Holy Heartburn

Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our Risen Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

“Stay with us for it is evening, and the day is almost over…” This is sort of the ultimate “airplane” moment (back when we flew on airplanes!) - you exchange pleasantries with the person next to you as you buckle your seat belt… and suddenly you are sharing with each other your deepest hurts and wildest dreams, and you now have a standing Thanksgiving invitation and you are making plans to go to their son’s wedding.

These two from our reading were walking along the road from Jerusalem, and discovered another traveler on their road, going in the same direction… and found themselves in a conversation they never dreamed they would be having.  And so when this utter stranger, and new best friend, seemed like he would be going on to travel, all alone, in the night… it was only natural that they invited him to share their Air BnB  as the sun set on that Easter day.

It’s still the season of Easter. Jesus WAS there in the tomb, but he is not here any longer. Instead, he has gone on ahead of us, to meet up us out there on the dusty roads we travel. And he has won the victory for us, so that we who have been buried in our own tombs with Jesus may be raised in his glorious resurrection, now and in the life to come.

Which sounds great…. But what about tomorrow, or next week when we are still social distancing, waiting for unemployment benefits, still living alone, and can’t see our loved ones and friends? What about all our disappointed hopes and very real fears that are still up close and personal?

The words of these two walking along the road really resonate with us right now They tell Jesus: “But we had hoped that….”

Perhaps we had hoped that, by now, six weeks in, we had hoped to be done with social distancing and business closures. We had hoped that, even when we are able to get back together, we might go back to the way things were…though now we know that it will not look like it did before. We had hoped a lot of things, but reality seems pretty rough right now for many of us. What can we really expect from the resurrection in these times?

Two disciples, traveling from Jerusalem to Emmaus on Easter afternoon, wondering the same thing. I like to think they were husband and wife, debriefing the unbelievable 3-day weekend they just had… when Jesus appears to them, hidden in plain sight. (Maybe Jesus was wearing a mask and staying 6 feet away?)

Theirs is a road of bitterest defeat, for they had seen the man they had put their hope in put to death. It is no wonder that they didn’t recognize Jesus when he began to walk with them.

Jesus asked about what they were discussing, and they gladly shared with him the whole perplexing story. So, Jesus told THEM the whole of GOD’S story, from start to finish. Then THESE two followers of Jesus REMEMBERED Jesus’ message of welcome and took it to heart – they invited him to share a meal and their place of rest for the night.

It wasn’t until Jesus blessed and broke the bread and they ate together – Then they KNEW that this was JESUS! And so, they RAN – 7 WHOLE MILES all the way BACK to Jerusalem, that same night, just to tell the story to the other disciples of what they had seen – the Risen Jesus!!!!

What would make you run seven miles in the dark? Would it be for something that you didn’t expect? That must have been some “holy heartburn.” Remember that they said, “Were our hearts not burning within us?” Their Holy Heartburn – and Jesus - had finally interrupted their despair.

Jesus likes to interrupt things - Jesus interrupted death. He intruded on the funeral preparations of the women at the tomb. He appeared incognito and joined the two travelers walking to Emmaus, and interrupted their dinner as he revealed himself in the breaking of the bread.

In contrast to the rest of the disciples, who were presumably still locked in a room in Jerusalem as we heard last week, THESE TWO took Jesus’ message to heart. They heard the word and acted on it. They welcomed a stranger into their midst and into relationship. They practiced what Jesus preached. They embraced radical hospitality. They created space in their hearts and in their lives. And remember, at this point, they didn’t yet know that is was Jesus.

But isn’t that what being a disciple on the road is all about? Welcoming one another, creating space for each other for all of our stories and all of our experiences, making sacrifices for one another so that the most vulnerable among us can be kept safe and healthy…. We do this, not just because these people MIGHT be Jesus…. But because these ARE JESUS. After all, Jesus told us that whatever we do to the least of these, we are doing to him.

When we see Jesus in one another, we invite, we welcome, we share what we have, and we go out of our way to make sure all people are protected cared for. That’s all we need, really, to do this “following Jesus” thing. Be the Church, not “go to church.” Create relationships, not programs. Build up the body, not buildings.  Open not just our doors – especially now when that is not possible – but open our hearts as well.

Most of you have heard me quote this prayer a lot, but I think it’s more meaningful now than ever. Called “the servant’s prayer,” it has sustained me many times when the way forward doesn’t always seem clear and things seems hard, like now. Please pray with me:

“O God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.”

