Easter Sermon

Matthew 28:1-10

April 20, 2014

 

One of the gifts of being a pastor to this community, and not just to this congregation, is that I get to have interesting conversations with people from all walks of life. I get to interact with people who are completely unchurched, people who are de-churched, and people who are active in the church. While I love talking with people from all walks of life, I am the most intrigued by those who are de-churched. Those who have chosen, for some reason or another, to quit going to church.

Recently I had a conversation with someone who is de-churched. He had gone to church with his mother when he was a child, but as soon as his mother quit insisting that he go, he quit going. I asked him why, and he answered with startling honesty: the music was dull, the rituals were lifeless, and there was no room for questions and dialogue. I must admit that I was hurt – and yet, I heard the truth in his words.

Why is our worship sometimes seen as dull, lifeless, and rigid? The church is a living, breathing organism made up of people who are anything but dull and lifeless and rigid. The church is made up of people who are called to love passionately, live fully, and wrestle deeply with the meaning of life. The church is full of people who suffer and rejoice, who weep and laugh; people who ask tough questions. If the church isn’t creating a space to love and laugh and live fully - if the church isn’t inviting people to wrestle and wonder about God and faith and reality - then people are going to look elsewhere to find life. How is it possible that the church is sometimes seen as dull, lifeless, and rigid when it is made up of human beings like us?

Recently I came across a quote by the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard that resonated with me. He wrote: “The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly.”

Think about it. We listen to sermons, we read books, we even discuss scripture in Bible studies. But we keep our distance. We “pretend we are unable to understand.” Because if we actually admitted that we understood the scripture and agreed to act accordingly our entire lives would be turned upside down!

And we aren’t ready for our lives to be turned upside down. Our lives already feel chaotic enough. We come to church to find comfort and stability and friendship. We come to church to sing praises to God with familiar words and favorite tunes. We share Christ’s peace, catching up on the hugs we’ve been missing all week. And we hear God’s Word read and proclaimed and gather at Christ’s Table. But we rarely deeply wrestle with what we hear. We rarely question what we experience. We are rarely challenged.

The truth is, most of us really don’t want to hear and understand the scriptures. Comfort and stability are much more appealing than transformation and new life.  And yet, deep down we all know we want more. We want to follow Jesus. We want to be challenged. We want new life.

Imagine actually loving your neighbor as yourself. Imagine giving the shirt off your back to a person who sues you for your coat. Imagine not worrying about your life, but rather trusting that the God who clothes the lilies of the field will clothe you and feed you. Imagine what our lives would be like if we actually lived the way scripture calls us to live. Imagine!

Imagine what would happen to homelessness if each one of us who has a spare bedroom welcomed a homeless person in and shared our lives with them. Imagine what would happen to hunger if we quit filling our landfills with uneaten food. I still can barely comprehend how it is possible that 20% of all of the waste we put in the landfill today is food waste.

Imagine what would happen to our prison populations if we made sure every child could read by 3^rd grade. Did you know that the third grade reading level is used to determine the future need of prison cells? What if we each made a commitment to spend an hour a week with a child, reading? Imagine what would happen to our physical and emotional and spiritual heath if people were paid a living wage to do meaningful work. Imagine what would happen if we were invited to use our God-given gifts every single day. Imagine a world where everyone was treated with dignity and respect.

I love the words from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s acceptance speech when he received the Nobel Peace prize in 1964: “I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.” Amen!

On this Easter Sunday as we gaze into the empty tomb in fear and amazement we hear the angel’s words: “Do not be afraid; I know you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.’”

Come and see, then Go and tell. There are two important actions here. Come and see – Christ is risen! Go and tell – He is risen indeed! Come and see – Christ is risen! The tomb is empty! This Jesus who was dead is now alive. This is not simply resuscitation. This is resurrection! Jesus was raised to new life. Jesus was bodily raised from the dead. He could be seen and touched, he could eat and drink; at the same time this new body could pass through locked doors and disappear from sight. This is resurrection! This is new life!

