I Have All I Need

A sermon for the fourth Sunday in Eastertide given at the United Church of Acworth, Acworth, NH on April 29, 2012.

Acts 4:5-12
Psalm 23
1 John 3:16-24
John 10:11-18



The Lord is my shepherd.
I have all that I need.

These are words that we need as individuals.  When we are burdened by stresses and difficulties of modern life.  When we are tempted to think that world is out to get us,or that nothing we set out to do will succeed, that all our efforts are in vain.  When changes in our lives make us feel like everything is falling apart and the future is not at all what we imagined it would be like or feel like.  When we find ourselves in that place where we realize more than ever how much we are not in control, we need to remind ourselves of this basic truth in which we live as those who have put our faith in God:

The Lord is my shepherd.
I have all that I need.

When we started this journey together in September, I think we all were very excited for what God would do in this new chapter of our life as a church.
And God has done much in these 8 months through our ministry together and despite our ministry together.  I’ve found myself praying before Sunday morning worship not that God would speak through me, but that God would speak despite me.
Now we look around us now and we can rejoice in all of the growth and positive change that has taken place.  And like little children in the back of the car on a long trip we ask (so innocently yet nonetheless intolerably annoyingly) “Are we there yet?”
And the truth is that we are not “there” yet.  “There” is for us a future place when the kingdom of God will be more fully manifest in our midst.  We are not there yet.  We are on a journey, we’re hoping to get “there” in the near future.
We are not “there.”  But we will get “there” by the grace of God.  And here, now, where we are at this moment is not sitting down, it’s walking on the road.  On the road to find out what God has in store for us in the future.  And while we walk and talk with God and with each other we keep in our heads the song, the refrain of the faithful throughout the ages:

The Lord is my shepherd.
I have all that I need.

We are a church in Acworth, NH.  We are THE church in Acworth, NH.
I think it’s one of the most interesting things for people when I tell them I am a Pastor.
The United Church of Acworth is not just A church in Acworth, NH -- it is THE church in Acworth, NH.  And we all need to remember that.  We are the one-stop shop for doing church in this town.
What does it mean to have this privilege, to have this responsibility?
It means much.  It is a weighty privilege, it is a heavy responsibility.  
Our next few years together will continue a conversation here in this place and in this time that has been going on in many places and many times wherever there have been Christians in churches to ask it.
What does it mean to be a church here?  What does it mean to be a church now?
What does it mean to be a church in Acworth, NH in 2012?
This is the question that I continue to ask myself as I think about our ministry together.
As walk and talk together on this journey, we need to recognize that God often surprises us by the answers that God gives us.
This church is a product of evolution.
I don’t mean the Christian church in general, though that’s also true.
I mean here in Acworth.
Once there was one church, then there were two, then there were three, then there were two again, and once again only one.
We are here a result of historical changes that forced a change in identity.
This was a baptist church, the building on the hill was congregational, the grange hall was methodist.
Now we’re all here.  In order to survive, Christians in Acworth have adapted.  They’ve adapted and successfully survived various changes that have come over time.
This is what I mean by evolution.  We are a church with a story rooted in pivotal events.
This building was hauled down the hill with oxen!
Why?  Because that’s where people lived.  
When the 1930s came along and there were tough times for everyone, the churches felt it too.
It seemed quite reasonable to consider changing the way things are done if it meant staying solvent.
Instead of each hiring a minister separately, Rev. Danforth was hired by both churches and served them both, doing services in both buildings at separate times.
This was a big change.  but the times called for it.
Slowly it seemed to make more and more sense to united and so the process was begun whereby two churches became one united one.  And here we are.
But even since that time we’ve been through plenty of changes.
Through all of these changes, what has remained the same?
What is the constant that remains in the midst of change?

The Lord is my shepherd.
I have all that I need.

When we experience times of difficulty, when we are faced with challenges that we never thought existed, we have mustered up incredible strength and courage and all throughout the country there are people who heard about the steeple project are telling the story of how David slew Goliath in a small New Hampshire town.
but what about churches that are less fortunate -- churches like S. Londonderry, Vermont where overnight a malfunctioning heating system engulfed the entire building in flames.
They’re now meeting in the town hall.  They are starting a process of rebuilding that will take a long time.  
The future of the church, the life of the church is something other than its buildings -- otherwise there would be no church anymore in S. Londonderry.
So what sustains the church?  What is the rock in the sea of change?

The Lord is my shepherd.
I have all that I need.

