Sermon, Easter Day/Sunday of the Resurrection, Year A, Matthew 28:1-10, 16 April 2017

SERMON                                                                                  16 April 2017

Matthew 28:1-10                                    Sunday of the Resurrection, Year A

“He has been raised; he is not here.” In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. AMEN.

         Jesus Christ is not a tulip bulb. If you came here this morning expecting to hear a safe message about spring and rebirth and bunnies you may wish to leave now. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is much more than that sequence of events we call rebirth or springtime. It’s easy for us to get distracted by spring. All around us new life is springing up. The squirrels in my backyard are busy at what squirrels and all animals including human beings do in spring.

Those squirrels in my backyard are busy trying to recreate themselves. And in the midst of all this rebirth of the natural world, as the lawn greens up, and the squirrels chase one another up the tree, and the tulips spring up from the dead leaves around them, it’s safe to think about Jesus as just another sign of spring. Jesus as just another moment in the natural history of the world: A sort of human yet divine tulip bulb.

         Ah, but the resurrection is an event, better still, an ongoing happening, that cuts clean across the natural history of our world. The resurrection is unexplainable by science, unattainable by the natural world, and moves us far beyond that sequence of events we name natural history.

         The resurrection is a continuing event that began one morning more than two thousand years ago and continues into the future. Instead of a tulip bulb, safe and brown and expectantly springing up green, we hear, “He has been raised; he is not here.” There is nothing safe about “He has been raised; he is not here.” These words instead bring drama and passion and a complete reversal of everything we know. This is an event that cuts clean across natural history, as we know it, and brings something totally new into the world.

         The stone was rolled back from the grave and the tomb was empty. “Jesus is loose in the world.”[1] We can no longer keep Jesus safe in his bulb as a dead thing in a tomb or a dim memory of a nice guy who was kind to children and fed several thousand people and healed the sick. Instead, we’re confronted with a dead man no longer dead. And an empty tomb missing its occupant: an occupant who has gone before us into a new life, a life of resurrection, a life of promise.

         Even the women who went to the tomb that morning long ago expected the natural history of the world to go on. They went to visit the dead: to anoint a body in a tomb. We do not visit tombs expecting to see the dead arise. We visit tombs to grieve, to acknowledge that life has ended and the natural history of the world continues in its course, the way it always has.

         Instead, the event of the resurrection completely changes the natural history of the world. The resurrection sloughs away all the reasons the women went to visit the tomb. Their visit replaces those reasons with the great emptiness of the yawningly empty tomb. The natural history of the world is thrown out and resurrected life begins.

In this surprising encounter at the tomb where we hear, “He has been raised; he is not here,” more surprises await us. More encounters with the Jesus let loose in the world follow and will continue to follow for us.

         In the emptiness of the tomb lies our inability to capture Jesus, to make him into merely a memory or a safe savior who will do what we want. The empty tomb laughs at our efforts to find a “historical Jesus” or to make Jesus something tame, something at our beck and call. In the act of having found the empty tomb, the women who went let loose forever the safe Jesus we thought we knew. Instead, our savior, let loose in the world, beckons us to follow him.

         The Jesus who left his tomb empty and went before the disciples and Peter to Galilee is a Jesus who began a story rather than ended one. This is the Jesus who will not fit into our ideas of the nice guy who loved children and fed a crowd of people once, maybe twice, and healed some people no one else would touch.

         We confine Jesus to his tomb if we acknowledge him only in these ways. The resurrection has nothing to do with the natural history of the world and the squirrels being squirrels and the tulips coming back in springtime. Jesus Christ is not a tulip bulb.

This morning we celebrate the continuing event of the resurrection. Jesus goes before us always. The future is no longer in our control because the natural history of the world was broken on that morning long ago. The tomb was found empty and the body is not there. Jesus is loose in the world and we are called to go and find him. Instead of an ending, Jesus leads us into a new beginning. Death has been trampled down and the grave is no longer. This is no dead end but a living one. Alleluia! Christ is Risen! AMEN.

