The Open Red Doors

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name. †

Christians use the Bible as a weapon in culture wars and search its contents for ammunition to use in our fights among ourselves.  For example, there was serious discussion among serious people about whether the Bible should be translated into the vernacular.  Anglicans argued against translating the Bible into English saying that uneducated people lack the critical skills to discern biblical truth and they used the Bible to make their point.  Guess what scripture was used to argue against translating the scriptures into English?  Remember the sign that was placed above our Lord’s head on the cross?  It said, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.”  Remember that it was written in three languages, Greek (the language of the people), Hebrew (the language of the Jews), and Latin (the language of the Empire).  So the argument was made that the Bible should only be published in those three biblical languages—Greek, Hebrew and Latin.

I mention that only as a benign illustration of how the Bible can be used to make all sorts of points.  On the other hand, the fact that scriptures are so readily available in the language we use means that we have a responsibility to read it both in the larger sense of a narrative of God’s mighty works in human history (which is why I preach so often from Old Testament lessons) and in the more narrow sense of realizing that every word in the Bible was chosen for a reason.  Sometimes there are words or phrases that we might not notice because they seem insignificant or even parenthetical but which are there for a reason and are profoundly important.

Take, for example, the words of Jesus when he appeared to the apostles in the upper room.  He breathed on them and they received the Holy Spirit and he told them that if they forgave sins, the sins are forgiven and if they retain the sins of anyone, they are retained on earth and in heaven. 

A working definition of Church would be the recipients of the gift of the Holy Spirit.  We traditionally celebrate the birthday of the Church and the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost Sunday using the story as Luke tells it but John’s gospel says that Jesus gave the apostles the Holy Spirit in the upper room.  Then, immediately after breathing on them (think about the fact that Jesus, who had died, was now breathing and you start to understand the nature of the resurrection) Jesus told them they have the authority to forgive sins or retain sins.  He didn’t say they could do miracles—at least not in the way we usually think of miracles.  He said they could forgive sins.  That can be miraculous in our lives—forgiving.  The Church has too often thought of this passage of scripture as giving the Church the power to forgive sins but it isn’t about power.  Forgiveness isn’t something we do as much as something we discover.  It isn’t about my having something I can hold over you.  It is about my coming to realize that we share a common shame with Adam and Eve who hid from God when they realized they were naked.  So when someone comes to me as his or her priest to confess and receive forgiveness, I do so in the name of the Church and ask the penitent to “pray for me, a sinner.”

I had a friend once who was a recovering alcoholic.  He was in his eighties and those of us who knew him cherished him as a spiritual friend and mentor.  His wife was killed crossing a street.  She was hit by a drunk driver.  My friend went to the jail where the man who had killed his wife was incarcerated, not to confront him or condemn him, but to offer to be his sponsor in AA.   

Forgiveness is our job as Christians.  If we were to hire someone to be a Christian his or her job description would be one word, “Forgive,” and the only qualification for the job would be, “Forgiven.”  We are a community who forgives as we have been forgiven.

So why is it so hard?  Why do we beat each other up so when we feel we have been wronged?  Why do we hold grudges and pass resolutions and quote scripture and write canons and make demands? 

I think one clue to that lies in the lesson from Acts:  Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.

We don’t do that.  We give a portion—some give incredibly generous portions—but we don’t give us private ownership of possession.  We have a word for political systems that don’t allow private ownership, communism—Godless communists.  But let’s not to miss the point.  Church is important.  Religion is important.  The reason Christianity is losing popularity in this country and in Europe and why it is growing with intensity in developing nations is because it is important.  The reason forgiveness is so difficult within the congregation of believers is because some of us take this very seriously.  So when we disappoint one another, when we wrong each other and let each other down, when we need to forgive each other, it is hard and it’s even harder when our investment, whether spiritual, emotional or financial, is significant and sacrificial.    

We get that.  The Prayer Book assumes that.  The presiding priest asks the congregation’s forgiveness every time he or she approaches the Altar.  That’s what’s happening when I say, “The peace of the Lord be with you.”  I can’t proceed with the prayers at the Altar unless the congregation responds, “And also with you.”  That means we are forgiven.  We are at peace.  You exchange the peace of God with each other.  Then, when we’ve made our peace, we can offer our gifts of bread and wine and we can receive the gift of God, the body of Christ and the cup of salvation.

Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

As forgiven and forgiving people, let us hear the word of God and live fully and never lose the joy of our salvation.

Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord!” †

Did you notice a couple of weeks ago the Best of Bristol list was published?  Did you notice the big winners included the best churches?  Did you notice Emmanuel didn’t make the list?  I admit that I looked and that I was just a little disappointed.  The Best of Bristol list was presented in categories: Food, Automotive, Shopping, Financial, etc.  Know which category the best churches were in?  Entertainment.

I preached five sermons last week.  The reviews were mixed.  One thing is certain.  The shortest one was the most popular! 

We did the hard work of Lent and Holy Week.  We looked at the cross and challenged ourselves again to find the words to express why Christians love and venerate it.  Now our task shifts to the resurrection and it may be even harder.  How do we find the words to describe what happened that first Easter Sunday?

Well, we don’t.  None of the evangelists do.  Mark, Matthew, Luke-Acts and John all tell their stories but neither of them tells what happened that Saturday night when Jesus rose from the dead.  Their stories are of discovering the tomb is empty and encountering the risen Christ.

I spoke last Wednesday in the chapel of how John used character development.  He introduces us to Jesus and the people with whom Jesus interacted.  The gospel is character driven more than plot driven.  John introduces us to Nicodemus, a member of the religious establishment who struggled with things spiritual.  “You must be born from on high—born again—if you want to enter the kingdom.”  John introduces us to a woman who came to the village well in the heat of the day to draw water.  He asked for a drink from her ladle.  She was a Samaritan, a woman, and was apparently living with man who was not her husband.  Her witness resulted in the entire village coming to Jesus.  There was a man who for thirty eight years had waited by the pool by the Sheep Gate hoping to be cured and depending on handouts from passers-by.  Jesus healed him but was condemned for doing so on the Sabbath.  John introduced us to a woman caught in adultery who was brought to Jesus as an object lesson.  He talked to her.  Then there was a man who was born blind and when Jesus was asked whose sin had caused the man’s blindness, Jesus again refused to see the man as an object for discussion but cured him.  The Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead showing that even the dead are beloved in the Kingdom of God.  Lazarus’ sister, Mary, washes his feet with expensive ointment and dries them with her hair and, later in the Upper Room, Jesus washes the feet of his disciples.  All the while Jesus talks with these characters of water and light and bread, of abundance and things spiritual, of the Comforter who would come to us when Jesus returned to the One he calls Father.

Now we come to the resurrection.  The people who come to the open tomb, as you would expect from John, are described true to their characters.  Mary Magdalene was the first one there.  She had come to tend to the body but fond someone had, she thought, taken it.  The runs to tell Peter and the disciple Jesus loved.  Peter rushed into the tomb.  The beloved disciple did not enter the tomb.  He looked in and believed.  Then they left and went to their homes leaving Mary alone to be the first to see Jesus after the resurrection.  She thought he was the gardener.  Mary tried desperately to figure out a rational explanation for why Jesus’ body was gone.  It wasn’t until she heard his voice, not until he said her name that Mary believed.  He is risen.

The point of the gospel is to introduce us to these characters and to ask us what we will do with this Jesus. 

The point is that we are witnesses to the resurrection.  Not protagonists, advocates, champions, or apologists, certainly not propagandists.  Witnesses.  Like Mary Magdalene, Peter and the Beloved Disciple, we come to the open tomb.  Some of us believe, like the disciple Jesus loved, quickly and naturally.  Some of us are aptly impressed, like Peter, but remain unchanged.  And there are those who like Mary Magdalene are task driven until finally we hear him say our name.  However we come to the faith, we are witnesses.

One of my favorite authors is the late Reynolds Price.  He wrote prolifically.  As much as I admire his writing, I am a fan more because of his own story.  I find him as interesting as the characters he created in his books.  He didn’t go to church even though he was raised in the South when going to church was the norm.  He saw the resist as the culture changed its attitude toward racial segregation so he opted out.  That’s what young people do.  But he never lost his faith.  He convinced me that it is possible to be a Christian without the Church if you define the church organizationally.  When Reynolds Price was stricken with a horrible, life threatening disease, he was cured.  He had a vision in which Jesus told him he was forgiven and Price said, “Yes, but am I going to be healed?”  Jesus answered, “yes, that, too.”  When asked what Jesus looked like, Price answered, “Just like his pictures!”

We are called to be witnesses to the resurrection.

