Crucifixion Followed by Flyleaves

 

This morning, we have arrived at the end of the book. Reign of Christ Sunday is the last Sunday of the Church Year. The reading from Luke 23 is the last Word of the year. In the last chapter authors wrap up the lose ends of their story, draw final conclusions, and/or reveal the key to understanding the whole tale. The curators of the church year have ended the year with this story – the end of the book returns to a previous chapter that has already been read – the crucifixion of Jesus.

It is a bone jarring ending and one that is meant to settle into our bones. Just like when dampness or a change of weather is felt in the bones or joints, there is an ache, a stiffness, and a slowing down.

The last Sunday of the year, cuts to the bone, to prepare the foundation for a reflective Advent Season and focused journey to Christmas. The epic story of Jesus’ crucifixion is the exclamation point on a whole year of worship, prayer, and study. The end brings us, once again, to the foot of the cross. To suffering. To death. To an ache for wholeness, for reconciled relationships and a coming in fullness of God’s kindom. We stand at the foot of the cross with our stiffness in understanding and our stiffness in responding with the same love and grace we have received.

The final chapter is presented as the key to understanding who we are and what we are all about. Walk into almost any Lutheran worship space and you will encounter at the front of the sanctuary a large visible cross. In Lutheran theology, it is the cross - Jesus’ death on the cross- that is THE story. It is a story that rewrites power and glory to be actions of compassion and expressions of unconditional love: defying the powers of this world, identifying with the pain and sorrow of human existence, and accepting and liberating that which is broken. God with Jesus on the cross choose to redeem and heal all creation.

 

For every year of the three year lectionary cycle, the scripture texts have been correlated into a book to make it easy for our lectors. Each book is a unique set of voices who bear witness to God’s story. The Gospel good news is told through the lens of Matthew, Mark, or Luke. At the end of this church year cycle, we end with the crucifixion according to Luke. This means that we are also at the end of this lectionary book. What appears at following this story, at the end of the book, are blank pages.

 

I am a book lover. I am filled with joy when holding and reading through a well crafted, beautifully bond book – the kind with embossed spines and fanciful inner leaf cover paper that hastens the cover to the reading pages. In such a book when you reach the end of the story, there is more. There are endpapers, also called flyleaves. The blank pages.

Let’s take a look at the end of the red hymnbook. Open to the end of the book and notice how many blank pages there are. There are various practical and production reasons for the flyleaves. The endpapers connect the cover to the main pages, protect text from damage, and balance book folios. These placeholding and space-filling pages are a product of the printing and binding process, in one type like our hymnbook through folding sections into what are called signatures. I have often wondered about these pages and considered them a waste of space and paper. Could more hymns not have been printed on the pages? Or are the pages a suggestion that there are more hymns, perhaps our own songs, to add to the compendium?

 

Coming to the end of a book, especially one that has captured my imagination and emotion, always seems rather sad. I want to know the end of the story, but I don’t want the book to end for I have enjoyed it so much. This week I finished a book with lots of flyleaves. I appreciated their presence. I found that reaching the end of a deeply emotional story and then flipping through the blank pages – was a pause to let the beauty of the book sink in, and it was a material sign that the story continues beyond the words of the book. There is more to be written.

 

There is more to be written after Jesus’ death on the cross. The Bible has many books that carry on from THE story: resurrection accounts, the coming of the Holy Spirit, Paul’s travels, stories from early church communities, the persecution of Jesus’ followers. Those are the stories that have been collected into the Bible. How many other stories were and are there that continue on from Jesus’ death on the cross?

 

There are various versions of a story about a magical library. The story is about a child who discovers a hidden library. The child spends many days going to the library to discover the stories in the magical books, books that when opened took the child to fantastical places. One afternoon when leaving the wizened librarian gave the child a book. Inside, the first few pages of the book, were the adventures of their life, and the rest of the pages were blank waiting to be filled. The librarian explained that the book was a gift for those who truly believed in the power of stories. The gift was for the child to so appreciate the beauty and adventure of their own life story, just like the love they had for other magical books, that they lived their lives with a heart open to see that every day held its own magic and each person’s story was worth telling.

 

We stand at the foot of the cross. Turn the page and what was a blank page is your baptismal certificate, or a story of your seeking out who this Jesus on the cross is. In the waters of baptism, we die to ourselves, we die with Jesus, and then we rise with Christ to write the rest of our pages. As we grow in faith we are taught the Lord’s Prayer, and in each praying of it we say for thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever. In each praying, we are drawn back to the end of the church year, the exclamation point – the cross. In praying this line, we are reminded that in dying Jesus exemplified kingdom, and defined power as actions of compassion and glory as expression of unconditional love. Rising with Christ we are called to live God’s understanding of power and glory and kindom. God’s story becomes our story; our story is God’s story. These stories and adventures are what gets written on the blank pages of our books.  God’s power and glory which are actions of compassion and expressions of unconditional love, are as described in the story of the child, the magic held in each day. It is through the cross, God’s unconditional act of love for creation that accepts and honours each person’s story as one worth telling.