Resurrection in Locked Rooms

4-19-20

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our crucified and risen Lord and savior, Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Alleluia, Christ is Risen! Lent is OVER, and Easter is HERE. All seven weeks of it. That’s right folks. We have six more weeks of the Easter season left to go. It’s the Sunday after Easter, and what about the world has changed? Anything? It’s after Easter, but some days the world feels more like it is still Good Friday. Yes, Jesus has been raised from the dead – and hallelujah for that! – But what, exactly has that gotten us?

I don’t know about you, but I feel like it’s been an entire month since Easter. Probably because after Easter, we were well into our fifth week of social distancing, waiting and wondering when or even life as we know it will ever resume, and knowing it will look different when we do. Not unlike the disciples, one week after the very first Easter morning, the second Sunday after Easter… AKA “Doubting Thomas Sunday.”

Poor, poor, Thomas, forever to be saddled with the nickname “doubting.” He gets such a bad reputation. We can’t really blame him for his reaction to the other 10 disciples. If I were him, I might think that the rest of them were playing some cruel version of an April Fool’s joke while I was out. But Thomas is not actually the most egregious doubter in this resurrection account. The true doubters are the other 10 disciples.

Earlier that day, according to the gospel of John, Mary Magdalene had gone to the tomb of Jesus, only to find the stone rolled away. And later, after Peter and the other disciple had corroborated her story and went home, Mary encountered the risen Jesus while she was still weeping outside the tomb. Their Lord was alive! He had risen from the dead! And what do you think happened next? Did they start running around, telling people the good news? NOPE. On Easter evening, they locked themselves in a room.

After the FIRST Easter, on the very evening that Jesus had been raised from the dead and appeared to Mary, the disciples actually WERE of one heart and one soul. But not the heart and soul we are supposed to emulate, a heart of love and a soul of generosity. They were united in fear, and of one soul in the desire to hide. So, they locked the door. They were still afraid.  It was after Easter – but the disciples were still stuck in Good Friday.

And so that is where Jesus found them, when they were all together, except for Thomas, locked in a room out of fear, when he burst INTO their locked room, just has he had burst OUT of the tomb.

Perhaps a better game plan for Jesus would have been to go and find some new disciples, for heaven sakes! But he didn’t. The evening after he was raised, he showed up in the very locked room that they had hidden themselves away in. Their fear had locked them IN, but it could not keep Jesus OUT.

But after other ten disciples saw Jesus for themselves, a week later - one week after Easter – where did Jesus find them? Yet again, they were sealed up in their old familiar tombs out of fear. And so, Jesus had to bust in YET AGAIN.

I think this year we understand the disciples just a little bit more. We are all in our own homes, physically distant from one another, because of some very real fears. We have sealed ourselves off from one another to keep each other safe from spreading a contagious illness, it does not buffer us from the very real fear we might feel about the unknown. We can wear masks and social distance as much as we can, but it doesn’t always completely protect those we love from getting sick ... and it certainly doesn’t protect us from things like job loss, loneliness, and depression.

So we ask ourselves: What’s now? What is the way forward? How do we walk through these uncertain, fearful times? How will we be living our lives now? Questions that I’m sure the disciples themselves were facing in that locked room.

In her book, “Learning to Walk in the Dark,” (which we will be reading together as a congregation) Barbara Brown Taylor writes: “We are all so busy constructing zones of safety that keep breaking down….. We keep thinking that the problem is out there, in the things that scare us: dark nights, dark thoughts, dark guests, dark emotions. If we could just defend ourselves better against those things, we think, then surely we would feel more solid and secure…..” And we are just as scared here in our locked rooms as we are about the scary things that wait for us outside of them. Nowhere seems safe, and we are trapped in the locked rooms of our own fear, immobile and isolated, fearing that there is no way out and no way forward.

But, we have seen and heard what Jesus does with sealed tombs and locked doors. We have seen and heard what Jesus does with the bonds of sin, with the sting of death, and the captivity of the fear.

The Good News of Easter, which is just as true today as it was a week ago, is that Jesus has busted open the stone of your tomb like it as if it were nothing; he has ploughed through the doors of your locked rooms as if they were butter. He stands in the doorway, reaching out to take your hand, showing you the marks of the crucifixion that still remain his body. And he calls you, as he did to Lazarus, while standing outside of that dead man’s tomb, calling to him, “Lazarus, come out!”

As Barbara Brown Taylor also writes in her book about the darkness in our lives:  “...new life starts in the dark. Whether it is a seed in the ground, a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb, it starts in the dark.” Fortunately, Peter, Mary, Thomas, and the rest of the apostles DO eventually get out of the locked room. And someday we too, will be able to leave our locked rooms, and we can still witness to what God was up to in our lives even as we were social distancing and under quarantine. New life begins here, shut away, but it doesn’t stay there. Nothing can hold it at bay and keep it from transforming our lives forever.  

