Finding the Risen Christ

            What an astounding time we live in.  The Supreme Court of the United States made a ruling saying in effect that since segregation is largely an item of history and isn’t in our society anymore, therefore it is not necessary for a school in the south to worry so much about the problem.  Almost in response to this, we have had two instances of extreme bigotry surface with Cliven Bundy refusing to pay the government for grazing his cattle on public land and making incidental comments about African American people that offended even some of his supporters; and Donald Sterling, the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers National Basketball team making racist comments and being banned from basketball for life by the NBA.  Their actions almost seem to be done in support of Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent in the case that was before the court.  Mr. Bundy even went so far as to quote Dr. Martin Luther King in his racist remarks.  I am sure that this series of circumstances will be cited by historians for many years as another example of the strange turn in American society that has happened in our time. 

            Racism is certainly alive and well in our culture.  Instead of hiding it as has been the unstated custom, we now feel free to say these things out loud that had previously been only lodged in our hearts.  We had friends visit recently whose daughter is the mother of a bi-racial child.  They told us some of the things that have been said to their daughter by well meaning people, and we were astounded.  “Well, he is a very light color and could pass for white,” one person said to them.  She was having a great problem feeling included in any church that she visited, and isn’t that a powerful indictment of our religious people. 

            I would think that if there is any place where inclusion ought to be the first thing on the agenda, it would be our churches.  Jesus told us to love one another the way that God loves us.  Loving one another is a primary reason to include in our fellowship everyone who comes along. 

            I was at the funeral of one of the bishops of my diocese many years ago.  We had heard the sermon and the eulogies to this leader and the time came for all of us to receive the body and blood of our Lord.  The family was located in the first pew and went up as a group to receive.  About this time, a strange person walked down the center aisle of the church and sat down in one of the pews that the family had just vacated.  Quickly, the well dressed ushers pounced on him and told him that he couldn’t sit there.  He left that pew and went across the aisle to one of the pews that had just been vacated by the clergy who had gone up to receive the sacrament.  Again, the ushers moved him out.  He came back down the aisle and found a place in the vacant pew that existed between the last row of clergy and the first row of lay people.  After everyone had received communion, two clergy came down the center aisle to give the sacrament to a woman in the row immediately behind the man.  Again the ushers moved him out and he wandered slowly toward the back of the church.  Somebody in our row asked “Who is that guy!” The reply came quickly from someone else: “It is the Lord!” And so it was.  If Jesus had shown up at that funeral that is exactly the way he would have come to us, as one of the lowest of the low.  When we finally exited the church in procession, I saw the man crowded into one of the rear pews, still worshiping, still with us. 

            If I had ever needed a concrete lesson about inclusion that was it.  I’ve never forgotten that humble man wandering the aisle of that cathedral.  Thank God for him.  He taught me a lot.

            In this post-Easter time, it is helpful to look around us to see the presence of the living Christ.  Maybe among the homeless or the forgotten is where we ought to look; or among those in prison or shoved aside by our society for other reasons.  That is what Jesus told his disciples to do, and it needs to be our mission also. 

Faith and Science

            I really don’t need scientific proof of the resurrection.  If I did, I would never find it.  The whole subject is completely a place where faith is the only proof.  You can doubt global warming, whether money is undermining our political system, or any number of other things that science has proved beyond doubt; but resurrection is one of those things that is only a subject of faith.  That is why our religious institutions continue to thrive around Easter when people need an answer to the question of continuing life.  We have all had losses that are sometimes overwhelming.  We need to know something else exists beyond what we know.  The story of Easter is that answer and we want it very much.

            The story of the gathering of the disciples in the house with locked doors on the day of the Resurrection is certainly understandable.  Jesus has been taken away and crucified by the powers extant in the community; the religious leaders and the Romans.  They fear that they are next.  While they are cowering in fear behind the doors, Jesus suddenly is with them.  He says Peace be with you, and shows them his hands and his side.  The disciples are overjoyed at his presence.  Jesus breathes on them and tells them to receive the Holy Spirit.  As the Father has sent me, so I send you, he tells them.  He gives them the power to forgive sins. 