One of the things that it means for us to be led by God as our shepherd is that we don’t know the future and that we walk by faith not certain knowledge.  What it also means is that we can’t tell God how things should or shouldn’t be.  We must be open to what God will give us, to what God will make known to us.
How do we go forward in this way?
Our statement of purpose in our by-laws reads:
“The purpose of this church shall be to maintain services for the worship of God for the teaching and the preaching of the Gospel and in all its work to promote the interests of the Kingdom of God according to the teachings of Christ.”
one thing I think that we will struggle with in the future is this last phrase:  “in all its work to promote the interests of the Kingdom of God according to the teachings of Christ.”
I think the reason that this will be one of the most difficult things for us is because we are constantly tempted to call “the interests of the kingdom of God” what are really our own interests.
But this is not my church, this is not your church.  This is not the deacons church, this is not the trustees church, it’s certainly not the UCC’s church or the Baptists’ church -- it’s not Acworth’s church -- it’s Christ’s church.  Christ is the good shepherd.
Which means that Christ will grow us, Christ will guide us into the future -- but the strong and sure and good voice of the good shepherd does us no good if we cover our ears.
With eyes and ears of openness and faith we need to allow God to speak anew to us in our new situation in the 21st century.
And this is troubling because while Christ’s yoke is easy and burden light, it’s not easy to put on that yoke and give up our own.
But this is what it means to be the church, it means to serve something much bigger than our own interests, it means to be willing to change and adapt whenever the good news requires it.
But change is hard.  Change means giving up the way we’ve always done things.
But change is possible and bearable because we are a building built not on sand but on the rock of God’s providing care:

The Lord is my shepherd.
I have all that I need.

Our Good Shepherd is with us.  That is our constant through the change.
And our good shepherd will be with us as individuals, as a community.  Our good shepherd will lead us on.  He will not leave us to our own devices, he will not abandon us in the times ahead.  He will lead us to green pastures, beside still waters.  

The Lord is my shepherd.
I have all that I need.

Children of God; and That is What We Are

A sermon for the third Sunday in Eastertide given at the United Church of Acworth, Acworth, NH on April 22, 2012.