The way forward is unknown, but it also well-tread. Thomas has walked this way before, as has the other 10 disciples, and Mary Magdalene, and the other women at the tomb. Together, we learn to walk in the dark, knowing that we are not alone. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Between Two Easters

4-12-20 Easter

Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen.

Ten “Holy Weeks” ago, while I was on internship in southern Minnesota, I found myself on Holy Saturday in the empty sanctuary of the church, helping to set up a giant paper mache empty tomb with the stone rolled away. As the intern pastor, I had underestimated the importance of this…. Thing… as part of the Holy Week observance of this congregation. Or at least, I had underestimated how important it was to my internship supervisor. So, I did as I was told, and in ten minutes time helped him set up this plywood monstrosity that seemed to necessary to his Holy Week experience.

Under normal circumstances, we all have our “favorite” traditions about Holy Week and Easter – the candles in the Tenebrae, the stripping of the altar, unburying the Alleluia, seeing all the kids come up for the children’s sermon, getting dressed up in our Easter best, ready to celebrate… then go home to eat a bug ham and too much chocolate.

Today, Easter 2020, it’s hard to feel like celebrating. The joyful “alleluias” can easily feel bitter in our mouths as we think about the families for whom this Easter will be full of death rather than life. Instead of stripping the altar on Maundy Thursday, we have been stripped of all the trappings and traditions we have added to this day.

This experience rattles us to the very marrow of our trust in God; it penetrates to the very core of who we believe our God to be. It causes us to ask ourselves, how could a truly good God allow this to happen? There are no easy answers to be found, not even on Easter.

During the very first Holy Week, the disciples had been through a lot in the previous few days and had no answers either. Their beloved leader, teacher, and friend had been arrested and cruelly killed while they had all fled. Now they were hiding – at home - in fear, waiting, watching, praying….. Waiting for discovery perhaps? Watching for whatever might happen next? Praying for a miracle?

And then there was this thing, about an empty tomb and some folded up grave linens. Mary Magdalene went to the tomb early in the morning and got the shock of her life – she discovered the stone had been rolled away. While Peter and the other disciple went back home puzzled, she stuck around. So she was the first person to encounter the risen Jesus – even though she didn’t recognize him (was he wearing a mask?) and he didn’t let her touch him – apparently he was practicing social distancing.

These years later, we may wonder at how long it takes for them to “get it” – Jesus is raised! Empty grave! Tada! Party time!  But we have the luxury of knowing the end of this story. Throughout these three days, as we commemorate the last days of Jesus’ earthly ministry, we do so knowing the ending. We know that the end of this story is a triumphant one – Jesus rises from the dead and the power of death is defeated for all time. The good guys win. So why aren’t the disciples living like it?

We know that through Christ’s death and resurrection, our sins have been forgiven and we are new people. But we don’t always live like this. We know that death has been defeated. But we still live in fear of it. We know that Jesus has conquered evil for all time. But there is still so much suffering and sadness  in this world.

It is so hard to live as Easter People, because we don’t know the end of our own story. We are living in the in-between, now more than ever, remaining in our homes behind closed doors, waiting for a miracle. We are the characters in the middle of God’s story, overwhelmed by our circumstances, consumed by conflicts, and persecuted by adversaries.  In every chapter and in every paragraph, we cry out to God, “Is there a plot here?” In this way, we are no different from the disciples. We thought God had come to fix everything. Make our lives better. To end the suffering. To make sure that no one ever had to die again.

During the first Holy Week, the people still prayed that their messiah would come and deliver them from their bitter existence, to mightily kick the Romans out of their land and establish a great kingdom of their own. But I imagine that they were getting very tired of waiting. God had seemed to be silent for so long, they must have begun to wonder if God had indeed forgotten them.

Fast forward two thousand years, and how much has really changed? For all of our modern marvels of technology, our breakthroughs in science, our fast travel and even faster means of communication, are we better off now? In many ways, yes, our lives have vastly improved compared to those in the past. With all our technological prowess, there are so many ways that we can remain connected during this time. But it also means that we have found more efficient and elaborate ways to hurt one another, and make the vulnerable even more at risk. In all this time, we have not really changed.

But in all this time, God has not changed either. And that’s a good thing. The faithfulness, the love, and the goodness of the Lord toward God’s people have remained the same, today, tomorrow, and always – and nowhere is it more apparent than in Jesus’s rising from the dead.

Truth be told, will we really feel like saying – Alleluia- when our lives seem like on long Good Friday that never ends. We are in uncharted territory, which feels both uncomfortable and scary. But, for over two thousand years, Good Friday has always been followed by Easter.  

