Sunday, April 19, 2015

What is truth? - A Sermon for Easter 3B



As with last week’s recollection of resurrection events, the disciples are confronted with an appearance of Jesus, who appears in their midst and says, “Peace be with you.”  Once again we hear assurances to not be afraid, and to not doubt – look at Jesus’ hands and feet – touch the wounds if you want to. The addition to Luke’s version of the account is that Jesus asks for food; the disciples offer him left-over fish and Jesus eats it.  The point is that Jesus has been resurrected in body; Jesus is not a ghost.  Unlike John’s telling of the story, where Jesus appears in their midst of the disciples, although, the doors were locked – so as to make one think that Jesus is some form of Spirit – that is until Thomas was invited to touch the wounds.
The recollection previous to the one read from Luke this morning, has two disciples on the road walking with a stranger and telling him of the happenings of the past few days – about Jesus’ death and then his disappearance from the grave.  They do not recognize that this stranger is the Christ until the stranger breaks bread with them.  So Jesus doesn’t look like Jesus. 
In the Gospel of John, Mary mistakes Jesus for the gardener, his voice gives him away –but, she is not to touch him as his body is not like a human body.
On Easter Sunday, Mark’s telling of the resurrection simply said that the tomb was empty and Jesus’ was going ahead of them to meet them in Galilee – Mark doesn’t tell us if this happens.
The discrepancies in the recollection of resurrection events has me think back to the beginning of the saga.  On Good Friday we heard Pilate ask, in a line that almost seems out of place at that point, “What is truth?”
What is the truth of the resurrection?

“A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it and thus changes it to his measure. Some pick out parts and reject the rest, some strain the story through their mesh of prejudice, some paint it with their own delight. A story must have some points of contact with the reader to make him feel at home in it. Only then can he accept wonders.”


Last Sunday for the Kids Corner, I brought a carton of coloured Easter eggs. Inside each egg was an item that was connected to the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection. As children opened the eggs, they were invited to tell a story about Jesus and the item in the egg.  For those who were here, you will recollect that the first egg held a small thin strip of leather. The congregation was told a fantastic story about a cow in a stable.  The cow ended up in Jerusalem.  It is here that Jesus sees the cow.  Jesus goes up to the cow and says, “Cow, you, are a good cow.”
This was the best resurrection story I heard last Sunday! Some of you may dismiss the story as a few lines of fabricated nonsense from a child; but, consider the truth within the tale.
The simple story, spoken in a captivating way, pointed to relationship – Jesus’ relationship with animals; Creator and creation; “reading between the lines” there was a sense of compassion, love, and belonging.  Jesus understood what the cow needed to hear.
What else would Jesus say to a cow…and if Jesus so loved a cow, how much more does Jesus care for you, me?
The story illustrated the resurrected essence of Jesus.  The story was perhaps based on experience or maybe words taken to heart from stories heard in a place such as this.

“You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone's soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows that they might do because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift.”



Searching for the historical Jesus has been a project of academics for the past forty years. In the 1970s, a guy by the name of Robert Funk convened a group of scholars in what by the 1980s was called the Jesus Seminar, to determine how much of the historical Jesus could be known.  The group decided through discussion and a complex voting mechanism that only about 20% of what Jesus said in the Gospels could actually be attributed to Jesus.  The Jesus Seminar was followed by others seeking the historical Jesus; public debates were held across North America, with academics lining up along the spectrum from the stand that there was little to no evidence to prove Jesus existed, to others holding to a long list of facts supporting the historicity of Jesus, including the resurrection event.
People from all walks of life also began to place themselves into different camps.  Some believe that the resurrection of Jesus happened exactly the way the Bible says – a literal interpretation of the resurrection of the body.  Then there are others who believe that resurrection was a spiritual resurrection.  Others hold a combination of both ideas, where theology and philosophy weave the pieces together.  Others use a good dose of mystery to allow for continued change in understanding and chance for surprise by the Christ.
Truth varies depending on who recollects the resurrection story.
There are congregations that like to think, or at least present to the world, that all people in their pews are of one mind, one heart, and most importantly one understanding. Some congregations can say this, perhaps, but, we certainly cannot.
The beauty of this place – of Resurrection – is that we come with as many varied stories and understandings as people sitting here.  This community is like that of the Gospel writers who reflected in their multiple recollections of resurrection events, the diversity of what resurrection means.  Why does truth have to be either/or? Not both/and….? Every tidbit of story - including that of Jesus speaking to the cow, contributes to a fuller picture of the resurrected Christ.
This congregation has embraced a diversity of truth and is comfortable allowing members to think for themselves and experience resurrection in their own time.  Our rules of engagement and community include being open to sitting side-by-side with someone who might articulate the truth in an entirely different way from our own understanding.  In today’s world, this is a pretty amazing feet.
Resurrection and truth – determined in this manner – serves us well as we then learn to hone skills:
the ability to juggle ideas and to be flexible, keeping open to the potential for surprise, accepting and anticipating the challenge of new understanding, articulating  transforming theology; and living in a constant movement from this boundary – where we are now-  to the next resurrection occurrence.

