We have a story for times like this

This Easter Sermon was preached at Frazer Mennonite Church on April 21, 2019.

Several years ago, you may remember the stories coming out of Philadelphia about the school budget problems.  As a parent of Philly school kids, it was a traumatic, difficult time. I watched my kid’s school lose their nurse, school counselor and safety patrol, along with the gifted program and art department.  

It was a terrible time to be in the school district, but we were determined not to give up.  In truth, we could supplement our kid’s education with special after school programs, but so many families didn’t have this luxury.  

The school crisis was something that local clergy talked about a lot.  How do we respond to this crisis? At one local clergy gathering, we were talking about this, and a colleague, who walked in late, jumped into the conversation rather abruptly.  

He said, “Schools have gotten so bad that i think we just need to give up on them. The era of public schools is over”  This colleague named the neighborhood school my children attended as part of his diatribe. He declared something I cherish and champion–dead.  

Needless to say, I was pretty angry.  

After the meeting, two pastor friends, Jarrett and Martin, surrounded me, to check in on me and me still raging blood pressure.  They had watched as my face turned red, as I shifted angrily in my chair, and they secretly enjoyed watching me call him out.

I struggled, with them, to understand how someone could give up on schools and our children like this.  

After a couple of minutes of debriefing together, Jarrett reminded us,“You know, we have a story for this. We are Easter people.  Resurrection people.”

We are resurrection people, friends.  And when things feel difficult, when things feel dead and buried, we know better.  We know we have a story for moments like this.

Here’s the part of resurrection that we don’t often like dwell on at Easter. And this is an uncomfortable truth about this season. We have no idea what resurrection looks like until we’ve experienced death.  If we have not experienced death, pain suffering, then resurrection just looks like spring. Resurrection looks like daffodils and lillies. We can look at these flowers and think, “There’s that new life. That promise of spring. That must be what resurrection is.”   

But that resurrection is only six inches deep.  The resurrection I’m talking about is the kind that is dead and buried six feet underground, forgotten about, and restored to life–against all hope.

The women were the witnesses to Jesus suffering on the cross, his death (they saw him in the tomb), and finally his resurrection.  Had they not witnessed to the suffering of Jesus on the cross, had they not seen him dead in the tomb, they may not have experienced the joyful, incredulous reaction to the resurrection.   So let this be a lesson to you all–listen to women. Believe women. They know what they are talking about.

One year while travelling in Jerusalem, we stopped at an alternative burial site for Jesus.  It was just outside the Damascus gate, a quiet, secluded, and cool spot to rest before our next event.  After we debriefed about what we had seen that day, a volunteer tour guide from Texas showed us around the gardens.  He pointed out the spot that may be where Jesus had been crucified–what is now a Palestinian bus station.  He suggested we sing a hymn. We did not. It felt forced. Hokey even.

Then the Texas tour guide showed us the empty tomb where he believed Jesus was buried.  He led us into the tomb, let us touch the walls, sit at the spot where Jesus may have been laid after his death.  We irreverently took photos coming out of the tomb (a thing that apparently a lot of tourists like to do.) And still we didn’t feel anything.   

We didn’t see Jesus on the cross.  We didn’t watch his suffering. So that empty tomb was just empty to us. Meaningless.    

But the women at the tomb knew that suffering.  They stayed at the cross on that terrible night. They saw Jesus struggling, ridiculed, gasping for breathe, for comfort and for a sign that God was there.  They witnessed these things and they did not look away. They stayed until the end. And they felt their own pain as they watched helplessly. If we don’t know what death, pain, and difficulty are, we don’t know what the resurrection is.   

But, people of Frazer Mennonite, you know what the resurrection looks like. You have stories of sadness, death and confusion here.  Several years ago, you saw the need for new life, and you prayed for families with children. And guess what–a lot of families with children came.  Ten years ago, you had conflicts with the conference about who was allowed to be part of this congregation. After what felt like death, you joined a new conference, and felt the new energy and new life in Atlantic coast.  

You have opened your building to folks in recovery.  Almost every night of the week, the parking lot is filled with people who find our fellowship hall to be a safe space, a space for healing from addiction. You wondered what you were called to do, and found that call in the soil on this very property.  And now, because of a garden, we have people that come to our building and our property, and can eat. We have a story for these times. We have the resurrection story. It is our story.

We live in difficult times.  We live in times where angry people cause carnage.  We live in times where fearful people put up walls, literal walls, to keep out people they fear.  We live in times where our government legislates hate. We are witnessing suffering and death every time we tune into the news.   

We have urges to shelter ourselves from this, to turn off the news, to run away from the realities of our world.  We have urges to protect ourselves from personal harm–to escape vulnerability–I find myself trying to do that with my kids and family all the time.  But, we can’t really know how good the resurrection is, until we’ve experienced pain, or sat with those in crisis.

That’s when resurrection is truly miraculous.   

To those who haven’t experienced suffering, perhaps this story–the one we Christian tell of resurrection seems like an idle tale, a silly, unbelievable story, told by overwrought women who didn’t know what they were talking about.  Maybe those who haven’t experienced suffering and pain can appreciate this story, but it doesn’t connect at a deep level.

But we’ve seen death.  We’ve seen pain. We know what heartache looks like, because we’ve shed our fair share of tears, and have called out to God saying, “Where are you?”  So, when hope comes, when God shows God’s self to us, when something comes from utter desolation, we have a name for it. It is called resurrection.

We have a story for difficult times.  The story is resurrection. It’s not just something that happened to Jesus.  It is something that happens to us and in us. This is our story. The resurrection story.  