            When Thomas, who has been away, comes back, they tell him that they have seen the Lord.  Instead of believing, Thomas says: unless I put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand into his side, I will not believe!  A week later, Jesus comes back to them at the house, greets Thomas and invites him to put his fingers in the mark of the nails and his hand into his side. Thomas response is simply to say: My lord and my God!  I have no problem at all with Thomas’ doubt.  I suspect that I would have been very much like him.  Belief in something as radical as Jesus’ resurrection is a very difficult thing for any of us to believe.  We want some kind of scientific proof for something like this.  That is what Jesus offered Thomas, but when he saw Jesus before him, no other proof was needed. 

            That is what faith is all about.  It isn’t science and it isn’t proof.  It is firm belief in things that aren’t seen, and really aren’t possible to be seen.  Faith is a grounding in the power of God to do more for us than we can ask or imagine.  That is what Easter gives us with all of its power.  Beginning with those people locked in that house who saw Jesus stand before them; we have a cloud of witnesses through the ages who have continued to testify to the presence of the Risen Christ among us.  That is the statement of our creeds, of our liturgies and of our lives. Jesus’ final remark to Thomas was for you and me.  He said to him: Have you believed because you have seen me?  Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe!

The Hope of Resurrection

            I really don’t know what to do with Easter.  Resurrection is something that I want to believe in with all of my heart, but I’ve never seen one.  I have stood beside many, many caskets at funeral services and wished with all of my heart that I could somehow do a resurrection; not necessarily for the person in the casket, although I loved them very much, but particularly for the grieving people sitting in the pews in front of me.  The tears always break my heart. 

            We certainly understand Good Friday.  We have all done Good Friday.  We have felt the torture, the cross and the pain in many ways and we have been part of inflicting that kind of misery on others.  Mostly, we stay away from church on Good Friday because of the somber service and the reminder of the pain; but we crowd into the pews on Easter Sunday because of the joy and the celebration.  Easter is something that we want to be true with every part of our being.  We don’t want death to have any dominion, as Dylan Thomas so eloquently put it.  We hope to celebrate life forever with those whom we love and the God who so obviously loves us.  That is what we hope and pray for on this glorious holy day.  That is why we gather as families and pray together as communities and watch the kids color and hunt eggs and peek into Easter baskets full of chocolate bunnies and jelly beans.

            Some critics point to the diversity of the resurrection stories in the four Gospels as proof that the story is made up.  I don’t think so.  I think it is like four different people viewing the same event.  They tell the story from their own point of view.  I have always loved the way that John’s Gospel shares the good news of the risen Christ.  Grieving Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb on Easter morning looking again for her Lord and wanting to cry at the tomb. She found the stone rolled away from the front of the tomb, so she went to tell Peter and the other disciples.  They ran to the tomb and found it to be empty.  The Gospel goes on to tell us that Mary stayed outside the tomb weeping when she saw two angels in white sitting where Jesus’ body had been.  Why are you weeping?, they said to her.  She answered them and then saw Jesus standing nearby.  She thought that he was the gardener.  He said to her: Woman, why are you weeping?  Whom are you looking for? Frantically, she said to him: Sir if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him and I will take him away!

           

            That is when the miracle happens.  Jesus says to her: Mary! She knows immediately that she was looking at Jesus.  She went and told the disciples:  I have seen the Lord!

            That is a story of resurrection, and the only one that I have ever heard about.  It is a story of faith, of hope and of complete joy that comes out of a sea of pain and devastation.  That is always what my faith tells me is going on when I stand by the casket at a funeral.  Death is certainly not the end.  We will see our Lord again and be welcomed into the joy of the presence of the father and of each other.  That is why we celebrate Easter with such vigor. Thank God for such wonder. 

Palms and God's Presence

            When I was a kid, Palm Sunday was a day to really celebrate.  We all got Palm crosses at church, took them home and tucked them behind a mirror or a picture, or anywhere that we could.  We heard the story of Jesus coming into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, or a colt with the people cheering.  We thought that was a wonderful tribute to our Lord.

            Later in my life, I began to realize what Palm Sunday is all about.  How the cheers of the population soon changed to jeers and how the King of the Jews was mocked, scorned by the high priests, turned over to Pilate and ultimately crucified.  Palm Sunday wasn’t a day to cheer so much as it was a day to weep.