Good Christian people disagree about all sorts of things.  This congregation includes people with all sorts of ideas and convictions and opinions.  Our search for common ground is futile.  It’s a waste of time.  Remember when the husband and parents of a patient disagreed about discontinuing treatment and it became a national story?  At the time I was the President of our state hospice and palliative care organization so I was asked to comment on the case for a church publication.  I don’t remember what I said but I remember the conversation I had with my mother.  She totally disagreed with my position.  My own mother who gave me not only have my DNA but inspired my values and my faith, disagreed with me about what was right in that particular situation.  This illustrates two things.  First, good, Christian people can disagree about what is right or best in a particular situation and, second, my mother can on occasion be wrong.

We are not going to find common ground on which to stand because the ground beneath our feet is stained with the blood of the innocent.  We are not going to agree because we are sinners. 

We are called to be witnesses.  We are called into a new baptismal covenant community defined by the love of God.  We are called to be the body of Christ, broken and given to a spiritually hungry world.  If we respond to whatever divides us with the light of Christ whatever divides us can stay harmlessly hidden in the dark shadows, out of sight and out of the way.

…he said, “It is finished.”  Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. †

As Episcopalians we are people of the incarnation.  On Christmas Eve we celebrate God-with-us with processions and candles and joyous music and evergreens.  And we should because incarnation is at the heart of Anglican theology. 

As Christians we are people of the Resurrection.  We celebrate God’s victory over death with processions and candles and joyous music and a feast on Easter Sunday—and every Sunday.  And we should because every Sunday is Easter.

But as disciples we are people of the cross.  We don’t exactly celebrate Good Friday.  Honestly, we don’t even get why we call it good.  The procession is somber.  The candles have been extinguished and removed.  If there is music on Good Friday it is somber.

It is a great mystery, the cross.  We hate suffering and death and we do not understand why the one we are called to love more than anyone else—more than our mothers and fathers, more than our sons and daughters, more than our wives and husbands—why Jesus, whose birth we so joyously celebrated, had to suffer and die such a horrible death.

There is a collect in the Book of Common Prayer that petitions God to grant that all stewards of God’s mysteries may impart to God’s faithful people, by word and example, the knowledge of God’s grace.  After the sermon tonight we will pray that God would “look favorably on God’s whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery.”

We are the stewards of the mystery of the cross.

The night before I graduated from seminary, a group of us gathered for farewell party.  We all knew what parishes we were going to be assigned after graduation.  At that party, one of my classmates challenged the rest of us to deal with a certain passage from Paul in our first sermons after graduation.  “When I came to you it was not with lofty words and wisdom but preaching Christ and him crucified.”

I knew immediately that was what I had to do but it was the last thing I wanted to do.  I had just spent three years studying theology after graduating from college—all so that I could learn lofty words.  As for wisdom, I was still young enough to believe I had the answers.  But the cross—Jesus crucified—there are not enough lofty words in the dictionary or enough collective wisdom in all the universities in the world to explain away that mystery.  Why did the creative Word of God that spoke into being all that is and called it good—that Word that became flesh and dwelt among us—have to die such a hideous, torturous death?

I was present at the death of a man in her early thirties, about the same age as Jesus when Jesus died.  This young died in a darkened hospital room on Good Friday.  He had been in the prime of his life—the picture of health.  Then because of something I cannot understand or begin to explain, he suffered a rapidly debilitating disease and died on that Good Friday.  Outside, the east Texas noonday sun was shining brightly on spring flowers but someone had closed the blinds in his hospital room.  He, like Jesus, died in the darkness even though it was the middle of the day.

I stood in a corner of the room trying to be present without being in the way.  This tall, dark haired, bearded young man looked very much like our familiar Caucasian images of Jesus.  When he died, his mother, whose name was Virginia, whose namesake was the Virgin mother of God, looked up at his father and, through her grief, said to him, “I did not raise him for this.”

“I did not raise him for this.”

Immediately I was struck by her words and the incredible set of coincidences.  Virginia, like the Blessed Virgin Mary—the blessed Virgin—watched as her son died in the darken noonday of Good Friday.  I wondered if St. Mary had looked up to the One her son called Father and, through her grief, declared to heaven, “I did not raise him for this!”

But she did.

God was as silent that day as the poor father was in that Texas hospital room. 

The incarnation is beautiful theology—that’s why we love Christmas so much—and the Resurrection is our defining theology—without the resurrection there simply is nothing to proclaim—but the cross is the only theology that can save us.

