The Easter Encore--April 10, 2024

The Easter Encore--April 10, 2024

But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” [John 20:24-27]

I'm still thinking about the eclipse as I write today, and it's funny--as much as I will hold the memory and the mental picture of what it looked like to see the blaring light of the sun be reduced to a hint of a ring around the darkened moon, it was still only just a few minutes before it was gone.  My photos didn't turn out great, even though we were in "totality," and it was all over in just over two minutes here.  And they say we won't have another total eclipse over these Ohioan skies until 2099, when I do not anticipate being around to see it.  For now, the memory is clear, but in time, even that will fade, and the image of this awe-inspiring experience will vanish from my consciousness.  And of course, I consider myself lucky to have seen it at all--a great deal of the country wasn't in the path of the eclipse at all, or weren't able to get to a place to see it.  That's just the way of things. I cannot call the moment back, and the lived experience of this wondrous thing cannot be repeated for me, just because I wish it, or for someone else who didn't have the chance or lives in the wrong place.

I think of that today, hearing again the story of Jesus appearing to Thomas and the other fearful disciples, because Jesus emphatically does repeat his appearance for those who need him, and he does show up again for Thomas, simply because Tommy wasn't there the previous Sunday.  The presence of the risen Jesus--behind locked doors, no less!--is nothing short of miraculous, and yet Jesus offers his presence twice in one week in a repeat showing, like it is a routine visit.  You know what they say about how lightning never strikes the same place twice, and yet here we have the supernatural presence of the risen Jesus, defying explanation and all probability, simply for the sake of the ones who are despairing and confused about his death.  Jesus keeps showing up, simply because we need him.

And as much as I might wish for the ability to reproduce an awesome sight like Monday's eclipse with a snap of my finger, what I know I most deeply need is for the presence of the risen Jesus to meet me when my faith is crumbling, when my despair is winning out, and when my head and heart are off course.  And after Jesus' presence gets me pointed in the right direction again and I get lost all over again, I need his patience with me to come back and reorient me... again.  A spectacle in the sky is cool and all, but it's unrepeatable in my lifetime.  The gift of the resurrection for me is that Jesus doesn't just put on a show of rolling stones at the empty tomb on Easter morning and then vanish in a puff of pastel-colored smoke--he keeps showing up for the ones who need him, even when it means bearing with the resurgence of their doubt and the return of their fear.

It's worth noting, after all, that when Jesus comes back to show his wounds to Thomas, a week after that first Easter evening, the other disciples are back in the same room, recaptured by their fear and anxiety.  Jesus appears for all of their sake, rather than saying with a sigh and an eye roll, "I've already shown up for you once. Didn't we go over this already?" He knows that Thomas missed out, and he knows that the rest of the disciples have fallen back into the grip of fear.  So he appears to all of them, because they all need it.

To be honest, I think this is why we keep coming back Sunday by Sunday to worship.  We don't just hand out a one-time reading assignment or mail pamphlets to everyone and say, "Once you've read this, you've got all you need to know--see you in heaven!" We keep getting battered by fears, beset by troubles, and overwhelmed by despair in life, and we keep needing Jesus to show up again for us and start over with us.  We need more than just the once-in-a-lifetime awe of an astronomical show in the sky; we need someone who can keep coming to be with us and putting us back together when our world is falling apart. We keep coming back to worship week by week because we keep finding Jesus here--or rather, he keeps finding us here, inside the closed doors of the sanctuary--and he speaks the peace we've been longing for.

So while I am a little sad to think that some future version of me will have forgotten the image of The Total Eclipse of 2024, I am more grateful that every future version of me will have the confidence of knowing Jesus can keep showing up when and where I need him, repeating the resurrection wonder and giving an encore of Easter not just on a Sunday each spring, but every time I need him.  And he keeps showing up for you, too.

May our eyes be ready to see him among us.

Lord Jesus, keep being patient with us and being present with us when we need you.  We need you still.

