Sermon Easter IV John 10:11-16 22 April 2018 Year B

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“I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me.”[1] Jesus says to us in John’s Gospel. Or, here’s another version of Psalm 23 as interpreted by a five year old: “The Lord is my Shepherd, that’s all I want.”

Just for a moment here, let’s think about these metaphors Jesus uses: those of shepherd and sheep. I find one of the challenges of preaching is translating biblical metaphors into something we actually encounter in our lives today. What used to be common metaphors in people’s imaginations often don’t really make sense to us today.

Take sheep and shepherds, for instance. Would you please raise your hand if you have ever herded sheep, owned a sheep, or sheared a sheep? See what I mean. Not too many of us get up close and personal with sheep.

Metaphors, though, and their next step, imagination, are helpful when we can attach something to them that we know about. If you can’t, a metaphor can be confusing and your imagination has no room to expand. If you’ve never been near a sheep, you might not understand why knowing and being known by his sheep would be something a shepherd would find important. Finding a contemporary image that works might help those of you who aren’t familiar with sheep. Perhaps it might be chickens since more people are raising chickens, even in many urban areas. Or it might be bees. Because these creatures also know their “shepherd” in a similar way that a sheep knows its shepherd.  

I once taught a class about the parables of Jesus. In one session we spent nearly an hour imagining a contemporary version of the story about the man who was tended by the Samaritan on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. The class, no thanks to me since I wasn’t a native of the area, came up with several stunning alternate versions that made people think more deeply about that particular story than they ever had before. None of us, you see, knew much about the road between Jerusalem and Jericho. What people from the area did know about was Interstate 35 that cuts down through Kansas. They did know about a devastating flood that had washed away a family in a car on Interstate 35. They knew about a tornado that had destroyed a small town near Interstate 35. So those dangerous events on that road were more familiar to them than the dangerous events on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho. By the time we were finished identifying contemporary metaphors, we felt we knew more about Jesus, even if we didn’t know about the road from Jerusalem to Jericho.

Right there is something important to think about. We need to know Jesus even if we don’t know everything there is to know about the metaphors, or the stories, or the places we hear about in Scripture. We need to gett to know Jesus and make Him known.

So whether it’s Jesus the Good Shepherd, or Jesus the Light of the World, or some other metaphor we might imagine for Jesus, he longs for us to know Him and to follow Him.

Here’s the best illustration I know of what will happen to us if we get to know Jesus. Other people will see Him in us and want to know Jesus too. In Madeleine L’Engle’s book, Story as Truth: The Rock That is Higher. She writes,

There’s a true story I love about a house party in one of the big English country houses. Often after dinner at these parties people give recitations, sing, and use whatever talent they have to entertain the company. One year a famous actor was among the guests. When it came his turn to perform, he recited the twenty-third psalm, perhaps the most beloved psalm in the Psalter. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” His rendition was magnificent, and there was much applause. At the end of the evening someone noticed a little old great aunt dozing in the corner.  She was deaf as a post and had missed most of what was going on, but she was urged to get up and recite something. So she stood up, and in her quavery old voice she started, “The Lord is my shepherd,” and went on to the end of the psalm. When she had finished there were tears in many eyes. Later one of the guests approached the famous actor. “You recited that psalm absolutely superbly. It was incomparable. So why were we so moved by that funny little old lady?” He replied, “I know the psalm. She knows the shepherd.”[2]

AMEN.

The Rev Nicolette Papanek

©2018

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[1] John 14 (NRSV)

[2] L’Engle, Madeleine. Story as Truth: The Rock that is Higher. Harold Shaw Publishers. Wheaton:1993.

SermonEaster III Luke 24:36b-48 15 April 2018 Year B

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            “You are witnesses of these things,”[1] says Jesus to the disciples in Luke’s Gospel. The way Jesus uses the word witness to the disciples is an imperative verb. For those of you who don’t remember imperatives from English class, an imperative verb is a verb that creates a sentence that gives an order or command. When reading an imperative sentence, it will always sound like the speaker is bossing someone around. Imperative verbs don’t leave room for questions or discussion, even if the sentence has a polite tone.[2] And, in today’s Gospel, Jesus is Mr. Bossy Pants, using the word “witness” as an order or command.