Marcus Borg on his blog wrote:  The central meaning of Easter is not about whether something happened to the corpse of Jesus. Its central meanings are that Jesus continues to be known and that he is Lord. The tomb couldn’t hold him. He’s loose in the world. He’s still here. He’s still recruiting for the kingdom of God.”

This is truth:  Jesus continues to be known and he is Lord. The tomb couldn’t hold him. Jesus is loose in the world. Jesus is still here.  Jesus is recruiting for the kingdom of God.  No matter how we interpret or understand this, no matter how this truth is articulated… This is Good News!
Resurrection is known, is bigger than ourselves, it cannot be contained; resurrection has energy, it is alive and moving, it is present and moves into the future; it has the potential to make all things new.
This is a truth I am wish to live in and share in community. This a truth for which I am willing to lay down my life.  This is a truth that will hold me should all else fail.
…and although I might understand it differently than you, I am honoured to be in this community where each of you challenges, changes, and adds to resurrection truth within me- making a picture that is closer to wholeness. …together we can say in the fullness of truth, “We believe in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.” Amen.

Sunday, April 5, 2015

Easter - sermon trilogy 2015




The sermons for Maundy Thurs, Good Friday, and Easter have interwoven the stories from the hundred loonies given to members during the month of January.  Each person was to take their loonie and use it to further God’s mission in the world. To date 36 stories have been written in the book, others are awaiting the opportunity to give them.  God’s mission continues every day, unfolding before our very eyes.

The Gospel according to Mark greets us with women going to the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus.  The tomb is empty – the story ends with the women being simultaneously ecstatic and terrified.  “They said nothing to anyone.”
That’s it, that’s all.
No appearances of Jesus in the garden, on the road, or cooking breakfast.
The end of the story is a letdown – it wouldn’t win a Pulitzer Prize. The ending does, however, end in such a way as to leave us curious, wanting more, and imagining what happened next – in the ecstasy and terror – and silence. 

Sunday’s and Seasons, an Augsburg resource, suggests that the reading from the Gospel of Mark is “an invitation to dwell in the silence, and to interrogate our noise.” We make a lot of noise during our Easter celebrations: the organ played with full stops, the choir in exceptional form, joyous Alleluias at the top of our voices, giddy giggles after Easter breakfast and the popping of champagne – finally a Sunday with a church teeming with people – no weather incidents, the ice receding to create parking on the street, and the silence of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday left behind. 
Today’s celebration is in great contrast to the services of the past two months. Those services were quiet and intimate gatherings of the faithful few who could walk or be dropped off. Circumstances gave us pause to reflect on the simple, with the intimate sharing of quiet prayer and personal stories, and participating in communion as one table. Many of you were unable to get here, let alone park.  What did you miss? Your answer is probably a simple one.
Easter stripped of the extras (the festivities, the hymns, the joy, and people) we are left with only the basic story – the simple truth: Christ has died.  Christ is risen. Christ will come again.

