Welcome Home (Reflections on the Resurrection of Our Lord, 2024)

 

“But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” (Mark 16:7)

Once upon a time Faith Lutheran of Philadelphia had a well-beloved and much venerated pastor named Johannes Skarsten. I’ve heard it said of him that he was in the habit on each Easter Sunday of announcing the worship schedule for the following Christmas Eve. This he did as a courtesy to those members of the congregation who only showed up on Easter and Christmas and were MIA the rest of the year.

Like the late Pastor Skarsten, I have a sneaking hunch I’ll be seeing some folks in the pews on Easter morning whom I shall probably not see until it’s time to croon “O Come, All Ye Faithful.” For such individuals, I’d like to say the following:

First, I don’t consider you to be slackers, lukewarm Christians, backsliders, unbelievers, or any such unflattering epithets. I’m not accusing you of figuring you can suffer through a sixty minute worship service once or twice a year to please an elderly parent or grandparent. I’m acknowledging that this world is messy and full of demands and an elective activity such as church is easily squeezed out by the stuff that isn’t so elective.

Secondly, even though it would tremendously massage my ego—to say nothing of what it would do for the church finances—if you were here every Sunday, I further acknowledge that you might still be very holy and pious people in your own way. You still pray, you still ponder the meaning of your life, and you still wrestle with ethics and the nature of God. You just don’t require a building like this or a ritual like this in which to do those things.

Thirdly, if you do find you have doubts and serious questions about all that jazz you were taught in Sunday School—welcome to the club. There may be people who sit in these pews week after week who might have exactly the same questions and doubts you have. This doesn’t make you a bad person or any less of a brother or a sister in my eyes, and certainly not in God’s eyes (however you conceive of God).

But perhaps you’ve come here on this festival day to hear a story. I think it’s a pretty good one. Every Easter in our formal liturgy we get the option of reading either John’s account of the resurrection narrative or the account from the synoptic gospel we’re focusing on this particular year. I love John’s very sentimental story of Mary Magdalene weeping at the tomb before encountering the risen Jesus, but this year, other than John’s melodrama, I think I want to hear Mark’s unsolved mystery.

Does it sound odd to you that Mark’s account of the Easter story (Mark 16:1-8) ends the way it does? I mean, if the women were seized with terror and amazement and told no one what they’d seen because they were afraid, just how did the story get out?

Perhaps we should back it up a little. Mark’s story begins with Jesus coming as a disciple of John the Baptist, being obediently washed by the senior prophet on the scene. Then he felt the spirit of God upon him, but, instead of glorying in that feeling, he was pushed out into a wild and deserted place to know hunger, fear, and temptation. He began is his ministry when John was arrested—not running from the danger of the authorities, but returning to the place where he was needed. He taught, he healed, he made friends and detractors, he taught that God was not far off but near. And he humbly ordered his followers not to speak of him as the Anointed One of God, because the people just wouldn’t understand.

He told the truth in love, welcomed those who had been left out of society, and confronted the powers that oppressed the poor. Jealous leaders denounced him, a friend betrayed him, another denied him, and almost everyone except a few faithful women deserted him. A tyrannical regime put him to death.

Then, when the Sabbath was over, three faithful women came to do the thing women did in those days. They came to anoint his body, but they were told by a mysterious young man in white that God had raised him from the dead. They were given the instruction to tell this story to the faithless men who had fled from arrest when Jesus was captured—even singling out the one who, in shameful cowardice, had denied he even knew Jesus.

What strikes me even more than the overture to the ones who have deserted Jesus is the instruction to tell them “he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.” They are reminded—as are we—that Jesus has gone ahead through everything. He’s gone ahead through joy, through temptation, through hunger and frustration. He’s gone ahead through love of friends and disappointment and betrayal. He has gone through adoring praise and lonely abandonment. He’s gone through pain, immobility, despair, and death. And there is no place we will ever go where he hasn’t gone. And yet he rose.

He’s also calling his friends to go back home. Back to the place where they were just plain fishermen, back to the place where they first recognized there was something special in the carpenter’s son from Nazareth. They are called back to their first ideals, back to the mission they believed in before the fame and the politics and the persecution and disaster happened. They are called back—as we are on Easter—to the things they most valued and believed in, and they are called to start over again.

The Easter story is a story of renewal. It’s the story of death giving way to new life and new hope. For me, it’s a reminder that the shrinking of our American Christianity is really just a precursor to a new life for our faith. We’re going back to the margins of society, back to where the outcasts and the poor, and the needy are waiting. Back to where Jesus wanted us to be. Back to where we shall behold him in all the unexpected people and moments God will put in our path. Back to where we shall experience his joy.