Acts 3:12-19
Psalm 4
1 John 3:1-7
Luke 24:36b-48

Take a few seconds and answer the following question in your mind.  Who are you?
[give a few seconds]
How did you respond?
Perhaps many of you immediately answered by giving your name...
But after that -- what came to mind, how did you identify yourself?
perhaps you identified yourself by your work -- farmer, craftsperson, teacher, nurse, entrepreneur...
or
perhaps you identified yourself by your hobbies or interests -- actor, fisher, hunter, gardener, dancer, intellectual
or
perhaps you identified yourself by a relationship -- say spouse, parent, uncle, aunt, grandparent
how we identify ourselves plays a large role in how we live our lives, how we think about ourselves and our place in this world.
we are a people of many hats, many masks, many shoes, insert an additional metaphor here...
we have many identities.  
I’ve thought about this a lot as I have taken on two new identities this year.
In addition to being a husband, I am now a pastor and a student.
but there is an identity that we have as followers of Christ that takes precedence over all other identities.
we are children.
that’s right, children.
in 1 John 3:1 we read:
“See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.”
That is what we are.  We are children.  This is an identity that is foundational, it’s bigger than our identity as employee, it’s bigger than our identity as employer, it’s even bigger than our identity as spouse, as parent, and so on.
We are fundamentally children.  
we read in the first chapter of John’s gospel:  
“All who received [Christ], who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.”
when we begin to follow Christ, we welcome a new reality to take precedence over the old.
no longer are we primarily parents or spouses, farmers or teachers.
we are all children.
and of course this is nothing new.  we all know that we are children.  there’s no other way to enter into life in this world.
but we are no longer simply children, as the scriptures say, “by the flesh”
but we are born of God, born of the Spirit -- to a new existence, a new identity.
and this identity is: child of God.
“See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.”
i am a husband.  i am a pastor.  i am a student.  heck, I’m even a musician.
but above and beyond all these is the reality that sustains me and will sustain me through my journey in life.
I am a child of God.
God is born in us.  Where there was an existence of death, now there is an existence of life.  God’s spirit has made a home within us.  And God’s Spirit is making us into new people, full of God’s grace and truth -- going forward in faith.  
This is our adoption into God’s family.  We share in the same Spirit of God who unites us and ignites a new desire for God’s goodness and God’s love to be manifest in ourselves and in the world.
we are children of God.  and the next verse goes on to say:  “we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed.”
by faith, we know now that we are God’s children, that God has received us into God’s family.  
But that’s about all that we do know.  “what we will be has not yet been revealed.”
We talked last week about the penchant for certainty that we as humans have.
Again we see here that we are not called by God to know the future -- we don’t know what it will be like to meet our Maker, we don’t even know what tomorrow will hold for us, if indeed tomorrow happens to come.
What we do know is that we are God’s children now.
it goes on to say that “when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.”
when God is revealed we will see God and in order to see God we will be like God.  And we know already that we have become like God -- because God has loved us so much that God has brought us into God’s family.
This is our hope.  Our hope is not that we will have a life free of trouble, but that we will have a life lived in God’s family.  Our hope is not that we will somehow get out of this life alive, but that we will have been prepared by God’s Spirit to enjoy the presence of God in whatever the future holds.
What we do know is that we are children of God.
We know that God has begun a good work in us, beginning a new life, redeeming us from the old and that Paul’s words ring true:  “I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.”
We are children of God.  We have a journey, a life ahead of us.  Even those of us who are grandparents are children of God.  And perhaps many of you feel as if you are even younger now than when you first came to know God.
I love Bob Dylan’s refrain in the song “My Back Pages.”
“I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now.”
We are on a journey, a journey with a new identity:  child of God.
And we have been given this new identity, this new relationship to God by God’s great grace, by God’s generous love.  And this new life is not an easy road.
It’s a hike up Gates Mountain.  Or for those more seasoned hikers, Mt. Washington.  
It’s a hard road.  And some of you are further along than me.  And you can tell me all about how tough that one spot is where the tree line ends and you have to start climbing some tough steep rocks.
And one day we will see God as God is.  And we will be able to see God because we will have become like God.  This is the transformation of God’s grace on our lives.  God melts our pride and hate, God melts our selfish porcupine defenses.  God slowly erodes the sharp violent edges of our wills.  God slowly grows a new tree of life and love in the ashes of our former way of destructive hatred of self or others.
God’s good work will bring us to the end of our days and we will see God as God is because God will have given birth to light within us, a light that will know God’s light, a love that will recognize God’s love.  
And that’s about all we know.  We are acorns now.  Then we will be a strong oak tree, the planting of our God.
And this is the journey we embark on by faith.  We don’t know the future, but we know that God is love.  We don’t know how it ends, but we know the Author of the story and we have come to call him Father.
We have this hope within ourselves.
And our epistle reading goes on:  
“And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.”
This is our spiritual journey.  It is a kind of purification.
It is a slow washing, a cleaning of what has been made unclean.
Perhaps you’ve got a messy room somewhere at home right now.  I’ve often thought of my mind as a kind of room that can be messy or clean or somewhere in between.  
When I’m busy busy busy -- my mind will oftentimes feel quite chaotic and messy.
When I slow down, when I have some time to meditate and pray, or even when my anxiety is broken by a refreshing and nourishing conversation with a friend or loved one, or a stranger -- when I slow down I find the room in my mind gets less cluttered, things start to make their way back to the shelves where they belong and order and clarity gets restored.
I think we can think of this verse in our text in a similar way.  
“All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.”
by the nature of this hope -- that we are children of God and that God’s presence in us will sustain us through life and beyond -- by the nature of this hope we are gradually brought to a greater purity, a greater freshness, a greater orderliness, we might think of it as a greater simplicity.
for what is more simple than love?  when Jesus sums up the law, the moral life, the spiritual life as “love God and love neighbor” there is a kind of simplicity.  there is a kind of purity to this.
immediately when we begin to try to live that way we realize that while it may be simple in one way it is not simple in many other ways.
but as we grow in this life that God has given us, we realize that God is slowly purifying us through God’s love.  God is slowly making us more aware of God’s love for us and we are made more pure through that awareness.
And the result of our coming to know God’s love is our radiating of that love to those around us.  God’s love is transformative.
God’s love is like the nourishment from a meal.  It sustains, it grows, it gives life.
And that life nourishes those around us.
Now all of this sounds very passive.  God loves us and somehow that love radiates from us.  Where are we, our active willing selves in all of this?
The truth is that God purifies us as we purify ourselves.  That both we and God are journeying together in a dance that makes it not easily discernible who is doing what.  
God indwells us and spurs us to lives which manifest the good works of one who has known love and who therefore loves.
We purify ourselves as God is pure.  But since God is the only one who is truly pure it is God who is purifying us as we purify ourselves.  
Perhaps it is best to leave this as a mysterious cause and effect relationship.  But I kind of like the dance metaphor.  Both God and the self are together moving to create a beautiful new reality and the music which lifts us to the movements is God’s music of unbounded grace and love.
There will be times when we will prefer to identify as something other than God’s child.  There will be times when we will prefer that we were not identified as children of the one who forgives enemies.  There will be times when we will prefer to hate, prefer to horde up treasures for ourselves, prefer to preserve our own identities and interests at the expense of others -- there will be times when being a child of God will be an embarrassing tattoo that we wish we could just surgically remove.