The women woke on the third day and went to anoint their loved one.  It was right and salutary. It was a gift. It was a way to express love and appreciation.  In the gift was respect, a remembrance of the past, and a hope for the future. We took anniversary loonies into the world as gift, where the gift was invested in hope to be resurrected in the future:
*a donation will be placed in the public gardens change box to maintain this beautiful public space
* vegetable seeds will be planted in a community garden, with the harvest to come back to the church to share
*a loonie was given to a parking metre that had run out of time
*a contribution was given to a collection for a co-worker facing surgery and medical expenses

Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.
Risen and come again – the possibility that resurrection is not a onetime static occurrence became real to us and in the world through loonies that will keep on giving and spreading Good News to more than one person:
*two loonies bought used books from the First Baptist book library helping their outreach programs, the book to be read will be passed on to a person working security night shift
*four loonies were used to purchase 4 toques at the Salvation Army store, supporting Salvation Army community outreach programs, with the toques going into boxes for the Mission to Seafarers

And perhaps the best part of the Easter story from members of Resurrection is that terror – fear- doesn’t paralyze us from sharing the Good News. Mark’s Gospel ends with the words, translated from gk, they were afraid for…  but, the ecstasy (a better translation of the gk, than amazement as we heard read) has us act in hope.  We set fear aside and shared whence our giving grows – acts of love were intimate moments without noise or fan-fare – just the passing of a simple truth:

*The witness to a nice waitress who heard the story of our church, and that the loonie will bring a blessing.
*The witness to a homeless man at McDonald’s who gets a breakfast every Monday.  The happiness expressed when he was chosen –special- as the recipient of a church coin.
*The witness of:
“My husband and I decided to put our loonies together as not much can be done with one, not even a coffee – One day I was in line at the drugstore when someone ahead of me was paying his power bill with a cheque and the clerk told him he was short $1.97. I put my hand in my pocket and there was the two loonies. The clerk asked him if he had the extra, he had no money.  I passed him the $2.  He said I can’t pay you back. I said no need –and told him our church was 100 years old and we were given a loonie to give away. He thanked me and said maybe it’s time I went back to church.  I invited him to come and told him it was a warm place to get out of the cold.  I asked God to bless him. He offered to carry my parcels home (I declined) – he was so thankful. When he left the clerk told me she had goosebumps because in all her years of work she had never witnessed anything like that happen.  It certainly made my day.  We don’t need a big amount to help someone in need. – only to be aware – and be ready.”

The anniversary loonie project resurrected in us a focus, a re-focus, to the simple truth:
 Christ has died.  Christ has risen. Christ will come again. 
Christ came again and again for us:  in reflection about what to do with our coins, in prayerful consideration, in the importance of gifts regardless of the size. It was resurrected in us that giving affects us as much or more than the receiver. Christ has risen in our changed perceptions of others. Christ has died and Christ has risen in the movement through terror to action – some of us were pushed outside our comfort zones – asking people their names, listening to other’s stories, and daring to enter the lives of others by setting ourselves aside.  Christ will come again as we have become observant of street people, musicians, those in the service industry, those living on the margins, seeing how far “welfare state” money doesn’t go, and seeing places to grow happiness, joy, and hope.
Resurrection simply happens – the truth of Easter explodes – when we are ecstatic and terrified, amazed and afraid – yet, remaining open to possibility, actively watching for opportunity to love our neighbour, and in the blink of an eye blossom a moment of joy.

Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.
The simplicity of this truth changes us, speaking to our hearts and consciences. 
We invested in those around us.  In fact we freely added of our own money, treasures, and resources – and we added compassion and love.
The news did reach the disciples and Peter that Jesus had gone ahead of them to Galilee.
The story was told, lived, and shared through the lives of followers through the centuries.
It is resurrected in our own day, in our everyday lives – experienced in ecstasy and terror.
This morning we are left in the middle of a story, one without an ending, they were afraid for …(dot, dot, dot)

Go and live the dot, dot, dot embodied in the simple truth: Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ will come again.

Friday, April 3, 2015

GOOD FRIDAY -sermon trilogy 2015




The sermons for Maundy Thurs, Good Friday, and Easter have interwoven the stories from the hundred loonies given to members during the month of January.  Each person was to take their loonie and use it to further God’s mission in the world. To date 36 stories have been written in the book, others are awaiting the opportunity to give them.  God’s mission continues every day, unfolding before our very eyes.

