The Final Countdown

John 13:31-35

31 When he was gone, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man is glorified and God is glorified in him. 32 If God is glorified in him,[a] God will glorify the Son in himself, and will glorify him at once.

33 “My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come.

34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

The Final Countdown

April 28, 2013

Rev. Laurie Lyter

First United Presbyterian Church, Loveland, Colorado

There’s a great legend about Ernest Hemingway, who wrote such incredible pieces of fiction as The Old Man and the Sea, A Clean, Well-lighted Place, For Whom The Bell Tolls, and A Farewell to Arms. The legend goes that a literary agent once challenged the author – who is well known for his pithy, direct writing style – to tell a story in only six words. Hemingway rose to the challenge with the following sentence:

For sale: baby shoes; never worn.

Since that time, the movement of the six word story has come in waves – everything from literary magazines to youtube campaigns – to see just how much meaning we can convey in a very few words. It’s not particularly easy to do.

Recently, author David Heims researched a smattering of contemporary theologians for an article in the magazine The Christian Century, asking them to summarize their faith in Christ and understanding of the Gospel in seven words or less.

Lutheran scholar Martin E. Marty wrote “God, through Jesus Christ, welcomes you anyhow”. Theologian and ethicist Donald W. Shriver writes “Divinely persistent, God really loves us”. The poet Mary Karr offers, “We are the Church of Infinite Chances”. Professor Ellen Charry writes “the wall of hostility has come down”.

Author and theologian Walter Brueggemann’s gospel, expectedly, is complex and densely packed — “Israel’s God’s bodied love continues world-making”. Brueggemann says he only used six words, and rested on the seventh. M. Craig Barnes, the newly minted President of Princeton Theological Seminary, gets it down to four words: “We live by grace.”

The reality is that preachers, philosophers, professors, and theologians have been attempting to synthesize, analyze, and convey Scripture to others for centuries now, and most of us use quite a lot of words to do it. We take a verse or chapter at a time and try to weave in complex theological ideas, contemporary references, context, translations, and so forth, all in the mostly vain hope that we can make these stories make sense – if not to others, then at least to our own minds.

In the never-ending attempt to speak about Scripture, millions more words have been written and spoken. The eminent theologian Karl Barth’s masterwork, Church Dogmatics, took nearly thirty five years to write. It is thirteen volumes of systematic theology on topics like Revelation, Creation, and Atonement. It contains more than six million words.

The Bible is a big, daunting collection of Words all on its own. There are seven hundred seventy three thousand, six hundred and ninety two words in the King James Bible – five hundred ninety two thousand four hundred and thirty nine in the old testament, and a comparatively brief one hundred and eighty one thousand two hundred and fifty three in the New Testament.

The Bible sometimes gets a bad reputation for being too verbose – all those stories with confusing names and lineage of intolerable length – but it’s got some great moments of distilled clarity. The Great Commission, for example, in Matthew 28 clocks in at a mere four verses, and is the summary of the great command of what the followers of Christ were and are meant to do.

“Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go.  When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Not bad on the brevity scale. But Scripture encapsulates another major command in even less space – the eleven little words of the golden rule of Luke 6: 31-  Do to others as you would have them do to you.

But what if a challenge similar to the one presented to Hemingway came to us – to tell the story of our faith in six words or less.

How about the beginning of the Gospel of John – in which we learn about the everlasting nature of The Word in six short words “The light shines in the darkness”. No matter what bleakness the world presents or how cruel humanity can be, nothing will ever put out that everlasting, glorious light. That, for many of us, is the heart and soul of the Gospel.

Or, perhaps instead, we could try the five words in Deuteronomy 6:5 Love the Lord your God. The verse is repeated in Micah and again the gospels, and is followed up with the way in which we should love God – with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength – but the simplicity of the command stands on it’s own two feet – or five words, as it were.

That kind of love can seem a bit too passive for some, though. Instead, perhaps, the contrast of joy and suffering in Scripture and in our lives comes to the forefront. Coming out of the unthinkable life of slavery under Pharaoh, Moses and Aaron convey the wishes of the Lord, God Almighty in Exodus 5:1 – “Let my people go.” Across time and geography, men and women have held firm to this four-worded promise from God – that we belong to the Creator, the God who is I am, and that our freedom from slavery, persecution, and suffering matters. That we might all be God’s people, and we might all be set free at God’s command, tells the story of our faith.

