Rise Up Singing!

March 23, 2008; Easter Sunday

Matthew 28:1-20; Isaiah 65:17-25

He is risen! Risen, indeed!

He is risen! Risen, indeed!

He is risen! Risen, indeed!

I don’t know whether or not that now traditional Easter greeting goes deep back into the roots of Christianity. It may be ancient, although it is not something I recall from my childhood in the church – and I am pretty certain that I attended, oh, about 18 consecutive years worth of Easter Sunday services before beginning my wanderings beyond church.

I do recall a Youth Sunday when my older sister was in high school. We’re talking early 1970, when the hair was long, the love beads still quite stylish – at least in Chattanooga, and everything orthodox was up for grabs. The kids asked the congregation if “the resurrection” was necessary to Christian faith. I don’t remember who the youth director was at the time; I do know that there was a new one by the time I was in high school a few years later.

Nowadays I can certainly tell you what the orthodox understanding of “the resurrection” is, but I won’t stand up here and tell you that what you think about that orthodoxy concerns me greatly. If holding on to the creedal proclamation – “I believe … in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord: Who was conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into hell. The third day He arose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, whence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.”

If holding on to that formulation is deeply meaningful to you, then hold on to it, by all means. If, on the other hand, that ancient creedal confession is a stumbling block to you, then let it go. It’s OK. Hold on, or let go. Either way.

Nevertheless, resurrection is why we are all here this morning.

Resurrection is why we are here.

Oh, to be sure, many of you worshipping here this morning have not been in a church since this time last year … well, maybe at Christmas. It is wonderful to welcome you today. You may feel like you are here out of some old memory or obligation, but at the deepest places we can go, resurrection is why we are here.

We may not all share the same understanding of resurrection, and some of us may have only the foggiest idea about it, but resurrection is why we are here.

It is a simple word, really, with a straightforward meaning. Although we have weighted the English translation with centuries of theological complications, the original Greek of the New Testament means, quite simply, “to rise up.”

It is something each of us does every day, with little fanfare, unless you have teenagers in the house, in which case “he is risen” announces a near miracle if spoken before 10:00 a.m.

The commonplace of these ordinary resurrections – the daily rising up – belies a deep faithfulness and obscures an even deeper longing. After all, it does take a deep faithfulness to rise up every day. After all … after all that each of us has endured of the particular and unique sufferings of our own lives – losing loved ones, battling addictions, struggling with chronic illness or pain, seeing dreams die around us – after all of that, to rise up again each day takes faith. To rise up again each day takes trust in the created order and in its Creator.

Such faithfulness is not, of course, the fullness of Christian life; it is only a necessary beginning of the journey of a resurrection people. Such faithfulness arises from the midst of a profound longing, a deep aching desire to experience resurrection and to join our voices together in a more profound Hallelujah!

That hope for resurrection draws us here this morning.

It is not ancient history; it is not vague obligation; it is not quaint memory. It is wind and fire! It is power and light! It is Christ, risen and alive in our lives! Even in a Good Friday world broken by sinfulness.

I wrote part of this sermon a couple of weeks ago, sitting in the Lincoln Parlor at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church while waiting for the DC police to come take a statement from me on the theft of my laptop – taken from an office at New York Avenue during the peace witness. A world of war … and petty theft – broken, indeed.

The Lincoln Parlor houses the original manuscript of Lincoln’s proposal to pay compensation for freed slaves. It is, so to speak, the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Lincoln was, famously, a complicated man, troubled by bouts of depression and faced with the extraordinary challenge of holding a country together as a people confronted its most difficult moral crisis, and war rent asunder the young republic. In the face of all that, Lincoln remained a man of authentic hope. Such hope is not mere wistful longing, rather, it is active participation in God’s love and justice.

The draft encased in the parlor at New York Avenue is a simple text with a few scratched out, corrected items – an utterly ordinary piece of writing that presaged an almost unbelievably extraordinary resurrection in the lives of a people bound and shackled to be sure, but waiting, longing to rise up singing Hallelujah!