Last Sunday we heard the Passion narrative from the Gospel of Mark, rather, than, the John reading we hear today.  In Mark, two bandits are crucified with Jesus; we hear that they join with others and taunted Jesus. This is all we are told.  In the Gospel of John we are given even less information: two others were crucified with him, one on either side.  John doesn’t label them as bandits or criminals– although they must have been; neither gets a plaque above their heads like Jesus does; John makes no comment as to whether the two taunted Jesus. They were there… unnamed, unnoticed, and disregarded.

Crosses are placed across our landscape every day. The nameless and falsely accused are sent to prison and death, often unnoticed as the busy world carries on at an inhumane speed with oft times questionable ethics.
The nameless ones in our midst are nameless and silent: some because they have opted out of business as usual, others because they are so far on the margin they avoid human contact, and others -more often nameless- because we push them to the margin and purposefully keep them at least at arm’s length.
The rituals of Good Friday bring us to the foot of The Cross … and the crosses of the nameless who continue to be crucified.  We are humbled in the bidding prayers and in the Solemn Reproaches as to those whom we forget, whom we have hand in crucifying.  Again and again God calls, “Oh my people, O my church, what more could I have done for you. … you have prepared a cross for your Saviour.”

Crosses have been made:  the shadow of death is a lived reality with death being a very real possibility for:
The disabled senior panhandling in Bayer’s Lake
The nameless restaurant server
The person asking for money on Spring Garden Rd
The old man at McDonald’s and his woman friend
The man jamming with his guitar for coins of the passersby
The unnamed beggar
A woman begging at the entrance to Bayer’s Lake
A young man on Young St needing a room for the night
The unnamed co-worker who is a 22 yr old single-mom

It is at the foot of this cross that we kneel.

Douglas John Hall wrote, “If you claim to be a disciple of the crucified one you must expect to participate in his sufferings; if you preach a theology of the cross, you will have to become a community of the cross.  Anything else would represent a kind of hypocrisy. … this theology is only authentic – only ‘for real’ – insofar as it gives birth to a community that suffers with Christ in the world.”   He comments that we are to be a “A cruciform people.” We are to be the cross, to bear the cross, to name the crosses in our midst: poverty, wage disparity, inequality, accessibility of jobs, lack of affordable housing and day care, pensions and disability shortfalls. We are to be the voice to name the nameless.

A voice that through our loonies carried to:
Syrian refugees through CLWR
To 200 high school students who attend weekly KD lunches at St. John’s United Church in Lower Sackville – keeping them from idle-ly wandering through Sobeys on mass at lunch time
To those touched through the Fellowship of the Least Coin
To the poor through advocacy of an ecumenical initiative started by Roman Catholics to reduce poverty

In the closing act of today’s service we hear the words,  By the holy cross you have redeemed the world.”
It is through Jesus’ act of compassion that the hope of tearing down crosses becomes a reality. Although we do not hear it in the Gospel’s read this year, the Gospel of Luke speaks of relationship; as Jesus speaks to the one bandit, the is redeemed, and to be in relationship with Jesus, Jesus promises, “today you will be with me in paradise.  This is the deconstructing of the cross. Naming, being in relationship, facing death so that new life might be a hope, a possibility, a reality.
The loonies given to the nameless were but a beginning to relationship, to facing death and the crosses in our midst -

At the foot of the cross, as we stare death in the face, as we know not what to do, as we lament at the crosses in our own time, as we shiver in chaos ---- in silence -----------------
The heavens open and we hear proclaimed
Behold the life giving cross, on which was hung the Saviour of the whole world.
The words don’t make everything right, but, the words hold hope and promise. There is a surprise.
Entering relationship with the nameless who bear significant crosses – we were touched.
Who would have expected the surprise of Jesus from the cross speaking back to us:
With thank-yous, “I can’t accept that,” a blessing – in the name of God from me to you.
Perhaps it is us on the cross and those we deem to have crosses are free – for they have already and do face death daily.
Face death: face the crosses, face the lack of relationships, face the big issues, face your inabilities, face the nameless – and in death see that it is the way to life and truly living with purpose.

Behold the life giving cross, on which was hung the Saviour of the whole world. Thanks be to God. Amen.

God Is Known- Eye to Eye, Heart to Heart

  The following lines from today’s scripture weave together in my mind.   I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their he...