But for others, Scripture is about upholding promises. In Christ’s birth, life, death, and resurrection, we receive the fulfillment of the prophecies of ancient days. John 19:30 sees the completion of Christ’s journey unto death in three simple and unimaginable words , breathed by a savior on a cross – “It is finished”.

Others still will see the promise of Christ’s incarnation in his shared experiences of humanity. John 11:35 gives us Christ’s response to the death of his friend Lazarus. Jesus knows Lazarus will rise again – and he’ll be the one to do it. He’s there ready and willing to reassure the grieving sisters – Mary and Martha – “your brother will rise again”. Yet as he approaches the tomb where Lazarus has been laid to rest, Christ expresses a deeply human emotion – grief. Verse thirty five simply reads “Jesus wept.” Two words that summarize an entirely human experience.

So the entire story of the Christian faith wrapped up in two words – not bad at all. But I think maybe the whole of this magnificent faith can be summed up in just one word – a word which appears throughout the gospel, more than 600 times. Maybe it is The Word.

Love. Love your enemies. Love your mother and father. Love strangers. Love the Lord your God. Love your neighbor as yourself. You are my Son, whom I love, and with You, I am well-pleased. For God so Loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.  “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples”

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

So maybe that is our answer – the Gospel in a single word, a single promise and a single command – just this: Love.

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It’s Not Easy Being Green

Psalm 148 and Genesis 6-7

 

It’s Not Easy Being Green

April 21, 2013

Rev. Laurie Lyter (with thanks to Kermit the Frog)

First United Presbyterian Church, Loveland, CO

 

This is a story all about how

The whole of creation got turned upside down,

It’ll take a few minutes but it’s worth the wait,

To learn how Noah met his fate.

 

Please don’t mistake these rhymes as a joke,

These were terrible words that our Creator spoke,

Dark days and dark times and a difficult chapter,

But it’s a mistake to think the Bible’s all “happy ever after”

 

So let content and form reveal and entwine

As we try to sort out the intent of the divine.

 

Noah was old, yet surprisingly spry,

A mere 600 years old when God’s patience ran dry.

God was generally pleased with Noah and so anointed,

but with the rest of the planet, God was most disappointed.

 

“I regret this Creation,” God fumed and stormed,

“There’s violence in them from the moment they’re formed!

What was I thinking? I’m God! I can’t make

Something so awful, such a mistake!”

 

Now Noah and his family were righteous and such,

Blameless and upright… The others? Not so much.

The rest of the planet was just misbehavin’

God was distressed – how’d you all get so craven?!

 

I’ve tried to be patient but Noah, we’re through,

I’m going to drown everyone but you.

I know it sounds grim and a little extreme,

but the floodwaters are coming, if you know what I mean.

 

 

People will tell stories of animals two by two,

But pan-ethnic genocide is part of it too.

It’s not just about a rainbow and a boat,

It’s about our humanity… Or God’s mutability… or both?

 

Whatever the meaning, allegorical or fact,

God’s not one to make empty threats and not act,

So Noah took seriously this righteous command,

And considered quite carefully the task now at hand.

 

Here comes the lightning, the thunder, the oncoming rain

The torrents and deluge – God’s anger unchained,

So build it quick, little Noah, though the neighbors will snark,

Your only option is building one heck of an ark.

 

One pair of each animal, to repopulate,

When God decides it’s time to re-create,

Seems unicorns missed the boat – what a shame, what a loss,

And can you imagine how rough waves must toss

 

A boat full of creatures, big and small,

And hardly sufficient room for them all,

The monsoon did pummel the lands and the sea,

Forty days and nights… all are lost… how can this be?

 

The flood waters stayed for days – one hundred and fifty,

By that point I’m sure the animals got shifty,

 

The ark came to rest on a mount, high above,

And Noah awaited the return of the dove,

An olive branch and a promise made new,

No matter how mad I get, I will never leave you.