Jesus had to die because of our sin.  The second Person of the Trinity, present at creation, the Word that separated light from dark and called it good; separated dry land from ocean and called it good; spoke into being the trees and flowers and vegetables and called them good; spoke into being the birds and fish and mammals and called them good; and, finally, from the dust of the earth, formed us in God’s own image and called us good—this creative Good Word came to us—Emanuel—God with us.

The thing is we are sinners.  God sees the good in us but we keep fighting.  One of the sons of Adam and Eve killed his brother and humanity has been a bloody mess ever since.  So the cross had to be.  Whenever we encounter something good, we try to control it, contain it, and master it.  If we write something good, we copyright it.  It we invent something good, we patent it.  When we heard the Good News—Jesus’ description of life in the Kingdom of God—we moved immediately to institutionalize it, to codify it, to canonize it, to nail it down.  We crucified it.

The cross had to be because of our sin.  So what is good about Good Friday? 

It is good that we are free to a life of the cross—discipleship—because of the incarnation and the resurrection.  We are all Christmas and Easter Christians.  We are called to take up our cross and follow Jesus but, unlike him, the life we are called to lose is a life not worth living.  It is a life of poverty no matter what our net worth may be.  It is a life of slavery no matter how many people serve us.  It is a life of captivity no matter how free we are to travel far from home.

What is good about Good Friday?

When Jesus said, “It is finished,” and bowed his head and died, that is exactly what he meant.  It is finished.  All that we need for salvation is done.  We are free to be people of the incarnation.  We are free to be people of the resurrection.  We are free because he has taken on our sinfulness and died and lived to tell it.

Did you ever wonder why only a priest or deacon reads the Gospel lesson in Eucharist?  It is because it is more than a reading.  It is a proclamation.  The sermon is a continuation of that proclamation, always following the Gospel lesson and usually followed by a creed.  All three—the lesson, the sermon and the creed—are part of the proclamation.

Today it is tempting—with good reason—to forego the sermon.  Let the proclaimed Gospel of the cross stand alone.  I will be brief this morning but I do have something to say.  We need to look at the cross.  We need to take a good, long look at it.  Every Sunday we follow the cross into the church and the cross is always before us on the retable.  But today we face the cross with special intentionality.

There is a story my first bishop told of some young men who lived in France years before.  It was a nice spring day and these young friends had gotten a bottle or two of wine and went outside the village to a nice spot to drink and cut up.  When the wine was gone, they decided they wanted more.  Being a little inebriated they came up with a plan.  They would draw straws and the looser had to go into the village and get more wine.  But that wasn’t enough.  They decided he would also have to go to the little parish church, find the priest, make his confession, do his penance and then return with the wine.  They laughed when the youngest of the boys drew the short straw (as it was probably intended).

Being a good sport, he went to the village church, found the priest, and made his confession.  The priest was wise and spiritually savvy.  And he remembered what it was like to be young and silly, innocent still but flirting with debauchery.  So he told the boy his sins were forgiven and his penance was to go into the church, to look up at the cross which bore the body of Christ.  He told the penitent to look at the face of Jesus suffering on the cross and say, “I know what you did for me and I don’t care.”  (Actually, when the bishop told the story, he used more emphatic language than “I don’t care.”)

Like so much in the prayer book, the pastoral office known as the Reconciliation of a Penitent has never been introduced to many Episcopalians.  It is too easily dismissed with the argument that you don’t need a priest to forgive you.  That isn’t true.  We do need a priest to forgive us.  That was at the heart of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses and the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers.  We must forgive each other, be each other’s priests.  Those of us who are ordained to the priesthood have been set aside by the Church to speak for the Congregation, for all Christians, when we pronounce absolution.  The pastoral rite is there because some of us carry terrible burdens and need an absolutely safe place to lay that burden down and hear the words of Christ when he said, “Come to me all who are burdened and I will give you rest.”  The last line in the penitential rite is the priest asking the penitent to “pray for me, a sinner.”

Back to the story, the young man, still a good sport, did what the priest had told him to do.  He went into the church, walked down the aisle of the church focused on the cross and the face of Jesus.  When he got close he said, “I know what you did for me and I don’t care.”  At least he started to say that.  He found he couldn’t.  He stumbled over the words.  He managed to say that he knew what Christ did for him but he just couldn’t bring himself to say that he didn’t care.  Because he did care. 

My bishop said that this story was told in a French cathedral and when the bishop finished telling the story he said, “That drunken young boy who looked at the cross of Jesus was me.”

Anything that trivializes the cross of Christ is sin and must be confessed lest its burden destroys us and robs us of the joy of our salvation.