazarus Laughed.” It was by no means a commercial success. In fact, it closed just a week after it opened on Broadway. But I wonder after hearing about this play if O’Neill put his finger on the functional significance of this miracle story we read today about Lazarus being raised from the dead.

We see here from the scripture passage this morning that Lazarus had been dead for four days when Jesus came to the village of Bethany, risking his own life to give life to Lazarus because the Jews were about to stone Jesus on his last trip to that region, and Jesus escaped. But now Jesus had come back because of his love for Lazarus and his sisters, Mary and Martha. When they lead Jesus to the tomb, he told them to roll the stone back, and then he called out “Lazarus come forth”, and Lazarus walked out of the tomb, thus Jesus gave him back the gift of life.
The play begins where the Biblical story leaves off. As the curtain goes up, Lazarus is seen stumbling out of the dark, into the bright sunlight. Then after the grave clothes are taken off of him he begins to laugh a gentle, soft laugh; nothing bitter, but an embracing, astonishing, welcoming sound. The very first thing he does is to embrace Jesus with gratitude. Then he begins to embrace his sisters and the other people who were gathered there.

Then he begins to look at everything around him as if experiencing it for the first time. And the very first words he utters is, “Yes, yes, yes” as if to embrace reality as it is being discovered all over again.

At this point in the play, Lazarus makes his way back to his house, and then finally someone finds the courage to ask him, “Lazarus, tell us what it’s like to die. What lies on the other side of this boundary that none of us have crossed?”

Lazarus begins to laugh even more intensely and then says, “There is no death, really. There is only life. There is only God. There is only incredible joy. Death is not the way it appears from this side. Death is not an abyss into which we go into chaos. It is, rather, a portal through which we move into everlasting growth and everlasting life.” He then says, “The One that meets us there is the same generosity that gave us our lives in the beginning, the One who gave us our birth. Not because we deserved it but because that generous One wanted us to be and therefore there is nothing to fear in the next realm. The grave is as empty as a doorway is empty. It is a portal through which we move into greater and finer life. Therefore, there is nothing to fear. Our great agenda is to learn to accept, to learn to trust. We are put here to learn to love more fully. There is only life. There is no death.”

Though this is a play, and only one person’s interpretation of what could have possibly happened after the raising of Lazarus, my thoughts go to what Jesus told Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

My reflections on this scripture is that Jesus, the Son of God, is the God that is with us through death, as well as through life. Certainly God never intended for us to die. It was by sin that death entered into the world. But just because humanity brought death into this world doesn’t mean that God forsakes us in death. To me, death is a birthing process, the going from one sense of life into another. So this does not only mean death in a physical bodily sense, but deaths in other ways, such as, the death or loss of a job, the dying of a way of life maybe from financial loss, or as a child goes to college for the first time, the birth of a baby to a couple is certainly the death of a familiar lifestyle and the beginning of a new, the starting of a new school, new relationships, teenagers getting their drivers license, going from a dependant lifestyle to a more independent lifestyle, new circumstances in any respect. There is certainly fear in the new endeavors whether we cause them or not. Is there a fear of the unknown? Yes, if we look to the unknown from our limited understanding, trying to make sense of it without God. But as we allow God to be in every part of our lives, God will be there in our living and in our dying. Jesus said, “I am the resurrection” that life that comes after a dying process, “and I am the life”, he is there in all of our daily living, and therefore, we have nothing to fear. In Psalm 23 the psalmist writes, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for you are with me.” I don’t see death as a stop sign, but more as a green light to enter into the presence of God in a whole new way, to experience God is a deeper way, whether it be through a literal, physical death, or through “deaths” we face in of our lives. Are we not to die to ourselves daily so that God is in control of our lives? Jesus says, I will go with you through the birthing process and through life itself because I am both. I am in both. I am God and I will not leave you nor forsake you.

So what happens to Lazarus at the end of the play? Well, not everyone was pleased that Lazarus was alive and laughing. The Roman authorities were quick to sense that he had lost his fear of death, because fear was the kind of control they used on people to maintain their desires. So the Roman authorities move in on Lazarus and tell him to quit laughing. They tell him to stop the merriment and partying in his house. This causes Lazarus to laugh even more. He tells them, “The truth is there is nothing you can do to me. There is no death. There is only life.” The Romans become even more frustrated, so they arrest him, they take him to Caesarea to appear before the higher official, then on to face the Roman emperor, and the whole time he is laughing because he has no fear of death. And so shouldn’t it be the same for us? Jesus tells each of us today, “I am the resurrection, I am the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” The question that Jesus asked Martha was and us today is “Do you believe this?” Martha responded by saying, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God.” If we truly believe that Jesus is who is says he is, then should we fear death, or life? The scriptures say that perfect love cast out all fear, and God is that perfect love. So how will you answer this question?