 

A rainbow then becomes the promise and reminder,

Of a moment when God’s words got kinder,

And may give us time to consider and pause,

Did God’s mind change? Did we give God just cause?

 

 

 

Or is this simply our new set of instructions,

The story of creation – still under construction.

 

Be fruitful and multiply, go fix up the earth,

Consider this covenant a sort of new birth!

That’s nice, in a story, from long far away,

But what does that mean for us here today?

 

How does God’s covenant make manifest,

In our busy schedules? Where is the rest?

Sure a creation redeemed makes a good story,

But what do we do with it? Get it together, Laurie.

 

Well of course of the Divine one can never be sure,

But I think God’s promise to all creatures endures

Because, at least in part, I suppose,

We’re meant to love deeply this creation that grows.

 

It’s not easy being green,

Or of the earth conscientious,

But we’re all called to be stewards,

Not just the proud or pretentious,

 

Not just the wealthy or powerful or few,

But earth-care is a call for me and for you.

 

All creatures should go for broke and sing and dance,

This re-creation is our second chance,

So stewardship of the earth is a sacred call,

Not a selfish act, but a gift left for all.

 

It’s not just reducing, reusing, recycling,

Forgoing our cars in favor of bicycling,

Those things do matter and our waste is intense,

But it’s about a new creation -in love so immense,

 

That a covenant was made – a promise so kept,

A gift and a call to which all creation leapt.

 

 

It’s about seeing and naming the things which are toxic,

And carrying on even when things feel Quixotic,

Like we’re tilting at windmills – or solar panels, as it were,

This life and this place are a gift, to be sure.

 

It’s about waking daily and continuing to alter,

Even just one small choice, that the odds might falter,

That in God’s covenant, alive in you,

The fruition of love might find it’s due.

 

So use it well, and live up to your relationship half,

With a merciful God’s new creation – on your behalf,

And leave this place better than when you were found,

By protecting God’s love – in the sky, sea, and ground.

 

 

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Breaking the Fast

John 21:1-19

 

Breaking the Fast

An Adaptation of the Oxfam America Hunger Banquet

Third Sunday of Easter

April 14, 2013

Rev. Laurie Lyter

First United Presbyterian Church, Loveland, CO

This day, right now, more than 2.5 billion people live in poverty. According to the research of Oxfam, an international organization which addresses issues of systemic poverty, over 925 million people suffer from chronic hunger world-wide. Simon, son of John, do you love me? A child dies from hunger or preventable disease every four seconds. That’s 22,000 children a day. We like to think that hunger is about too many people and too little food, but scientists prove again and again that our bountiful planet produces enough food to feed every woman, man, and child on earth.

Hunger is about power. Its roots lie in inequalities in access to resources. The results are illiteracy, poverty, war, and the inability of families to grow or buy food. Hunger affects everyone, in countries rich and poor. But some of us face greater challenges than others.

If you love me, feed my sheep.

As we consider some of these facts in light of today’s Scripture, I’d like to invite all those who are able to please join me in a little experiment. Those of you with pink high income cards please rise as you are able, and come on down here to the front.

Those of you with green middle income cards, please come over to this section here.

And those of you with orange or purple will have to figure out how to squish together over here. Get cozy. (time for congregational re-seating)

This is a variation on the Oxfam Hunger Banquet, an event where we divide our resources and space based on the way food sources are divided in the real world. Oxfam works in more than 90 countries. They are committed to community-based work, and also call our attention to the larger barriers that keep people from thriving.

Every human being has the same basic needs; it is only our circum- stances—where we live and the culture into which we are born—that differ. Some of us are born into relative prosperity and security, while millions—through no choice of our own— are born into poverty.

Those of you up front – If you are sitting over here, you represent the 15 percent of the world’s population with a per capita income of $12,000 or more per year. You are fortunate enough to be able to afford a nutritious daily diet. Since many of you exceed your daily requirement of calories, you are likely to face health problems at the opposite end of the spectrum from starvation – diseases such as heart disease and diabetes.

But most of you have access to the best medical care in the world. It’s a given that your children will attend school; the only uncertainty is how many years they will study after high school. Access to credit? You turn down more offers than you can count. You and your family live in a comfortable and secure home. You probably own at least one car and two televisions. When you take your annual vacation, you don’t worry about your job disappearing in your absence. You have access to virtually everything you need and the security to enjoy it.