            I love the day because of what it says about God’s presence in our lives, from the beginning to the end, every day.  God is present even when we think we are the most important person on earth; and God is present when we are at the bottom of our lives without friends or meaning.  God is present to provide hope when we are hopeless and meaning when we can’t find the first thing about it.  The cry from the cross of Jesus: my God, my God, why have you forsaken me is the cry of all of us at some point in our lives, when power is gone and meaning has fled.  Sometimes when we look at the world, all that we see is pain and suffering.  God is present in all of that, leading us to supply hope and meaning for those in the worst of straits and to help bring out of darkness the people who are trapped in despair. 

            It is right that the celebration of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem ends in the ongoing darkness of Holy Week and the movement toward Good Friday and the Way of the Cross.  The celebration of Easter is only a vague hope at this time.  We really know nothing about resurrection except what Jesus told his disciples during his time on this earth.  We have never seen a resurrection and we don’t understand it at all.  That is one of the reasons that death becomes so frightening to us.  The promise of resurrection is not something that we want to emphasize during this holiest time of the year.  This day and the coming week is a statement by God of God’s continuing, ongoing presence in our lives and in this world, no matter what it is that happens. 

            Let’s get through this fateful day and the coming week with hope and know that our loving God waits with us for the Glory of Easter.  Tuck your palm crosses behind your mirrors and look at them from time to time and let them be a reminder of God’s constant presence in your life.

The Ultimate Love of God

             Fred Phelps died on March 20.  He had been the pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church, which took pride in picketing the funerals of slain military personnel in this country and proclaiming in the loudest terms the “hatred” that God had for homosexual people.  Signs that said “God hates fags” were a part of the arsenal that Fred and his people brought to the places that they picketed.  They tried to make themselves as obnoxious as possible and for a time were largely successful.  In recent times, other people have risen up to block their picketing and to stand between them and the families who were grieving over their lost loved ones. 

            When Fred died, a chorus of almost glorious celebration rose up to consign his soul to the darkest depths of Hell and assure us that God had no time for someone who hated with such venom.  I can certainly understand those feelings.  When Westboro Baptist picketed the General Convention of the Episcopal Church that I attended in Minneapolis, I was struck by the vacant eyes of the sign carriers and the inability of them to engage in any kind of conversation with those who disagreed with them. 

            What we have been hearing in the wake of Fred’s death has been a secular chorus who have been responding to his hatred with a different kind of hatred.  I certainly understand that and have no brief to add to the pain of people whose lives have been affected by the acts of the Westboro church and its few people.  I want, though, to say something about how I believe that God responds to us, even when we are so deep into our hatred and our sin that we believe ourselves to be the most righteous of all.  I am sorry that Fred Phelps was seemingly an incurably nasty man; but I know that God loved him.  God loved Fred, because God loves all of us, even in the midst of the nastiness that all of us at one time or another can bring to our lives and to the lives of those around us. 

            When I worked as a chaplain in the prison, the men in my group had all committed murder.  They were serving life sentences for their crimes.  We talked often of forgiveness, but it was seldom that any of them believed me.  I have stories of times when this wonderful and elusive word became a part of their lives, but most of them had despaired of that ever happening.   They understood that their crimes were such that the very idea of forgiveness was an impossible goal.  I never believed that.  When forgiveness happened to any of them, it was a moment to be celebrated with great joy. 

            I believe the same thing about Fred Phelps and those who are associated with him.  I know that when Fred died and he came into the presence of God that God arms wrapped around him and that he knew love, possibly for the first time.  I don’t know what caused Fred to behave in the impossible ways that he did during his life; but I know that nothing could separate him from the Love of God.  Nothing.  That is what the life of Jesus was all about and why he forgave his murderers from the cross.  Thank God for that love.  It is what enables me to know that my own failures are not ultimate; that God not only loves me, but redeems the things that I have done that are outside of God’s hope for all of creation.  I know that hatred of people who hate only creates more hatred.  Love is the answer to this, even though Love is the hardest thing of all to muster in the face of such effusive hatred.  That is why we need God’s blessing to endure this life and to continue to show that magnificent Love to the world that God has given to us over and over again. Of course it isn’t easy, but following the teaching of Christ was never designed to be easy.  It is our calling, and ultimately that Love that God offers is the hope of the world.