Hillside Church, Merry Christmas and Thank You

 

This is a personal note to my church family.  The Apostle Paul unabashedly expressed his love for the churches he founded.  I'm no Paul, but I will follow his example here, and express my affection for the church God privileges me to serve.  This photo is our Advent candles in our sanctuary from the fourth Sunday of Advent last year.

Hillside Church, I am very thankful that 15 years ago, God called me to be your pastor.  I preached my installation sermon here on September 24, 2006.  This year, you showed me and my family a lot of love, and I really grateful.  But then, in countless ways, you show us love every year, and I hope we show you love too.  I won’t say ‘reciprocate.’  Love is not reciprocal, but flows from the Spirit beating within each of us and from the generosity of the heart. You show love because of the heartbeat of Christ in you.  I hope that’s what I am doing as well.

The last few years we have seen ups and downs.  Before COVID came our church went through some changes, and now, 21 months of pandemic have imposed changes on all churches and on everyone everywhere, churched or unchurched.  I thank God to have gone through this with you.

I believe God will be seen this Christmas among us, as we love each other and welcome all who come.  I believe as the word is proclaimed and praise is sung, the Holy Spirit’s touch will be felt.  Reader, be part of it.  Maybe you are a Hillside member who hasn’t come in-person yet.  Maybe you are someone who sees our newsletter, but hasn’t gotten very involved in our church.  I pray that you will.  I pray you will come and experience the love and community that we offer.  And I thank God that I get to be part of it.

-        Pastor Rob

Book Review - "Church: What to Do When Everyone is Like You" (Daynette Snead Perez)

 

Daynette Snead Perez asks a question every church should ask itself.  “Can there be unity and diversity here?”  In her latest book ‘Church: What to do When Everyone is Like You,’ she answers ‘yes,’ and ‘yes.’ There can be unity in your church.  In fact, there must be.  And there can be diversity, no matter where your church is.

Snead Perez doesn’t make the assertion.  She charts the course.  Blending Biblical principles, bible stories, and her own story, the author introduces the reader to her Stranger to Neighbor ministry.  This approach to unity/diversity is going to catch on and alter the way churches see the people who walk through their doors as well as the people in the community who walk past their doors.

 Two particular strengths that stand out are the weighted phrases Snead Perez pastorally invites the reader to carry.  For instances, she likens ministry to standing.  Wouldn’t we all like to stand on firm ground? Doesn’t Jesus instruct us to build our faith on the rock of his word, that we might withstand the storm (Matthew 7:24-27)?  Of course he does.  But our foundation is him.  He does not tell us to avoid the storm!  Thus, Snead Perez writes, “adjust your comfort to stand in a canoe, rather than on firm ground” (p.52).  Have you ever toppled into the water trying to stand in a canoe?  Yes, ministry can get wet and messy, but when we develop the agility to navigate the roiling changes in the cultural climate around us, we are ready to grow united, diverse congregations.

 Another example of her powerful wording comes when she a process for stepping onto new ground in ministry.  She writes, “Blind spots are removed through education, listening, and engaging with people willing to provide and share first hand knowledge of lived experiences.” Having practiced this approach of humble listening to people willing to share their stories with me, especially across racial and ethnic lines, I can attest to the efficacy of the approach she prescribes.

 These are but two examples from a book chalk full of compelling wording and phrasing.  The reader will be challenged to examine his or her own life is he or she has the temerity to follow the course the author is plotting.  Yet the challenges Snead Perez presents come as an invitation, and this is the other particular strength to be mentioned here. 

 Her style is direct, but gentle.  She tells her own story truthfully and vulnerably, but not in a way the condemns any particular racial or ethnic group.  As a white male, I don’t read this and think, “Gosh, I am awful. I need to change.”  It’s a conviction of guilt heaped upon me.  Rather, I come away from reading ‘What to Do When Everyone Like You’ thinking, “I might need to change, and I know can!  I can play role and unleashing a more diverse, unified, loving church upon the world.” Daynette has invited me to be part of the beloved community.

 

Pick up a copy of this book for your pastor, you church elders and deacons, the Sunday school teachers, and yourself.  You’ll come away ready for a more colorful, blessed future for your church.

Jesus in the Neighborhood

            After I preached a sermon on Mark 12:28-34 about loving one’s neighbor, one of our members shared with me an article she read.  In it, Mother Teresa is interviewed.  The interviewer suggests that though Mother Teresa in her ministry works hard and does some good things, in the long run, it makes little difference.  Her efforts do not alleviate poverty on a large scale.