Un-eclipse-able Goodness--April 9, 2024

Un-eclipse-able Goodness--April 9, 2024

"Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is not variation or shadow due to change." [James 1:17]

We were joking, as we watched the total eclipse just a few hours ago as I write, that there isn't a section in the hymnal of "Eclipse Hymns" (and thus, that's why, instead, I put songs like, "Moondance," "Here Comes the Sun," and "It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" on the playlist for the church watch party). But there is at least one well-known hymn of the faith that is eclipse-based--and it is actually inspired by this verse from the letter we call "James."  I bet you know it.

The opening verse goes, "Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father; there is no shadow of turning with thee; thou changest not, thy compassions they fail not.  As thou hast been, thou forever wilt be."

And as you can see, it's basically just a paraphrase of these words from James 1:17.  And the verse from James is talking eclipses.  Well, eclipses, shadows, phases of the moon, and a whole host of other astronomical phenomena would all be in James' mind.  Even though James' first-century culture didn't have satellites or even telescopes, they could see how the lights in the sky changed, dimmed, waxed, and waned over time.  And they knew that even the seemingly most permanent and most reliable objects in the cosmos--like the sun and the moon--could be dimmed.  The moon goes through a regular cycle of vanishing into shadow and re-emerging every month, and as so many of us witnessed just recently, even the sun's light can be hidden in shadow when an eclipse happens.  Even the most essential, most vital, most dependable things in our universe turn out to be changeable, shakable, and--as Einstein taught us--relative.

Well, except for God's goodness, James adds. God's generosity, God's sheer extravagant graciousness, turns out to be the one thing that doesn't vary or flicker.  It is the one reality in all the universe that truly doesn't diminish and cannot be overshadowed... ever.  Like the Julie Miller song says with her own Einsteinian allusions, "The only thing that doesn't change makes everything else rearrange--is the speed of light, is the speed of light: your love for me must be the speed of light."  That's how James sees things:  the love of God is the one thing you can count on, even if the sun, moon, and stars, all fall out of their orbits or lose their light.  The generous goodness of God is the one thing you can know is true, unchanging and yet changing everything else.  And the self-giving nature of God's grace cannot be blocked by the moon, hidden in the clouds, obscured by night, or diminished by our stingy hearts and crooked ways.  

I think that's what I'm taking with me from my experience standing in the open field of the church yard this afternoon, looking up at the sky while U2's "Staring at the Sun" played in the background.  Here in real time I was watching the closest thing I've ever known to permanence--the sun that has shone for every day of my life and that will keep on burning for billions of years--being covered in darkness by a much smaller ball of rock we call the moon.  And to me it was one more reminder that everything else in my life, indeed in this world, is ultimately impermanent.  Jobs change, friendships get frayed with time and distance, loved ones grow old and grow apart, and our piles of currency lose their value to inflation.  Everything else, even the sun itself, isn't quite as fixed or set in stone as we think.  And as the earthquakes of the last several weeks in the news remind us, too, even the very stones in the ground are not as fixed as we imagine.

James, however, insists that beyond all of those things is the love of God, which can be counted on, and really doesn't depend on the alignment of the planets or the phase of the moon.  God's generosity is what we can stake our lives on.

And to be honest, that's really all that faith is--it is a matter of deciding what is (and is not) worth staking your life on.  I can have faith in my investments or my 401(k), only to have it all crash in value with the next market "correction." I can have faith in my job, only to have the company "downsize" or "right-size" my position away. Or James tells us that we can root our faith in God... and not be disappointed.  

If you also have found that staring up at the eclipse was a humbling experience that reminded you of your place in a vast, swirling, dynamic universe, then maybe today is a moment to re-examine what--and who--we put our trust in, and what things are not worth staking our lives on.  James would tell us that the One who doesn't change is also the One who changes everything for us... forever.

Lord God, reorient our lives and our faith toward your unchanging goodness.