The risen savior asks – do you love me? Then feed my sheep.

Those of you in the middle group – If you are sitting here, you represent roughly 35 percent of the world’s population. You earn between $987 and $11,999 a year. The levels of access and security you enjoy vary greatly. You live on the edge. For many, it would take losing only one harvest to drought or a serious illness to throw you into poverty.

You probably own no land and may work as a day laborer, a job that pays a paltry amount—but it’s better than nothing. Your small income allows for some use of electricity and a few years of schooling for your children—especially if they are boys. Alternatively, you may have left your family to go work in the city. You hope that the money you earn from your less-than-minimum-wage job as domestic help or sweatshop worker will eventually allow you to move back home and make a better life for your family.

From the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 25, verses 31-40 ³¹ “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. ³² All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. ³³ He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

³⁴ “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. ³⁵ For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, ³⁶ I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

³⁷ “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? ³⁸ When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? ³⁹ When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

⁴⁰ “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

Or, put another way, feed my sheep.

The rest of you – the ones sitting in this group – with the most people and the least space, you represent the majority of the world’s population—roughly 50 percent. Your average income is less than $986 a year—about $2.70 a day—although many of you earn much less. Every day is a struggle to meet your family’s basic needs. Finding food, water, and shelter can consume your entire day. For many of you women, it would not be uncommon to have to walk five to 10 miles every day to get water, spend several more hours working in the fields, and of course, take care of the children.

Many of you are frequently hungry. It is quite likely that you don’t get the minimum number of calories your hardworking life requires. Many of you are homeless or living in structures so flimsy that a hard rain or strong wind could cause a major catastrophe.

Even though education is the single most powerful weapon against poverty, school is a luxury few of your children will ever experience. Most girls will receive no education. Adequate health care is out of the question. For most of you, early death is all too familiar, with many mothers expecting to lose one or two children before they turn 5.

If you are lucky enough to work, you are probably a tenant farmer who must give your landowner 75 percent of your harvest. Or you may get occasional work as a day laborer at a large plantation growing bananas, sugar, or coffee for export. You reap few benefits from these crops; you’d prefer to grow food your children could eat.

The prophet Isaiah tells us, in the 58th chapter, in verse number 10 “If you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.”

Starting at sundown last night, some of you have been joining me in a 24-hour, water-only fast. Fasting is never something we should enter into lightly, for it is a powerful practice and has the potential to be enormously dangerous if misused. While fasting can’t begin to mimic the fear, long-term health implications, or danger of true hunger, it can serve as a mindful spiritual practice which allows us a mere glimpse at understanding what many of our brothers and sisters experience as a way of life. Just as the practice of giving up something we enjoy during Lent can serve to remind us of sacrifice, so too can fasting help us to think about our relationship with food – what we eat, and why.

I love the generous sharing of treats during our weekly post-worship fellow time. I love the way we come together as a community over food – both the feast of the table during communion and the feast of our shared bounty over conversation after worship. But, just this once, I want to ask that we mindfully forgo snacking during our time of connection and sharing as a church family. I want us to thoughtfully give up something very small to remember a very large truth – that many of our brothers and sisters go without — all the time.

Fasting is, historically, a rich part of religious expression or spiritual formation in cultures all over the world, and dates back to before Christ. It’s part of the Baha’i practice during the month of Ala, the Muslim month of Ramadan. Moses fasts in Deuteronomy 9 – twice, back to back, for forty days and forty nights. King David fasts when his son grows ill in second Samuel 12, and again to humble his soul in Psalm 35:13. The people of Nineveh fast in response to the prophecy of Jonah in Jonah 3:7, and the Jews of Persia fast with Mordechai when Haman declares genocide on them in Esther 4. Jesus fasts for forty days and nights in the desert while being tempted by Satan in Matthew and Luke 4, and Christ teaches us to fast inwardly rather than for outward show in Matthew 6. Paul fasts for three days after his Damascus road conversion in Acts 9, and the early church leaders fasted and prayed abundantly while making decisions about Elders.

