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"I have been surprised by a Presence that knows my name. It’s always just a flash - but it’s enough for me to actually believe that I too have seen the Lord."

4/21/2019

FLASHES OF THE RESURRECTION
Easter Sunday, April 21, 2019
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

John 20:1-18

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

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I’ve been trying to grab hold of Jesus for as long as I can remember.  As a young teenager, I had this incredible oversized 3-D postcard of the Shroud of Turin.  The thing was awesome.  If you held it to the light one way, you saw an artist’s rendering of the face of Jesus, inspired by a photographic negative of the Shroud.  Held one way, it was a death mask, eyes closed.  But if you moved the postcard the other way, the eyes of Jesus would open.  There he was, alive.  I would spend hours flipping back and forth and watching those eyes open and close. And I used to wonder: “What if I am looking at the very face of Jesus the moment he was resurrected?”

Believers in the Shroud’s authenticity maintain that this image of the broken body of the Lord was not made by traditional artistic methods.  Instead, they say, it was burned onto the cloth at the very moment of Resurrection, by a sort of radiation, a side effect – if you will - of all that life-giving glory. In the shroud, they say, we have physical proof for this most foundational of all Christian beliefs – that Jesus of Nazareth, crucified by Rome, dead and buried, was raised to new and everlasting life by the power of God.

The shroud is some people’s way to try to grab hold of Jesus. They need the Shroud to be authentic because that would make it an actual witness to the Resurrection – something no human could ever say.  All four Gospels agree on that.  No one was in the tomb when it happened. There were no eye witnesses to this event.  Theologian Barbara Brown Taylor writes: “Whatever happened in (that) cave happened in the dark.  …it happened in complete silence, in absolute darkness, with the smell of damp stone and dug earth in the air.”[1]

So no one saw the actual moment.  But lots of folks claimed to have seen the aftereffect.  Ordinary people, like you and me, at different times and in different places claimed to have had encounters with the strangely elusive figure of the Risen Jesus, who appeared and disappeared at a moment’s notice.  We don’t know exactly what it was they experienced, but whatever it was, it was enough to change their lives forever.  Whatever it was, it started a world-wide movement that has become the world’s largest religion.  Whatever it was, it was enough that 2000 years later, here we are, in this room, to celebrate it.

Very early on Sunday morning, while it was still dark; while it was dangerous for a woman to be traveling unaccompanied, a grief-stricken Mary Magdalene went to the grave of Jesus anyway.  And when she arrived, she noted with fear that the stone had been rolled away from the mouth of the tomb.  And so she ran to tell Peter and another unnamed disciple that someone had stolen the body of Jesus, which was the most logical conclusion. Upon hearing this distressing news, the three ran back to the graveyard; each one looking inside the tomb, each one seeing no corpse.  Instead, the grave clothes were neatly folded on the slab; the face cloth carefully rolled up, something grave robbers would not have taken the time to do.  So that was perplexing.  But the notion of Resurrection never crossed their minds.

The two men being men decided that they needed to do something – anything - about this!  So, they ran off to tell the others.  They ran off… and left Mary by herself, still unaccompanied, grief-stricken, in the dark.

Suddenly, from the shadows, a stranger appeared.  Startled, Mary assumed that he was the gardener and asked if he knew where the body of Jesus had been moved.   “Please tell me,” she begged, “so that I can go and take the body myself.”  As if she could.  But grief does strange things to the mind.  And still there was no thought of Resurrection.

The gardener did not answer her question.  But he did speak.  He spoke her name.  And when he did, it was like a flash of lightening.  For just a moment, everything was as clear as midday.  “Rabbouni; my teacher” she cried and grabbed hold of him, hanging on for dear life.  Now that she had him back, she would never let him go.  But then Jesus made an odd statement: “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father.”  “Do not hold onto me…” “Do not hold onto me…”And in that odd statement, an essential truth about the Resurrection is revealed.  It cannot, in any tangible way, be grasped.  Resurrection cannot be codified or put in a box or explained in a theology book or proven in a debate.  Resurrection can only be experienced.  And it usually comes to us as a flash of something too good to be true.