These times will come and perhaps for some of us are present right now. Let us let go of our selfishness and allow God's love to melt our wills, to show us anew that we are children of God, that we have a new way, and no longer live according to the way of self-preservation or the partisan identities which war for our allegiance in this world. We have an identity which transcends other identities and calls us to be healed by God and be agents of God's healing in this place at this time.

There will be times where we will not feel like or not want to be children of God. But just as the Father received with open arms the prodigal son who returned, God's forgiveness is inexhaustible.
What blessedness there is in the way of Christ.  It’s not easy, but it is true.  It is not always pleasant, but it is the abundant life. As it is said of Aslan in the stories of Narnia: “of course he's not safe – but he's good.”
God will be with us always, to end of our lives and beyond.  We are called out by God’s love to be that love in the world.  And folks, this world needs that love now more than ever.
There’s a lot of violence.  There’s a lot of brokenness.  There’s a lot of fear.  The shadow of death is dark and many live enslaved to its reality -- living lives of stiff resistance, of tough-minded defensiveness -- or worse, escaping the harsh realities of the brokenness in this world by entertainment, or by escaping somehow into unreality.
But we are children of the God who longs for the reconciliation of the world.  God longs for the redemption of what is broken.  The restoration of what has gone wrong, the healing of what has been made sick.  Now more than ever this community, this state, this world needs those who identify themselves as children of God.  Those who long to be purified by love as God is pure in love.  Those who may not know what the future holds, but who by faith rest like a nursing babe in the nourishment of God’s never-ending grace and generous love.
Let us remember that we are on a journey as followers of Christ.  And this journey is founded in God’s love and continues in the way of God’s love.  As we are purified in ourselves by God’s love -- breaking down the barriers in our hearts by which we’ve justified our own hates and violence, pride and greed -- as we are purified by God, purifying ourselves through our daily choices, our daily actions -- in that mutual activity between God and us, the dance of grace to the music of God’s new way, God’s kingdom -- as we are purified we will more and more come to receive Christ, to love God, to rejoice in the simplicity of God’s love for us and the world -- the purity of God’s childlike acceptance of others.
And we will purify ourselves as God is pure and know the blessedness that is our existence in God’s family.  And our families and other families will be nourished by the radiant light that beams from the one who has known the purity of God’s love.
But this is a journey that we take together.  Here we come to remind ourselves and to remind each other that we are not the only one in God’s family.  We are in good company and together we will be purified by love from God and from one another. Let us remember this new identity we have been given.
“See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.”

Of Bricks and Springs

A sermon for the second Sunday in Eastertide given at the United Church of Acworth, Acworth, NH on April, 15 2012.

Acts 4:32-35

Psalm 133

1 John 1:1-2:2

John 20:19-31

Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.’

--------

“We always said that Tom Ryle should have been a preacher.

Every Sunday he was the first one into church and the last one out.

He even had himself a special seat with his name on to it right up front by the pulpit.

When people came in late, Tom would turn round in his seat and stare at em.

One Sunday, the Reverend Foggs preached an unusually inspiring sermon about how Christ walked upon the waters.

After the service, Tom headed straight for Decker's pond and ran right into it – clear up to his neck in the water.

Some people come by and asked him how the water was.

He replied not bad, not bad at all – I took two or three steps afore I went down.”

--transcribed from Bert and I... (CD) by Marshall Dodge and Bob Bryan

Let us turn to our gospel reading -- the story of the famous “Doubting Thomas.”

I like Thomas. I can certainly understand what he might have been thinking when he said, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

This man had just gone through a traumatic experience along with the other disciples and friends and family of the crucified Jesus.

Now the disciples want him to believe that Jesus appeared to them, alive again.

Thomas has a lot of pain and pain gets in the way of feeling that the world is good, that there might be a bright turn in events.

Thomas is probably not an idiot either: dead people don’t rise.

What’s more, the only reason the others believe is because they have seen. So we can’t be too hard on Thomas for his stubborn refusal to believe without evidence.

Of course when Thomas does see, he is extreme in his praise: ‘My Lord and my God!’

We are a people of extremes. We need to see and without seeing we will remain solid doubters, skeptics.

We are a people of extremes: either complete doubt or complete sight.

We want to be either confident that what we believe is true beyond the shadow of a doubt or else...

we might as well be fishing.

So I think Jesus’ words should disturb us moderns:

‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.’

“blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”

we don’t want to believe without seeing. that not only seems foolish it goes against every hard-headed experience-strong inclination in our stubborn New Hampshire minds.

don’t try to fool me. don’t try to sell me anything. i won’t buy unless it makes sense. otherwise i’ll save my time. i’ll save my money.

we live in extremes. we live in the world of seeing is believing.

and then we hear Jesus’s words: “blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”

what is Jesus saying here? how are we supposed to take this?

i want to look at Jesus’ words with the help of Pastor Rob Bell of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

In his 2005 book Velvet Elvis,* Bell has take a fresh look at what it means to believe.