 

As we finish off the church year, you are invited to digest THE story of Jesus’ crucifixion. Let it grow in your bone marrow and strengthen your bones.  Keep the cross before your eyes as the key to understanding and experiencing Advent and Christmas. Bend on the prayer-bone offering your very bones to God for God’s use to bring the kindom, the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen.

Fiery Conversion

 on this Sunday (Pentecost 23) the opening hymn was 'Hark the Herald Angels Sing."

Yes, we did. This morning’s opening hymn was a Christmas Carol, as surprising as the words read from the prophet Malachi. Malachi, a prophet not read throughout the season of Advent or Christmas, provides the lyrics of the third verse of the hymn, Hark the Herald Angels Sing.

Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace!/ Hail the Sun of Righteousness! Light and life to all he brings,/ risen with healing in his wings

 

After the initial surprise, how do you experience singing a Christmas carol outside of the Christmas season?

…

 

Christmas carols are the kind of music that is bold and powerful. It fills our spirits, our voices sing loud, there is joy and expectation. The music and lyrics carry the prophetic word, just as in the Book of Malachi, the text proclaims that evil is rooted out, those who revere the Lord’s name shall be healed, and that day is joyous. The theology of Christmas carols runs deep singing of incarnation, salvation, the cross, the kindom, and end times.

Like the prophecies of Malachi, carols balance the challenging reality of our lives together, coloured by evil, suffering, war, and so on, with the loving and healing presence of God in our midst.

 

On the last few Sundays of the church year, we read alarming and fiery scriptures, apocalyptic texts that warn of calamity upon calamity with exhortations to listeners to remain faithful. Malachi’s audience asks question after question from their lingering doubts of both the love God and justice of God. The peoples’ weariness shows as they repeatedly ask, “How have you loved us?” 

 

The people question God’s love and justice, for their lived experience – our experience- is a world shadowed by despair and heartache, where millions live a daily struggle for survival. Malachi points to a lived truth that there is no such thing as getting through life unscathed. The text’s focus draws people of faith to ponder the bare bones of the matter: to this truth how does one respond and where does one find refuge? We are told what we already sense and know: impermanence, inevitability, and unpredictability are intertwined in earthly life. The Gospel reminds us that we are unable to prepare for every eventuality. There is no amount of planning or worry that will save us. And when it all seems bleak and we are about to stop reading the text because it is depressing, the writer reassures the hearer of God’s presence.  Jesus’ comments about the Temple and its destruction preface his apocalyptic talk. Jesus is warming hearers to faith, a faith that is called away from fortifications, and whatever the large stones are in our time and place – to place trust not in the perishable but rather in the persistent presence of God, and the working of God’s love and justice.

 

Charles Wesley wrote Hark the Herald Angels Sing within the first year of his conversion. It was said by Albert Bailey that, “the inspiration of [Charles] newly-made contract with God was still fresh.” The point being that the hymn was filled with emotion and passion; it was an expression of faith that was experienced and embodied more than an intellectual exercise or pursuit.

Charles Wesley’s conversion is not what you might think. Charles and his brother John were raised as Christians. As students at Oxford University, they formed a student organization called the ‘Holy Club,’ a group that met for prayer, Bible study, and practiced pious discipline. They lived directed by good works not by faith. The brothers were ordained pastors and missionaries.  John described being Christian before his conversion as living a “fair summer religion.”

On Pentecost Sunday in 1738, Charles, influenced by Moravian friends who bore witness to salvation by grace through faith, had an experience of Pentecost.  He felt the conviction of the assurance of being a child of God, justified by faith. Charles expressed the experience of the Spirit as one who “chased away the darkness of my unbelief.” Three days later John was at a meeting house and heard a reading of Luther’s preface to the Book of Romans, describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ. John describes the conversion experience, “[I]felt my heart strangely warmed.”

The conversions were not what we generally expect. The brothers, Charles and John were not unbelievers or those deemed heathen, they were Christians – preaching and teaching pastors and missionaries. Conversion was not a change of faith, but rather a change in conviction – much like that of Martin Luther – a sudden experiential knowing of God’s grace.

