Thomas and FOMO: A Sermon for 2 Easter Year C

 

I love St. Thomas...both my sending parish and the saint. I love that I was attending seminary being sent from a parish named for the one who wanted an experience of the risen Christ for himself, and not just the glorious reports from other people. I love that Thomas is like a scientist, cautioning that he desires peer review (namely his) before he'll accept that Jesus has risen from the dead. 

Mostly, what Thomas wants is what we all want: we want that cool experience of knowing such a deep and profound love in our lives. Here's the sermon....

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 Text: John 20:19-31

Fear of Missing Out.

The shorthand is FOMO…and it speaks to that sense of feeling like other people are leading better lives or having more experiences than you are.

It’s a little bit like the old “keeping up with the Joneses.” And with Facebook and Instagram and other social media…it’s become a real thing that causes stress in people’s lives. People turn to these platforms to figure out what their friends have been up to…and will scroll and scroll through photos…and memes…posts…all the while feeling as if other people are doing more important or interesting or fun things.

Other people get to see the cool stuff!

I can imagine that Thomas is suffering from some FOMO in this account from our Gospel. For whatever reason…all the rest of them have locked themselves up in a room. The text says “for fear of the Jews” but as I’ve said before, all these disciples are Jews themselves, so let’s be clear: they’re afraid of the ones who are in cahoots with the Roman authorities.

And you know the emperor’s men must be angry to find that the body of that Jewish upstart Jesus has gone missing. I mean, this has scandal written all over it.

So the disciples are huddled together. They’ve heard from the women and from Peter that Jesus has risen from the dead. That alone probably has them scared because that’s not normal. One commentator even suggests that they may be frightened of Jesus. Afterall, they said they were going to be on his side, but when the authorities showed up, they went running to save their own skins.

Is Jesus angry?

Is he going to punish them for deserting him?

Some may even be wondering if this is story they’ve heard is true. Again…it’s pretty outlandish and far-fetched.

As they’re wringing their hands…with their knees knocking… and their hearts beating faster…Jesus shows up.

Not as a ghost.

Not as a shadow.

He appears inside the locked room.

If they weren’t already afraid…this would definitely have given them a jolt.

The doors are locked. How’d he get in here?

(Oh, silly disciples: if Jesus can overcome death on the cross and the grave…do you think a locked door is going to keep him out?)

Jesus…probably sensing their fear…greets them with “peace be with you.”

It’s probable that he used the phrase “Shalom Aleichem,” which we translate from Hebrew into “peace.” But shalom aleichem carries more meaning that simply “peace.”

It conveys a wish for the person to be made whole.

That seems important given all that has happened to the disciples in the past week.

They’ve been through heavy trauma…the type of earth-shattering experience like remembering President Kennedy’s assassination…or 9-11…or even the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6^th.

Their world has started spinning off its axis. They know their leader was killed but now they don’t know where he is. They intellectually understand the resurrection, but where is he?! Their sense of security is gone. That’s why they’re in a locked room.

Now the resurrection is made real as he stands before them…this figure who is not a figment of their imagination.

They see his hands, his feet, his pierced side. As their initial shock is wearing off…and they realize that it’s really him…he again wishes them “shalom aleichem” and breathes out the Holy Spirit on them…with the instruction that he’s sending them out.

Carry on, my dear ones.

Do all that I taught you to do.

Go forth…and show yourselves as followers of Jesus.

And…importantly…forgive. Forgive unbelief.

This shalom is forgiveness…forgiving them of their fears…and emboldening their faith.

So…all this took place without Thomas being in the locked room.

We don’t know why Thomas wasn’t there.

Maybe he was late to the party or got lost looking for the hideout. But for whatever reason…he missed this visit from the Messiah.

And when he does get up with the others…they are all a-buzz with excitement.

They couldn’t stop telling him “We have seen the Lord!”

They gave him all the exciting details…all the nuances…what the holes in hands and feet looked like.

If they had had social media in those days…this would have been “trending” all over the internet…with hashtags galore.

And Thomas would have had that nagging feeling…the anxiety that happens when you’re not “in the know.”

He would be having that FOMO moment.

He’d missed the really cool thing that just happened.

“Oh, yeah,” he says. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” We can almost hear the “So there!” at the end of that statement.