He uses two pictures: one is a brick wall and the other is a trampoline.

Bell thinks the Christian faith is like jumping on a trampoline.

The point of Christian belief is not belief. The point is the life that God through Jesus Messiah has called us to live, the light that God has called us to make known in a world beset with darkness.

Jesus our shepherd directs us to the waters of peace and the pastures that are green...

Earlier in the gospel of John we read,“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10)

Rob Bell thinks the abundant life that Jesus calls us to live out is like jumping on a trampoline.

He recognizes that if we are going to jump, we need the trampoline, we need the springs that make up the trampoline.

he writes:

“when we jump we begin to see the need for springs. the springs help make sense of these deeper realities that drive how we live everyday. The springs aren’t God. The springs aren’t Jesus. The springs are statements or beliefs about our faith that help give words to the depth that we are experiencing in our jumping. I would call these the doctrines of the Christian faith.” (Bell 22)

What we believe, what sustains our faith, the doctrines, the truths are the springs of the trampoline.

they aren’t the point. they aren’t what makes up the Christian life, but they sustain the ability of the individual and the community to continue on jumping, to continue on coming to know God, living the life that God has called us to, moving forward in the journey.

You don’t have to know and be certain of all of the things that are in the faith, in the historic creeds in order to know the grace of God and enter into the story of God’s salvation.

In fact, when you find a spring that doesn’t make sense, like the doctrine of the Trinity, that God is one being and three persons, take the spring out and look it over, “discuss it, probe it, question it. It stretches and it flexes” (Bell 22).

“In fact,” Bell writes, “its stretch and flex are what make it so effective. It is firmly attached to the frame and the [trampoline] mat, yet it has room to move. And it has brought a fuller, deeper, richer understanding to the mysterious being who is God. Once again, the springs aren’t God. They have emerged over time as people have discussed and studied and experienced and reflected on their growing understanding of who God is. Our words aren’t absolutes. Only God is absolute, and God has no intention of sharing this absoluteness with anything, especially words people have come up with to talk about him. This is something people have struggled with since the beginning: how to talk about God when God is bigger than our words, our brains, our worldviews, and our imaginations” (Bell 22-23)

So why do we feel so guilty when we doubt? Why do we feel like we should be certain?

We’ve been duped into thinking that the point is having all our theological and philosophical ducks in a row.

We’ve been guilted by past generations that we have to silence, suppress, shut down all doubt, all question, all uncertainty.

These voices have been raised against fearful attacks against the truth of Christian claims. In the face of changes in our understanding about the world, people have felt threatened and tried to defend an older way of seeing the world. Galileo was threatened torture unless he recanted what he had written about his new understanding of the universe -- that the earth moved around the sun rather than vice versa. Why? Because the new understanding seemed to contradict how things had been understood.

Galileo had taken the spring out of the trampoline, the one called “geo-centrism” and rethought it in light of new evidence, stretched it, flexed it.

He found that the Bible makes reference to the sun moving around the earth but was able to rethink what this might mean and see that the writers who wrote about the sun’s movement were poetically expressing what they experienced. It had a poetic reality, a poetic truth.

Stretching the spring did not cause the whole faith to crumble. It gave a deeper more complex way of reading the Bible, of understanding human and divine perspectives.

But for the people who opposed Galileo, belief and unbelief was not like a trampoline.

For them, the Christian faith is a brick wall. If you take one brick out, the integrity of the whole structure is threatened.

For them, faith was sight. Faith was certainty. A strong and tall brick wall that it is our job to preserve and protect.

We continue on in history with both perspectives. Springs and bricks.

Bell calls the defensive posture “Brickianity”

There is a natural defensiveness in Brickianity. If you question this belief of mine, if your science of heliocentrism challenges my geocentrism, rather than adapting, rather than allowing that spring to be reunderstood, flexed in a new way, I will defend my older understanding. My understanding is the point, I am not a Christian if I am not certain. My faith is not real if it is not founded on absolute and unquestionable facts.

This will to certainty is not a will to truth. To want certainty is to want a system that will never completely represent what is true and real. To want certainty is to want control over the universe. We aren’t call to have control over truth, we are called to follow the one who is True and trust that we will be led into all truth.

As I said earlier, we are a people of extremes. We need to see and without seeing we will remain solid doubters, skeptics. We are a people of extremes: either complete doubt or complete sight.

And both skepticism and seeing are two sides of the brick wall. The wall that has been fought over. Both want to either have certainty that something is true without a shadow of a doubt or throw it in the trash.

But Jesus says, “blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”

Seeing is certainty and certainty is something that we moderns long for in our changing and uncertain times.

