BTW I'm bleeding a little here.....

We all have them.  Wounds.  Stuff that has broken through our outer shell, whether it be flesh or emotion or physical safety and left a mark.  A scar even.

The easy wounds we can point to and tell the story "that's from when I fell on the gravel in the parking lot in second grade".  The more difficult ones still cause  us pain....the co-worker who lied about our work to the boss and got us into all kinds of trouble.  The spouse who cheated.  The friend who betrayed us.

Then there are the wounds that simply are.  The disease that is destroying our body.  The abuse that still haunts us in the night.  The thief who attacked us and the fear that rises up in dark streets every time.

We all have wounds.

So does Jesus.  Not the Jesus who is hanging on the cross, but the Jesus who is risen and ascended to glory with God.  That Jesus.  We have at least two stories from the gospels who tell us this:  John 20 when Jesus appears to Thomas and Luke 24 when Jesus appears to the whole group of disciples.

"Look" he says.  'Here are the wounds"  Jesus' time among us left scars on his body, and he carried them into glory.  Because Jesus became incarnate, that is, took on human flesh, he also took into himself  the human potential for wounds.   It was this human, wounded Jesus whom God raised into glory.

So the wounds we carry do not keep us from new life, do not separate us from God's  presence.  In fact, the wounded  one now resides in the  heart of God.  God embraces the broken  ones.

Does this bring you  any comfort?

Count your blessings..............

Promise or Demand?  Law or Gospel?

We all have experience with the Lutheran concept of Law/Gospel even if we have never called it that.  Even if we can't put it into words, we know in our gut when someone is setting up requirements even when they are trying to make it sound like a gift.

 Gifts are grace; they are good news; in theological terms they are gospel.  Jesus comes to us as a gift of love and through Jesus we know forgiveness and new life and all those are given to us as gifts. We see Jesus interact with others.  We hear Jesus speak a promise of love to us.  All good news.  All gospel.

The idea that "Jesus' forgiveness comes to those who truly turn away from their sin and live lives for God" doesn't feel quite the same does it? Leaving aside the fact that I believe this is an inaccurate statement about the love of God through Jesus, it causes a person to re-examine themselves, wonder whether they have been repentent enough, and be convicted of the fact that they do not live their lives perfectly for God. It demands something from us and highlights our shortcomings.  That, my friends, is law.

In theological terms, law drives you to repentence.  It causes you to seek God's mercy, knowing you are in need of God's mercy and wanting to start anew.  Law isn't a bad thing; it is quite useful and keeps us reassessing our lives.  But it isn't Gospel.

So all that is a prelude to this:  Count Your Blessings. Not an unusual theme for church gatherings, even worship.  But is it Law or Gospel?  Promise or demand?  Thanksgiving for all that has been received in your life or scolding for your lack of appreciation?

Counting my blessings helps me re-align with the gracious abundance of God, to acknowledge it and hopefully to live more graciously and generously myself.  It is a spiritual aid and discipline as well.  But even in its most gentle form, it is calling us to return to the face of this generous loving God - because we have strayed into foreign territory.

The blessings are grace - gifts that come to us because that is who God is and how God operates in this world.  Blessings are life and wholeness, promise and thanksgiving.

Counting them is something quite different.  It is a good discipline but in the end, no matter how pretty the crossstitch pillow is, this is intended to remind you of your lack of proper thanksgiving.

Let's end with this

"Remind me O Lord of all the places in my life where your generosity has been made manifest and your gracious love has sustained me and allowed me to be generous to others.  For the abundance of your gifts to me, and all the opportunities you give me to share those gifts with others I give you thanks."

Like a large, warm blanket........

No one in the Old Testament would have described their relationship with God as 'a large warm blanket' but recently I heard a young woman talk about a time when in her alienation she experienced God as a large, warm blanket.  She felt loved and protected for that moment.  In her understanding, God had invited her to stop and rest and recoup.  God didn't change the circumstances which caused her aloneness, but rather gave her a space to gain strength through the knowledge of God's presence.

How would you describe your experience of God?  Can you summon up a picture that begins to capture this relationship you have with the Divine?

It is worth the time to think about this.  This is God talk that is easy for others to understand and your image might lead someone to an experience of God.  Everyone gets what it means to be wrapped in a warm blanket, right?

Eternal One,

     Silence

        from whom my words come;

    Questioner

        from whom my questions arise;

     Lover

        of whom all my loves are hints;

     Disturber

        in whom alone I find my rest;

     Mystery

        in whose depths I find healing

            and myself;

enfold me now in your presence;

     restore to me your peace;
       renew me through your power;

            and ground me in your grace.