Even After the Worst--April 8, 2024

Even after the Worst--April 8, 2024

"...Jesus came and stood among them and said, 'Peace be with you.' After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord...." [John 20:19b-20]

On television and in the movies, it is usually a dangerous thing to ask the question, "What's the worst that could happen?" The big and small screen both appreciate dramatic irony enough that you can generally expect the character who poses that question is about to have some sort of tragedy befall them. "What's the worst that could happen?" someone asks... and then the roof falls down on them... or the plumbing bursts in their face... or the toddler they were supposed to be watching sneaks off, or the bad guys come busting in the door in the next moment. That sort of thing. On TV, you don't get to ask, "What's the worst that could happen?" without something momentously bad happening before the next commercial break.

But in the resurrection of Jesus, and the stories that unfold after his rising, that same question takes on a whole new feel. It becomes a new question entirely when the scene playing out is a resurrected rabbi standing, alive and well again, in front of his fearful disciples huddled within a room they have locked from the inside. When the risen Jesus appears--despite their best efforts to keep anybody and everybody out, and in defiance of the fact that nobody had the courage to invite Jesus in first--all of a sudden, the question, "What's the worst that could happen?" changes. The question that used to sound like it was tempting fate, practically just begging the universe to send some cruel twist their way, now feels like a declaration of victory. After all, really, the worst they could do to Jesus... was to kill him. And he has triumphed over their worst actions and attempts. They did it--the Romans, the religious authorities, the manipulated, stirred-up crowds--they set out to get Jesus killed; and they did it. And even after they did their worst, there Jesus is, alive again, and beyond their power to do anything further to him.

And in that, Jesus has broken the power of the "bad guys" that the fearful disciples are so afraid will bust down the door at any second. Jesus' presence makes it mean something different when he says, "Peace be with you." He is able to actually create peace among us, because Jesus has done something to forever disarm the powers of the day. Jesus' resurrection means that he is victorious even after the powers of death and evil have done their work... they are out of ammo and have spent all their chips trying to get rid of Jesus. And he is still there. He has gone through death and come out the other side. And that means that for Jesus and his followers, we no longer have to be ruled by fear. We no longer have to let fear call our shots, make us cower, make us resort to seeing everyone around us as a threat, or make us play the world's games by the world's rules. We no longer have to have our actions dictated by our fears. The world will not cease being a scary place, and the world will not stop having threatening things in it. Jesus doesn't make the empty promise that he will take away all the scary or dangerous stuff--he just points out that even after all the scary and dangerous things in the world have done their worst, they cannot--and cannot EVER--overpower his resurrection life, which gives us the power to choose whether we remain dominated by fear, or whether we let Jesus be Lord and usurp fear's place on the throne of our hearts.

So often our culture throws around the word "peace" so casually and vaguely that there is no reason to believe it means anything. We church folks are often especially guilty, because we talk loosely about "peace in our hearts" as a sort of groundless warm and cozy feeling that has nothing solid under it--no real reason for peace. But the thing is, Jesus has actually given us a reason for peace to mean something--his resurrection says to us, "Look--even if they do the worst they can do to you, I've got an ace up my sleeve: resurrection!" There's a reason that the followers of Jesus can dare to have peace, because it is our confidence that even if the villains of the Legion of Doom, or the bad guys we are sure are looking around the corner, or even the Roman Empire come face to face with us and do their worst, the worst is not enough to stifle Christ's power to raise us back up. As other voices in the New Testament are fond of saying, we are already dead and resurrected, and our lives are hidden with Christ, where the powers of the day--even the power of fear--cannot reach. That is what our kind of peace means--not a denial of the painful or difficult stuff of the world, nor a naïve ignorance of the real presence of evil in the world, nor of the people who do evil things in the world--but rather, an awareness that even when they all do their worst, the worst is not enough.