But what if God doesn’t want us to be certain? What if God wants us to live with questions? What if the questions give us a kind of humility and hospitality to truth that we can’t have with certainty?

We are not called to be those who see with certainty. We are called to be those who jump on the trampoline, those who enter into the journey of the new life with an openness to how God will reveal this new life to us everyday.

A final point I want to make relates to the understanding of faith that we have.

Brickianity has triumphed in the definition of belief in our modern world. Belief for moderns means certainty.

But Luther never understood faith this way.

Faith was never something we do. Faith was not something we achieve or some tool for fighting a war of ideas or cultures or religions.

Rather, faith is our recognition of our inability to be perfect, our inability to live up to the standards we see all around us, our inability to have the perspective and knowledge that belongs to God alone, our inability to be in control of our lives.

And what is Brickianity if it isn’t an attempt to have a God-like perspective, to presume to know everything beyond a shadow of a doubt and to demonize as unfaithful as spiritual failures those who dared to question that certainty in any one of its major points.

We’ve turned faith into works if we make it necessary that we believe x,y, and z in order to be a Christian, in order to be a follower of Christ.

Rather, belief is a clinging to God, a clinging to God’s mercy, God’s forgiveness, God’s love.

To let God be God that we might enjoy God’s mercy and light.

To be honest about who we are in all our limitations that we might exalt in the God who created a universe that is ultimately a mystery even to our brightest physicists.

It is a clinging to God like a rock in the sea of our doubts. Not trying to deny the sea, but trusting God in the midst of it.

God is not offended at our doubts, God is not angry at our questions. God knows that we are but humans with the perspective of humans, and he understands all the reasons why in this modern world we may find things to doubt, things to question in the faith that has been handed down to us.

To feel guilty for doubting, for questioning is to exist in the world where we have to be right, we have to have control over truth.

‘God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.’

To presume to have certainty -- to have to “see” in order to believe. That is pride -- humility lives by the grace of God.

As Hamlet says “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Christianity does not depend on the strength of our belief as if we were a kind of Atlas holding up the heavens. Christianity is a trampoline on which we jump.

To use another image, Christian faith is a house in which we dwell, We can point to different things and say “how does that work?” and there’s a trust that someone back somewhere at sometime asked a similar question and if they didn’t find an answer maybe we won’t and that’s ok. Because coming to know God is a process of coming to know how little we do know.

‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’ (Matt 11:28-30)

Christ calls us to follow him in the way of the easy yoke and the light burden. Come as you are, come with questions, come with doubts, just come. This house in which we dwell is a large house and there is much to explore as we journey together.

God will show us much if we are honest with ourselves and hospitable to truth whereever it may be found.

“blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”

blessed are we when we give up the pretense to see

and rather rest in God’s sight, believing that God accepts us as we are, that no works, no achievement, no certainty is required. Only honest acceptance of our limitations that we might know the richness of God’s love and acceptance of us as we are.

blessed are they that don’t presume to have certainty and control, but rest in the God who is beyond all words of description and beyond all systems of definition.

As the Apostle Paul writes in his letter to the Romans:

O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgements and how inscrutable his ways!

‘For who has known the mind of the Lord?

Or who has been his counsellor?’

‘Or who has given a gift to him,

to receive a gift in return?’

For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory for ever. Amen.

(Romans 11:33)

*Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith (Zondervan, 2005).

Ears Awake and Eyes Opened

A resurrection sermon for Easter Sunday given at the United Church of Acworth, Acworth, NH on April 8, 2012.


Isaiah 25:6-9 
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24 
1 Corinthians 15:1-11 
Mark 16:1-8

Introduce poem.

“i thank You God for most this amazing” by E. E. Cummings

“i thank You God for most this amazing

day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything

which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,

and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth

day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay

great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing

breathing any--lifted from the no

of all nothing--human merely being

doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are opened)”

today's gospel story is a story of expectations reversed

three women come to a tomb to anoint a corpse.

they come expecting great difficulty in accessing the tomb because of the custom of large stones being used for sealing the entrance.

they come expecting to mourn and continue their grieving.

they come with expectation that their hopes were indeed futile.

Was God in this? Did he care?

These women came dejected, trying to move on and give their best to the body of one they loved so much.

these women experienced the trauma of the suffering and crucifixion and slow dying of their teacher, their friend, their savior.

they came expecting to say their last goodbyes.

but they forgot.

they forgot what Jesus had told them over and over: ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’

the word repent, metanoite, has a literal meaning of change your mind -- change your expectations, change the way of viewing the world, turn from the old way of being where you lived under the shadow of death and a kind of dim defeatism, the enslavement to the way things are.