Ground Me in Your Grace  

            by Ted Loder   Guerrillas of Grace: Prayers for the Battle

Presence and blessing.........

That is God in my life.  Presence and blessing.

Presence:  there.
Available even in the mystery of the holy.  Holy, even in the midst of the mundane.
Ordinary as the face of a stranger; innocent as the face of a newborn.
Powerful yet not coercive.  Reassuring but not complicit.
Forgiving even in the face of my defiance.

Presence:  in, with and under
     the bread and the wine,
     the beauty of almost everything,
     the words of grace from another.

Presence: standing near and not accusing when I am very busy accusing myself.

Blessing: There are a lot of ways to describe Christ's presence in my life but there is only one blessing....

You are my beloved child.  

Perhaps God will add a second blessing as soon as I live as if I believe the first.

Perhaps it's really about peace

Fear.

The story of Jesus' appearance to the disciples in the gospel of John is as much about fear as it is about doubt.  They have locked themselves in an upper room.

You can smell the fear.

It all fell apart so quickly.  A shared meal, a night of prayer in a garden, an arrest, a cross......and the flight of 11 fear soaked disciples (and probably a few women as well).

We are familiar with this place, this fear that overrides all our ability to think logically, to plan.  This is a fear that makes it almost impossible to close our eyes until, in exhaustion, our bodies can resist no longer.  Not that we are able to rest really.....we just take a little time away from breathing and tasting and imagining.  We know this kind of fear.

2000 years later we are still locking ourselves behind doors in fear.

2000 years later peace is still the greatest gift Jesus could possibly give us.  A calming of our racing heart.  A stillness for our wild imagination.  A pause that allows us to think.

Part of the great Easter story is the new peace which is now ours through Jesus.  A peace that passes all understanding.  A peace that trusts in a crucified Messiah standing right before our eyes.

May that Peace be with you.

Really. What's up with this Thomas fellow?

We love to call him Doubting Thomas when perhaps we should call him "Straight Shooter" Thomas, or maybe even (stealing from the current commercial) Captain Obvious Thomas.

Who knows exactly what Thomas was thinking when he got back to the secret room where all the disciples were holed up in fear?  They claimed to have seen Jesus.  I think Thomas had his doubts about their sobriety.  So he says what he .....and might I add, almost anyone else who would have been in his position....is thinking.  Show me the evidence.  Show me wounds.  Let me touch this Jesus you have seen.

It is easy to 'hear' the tone of this exchange as hostile, disbelieving.  But what if it was sorrowful?  What if Thomas speaks gently just as one would speak to a child who sees monsters under the bed and ghosts in the closet?  What if Thomas is preoccupied with figuring out what he is going to do next?

There is no need to make Thomas out to be weak or dense or confrontational.  He could have been, but he could have been so many other things as well.  There is one thing we know for certain:  Thomas was not at peace.  We know this because it was the first gift Jesus offers to him.

"Peace be with you."

It is Jesus' starting point with every disciple.  Peace; and it is a gift from God.  Jesus does not bring answers to all our questions or fulfillments of all our hopes, dreams and prayers.  Jesus brings peace.

Not everyone values this gift from Jesus.  Certainly Thomas faced the exact same dilemmas he had 5 minutes ago.  The Romans are still in power, Jesus was considered a criminal, Jesus' body had disappeared and it was a good guess that the disciples were going to be blamed.  There was a great deal of fear, uncertainty, and disappointment to work through.

But now Thomas faced all those difficulties having received the gift of peace through Christ.

How many times have you seen some parody of a beauty contest where the contestant's goal is world peace?  It's laughable.

Unless, of course, you are in the presence of the crucified and risen Jesus.....and he offers Peace to you as a gift.  In that moment, it all seems a wee bit more believable.

What are we supposed to think about the Resurrection?

What exactly is the Resurrection of Jesus about?

We begin with the fact that Jesus was dead.  Completely dead.  Everyone said he was dead.  Then he was laid in a tomb - which if you have never witnessed my Easter morning children's sermon means he was placed in a cave and a large stone was rolled over the entrance to keep the wild animals and grave robbers out.

He Qi's Women at the Tomb

Then, early in the morning, on the first day of the week.....which in Jewish counting would be Sunday.....the women took spices to the tomb to anoint the body.  They wondered aloud how they would roll the stone away from the entrance to get in.  They found the stone rolled back, and according to different accounts, an angel there to tell them that Jesus was not there.  He was risen.