Alleluia! Christ is risen indeed!

Free Food. Free Family (Reflections on Maundy Thursday 2024)

 

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” (John 13:34)

Back in my LA days I rented a flat in this funky, Spanish courtyard-style apartment complex in the Studio City neighborhood. While waiting for Hollywood to discover me, I made ends meet by teaching at the junior high next door. My landlady, a sweet, elderly woman with great maternal instincts, always felt I was too skinny and often invited me over for meals. One particular summer evening she decided to order a pizza. This was an invitation I’d never refuse. Unfortunately, just as the Pizza Guy showed up in the courtyard, another guy—coming from who-knows-where—also showed up, stuck a gun in Pizza Guy’s face, robbed him of all his cash, and vanished back from whence he came. Pizza Guy dropped his warming bag and dashed to his car.

This incident (just part of the charm and excitement of living in Los Angeles) caused me and my landlady no small amount of anxiety. It also left us with the dilemma of what to do with three large pizzas and a warming bag. We called the pizza place. They told us we didn’t have to pay for our pizza and we could keep the other two in the bag. We’d just have to return the bag at some point and tell the police everything we’d witnessed—which was practically nothing as the whole episode had happened very quickly.

My landlady, never one to let good food go to waste, instructed me to bang on the doors of the other tenants and invite them to dinner. This complex housed a bunch of show-biz types: a musical theatre performer, a voice-over actor, a movie extra, and a couple of cartoon writers who provided the dialogue for Sonic the Hedgehog. We’d all pass each other and say our hellos, but we didn’t really know each other very well. That night, however, sitting around the courtyard eating free pizza and trying to deal with the fact that our neighborhood wasn’t as safe as we’d thought it was, we became something of a family. Sharing a meal will do that.

As Christians, we share a meal every Sunday. In fact, Jesus was pretty well-known for dinner parties. He’d eat with tax collectors, prostitutes, and others who were considered unclean by the established folks. When some were excluded from making a temple sacrifice because they were female or not fully Jewish or disabled, Jesus offered a meal of his body and blood in which everyone could partake.

On Maundy Thursday we remember that night when Jesus had his last supper with his disciples. I’m sure they felt even more nervous and unsafe than I and my neighbors felt on that summer night when a crime was committed in our courtyard while it was still daylight. The disciples knew Jesus had his enemies, and they knew someone among them would be the betrayer. It might’ve been difficult for them to remember, in the midst of all that was going on, that they ate this meal to remember God’s goodness in delivering God’s people.

But Jesus was about to drive home the point. Before dinner was over he got down on his knees and did this incredible, humble act. He, the teacher, washed the feet of his students. It was not uncommon in that day for students to honor their teachers by washing the master’s feet, but Jesus put an end to the ego, the hierarchy, and the love of status. He gave his disciples two commandments which we celebrate and remember on this festival day: share this meal and love one another. Love one another the way he loved—in sacrifice and humility and service.

Poor Peter, of course, was still a little hung up on protocol or status and felt really uncomfortable with Jesus loving him in such a humble way. Maybe he couldn’t stand to see someone he respected so much take a servant’s job, but, more likely, he didn’t feel himself worthy to be served by Jesus. So Jesus had to set him straight once again. God’s love doesn’t depend on our human standards of self-worth. God’s love is free and unconditional for all of us. When we come to the table, we’re all family. No questions asked. Nothing to prove. We just let ourselves be loved, and in that way we learn to love and accept and honor one another.

That’s even better than free pizza.

Palms or Passion? (Reflections on Palm Sunday, Year B 2024)

 

"Jesus Enters Jerusalem" (Giotto, It. 14th Cent.)

Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” (Mark 11:9)

When I remember Palm Sunday back in the day, I have a semi-nightmarish vision of me as a Sunday school teacher and Chairman of Altar Servers at St. Luke’s Lutheran in Long Beach, California attempting to wrangle unruly little Lutheran kids into some semblance of a procession. The challenge was to get twenty or more kids—all of whom were squirming around like squirrels on Red Bull—to stop hitting each other with their palm branches, walk in a straight line, and proceed down the nave of the church following the crucifer while the adult choir followed behind bellowing “All Glory, Laud, and Honor.[i]” The results of my labors always garnered a smile on the faces of the congregants. Lutherans love to see little kids in church. We also love to get those blessed palm fronds, so Palm Sunday usually turns out to be a pretty cool event.