In the name of Him who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, AMEN.

“Regaining Sight” Fourth Sunday of Lent March 2, 2008

(First, read the text for this sermon: John 9:1-41)

This is such a great story, in the ninth chapter of John! There’s the disciples’ assumption that the man has been blind from birth as punishment for sin. There’s the muddy paste Jesus makes and spreads on the man’s eyes. (How physical is God’s healing presence!) There is the Pharisees’ angry reaction to the healing Jesus has performed, because it’s the sabbath, and kneading is an expressly forbidden type of work (which is what Jesus has done with the mud). There are the comical scenes of courtroom-like questioning: with the Pharisees interrogating the healed man himself; and then his parents (those weasels!); and then the healed man again (whose sarcasm this second time gets him thrown out of the synagogue community).

It’s a story about regaining sight – so that one can see that Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ, the one who enlightens a world of darkness.
It’s a story that asks us: “What prevents you from seeing that Jesus is the Messiah?”

In the story, the physical ability to see is not very important! The man blind from birth is physically healed – but that is just the beginning of his journey towards sight. In the story, the man’s parents are also blinded: by their need to protect themselves from the temple authorities, because they want to remain among the chosen people. The Pharisees are blinded too: by their need to maintain control while managing a situation that threatens their religious system. And so, the story asks of you and me: “How are you blinded to the presence of Jesus among you in daily life?”

Look at the halting stages of the healed man’s journey towards regaining sight. We can chart his progress by noticing how he refers to Jesus in three places in the story. In verse 11, the man has just received his physical sight, and when he is questioned by curious neighbors who wonder how he was healed, he refers only to “This man Jesus.” Later, when the man is first called on the carpet by the Pharisees, his increasing sight is revealed in his further claim about Jesus: “He is a prophet.” And, of course, at the climax of the story, he says to Jesus, “Lord, I believe.” By the end of the story, the man has regained his sight.

The story asks of you and me: “Where are you, along the way of regaining your sight?”

It’s a story about conversion, isn’t it? I don’t know about you, but I have never known conversion to be an instant thing by any means! Instead, it is a life-long process: of drowning the old creature each day so that the new person God created me to be in those baptismal waters can arise. It’s a daily, life-long journey of repentance: of re-turning to God, of turning again to God. It is a journey that progresses in fits and starts – through periods of lively spiritual growth as well as long periods that feel routine and mundane, perhaps even arid. Conversion is the gradual identification and relinquishment of self-delusion and blindness, discovering the person one really is (created by God), and becoming comfortable with that person. It includes, as well, seeing through the false identities I have assigned to God, and discovering who God really is!

We regain our sight as a result of years of listening to God in solitude: through faith practices such as daily reading of the Bible and, in prayer, paying attention to the phrase which catches your attention and listening for what the Spirit might be saying to you; and through the Scripture and song of communal worship; and through openness to each other, as we guide each other into God who is love. Over the years of our spiritual journey, any degree of restored sight is a gift of God’s grace, the Spirit leads us more and more deeply into the joy of seeing that Jesus the Christ is the one who brings light to a darkened world.

In the story from the ninth chapter of John, the parents cannot receive that joy because they are terrified of the dangerous consequences of responding to the risk that God asks of them through their son. In the story, the Pharisees cannot receive that joy because their pre-conceived ideas about God keep them blind to what God is doing, and because they so desperately need to reassure themselves that they are in control. They cannot let go – which is necessary for faith, isn’t it?

The story ends in this way. The man healed of his blindness declares, “Lord, I believe”; and Jesus said, "I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind." Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, "Surely we are not blind, are we?" Jesus said to them, "If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, 'We see,' your sin remains.”

Remember that sin is brokenness. Sin is the brokenness of our relationship with God. It is our brokenness from each other. It is our brokenness that blinds us, so that we cannot perceive and receive the joy of God, who has entered into our human flesh through the human flesh of Jesus the Christ.

Are you joyous in your faith? What prevents you from receiving such joy?

That is the subject for your prayer: offering that up, listening for what comes, as your blindness is revealed by the One who yearns to heal you.

Blessings on your continuing journey through Lent.

In the name of God, who is Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Pastor Andy Ballentine
St. Stephen Lutheran Church
Williamsburg, Virginia