Witnessing, or telling the story of God in our lives, is something that is long out of fashion among most of us in the Episcopal Church. Speaking so directly abut God working in our lives is something most Episcopalians don’t do. After all, we certainly wouldn’t want to be accused of being pushy about our faith! Or worse, there’s the fear factor: suppose we told the story imperfectly; without due thought or the right words or the right inflection or the theology wasn’t quite right? What if we told our story, but the story was about God in the midst of pain or doubt instead of God in the midst of love and joy?

         Dear People of God, people outside these walls and inside these walls are hungry. Hungry, not just for food, but to hear about God. People don’t need just the right words or just the right inflection, or perfect theology. People are hungry for stories about God told by people who have experienced God in their lives. People are thirsty for stories about God in the midst of love and joy, and dry as the desert for hearing about the God who comes in the midst of pain and doubt. People hunger for a witness; the authentic witness of God working in someone’s life, so they can see it, feel it, and know it in their own lives.

         I can see from your expressions that many of you think this is something you could never do. It sounds frighteningly like the “e” word, doesn’t it? (The “e” word being Evangelism.)

Let’s try something though. I know what we’re about to do can be even harder for most Episcopalians, an interactive sermon, something that requires more than listening or possibly dozing a little. So join me in this. Think of something you love. It can be anything: a family member, a child, your work, your garden, something you play, a sports team, a beloved pet, or whatever it is. Got that? Okay, now turn to the person next to you – yes, you’ll have to get up and move if there’s no one next to you – and tell the person next to you about this thing, or person, or creature, you love. What or who is this you love? What is it about what you love that makes you love it? Let’s take, oh maybe, two minutes so each of you can tell the other person about what you love. (Long pause.)[3]

         Great. Stay where you are for a moment if you had to move. Was there some enthusiasm in your voice when you told about what you love? Was there some joy in your voice? Even if your team lost last week or last month, or the person or the animal, or whatever it was is so longer around, was there joy in what you said? I heard a lot of energy in those stories (even at 8 am when some of us are only partially awake). Now you know. You are witnesses to what you love.

         We witness all the time to things we love and care about: great movies or television programs, good books, accomplishments and failures of our lives and of others, our family, our life, our work and our play. We are constant witnesses to what we love. This means all of us are experienced witnesses. We are fully trained and capable. We know how.

         So let’s do this one more time. Take a moment and think about what God has done in your life. You may have seen, felt, heard, sensed, known God in a moment of joy or sorrow, in love or anger, in something expected or something unexpected. Now turn to the person next to you and share that story. And then listen to their story. (Long pause of about three minutes.)

         Was there some emotion in your voice? Was the story an authentic part of who you are? Did the story matter to you? Do you think the person who heard the story could tell? Now you know. You are witnesses to the God you love.

         Your witness may not have included just the right words or just the right inflection, or perfect theology. But the person to whom you spoke heard your authentic witness about God and you needed to hear their witness too. We all have a deep need to hear the witness of people who have experienced God in their lives. We need to hear the witness of God in the midst of love and joy, and the witness that God comes in the midst of pain and doubt. What we need in here and people need out there is witnessing; the authentic witness of God working in people’s lives. And we need to hear it to remember that God is working in your lives and in my life. Other people need to know, just like you know, that Jesus defeated death and rose again.

         Remember: you just told a story of something you love. You can do it again. You will do it again. Come to the table. Eat and live. Go and tell. You are witnesses to these things.[4] AMEN.    

          

The Rev Nicolette Papanek

©2018

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[1] Luke 24:48 (NRSV)

[2] Grammarly.com/blog/imperative-verbs/ Accessed 14 April 2018

[3] Props to David Lose at workingpreacher.org and Rob Voyle of clergyleadership.com for this idea.

[4] Ibid.