Yet, our enlightened and academic minds fail to fully understand. Kierkegaard was right.  We turn to theology and scholarship for explanations. Like doubting Thomas we want to see and hear and touch the truth. But the explanations are never quite convincing. They are not enough. People keep telling us we just have to believe. And we are quick to affirm, “I believe in the resurrection of the body!” And yet, belief doesn’t always translate into action.

Friends, Jesus’ resurrection is not just a promise of eternal life in the hereafter. We don’t say the words, “on the third day he rose again from the dead” and hear the promise of heaven. Jesus’ resurrection is the promise of everlasting life here, now, today. We are the living, breathing body of Christ in the world today. Through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead we have been transformed! We have been given new life. God’s kingdom is breaking in. Instead of spending the rest of our lives trying to understand this strange new reality, I invite you today to simply live it.

The angel tells us, “Do not be afraid.” Do not be afraid! Read the gospels, hear the good news, and act on what you hear. Die to your lives as they are today so that you can be raised to new life in Christ. Be born again. And again! And again, if need be! Seek God’s kingdom among the poor and the sick and the blind just as Jesus did. Make friends with strangers. Encounter Jesus in your neighbor. Love your enemies. Give of yourselves for others. Ask questions. Confront the darkness. Experience new life.

There is nothing more amazing, more beautiful, more startling, more exciting, more overwhelming, more joy filled, and more life-giving than the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

Nothing.

Thanks be to God for this indescribable gift!

The Relational God

Matthew 3:13-17

Baptism of the Lord

Yesterday afternoon the dogs and I stood on the bridge watching the water race by. The Haw River was the highest I have ever seen it. The clay colored water was full of debris – logs and plastic bottles and other trash. And as I watched the river race by I thought of our gospel lesson and the meaning of baptism. John preached a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Water has the ability to wash away all the “trash” in our lives, especially when there is a lot of water! And we all have a lot of “trash” in our lives that needs to be washed away. Perhaps we all need a flood to rush through our lives every once in a while to carry away all the debris.

Well, all of us except Jesus. Jesus knew no sin. And yet here he is in today’s gospel lesson, having traveled from Galilee to the Jordan, to be baptized. There is no “trash” in Jesus’ life. There is no debris to wash away. So what is Jesus doing at the Jordan River? Why has Jesus come to John to be baptized?

John is asking the same question. He is wondering what Jesus is doing there. Jesus doesn’t need to repent. Jesus has no sin to confess. Jesus is the Son of God! He does not need to be baptized. So we are not surprised when John tries to prevent Jesus from being baptized, saying, “I need to be baptized by you.” But Jesus answers: “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”

When I ask people why they want to be baptized, or why they want their children baptized, the most common answer is so that our sins can be washed away. While there is no doubt that this is an important part of baptism, we all know that sin lurks around every corner. While we are born again and made new through baptism, this flesh – these mortal bodies – continue to stray from God. So there must be more to baptism than this.

So today, as we celebrate the baptism of our Lord, I invite you to reflect on the meaning of your baptism. Whether you were baptized as an infant and have no memory of that day, or as a youth or adult in response to God’s invitation into a deeper relationship; whether your baptism was a moment of profound encounter with God or simply a moment when you got wet – how does your baptism impact the way you live your life today? What difference does it make that you’ve been baptized?

Jesus tells John to go ahead and baptize him in order to “fulfill all righteousness.” Righteousness, at its most basic level, simply means being in right relationship with God, or living in a way that is acceptable to God.  We are right to wonder how Jesus’ baptism will fulfill all righteousness. How does Jesus’ baptism put us in right relationship with God?