The Rev Nicolette Papanek

©2017

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[1] Charles S. Cambell

Meditation, Holy Saturday, Year A, Matthew 27:57-66, 15 April 2017

MEDITATION                                                                                   15 April 2017

Matthew 27:57-66                                                             Holy Saturday, Year A

May my words be your Word and my heart rest in you as I speak, O Lord. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

         Welcome to Holy Saturday, possibly the least-attended service of the church year. I’ve often wondered why this very early church tradition has been mostly lost. Oh, sure, the service is listed in the Book of Common Prayer, but in an Internet search for Episcopal Holy Saturday services, I turned up lots of Easter Vigil services in the evening but only one during the morning of Holy Saturday. Maybe it’s because clergy have enough to do in Holy Week already and don’t want to add anything. And who could blame us, right? Holy Week, after all, is a sort of marathon of faith and a test of clergy stamina. Or perhaps, what I think might be closer to the truth is that most of us simply don’t like the idea of waiting.

         Waiting is a waste of time, something boring to be got through or endured. And Holy Saturday, once Christ is in the tomb, seems a waste of time also, especially since we know how the story ends. Let’s just skip over the whole thing and go straight to Easter. Some people do this by staying away from even Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services. Why belabor the point, right? We all know Christ suffered and died on the cross. Why dwell on it?

         Well, because, because…frankly I don’t know why except that my heart tells me waiting, especially learning to wait for God to act, is a good and right thing to do. In the midst of our impatience, God can teach us both patience and wisdom and cast out fear with love.

         In the fourth century CE there is a sermon in Greek on this very subject of waiting and what might be happening as we wait. The unknown author wrote about Holy Saturday, “Something strange is happening – there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps still because the King is asleep.”

         So shhh, do not awaken the King before he is ready for us. On this Holy Saturday, as we begin our hustling and bustling and preparing, remember the great silence and stillness. Remember to wait. Remember the King still sleeps in the tomb. Remember this day is a day of Holy hush, of silence and waiting for the Resurrected One. AMEN.

The Rev Nicolette Papanek

©2017

Sermon, Good Friday, Year A, The Passion According to John, 14 April 2017

The Passion Gospel of John is a love story. The crucifixion is a reminder for us that love never ends. That at the beginning of time God created us out of love, and God redeems us with love now and at the end of time.

In tonight’s gospel reading the evangelist, or writer of the Gospel, leaves off most of the “theologizing” and explaining of events he does in the rest of his gospel. Instead, we’re given a story that is almost painful in its simplicity. Yet this simple story becomes more than the “greatest story ever told;” it is the greatest love story ever told.

The love story we heard tonight is full of betrayal and despair and death. Yet over and over within this story there exists a kind of love that happens nowhere else: a love that never ends.

Jesus allows himself to be arrested because of the love he had for his disciples and the love he has for us. “Greater love has no one than to give up his life for his friends.” And, as he is arrested, Jesus protects his friends by identifying himself so clearly that no one can be mistaken for him. “Whom are you looking for?” he says as he steps forward. When he is told “Jesus of Nazareth,” he answers, “I am he.” And in order to be sure of his followers’ safety, Jesus adds, “I told you that I am he. So if you are looking for me, let these men go.” This is a love story moment: take me, not my friends.

Yet another love story moment is contained in Jesus’ words from the cross to his beloved disciple and his mother.

“When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, here is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.”

These stories within a story remind us, once again, of why this day, of all days, is called Good rather than Bad Friday. Despite the absence of love at the end of the gospel reading, despite the lack of Eucharist, despite the blackness and bleakness of the tomb, there is love. At the end of Jesus’ life, hope is there in these stories of love demonstrated even in extremis from the cross. And at our own death, at the death of our friends, our spouses, our lovers, our children, there is love.

In the midst of abandonment, there is love. In the midst of darkness so complete we see no glimmer of light, our stories, their stories and the gospel stories tells us the darkness will not last forever. Light and love will return.

In the midst of the story there are moments of love. Those moments give us a sense that God has not finished this story where it ends today.