            Here is Mother Teresa’s response:

“I do not agree with the big way of doing things,” Mother Teresa replied. “To us what matters is an individual. To get to love the person, we must come in close contact with him. If we wait till we get the numbers, then we will be lost in the numbers. And we will never be able to show that love and respect for the person. I believe in person to person; every person is Christ for me, and since there is only one Jesus, that person is only one person in the world for me at that moment.”[i]

 

            I appreciated her focus on loving the person and not getting lost in the numbers.  We do the one and avoid the other.  We can focus on loving people, our neighbors.  We can be creative and find meaningful ways to show love to the people around us.  We can be a gathering of people willing to walk with individuals in their struggles.  We can help people see Jesus.

            We can also avoid getting lost in the numbers.  In terms of active members, our church is smaller than it has been in over 30 years.  If you just counted bodies, you’d say we’re in decline.  However, when I see how many of our people commit to neighbor love by volunteering at the food pantry twice month, I see a small congregation doing a lot of good.  When I consider the way our members support the church through tithes and offerings, it makes me believe God wants our church to thrive.  We haven’t been this small in a long time, but we also haven’t been this financially stable in a long time.  We have a lot going for us and the Gospel we preach and try to embody is the same Gospel they read in churches with thousands of people.

            It’s OK for us to want a growing children’s ministry.  It’s ok to want youth, young adults, and small group ministries that are more developed.  It’s ok to acknowledge that one of the things we probably need for these ministries is more people.  It’s ok as long as we remember that God has blessed us as we currently are, and the group that currently comprises our church body is capable of countless manifestations of neighbor love.  We dream about what will be even as we pour energy into what are doing right now as a church. 

            Like Mother Teresa, we see and love everyone who comes through our doors as if he or she were Jesus.  We members of the church family go out into the surrounding world intent on showing neighbor love.  Jesus is in the neighborhood and we will see him if we seek him.  We seek him by loving all the people we meet in the everyday places of our lives.   

---

[i] https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/08/mother-teresas-nuns-escape-kabul-with-orphans-and-show-us-how-to-live/ 

Provoked

8-4-2021

 

            I pray you will be provoked.  Wait!  What?  That’s right, I pray you be provoked!  Doesn’t provocation lead to conflict?  Maybe.  Stay with me here.

            A few weeks ago, a friend strongly recommended I spend significant time in the New Testament book of Jude.  Jude only has 25 verses in total.  Because I greatly respect the friend who recommended Jude and because it is so short, I decided to go through Jude praying each verse, phrase-by-phrase, in the manner of Lectio Divina.  I read a phrase out loud, take several deep breaths, read it again, and then read it one more time.  I let the sound of the words settle on me.  Then, I write in my journal what I hear.  It took me a week just to get through Jude 1:3, but that’s the whole point.  I am taking my time; and being provoked.

            Verse 1 includes the phrase “… kept safe for Jesus Christ.”  I wondered if Jude was writing to a persecuted church.  He said they were “kept safe,” but I had to ask did they feel safe?

            In verse 3, Jude feels he has to “contend for the faith.”  I was provoked to ask, where do we, in Hillside Church, have to “contend for the faith?”  And, when we identify where that is, are we doing it? 

            Verse 3 records Jude referring to “intruders.”  Have I confronted intruders at Hillside?  Or, have intruders intruded, and when they did, did I fail to recognize them?  Or, did I confront someone as an intruder who was actually a brother or sister in Christ and was not actually intruding?

            Do you see?  Simply reading and praying over 4 verses in Jude provoked me to a number of questions.  Obviously, some of the questions with which I wrestle are specific to my role as the pastor.  You, though, can read in the same way.  Read scripture slowly, thoughtfully, and prayerfully.  Read with your life wide open before you, before the Bible, and before God.  When the word prods you, respond in humble, confessional faith.  Be vulnerable and moldable, so through the Bible, God can shape you. 

            I pray you will be provoked.

Presence

 

Last Sunday (6-27-21), I urged the congregation to see that our greatest joy is found in God’s presence.  Being with God is better than getting what (we think) we desire.  You can watch that sermon here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnytxbCHJMw (begin at 19:20 mark).  Be with God.

            Here I follow up that message with an encouragement for you.  This summer, 2021, discover what being is God’s presence is like for you. Prayer walking.  Periods of silent meditation.  Worship singing.  Journaling.  Find the mode and context in which you are able to tune out distractions and focus on hearing from God.  Feel God speak to your spirit. 

            Jesus promised “I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20b).  Paul promises nothing in creation can “separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39).   Why is it good news when we say “God is with us?”  I bet you can answer that question intellectually or rationally.  Or, if you don’t know the answer, you can research it and discover a cogent response. 

            Why is it good for us experientially?  I suspect this one is harder to articulate.  And this is not something you’ll learn by a google search our hours spent reading thick theology or spirituality books.  To experience God, you have to invest significant time and focused attention walking with God, sitting with God, and listening to God.  Do exactly that this summer.  Dedicate this summer to knowing God in your spirit.