Thomas gets called “the doubter” as if that makes him some sort of inferior disciple. But I don’t think he was any more of a doubter than the rest of them.

Or frankly…any more of a doubter than any of us.

It’s a very rare person of faith who at one time or another didn’t wonder about some aspect of our story…about God…about Jesus. One of the blessings about being in the Episcopal Church is that we are followers of Jesus who say it’s OK to have questions and to ask them. As I’ve said to many a person exploring their faith, “I’m pretty sure God enjoys your questions because it means you care enough to ask.”

Thomas’ insistence on being let in on the cool stuff is no different than what anyone of us wants when we go seeking after God.

We want to know that this incredible source of Love is real and that this promise that “I’ll be with you to the end of the age”…is not a ruse.

Thomas is one of us. And expresses our same fear of missing out when others seem to have had such remarkable experiences of the Holy One that we haven’t had.

But Thomas does something bold. If you think about his statement, he makes the ask. He wants Jesus to show up for him, too.

And Jesus responds.

One week later…in the same way as before defying all attempts to lock the doors…he shows himself to Thomas. If Thomas really was such a doubter…a non-believer…he might have stuck his hand in the holes in Jesus’ body. But his words show that he never really doubted who Jesus is.

He exclaims, “My Lord and my God!”

You can’t get any surer of Jesus’ status than that.

There is no shame in this story. In fact, John even notes that part of the purpose of sharing these encounters with Thomas and the others is to help us to see that by seeking, by asking, by insisting on having an experience of Jesus we don’t need to fear on missing out. 

Jesus will show up.

Maybe not standing there with holes in his body, but maybe in the form of a stranger giving us a hand or the sun breaking through after several gloomy cloudy days. Or maybe we play the role of being Jesus for another person or creature in need of help.

Acts of kindness…friendliness…generosity. That’s the cool stuff we need in the world today.

In the name of God…F/S/HS.

 

 

 

Remember and Share: A Sermon for Easter in Year C

 I was so slammed trying to get my sermons written. And it was really hard to wrap my mind around Easter when I was actually living in Maundy Thursday. The first draft of my sermon was...well...a mess. So, Holy Saturday, as I sipped coffee and ate a bagel at a coffee shop in downtown Valdosta, I read the end of the Rev. Canon Stephanie Spellers book "The Church Cracked Open." I let some of my thoughts about the Episcopal Church...where it is as we look for COVID to move from pandemic to endemic, and the whole notion of the church needing to be different, deal with its connection to Empire and colonialism, and head back toward Jesus. I also thought about my own journey with God and Easters past, the amazing feeling of experiencing Jesus as a liberator from oppression. 

In the end, the sermon I had written needed some major edits and a much clearer direction. My Holy Saturday "chill time" gave me the space to do that. 

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Text: Luke 24:1-12

Prayer: “The strife is o’er, the battle done. The victory of life is won. The song of triumphant has begun. Alleluia!”

          Whenever we hear or see something amazing…there’s an urge to share it. We can’t wait tell somebody about the thing that just happened…

It used to be that Postcards were the way to show off and share the beautiful vistas of a vacation.

Now…in our social media-driven world…sharing has taken on a whole new life of its own with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok. How many people “like” one of our posts…or share one of our photos.

Recently…I took a picture of a billboard making fun of the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill the Florida Governor signed. Within a week…the thing had been passed around far and wide all over the internet. I finally joked that I only wished people would share when I post our church information as much as they shared this photo.

Having hundreds and thousands of online “followers” makes you a Very Important Person. Those not on the internet are left watching all their friends…and grandkids constantly tapping on tiny keyboards on their phones…as they type their approval with a thumbs up.

Sharing…and bearing witness to something incredible is what is at the heart of our Gospel.

After the shock and horror of the crucifixion…Jesus followers have scattered. They’re in hiding and mourning and numb from losing their leader. This is one event many are too terrified to share with others.

The women…who had been in the crowd and did not turn away…have gone to his grave. But instead of finding the body…they’re meeting two bright shiny men…presumably angels. Jesus’ body is gone. OK…now they’re mourning is pivoting to a new shock…a total disbelief…and new terror is rising in their bodies.

And the two angels say, “Why are you looking for the living among the dead? He is risen!”

Whoa! Mind. Blown. They go running to find Peter, and James, and John and all the other disciples. This is HUGE news!