Metanoite -- Change your minds!

Metanoite -- Change your expectations!

Metanoite -- Believe the good news and let it bring light and hope to the bad news that you are carrying heavy on your hearts and minds.

Metanoite -- God is doing a new thing, jump on board.

Metanoite -- change your mind, AND pisteuete -- believe, come to this new realization, come to this new way of seeing the word: the kingdom of God was breaking into the world and those who found faith were able to see and rejoice that the blind were receiving sight, the lame were walking, those oppressed by the realities of evil in the world were being set free, the hungry were going off well-fed, and the severest of life’s storms were being calmed.

Change your minds! and Realize the new that is intruding into the old.

Believe in the good news.

All throughout Mark’s gospel we see this good news breaking into the lives of the people of Palestine. They expect the inevitability of unclean spirits -- only to see them thrown out, they expect the slow decay of sickness and dying -- only to see the intrusion of life.

They expect scarcity and the hunger of the multitude --- only to see that faith trusts in God’s provision, that God gives us bread in the bleakest of our wildernesses.

Change your mind and believe -- there is good news breaking into this world.

But again and again we read of how the disciples don’t get it. Old habits die hard.

But as Christians we are called to expect the unexpected. To be liberated from the tyranny of the same into the newness of what might be.

And so we join these women as they make their way to anoint the body and let us try for a moment to inhabit their expectation, to live in their grief, to pretend that we don’t know how the story goes on.

We know what it feels like to mourn loss, we know what it feels like to have our hopes crushed.

We know what it feels like to be limp with broken bones and to live in the darkness of despair.

In these times of grief and loss I have found it cathartic to say with Langston Hughes:

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore--

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over--

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

We read in Proverbs 13:12: “Hope deferred makes the heart sick...”

And we can feel the sickness of heart with these women who are making their way slowly in the dim light of the early sunrise.

There are some hints here, however, which the reader can pick up on. Hints that foreshadow an upset of expectations. Hints of possibility where there seems to be no possibility.

First -- the women coming bear names of newness and hope: we are told that Mary Magdalene, Mary mother of James, and Salome are the women coming to the tomb.

Mary is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew name Miriam. Many of us remember that Miriam was one of the three sibling prophets who lead the people of Israel out of the bondage of Egyptian slavery through the Reed Sea and forward into a new existence as those who by faith follow a God who provides in the wilderness.

We have two Miriams here -- perhaps to get us thinking about a new exodus, a new escape from a different kind of slavery, where we may sing with the first Miriam in a new way, “‘Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.’” A new kind of deliverance from a different enslaving reality.

And then we have Salome. The female equivalent of the name Solomon. Solomon as we remember was considered to be one of the wisest humans but we also remember that Solomon was the one who built the first glorious temple to the Lord. We have a new Solomon -- a new temple builder.

Here are names of a new deliverance, a new escape from slavery, and a new temple, a new way to worship and know and experience God’s presence.

A new community will arise out of the old, a community which by faith accesses God in no particular place in no particular way but will worship God in spirit and truth wherever they may be.

So these women are traveling to the tomb, to the place of disappointment, of eternal recurrence of the same, yet we see as readers a hint of something a new, a foreshadowing of a coming act of God.

Second, we are told that it was the first day of the week. We as readers are immediately able to realize that something very significant happened according to the tradition of the scriptures on a first day of the week. The Genesis creation story tells in a rich and poetic way that God spoke, in the face of a chaotic void, a nothing, God spoke: Let there be light and light was.

Here in the face of the death of the savior, we are brought as readers back to the creation story -- where God spoke being in the face of nonbeing, light in the face of darkness, newness in the face of nothingness. And it was good.

Third, we are told that it was early in the morning and that the sun was rising.

When Jesus yelled “my God my God why have you forsaken me?” before he gave up his spirit on the cross, we read that there was a great darkness over the land.

it is the darkness of God’s absence. we killed Jesus and told God to stay away from our affairs.

but here the sun is rising. quite beyond our control a new day begins.

“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” (Lam 3:22-23)

We may try to throw God out of our story, but God relentlessly and faithfully returns with mercy -- as faithfully as the sun rises.

The sun is rising and we hear an echo of the prophet Malachi who wrote:

“But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall.”

The new day will bring the sun: “the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings.”

Perhaps we feel like a new day will only bring suffering, will only bring more tyranny of the business or brokenness, the anxiety or shame, but friends we live under the care of the GOd who rises like the sun in our new days and there is healing in his wings, he will bring a newness as we turn our hearts and minds anew to him and put our faith in his love.

Fourth, these women were bringing oil to anoint the dead. But we as readers expect that a different kind of anointing is in order. The anointing of a new king, a new kingdom, a new reality.