            There will be trial and error, and frustrating periods of silence.  It’s worth the agony.  Transformation comes in the journey.  And, you’ll see the world around you differently, and you’ll become a new creation.  Practice the presence of God.  Discover who you are in light of your relationship with God in Christ. 

Graced (6/1/2021)

 

 

“Sin will have no dominion over you since you are not under law but under grace” (Romans 6:14).

“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8).

“Each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift” (Ephesians 4:7).

“Live in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us” (Ephesians 5:2).

 

            Why this sampling of numerous New Testament verses about grace?  We are “graced” people.  We are saved by God’s show of grace, the sending of his beloved Son on our behalf.  The hope we have for eternal life is a gift God gives us.  If we understand we have been gifted with grace, we will be eager to extend grace to others.

            Opportunities to give grace come up in every encounter in life.  A most present and immediate application for grace is the awkwardness of emerging from COVID-19 quarantines, back into fully engaged life.  Those vaccinated and ready to take off masks need to have patience and give grace to those who insist we still need to wear masks.  Those not quite ready to be fully open can extend grace to people running around without masks on.

            Some people have not been vaccinated and there are still new cases of COVID-19 in our area every day.  Those under 12 years of age aren’t eligible for vaccination yet.  Vaccinated people can be carriers of COVID without getting symptoms themselves.  When they wear masks, they are “living in love” (Eph. 5:2), showing love for vulnerable, unvaccinated neighbors. 

            Whatever one feels about masks, vaccinations, and COVID-19, when we are in Christ, our priority is to share self-giving love to our neighbors as Christ gave himself for us.  If we approach others in a spirit of self-giving love and extend grace, we’ll get through the awkward conversations.  We’ll get past the tribulation of the pandemic.  Our purpose is to bear witness to the gospel of Jesus.  One of the ways we can do that is to give love and grace. 

The Called

5-4-2021

 

            A couple of thoughts tease my mind as I sit to write.  It’s “Star Wars” day.    How did a fun, fresh science fiction movie become the mythic, entertainment behemoth that it is?  Fans exchange knowing winks as they proudly say, “May the 4^th be with you!”  They delight in the ignorance of the uninitiated who don’t understand “the force.” 

            This is all fantasy, but like a lot of fictional world, Star Wars holds a firm grip on the hearts of many in the world.  What do witnesses sharing testimony about Jesus have to say to the voters, lawyers, dishwashers, bus-riders, builders, writers, wannabe-writers, gamers, and influencers inhabiting the Star Wars universe?

            The other musing poking around my brain is the movement related to COVID-19: vaccines are up; infection rates are down; restrictions are being lifted.  In the U.S., we are inching toward the end of the pandemic.  Of course, just as some at the beach go charging into the surf, and others gradually dip their toes and venture no farther than ankle deep, and others stay completely dry settling for sand and sun, we will see varying levels of social engagement that mark the end of the COVID-19 ordeal.  

Some will continue to isolate.  Some will come out but stay protected by masks and will find themselves wary about handshaking.  Some will bound out into the world and act gregarious, ignoring the personal space of others, and acting as if COVID-19 never happened. What word do Christ-followers have to share in this disordered, unbalanced time?  And how do we share it?

Sorry, I don’t have answers, per se.  When COVID-19 is completely in the rearview mirror, there will be other crises ignored by some and completely feared by others.  There will be numerous fantasy worlds that give people joy and even meaning.  We who follow Jesus are called to show the world who He is and why He matters, and we’re called to do that no matter how things are in the world. 

Ephesians 1:18 says one of the goals of this letter is that the reader will receive the Spirit and know the hope to which Christians are called.  Believers often talk about, write about, and debate about “the elect.”  Who’s included in “the elect?”  Who’s excluded?  Am I among “the elect?”  What if, instead of these conversations about something utterly out of our control, we see ourselves as the called.

We are called to hope.  We are called to follow Jesus, love others, and share hope!  We are called to be witnesses in a Star Wars world, in a COVID-19 world, in a post-COVID world, and in the midst of whatever comes next.  As you bask in the fresh, new beauty of Springtime, consider seeing yourself with new eyes.  If you have given your heart to Christ and dedicated yourself to following Jesus, then you are among the called.  How will you respond to God’s call? 

"The Resurrection HAD to Happen" (Luke 24:36-48)

 

Watch - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvoY6A1tZIk

Sunday, April 18, 2021

 

            The universe and everything in it belong to God.  It is created by God; all of it.  Physicists, astronomers, chemists, biologists, and geologists weigh in on how the world came to be.  Their scientific methods of observation describe what God has done.  Everything is God’s.  God’s values are ultimate values and apply to everyone. 

            This is why the death of Daunte Wright last Sunday in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota at the hands of a police officer who mistook her firearm for her taser, is so awful.  One of God’s ultimate values is life.  Jesus says, God is God of the living.  Speaking in Luke 20, “to him all [who have died] are alive” (v.38).  God has no place for death.  The death of a 20-year-old young man is an offense to God.