While that liberation – as incomplete as it may remain – is a central episode in the history of our still young nation, it does seem sometimes almost as ancient as the liberation of the Hebrew slaves when Moses acted in authentic hope, proclaimed emancipation and modeled a way walked in more recent times by the likes of Martin King and Desmond Tutu.

Where do we turn today to experience such resurrection?

Well, where did the women go on that first Easter morning, and what advice did they receive? To begin with, they went to the tomb, to the place of death, to the site of the deepest brokenness human beings experience. They went to a place where they knew their hearts would be broken. They went to a place of vulnerability and risk.

What was it Jesus told his followers a bit earlier in Matthew’s gospel? When I was hungry, you fed me. That takes going to places where people are hungry. When I was thirsty, you gave me a drink. That takes going to places where people thirst. When I was in prison, you visited me. That takes going to jail. When I was sick, you came to me. That takes going to places where people are sick.

We cannot get to those places when we live fenced lives. When we put up barriers between ourselves and a hurting world we not only live under the illusion that we can escape suffering, but more importantly, we wall ourselves off from the places where resurrection happens, the places where Jesus is, the places of authentic hope and of eternal life.

Abraham Lincoln knew this, and answered the call to lead a divided nation. Moses knew this, and answered the call to free the slaves. Martin King knew this. Desmond Tutu knew this. You and I, we know this, too, and if we open ourselves to our various callings, we will follow the risen Christ into places of authentic hope and eternal life even and especially amidst places that seem filled with darkness and despair.

The women of the gospel knew this, and so they followed Jesus even when they had lost any expectation of finding life of any kind. The advice they receive there is crucial. In Luke’s account, an angel asks them, “why do you look for the living among the dead?”

In others words, do not stay in this place but go and look for life. In still other worlds, go into the places of hunger and thirst and imprisonment and suffering, but do so with hope, seeking life and participating in the love and justice of the gospel of the risen Christ, such that you rise up again and again and again from the inevitable falling that you will experience in such places. And in that rising up, you will find your soul filled with a more profound Hallelujah!

Indeed, resurrection is why we are here. The resurrection of Christ, however you imagine it, means something utterly essential for human life. Resurrection does not mean that suffering will be no more.

Rather, resurrection means this:

It means that hope resides in the midst of despair; an essential element of the new heaven and new earth that God is creating in our midst.

It means that light shines in the darkness, and that darkness shall not overcome it.

It means that in the face of the sometimes loud clanging “no” of human strife, struggle and suffering, God speaks a decisive “yes” to all of creation.

It means that “in every insult, rift and war, where color, scorn or wealth divide, Christ suffers still, yet loves the more, and lives where even hope has died.”

It means, “Christ is alive, and comes to bring good news to this and every age. Till earth and sky and ocean ring, with joy, with justice, love and praise.”

He is risen! Risen indeed!

Let us rise up singing, and carry this song of resurrection hope into all the world! Amen.

Who Is This?

Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29; Matt. 21:1-11

March 16, 2008

Who is this? Who is this one riding into town, celebrated with waving palms and shouts of “Hosanna!”? Who is this?

That really is the question, isn’t it? That is the whole of it, for us who would call ourselves followers of this Jesus.

Who is he? Why do we care? Now, some 2,000 years after the events we’ve just read about and the ones we circle around during Holy Week each year. This morning, as we welcome new members, reaffirm our faith, promise again to be disciples.

Who is he?

Let’s stop right here, for just a moment. Set aside, if you can, the obvious fact that we are gathered together in a Christian church – a place that is part of an ancient institution that exists, at least in part, to project and protect a set of orthodox answers to this question of Jesus’ identity. Set aside, to the extent possible, those orthodox answers that we have received, and put yourself back into the gospel stories themselves. Bring with you, if you need to, a post-Easter faith in the risen Christ, but bring with you, front and center, your own experience of Jesus.

Who is he?

What names, identities, associations come to your mind when you think of Jesus?

What are the most comforting images or experiences with Jesus that come to your mind?

What are the most challenging or difficult images or experiences?