We are called to expect differently, to live with a changed mind, a new expectation. We are called into a new community, to live in light of the daily new mercies of God, to be forgiven and to forgive. For despite us God will bring the new. We may embrace our selfish isolated worlds, but God stands at the door and knocks asking us to open up to a new life of a liberation on par with exodus of the Israelites from slavery, a liberation and a new access to the eternal on par with the new temple of King Solomon.

But we are still with the women on the road to the tomb. And none of this means anything because our minds still expect the same, still expect death, still expect broken frameworks of meaning, they still expect the “no of all nothing” in the words of E. E. Cummings.

but they get the tomb and suddenly they are confronted with the new reality. it doesn’t seem real, it doesn’t make sense, it defies expectation and the only response we can sometimes muster in such circumstances is fear and anxiety. It’s easier to live in the reality of the crucifixion than it is in the reality of the empty tomb. There is certainty in the crucifixion, there is a sense that we are not in control in the empty tomb.

The young man tells them, echoing Jesus’ many reassuring statements to his disciples earlier in the gospel:

“ ‘Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here.”

You may have come here expecting nothing, you may have come here expecting death and expecting grief and expecting defeat and nothingness. But here is where you’ve missed the point all along.

The kingdom, the reign of God, has broken into the world and by faith it is upsetting the expectations of those who live enslaved to the “no of all nothing.”

Here is a Yes of God that we can’t hear because we are so used to hearing No and so used to accepting the death of hope, the dream deferred. The Proverb says that “Hope deferred makes the heart sick,” but goes on to say, “but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.”

What a tree of life has been revealed in the reign of God. Change your mind and let your eyes be opened by God’s grace to the new reality of faith.

The sun has risen in the sky with healing, and the Son of Man has risen to begin the new healing of God’s grace for all people. The grace that is a gift, the gift that defeats our defeatism, that liberates us from the tyranny of what has always been, into the newness of the possibility that comes with forgiveness and connection with the God who is the source of our being, and the one who is closer to us than our own breath.

The young man says “Do not be alarmed” but go and tell the others of the good news-- so how do the women respond?

We read that “they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

Of course. Old habits die hard.

We are these women. We live everyday unable to live into the new way that God has shown us. The way of love, the way of giving, the way of hope in God’s power to change the world, to change our souls, to change our society, to bring healing out of our individual and collective brokenness. We forget that this the God who raised Jesus from the dead. This is the God of new creation, of exodus liberation, who is universally present to be worshipped and enjoyed. This is the God who comes to us new each day in the rising of the sun, who longs to upset our expectations, to open our eyes and ears to the grace of existence in light of his care and guidance.

These women are us. We see the new possibilities of God and in response we muster our strength not to praise God or accept the light of grace, rather we put all our strength into preserving our perceptions of ourselves, of others, and of the world that we live in. We muster up our strength and we nurse our hurts, our disappointments, our dreams deferred by strongly resisting the possibility of God’s resurrection of life from the broken bones of our hurts. We muster up our strength and pour it into cynical sarcasm at the goodness around us. Or worse we escape reality altogether and return to our business or hide in the world of entertainment and amusement.

The biggest obstacle we face as humans is the obstacle of unbelief. We have become comfortable with disappointment, we have become comfortable with the inevitability of failure, we’ve become comfortable with a kind of sarcastic distance from the realities of life.

But let us look at the death of Christ and realize that this the worst of disappointments, the worst of failures, the worst of meaninglessness and hurt.

But our word from God is that in the worst of these our life circumstances God can bring restoration, God can forge a new path, and make our broken bones rejoice. The night of weeping will pass into the morning of laughter and joy.

The kingdom of God is near, change your minds concerning your life and allow God to bring in the reality of resurrection hope as your heart becomes flooded with the love of God by the power of the Holy Spirit through faith.

Let us be honest. We are the women, afraid of the possibilities of grace and new life. Afraid of leaving behind the comfort of skepticism. But may we here read the resurrection as a call to us that the brokenness in our hearts, the brokenness in our relationships, the brokenness in our life stories and our communities is not the final word. Suffering and death, the no of all nothing is not the final word. He is risen, risen indeed and with the resurrection of Christ by faith we realize that no darkness can escape the power of the light and no brokenness will not one day be made whole. Let us enter into God’s wholeness now. May we pray with the Psalmist with the earnest desire of faith: “Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.” (Psalm 51:8 KJV)

And then sing with E. E. Cummings in celebration of the resurrected life, the reign of God in our midst, the upsetting of our expectations, the denial of the “no of all nothing”:

“i thank You God for most this amazing

day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything

which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,

and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth

day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay

great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing

breathing any--lifted from the no

of all nothing--human merely being

doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are opened)”