So, was it real? Was it a dream?  Was it the hallucination of a sleep-deprived, grief-stricken woman? Whatever happened to Mary Magdalene in that garden was enough to convince her to believe the impossible.  And so she ran back to where the men were now hiding in fear for their lives and Mary Magdalene, a woman, preached the first Easter sermon ever, boldly announcing to anyone who would listen: “I have seen the Lord.”

If only she’d had her iPhone with her! If only Jesus had whispered the secret word in her ear that only he would know.  If only he had given her something to prove that she wasn’t crazy.  But all she had was her experience.  All she had was that flash of the Resurrection.  And that is all that anyone has ever had.

Flashes of the Resurrection - maybe that’s what you came to church seeking today. That’s what the great 20thcentury Swiss theologian Karl Barth said.  Barth said that the reason people come to church on Easter or on any Sunday is the unspoken question clinging to our hearts and minds “Is it true?”

In her marvelous short story entitled “See the Other Side” author Tatyana Tolstaya writes beautifully about our human struggle to dare to believe what we hope is true, but cannot prove.  She writes: “We hear whispers, but we plug our ears; we are shown, but we turn away. We have no faith: we’re afraid to believe, because we’re afraid that we’ll be deceived.  We are certain that we’re in the tomb.  We are certain that there’s nothing in the dark.  There can’t be anything in the dark.”[2]

Except that the message of Easter is that the Risen Christ dwells in those shadows and in that darkness. What proof do I have of that? Only my own experience. For you see, there have been moments in my own life when I have been so low.  Like you, I have buried those I love.  Like you, my health has faltered.  Like you, my relationships have crumbled.  Like you, I have lost my job.  Like you, I have sometimes wondered – truly - if God exists and if I’m wasting my life doing what I do.  And like you, I have doubted this incredible nonsense about a dead man being raised to life. But… time after time after time, at the edge of despair, in the darkness of doubt, in the midst of grief, I have been surprised by a Presence that knows my name.  It’s always just a flash - but it’s enough for me to actually believe that I too have seen the Lord.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

[1]Learning to Walk in the Dark, Barbara Brown Taylor

[2]The New Yorker, March 12, 2007

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"Mary was faithful. Judas was not. But faithful or not, they remained his. And faithful or not, we remain his."

4/7/2019

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TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN

Sunday, April 7, 2019 – Lent 5
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

John 12:1-8

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

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To understand the passage we’ve just heard, we have to back up to a previous and pivotal event.  Sisters Mary and Martha had sent word to Jesus that their brother Lazarus, upon whom they depended entirely in that patriarchal society, was very ill.  Despite the urgency of their message, Jesus delayed his coming.  Jesus delayed and Lazarus died. When Jesus finally arrived four days later, the sisters were overcome with grief, compounded with anger and deep disappointment.  But Jesus told them that if they believed they would see, for themselves, the shining glory God.  And then he stood outside Lazarus’s tomb, and through his own tears shouted down death: “Lazarus, come out,” he commanded. And Lazarus did.

Today’s scene takes place some days or weeks later. Now the tables are turned and it is Jesus who is standing at death’s door.   The religious authorities were after him precisely because he had raised Lazarus from the dead.  This was the opposite of “dead men tell no tales.”  In fact, this dead man had one heck of tale to tell.  It was enough to cause an insurrection. So Jesus had to go.

It was, in this atmosphere of dread and fear, that Jesus sat down to eat with this bes friends. There, at least for a few hours, he would be safe and sound. In the midst of the meal, Mary did a very odd thing.  She left the room and returned with a box of nard – a very expensive perfume with a fragrance somewhere between mint and ginseng. Nard was made from a little plant that grew in the Himalayas in far off India.  It would have been brought to Palestine by camel caravan, thus its high cost. It was the kind of exotic spice that might have been used to anoint the body of a dead person, in order to mask the smell of decay.  Maybe this box of nard was leftover from the time of Lazarus’s death.

Mary knelt down in front of Jesus and opened the box and began to anoint his feet with it.  That was odd too.  Unlike anointing one’s head as one might do to a king at a coronation, anointing one’s feet would have been understood as a death sign – something one does to a corpse. And then she wiped his feet with her hair.