 

Every pastor has a particular kind of situation that cuts them to the bone. For me it is when members, people I have taught, baptized, confirmed, and have relationship with – choose to be re-baptized in a church community that requires re-baptism for membership. It has happened a few times over my career. It happened this past Sunday. It always hurts. I feel in some way that I have failed, failed to communicate the gospel, the work of God through baptism, and the use of the affirmation of baptism as a liturgy of recommitment. I get angry when a shiny new package of faith – full of emotion and couched as salvation- tempts people into a conversion – that isn’t really conversion, but rather an experiential recommitment to Christ and to God who is already present and working in their lives. That which is shiny and new, in the long run isn’t going to chase away troubles or make living life easier. When the emotion of the experience wears off, when the community rallies around the person less, when the pressures of life surround, when God’s love and God’s justice seem once again overshadowed by the troubles of the world, what then? Where is one’s trust and faith when the ashes of life settle over emotion?

 

Malachi’s listeners continue to question, “how have you loved us?” They have lost faith in the persistent presence of God, and the working of God’s love and God’s justice. Jesus addresses listeners to put their trust in that which although intangible is steadfast and sure.

I get frustrated with a change of church based on emotional experience because I hear in the prophets and from Jesus a message of perseverance and steadfastness regardless of circumstances. I hear the necessity of persistence in faith, persistence in placing trust, which is aided by a persistence of practice, at all times, and especially in the times when our hearts aren’t in it, or our minds journey in doubt. I feel sadness and grief, that restless souls and troubled spirits are unable to wait for an experience of God’s love and God’s justice. I spend much time and energy crafting worship with purpose and intent. Worship designed in connecting head and heart, exploring complicated world views side-by-side with experience and emotions to embody theology deeply. The feeling of commitment, or renewed commitment, a fiery passionate embrace of an experience of God or an exhilarated emotion – won’t happen every week -but with persistence, faith and trust are planted and nourished so that we may be rooted deeply in the mystery of God.

 

I am currently playing in a Scrabble tournament called, “Everybody Loves a Baby.” While I am not all that comfortable around babies, I get it. Bonus words in the tournament include love and joy. Babies bring both emotions to the forefront, along with possibilities and hope amid whatever is going on in the world. In some ways the mention and/or presence of a baby is a conversion experience; our hearts and emotions are activated. We feel something. It is no wonder that God’s love and God’s justice appear in this form, in a baby. Deep theological concepts are diffused through the presence of a baby, the feeling – the emotion around a baby. I am reminded of this each year as I hear you sing the carols of Christmas. I hear your emotion, your longing and thanksgiving, joy, and power, presence – I hear a conversion of heart and a conviction of faith.  

 

Outside of Christmas and the emotions of that season, this morning has been a gift. We have heard the power of a carol and sung together. We have sung theology deep into our bones, in facing fiery apocalyptic texts and articulating the challenging reality of our lives together, coloured by evil, suffering, war, and so on, through a singing with herald voices, we have experienced the Sun, with light and life to all he brings, risen with healing in his wings. In fiery text comes the loving and healing presence of God.

I Know that My Redeemer Lives

 

If you were to die this afternoon …

it is likely that by the end of the month, I, along with your family and friends would gather with your body or ashes in a cemetery. Standing on muddy ground in a wide-open space, huddled shoulder to shoulder as a cold persistent wind blows, our eyes brimming with tears, we would individually take a breath and sigh;

connected in that moment with faces turned toward the earth we find an insulated stillness…

My voice casts the Word, scripture, that hangs in the air as a blanket of comfort for the heart – I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.

When asked, “Where is this passage from?” who would guess the book of Job? I suspect many would guess it was from one of Paul’s letters. This blanket of comfort for the heart  - I know that my Redeemer lives- is ancient! Ancient as in the 7^th-4^th centuries BCE, that is 4-7 centuries before Jesus lived. The book draws on several genres and traditions of ancient Levantine peoples forming the book around far more ancient folktales that explore themes of undeserved suffering and final restoration. Job is a legendary figure of antiquity, from the remote ancestral period with the likes of Noah. With our ancient ancient ancestors we continue to turn our faces toward the earth, finding an insulated stillness and sacredness in the burying our dead; calm and comfort in the intonation: earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

 

The Book of Job is an ancient text that has layer after layer added and tweaked as humans try to account for suffering. We learn through the story that Job’s human understanding is limited, unable to classify suffering other than reduced to legal categories of guilt or innocence. While the book of Job ponders suffering, ‘why bad things happen to good people,’ questions where God is and why is God, if God is just, not addressing inexplicable human suffering  – it has been suggested that the principal theological issue is presented at the beginning of the book: Will mortals – human beings- be religious (will they fear God) if there are no rewards or punishments?

That is a weighty question. Would human beings choose to be religious, faithful, and fear God, if there were no rewards or punishments attached? Without threat of judgement or hell? Without golden crowns and a seat in heaven? Without reward for ‘doing what is right,’ ‘loving neighbour and enemy alike’? Amid persecution, suffering, and without answers to age old questions: Would -could- the human heart freely and willingly choose to love God?