This morning – this Palm Sunday morning – I want to share a couple of my own experiences with Jesus, one comforting, one that I found quite challenging.

Those of you who know my story will not be surprised to hear that the challenge came in Pittsburgh, land that I love! However, it had nothing to do with my resignation – at least not directly.

It will help you to know that while I was in Pittsburgh I had a ponytail that went halfway down my back, and that I had a lovely beard and mustache. In this robe, I cut quite the figure. Indeed, one Sunday when one of Bud’s friends – probably a fourth-grader at the time – joined us for worship for the first time, he saw me process into the sanctuary behind the choir, turned to Cheryl and asked, “what is he, some kind of soul man?”

I have been called many things over the years, but that remains my all-time favorite! But it’s not what I want to tell you about.

What I want to tell you about happened at the very end of my time in that congregation, when I was visiting an elderly couple – Touhy and Jack – in their home. I think I had already resigned, and was saying some “thank yous” and “good-byes” to folks who had been wonderfully supportive throughout our time there.

At some point in our conversation, Touhy said to me, “you know, the first time I saw you at church, I thought there was something about you – you looked like what I imagined Jesus looked like.” She went on in that vein for a moment, and I brushed it off saying, “well, I’m certainly not Jesus.”

But the conversation stuck with me; indeed, haunted me, because it reminded me that I had fallen prey to the most common temptation – especially common to ministers – to think we can be saviors, that we can be Jesus, that we can take stone and turn it into bread, that we can have dominion over the nations, that we can cast ourselves down from a high place and neither stumble nor fall.

While those of us who are ministers of the word and sacrament may be particularly susceptible to these temptations as they arise in ecclesiastical settings, they are common among all of us. At some point in most of our lives we have occasion to believe that if everyone else would just listen to us then the world would be a better place – “work we be better if they’d just listen to me; home would be better if they’d just listen to me; church would be better if they’d just listen to me. If I had dominion, if I were king of the world, I could fix all that ails it. … If everybody would just recognize my messiahship ….”

Somewhere along the line Jesus should have requested a warning label for the gospels: “Caution: extremely dangerous. Do not attempt on your own!”

We forget the gospel call is to follow, not chart the course; to serve, not to be served; to worship, not to be worshipped. We are to be disciples, not messiahs.

It is, perhaps, comforting to consider the Palm Sunday story, and know that we are not alone. The teeming crowds gather to celebrate and shout “hosanna!” but when Jesus moves into the temple to confront the powers and principalities, the crowds disappear. When he moves to speak truth to power, they fall silent. When the moment of decision arrives, they turn quickly from the call to follow, to serve, to worship. They scatter and try to get by on their own devices.

It’s easy to be a Christian in church on a Sunday morning, to join the parade of palms, to sing “All Glory, Laud and Honor.”

But what happens when it comes time to confront the powers? What happens when our own power fails us, when we cannot get by on our own, when we are alone? What happens on Good Friday … which is to say, what happens in the everyday suffering of this world? To whom do we turn?

When Touhy Sharkey said, “I looked at you and I saw Jesus,” I heard not the praise she intended, but rather a sharp word of condemnation because I was trying to make it through a Good Friday world on my own … worse yet, I was trying to make it through on my own image that was largely created by expectations that others had cast upon me because of the role I played, the office I held, the ecclesiastical vestments that I wore.

Sisters and brothers, this is not news to you: I am no Jesus.

Indeed, as one of my favorite seminary professors liked to remind us, “reverend is a noun, not an adjective; it names the office it does not describe the office-holder.”

The robe and vestments come with the office, and do not endow the wearer with any special powers or pieties; no more than does the status of “member of the community” endow any of us with special powers or pieties.

For, you see, despite the confessional tone this morning, this is not about me. It is about Jesus; and it is about us. It is about who we say that he is; and about what that says about who we are.

So, let me share that second “Jesus experience.”

This happened just last Friday, as I was kneeling in prayer outside the Hart Senate Office Building with others from the Olive Branch Interfaith Peace Partners witness for peace. There were 42 of us there, a group of strangers, standing or kneeling in the rain, expecting the Capitol police to arrest us for making their afternoon miserable or “unlawful assembly.”