The church may be empty today, on Easter 2020. The church is empty, but so is the tomb. Easter arrives, even when we are hidden away in our homes. Not unlike how Christmas arrived in Whoville, despite the Grinch’s theft of all the precious "who-trappings." This year there will be no Easter lilies, or gimmicky children’s sermon, or plywood paper mache tombs…. And yet, even so, Easter morning has arrived. It’s here. We made it. We’re still standing.

While at the same time we celebrate Easter 2020, we look to another Easter – and Easter when this pandemic is over, the dust settling, and we can attempt to find a new normal. And we long for the final Easter, when we are welcomed into the arms of Jesus, when illness, suffering, and death will be no more.

In the meantime, we Lutherans do what we do best – live into the nuance of living somewhere between “once upon a time” and “happily ever after,” somewhere between the first Easter and the Last Easter. And in between those two points in time are still a million possibilities to be lived. Some good, some bad, all holy.

Pastor Meta Herrick Carlson wrote a book of poems and meditations called “Ordinary Blessings.” And in her poem called “False Choices,” she writes, “Draw me to the mysteries of an ever-expanding universe, a redemption that is already and not yet, a God who is bending time and space … we are resuscitated wild and holy, wherever death and life blur… Surely, we are made for more than two dimensions and the simple chronology of life!” (70-1)

Though songs of praise and alleluias may stick in our throats today……  that’s ok. Disasters can and will still come, but we do not need to fear them. Jesus is the plot. Jesus is the meaning. Jesus is there, in the prayer, in the waiting, in the watching for what is to come. We may not know what the end of this next chapter might bring for us, but GOD IS THE ONE WHO WROTE THE BOOK. And God loves us so much that God just HAD to “spoil” the ending for us:

Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed, ALLELUIA! Amen.

Our Good Friday Zoom Tenebrae worship

Good Friday: Grasping and Remembering

GOOD FRIDAY 4-10-20

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

Thursday night began in celebration, with Jesus celebrating the Passover with his twelve disciples. They broke bread and shared a cup of wine. But that celebration was bittersweet with the knowledge that one of Jesus’s own closest friends would betray him and the rest would abandon him in his hour of greatest trials.

As the darkness deepened, Jesus is betrayed, arrested, and taken away to be secretly tried by the religious authorities, who falsely try him and hand him over to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor. In the meantime, Peter has denied Jesus three times as the rooster crowed, just as Jesus predicted.

Today, Friday, Jesus is taken by the religious leaders to Pilate in order to carry out his death sentence.

But before Jesus is to die, the Roman soldiers under Pilate must put on a show of strength. These soldiers are under the impression that they are mocking Jesus when one takes off his own robe to create a sham of a cape, and another braided a pitiful crown out of thorns, and a third pulled up a tall weed for a scepter. But the truth is, Jesus was never the kind of king to wear gold and jewels and fine robes.

What they put on Jesus is just what a suffering servant-king ought to wear – not trappings of power and might, but badges of pain and suffering. There is one last item that the Christ will wear before that Friday is over, one last garment that this King will put on for our sakes. That is the shroud of death. And his royal palace shall be a stone tomb.

In many ways we may feel like we are waiting in the darkness of a tomb – a tomb of social distancing, made necessary by a virus that is causing real harm to the people we love. In many ways, the only thing we can do is wait with the disciples – huddles just out of sight somewhere, wondering what is coming next.

Pastor Meta Herrick Carlson wrote a book of poems and prayers for the ordinary moments in life, and I think one of her meditations speaks to this moment, both on that first Good Friday and this Good Friday. In her poem called “For Rock Bottom,” she writes with words that clearly resonate to all of us now” “I am separated from friends and neighbors…. My eyes have adjusted to the grim confines of this grave, and I could give up, but even here my hands grasp at the darkness in search of the God who claims to care …. I have nothing but time and will wait for you to remember me.” (128-9)

In less than three days’ time, we will celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, our Lord and savior. On Easter we will be singing “Alleluia.” Truth be told, will we really feel like saying that, when our lives seem like on long Good Friday that never ends…. Where it feels like we have nothing but time to grope around in the dark?

But there is one thing we do know, one thing that we profess even in the midst of intense suffering and even despair - we cling to the hope that the Lord is near and is in our midst…. ESPECIALLY in the midst of pain and suffering, which Jesus has experience and knows well. 