 

Reading the book of Job for me, is like gathering at a graveside, in the moment when the gathered faces are turned to the earth and focused on the remains of a fellow human being – when there is a momentary pause for the mind and heart to be still; in the fleeting moment of facing our own eventual return to the earth, ancient ancient words are delivered in the extraordinary beauty of the poetry and mysteriously bring a sense of meaning. Commentaries comment on the elusiveness of divine speeches in Job, acknowledging that there is no answer to the questions Job poses that will satisfy the human intellect. Yet holy words in the form of poetry do. In the end, at the end, resolution to life’s questions are found in the depths of faithfulness before a mysterious God. English speakers have a phrase, “the patience of Job”, patience in the sense of endurance, persistence, and steadfastness – this is the depth of faithfulness.

 

In the Lutheran calendar that commemorates faithful witnesses through the ages, 19^th Century Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard is remembered on Nov. 11. Kierkegaard sounded like the prophets, decrying the complacency of the established church of his day demonstrated in its lean toward intellectualized faith and a bending to be accepted by the society. In his writings there is an exploration of faith that has depth and is in communion with the Absolute (his expression of God’s name and character). Kierkegaard’s theology is at home in the questions of Job, the ongoing cosmic conversation, the pontificating of Job’s friends, and the Word mysteriously winding through the poetry of the text. Kierkegaard reflects:

Truth is not something you can appropriate easily and quickly. You certainly cannot sleep or dream yourself to the truth. No, you must be tried, do battle, and suffer if you are to acquire the truth for yourself. It is a sheer illusion to think that in relation to the truth there is an abridgement, a short cut that dispenses with the necessity for struggling for it. 

In an Abstract, Benedict Egbuchunam distills a portion of Kierkegaard’s philosophy to this statement:

Suffering, which is a dying to immediacy, is an essential expression of the relationship to the Absolute.

Suffering, which is a dying to immediacy, is an essential expression of the relationship to the Absolute.

 

We live in a society that prizes immediacy. At our fingertips the internet has the answers to our questions. With a voice command, Siri or Alexa can turn out our lights or turn up the heat. Pinpointing our location, Google maps will give us step-by-step directions to where we want to go. When we have a craving, the supermarket has the food we want, whether in season or not. Doordash or other such service can deliver takeout or groceries to our door in no time. Streaming services allow us to watch what we want when we want. Work is about efficiency, a list of tasks completed in the shortest amount of time. We like results, quick fixes, and quarterly gains. It is preferred to buy new than take the time or energy to repair or repurpose.

Immediacy has and is shaping us. We use substances to mask pain. We go to great lengths to avoid conflict. As a society we apply band-aids to alleviate poverty rather than addressing the core problems. We opt out of uncomfortable situations and ghost those we find difficult. We assume we know, rather than listening. And when it comes to death there are options perceived to decrease suffering by speeding up the dying process.

And after death, there are less visitations or wakes, “too hard” people say. There are fewer funerals, “too sad” people say. There are less graveside services or scattering of ashes – because heaven forbid, we would take the time – to let go of the immediacy of taking care of things and just be still. To risk suffering a broken heart, to experience a fear of death, to have the ego suffer an acknowledgement of being human, fragile, hurt, and broken. Humans who for centuries have pondered the purpose of life, the cosmic actions and character of God, why suffering happens, have an insatiable hunger to understand, and we can not unless we let go of immediacy to stop and be still – and like our ancient ancient ancestors turn our gaze towards the earth and remember that we are dust and to dust we shall return. So many bypass the pause and miss finding in suffering the depths of faith and falling into the Absolute. Be still and know that I am God.

 

The good news for me this morning is that I am reminded that I am human, with a myriad of ancestors who asked and pondered the same questions. I find truth told through the stories of ancient ancestors who journeyed through immense suffering with endurance, persistence, and steadfastness. The good news in the book of Job is that in the same breath Job pleads to have his suffering recognized, he claims the promise of a redeemer who is long in coming. Hearing Job’s journey, suffering is not an end, it is an agent of change, that works deep in the bones awakening a depth of substance. Moving in the deep, there is cosmic Mystery, and in the stillness, the Absolute.

Stripped down – meaning no immediate reward or obvious benefit- Would - could – a human heart choose to love God? Ancestors like Job most assuredly say ‘yes.’ In the cemetery huddled with others turning our face to the earth, finding a moment of insulated stillness - the answer is yes, I know that my redeemer lives.

O Lord, support us all the day long of this troubled life, until the shadows lengthen and the evening comes and the busy world is hushed, the fever of life is over, and our work is done. Then, in your mercy, grant us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last, through Jesus Christ our Lord. (ELW prayer 421)