            The list of unarmed black people killed by white people in America is impossibly long.  It is our national shame that it keeps happening, and that people – mostly white – emotionally defend the integrity of the police instead of mourning the evil of institutional bias that results in so many defenseless people dying.  We hear that most police are people of good character.  That’s true, but it’s not the point.  We hear that Daunte committed some misdemeanors.  Again, not the point. 

            I have an 18-year-old son.  He has had public encounters with the police; not as many as I did when I was his age.  And he hasn’t done anything dangerous or too destructive and he does not have a record.  But, if a simple encounter with an officer ended in his death, it would tear my world apart.  Think of someone you love, deeply, about my son’s age, or Daunte Wright’s age.  Think of how devastated you would be if that young person died.  How hard would it hit you?  The death of Daunte Wright should hit you and me that hard.  It hits God that hard because God made us to live.  You and I and my son and Daunte Wright, God made us to be alive. 

            Parents of black young people have to have a talk with their kids about how to act when pulled over by the police for the most minor of offenses or even for doing nothing.  They have to have this talk because black people are so much more likely to be pulled.  And those encounters are so much more likely to end in death at the hands of officer we trust to protect us. 

We can talk all about systemic injustice, slavery, Jim Crowe, and mass incarceration. We can talk about the root issue being white people’s desire to hold onto to power and to keep black people in a socially subjugated role.  Individual white people do fight alongside black and brown brother and sisters for a more just and equal society, and we may be gaining ground, the trial of Derek Chauvin for killing George Floyd and the death of Daunte Wright at the hands of 26-year police veteran Kim Potter make it clear we aren’t there yet and we have along way to go.  

We could have that racial justice conversation, but on this third Sunday of Easter I bring up Daunte’s death for a theological reason.  God is offended and dishonored by what happened.  The fear our black neighbors have to endure every time they do the most mundane thing, drive a car, is unacceptable to God.  Remember.  America is God’s possession.  You and I might tell ourselves we are masters of our own fate, but it’s a fallacy.  The truth is we are God’s.  God’s values are ultimate for us.  God values life.  To God, Daunte Wright and George Floyd are alive.  Don’t believe me?  Wrestle with what Jesus says in Luke 20:38. Take all the time you need.  Jesus insists that God’s ultimate value applies universally; to everyone.

Racism is only one space in which we mock God’s creation with our prolific killing.  What are others?  When I preached Luke 24 in 2007, I had only been pastor here a year.  As I read the resurrection story, I looked around my life and saw death in every direction.  First, I was called to my previous church to preach the funeral of a beloved member.  We wouldn’t call the death of one in his 80’s, by natural causes, a tragedy.  God actually would.  God did not create us for death; not death by Gunshot, not death by cancer, not death by old age.  God created us for eternal life. In April 2007, I preached my friend Ralph’s funeral and God was honored by the love we showed.  But even that, what we call ‘sensible,’ death was an affront to God.

A few months later that year, senseless killing followed.  August 14, 2007, over 200 Yazidis in Iraq were killed in a terrorist bomb.  Americans don’t know who the Yazidis are, so we pass off such news as ‘something terrible that happened over there.’  I hate that vacuous phrase ‘over there.’  When Americans use that phrase, we are insulting ourselves.  ‘Over there’ means ‘not here,’ so, not my problem. 

What happened on August 16, 2007, certainly was our problem.  Seung-Hui Cho shot and murdered 32 of his classmates and professors at Virginia Tech, and then killed himself.  It happened at Tech, not ‘over there.’  It could happen at UNC. 

All of it disregards God’s intent for humanity.  As Jesus said, he is God of the living.  Death in situations of racial prejudice or racial profiling or unconscious bias, death in school shootings, death in war, and death of natural causes; all of it is the opposite of what God had in mind when God created Adam and Eve. 

In God’s vision, nature, humanity, and God all live in beautiful harmony with each other.  The Jewish idea describing this beautiful state of Eden is ‘shalom,’ a combination of peace, bliss, safety, provision, and most importantly, right relationships.  This was lost in the fall and this is what God restores in the coming of Jesus, the death of Jesus, and the resurrection of Jesus.  The story is not complete until the disciples meet and touch the risen Lord. 

The empty tomb did not convince Jesus’ followers he was alive.  On Easter morning, when the women told the disciples, they had seen an angel who told them he had been raised, Luke 24:11 they did not believe it.  Do we think the empty tomb was evidence that would show skeptics, scribes, and Romans Jesus was alive?  The empty tomb didn’t even convince his own followers.