I had never been arrested in my life, and it was not a step I was taking lightly or without a fair amount of fearfulness. As we were praying together, my eyes were cast down, and looking at the wet pavement I felt cold, fearful and very much alone. The police were gathering, filming us. Other officers stood inside the building watching us through the plate glass doors and windows. I did not know what was going to happen in the next few moments or hours or days, for that matter.

But then I lifted my eyes, and saw that I was surrounded by a group of faithful folks praying for peace, and a great cloud of witnesses, and I knew that I was not alone. I was overtaken by a deep calm, and a sense that not only was I in the midst of a congregation of the faithful, but that the Christ in each one, demonstrator and police officer alike, was plain and clear to see. In a way that cannot be described except by recourse to the poetic language of the psalms,

“Out of my distress I called on the Lord; the Lord answered me and set me in a broad place.

With the Lord beside me I do not fear. …

I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation.

The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.

This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.

This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

It was not much – little at all, to be sure. No clouds parting, no sun beaming down upon us, certainly no dove descending. Indeed, no assurance that we were right in any political or strategic sense.

Nevertheless, Jesus was there, as comforting presence and assurance that the attempt to make peace, the witness to shalom, the openness to seeing the spark of the divine in every other human being, is enough for the day that the Lord has made; enough to rejoice and be glad in it – even if it ends up with you in jail.

For that effort is what we’re called to – not to be Jesus, as if we could; but to be his disciples.

For who is this one who comes riding in? He is the son of man. He is the Christ. He is the prince of peace.

And who are we? At our best, we are disciples. We are followers. We are witnesses.

We are not called to be always correct in our assertion, nor always certain in our convictions. We are not called to be always successful in our endeavors, nor always pious in our practice.

We are called to be faithful, to trust the presence of Christ, and to follow Jesus into the world.

Even as the hosannas of Palm Sunday turn to shouts of “crucify him,” we are invited into a relationship of trust with the crucified one.

It is not much to go on, to be sure. Hardly enough to stop a war or dismantle an empire. But enough for the day. First this day, then another, then the one after. Now and forever, amen.

Sleepers Awake!

