Health, Community, and the Body of Christ

Acts 3:1-10

            Well, if this isn’t a fine kettle of fish to preach from this morning. Peter and John, disciples of Jesus, meet a crippled man on the road asking for money. He’s asking for that stimulus check. And what do they give him? Not money but health. One of those things that money can’t buy.

            Today, I’m going to resist the urge to use this scripture as commentary on what’s happening in our country regarding lockdown protests and whatnot. While I think there may well be something to be said there, I don’t want to distract from the astounding good news here. This is, after all, a story about health. Jesus and the disciples were healers of a very particular sort, which is much needed in our Covid-19 era.

            One of the formative quotes for me regarding health is a passage from Wendell Berry’s speech-turned-essay entitled Health is Membership. He said, “I believe that the community—in the fullest sense: a place and all its creatures—is the smallest unit of health and that to speak of the health of an isolated individual is a contradiction in terms.”

            I find that quote so meaningful, because we, as church, are the body of Christ. Many members; one body. When one hurts, all hurt. Our society treats health as an individual enterprise. In fact, you could say there is little difference between going to the doctor or the mechanic; we treat our bodies like we treat our machines. A little fix here,; a little preventative maintenance there. But our bodies are much more integrated with the world than a typical machine. We are not just tools to impact the world, we are part of the world, and Covid-19 is revealing our interconnectedness in many ways both good and bad. Disease is spread within a community, whether by touch or through the air, or in the case of other diseases through an infected water supply, or poorly cooked meat. We are connected to one another and to the natural world in ways we continually undervalue.

            But God doesn’t.

The defeat of normal

Acts 1:1-14

I want to talk this morning about how God works opposed to what is normal.

            There’s one line in particular from the Acts 1 reading that caught my attention and brought me there. It says, “While they were eating together, [Jesus] ordered [the disciples] not to leave Jerusalem but to wait for what the Father had promised.”

            Lately, I have a pretty good ear for moments in scripture where Jesus tells us to stay put (for some reason, I’m not sure). In this case, Jesus adds a simple instruction: “Wait.” Wait for it.

            Somebody should have told Jesus that we’re not supposed to wait for it in Easter. That was for Lent, now we are supposed to be living in the joy of the resurrection. That’s how the church year is designed. Get with it, Jesus! Nevertheless, that routine has never been a given, because in real life, finish lines move with regularity. The church year tells you: 40 days and then you will get to say “Alleluia!” again, but life doesn’t always tell you that. Grief, for example, lasts however long it lasts; there’s no obvious finish line. In real life, we wait in uncertainty more often than not.

            Right now, we are getting an object lesson in what waiting looks like for us as a society. We wait, and we know that there will be an increasingly large contingent of folks banging on the doors to end the waiting, to reboot the world, you might say, but the normal we are trying to return simply isn’t there anymore. It’s up to us what we do next, which is so tough, because we will grow increasingly impatient to find what was normal. The problem—the big problem, really—is that we are discovering, little by little, that normal is over. What was normal is no longer.

One of the Bible stories that has popped up in my head countless times in the last few weeks is the story of the Israelites wandering through the desert, especially I’ve thought of Moses, who led them for forty years but never reached the Promised Land. That kind of waiting is so brutal, because there are no guarantees you will see the other side—not on this side of life. So, I get the anxiety and the frustration, the desire to return to something that seems normal. It wasn’t long in the wilderness before the Israelites were begging to return to Egypt and slavery. Normal is powerful.

            Easter is the opposite of normal. Resurrection is the antithesis of normal. We are not a church of normal. If this pandemic is going to show us anything about ourselves as a church and as a society, it will show us that normal is not what we thought it was.

            Normal favors those in power. Pontius Pilate was a champion of normal; Herod the Great was a champion of normal. All those chief priests and scribes running around in Jesus’ life suggesting he didn’t know what he was doing were champions of normal. You and I might benefit from what is normal too, but that benefit comes at a cost. The vulnerable stay vulnerable; the poor stay poor; the oppressed stay oppressed. Human beings are much more attuned to the Easter story when things are not normal or when we understand that normal is not OK. It’s why people listen closer at funerals. When our normal is interrupted, we notice the God who has been there all along.