Conscientious forgoing of food is often used as a form of political protest, in the form of hunger strikes. In the early 20th century, British and American suffragettes like Marion Dunlap and Emily Pankhurst took up hunger strikes while imprisoned for protesting for their right to vote.

In April, 1972, Pedros Luis Boitel, an imprisoned poet and dissident in Havana, Cuba, declared himself on hunger strike to protest the oppressive regime of his government. After 53 days on hunger strike, receiving only liquids, he died of starvation on May 25, 1972.

Civil Rights leader, Mohandas Gandhi was imprisoned in 1922, 1930, 1933 and 1942. Because of Gandhi’s stature around the world, it was difficult for British colonial authorities to ignore his efforts. Gandhi engaged in several famous hunger strikes to protest the British rule over the people of India. Fasting was a non-violent way of communicating the message and sometimes helped to dramatize the original reason for the protest. Along with several others, the efforts of Gandhi led to a change in political power for an entire nation.

When we fast today, we don’t do it with the expectation of moving political mountains or raising broad awareness. We are skipping a meal or two. We do it to raise the level of consciousness within, in the hopes that we might be more aware of our brothers and sisters in need than we were before. The way this manifest for each of us will be different. Perhaps we will resonate more deeply with the hungry. Perhaps we will think about how often we throw away food, or how we might best help serve the hungry. Perhaps we will just be a bit cranky til dinner. That’s between you and God.

In the third chapter of the Gospel of Luke, the eleventh verse…”And he answered them, “Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise.”

There is an undeniable power of three in Christianity – the three persons of the trinity, the three crosses at Golgotha, Christ’s resurrection on the third day. It creates a triangle, a tryptic, a waltz.

Peter denies denies denies, ⁶⁹ Now Peter was sitting out in the courtyard, and a servant girl came to him. “You also were with Jesus of Galilee,” she said.

⁷⁰ But he denied it before them all. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. ⁷¹ Then he went out to the gateway, where another servant girl saw him and said to the people there, “This fellow was with Jesus of Nazareth.” ⁷² He denied it again, with an oath: “I don’t know the man!”

⁷³ After a little while, those standing there went up to Peter and said, “Surely you are one of them; your accent gives you away.” ⁷⁴ Then he began to call down curses, and he swore to them, “I don’t know the man!” One, two, three.

But the waltz goes on – Christ redeems, redeems, redeems.

Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” “Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”

¹⁶ Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.”

¹⁷ The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.

Three times denied, three times redeemed. One, two, three, one, two, three. It seems like such a simple, straightforward story arc. Beginning, middle, end.

It seems like there’s a lot expected of Christians these days. Gone are the days when we can check in around 9:35 and check out by 10:30 and call it a day. There’s hunger, human trafficking, child soldiers, civil wars, genocide, nuclear proliferation, state-sponsored torture, illiteracy, gun control, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, civil rights, maternal mortality rates, homelessness, domestic violence, child abuse, animal abuse, environmental stewardship and on and on and on.

We are bombarded with issues and committees, opportunities to serve, philanthropies to chair, and checks to write. There is so much worthy of attention, time, and energy, and often we feel cornered into picking a few choice, defining issues and leaving the rest where it lies. Because it’s too much. We’re too diffuse. We can’t live up to it all. There’s too much being asked of us. There are too many issues, and there is insufficient humanity.

Except, I don’t think following Christ is about choosing an issue. It’s about letting God break in to your whole-life, like sunlight shining through a wall so cracked that pretty soon, the wall itself is eclipsed by the brightness. They will know we’re Christians by our love. Not by our causes. By our love. Christ breaks the fast of loss, loneliness, need, and emptiness by incarnating God’s love. It’s up to us to keep carrying that forward.

People of First United Presbyterian Church of Loveland Colorado… you can return to your regularly scheduled pews and worship services in

just a moment, but as you do please join me in considering the ultimate question…do we love Him? Then let us make sure the world knows us by that love. Let us feed His sheep.