Let me invite each of us to ask the question then today: what's the worst that can happen today? Seriously, facing it head on--what's the worst that can happen, the worst that "they" (whoever "they" might be) can do to us? The biggest weapon in evil's arsenal is death--and death has already been outflanked by Jesus' resurrection. If we dare to believe that is true, then the only other question that remains on this day is simply, "How much control will we give fear in our lives... and how much will we give control to the living Jesus?"

Lord Jesus, give us your peace again today... and let it be real and solid.

On Beginning Again--April 5, 2024

On Beginning Again--April 5, 2024

"When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Judeans, Jesus came and stood among them and said, 'Peace be with you'." [John 20:19]

It had to have been hard for Jesus to see them again, you know?  

As many times as I have read this story or heard it preached (and this is the beginning of a story we hear literally every year on the weekend after Easter Sunday), I don't think I had ever really thought about it this way.  But it had to have been difficult--even painful--for Jesus to see these guys again, because of how they had left things.

When Jesus appeared on Easter Sunday morning to the women, and in particular to Mary, there outside the tomb (see John 20:11-18), that moment didn't bring the same baggage.  The women, after all, had not abandoned Jesus.  The women kept their vigil there, not just through the last night in the upper room, but even at the foot of the cross itself.  They didn't deny Jesus. They didn't swear up and down to him how they would pledge their allegiance to him, only to swear just as forcefully around the charcoal fire that they didn't know him, like Simon Peter had.  The women, at least had not hurt Jesus so deeply as the likes of Peter, James, John, Andrew, Matthew, and the rest--you know, the guys we usually name churches after.  

The eleven had all broken Jesus' heart and scattered when he most needed someone to walk with him through the fear and darkness of Thursday night in the garden.  So it had to have been difficult for him to face them again at all.  And yet--he knew that they needed hope when they were trapped by their own fear.  So he shows up for them... even within locked doors.

And the first words out of his mouth tell them that he has set aside all the old hard feelings:  "Peace be with you."  Jesus makes the first move to reconcile with the disciples who had let him down so badly, knowing that they will never be mature enough (or brave enough) to seek reconciliation with him first.  The risen Jesus does indeed still bear the scars from what he has endured--but he does not bear grudges from it.

This is another part of the resurrection story that needs to be heard.  Certainly, the news of Easter is evidence of the hope of life beyond the grip of the grave, but it is also the assurance of reconciliation beyond the deathly chasm labeled, "Too Late."  Jesus doesn't just rise from the dead and go up to heaven alone, giving the Eternal Silent Treatment to the disciples who had abandoned him.  He vulnerably seeks them out, letting them know that he does not bear them any ill will, and in fact, that he brings peace to them.  He brings them the thing they needed most but could not manufacture for themselves, trapped as they were inside the doors locked by their own fear.

And if we are going to hear this story rightly, then, it means that the risen Jesus bears no ill will or grudges toward us, either, even though our ongoing struggle with sin means that we keep grieving Jesus.  We know he calls us to love neighbors and enemies alike, and yet we struggle with stingy hearts that cannot spare compassion to people--but Jesus hasn't given up on us.  We know that Jesus has called us to a life of care for others, and in spite of that, we keep looking for ways to ignore the needs of the world around us and to baptize our apathy--but Jesus hasn't stopped talking to us.  We keep crying out for Barabbas and his brand of religious nationalism rather than for Jesus' way of self-giving love--and yet, Jesus hasn't given up on choosing us.  Jesus keeps finding us, even when we are walled up inside our own fear and trapped by the bridges we have burned, and starts over with us. He will not let our own estrangement with him from our side be the last word. And no, not even death will prevent him from finding us again and beginning again.