God has always been in the thick of it with us. No amount of misery, no amount of isolation and physical distance, no amount of fear could ever make God turn away from us. No life is too broken, no loneliness is too deep, no death is too tragic for God to be near. Jesus walked that path ahead of us, and now he leads the way, as we walk this difficult Good Friday path with no clear Easter ending date. We walk, knowing and trusting and hoping and feeling and remembering… that Easter WILL arrive. Thanks be to God, amen.

A Holy Week - And a King - We don't Expect

4-5-20- Palm Sunday

Grace to you and Peace from God our Creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Sometimes, when you’re having a good time, or you’re “in the zone,” and hours or an entire day can pass in the blink of an eye. Other times, time can stretch out and feels like an eternity. Especially when you are at home, social distancing - an hour may feel forever, or you may collapse into bed every night wondering where the day went, and we can’t stand the thought of doing the exact same thing tomorrow.

During these forty days of Lent, we are deliberately stretching out time, so that we are spending six weeks with our eyes on the cross. And now we are here, the beginning of Holy Week, starting with today, Palm Sunday.

It all began with such high hopes, when Jesus entered Jerusalem in a parade, palm leaves flying. It’s no wonder – for the people have seen some pretty amazing things from Jesus in the last three years. Jesus has healed people with skin diseases and people who were paralyzed. Jesus has calmed storms and cast out demons. Jesus has feed thousands and told story after story about the amazing love God has for his wayward people. So they shouted “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!” Hosana – save us! But these are dangerous words, especially when this country is under occupation by a ruling force that is both powerful and swift to punishment.

The people wanted this Jesus to be a king to rise up and send the Romans packing. Those backed by Roman power and authority feared that this Jesus would rally enough support to be a threat. Later on this week, Jesus will pay the price, and be labeled as a failed king by his enemies.

This was not the first time, though, that Jesus had been called a king. Long before this, back at the beginning of Matthew’s Gospel, a group of wise men from the East arrived in Jerusalem, and asking “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?” This terrified the entire city of Jerusalem, and with good reason. Then, as now, there can only be one king, and his name is Caesar. So, when Jesus was arrested, the religious elite imagined charges that would get the Roman’s attention – that Jesus claimed to be a king.

Jesus, who seems so harmless to us – welcoming children, talking to women, feeding people, healing the blind and the infirm. But the great irony is that Jesus is actually guilty of the trumped-up charges against him. Jesus really IS the King. “Christ” is not Jesus’ last name, it’s his title. It means the one who is anointed, selected and set apart by God, to rule as king.

But Jesus is not just a regular old king, like the brutal and cruel Caesars of this world, set apart above and beyond the people they rule over. Jesus is not a king that comes with armies and weapons to vanquish his enemies. Jesus came to be a king WITH his people, to rule them by example of self-giving love. His is a kingdom that conquers by peace, rather than the violence and death that SEEMS to win by taking Jesus’s life. Death seems like the only option to shut Jesus up. After all, even kings die. No ruler, no emperor, no king, no matter how powerful, has ever defeated the power of death. But then again, Jesus isn’t just a regular old, king, is he?

And this is not going to be a regular old Holy Week, is it? This is a Holy Week for the history books, and years from now our children and grandchildren will ask us – what was it like, in 2020, when there was no palms and no parade and no in-person gatherings at all?

I admit, this year I had such high hopes. I really wanted to try Dinner Church for Maundy Thursday, and I was excited to have an even bigger turn out for our Noon Five Senses Good Friday service than the forty we had last year. I think we could say that we would all love for Jesus to rise up and send the virus packing. Hosanna – save us! We could really use it right now.

But this isn’t the first time that unexpected circumstances have stretched us and challenged us, and it’s not the last time that Jesus is going to show up in ways we didn’t expect. So this year, instead of a parade around the church to usher in Holy Week, we stay home to protect our vulnerable neighbors and keep it safe for all the medical staff and essential workers who are working hard to heal the people who are sick. They are the real, unseen heroes, putting themselves on the line, who are working hard and so doing are showing us the way of Jesus. And so, the least we can do is help them – by staying home, by not stashing away toilet paper….. but also for advocating for fair pay and compensation for those left vulnerable.

This is not the Holy Week we’re expecting, just as Jesus is not the king we expect. Jesus may not be the king we want, but he is exactly the kind of King we need. Because no matter what happens, Jesus is here.

This week is what the forty days of Lent have been leading up to. We are about to enter a week where time is more than just seconds ticking by on a clock. Where the cross - an instrument of torture and intimidation - becomes the means through which we are saved. Where our sacred and meaningful rituals have been temporarily stripped away from us… but our faith remains. Jesus remains. And, as the Roman officials and Jesus’s enemies found out the hard way at the end of this week – Jesus is NOT going anywhere. Thanks bet to God. Amen.