            We are all undergoing trauma right now, so it’s hard to argue against that feels normal but normal isn’t what we think it is. The Bible doesn’t say, “Normal is bad,” but the trend of scripture is God doing new things through often terrible circumstances. It’s not about getting back to where you were but about a new day where things are changed for the better. Those Israelites, wandering through the desert, were thinking, “What on earth are we doing?” Those disciples, hiding in their house for fear of the authorities who just crucified their rabbi, were thinking, “What on earth have we done?” Those early Christians, sitting in jail cells for their faith, had to wonder, “Is it worth it?” Those Christians, like Bonhoeffer in Nazi Germany, who stood up to empire and ended up on the gallows or in front of firing squad, had to ask, “Did it make any difference?” Normal is powerful, because normal takes no chances, but God is God not of the normal but the extraordinary.

            The story of the Bible is the story of God showing up in the ordinary and making it extraordinary. If you tally it up, God shows up far less often in burning bushes than in poverty and mourning places and tombs. In his life, again and again, Jesus walked into a situation where a person was hurting or dying or dead, and he never returned things back to normal. Instead, he demonstrated a promise of a better future—not normal but extraordinary.

            Today, I pray not to return to normal but to be led somewhere better. And I do so realizing that when God moves society it tends to take time. 40 years for the Israelites. We take that as a given, but their entire lives were spent in transition to something better. Generations passed. Our current situation isn’t going to be over in a day, or a week, or even a month. Even when we are back in worship, seeing each other face to face, it won’t be over, and it won’t be normal. Mourn that, grieve it, but also understand that everything God has made new has gone this way. We mourn change, especially dramatic change, but it’s only when we let go of what is normal that we discover that God is moving mountains for what comes next.

            What is normal anyway?

            Throughout history, disease has been normal. War has been normal. Short lifespans relative to what we experience today have been normal. We’re not looking for normal. The resurrection should remind us of that every week. When we come back together to proclaim Christ crucified and risen, that is anything but normal.

            This Easter season, which lasts fifty days, is a chance to embrace the abnormal—to remind ourselves that we will find routines again, but it should never be normal. Resurrection promises better.

We will rise

Mark 16:1-8

            The good news of Easter from the Gospel of Mark is abrupt and open-ended, which makes it stunningly appropriate for a service like this. It is certainly the least popular story of the resurrection from any of the Gospels, because we don’t get to see Jesus at all. He doesn’t meet the women at the tomb and he doesn’t appear to the disciples on the road. It is abrupt and somewhat disorienting.

            Welcome to 2020, never has there been such a disorienting Easter. If we stop to think about this scene that is set in Mark’s Gospel, it is stunningly appropriate for today. The disciples are hiding in their house, socially distanced from society, afraid that something was going to come and get them too. Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Salome go to the tomb to pay their respects probably because the men-folk were so afraid, but what do they feel when that man in white tells them the good news of Easter morning—that Christ is risen? Fear! The Gospel of Mark says, “They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

            You know what happened in spite of their fear?

            Jesus Christ still rose from the dead.

            You know what happened in spite of disciples who never understand a thing that Jesus said?

            Jesus Christ still rose from the dead!

            You know what happened while the disciples were locked away in their homes?

            You guessed it: Jesus Christ rose from the dead!

            The good news of the resurrection does not wait for us to be in an adequate state of mind to receive it. In fact, resurrection is especially for those locked in their rooms for fear of what may be. Resurrection is for those who go looking to mourn at the tomb and discover that something startlingly new has happened, and all they can feel is fear, because new is frightening. Resurrection is terrifying, because the rules of the game have changed.

            As Christians, we are not expected to live free from fear. Instead, our fear does not define us, because it is not the ultimate reality. Even if the worst should happen, even if we lose everything and everyone we love, Jesus Christ rose from the dead for the sake of the lost and dead. It’s OK to be afraid because life offers no guarantees, but the miracle is this: Through Christ, death does offer us a promise. Still, that’s a bit scary, because we’ve never gone there before! It’s normal to be anxious, because life is worth living and we cling to the moments of sunshine that reveal a world that we feel in our hearts to be good. We cling to life because our loved ones are here, because we cherish those who come after us! We are anxious about what is coming, like the disciples—like Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Salome—because we know how valuable life is, that you can’t put a price on an hour, no matter how much the economists try.

            Easter Sunday puts our math to shame. It does not add up. So it is completely normal to be afraid. But, brothers and sisters, we can’t stay there. Fear is natural and it’s real, but there is something waiting for us that will calm our fears. Together, we will hold one another in those darkest moments. Together, we will proclaim Christ crucified, that God meets us in our despair and holds us with a promise of hope for something more. And then, together, we will proclaim that death is not the end, that disease will be defeated, because its endgame is not the endgame. Death won for a minute, but Easter morning revealed a truth that was more powerful. Death, where is your sting? Because we are a people of resurrection!