Listen again to Matthew’s words: “And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’”

Something truly extraordinary happened when Jesus was baptized. We are invited into the relationship between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. So often when we talk about the Trinity – the three Persons who make up the One God – it feels like this piece of Christianity that we just have to accept because nothing about it makes sense. If we try to talk about the three faces of the One God we are accused of heresy. If we argue that God the Father is the Creator and God the Son is the Redeemer and God the Holy Spirit is the Sustainer we are told that we can’t assign different roles to the different persons – for they all act together in creating, redeeming, and sustaining.  If we push back and point out that the word “Trinity” isn’t even mentioned in scripture, we are reminded that the Doctrine of the Trinity is central to who we are as Christians. Theologians have written entire books on the Trinity, and yet we are still left trying to understand this God who is three in one.

As I have been working on my ordination papers, I have been reminded of this odd reality that we can best see the differences between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit when they are interacting with one another. With that in mind, it is quite a gift that we get to witness the interactions among the three Persons in Jesus’ baptism!

As the Son comes up out of the water, the Spirit descends like a dove. The Son, who has chosen to take on flesh and become fully human, rises out of the waters of the Jordan. This is the river the Israelites crossed when they entered the Promised Land. As Jesus comes up out of the waters we are reminded of the way God liberated the Israelites from captivity in Egypt and gave them new life. God brought them through the waters of the Red Sea and through the waters of the Jordan to a land flowing with milk and honey.

We are often overwhelmed by this promise of new life seen through the Son, and we witness this new life as the Spirit simultaneously descends like a dove. The dove is this incredible symbol of peace and new life. Remember the dove that brought the olive branch to Noah pointing to the promise of new life for Noah and his family? After all that rain, the land was once again producing new life. And the Holy Spirit descends like a dove and rests on the Son.  This is a moment of intimacy; the peace that passes all understanding rests between the Spirit and the Son in this promise of new life.

But there’s more. A voice from heaven announces this incredible good news: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” The Father pours out his love on the Son, affirming and delighting in their relationship. Beloved. In that moment we witness the Father’s abiding love for the Son.

And in Jesus’ baptism the Trinity is very real. We can see and hear and feel the three Persons who make up the One God as they interact with one another. It is a moment that is full of mystery and beauty. But perhaps the most amazing thing about this moment is that we glimpse just how deeply relational our God is. We glimpse the obedience of the Son and the love of the Father and the peace of the Holy Spirit all wrapped together to create something that is so much bigger than any one part. When we are able to enter this moment, the peace and joy and love that overflow from our God invite us to encounter the full depth of what it means to be in right relationship with our God.

For in the moment of Jesus’ baptism we are being invited through our own baptism into the fullness of the Trinity.  Our Three-in-One God is drawing us up into this divine relationship, longing for us to be one with God and one with one another through our baptism. God is inviting us into a deep and all encompassing relationship that is lived out in the midst of God the Father’s abiding love for us revealed through the Son and by the Holy Spirit.

Maybe we have missed just how powerful the moment of baptism really is. For through our baptism we have been incorporated into the very heart of God. And here, in the very heart of God, we are able to experience what it means to be in right relationship with God for here we witness the beauty of right relationship between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

 

In just a few minutes we will be reminded through our liturgy that baptism is a sacrament – an outward and visible sign of an inward grace. Through our baptism we have been incorporated into God’s mighty acts of salvation and given new birth. All this is God’s gift, offered to us without price. Certainly our sins have been washed away, but more than that, we have been drawn into right relationship with our deeply relational God. We’ve been drawn into the very heart of God. And through this intimate relationship with God we have been drawn into relationship with one another. No wonder the two greatest commandments are “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.” Those fulfill all righteousness!

Today, as we pause to renew the covenant we made with God through our baptism, I invite you to experience the fullness of our Three-in-One God. Touch the water and remember that the Son has experienced the fullness of humanity, in all its joy and sorrow. Allow the Spirit to rest on you and fill you with peace and new life. Listen to the voice of the Father, affirming that you are a deeply beloved child of God. Welcome the embrace of our profoundly relational God and be reminded that you are never alone. God loves you.