Then, two others, Cleopas and his wife who is not named, meet Jesus making the 7-mile walk from Jerusalem back to their home in Emmaus.  Though they were his followers, they do not recognize Jesus until he breaks bread with them.  He breaks the bread, a physical act in their presence, and then vanishes.  They immediately turn around and hike 7 miles back to Jerusalem to tell the disciples what they’ve seen!  Jesus, alive! 

As they tell their story, Jesus, who they saw vanish, now materializes before them and the eleven disciples.  This is where our reading for this morning picks up.  We know the disciples did not believe Cleopas.  They didn’t even believe their own eyes.  Resurrected Jesus says to them, “Peace be with you,” but the next verse describes them as ‘startled and terrified’ thinking they are seeing a ghost. 

The empty tomb, testimony of friends they absolutely trust, and even their own eyes are not enough to shake the hold death has on these disciples.  They saw Jesus’ miracles and heard his teachings, yet they remained locked in their sense that natural forces, not God, determine how things are in the universe.  The dead stay dead.  It’s what they expect.  It’s what we expect. 

What’s the first recorded meal in the Bible?  It’s Adam and Eve, eating forbidden fruit.  The first meal rips apart the serenity of God’s creation and brings death in when God never intended death to be in this story.  Adam and Eve made a choice.  They were in a garden full of fruit trees.  Clearly God intended eating to be part of his creation when it was at its best.  God wants us to enjoy life, just on God’s terms. 

At that first meal, the first humans rejected God’s ultimate value of life and instead opted for toil and death.  We chose the wartime massacres of people like the Yazidis and we chose school shootings and we chose institutionalized racial bias and the death that comes with it.  Every time an Officer Kim Potter shoots a 20 year-old Daunte, Adam and Eve and you and I take another bite of that apple, when we could be eating all the other fruits God put there for us to eat. 

Jesus announces new creation with a meal.  In this act, he undoes the harm of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3, and begins the new day.  He asked the disciples in Luke 24:38, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?  Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself.  Touch me and see for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see I have.” Then he asked if they had anything to eat. 

The resurrection had to happen.  What was lost as Adam and Eve and you and I munched on forbidden fruit had to be restored.  Eating fish with his scared disciples, Jesus reset creation, with our sins atoned and eternal life assured. 

At the first meal of new creation, there was no white supremacy or systemic injustice or violence or death.  Those things had no place there.  There were and there are places set for you and me to sit down together in love and right relationship.  The resurrection assures our place at Jesus’ table alongside Trayvon Martin, who sits with George Zimmerman, next to George Floyd sharing fellowship with Derek Chauvin, and Daunte Wright and Kim Potter.  None is killer or victim because sins have been covered and death is no more.  Because of the resurrection, we sit in right relationship with one another, with God, and with all that He has created.

AMEN

"He Shall Command Peace" (Zechariah 9:1-11)

 

watch it here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H54szh1HFZA

Second Sunday of Easter, April 11, 2021

 

            What God has done?  I’ll tell you.  Jesus crucified for the sins of the world?  That was God’s doing.  Then, he rose on the third day.  Resurrected! So what?  Does it make any difference? How does the resurrection – what God did – define your life?

            Theologian Stanley Hauerwas writes, “Through Jesus’ resurrection, we see God’s peace as a present reality.  Though we continue to live in a time when the world does not dwell in peace, when the wolf cannot dwell with the lamb and a child cannot play over the hole of the asp [as imagined in Isaiah 11], we believe that peace has been made possible by the resurrection.”[i]

            Hauerwas believes that because of the resurrection of Jesus, peace is inevitable in God’s kingdom, and God’s kingdom has begun breaking into this present reality.  We can be sure of both – peace and the inbreaking of God’s kingdom.  Count on it. 

However, there’s the rub.  The world does not know peace right now.  The Bible is full of war.  Last century saw two massive world wars.  Local, enduring conflicts seem ubiquitous and unending. 

            I think of the January 6, 2021 storming of the U.S. Capitol which ended in bloodshed and death. We Americans can no longer brag about transferring power peacefully.   We can no longer wag disapproving fingers at other nations we deem not democratic enough.  We saw deadly violence in the very heart of our democracy.

            I think about Honduran immigrants moving across Mexico to the southern U.S. border.  Homicidal gangs vying for control of the illegal drug trade and a corrupt government unwilling to confront the gangs make life in Honduras unlivable.  Honduras has the fourth highest numbers of murders per 100 people in the world.  Neighboring El Salvador is number 1 on the list, Guatemala is 14^th, and Mexico is 16^th.[ii]   Also, the region is often battered by hurricanes.  The masses to enter the U.S. aren’t “migrating.”  They’re desperately fleeing death. 

            I think about the trial of Derek Chauvin, the white Minneapolis police officer whose killing of a black man, George Floyd, set off protests and riots last year.  The crime and the trial is emblematic of how violent racial tension in America is.  So too is the recent spate of hate crimes committed against Asian Americans.

