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.

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.

The Three Days – 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.

MAUNDY THURS

Tonight I give you a new commandment, to love one another.   

This is the message we are to take to heart and carry with us through the coming paschal year. The commandment isn’t new; it is the rules of covenant community crafted into one command, rather than ten. Those eating with Jesus at the Passover are ritually remembering and celebrating coming out of Egypt, receiving the Law, and becoming a people. Forty years was spent in the desert learning to love one another, so that arriving in a new place, a new community could flourish- with values and structures – that embraced a different way of living; one based on love - for God, humans, and creation.

Time and time again the rules of covenant community were taken for granted, forgotten, becoming words and ideas, rather than care and action.  The responsibility of participation in the heart of the law –love- was squandered. Through long centuries – right up to this time and place- God-fearers went in and out of exile, fought amongst each other, started holy wars and crusades, shunned other peoples, turned away from God – turned from each other – desecrated creation. Every generation was called to turn back and reclaim an engagement in the Law so as to be able to live in community.  To love one another was spoken by prophets, rabbis, sisters, brothers, pastors, faith communities.  The commandment, love one another, is not new, yet, on this night perhaps our ears will be more open to hear and to take it to heart – to hear the command in a new way.

The rituals of this night are symbols to illustrate the intimacy that Jesus indents in the words “love one another.”  Tonight it is touchy-feely: so be humble and open; set aside your hang-ups, any self-sense of personal space, and act through/despite being uncomfortable.  Tonight is about being human and caring for the other, the entire being bringing and participating in healing and wholeness. We dare to be intimate, vulnerable with each other.

And so we take the time to enter intimate moments with others, listening to their story, asking their name, offering a piece of our own story. It is stopping to take the time and wash another’s feet.

It is the act of while waiting for a cab, entering a conversation with an elderly man, to find that his pension check was not going as far as it should – listening and passing a loonie to him.

It is hearing of a friend’s adventure to Germany with her mom as her mom goes on sabbatical and giving her a token of friendship – a blessing.

Opening our hearts, being vulnerable, and letting Jesus command to settle into our essence - we hear words that change us to live into the command; we hear the Good News:

This is my body given for you.

Tonight the table has been prepared; including a loonie turned into two cans of soup for the local food bank.  The disciples gathered around Jesus to celebrate the meal, an intimate moment where the group would lounge around a low table, sharing bowls of food, dipping bread into common dishes, reaching over each other, grazing hands or feet, whispering in each other’s ears, clinking glasses; a meal of those who consider themselves family.  Everyone is welcome to come to the table and all eat.  It is a meal where those who come know each other – by name:

“Driving home from work, a cold day, and the man I had given money to at Connaught and Quinpool several times before was there again.  A man I have always recalled as being very short. I gave him the loonie, however, I did not get through the green light and so I saw him again as he passed my car. I gave him a loonie, BUT, had the good sense to ask who he is, “George,” he said. He then asked what my name was.  The pleasure on his face over this exchange of names was priceless.”

Also with a place at the table  -

is Mike, the Assess-a-bus driver, who was given the loonie as a tip for his compassion shown to his riders (although not allowed to receive gifts from people – he did after hearing what the church was doing).

Seated beside George, and Mike at the table is Josephine, a woman in Uganda who through the micro-credit charity Kiva, will use the funds to buy supplies for her clothes-making business.

And other creatures are welcome in the upper room too -

Lucky the cat is invited through a donation to her fund for a needed operation.

From sharing in this intimate meal with the invited guests we have become family through the life and death and life of Jesus – soon to be Christ. The rituals move us through our own humanity to consider the humanity, the Christ, in others.  We experience that without living the command to “love one another,” the Three Days are for naught.

In a tangible and material way the loonies became the barrier breaker for encountering another – a body – an honest to goodness human being – in flesh; and we realize it is our responsibility of speaking the word of forgiveness to others in their daily lives.

As individuals and as a community, through the laying on of hands, you have been forgiven. You have heard the words pronounced upon you.

In obedience to the command of our Lord Jesus Christ I forgive you all your sins.

This was the first ritual of the night.  The Word spoken to your inner most being. The Word is freedom. 

Freedom from sin: guilt, shame, wrong doing, questionable behaviour, inaction, un-godly thoughts, destructive self-talk, poor self-esteem. It is the first ritual, for the following rituals of foot washing, eating together, and preparing the sanctuary for the collective remembrance of Jesus’ death (lamenting and being vulnerable together) requires freedom - a freed humanity to live out of the compassion offered through the Word, and the death thereof. It is through the intimate embrace of Jesus on this night that we can embrace others, inviting and calling them by name.  Being forgiven has freed us to invite George, Mike, Josephine, and Lucy to the table to which they already were a part; once forgiven, once intimate with Christ, our hearts are open and humbled to see that we  have missed those sitting beside us.

As are hearts are warmed, we are called to go to the garden to pray, to watch with Jesus, to face death – Jesus’ and our own – and rise to the responsibility of offering freedom to the entire world, with the Words:

In obedience to the command of our Lord Jesus Christ I forgive you all your sins.

For the healing of the world, for a world that lives into the command to love one another, be freed by the power of intimacy with Jesus; forgiven and thus forgiving.  Amen.