Now, to be sure, in our own lives, there are times when the ones who have hurt us--or whom we have hurt (and it's usually a matter of both)--are not able to reconcile with us.  Sometimes we can't bring ourselves to face the ones who have caused us harm.  And sometimes we cannot muster the courage to admit and make amends for the harms that we have caused.   It is not mine to tell anybody that the marriage that ended, or the friendship that was strained into oblivion, or the partnership that dissolved, just needs some emotional duct tape and elbow grease to be put back together.  There are indeed times when our best attempts to mend a relationship fall apart.  And sometimes the least-worst option we have in life is not to go back to a situation that would be toxic all over again right from the get-go.  But a story like this insists that what may be impossible for us is still perfectly possible for the Risen One.  And moreover, this story shows us that Jesus is not only "able" (in the hypothetical sense) to reconcile with the ones who had betrayed and abandoned him, but that he actually does it.  It is not merely a thought experiment, but reality.  He shows up, not waiting to be invited in, but taking the initiative himself, and he tells the ones who had left him for dead, "I have come for you. I am here to bring you peace."

It is never too late for Jesus, then.  And maybe that breathes life into the places in our own relationships where we had given up hope of ever reconciling or making amends.  At the very least, this moment from John's Gospel tells us that the moment we are certain we have locked the doors to keep everyone out is the moment Jesus reserves the right to appear in our midst, ready to bring the reconciliation for which we had given up hope.

What doors might Jesus appear within today?

Lord Jesus, come where you will and resurrect our dead relationships as well as these bodies and hopes.

Through Easter Eyes--April 4, 2024

Through Easter Eyes--April 4, 2024

[Peter said:] "We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead." [Acts 10:39-41]

The resurrection does something to our eyes, or rather, to our vision.

In light of the risen life of Jesus, even the most terrible and ugly things in the world are transformed into God's instruments for beauty and goodness.

Here, in these verses we heard this past Sunday (and that we took a summary view of in yesterday's devotion), there's a fantastic case in point.  The cross of Jesus, in light of the resurrection, has become a tree.

Seriously, Luke the narrator has made a really powerful (but often overlooked) move in the way he describes the instrument of Jesus' death, and it's something that he alone in the canon of the New Testament was in a position to pull off.  That's because Luke is the only one of our four gospel-writers who also penned a second volume--a sequel, of sorts--that gives us a window on the life of the early church.  So we get to hear not only the stories of Jesus' life as it led to the cross, but also the early church's reflection on the meaning of that cross.  And here's the giveaway for Luke: before the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, he'll talk about Jesus death on "a cross."  But afterward, once the Holy Spirit has been given to the community of Jesus to see and understand in a new way, Luke describes it as Jesus being hung "on a tree."  Same instrument of torture, honestly--the Romans were pretty willing to use lumber posts or live trees or whatever they could find when they were crucifying people, just like the lynch-mobs in the American South were willing to use gallows as well as live trees to hang Black bodies from for decades in our own history.  

But for Luke the narrator of Acts, he tips his hand that he wants us to see the meaning of the cross in a new way--it is no longer merely the tool of death the Empire wields, but it is now the means of life for all people through Jesus' resurrection.  As Luke recounts Peter's message here, he is using some faithful imagination: the cross is no longer lifeless lumber, but a living and life-giving tree.  The risen life of Jesus does that to us: it colors our vision to see the world differently--through Easter eyes.

You'll see it a number of times throughout the book of Acts: the cross is described as "a tree," and it's always connected immediately with Jesus' resurrection and his mission to save, heal, and accomplish "the time of universal restoration" (Acts 3:21).  What the Empire wanted to use to mock, humiliate, and torture Jesus with in a show of Rome's domination and unquestionable power, God had now used to pull the rug out from under the Powers of the Day and brought about a new kind of reign.  In light of resurrection, the tools of evil become the instruments of good.  The means of dealing out death becomes a source of life.  And within this reframing, you get a glimpse of what Luke wants us to understand about how God's reign works.  God doesn't trample puny humans into the dirt and intimidate or dominate us into submission, and God doesn't fight the world's empires on the world's terms, with armies and weapons and military might.  God takes the most horrible thing we humans could do (killing Jesus) in the most cruel way we could find to do it (crucifying him) and turns it into a means of bringing life.  Like so many of the Eastern church fathers and mothers of the early centuries would put it, in Jesus, God used death to destroy death.  This is God's utter genius, and God's radically different way of winning the victory--it is a triumph of transformation.  God doesn't coerce but rather creates something new with the wreckage we have made.  God doesn't seek retribution, but reclamation.  God doesn't dust off Friday's cross in order to crucify the ones who put Jesus on it in the first place, but repurposes it for Sunday-best use--fashioning it into a tree that is both alive and life-giving.  