Sermon Sunday of the Resurrection/Easter Sunday March 16:1-8 1 April 2018 Year B

Most of us sitting here this morning know where our Gospel reading ends is not the end of the story. At some point those three women told others they had found an empty tomb. People believed their story or we wouldn’t be sitting here. Sure, I know you may have other reasons for being here. Your mother made you come. You did it to please your great aunt Agatha. You thought you should at least show up on Easter Sunday so friends won’t think you’re a total pagan. It started to rain again and you saw the lights on and wandered in. Doesn’t matter. You’re here. Welcome!

And then you hear that ending to Mark’s Gospel. Weird. Puzzling. Strange.
The ending reminds me of a friend of mine. We’d been out of touch for a really long time. She didn’t seem particularly surprised to learn I’d become an Episcopal priest, just curious. She told me she had gone to an Episcopal School where Episcopal nuns were the teachers.

In response to my question about why she didn’t follow the religion of her childhood, she said this. “I was four or five, in preschool or kindergarten, when the nuns told us the story of the crucifixion. When I heard that, I thought, ‘If that’s what happens to the good guys, I don’t want any part of it!’” And you know, I get it. If that were where the story ended, I wouldn’t want any part of it either!

Maybe the nuns read those children the story of the crucifixion and the tomb from Mark’s Gospel. Because here we are, faced with another ending that is not the end. The question is: Why did Mark end his gospel at the point we heard? “So 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.”

We’re not the only ones to wonder. Scholars have all kinds of reasons. The “real” ending was lost. And then someone decided to write an alternative ending to make the ending better, more palatable, perhaps easier to understand.

I am convinced, as are others, just so you know I’m not out on this limb by myself, that the ending Mark wrote was a literary device. It’s like a surprise ending to a mystery where the murderer is revealed as someone you never suspected.

Mark’s ending invites each of us to enter the story. He involves us in the story throughout the Gospel and his surprise ending draws us in even further. We know it is not the ending. We wonder. Is it an ending that might, possibly, be a beginning?

This means our faith can have room in it for mystery. Not a mystery to be solved, but a mystery to enter into and explore.

Perhaps on this Easter morning we could begin by remembering why we’re here as part of that mystery. Something brought you, even if it was Aunt Agatha.
And maybe, just maybe, you’ll find it out like this young woman did. She was visiting an Orthodox Church during the great fifty days of Easter. There, during Easter Season, instead of greeting one another during the peace the way we do, with, “Peace be with you,” they turn to one another and say, “Alleluia, Christ is risen!”

The young woman, not being Orthodox, was unaware of that tradition. And, when the woman next to her in the pew turned to her and said, “Alleluia, Christ is risen!” she blurted out, “I know! That’s why I’m here!”

That’s why we’re here! AMEN.

The Rev Nicolette Papanek
©2018

Sermon Good Friday John 18:1 -- 19:42 29 March 2018 Year B

         Good Friday: What a strange name for this day. This is the day on which Christ was crucified, taken down from the cross and put in the tomb. This is the day on which Christ is not available to us. This is the day on which we will not celebrate the Eucharist or receive Communion from reserved sacrament because Christ was not there for anyone on this day. He rested in the tomb: remote, unavailable, in darkness. How can this day possibly be good?

         For those of us who know the end of story, it is good. In the midst of all the horror and death, we know the best is coming. The burden of these Holy Week days is lighter, precisely because we know the end of the story. Even in the midst of pain we are granted glimpses of God. In the very deepest and darkest places, where we may not even be aware of it, the light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overcome the light.

         What I have learned about the light in the darkness, however, is that we need at times to forget we know the end of the story. We need to forget any knowledge we have of the resurrection. We need to forget and leave Christ hanging on his cross. We need to become like the women who waited to anoint Jesus’ body, assuming death into their own bodies, on a visceral level, until that is all they could think about. We need to wait with our pain and darkness. This is the only way true light comes.

         There is usefulness to simply waiting in darkness. Our eyes become accustomed to the dark and we see things we never knew existed. Like cave dwelling fish, whose eyes become accustomed to dealing with darkness, we begin to see light where we thought there was none. And precisely because we see a little light and hope, we seek to do something with our pain.