 

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Law and Order, Will and Grace – Grace (Easter Sunday)

Exodus 14:10-31

Psalm 98

Luke 24:1-12

Law and Order, Will and Grace

Rev. Laurie Lyter

Easter Sunday – March 31, 2013

First United Presbyterian Church, Loveland Colorado

Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed. We gather here to celebrate a sacred and unbelievable thing – the morning when Jesus comes out of his cave and if He sees his shadow, we get six more weeks of winter… I wish I could take credit, but that’s very much a borrowed joke. Anyhow, that’s not right at all. Today is the day when the Jesus Bunny comes and leaves eggs and candy for all of us. Right?

One does have a somewhat difficult time in drawing the connections between the story of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, and the practices we use to celebrate Easter today. Our celebratory traditions actually are historical – just not particularly Christian. Many of our Easter traditions arose from Pagan symbols – including the very name “Easter” which comes from the ancient Pagan goddess known as “Oestra”, a Saxon goddess of dawn and spring, whose name means “shining light arising in the East”. She was a goddess of fertility and new life, and the sacred animal most often associated with her was – you guessed it – the rabbit. So an Easter rabbit and Easter eggs (also a symbol of new life) were used in celebrations that took place around the time of the vernal equinox, symbolizing the arrival of new life in spring.

It was with an awareness of all of these traditions that early Christians began celebrating their sense of new life in Christ’s resurrection promises that these practices were borrowed. The eggs came to symbolize more than new life alone – but are a reminder of the stone of a tomb, or of a bird hatching as a reminder of Christ rising from the grave.

Personally, I don’t think there’s a thing wrong with borrowed or shared symbols, or things like Easter eggs and candy. Especially not the candy part. Celebrations and silliness are an important part of faith and I don’t think Jesus would mind one bit. However, receiving candy and gifts is only the beginning of why this day matters.

We Christians are much more inclined to use the calendar of our beliefs as a compass, finding our way by the north star of our faith – the repeated and remembered cycle of Lent and Holy Week, Good Friday and Easter. These are the cosmic bookends of our faith. As we celebrate the full cycle of birth, life, death and resurrection, the sun that rose on that darkest day rising once again in the East, we must know that this resurrection day is our true north – the true joy of joys, the most sacred moment of all.

Up and down, East and West, backwards and forwards, our faith is a compass in an often directionless life, anchoring us with the resurrection promises of Christ. But it doesn’t always seem that way at the time.

The Israelites look back – the Egyptians are coming. They were terrified and cried out to the Lord. 11 They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? 12 Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians’? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!” These men and women are recipients of miraculous grace and radical gentleness, yet they find themselves in the middle of violence, regret, scapegoating, and fear. Looking backward, there is slavery and unimaginable suffering, but it is suffering that is known to them and the known is always less terrifying than the unknown.

The Israelites look to their right and their left – a wall of water on either side. Impossible to know that this is real and a pathway forward, rather than a trap of death set before them.

The Israelites look forward – a pillar of cloud, first going before them with the angel of the Lord, then behind them – as if to give them a needed push. Before them is the treacherous beast of escape, and then only wandering. Death in a desert over death by the hands of slave owners or soldiers. Death seems everywhere. Looking towards the heavens, they cry out – “Why did we come here? What have I done and why have I done it?” Moses tries to reassure them but must not have been too sure, because he takes the concerns to God. Who tells them simply to keep moving in faith. That it is a Good Friday world, but the jubilation of Sunday is coming.

The disciples look backward – was everything they’ve done for nothing? They’ve been witnesses to and recipients of miraculous grace and radical gentleness.

Running away from the table of Christ….deserted before dessert. It had been such an incredible time together, and that last meal felt like it could go on for eternity. But night fell and the guards came and the men scattered. This community of brothers and sisters has always been a little dicey before the law but they were following Him, and trusted that that would be okay. But now He is gone.

The disciples look forward – who among them betrayed and denied? Who is next in the bloodlust warpath of the state officials and the angry mobs? Where do we go after the tomb? What happens next? Sure he promised to rise again, but you should’ve seen him suffer on that cross. No one could come back from that. The disciples move through a cloud, disoriented, lost, without their compass.

The women look backwards – a lifetime of serving, child-bearing and child-rearing, washing feet with their hair. Listening from the fringes of the group, absorbing His teachings even when others thought they were unworthy and unclean. Recipients of miraculous grace and radical gentleness. There had never been such a time and teacher as this. Now he was gone.