Maundy Thursday and Good Friday

Maundy Thursday

There’s a lot that can be said tonight. First, Maundy Thursday is about communion. This has been the subject of angst without end in the pastoring world these days, as we struggle to figure out how we can possibly call ourselves “ministers of word and sacrament” when we aren’t able to physically offer the sacraments. For our part here, we aren’t practicing any kind of virtual communion tonight. However, we do have a liturgy for home communion linked in the description of this video. If you are feeling the desire to have communion, you can lead it yourself as the pastor of your household. It isn’t perfect, but not perfect is kind of the reality we are working with here.

            Next, there is the matter of Jesus’ betrayal. A lot can be said about Judas, about the disciples stumbling in their faith, and Peter failing to stay awake. The disciples’ failures have been the story of the Gospel of Mark if you have been listening along these past few months. The disciples fail again and again.

            But tonight, instead of betrayal or the last supper, I want to use this opportunity to talk about the way that Jesus prayed on that fateful night. Specifically, I want to focus on Mark 11, verses 33-36, which offer a rare glimpse into what Jesus was actually feeling in his last full day on earth. It says that Jesus “began to feel despair and was anxious.” “I’m very sad,” he says. “It’s as if I’m dying.” Then he goes off to pray on his own, saying, “Abba, Father, for you all things are possible. Take this cup of suffering away from me. However—not what I want but what you want.”

            These four verses paint a picture of Jesus that strikes me as particularly poignant for us today. Jesus feels the way we feel. He felt despair and found himself anxious about what is coming. Perhaps most remarkably of all, he turns to God in prayer and asks that he be freed from this burden of dying. It’s maybe the most astonishing and wonderful verse in all of scripture, because we are so accustomed to Jesus having all his ducks in a row. One of the central tenets of the Christian faith is that Jesus is without sin, yet he feels emotions that we so often consider to be negative. Despair and anxiety are one thing, but praying to be relieved of a burden is the kind of thing we so often equate with a lack of faith, and that lack of faith we view as a byproduct of sin, but here we have Jesus praying exactly for this! It could not be clearer: To pray to God to be saved from a terrible fate does not show a lack of faith. To feel despair and anxiety is not about sin. Jesus felt these things!

            These four verses paint a picture of a world where God weeps and mourns alongside us. We spend so much time rightfully praising the Jesus who is above us that it’s easy to forget that Jesus became one of us. He became fully human and experienced it all. We know he suffered, but today’s passage reminds us that he also felt anxious and doubtful and even afraid. Jesus felt all this, but he channeled it in a very particular direction, and I think that is the lesson for us to take from this.

Palm Sunday: Not how we supposed

Mark 11:1-11
http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=453090876
            If there is one constant in the Gospels, especially the Gospel of Mark, it is that the people who think they have it all figured out are wrong—even the disciples, even the priests, and all the other smarty-pantses of the world. The Gospel story is a thriller that climaxes with a hero getting crucified. Palm Sunday marks the triumphant entry into Jerusalem of a king who never once ascends to the throne. Nothing is as it seems.

            In a time of great uncertainty, like the one we are living in today, it is right and good to hang on to what is certain. Still, we should be careful that what we are hanging on to is actually certain. On that first Palm Sunday, the people lining the streets of Jerusalem put their trust in a king but not the right kind of king—a king riding a colt, not the king heading for the cross. Palm Sunday is the day where the world got it wrong. We don’t put our trust in the king of Palm Sunday.

            “Go,” says Jesus in the familiar Palm Sunday story, “Go, and find a colt, untie it and bring it back.” That Jesus was going to use that colt to ride into town like a king was a big deal, because Jesus seemed to be stepping out of the shadows as the country prophet and into the limelight, claiming his status as king. The crowds anticipated a revolution that would overthrow the occupying Roman forces and restore the primacy of God’s chosen people in Israel. This was going to change everything! Peoples’ expectations were about to be realized. The king was coming! “Hosanna! Blessings on the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” they shouted. “Blessings on the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!”

            Palm Sunday ushers in the Return of the King, and the people had every expectation that it would be exactly like the Lord of the Rings: Return of the King with Jesus picking up a sword and laying waste to the principalities and powers who ruled over the land. After all, if he could heal like magic, then what will his vengeance look like? Terrible, I bet! The people were revolution-ready. It all seems so silly now. I mean, what good would it have done for us today if Jesus was just another David coming to reclaim Jerusalem? Sure, it would have been great at the time, but all these covenants were temporary. How many times must the temple be destroyed before the people of God realized it’s not about the temple?

            Once more, I think. We need to reminded of what is really important one more time—always once more.