It's no wonder, then, that the followers of this risen Jesus are the ones captivated by the prophets' visions of swords beaten into plowshares and spears refashioned into pruning hooks.  It's no wonder we tell the stories of cowardly and violent Peter who was transformed by the Spirit's outpouring into the bold and peaceable apostle, or of persecuting Saul transformed and called by a new name, Paul, when the living Jesus got a hold of him.  We are a people learning to practice God's new way of seeing--through Easter eyes.

How might the resurrection of Jesus change our vision today?  Where other loud voices around us want to dehumanize the people who are different from us or treat others as "animals," we will insist on seeing them as made in the image of God.  Where others insist that there are no options but endless war (because you gotta get them before they get us!) we will look for new possibilities where peacemaking is possible.  Where fear makes us see everyone else as a threat competing for limited resources, Jesus' resurrection leads us to see all people as neighbors welcomed into God's new thing, where there is abundance and life for all.  We are people learning to see the cross as a tree, and with it, all of creation in light of God's intent to redeem, renew, and restore all things.

Now, go out and have a look at the world around you in that light...

Lord Jesus, heal our vision to see the world in light of your life-giving presence that turns a cross into a tree.

A Done Deal--April 3, 2024

A Done Deal--April 3, 2024

Then Peter began to speak to [Cornelius and his household]: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all. That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.” [Acts 10:34-43]

The news of Easter is not a sales pitch or a bargain to be struck. It's a declaration of something that is already true, complete and accomplished.  It's a done deal.

Listen to Peter on the subject if you don't believe me. In these words many of us heard this past Sunday morning from Acts, Peter doesn't sound like he's selling anything. There is no deal proposed, no tit-for-tat, sign-on-the-dotted-line move to "win" the Roman soldier Cornelius or make him a notch on a spiritual bedpost. In fact, there doesn't seem to be any talk of what "I get out of the deal" for believing in Jesus until the very last sentence.

Instead, Peter presents the news of Jesus first and foremost as a story of what God already has done--as in, already completed, already finished, already accomplished. Jesus did these things—healing, doing good, dying, rising—and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Whether you like it or not, Jesus has been sent by God for the sake of "peace," Luke the narrator tells us. Whether we can believe it or not, he is alive again. And whether we completely understand what it means or not, he is Lord, and has brought about the upside-down rule of God in which the last are made first, the poor are the blessed, and the dead are raised. Peter's first move is not to sell Cornelius a religious product or dangle the carrot of heaven or wave the stick of hellfire in front of him. In fact, that is never Peter's move in this speech. There is no looming question, "If you were to die tonight, Cornelius, where would you wake up?" And there is no pitch for Cornelius to make Jesus his personal Lord, since Peter seems to believe that whether we like it or not, Jesus is already currently "Lord of all" by virtue of his resurrection.