And then…well…the men don’t believe them. And isn’t until Peter goes and confirms their story that it now is REALLY true.

 And I’m just saying as a middle-aged woman…I know what it’s like to report something to a group of men…not be believed…and then one of them gets the same information and he tells all his friends, they’re like “Wow!”

Now…to be fair…the women didn’t get it at first either. They needed to hear it from the two men in dazzling clothes…who remind them of all that Jesus had promised would happen has indeed happened. Only then does the lightbulb go off…. And they flee from the tomb and start spreading the news.

It's interesting that line about not looking for the living among the dead.

It’s pretty common for us to want to hang on to the way things were in our lives.

I touched on this at the earlier service that there’s a tendency to be afraid of moving forward into unknown territory.

Most of us want to know what the next thing is that’s coming. We like to have rituals, and to know where we fit into “the plan” whatever “the plan” is. Think about it: all of our TV shows have plot lines where the mystery gets solved in roughly 52 minutes…no matter how improbable it would be to get that crime wrapped up so neat and tidy.

This is why COVID has been so disruptive. We have not known what’s next. And we’ve grown exhausted and angry trying to figure it out. Do I need another booster shot? Do I wear a mask? As a world community, we’ve been living under the cloud of a pandemic that has been both frightening and frustrating. And whether we like it or not…our world as we’ve known it in the past has changed. And so have we.

In the middle of all of this…there have been some important shifts.

People have been taking stock of what it really means to be alive. Some have decided not to go back to their old ways of living and being. 

It’s meant letting go of fears about the future and letting growth happen…moving on…and entering into a new phase of life. Our disrupted life these past couple of years has maybe made some of us appreciate what we had taken for granted. Perhaps we can now see the Christ of the essential worker who is standing for hours at a time checking out our groceries at the supermarket. “New understanding” is an important component of “new life.” That ability to have recognition of the “other” echoes Peter’s exclamation that after long thinking salvation was only for some…he finally sees that God shows no partiality. All people…every creature is loved by God.

It's what the disciples are facing in their rapidly shifting reality. Jesus has died…Jesus has risen. What they thought they’d lost has now been regained. And while the message here isn’t explicitly stated, the assurance coming to these women and to us many centuries later is that oft-repeated phrase: Don’t be afraid.

Remember Jesus’ message: love one another. Take care of each other.

Why is it so hard for us to believe that? Why is it that when we hear such good news we keep looking for the caveat…the asterisk…the fine print that informs of us that “our mileage might vary.”

I imagine the reason it’s tough for many of us to believe in this incredibly good news is because we’ve had far too many experiences of Christians or Christianity that have undermined this reality of Jesus. I’ve said it before: church hurt is real. And there have been plenty of people who have kept Jesus in a locked closet of the church…rather than letting everyone in on the reality that Jesus is the greatest liberator from oppression ever.

Perhaps the message we need to get out of this is not to be afraid to speak our truth about how God has met us…helped us through those times of chaos that come in our lives…given us the courage that when things are going awry…we can trust that a new path will open. It’s because of the women…and men…that the life of Christ became known…and the church grew.

More importantly…because Jesus’ liberating love has touched lives…people couldn’t wait to share that love with others who found themselves on the margins of society.

And we don’t need megaphones…or big fancy church programs. Being present and sitting with the person who is hurting…being willing to reach out to the disenfranchised…has given those who have been hurt by the church a new understanding of the reality of Jesus as we know him. And healing begins to take root.

Remember what Jesus has taught us…and shown us through the resurrection: new life has begun.

We are alive!

We are free!

And let the whole of God’s church say, “Alleluia! Amen!”

"The Egyptians Whom You See Today": A Sermon for the Great Vigil of Easter

I love the Great Vigil of Easter. I love the tracing of the history of salvation. I love the Exsultet. I love the first fire. And, as a priest, I love that it signals that I am almost to the end of the marathon of Holy Week. 

I had initially planned to preach once we got into the Eucharistic part of the Great Vigil service. But then I realized that it was the same Gospel as the Easter service. And I truly don't like when priests preach the same sermon at two different services that have two different feelings. 