         May I suggest something to you? There is something we can do with our pain. In one of Madeleine L’Engle’s novels there is a healer, an old native woman. The old woman lays her hands on a young woman in need of healing from pain. When she is done, the old woman takes her hands and rubs them hard, hard, down the solid wood of the bedpost on which the young woman lies. The young woman asks her what she is doing and she replies, “Honey, when I treat you I take on your pain. I have to do something with it or it will pain me and eat me up. So I leave it on the hard wood.”[1]

         Good Friday is the day to leave your pain and darkness on the hard wood of the cross. Good Friday is the day to so enter into the darkness that our eyes become accustomed to the darkness. Good Friday is the day to stay in the darkness until our own glimmers of light begin at the backs of our eyes. Good Friday is the day on which we become like little children, deeply grieved and deeply grieving.

         We need to forget we know the end of the story and become like the little boy who was in church on Maundy Thursday evening one year. In this particular church there was an ambry or small cabinet where the reserved sacrament was kept. It was in plain sight of the congregation. When the altar guild stripped the church of its adornments, the last thing carried out was the Blessed Sacrament. The door of the ambry was left wide open and even in the dim light at the altar its gaping emptiness was revealed. The rest of the church was in utter darkness.

Out of the darkness arose a little four-year-old wail, “Mommy, Jesus isn’t home any more!” And he began to sob.

         This is where we need to be on this Good Friday. It can only become good to us if we are willing to sober ourselves into little children, shocked and appalled at the acts that brought Jesus to the cross. And then we rub our hands, hard, hard, down the wood of the cross, freeing ourselves of all our pain and sorrow, and waiting in the darkness until the light comes. AMEN.

The Rev Nicolette Papanek

©2018

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[1] Paraphrased from a novel by L’Engle, Madeleine. The Other Side of the Sun. New York: Random House. 1971.

Sermon Maundy Thursday John 13:1-17, 31b-35 28 March 2018 Year B

         Foot washing makes most people uncomfortable. It’s an intimate act and it’s done in public. That, of course, means it cuts across at least two of the remaining boundaries we have in our society.

         Foot washing makes me uncomfortable as well. It might make you uneasy for some of the same reasons. I have ugly feet. I have scars. I have bunions. One toe was broken and looks odd. I gaze enviously at photographs of bare footed women on beaches, not because of their bathing suits but because of their beautiful feet. I wonder how they’ve managed it. Heredity? Exercise? Better surgery? Botox for the feet? Daily foot massage?

         Now you probably know more about me than my mother did. It was uncomfortable to say, and may have been uncomfortable for you to hear. Just like foot washing itself.

         We’re in very good company, though. Peter didn’t want Jesus to wash his feet. He protested vehemently. Jesus’ reply was, “Unless I wash you, you have no share in me.” That is a sobering thought. It is especially sobering because we are the hands and feet of Jesus now, and if we do not serve one another, how can we expect Jesus to be present among us?

         Unless we accept that intimacy with Jesus, that great love he offers us, we are empty shells. We go about doing intimate things perhaps, but we are detached from those things rather than demonstrating the love Jesus commanded us to do on this same night.

         “Do you know what I have done to you? You call me teacher and Lord – and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your teacher and Lord, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you should do as I have done to you.”

         First Jesus gave us himself as an example of what serving others looks like and how intimate it is. That it is an act of love that engages the heart as well as the hands and feet.

         Then Jesus gave us the new commandment that he had just illustrated: to love one another as he loves us. And not just those of us here, but those who have betrayed us, hurt us, loved us only a little or a lot, made us unhappy, made us angry, or anything else hard to love.

At the end of this service tonight we will strip away all the things we use to beatify the church. You will not see them again until the Easter Vigil. As we strip away the things we use for worship, imagine that you are having all your fears and all your dirt stripped away. Listen. Watch. Can you hear Jesus? Can you see him? He is standing here among us, holding his basin and wearing his towel. He is waiting to wipe away our dirt, and fear, hate, and jealousy, and offer us intimacy and love. Let him in. Let him in. AMEN.

The Rev Nicolette Papanek

©2018