This is all quite different from so much of the talk out there floating in the religious airwaves about how to share the Good News. Peter tells it like it is--Peter seems to believe that the universe is a different place already because of what God has already done in Jesus, and his role is to invite Cornelius into the movement of what God has done. And in particular, what God has done is to mend the world's broken places through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Peter knows already that Cornelius is a man of some faith--that he has been a prayerful person and was clearly seeking more about God. So Peter takes that and runs with it, not trying to prove that there is a God, nor to prove that Jesus is God, nor to prove that the Scriptures are infallible, but to carry on with the story of the God Cornelius already knows something about. It's a rather different sermon than on the day of Pentecost or back when Peter was in front of the authorities earlier in Acts, which means that there is no cookie cutter formula for sharing the Good News. There is no simple 1-2-3 formula or recipe or set of directions, and there is no requirement that the Good News be packaged like a deal in which "you do your part" so that, in response, "God will do God's part." (This is because, to be honest, God isn't so cheap or needy as to try and strike a bargain as if God needed something in return--deal-making, it turns out, is something of a sign of weakness and need compared to unconditional giving.) Instead, there is this wide open invitation to be a part of the motion God has already begun, to be caught up in what God has already done.

Reading through this whole sermon and knowing that the very next thing to happen in the story is the pouring out of the Holy Spirit on those who were gathered to hear Peter, you almost have to wonder where all the familiar trappings of evangelism are—where is the invitation for Cornelius to pray and invite Jesus into his heart? Where is any talk of repentance? Where is any mention of the responsibilities of church life? Why hasn't Peter tried to close the deal with a promise about going to heaven when you die? And why isn't there a single mention of making Jesus your personal anything? Unless perhaps all those staples of popular religion in our day miss the point—if we really do believe that faith is God's gift to us, and if we really do believe that we are received into God's new community completely by God's grace toward us, then it shouldn't surprise us that God doesn't wait for someone to sign on the dotted line first to become a believer. It is God who acts first, to pull Cornelius and everyone else in the room to faith. It is God who gives the Holy Spirit—not just when we've prayed a prayer or asked for the Spirit or felt sorry for our sin—but as a pre-emptive first strike on our walled-in and insulated selves. It is God who sent Jesus and raised Jesus, it is God who set up this meeting between Cornelius and Peter, and it is also God who kindles faith in Cornelius rather than wait around for him to get it right or to ask for it first. That is precisely what it means to say that God is Lord of all, anyway.

Now in all fairness, often Lutherans like me live under the impression that since we don't "do evangelism" the way the popular religious voices on television and the radio do it, then we must not care about evangelism at all. We sometimes assume that since we don't do the altar call or talk in the language of "making Jesus your savior" that we must not really be interested in sharing the Good News of Jesus with others who have never heard the story and have never learned the news that God has loved us to the point of death and invited us into a new relationship and new community. But perhaps Peter's example tells us that there are more possibilities than the radio religion would allow. Perhaps Peter's example gives us a new—and yet really ancient—way of sharing the Good News, a way that is centered in what God does rather than in what we do. Perhaps Peter would dare us simply to retell the story of our faith, the story of what God has done for us, the same story that invites us to be part of what God is doing, and the same story that holds out the promise of what God will do.

God of all nations, give us the capacity to see your Spirit reaching out to all in this day, and give us an awareness of your generosity so that we will share your Good News as a free gift to be received—the way you have meant it to be—rather than a deal we must sign up for.

The Punchline of Divine Comedy--April 2, 2024

The Punchline of Divine Comedy--April 2, 2024

"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." [Mark 16:8]

“…And no one ever told the news that Jesus was alive again. The end.” That’s the last sentence of Mark’s Gospel. No joke.

Seriously, it is. It will turn out that there has been a method to Mark’s madness all along, but this really is the last line. And it turns out that it is, after all, a punch-line. But we have to get there.