And so I opted to put the sermon after the five readings from the Hebrew Bible about the journey of salvation. I primarily focused on the deliverance through the Red Sea. But really, all the readings are meant to help us see how God's been with us through our Jewish ancestors experiences...which would lead to our story which picks up with Jesus. 

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When I was telling my wife Isabelle about this service and the readings we were going to hear, she was aghast.

“That’s too much!! That’s like your EfM…where they had you reading whole books of the Bible!”

Fortunately, this service doesn’t have us reading the entire books of Genesis, Exodus, Isaiah and Ezekiel. If we had THAT requirement...our service would be longer…Christ wouldn’t rise from the grave until sometime about Christmas…and I would agree with her that then it would really be TOO much!

We also aren’t doing ALL nine of the recommended readings. One of my liturgics professors at seminary insisted that we must do all of them. And while I appreciate and get his point, I also know the people of God have their limits. What might have been a good and noble practice in the 1980s has had to change to accommodate our 21^st century attention spans.

But there is one reading of the nine that IS required at this service, and that’s the one about the Israelites escaping their oppression in Egypt through the Red Sea.

“But Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the deliverance that the LORD will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today you shall never see again. The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to keep still.” (Ex14:13-14).

The Egyptians whom you see today you shall never see again.

The bullies, the tyrants, the ones laying burdens upon you…take heart: God will buoy you up in these times of fear and chaos…and will help get you to a safer shore.

If these words of blessed assurance are a comfort to us in Valdosta, I can only hope and imagine how they can embolden and help those whose lives are in danger in Ukraine and other parts of the world where war and civil strife are the rule of the day.

It can be so hard to see and feel God’s presence when we are in the middle of danger or any kind of crisis…whether it’s being hit with a sudden loss or even running for our lives. Our aggressors and our troubles seem so huge.  We feel trapped and under their thumb with little hope of escape.  We can imagine how the Israelites must have thought…escaping a powerful army and finding themselves standing at the edge of the Red Sea with nowhere to turn. And we hear it in their complaining…

”Why did we do this? Why didn’t we just stay with the devil we knew instead of being out here with the devil we don’t know?”

Moses had certainly had his own arguments with God, wondering how he could help his people…while also taking on the powerful Pharaoh. And each time he balked at this mission, God reassured him…and even told him how things were going to go with Pharaoh.

And now…standing before the Red Sea…we hear that God’s work is at play in him. That confidence has bubbled up inside Moses and he says that oft-repeated Biblical phrase, “Do not be afraid.”

Fear is the thing that often stops us and keep us from moving forward. Just like the Israelites, we’d rather retreat back into our known lives…even if it means servitude and horrible life conditions rather than taking that terrifying step forward. 

Fear tells us we can’t take that step…make that move…go in that new direction. Faith beckons us to trust that we can and will be alright. “Don’t be afraid.”

The Pharaohs of the world depend on us being too afraid to act. That’s how they maintain their status with their hardened hearts. But when we listen like Moses…calm our fears…the waters part…we see a way forward…and the Egyptians of old get washed away and no longer hold power over us.

I’ve had many conversations with priest friends about this passage, and they worry that this story comes off as God hating the Egyptians. If we take it literally, I guess we could get that impression. But this story…like so many others…is not literal….but it IS liberating…and shows the enormous freeing power of God.

The readings we’ve heard this morning…from the First Creation to the rebuilding of a scattered people ligament to ligament and bone-to-bone…are the repeated signs of God’s love and determination to be living in Love with God’s creation. These stories are in the collective consciousness of Christianity as passed on to us from our Jewish ancestors. And they set the stage for the start of our own story: just as God delivered Israel…God is delivering us through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  

Jesus opens for us a way to overcome whatever metaphorical Egyptians are pursuing us and trying to drag us down…whatever Pharaoh is holding us hostage to our fears…and showing us that we shall overcome the obstacles in our way.

Trusting in this reality of Jesus…we stop and give thanks for the times in which we were able to get to the other side of turmoil and crisis.

It’s not that we never face trying times again…certainly they will come. But with Christ in our hearts…there’s the confidence that the Lord will fight for us if we keep still and stick close to that Holy Presence within who is our God.

Thanks be to God for that!

 

Love Wins...Even When It Looks Like It's Losing: A Good Friday Sermon

 Because the services of the Triduum are one very long continuous service, I chose not to pray before I started. Instead...I picked up on this one section of John's Passion Gospel. And--truth be told--I cribbed quite a bit from some previous blog entries to write this one. It helps that I was one deep theological thinker for years before I was even allowed to go to seminary. LOL!