I don't want to argue whether this happened or not.  I want to wonder about what we are to take away from this incredible, singular experience.  Here are some possibilities

Jesus was really God.

Jesus was now a zombie. [in deference to popular culture]

Death is just temporary.....for Jesus .....or maybe even for all of us.  The tomb wasn't really a tomb, it was a tunnel that Jesus skimmed through to another life.  Like getting on and off a bus at different stops.

There really is a heaven.  That heaven is where Jesus lives.  Possibly we could live in that heaven too after we die.

Notice that some of the possibilities only apply to Jesus.  The big question for us is whether this extraordinary thing could happen to us as well.  Let's try to think about this on a higher plane.


1. The resurrection of Jesus shows us that evil will not triumph.....in the long run.

2. The appearance of the resurrected Jesus suggests that the God we always thought was 'way far away' could be right next to our elbow right this minute.

3. The resurrection is about new life for all of creation and not just for Jesus.

4. Or we could say it is about transformation: that which was without breath was made a new creation.  Therefore we could talk about new beginnings arising out of apparent endings.

5. The world we think we understand is totally beyond our comprehension.

If the resurrection of Jesus is only good news for Jesus, then that is nice but not particularly important to me or you.  But if the resurrection of Jesus is the sign of God's intervention in this world: through the incarnation first, and then through the raising of Jesus....well, that is something different entirely.

So, don't just use the words someone else has used to describe what was going on that Easter morning.  What do you think the resurrection means?  That is probably where our faith begins.

Empty or full?

.

It is a simple enough question

Was the tomb empty......or was it full?

We instinctively answer 'empty' - and certainly if you were looking for a dead body, there was none.

Like folks down through history you could summon many possible explanations for that emptiness.

However...............possibly............like the angels proclaimed and millions have believed through the centuries...........

What awaited the women that first Easter morning was not emptiness, but the fullness of God.  

The fullness of God's power to call life out of nothing; 

the fullness of God to make be what had ceased to be; 

the fullness of God that is life in its purest form.

Just possibly that tomb was so full that it overflowed into all creation

and the history of the world.

He is not here! He has been raised!  

Alleluia!

no, it's not about bunnies....

I love bunnies.  And little chicks.  And Cadbury eggs.  And pastel colored M&Ms.

But they have nothing to do with Easter.

I am so thankful that the weather has made a turn towards Spring.  I love to see folks I haven't seen all winter.  And to eat ham dinners, too.

But they have nothing to do with Easter.

Coloring hard boiled eggs is fun.  Finding those eggs hidden around the yard (or inside the house if the weather is not cooperating).  Getting a new set of clothes is very cool.

But they have nothing to do with Easter.

Perhaps it is the emptiness of the tomb that stymies us.  Unlike the babe in the manger at Christmas, Easter gives us a great absence.....an empty tomb.  The excitement is in what isn't there.

But of course, it is what isn't there that fills the whole of creation with life.  It is the one who can't be found who brings us a future.  It is the unseen God whose power makes it all possible and which takes the breath away.

He is risen!  He is not here!  Alleluia!  

That's what Easter is about.

Our Easter hopes.........

I think this is at the center of our deepest hopes:

I am loved so deeply that it will always be life to me.

Easter announces that God's love is even deeper than that.

He is not here!  He is risen!  Alleluia!

A little glory here

"Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you." 

Jesus said to them, "What is it you want me to do for you?" 

And they said to him, "Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory."  Mark 10

There you have it.  James and John, the Sons of Zebedee, are reserving their places in glory before all the bad stuff goes down.  The request is so outrageous that in the gospel of Matthew, the author has their mother ask the question for them.

I too would like a little glory.  Not a whole parade, or presidential proclamation.  An official 'atta girl' would be nice.  Adulation from the congregation would be more than I could expect.  An official certificate that I am beloved of God, faithful enough, loving enough, counted among God's children.

But I have such a certificate.  It's that fancy document that marked the date and place of my baptism.  There was water and God's word and promises were made, and those promises were kept by my parents, and I was given into God's care.  I have the certificate, but the truth is, most days it is hard to believe that a broken, often insufferable me could be beloved of God.

Perhaps that's why I became a preacher.  So I could tell myself the good news of Jesus over and over again.  Some days even that is not enough and I must seek out another to be preacher to me.

I'm thinking that if I need to hear it that often, you might need it too.

God loves YOU.  You are God's BELOVED.  

Perhaps that will hold you for one more day....for Easter is coming.