They turned right and left, turned towards one another as they gazed upon the crucifixion scene. The agony of watching your own son brutally murdered. They couldn’t look. But they couldn’t look away either, and they couldn’t leave him.

The women look forward and the future remains unclear. Where will they go? What will life look like? There can’t be any returning to “normal” after all they have seen and learned. Do they just go back to their husbands and fathers and villages? Does this whole experience get tucked away – a memory, a dream that ends in nightmare? Who are they now, these women who followed Christ?

The crucified Lord looks left, looks right, and sees the criminals crucified alongside him. These bandits, thieves who had knowingly broken the law. Below his feet – jeering crowds, soldiers gambling for his clothing as he struggles for breath against the sinking weight of his own, broken body. Above, the sky with scavenger birds circling and the sun, blocked out by mid-day, and beyond, a mysterious source, into which he commands his spirit and breathes his last. Backwards – a lifetime of risking, leading, teaching, preaching, challenging, and above all, loving the unlovable. The present moment – an innocent man sent to death, feeling left, knowing what it is to perceive abandonment by Creator God. To the future… God’s will be done.

People across all spaces and times stop on that difficult Friday, asking ourselves….why did this happen… Was it really for us? Is it in the at-one-ment, the atonement of God and us, that the curtain of division was torn in the temple and through Christ we might know love over death every time? The undeserved gift, and unearned grace. He brought us peace, but we draw the sword to strike in His name and seek the highest places for ourselves. He offered us body and blood, but we scatter and deny and abandon, and we have prepared a cross for our savior.

We, the people of God, turn to Moses, angry. Why did you lead us into this place? We would have been better off living where we were! It was a known misery, and Pharaoh was a tyrant we knew. Why this instead – this dying in the desert places, watching our children so parched with thirst that they can’t even cry out? Is this pain really the better plan?

We turn to God, angry. This life – so pockmarked with loss and suffering – is this really the best plan you could come up with? Is this call to selfless love and radical gentleness and miraculous generosity really your command in a world so hallmarked by greed and cruelty?

We turn to Christ, lost, furious. A great pillar of cloud blocks our view on all sides. Where is He? What happens to us now?

Sure, Love is patient and kind, but how patient and how kind and for how long? How kind in the face of such violence and cruelty. Crucifixions are happening all over the world, in the form of little children sold into slavery and bloody wars fought for decades. Bodies of our brothers and sisters, broken, for no good reason.

We turn to one another, in communal confession and confusion. Where do we go from here?

We close our eyes – looking away, hiding our eyes from the unseeable ways of the world, the social and political violence enacted again and again. We disappear inside a faith of introspection, asking the questions of Walt Whitman, exclaiming, “O Me! O life!… of the questions of these recurring; Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill’d with the foolish; Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?) Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects mean—of the struggle ever renew’d; Of the poor results of all—of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me; Of the empty and useless years of the rest—with the rest me intertwined; The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

When suddenly and yet predictably we are snapped back to life, called to remember the moment that the curtain was torn, and then, the tomb opened to reveal the glorious truth. Our eyes are open wide by the shock to see a new life and new world in Christ Jesus. In every direction, we see the broken made whole.

The table is emptied. Emptied of expectations and exclusion, assigned seats and preferential treatment. The table is set anew for you.

The tomb is emptied. Robbed of death, disarmed of its power by one who simply got up and walked away. Such miraculous grace and radical gentleness.

For this is our Savior, who proclaims solidarity with – not pity for – the poor, and the most vulnerable around us. He lived with compassion – literally, to suffer with, even unto death.

In this moment, he absorbs us. He hears and knows all of our questions and worries and fears. What does all of it mean? He grounds us with a simple answer. You are here—that life exists, and identity; That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse. So pick up your mat and follow. Leave slavery behind. Step into the divided sea. Stand at the empty table, the foot of the cross, the entryway to the tomb.

Let Christ become your north, your south, your east, your west, and know the shocking truth – that in the empty table and the empty tomb and the empty cross, we get closest to the fullness of the risen Christ. And we come to that with our eyes and hearts wide open.

 

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