Resurrection of our Lord; April 24, 2011

We had a big Easter egg hunt with the Sunday school yesterday. I’d forgotten how exciting Easter egg hunts are! If you haven’t watched a little child hunt for eggs in a while you really should be reminded of the thrill, the suspense, the emotion and the victory involved. They come out of the gate running! Because they know that there is something very good waiting for them.

And then when they find an egg, watch out. They see it, they zero in and they go for it, grab it with both hands and hold it for a second, admiring it, that egg is their very own, just for them! Victory!

And maybe you can even go back far enough to remember that feeling yourself from your childlike point of view. When I do, I remember that my family used to go camping in the desert over Easter. We’d get there Friday or Saturday. And even in the springtime there, maybe especially in the springtime, the desert was dead and dark and dry. Prickly cactus and the skeletons of sage brush turning into tumbleweed vast and deserted.

The night before Easter we would cook out as a family, huddled together in what seemed like the most vast empty space anywhere. Just us, just quiet, very reflective in the darkness. And then at bedtime we children laid down a little afraid because the noises were new, because this wasn’t our home because the wind blew hard and coyotes hollowed at night. But finally we would drift off to sleep. And then, in the morning. The world had transformed. While we were sleeping the desert had burst into bloom!

As our sleepy eyes opened all of a sudden the world held something incredible, eggs, beautiful colored ones, to this day I’ve never seen eggs as perfectly colored. And they were just for us, all the way out in our desert. We’d take off running through the desert searching. I remember the first one I found, one year. I spotted it in the sage and went running down the dusty desert path, stumbled down to my knees, picked it up and held it close, it was the most beautiful thing I’d seen...and it was mine! There was great wonder and joy in that experience for me.

Something kind of similar happened to the women in our gospel lesson today. The lesson is all about the women who go to tomb on the third day. They went on the third day because that was the first day that they could. Up to that point they had been caught up in the very specific ritual of a specific religious celebration, passover. A festival still celebrated that is just finishing now for our brothers and sisters of the Jewish faith. We mostly notice passover because grocery stores carry special things for passover celebrations and we hear little things in the news about it.

But we should notice it because, the whole Easter story begins with Passover. Passover recalls a time when the people of God were in need of unimaginable deliverance. And so they were told by God what to do. They were told to stand up with their loved ones, to eat a meal of celebration but to hurry because something new was happening. They did, they ate fast and got what they needed together and then they went to bed. They went to bed in fear and trembling because they were in a strange land and they were slaves constantly kept from the life they needed to live and they never knew what dangers and sadness life would hold.

But it was the passover of their Lord that night and while they were sleeping something magical and mysterious happened. In just the same way as Easter baskets appear prepared with good things, eggs end up hidden in lawns or presents end up under the tree at Christmas time, something new and completely unexpected was prepared for the children of Israel when they awoke. Complete freedom, complete deliverance. And so they got up and they ran. They ran swiftly into the new land that they were promised, seeking new life like it was something that might disappear if they didn’t grab onto it immediately.

These past nights as shadows fell we sat near Mary and Peter, those closest to Jesus who had lost him forever. Just like a funeral vigil for a dear loved one of our own, we were reminded to eat, to do the things we needed to do and we were reminded to sleep, we finally drifted off to sleep, with a sense of heaviness, of sadness and dread. But it was the passover with our Lord Jesus Christ from darkness into light, from bondage to freedom, from life to death. And so when Mary and the other women awoke this morning, in the same way that sparkling eggs appear gleaming all through a dry dusty garden something magical had happened, not magical but Holy.

New life had appeared in the dry dust of the tomb. And this meant complete freedom for them and all those they loved, freedom from the oppression of the occupying military force, freedom from the oppression of the pains of life and the fear of death. It meant that thing which they most treasured and had lost, had been returned, never to be lost again.

And so they ran. They ran swiftly, looking all around in excitement but sure of their goal, when all of a sudden they spotted something even more amazing. Jesus was right there in the road, standing in front of them.

And when they first saw Him, they ran up to him and dove down on the ground and held onto him knowing that he was the greatest gift they would ever receive and determined to never let go. And for a moment time froze and they just basked together in the goodness of God.

But Jesus didn’t leave them laying on the ground worshiping because the whole point of the resurrection was that they, and we serve a living, moving, walking proclaiming and personal God. And so he reached down gently. And lifted the women up to their feet. And told them that the news they now had personally, the news that they had only begun to understand at the edge of the dark tomb, that new life had appeared in the dry dust of that tomb. That this meant complete freedom for them, freedom from the oppression, freedom from pain of brokenness and the fear of death was really theirs, and that thing which they most treasured, a God who stayed with them always, had been returned, never to be lost again.

And that news was too good for them to bury their faces in the sand of the road and keep to themselves. They had to go and share it. And so they did and that is why we do, that is why we’re here. That is who Jesus is.