As a Lutheran, I was never used to calling the Sunday which begins Holy Week the Sunday of the Passion. Nope, it was always Palm Sunday for me. I’ve come to find out, however, that our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters have been observing this Sunday as Passion Sunday for centuries. In fact, older liturgical traditions observed both Lent 5 and Palm Sunday as part of a two-week observance of Jesus’ final days. About 1962 Pope John XXIII figured two weeks to think about Jesus suffering and dying might be a bit excessive, so the Passion observance was cut back to just Palm Sunday and Holy Week.

I’ve always figured that good, church-going folks would observe the drama of this week the way I always remembered it. We’d wave palms on Sunday. Then we’d wash the feet, eat the meal, and in some way remember Jesus’ betrayal on Thursday—that last part traditionally being done by the removing of all ornamentation from the chancel and processing out of the worship space in mournful silence as we contemplated the really nasty stuff that awaited Jesus after that Last Supper. Finally, we’d return to church on Friday night for the gloomy (but super cool, if you ask me!) Tenebrae service in which the seven candles—one for each time Jesus spoke from the cross—were slowly extinguished, the church was slowly darkened, and we’d all leave wordlessly in pitch black, trying not to trip on anything until we got safely out to the parking lot.[ii]

It wasn’t until I got to seminary that I was introduced to the very ancient practice of reading the entire passion narrative on the Sunday before Easter. Part of me still rebels against this, but I can also see the wisdom. We miss the whole point of the Gospel if we just want to go from triumphal entry and loud Hosannas to resurrection and that other word of acclamation we’re not supposed to say during Lent. I was actually a bit shocked when I first began my ministry at Faith Lutheran of Philadelphia to discover the congregation actually held no service at all on Good Friday. The worship space was left open for prayer, but I only remember one person ever taking advantage of this. One parishioner told me they didn’t like Good Friday because it was “too depressing.”

That’s rather the point.

The truth is, there is suffering in this world, and Jesus came to share in our pain, to take it on himself, and, through his empathy, to bring us to a place of healing. But we can’t be empathetic if we don’t admit to our shame and our weakness. We need to hear the passion story.

I’ll admit that Mark’s description of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem seems a little silly and anti-climactic. Jesus rides on a colt, a baby horse or donkey. He doesn’t enter on a magnificent stallion as a conquering hero might. Rather, he comes on this tiny animal which might just barely be able to carry his weight. He’s not at a trot or a gallop, just the slow plodding of this little beast of burden. The palm branches, traditionally waved to welcome a victorious hero, are spread for Jesus as are the cloaks of “many people,” but Mark only says those in the procession are cheering. When Jesus reaches the Temple, he has a little look around, then decides it’s late and goes home. Nothing spectacular happens. The whole business seems a little pathetic as Mark tells it.

You have to wonder if those spectators in Jerusalem felt a trifle disappointed by the low-key arrival of the rabbi from Nazareth. Were they expecting more flash, more spectacle, more drama? Were they looking for a superstar? Did they want a macho man who would come at the head of an army, ready to kick the snot out of their oppressors? Perhaps they felt so let down in their expectations that five days later, when given the choice by Pontius Pilate between Jesus or Barabbas, they’d shout for a violent insurrectionist and bandit over the man who healed the sick and welcomed the sinners.

We don’t like to look at weakness or pain. Perhaps it’s because we’re too afraid of our own. We might think that, if people only knew who we really are—how scared or disappointed or powerless or unsuccessful we feel—they’d want nothing to do with us. We want to cover up our hurts, but Jesus came to show us our pain and love us anyway.

I still love the traditions of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. I love to wash the feet of the first-time communicants and act out the servanthood Jesus humbled himself to demonstrate. I still love to sit in the growing darkness of a Good Friday Tenebrae service and remember how the sky turned black when the Redeemer of the World was murdered on the cross. Of course, I understand there are reasons why others aren’t in church for all of this. There are work schedules and family commitments and some just don’t drive at night anymore. So I would be remiss if I didn’t remind you that this little parade we celebrate on Palm Sunday was only a tiny moment of victory which—like so many tiny victories in our own lives—would soon be eclipsed by sorrow, pain, and death.

The bright green palm fronds we carry from church on Palm Sunday will soon turn dry and brown. The Gospel story will also turn from bright victory and cheering to betrayal, cowardice, cruelty, and mourning. It will show us all the things of this world and of our sinful selves we’ll need to confront before we can appreciate the final victory of God.

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[i] Evangelical Lutheran Worship hymn number 344, in case you’re interested. The music was composed in the 17^th century, but it’s been Number One with a bullet for Palm Sunday processionals as long as I can remember.