It’s interesting to note here that in Mary’s actions we see a precursor to Jesus’s actions just a few days later.  Mary washed Jesus’s feet with the perfume and then wiped them with her hair.  Jesus washed the feet of his disciples with water and then wiped them with a towel.  Maybe Jesus was imitating Mary’s act of love.

It was an act of love, but not everyone was impressed with it.  Some of those present were no doubt scandalized that an unmarried woman was even in the room with the men.  And then she let down her hair – which an honorable woman never did except in front of her husband.  And then she touched Jesus’s feet, which was seen as an intimate act, and used her hair to wipe off the nard – another intimate act.

But for Judas, what was far more offensive than any of her actions was the waste of money.  And so he protested: “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?”  It’s a good question, actually.  300 denarii was basically a year’s wages.  Imagine the good that could have been done with that?  What would this church do with an extra $56,000 this year, which is the average American wage?  It’s a good question.  It’s the kind of question that comes up at every Annual Meeting I have ever attended. So, there’s nothing wrong with the question.

But John adds this detail to let us know that Judas’s motivations were less than noble.  He writes: “(Judas) said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.”  These details about Judas are only found in John’s Gospel.  It’s as if John wants us to understand clearly the kind of person Judas was – a traitor and a thief.

In the past when this lesson has come up in the lectionary cycle, I’ve almost always preached about Mary.  She’s far more likeable.  In addition to that, anytime we can lift up a strong and faithful woman in Scripture, we should.  Women have been given the bum’s rush in the church’s history since about the second century.  So at Mary, the faithful, we should pause and pay our respects.

But this time around, I found myself wondering about Judas – the one whom dismisses as a thief and a liar.  It’s almost as if John doesn’t want us to look any deeper into this man.  Maybe he had a vendetta against him. And so what we are left with is a one-dimensional character, who is easy to hate and convenient to dismiss.

I was intrigued recently to read about something called “The Burning of Judas.”  In certain Mediterranean and Latin American countries, it is the tradition during Holy Week to make an effigy of Judas that is publically hanged on Good Friday and then burned on Easter Sunday evening.  Before burning, some people beat the Judas figure with sticks or explode it with fireworks. Sometimes this Judas effigy is simply referred to as “the Jew.”

Isn’t that odd, I thought.  Except, of course, it isn’t.  The Judas figure taps into a deep human need to pass the buck.  In Judas, people find an easy target to vent their frustrations and blame for the troubles of the world.  It’s not at all unlike what loud-mouthed media personalities do to gay people or black people or Muslims or immigrants.  It’s called scapegoating.  Judas, then, is a stand-in for those things we don’t like about others, which (by the way) are almost always things we don’t like about ourselves.

But we know that no one in this world is one-dimensional.  And we know that surely there was more to Judas than his worst moment and worst decision. Who was he before that fateful kiss of betrayal in the Garden of Gethsemane? Who was he before he began to steal from the treasury? Who was he when Jesus first met him?  What did he hope that God was about to do in the world through Jesus?  We have to ask these questions, because once upon a time there was a light in Judas that caused Jesus to invite him into the inner circle.

It’s easy to love Mary.  In her extravagant devotion; in her rejection of social convention; in her refusal to be put in her place, we see something strong; someone to admire.  And it’s easy to hate Judas.  In his bitterness and envy; in his dishonesty and betrayal, we see weakness, something to loathe.

In just a few minutes, as I invite us all to the Lord’s Supper, I will say these words:“The first time Jesus sat down to this meal, among those gathered there were one who would doubt him, one who would deny him, one who would betrayhim, and they would all leave him alone before that night was over—and he knew it. Still he sat down and ate with them.” Jesus sat down and ate with Judas.

Mary was faithful.  Judas was not.  But faithful or not, they remained his.  And faithful or not, we remain his.  On the days of our generosity, we are his.  On the days of ours selfishness, we are his.  On those days when we don’t even understand why we do the things we do, we are his.  We are two sides of the same coin.  And the that coin belongs to Christ.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

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"I have been surprised by a Presence that knows my name. It’s always just a flash - but it’s enough for me to actually believe that I too have seen the Lord."

"Mary was faithful. Judas was not. But faithful or not, they remained his. And faithful or not, we remain his."

TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN

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