Your own Bible may have other “endings” that come after this in your copy of the Gospel of Mark, but you probably will also have a little footnote in your Bible’s margins as well about those extra endings, noting that they appear to be later additions that other Christians wrote because they didn’t like the suddenness and ambiguity of Mark’s ending. So some well-meaning copyists decided to cobble a little bit of Matthew, a little bit of Luke, and some other odds and ends together to create what appears in your Bible as “the shorter ending of Mark” and “the longer ending of Mark.” But it seems, based on the best and oldest manuscripts available, that Mark intended to end his story here, with “…and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

This can either seem like the worst possible ending of the story of Jesus, or the most hilarious example of divine comedy you’ll find in the New Testament. On the one hand, it sounds so sad and forlorn. Don’t the women ever get to see Jesus? Don’t the disciples eventually get to meet him face to face again? Didn’t the angel say that Jesus promised to meet his disciples in Galilee? Then why don’t we get to see any of that? Why don’t we get to hear that story? And how can Mark end this Gospel on such a sad note: they said nothing to anyone? They were paralyzed with fear? Is that really how the story of Jesus ends?

Well, in a word, no. Of course not.

This is where the hopeless-sounding last verse of Mark turns out to be the punch-line of resurrection hilarity. Think about it for a moment. Just who did Mark say was at the tomb? By my count, there are three people there—Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome—and one angelic messenger. What is crystal clear is that none of those people is Mark, our narrator, the one who actually wrote down this gospel in the first place.

So… how did Mark ever find out?

There is only one inescapable conclusion: somebody eventually told! Someone—one of those three women at the tomb—eventually had their fear silenced and broken, and they went and told! Someone eventually let the big secret slip—Jesus is alive!

Well, now what could possibly have done it? Do you suppose the women just needed some time to “think it over” and decided that they didn’t need to be afraid? Do you suppose they just overcame their crippling fear by sheer willpower, without ever actually seeing the risen Jesus again? No, of course not—the only possible thing that could have changed things for these women is that they eventually met Jesus himself! The risen and living Jesus had to appear—he himself changed their hearts and their minds so that they could eventually bring the news to the disciples, who brought it to others (like, say, Mark himself), who brought it to others still, who eventually brought it to you and me. It’s the greatest punchline in the world for Mark to say, “And nobody ever told…” while Mark himself is proof that someone eventually told, and that only a risen Jesus could have brought about that kind of transformation! “…and they said nothing to anyone…” It’s hilarious! Preposterously, uproariously funny!

And, at the same time, it is also intentionally unresolved. Mark doesn’t tie a bow on the story of Jesus with a concluding, “And they all lived happily ever after,” because as far as Mark is concerned, the story isn’t over. That’s part of what the resurrection means: Jesus is still alive, still loose in the world.

For us who have grown up on sitcom plotlines that wrap up everything in 22 minutes and end with a group-hug freeze-frame while the credits roll to give us “closure,” Mark’s Gospel feels decidedly messier. But it’s intentional—the one thing Mark doesn’t want to give us is “closure,” because the story isn’t done. And if we had a sitcom-style ending we would all thing that the adventures of Jesus were done, just a story to watch on a screen or a book to read and master. But it ain’t any of that. The story of Jesus is an unending, unfolding divine comedy… because Jesus is still alive and isn’t done reclaiming and restoring creation!

Being a Christian, in the end, is being someone who is in on the joke, someone who learns to laugh with sheer and holy delight in the hilarity of resurrection, the hilarity of a kingdom where the last become first, the lowly become the leaders, and crown comes from a cross. And now we are a part of the story, too, a story that doesn’t end with a single period, but with an ellipsis…

“…And nobody ever told, because they were afraid…” Yeah, right. Sure they didn’t, Mark. Good one. April fools… Today, and all our lives long, let it be our constant prayer that God would work his divine comedy in and through us, so that the laughter of resurrection can’t be contained, and so that we, in turn, are the ones who will tell someone else this hilarious, uproarious news.

Who, do you suppose, in your life’s circles, will one day name you as the one who told them the news? Who else will be in on the joke because you were one to tell the story in their lives?

Lord Jesus, we are not afraid anymore, for we have come to know you, alive and risen. Let us be a part of your unfolding, unending reign of joy by telling the news of your resurrection’s divine comedy. Let us follow after you, Lord Jesus, all our days…