            Whether it is political division, immigration and nationalism, racial strife, or something else, hate and violence are the flavors of the day in America.  We love Easter.  We bask in the light of the empty tomb.  We believe God is all powerful and we follow Jesus.  But, how can possibly we see God’s peace as a present reality?  When we read “he commanded peace to the nations,” don’t we assume that’s some distant, future thing that we won’t see in this lifetime? 

            That quote is Zechariah 9, 9:10 to be specific.  Zechariah chapters 1-8 are attributed to the prophet.  He and the prophet Haggai were late 6^th century BC peers who heard God’s call to rebuild the temple as a catalyst to reestablish Israel’s God’s people after the Babylonian exile ended. 

            Zechariah 9-11, Zechariah 12-14, and Malachi 1-4, three distinct units probably written in the 400’s, the 5^th century BC, close out Old Testament prophecy.  Through these anonymous prophets, God offers a special insight into his future promises.  In Zechariah 9 we hear God’s command for peace,  Because the resurrection has happened, we can begin living this peace even in a violent world. 

            The Gospel accounts of Jesus riding to Jerusalem on what we call Palm Sunday, refer to Zechariah 9:9. “Rejoice greatly, O Zion; … your king comes to you triumphant and victorious, humble and riding on a colt, on the foal of a donkey.”   Matthew and John quote this directly; Mark and Luke allude to it.   Entering Jerusalem prior to his crucifixion, Jesus fulfills the unknown prophet’s prophecy. 

            These promises come from Israel’s story.  Read about Samson and the other Judges.  Read about Israel’s greatest Judge-Prophet, Samuel; and the first Israelite king, King Saul, and the greatest, King David.  Each of these notable Old Testament figures fought the same enemy, a persistent foe who dogged Israel relentlessly: The Philistines!  After Solomon’s reign, as Philistia’s international influence diminished, a greater empire arose to threaten God’s people:  Assyria! 

            Zechariah 9:1-8 along with a prophet from a few centuries earlier, Amos, 1:3-8, name Syrian and Philistine cities.  Relating God’s vision through prophetic poetry, Amos and Zechariah recount God’s response to the Philistine and Syrian threats.

Syria: “The word of the Lord is against Damascus.”  The capital city of Aram belongs to the Lord.  The island city-state known as Tyre was thought to be impenetrable, but the prophet says, “The Lord will strip it of its possessions and hurl its wealth into the sea.”  The Philistine: Ashkelon shall be afraid, Gaza shall writhe in anguish, the hopes of Ekron are withered, and God will make an end of the pride of Philistia (Zechariah 9:5-6).  This prophet never bothers to tell us his own name, but repeats Amos’ condemnations of all these Syrian and Philistine cities.  Why?  Why tell us about the downfall of Israel’s oldest, fiercest rivals? 

            After describing how God will humble the enemies of His people, in verse 7, the perspective changes.  “I will,” God says, “take away … [the] abominations from between [the Philistines’] teeth.”  Is God going to wash Philistia’s mouth out with soap?  God says Philistia will also be a remnant for God.  God has always promised to save a remnant from Israel.  Since when did those cursed Philistines who cut Samson’s hair, harassed Samuel, and intimidated Saul get to be God’s remnant?  They aren’t us!  But God cares about Philistines and Syrians, Iraqis and North Koreans, black people from Alabama and white from Alabama.  Peace comes because of what God has done, not because we learn to be peaceful. 

Verse 7 says Philistia will be like a clan in Judah.  Just as God ushers in justice and peace for the Chosen People, God brings a new, peaceful age for all people.  What difference does the resurrection make?  The prophet of Zechariah 9 paints a picture of a united Israel with former enemies now a part of God’s community. 

It’s because of that king who rides in on the donkey. He will reign from “sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth” (Zech. 9:10).  He commands peace to all nations, and He has defeated death.  Jesus Christ, the resurrected Lord, fulfilles this prophecy. 

Time out, Pastor!  Where’s peace?

I hear your objection.  Our political division is as bad as ever, the poor souls at the Mexico-Texas border are living in anything but peace, and the Derek Chauvin trial is a powder keg that should drive all to our knees.  Where is this promised resurrection peace? 

It began with what God did: he resurrected Jesus.  New creation began, an age in which all sins are forgiven, and all who follow Christ will have eternal life.  It grows as we – God’s church – begin living the new creation reality today, even in the midst of a murderous, violent world. 

When we live the peace God commanded, we don’t let politics determine who are enemies are.  We may doggedly fight over policy differences with someone or a group from a different political party or persuasion, but when fight for our case, we do it with kindness, manners, and recognition of the other’s dignity.  We don’t hate Biden supporters or Trump supporters.  We give grace and love to all, as our Lord commands. 