It is Finished….

I preached this sermon at a Seven Last Words Community Service. I had the sixth word–It is finished.

My daughter, Reba, was two when I entered seminary.  On days when I didn’t have class, and it was just her and I at home, I would sometimes take her into school, to run around the beautiful grounds.  One morning I took her into the main building on my seminary campus, and there she encountered her very first crucifix, and a life sized one at that–Jesus hanging limp on the cross, in obvious pain.  Reba was aghast. “Who is THAT, Mama?”

It was at that moment that I realized she only had memories of encountering a cute, cuddly, helpless baby Jesus in the manger.  She knew how the story began, but not how it ended.

At that age, I had never talked to her about how Jesus died.  I don’t think it was a deficit in my parenting. Who should have to explain Jesus’ death to a toddler?  Who wants to explain Jesus’ death to a child, let alone look at death, facing the reality of the cross where Jesus was crucified at the hands of the state, an ancient version of the lynching tree, gas chambers, firing line, the executioners chair. No one should have to explain that to a child.

So, while I wasn’t sorry I held back, I also wasn’t exactly ready for her to meet dying Jesus like this.

Two year old wide eyed Reba looked up at life sized Jesus, hanging in agony on that cross, black body against black wood.  She saw his form, degraded and humiliated on the cross. She touched Jesus’ feet tenderly, tracing his toes and the nails in his feet.  Then she turned and looked at me, with her most serious, intense, two year old face, and said, “Poor Jesus. He needs a doctor.”

I feel badly for laughing at her in that moment.  It wasn’t a “kids say the darndest thing” moment. It was a moment of deep sadness for my daughter.  She saw the pain of Jesus on that cross, a pain to which I had become numb. I walked by that same Jesus hanging on that same cross several times a day, and never gave it a thought.  I never noticed the pain in his tense muscles, recognized the agony on his face. It is important to see that pain, and I was glad that my daughter brought me back to that in the crucifix.  

But, there is much more to this story than the pain. So, while we pay attention to the state torture of Jesus on that cross, I want us on this Good Friday to also notice these words.  “It is finished.”

“It is finished” is one word in greek–tetelestia.  And while “it is finished” sounds more final, more poetic, a more accurate translation is “It is completed.”  

It is completed.  

Here in this moment on the cross, Jesus finished the work of teaching us and showing us how to live.  After three years of ministry, after a lifetime of worrying his Mama and learning carpentry from his Pop, after escaping death at an early age, after learning all he could in the Synagogue as a young child, after walking through cities and countryside alike, preaching and teaching, after making religious and political leaders angry enough to kill him, he had completed his work. He had done all he had set out to do.

To everyone else at Golgotha, the place of death, Jesus was a mockery, a joke.  To them, he had received the appropriate consequences for messing with the powers of Rome and the powers of the established religious authorities.  

But, even in his agony up on the cross, Jesus knew better.  He knew his work was completed. It was finished, for now. It was finished for the time being.  And soon–in three short days–all would see. First the women would see it, because while women were and are underappreciated and undervalued, they often have more wisdom than those that claim to be wise.  Soon, those women would see that what had been completed in Jesus ministry would be sealed in the resurrection, and soon they would tell everyone.

That resurrection was an “I told you so” to the “it is finished” on the cross.  The resurrection was a “you didn’t think I would, but I did” to that cross. The resurrection, witnessed first by the women who stayed for Jesus’ very last breath, was Jesus’ hold my beer oh ye of little faith.  Watch what I do next.

It is finished.  It is completed. Jesus taught us up until his last moments how to live, without fear.  Jesus taught us, in his every breath, to live as the people God has created us to be. Jesus taught us to bring our fully human selves to the work of discipleship, just as he did.  

Another story about Reba.  When she was 8, she heard an animal crying in our backyard.  We looked for the source of the cry, and finally, found the tiniest kitten wedged between our fence and our neighbors.  I struggled for a while to rescue this sick, dying kitten, and finally gave up. “Reba, we can’t get to it. I’m sorry. I think it might die.”  

I went back inside, and Reba stormed in behind me.  She would not take “no” for an answer. “Mom, you told me to always look after God’s creatures.  And that’s what I’m trying to do. You are a pastor! You’d better help me!”

Emotional manipulation at its finest.  But she was right. Yet again I had become numb to suffering. This kitten need saving and we were her only hope.  So, what could I do? We had to go back out there. By then, this kitten, small enough to fit into the palm of my hand, had freed herself.  She was sick and malnourished. But she would be ok. She found us and we would carry on the work of caring for this sweet kitten, a work that continues to this day.

As always my kids model to me the way of faith.  Reba made the connection between someone else’s suffering, and her responsibility, between the “it is finished” and our own call as faithful followers of Jesus Christ.  On the cross, Jesus completed his work of teaching us how to live, of showing us what lived faith looks like, and now he has passed the work onto us.  Jesus work in human form is now down and we take up the cross and the example of Christ. We become the living stories of healing, hope, comfort, care and inclusion that Jesus lived in the gospel.

Jesus took his work from birth to his death on the cross, and now it is complete.  So–the challenge of Good Friday is–what will we do to live fully as the people God created us to be?  How will we follow Jesus’ example and care for all God’s children?

God, who began a good work in us, will be faithful to complete it, just as he faithfully walked with Jesus who completed his work on the cross.  

This holy week, let us follow in the way of Jesus, being fully the people God created us to be.  Let us continue on this uncertain road of discipleship, knowing that God will complete the work in us, walking with us, showing us the way, remaining with us until the very end, until our work is completed. AMEN.