I said this at noon today, and I will say this again tonight: the burial liturgy of the church, at the moment the body or the ashes of the departed are commended to God, we proclaim,

You only are immortal, the creator and maker of mankind; and we are mortal, formed of the earth, and to earth we return. For so you did ordain when you created me, saying, “You are dust and to dust you shall return.” All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song, “Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.”

So this noon and this evening we have entered the story with all its blackness and bleakness and hopelessness. We enter it knowing God is not finished. There is more to our story. There is more to this story. Even when Jesus says, “It is finished,” God has more to tell. Even at the grave of Jesus there is more to tell. It is the story of love begotten, love given, and love resurrected. AMEN.

The Rev Nicolette Papanek

©2017

Sermon, Maundy Thursday, Year A, John 13:1-17, 31b-35, 13 April 2017

Something we tend to forget on Maundy Thursday is why on earth we call it “Maundy.” We get caught up in the stunning revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ’s gift of the Eucharist, the supper of bread and wine, and forget the rest. The gift of the Eucharist is indeed wondrous and revelatory, yet it is the frame in which the act of food washing is the picture.

We forget because it is so easy to ignore loving. It is so easy to forget loving. It is much easier to remain unloving.

         Yet the word “Maundy” is taken from the word “mandatum” from which we derive the English word “mandate” or “command.”

         I often used to wonder, when I was younger, why we needed to be commanded to love. Now that I am a little older, and I hope just a little wiser, I think I know the reason, or at least part of the reason. It is because it is so easy for us to ignore love, to forget love, to remain unloving.

         We ignore love because we live in a world of never enough. We think if we can just gather enough, we will somehow get to the point where we have enough. Then we will have time to love. We forget love because we go in pursuit of love, forgetting pursued love is wily and slippery and cannot be really pursued. We remain unloving because it is easier to be unloving than to allow God to stretch us and pull us and yes, sometimes pummel us into loving when we whine, “But I don’t feel like it.”

         To love as our Lord loves is not a feeling. Love is a command. Love is a mandate. Love is a policy. Love is something we apply regardless of circumstances, of happenstances, and of choice. Do I like that? No, no, and no! I want the kind of love that is dependent on my feeling like being loving. I do not want a love that is demanding things of me I might not feel like giving. I do not want a love that demands I love when I am not in the mood for anything, not even love.

         The love our Lord Jesus Christ showed, demonstrated, simply did, on the night before he died, was love that is the same, now and always. It was a love that was willing to make itself nearly naked in the role of a servant, a slave, and wash the filthy, stinking, calloused feet of that motley awkward unsavory sometime stupid band of folks he called his apostles, his disciples, his followers, his friends, his brothers, his family, and his companions.

         In Jesus’ time, in culture of first century Palestine, no rabbi, no teacher worthy of respect would lower himself to wash feet. Foot washing was a job for a servant, or a slave. If the host owned no slaves, then he would give the guest a towel and water to wash, not wash feet himself. Foot washing was a job for a woman, or a child, or a non-Jewish slave, an alien, not a Jewish male. Even a Jewish slave could not be made to wash the feet of someone.

         You can see why this loving act of Jesus was so scandalous, so out there, so completely beyond the pale that the disciples were shocked. And Jesus told them, “Do you know what I have done for you? You call me Teacher and Lord – and you are right, for that is what I am. So if, I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you should also should do as I have done for you.”[1]

         Jesus knows Judas has left to betray him, and after Judas leaves Jesus says, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”[2] Jesus means us to love even those who betray us, those who leave us, those who are our enemies, and those we would rather not think about at all. This is how Jesus calls us to love, whether we like it or not, or feel like it or not.

         Tonight is the reminder, the reminder of love. Tonight is the reminder of how easy love is to ignore, to forget, to remain unloving. Tonight is the reminder of the love our Lord Jesus Christ holds us in always, even when we are least lovable, and even as he gave his love for us, love that became death on a cross. AMEN.  

The Rev Nicolette Papanek

©2017

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[1] John 13:12b-15 (NRSV)

[2] John 13:34-35 (NRSV)