When we live the peace God commanded, we recognize the plight of the immigrant fleeing death and seeking hope in America.  These are children of God.  Because we are in Christ, we do not act on some selfish desire to preserve an impression of what America is supposed to be.  We don’t fear how new arrivals change America.  We’re not driven by fear at all.  When we react to what God has done in the resurrection, we welcome people in distress just as Christ welcomes us.  

When we live the peace God commanded, we stand with the victims of prejudice and systemic injustice.  Those privileged to be in the dominant group don’t fight to protect what they have.  They share it.  Defending white privilege is akin to fighting to hold onto our share of stale crackers while ignoring the resurrection feast God offers to share.  When we throw down our old loyalties and insecurities, and accept God’s invitation, we discover that the joy of God’s table is not found only in the endless delicacies we eat, but also in eating those heavenly foods alongside our black brothers and Chinese sisters and African friends and arab friends and white cousins and Mexican neighbors. 

We begin anticipating that grand banquet by making space in our lives for black, white, Native, Arab, Asian, and Latin people right now.  God commanded peace.  That same God defeated death.  Can we see that this God has absolute authority to command peace?  Will we trust that in the risen Christ, this promised peace has come, is coming, and  as his return will come in full? 

Jesus has risen.  God has done something.  Will we live in God’s new reality, or hold on to our old rivalries and hatreds?  Go out this week, and share resurrection peace with someone who looks and thinks differently than you.  Ask God to put someone like that in your path.

AMEN

---

[i] Hauerwas, S (1983), The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics University of Notre Dame Press (Notre Dame, IN), p.88-89.

[ii] https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5/rankings

Easter 2021

 

Easter Sunday, April 4, 2021

watch - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_E2nGr_nWo

Easter, April 4, 2021

 

A man overhears his friend say the police were at the elementary school.  He turns white with horror.  These are dads of second graders, and the first guy has been watching the news and become fixated on stories of mass shootings.  Panic-stricken, he asks, “What happened?” The second man, the story-teller, looks at him and says, “Nothing.  I was just talking about how cool it was that the police were at the school doing a demonstration with K-9 unit dogs.”

False assumptions distort our perception, of reality.  In the dark, early Sunday hours, Mary Magdalene discovered that the entrance to the tomb where Jesus was laid to rest on Friday had been opened.  The rock sealing the tomb entrance was rolled aside.  She assumed someone had stolen the body, so she ran to Peter and the Beloved Disciple and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him” (20:2).  We do not know.  We bump into several unknowns in John 20.  Mary did not know where Jesus’ body was. 

Bible readers, avoid what Mary did.  Avoid jumping to conclusions without knowing the full story.  Bible readers, do what Mary did.   Mary readily acknowledged what she did not know.  We should too. 

I have discovered freedom in saying three simple words: “I don’t know.”  Acknowledging my own ignorance protects me from leaping to false conclusions.  It makes me curious, especially when reading the Bible.  When confused, I tenaciously seek answers.  And, I don’t confidently assert untruths as if they were true.  The church does not demand that I have all the answers, so I shouldn’t pretend to know things I don’t know.

Mary ran to tell Peter and the “one whom Jesus loved,” the Beloved Disciple.  Most readers assume the Beloved Disciple is John, but the actual book we call “John’s Gospel,” doesn’t say that.  Anywhere.  Later tradition equates the Apostle John with the Beloved Disciple.  Since the gospel doesn’t name him, I will refer to him as the Beloved Disciple.

He outran Peter, but didn’t go into the tomb upon arrival.  Why did he hesitate?  I don’t know.  Upon arrival, the slower Peter went in, and then the Beloved Disciple followed.  They discovered the linens meant to enwrap the body lying where the body should have been.  The head cloth was not with the rest of the linens.  The head cloth was rolled up and set off to the side in a place by itself.

Head cloths do not unwrap themselves from around the corpse’s head.  Head cloths do not then roll themselves up and set themselves off to the side.   Something happened.  Mary, seeing the stone rolled aside knew something happened, and now, seeing the scene inside the tomb, Peter and the Beloved Disciple did too.  Neither they nor Mary knew what; they only knew something was going on.

John tells us the Beloved Disciple believed, but did not understand.  What, exactly, did he believe?  Belief soaked in incomplete knowledge comes up more than once in this gospel.  When grief-stricken Martha talked to Jesus in chapter 11 about her dead brother Lazarus, he said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life.  Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die” (11:25-26).  He’s saying this where Lazarus, Martha’s brother, lay dead.  He then asks Martha, “Do you believe?”  “Yes, Lord, I believe.”

Does she?  He talked about being “the resurrection and the life.”  She says, “I believe you are the Messiah, the Son of God.”  Did she hear Jesus’ words about people never dying?  When she said, “I believe,” did she understand what it was that she believed?  When we express our faith and belief that Jesus rose from death and in him, we will too, do we understand what we are saying?