[ii] A Tenebrae service is creepy, but really effective.

A Death with Meaning (Reflections on Lent 5, Year B 2024)

 

"The Crucifixion" F. Zurbaran (Spanish 16th Cent.) 

“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die. (John 12:32-33)

There’s a big chunk of the Gospel lesson for Lent 5, Year B (John 20:20-33) which I can recite by heart. Verses 23 – 26 are found in the Lutheran Occasional Service Book for the burial of the dead. I guess this passage was chosen by the OSB’s editors because of that particular image of the grain falling into the earth. The passage is to be read at graveside for an in-ground burial.

As I think I’ve mentioned, I do a lot of funerals. I consider it an honor to tell the tale of the departed and to offer the comfort of eternal life to the bereaved. Sometimes, however, the honor carries an emotional weight. Last week I was called on to say a service for a young man who took his own life. Quite aside from the fact that none of us should ever have to face the agony of burying one of our own children, the sudden loss and the soul-numbing shock of a suicide create a state of grief which, unless you’ve experienced it yourself, is unfathomably dark. There was nothing of consequence I felt I could say to the grieving parents, family members, and friends of this young man other than to implore them not to allow the manner of his death to define his life.

That exhortation came to me a few years ago when I was asked to memorialize two sister. These women were savagely butchered by a controlling ex-boyfriend. The killer violated a restraining order, attacked his ex as she visited in her sister’s home, and knifed both women to death. When I sat with the women’s parents, I felt as helpless as I’ve ever felt. There was nothing I could do or say that could possibly lesson their pain. I only knew I did not want the act of a selfish, violent man to be the last word on the lives of two wonderful, caring, intelligent, and accomplished women, both of whom left children as well as parents behind to mourn them.

The manner of a death should not define a life—except sometimes it does. Jesus taught his followers to love one another. He healed the sick, touched the untouchable, dined with the despised, welcomed the foreigners and the outcasts, lived in poverty and humility, and taught us all about the Kingdom of God. But what matters most is that he died on the cross. He was lifted up to draw all of us to himself.

It is when we see him on the cross that we know the depth of his love. When we hear him forgive his enemies with a dying breath, when he cares for his aging mother, and when he comforts a condemned sinner with a word of love—that’s when Jesus speaks most profoundly to us.

It is the power of Jesus’ sacrificial love. It is knowing that he defied the powers of this world and accepted the torment of their punishment. This is what makes everything he did prior to Calvary resonate with unutterable depth.

Alexei Navalny may have been dismissed as just another idealist attempting to expose and reform a hopelessly corrupt government. Even after being poisoned by Putin’s agents, he returned to Russia—knowing he had been marked for death. His death in an arctic prison camp has reverberated around the world, underscoring his courage determination, and honor while further exposing Putin’s ruthless barbarism.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a great reformer and theologian. His stirring speeches about civil rights have inspired generations, and his activism changed the course of history. Nevertheless, King’s willingness to confront the powers of oppression and racism at the cost of his own life to an assassin’s bullet forever enshrines him as a man of overwhelming integrity. The bullet which took the life of Mohandas Gandhi and the Nazi noose around the neck of Dietrich Bonhoeffer similarly elevated the righteousness of their causes.

Sometimes the manner of death does, indeed, define the life. Every police officer, firefighter, or warrior who has fallen in the line of duty is a witness to this. It is their deaths which gave meaning to their lives.

The coming of the Greeks—foreigners who have heard of the wonderful words and deeds of Jesus of Nazareth—is the signal to Jesus that his fame has grown to the point where his opponents will want him dead. “Now my souls is troubled,” he confesses, “and what should I say—‘Father, save me from this hour?’ No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.”

This is the final covenant, God’s last treaty with humankind. No longer do we need a book of rules. Rather, we are to remember the cross and remember Jesus’ sacrifice, forgiveness, humility, and compassion which shone from that horrible symbol of death and oppression. That’s the Law which is written, not with words, but on the heart.

Look to the cross, my friend. Thank you for stopping by. Please come back next week.

 

 

This Time It's Going to Cost You (Reflections on Lent 4, Year B 2024)

 

"The Brazan Serpent" (Tissot, Fr. 19th Cent.)