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“Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, "Woman, here is your son." Then he said to the disciple, "Here is your mother." And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.” (John 19:25b-27)

 

Last night…Jesus taught us through a meal and foot washing how to love and be true friends to one another.

Here…at his final hours of his life…most of the inner band of beloved friends have disappeared.

Love is left vulnerable and suffering.

He cries out for God: My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?

Where are you?

It is an intense scene. It is also this experience of agony that for so many who have felt themselves pushed into the margins of society…this is how they see God as having been through the same wringer…the same hardships and sting of rejection…and as the hymn says, ‘the strife is o’er, the battle done. The victory of life is won!’  Because this is not the end of Jesus. He is winning…even as it appears on the outside that he’s losing. God is taking the world’s sins into the grave and will resurrect Jesus on the third day.

I quoted at the start some lines that struck me. As I’ve said, even after Jesus has shown his disciples how to be friends, most of them have run away in the face of Jesus’ arrest. But the women…three Marys including his mother…are standing in the crowd…watching him die. With them is the beloved disciple…John.  Jesus, as he is dying this excruciating death, gazes down…and brings together two people into a familial kinship of mother and son.  Before this moment, Mother Mary and Disciple John may have been, at most, acquaintances.  But Jesus is providing the bond that draws two strangers together in Love.  

In suffering, pain, and heartache…John and Mary cling to each other and he takes her into his home.

Another verse in the Gospel passage from tonight also caught my attention. It’s in reference to the criminals executed with Jesus:

There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, with Jesus between them.

John's Gospel doesn't elaborate on this moment in the way that Matthew and Luke feel the need to discuss the ones hanging alongside Jesus.  Matthew would have us believe that the criminals, who we believe are justly accused as opposed to innocent Jesus, join with the crowds in mocking him.  Luke, on the other hand, gives us a more hope-filled moment where one criminal is mocking Christ, and the other criminal comes to Jesus' defense and asks Christ to remember him.  And Jesus, again during his own physical pain, assures that criminal that today, he will be with Christ in Paradise…redeeming the dead. 

Jesus' arms, stretched out on the hard wood of the cross, is reaching out to those condemned to die with him.  That reach, extending forward to us today, invites us, too, to die with Christ to all those various sins of failure to love more fully, pay attention to those around us, reach out to those in need.  This is the day of recognition, reconciliation, and repentance. 

It seems fitting, then, that Good Friday represents the day that hangs in-between Maundy Thursday and Holy Saturday and the Easter Vigil proclamation that Christ has risen.  It is the middle ground between Thursday night's shared meal, foot washing, and final instructions to love one another as Christ has loved us and made that love a visible sign in going to the cross to claim the ultimate victory over sin and death.

And…just in case we still didn’t get it…the empty tomb of Easter shows us that nothing, absolutely nothing, will destroy Love and separate us from God. Ever! 

The solemness and the hard wood of the Good Friday cross remind us that we must endure and pass through this pain before we can celebrate on Sunday morning.

Good Fridays happen….and I know we have all been living through what might have felt like one extremely long Good Friday period.

But Easters will follow.   

Jesus’ place, in between two acquaintances and two strangers, is the constant reminder that even as we are in pain in our Good Friday moments, we are not exempt from reaching our hands forth in Love to the other, all of those we call "other." Keep the faith, dear Easter people of God!   

 

Meditation on Washing Feet: Maundy Thursday

 This is my first time being in the role of priest for Holy Week. And serving a congregation 80 miles from home has meant that I needed to stay in Valdosta. I chose to write all my sermons before Maundy Thursday. I didn't want to chance not getting them done. 

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Text: John 13:1-17; 31b-35

 

Loving God, as we seek to know and follow you more faithfully, we pray you will open and fill our hearts with love and knowledge of your Son Jesus. May we see ever more clearly what it is you are calling us to, and may we respond with joy and justice. Amen.

 

You know, feet must be some of the most mysterious parts of the human body.

They’re pretty essential parts, too, particularly for anyone working jobs that don’t involve sitting at a desk all day long.  