The beloved discipled believed, though what he actually believed we cannot say because he also misunderstood the way Jesus’ resurrection fulfilled scripture.  And what about Peter?  What did believe was going on?  The gospel doesn’t say.

It does say after they left, Mary lingered and then looked into the tomb herself.  She saw two angels.  Peter and the Beloved Disciple didn’t see angels.  They saw clothes and head wrappings for a corpse, but no corpse.  Were the angels invisible to them, but then visible to Mary?  Did the angels slip in after the men left? 

The angels ask Mary, “Why are you weeping?”  She answers, still locked in her false assumption that Jesus is dead and someone has nefariously robbed the grave.  “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him” (20:13).  Did Mary know these were angles?  Was Mary startled or upset to find two unknown persons in the tomb of Jesus?  The Gospel doesn’t say. 

She steps away from the tomb and faced toward the surrounding garden.  For the first time, the narrator announces the resurrected Jesus.  For the first description of the risen Savior, wouldn’t we anticipate something more forceful and theatrical than what the fourth Gospel gives us?  It’s as if the resurrected Lord is a background character in a drama where Mary is the star.  Mary has been locked in on what she does not know.  She does not know where Jesus’ body is. 

Now, that which she has so earnestly sought, Jesus, stands before her and she thinks he’s a gardener.  He repeats the question the angels asked.  “Why are you weeping?  Whom are you looking for?”  Mary has spent this morning in the land of false assumptions, and who can blame her?  It had been a traumatic couple of days and that was before she discovered graves unable to hold in their residents.  Assuming he’s about to pick up his hoe and go to work on pesky weeds, she repeats her mantra to him, this time thinking she may finally make some headway. 

“Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away” (v.15).  In this statement, made in the land of false assumptions, made from a place of not-knowing, we have a hint of why the resurrection is the event upon which all of reality stands. 

In the world as we understand it, the dead don’t bury themselves.  It could be in unmarked mass graves, it could be in cheap pine boxes or gold inlaid, elaborate caskets, or it could cremation; whatever form we choose, we, the living, have to deal with dead bodies.  If we don’t, there will be carcasses in various stages of decomposition all over the place.  This is our reality as it was Mary’s. 

What does Jesus have to say to our ideas about reality?  Back in John 10, Jesus said, “No one takes my life. I lay it down of my own accord” (v.17-18).  Mary lives in a reality where she, or someone, has to deal with the corpse of a man they know and love.  Jesus announces a new reality.  The corpse she seeks is the living, breathing man before her.  She finally sees him when he speaks her name.  “Mary!”  

Remember what I said?  I found freedom in the phrase “I don’t know.”  I don’t know how this story hits you.  I don’t know what you think about Jesus’ resurrection or resurrection in general.  I do know I have become convinced through my reading of 1000’s of pages from New Testament scholars that the writer of John’s gospel believed he was writing about a fully raised, fully physical body.  Mary grabbed hold of Jesus.  In Luke’s Gospel, and later in John 20, and again in John 21, we see indicators that Jesus’ raised body was tangible but also different.  He could cook fish and share it; he could be bear hugged by Mary; but he could also pass through closed doors without opening them.

That different quality of existence signals that the resurrection of Jesus is the dawning of New Creation.  Do you want to be part of New Creation?  We believe in the resurrection because we believe God is free to step outside the boundaries of natural law, and more importantly, is free to do new things.  Please do not mistake this assertion of new creation for the insufferable platitude “God can do anything.”  That’s something someone says if they get the job they were hoping for, or their teams wins a title.  That sentiment is essentially meaningless. 

Forget God can do anything.  Respond to God has done something.  In the risen Jesus Christ, God has ushered in a new age in which all who believe in Jesus and follow him as Lord, will have eternal life.  Jesus declared this in Chapter 3.  His resurrection is the stamp of approval affirming his power to overcome of death. 

I am comfortable saying “I don’t know” when I really don’t.  I readily accept there is far more knowledge that I seek than what I possess, and there is far more I am unaware of than that which I seek.  But there is something I do know.

What I know is that I have studied the evidence of the resurrection.  I believe, historically and logically speaking, the most plausible conclusion is that Jesus’s resurrection happened in actual history. I know that I have studied the scientific method.  I believe the resurrection cannot be proven or disproven scientifically.  I know my experience with God tells me that God is real and that the Spirit of the risen Christ is with me. 

Based on what I know, I believe in Jesus Christ, crucified, resurrected, ascended, and present as Holy Spirit.  He is my Lord.  Because I know him, I believe New Creation has begun overtaking a dying world.  Because of what I believe, I invite you to consider the resurrection –death is no more.  Considering the resurrection, I invite you to give your life to Jesus.  Commit to follow him.  There will still be much you don’t understand, but when you give yourself to Jesus, you will know life, abundant, joy-filled, everlasting life.

AMEN