“And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him might have eternal life.” (John 3:15)

Sometimes God can drive a hard bargain. In the Hebrew Scripture lessons for Lent in Year B of the Revised Common Lectionary, we’ve had this theme of God making pretty lousy deals. Lousy, that is for God, but pretty good for the rest of us. There was God’s non-aggression pact with Noah in which God promised never again to wipe out humanity and asked no conditions on our part[i]. Then there was God’s lopsided deal with Abraham in which God promised a whole freakin’ nation, eternal fame, and more descendants than stars in the sky in exchange for a little faith.[ii] That was followed by God’s contract with Moses and the children of Israel in which God, having already delivered the people safely out of slavery and was in the process of providing their social safety net in the wilderness, asked in return for obedience to ten little laws which were in the people’s best interest to begin with.[iii]

(Spoiler alert: The people reneged on that last deal, and we’ve been reneging on it ever since!)

But in the Hebrew Scripture Lesson for Lent 4 (Numbers 21:4-9), God isn’t fooling around anymore. Nope. It’s no more Mr. Nice God. God’s coming to the bargaining table with God’s sleeves rolled up (Metaphorically speaking, of course. God doesn’t actually have sleeves) and this time God means business. In this story God’s people—whom God has rescued from slavery and provided for in a nasty, hostile, desert land—are still whining, moaning, complaining and otherwise kvetching against God, their leader Moses, and the circumstances they’re actually pretty darn lucky to be in.

So what does God do? God makes the punishment fit the crime. Since they’re tearing apart their own nation with lies and contemptuous speech—with poison from their mouths—God gives them a taste of some really poisonous mouths. God sends venomous snakes to bite the people and teach them a lesson. Suddenly, as they’re all dying from snakebite, they don’t think Moses is such a bad leader anymore. Now they want to suck up to him so he’ll mediate with God and save them from these disagreeable reptiles.

God tells Moses to make a serpent of bronze and put it on a tall stick and make the people look at it. I think what God wanted was to have the people see themselves. They needed to see their own sin, their own likeness to poisonous snakes. They had to see it, own it, and repent of it. God was telling them: “You want to be healed? You want me to heal you? First you need to acknowledge who you are and what you’ve done. You’re vicious, self-involved, ungrateful, and low-down. And if you won’t see that you won’t get well.”

I think that’s something Jesus is trying to tell Nicodemus in the accompanying Gospel Lesson (John 3:14-21). We all need to see the Son of Man lifted up. We need to contemplate what it is to have a human being impaled on a piece of wood and left hanging there to drown in his own bodily fluid. We need to recognize just how cruel a punishment this was and how twisted the injustice of it was to put an innocent man through that kind of torture. And we need to learn gratitude to believe Jesus loved us so much he was willing to suffer in this grotesque way. We need to look to the cross and the man who is bleeding and dying upon it.

There’s a real misconception among American Protestants about the absence of the image of the suffering Christ in our churches. We’ve been told Roman Catholics focus on the crucifix—the cross with Christ’s image upon it—because their theology emphasizes Jesus’ suffering. Protestants, we’re told, view the empty cross because our theology emphasizes Christ’s resurrected victory.

This is not actually true.

I’ve always suspected the absence of Christ’s image on Protestant crosses was due merely to the early Protestants’ poverty and inability to pay the craftsmen who so lovingly depicted our Lord’s dying form. Similarly, the opulence of church art was seen as symbolic of a decadent, usurious, and oppressive church hierarchy. The Protestants opted for simplicity, but Martin Luther would doubtless have us keep our focus on our Lord’s pain and sacrifice.

Luther would want us to know that this disgusting and savage form of execution was devised by human beings just like us. Just as human beings are responsible for the savage suffering in Gaza and Ukraine. We are responsible for damage to the earth, climate change, and pollution. We are responsible for gun violence, racial oppression, and poverty. And if we fail to look at these things, these things will continue.

We are in a crucial moment in history.[iv] It’s very easy for us, smothered as we are with news and information, to want simply to ignore it all and turn our attention inward to our own, individual needs, grievances, or whatever. However, if all we want to do is sing “Victory in Jesus” and accept simplistic answers to complex moral questions, we are missing the point of the Gospel. If we ignore our sin, we won’t be free of it.

The great Lutheran theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer was asked in 1943 how the German Church could allow someone like Hitler to seize power. His reply: “It was the teaching of cheap grace.” According to Bonhoeffer:

“Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”[v]

We run, I think, a serious risk of bitterness, apathy, and decay of the soul if we do not look to Christ lifted up on the cross. It is there and only there that we recognize our sin. It is there that we learn compassion and love. It is there that we are healed.

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[i] Genesis 9:8-17

[ii] Genesis 17:1-16

[iii] Exodus 20:1-17

[iv] No pun intended, but it the word “crucial” does seem to fit.

[v] Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, 1937.