As a licensed massage therapist, I have had countless numbers of clients tell me that they don’t want me to touch their feet (thankfully, I have some who are more than happy to have me work on them). Most of the time, it’s that folks are embarrassed about their feet…especially if they haven’t had time to go home and shower before their appointment. I always gently assure them that I am not offended by their feet…and remind them how our feet must hold us up all day, sometimes in socks and cramped shoes…so they could use some tenderness and care.

And…if the person seems really worried about having dirty feet…I’ll offer to wash them.

The times when I have done this in my practice have been beautiful. The anxiety, the fear, the self-consciousness about having stinky feet literally seems to flow out of their soles and into the water bath. The creases on their foreheads relax. They’re refreshed and renewed. And I haven’t even laid my hands on their aching back, or tired neck.

Jesus’ act of washing the disciples’ feet is part of his last instructions to them and to us about what it means to love one another. There were no closed-toe shoes back in First Century Palestine, so their feet were likely pretty rough and caked with all kinds of mud and dirt. In the same way that John’s Baptism was meant to purify people from sin, Jesus is washing away the impurities collected on the feet and giving them a fresh feeling that relaxes the whole body.

Now…Simon Peter…sweet loveable Peter…he doesn’t understand what Jesus is doing and actually is offended that Jesus wants to wash his and the others’ feet.

“Oh, no, no, no…Lord. This is beneath you, good Teacher, venerable Rabbi, most excellent Messiah…”

And then he starts insisting that Jesus must wash all of him! Honestly, if washing his feet was “too much”…Peter wants Jesus to wash his whole body?

Jesus is like, “Didn’t you take a shower today?”

See: from Jesus’ perspective…this foot washing is exactly what he’s supposed to be doing.

He’s not royalty.

Just because they call him “Master” that doesn’t excuse him from serving…especially to those who will soon find out that he’ll need them more than ever to serve his good work in the world. This foot washing is to make the point: love one another. Treat everybody right. This is how we’ll change the world as we know it.

Tonight…we engage in this same opportunity to give and receive, to allow another to show us love…that same agape-type love…that we had with our meal before the service. For those who are so used to being the ones who help…the doers…some might call y’all the Marthas of the church…allowing your fellow follower of Jesus to wash your feet may make you a little bit nervous. That’s OK. I know better than to tell you “Don’t be nervous.” I will remind you that one of the most oft-repeated phrases in the Bible is “Do not be afraid.” Taking part in this ritual brings us all closer to the One who taught us this action as a sign of Love.

It is also a good preparation for what is to come for these next days of the Triduum….that fancy word for “The Three Days.”

Letting go of control…and the need to know what’s going to happen next…acknowledging that some events are put into motion and we must go into places which challenge us. That’s all part of what begins tonight with the stripping of the altar. On this night…when Jesus says he knows his hour has come…he is releasing himself completely to God’s will and mission. The symbolism of taking away the artifacts and the beautiful altar frontal and leaving the table bare is the reminder that…in the end…Jesus laid himself bare as his final act of love…trusting in God’s mercy and deliverance. Just like the sharing of a meal…and the washing of feet…the emptiness of the altar serves as a visual reminder to us that love makes us vulnerable.

All the more reason for us wash each other’s feet, and give each other that comfort that we are not alone on this journey.

 

Palm Sunday 2022: Beware of the Powerful

 

Here it comes: my first Holy Week as a priest. As I was sipping on my coffee in the pre-dawn hours of Sunday, a text came in from my seminary classmate, Mtr. Melina, wishing a slew of us all the best this week. It was a nice reminder that I have a crew of colleagues in the church spread throughout the country. That helped to give me a lift as I got in the car for the long drive to Valdosta. 

As is the custom, we did the reading from the Passion Gospel of Luke in parts. As a Mickee Faustkateer, I don't believe in gender-specific casting. And...like so many churches...St. Barnabas has more women present on any given Sunday, so the women have to play men. And, in the case of St. Barnabas, one of members is Transgender and volunteered to read the part of Jesus, a much better choice than the usual casting they've done (apparently, the priest has played Jesus for years. I refused. Theologically, it is not right to have the authority figure in the worship service play the role of the one questioning authority. So says this priest!)

Because the Gospel is so long, I kept my sermon to less than my usual 10-13 minutes. See what you think. 