And everyone gets to wake up to that today, whether they know it and feel it or not. People in Japan surrounded by fear and destruction, our people in Afghanistan and the local people of Afghanistan, surrounded by darkness and uncertainty, our loved ones in nursing homes and hospitals, people mired in depression and illness, people who are lonely and afraid. Babies being born this morning, children first experiencing the mystery and wonder of this day. Everyone gets a gift this morning and it is more than candy and color, more than springtime and warmth.

It is new life, worth running up a dusty dirt road for, grabbing with both hands and holding onto forever. But the even better news about this day is that just like Jesus reached down and gently brought those women to their feet and stayed with them in the brightness of the moment until they were ready to run and spread the news, this gift of new life, grabs hold of us with both hands, like we are the greatest gift there is and holds onto us forever so that we will never be lost. This is great good news. Thanks be to God. Amen

Maundy Thursday April 21, 2011

Last year or the year before, we changed Maundy Thursday from footwashing, a literal cleansing, to a healing service, one that is about a more spiritual kind of cleansing. I want to tell you why:

When I was a child, there was an environmental crisis that was drilled into our little minds, the ozone layer had holes in it and they were growing! Depending on who and where you were at the time you probably heard this news in different ways.

But for us, little kids in school, this was terrifying and we were given all kinds of things that we could do, and encourage our parents and grandparents, in order to do to address it. So we did them!

As a society we addressed those problems. We Reduced, we Reused and we Recycled. We stopped using dangerous aerosols, we even made legislation to make sure companies did a better job manufacturing in safe ways and creating better, safer, healthier for the world, products. This work is far from done but those holes in the ozone that we were watching so closely? They began to shirk! They are actually healing.

Our very world, God’s very creation can be healed.

And it can be healed through the efforts of the people of God. Very often that is how God’s good and healing work is done. By our hands.

But there was some disturbing news from the science world this spring, just like a patient whose cancer came back, there is a new and troubling hole in the ozone and the healing work needs to be done all over again. We need healing again, our very world needs healing again.

It seems like that is the way with healing though, we heal and then something breaks again, we find new life and then we experience death. Over and over again.

And when we say life and death in the church we don’t always mean the one, once and for all thing. We talk about new life as renewal, little new lives like the beginning of a new chapter of life, the accomplishment of a goal, the start of a relationship, the conquering of an obstacle, a birth, even just that general feeling of success and happiness like everything is going alright.

And likewise when we say death we often mean the smaller things-or the big ones-but not necessarily the literal kind. The experience of loss or failure, the feeling that things just aren’t going right, a battle with an illness, the loss of a loved one, or the loss of a part of yourself, failure, pain, depression, lostness.

Death like that happens over and over again. And we need healing over and over again,it is just as natural as our other needs, food, water, safety and companionship. Though we eat, we get hungry again, though we sleep, we get tired again, though we wash we get dirty again, though sometimes we feel filled with life, we experience death again.

I think that is why those needs are highlighted in our lessons for tonight and the reason that the signs that God gives us are so human and repetitive. They are things we need over and over again. Our promises from God are all related to everyday living and human need.

So that we are reminded that just as we never cease to need food and water, protection and cleansing, we never cease to need a God who provides those things.

In the same way that sometimes I might not be very hungry, but there are other times when it seems like I am fed and fed and it is never enough, Jesus shared the passover meal in our gospel with his disciples, promising to always be present in it, to feed them whenever they were hungry.

And in the same way that sometimes I feel shiny and clean but there are other times when I scrub and scrub, my heart and soul and mind, and I still feel, slow and sticky and mired and stuck in the mud, Jesus gave water for baptism as a sign of cleansing and then washed his disciples’ feet in our gospel tonight in remembrance of the type of cleansing that can wash off even the worst feeling, the worst experience, the worst pain, once and for all.

And just as sometimes I feel like I am perfectly fine, better than fine but other times I feel like I’ll never see the light of day again because of whatever it is that is keeping me bound, God gave us so many signs of healing and deliverance that we can’t help but see ourselves in one of them:

from the Israelites being freed from slavery, and safe from all plagues in our old testament lesson
to Jesus’ healing of a man born blind,
His healing of a woman bleeding for 12 years,
His healing of a child dead too soon and of her parents’ pain,
His raising a friend buried in a tomb
His call to the little children to come
His promise to the widow of care and companionship
to His comfort to the publicans and centurions in their vocational doubts

And finally to His own resurrection and new life even after terrible death.

You know from signs in your own life, that deaths, literal and figurative, lurk around each corner, that we all sit and pray in Gethsemane with Jesus,
that darkness does fall and the alters of out lives are stripped bare

and so you know, you need, new life, over and over again. And God provides it in our own bodies and minds, in our families and homes, in the midst of our own tombs, even in the world around us.

So tonight come to the alter with whatever you carry, and receive prayers for whatever death in you is seeking new life and come to the table and be fed with the bread of life,

and then watch the darkness fall and the alter be stripped bare knowing that every time this happens in this place and in your own life, every time there is pain, fear and death, they happen in sure and certain hope that Easter, ---Easter which carries with it cleansing, healing and new life are always, just around the corner. Thanks be to God! Amen!