Psalm 23; Ephesians 5:8-14
March 2, 2008
What difference does beauty make? Is hospitality anything more than a social nicety? Why consider these in the context of Christian worship, as values or practices having something to do with Christian faith and life, and, moreover, why take them together?
I’m not sure that I can answer those questions in any systematic, theological way this morning, so let me simply share a few provisional impressions.
A decade ago, when I was doing a three-month stint of clinical pastoral education at Central Baptist Hospital in Lexington, our CPE supervisor described the experience of many patients in hospital by recalling the Biblical story of the spies sent in ahead of the children of Israel to check out the promised land and returning to say that it was a land of giants who spoke a foreign tongue. I was thinking of that story this week while considering the mission work of our young people in preparing a room at the pediatric clinic, and it occurred to me that, to some extent, mission is hospitality.
I am awash in opportunities to think about hospitality just now. It may seem otherwise to those who know how much time I have spent over the past many weeks as part of the planning team for this week’s Christian Peace Witness and the Olivebranch Interfaith Witness. It probably sounds like, oh, just more of David’s peacemaking and politicing.
But last Friday, as I juggled phone calls, e-mails, a newsletter, the bulletin and plans for a funeral service with housecleaning because we had dinner guests, I realized that all of this work – whether it was the pastoral work of comforting those who mourn, the priestly work of preparing for worship services, or the prophetic work of peacemaking – all of this work was first and foremost a matter of hospitality.
I assure I was not thinking in any high-minded manner about it, though, because my tasks included securing port-a-potties for the interfaith witness on Capitol Hill this Friday and cleaning the toilets in our house for the folks coming over for dinner. I did pause to consider the story of Mary and Martha – you remember: Jesus comes over for dinner and Mary sits with him while Martha runs around the house making sure that everything is just so. I wondered, “am I Mary or Martha just now? Am I preparing to welcome Christ just as Christ welcomes me, or am I just cleaning house so folks will notice how clean the house is?”
Well, trust me, no one ever walks away from our house saying, “my, what a spotless place they keep.”
I do hope, however, that folks walk away feeling that they have been deeply and warmly welcomed, that the Christ in them has been honored by whatever there is of Christ in me.
This is how we live as “children of light.” It is the greater part of what it means to “awake.” It is a central part of discerning Christian vocation.
If, as my friend Leann Hodges puts it, discernment means simply “wake up!” then extending authentic hospitality is the alarm clock of vocation. Hospitality extended or received awakens us to the presence of Christ in our midst and opens us to hearing Christ when he calls us by name.
Too often, though, we confuse hospitality with something else. In an age of disconnect, when so many folks are searching for some sense of welcome, of connection, of community, we wind up looking for it in places shaped far more by market values than by faith values. I may be wrong, but I don’t think the Kingdom of God – a foretaste of which we will share together at table in a few minutes – is going to look much like the Magic Kingdom; when we are honored in the presence of the Holy One it is not going to look much like the Hilton Honors program.
Why? Well, to begin with, because everyone will be there. The folks who cannot dream of a night at a Hilton banquet come to this table. The folks who cannot dream of a day at Disney are welcome always to this table. Moreover, the folks who are locked out and marginalized from the centers of market power because of economic status, sexual orientation, race, gender and so on, are welcome to this table.
I’m not knocking Disney or Hilton – they probably have their place. It’s just that we have come to imagine or allow them to occupy what is not their proper place. We’ve come to imagine that we can buy connection and meaning and community through the entertainments the market entices us with, and we’ve lost track of the gift of simple hospitality that is at the heart of authentic Christian connection, meaningfulness and community.
We have also lost sight of simple beauty. God’s gracious hospitality to us includes the lilies of the field and the birds of the sky. The seas and mountains are God’s handiwork. On the one hand, that recognition calls us to embrace deeper values such that we do not demean or destroy that which is of God, and on the other hand, that recognition calls us to join God in creative work to construct in our own lives small spaces of beauty.
So we get the bathrooms cleaned … and we put some flowers there. So we do the work of hospitality and create a space of great welcome and beauty right here. Look around you, and consider all of the work by all of the hands of so many folks for so many years right here.
When we look past beauty we lose track of God and of God’s remarkable gift of hospitality through the primal act of creation.
Our lives are cheapened as a result. Moreover, as I have considered the work of peacemaking and justice seeking that we are engaged in these days, I have come to believe that our politics – secular and within the church – are cheapened as well to the extent that we look past beauty and ignore this fundamental Christian practice of hospitality.
I believe that is one of the principle reasons that we’ve come to privatize faith and to disassociate our faith lives from our public lives. When we do so, we impoverish both spheres.
Christianity has always been inherently political, but it has been so in a way that calls forth a profoundly enlarged view of the political – the polis, the city and its ordering and one that values the beauty of the created order for more than its use value. When we attend to beauty we deepen our sense of connection to the earth and all that is therein – that is to say, we deepen our sense of connection to that which belongs to God.
When we practice authentic hospitality we broaden our own sense of connection and welcome and relationship to include folks who are not like us and who do not see the world through the same eyes. That does not mean backing down from our own convictions, but it does mean recognizing in those with whom we disagree a fundamental common identity as children of a loving God.
I’m here to tell you, not only are Dick Cheney and Barack Obama distant cousins as defined by human relations of kin, but also they are brothers as defined by Godly relations.
The call to hospitality is a call to see that which is of God in every other. Responding to that call with grace and authenticity explodes every narrow politics and invites us into a new space of relationship and community.
God does set a table for us in the midst of our enemies, and the call to hospitality asks of us that we invite those enemies to join us at the table. You see, hospitality is peacemaking. And the banquet of the beloved community is a place of deep beauty reflected in the faces of all those gathered around the table that marks in center.
So come, this morning, beautiful people of God. For a place has been set for you and a welcome has been prepared.