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Text: Luke 22:14-23:56

 

Politics makes such strange bedfellows. And that can be found in one of the lines in the Gospel text:

“That same day Herod and Pilate became friends with each other; before this they had been enemies.” (Luke 23:12)

The whole scene involves Pilate and Herod passing Jesus back and forth between each other to determine which imperial leader was going to take responsibility for convicting this upstart Jesus. Would it be the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate or the Jewish tetrarch Herod Antipas? 

This scene only appears in Luke…and no other authorities can verify that it happened. So why is it there?

Maybe Luke wanted to further establish just how much of an outsider Jesus was to the authorities of his day.

It could also be that this ping-ponging of Jesus between the two leaders recalls some of the gruesome details of the execution of John the Baptist…another agitator…whose head got passed from person to person at a birthday party.

I don’t know why it’s there.

But it serves as a useful allegory for us in the 21^st Century of what happens when politics and “religion” become bedfellows…when power perceives a growing threat from those it considers “other.”  It gets ugly. It’s worse when the representative of “religion” is barely recognizable as a true religious authority. Even though Herod was Jewish…he was a puppet of Caesar Augustus…and his kinfolk would have seen him as a collaborator with Rome. And Pontius Pilate was widely known to be a brutal authoritarian.

Even today…when politics and religion get intertwined in a competition of power and dominance…it’s usually those without the power who get hurt.

In our society…our extremely polarized society…there are those claiming moral authority in the halls of power who keep stoking the fires that have led to distrust…and anger…and our inability to have rational conversations with each other.

Here enters Jesus.

Once more…Jesus is showing us that when faced with a corrupted version of justice…when dealing with self-serving power brokers…he refuses to play their games.

When Herod wants him to perform a sign, he stays silent. When Pilate wants to know if he’s the King of the Jews, he gives a non-answer of “You say so.”

Some commentators say that Jesus is presenting an alternate reality. But what I think he’s doing is establishing what is the real reality: Love. 

Love as the more powerful force that doesn’t demand dominance.  

That Love gets nailed to a cross…and yet that cross and grave cannot contain that Love because Love is a greater force than evil and death.

We…as followers of Jesus are invited through our baptism to live into this reality and walk this path. 

This is a way of Love which takes us into the suffering world just as Jesus went…with the promise that if we stick with this source of Love…and when we fall away…come back onto the path…we can and will overcome the obstacles put in our way.

One more thing before I conclude.

As we enter into this Holy Week, we are going to be hearing readings from the Gospel of John that need a lot of context because of his repeated use of the term “the Jews.”

We must always remember that our evangelists were writing at a particular time and to particular groups of people….Luke, for instance, is really more for a Gentile audience.

What John gives us is an insider’s view of the polarized times in the Second Century. There was dissension in the Jewish family between those who believed in Jesus as the Messiah and those who looked around at a troubled world and said the Messiah had not yet come. This was the beginning of the split which would eventually lead to Christianity. We read these texts because John is the one Gospel that makes the strongest claim of Jesus as God…the Word made flesh.

Unfortunately…this Gospel has also been one of those texts that prove my point about what can happen when religion and political power get too cozy and corrupted.

The result has been horrific crimes against humanity…from the medieval Inquisition in Spain…to the Holocaust in World War II to the rise of anti-Semitism in this country and around the world. The Gospels…especially John…have been used to persecute Jews.

The terrible irony is that Jesus was a Jew.

So was Peter.

So was Judas.

So was Mary.

Each of them provide us an example of discipleship:

There’s the one who denies Jesus because he’s afraid of what ridicule and consequences he might face.

There’s the one who betrays Jesus for a profit.

And then the one who loves Jesus and bears witness to both his brutal death and his incredible resurrection.

All of them were on Team Jesus. To be anti-Semitic is to miss the point of Jesus’ whole ministry and mission which is to Love.

With that caveat…I invite you and encourage you to take this week…this Holy Week…as a time to slow down, and experience in body, mind and spirit what it means to be a follower of Jesus. Come back for a meal on Thursday…and the foot washing at the service. Take a moment to pause and take in the site of an empty altar.

Remember Jesus’ death on Good Friday with the stations of the cross and in the evening service where we name the many ways in which we need God’s help to make for a more just society.

And then return next Sunday to remember the reality: Resurrection is real. We are redeemed. We are loved.