Category Archives: Easter

Thinking Toward Sunday April 24: Part 3

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With the background clear, we can encounter Acts 11:1-18 directly.

The Structure of the Passage

The narrative exists as a chiastic structure with Peter’s vision at the center.

  1. The Judean (Jerusalem) circumcised believers (Jews) hear about Gentile converts and criticize Peter
  2. Arrival of the Caesarean (Gentile) messengers/decision to go with them
  3. If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?”
  4. Holy Spirit falls on the Gentiles at Cornelius house
  5. The Judean circumcised believers are silenced

Boundaries

Jesus is criticized for eating with sinners at Mark 2:13-17, Matthew 9:11, Luke 15:2. Now the church is remembering from the perspective of about 85 CE, on the moment when its original boundaries were broken and Gentiles accepted. The issue is not settled here; a later Council discussed at Acts 15 will formalize this decision (the Council took place in 50 CE, so 15-20 years after the end of Jesus’ ministry).

The text raises at least two questions for us.

  1. What is the authority for decisions about boundaries in churches?
  2. Are we living out the good news with respect to boundaries?

Authority

Christian dialogue often refers to canonical Biblical passages but the amazing testimony of this story is that the Bible may not hold the right answer. After all, in his vision, Peter correctly references the Torah regarding permissible foods; the response is that even Biblical provision falls before God’s intention.

If we can’t rely, as a Calvinist would say on “sola scripture” (scripture alone), what authority will we turn toward for decisions? The passage doesn’t answer but it does seem to have some indications. One is the validation of the evident presence of the Holy Spirit. A second is found in Peter’s address to Cornelius’ household where he references “the testimony of the prophets”. Exegesis and Spiritual presence seem to be guides. It’s left to us to discern these.

What boundaries?

We can discern in the history of our own tradition as Congregationalists successive boundary breaking moments. Membership in a Congregational Church in New England generally required an extensive profession of faith and implied property ownership. By the end of the 17th century, women and non-property owners were accepted and the Great Awakening included the founding of many new churches by members who were far more democratic that predecessors. In 1854, Antoinette Brown was ordained after a long struggle, the first woman ordained in the US. The abolitionist movement broke boundaries of race. More recently, many churches have broken boundaries about sexual identity.

Yet its easy to see socio-economic-racial boundaries in our churches. How can we become more diverse?

Once when I was a new pastor of a declining church, a long time leader in the church said to me, “I hope you can bring new people into the church but I hope they will be our sort of people.” I think the issue of boundaries is about moving from focusing on our sort of people to God’s sort of people.

Thinking Toward Sunday for April 24 – Part 1 – Context

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This is an experiment: I’m posting some notes toward the sermon on Sunday and inviting your response. Let me know if this is useful, interesting, or if it’s better to simply post the final sermon.

Fifth Sunday in Easter – Year C – Click for texts

I’m focusing on the Acts text in which the church begins to move beyond it’s beginning.

Context

One of the questions Acts seeks to answer is how the few followers of Jesus moved beyond their origins to become vital, thriving church congregations. There are a number of conversion stories in Acts.

  1. Acts 8:4-40 An Ethiopian eunuch and is baptized by Philip
  2. Acts 9:1-19 Saul sets out to persecute Christians at Damascus but is struck blind by a vision of the resurrected Lord, taken to the city where he heals and converts
  3. Acts 10:1-48 Peter with Cornelius

These can easily be found by copying and pasting the citations here.

These stories have in common that the person converted is unlikely and in two cases outside boundary. Torah clearly prohibits eunuchs from worship; Cornelius is a Gentile. Saul is an observant Jew but is marked as one of these unlikely convert by the fact that his intention is to persecute the church at Damascus.

The stories also are marked by repeated instances of divine intervention.
The Ethiopian’s conversion is initiated by an action of the Holy Spirit pushing Philip and Philip is also snatched away at the end of the story.Paul’s conversion is accompanied by an appearance of the Risen Lord, which Paul will make a foundation of his claim to apostleship. It also involves a repeated command to Ananias who is the agent of Paul’s conversion.

A second factor that unites these stories: all of three include a reluctance by the Christian to undertake the conversion. This isn’t as clear in the Philip story; there we have a trace in the Ethiopian’s question, “What is to prevent me from being baptized?” Ananias has a vision of the Lord to which he initially replies in effect here am I, send me but when the mission is explained, he says no and it requires a further word from the Lord to move Ananias along.

Peter’s conversion of Cornelius, which is the occasion for the Acts reading, will be the subject of tomorrow’s post. Share your comments below. Think off this as a weekly Bible study.

All We Like Sheep

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First Congregational Church of Albany

You can listen to the church being preached by clicking here

A Sermon for the First Congregational Church of Albany, NY

by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor • Copyright 2016 All Rights Reserved

Fourth Sunday in Easter/C • April 17, 2016

It’s a cold day in Jerusalem, like some of the ones we’ve had recently. The city’s up on a mountain; winds blow like a knife there. Jesus and his friends and some others are gathered in a portico alongside the temple. Maybe they just wanted out of the wind; maybe it’s their regular place. It’s Hanukah: the feast of the dedication. The story is that after Antiochus Epiphanies desecrated the temple, a great messianic figure rose named Judas Maccabeus. He defeated the Greeks and rededicated the temple . Only a small amount of oil was available but the oil burned for eight days. So there they are in this festival season, in the cold, with that great story certainly present in everyone’s mind and some are asking Jesus, “Are you the Messiah? Tell us now!” This is his reply: my sheep know me. His sheep: that’s you, that’s me.

The Good Shepherd

The image of a good shepherd is all over the Bible. The Hebrews started out as herdsmen, people who moved with herds of sheep from one grazing ground to another. Long before they went down into Egypt where they became slaves, they were a people shepherding sheep, following them, shearing them, living off of them. Just like us, when they imagined God, they imagined someone like themselves except better, so the patriarch Israel, when he blesses his son Joseph, describes God as, “The God before whom my ancestors Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has been my shepherd all my life to this day…” [Gen. 48:15]. David is a shepherd and his first victory comes using a shepherd’s weapons: a sling and a few stones. The image of a shepherd became the ideal image of a good ruler and of course in Psalm 23 as we read earlier, the Psalmist himself calls God a shepherd. Later, Isaiah will describe God’s care this way:

He will feed his flock like a shepherd;
 he will gather the lambs in his arms,
and carry them in his bosom,
and gently lead the mother sheep. [Isaiah 48:11]

Jeremiah and Ezekiel condemn the rulers of Israel by describing them as bad shepherds.

So when Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd”, he is brought up one of the most powerful images these people know. It’s like talking about the Pilgrims here or the Founding Fathers and Mothers or Cowboys. All cultures have these pictures, these models. For this people, for this time, it is a good shepherd. Now people who oppose him and perhaps some who are just wondering ask: “Are you the messiah?” They’re trying to understand him. He says this mysterious thing: his sheep know him. Do you? Do you know him? It’s a good question because if Jesus is the shepherd—we are the sheep.

The Sheep

I don’t know much about sheep; I grew up around dairy cows but sheep are a mystery to me. So I asked friends who had more experience, “What are sheep like?” What is Jesus implying about us?The most common comment was: stinky. One of them said, “They are big. And heavy. And smelly. And loud.” When Jacquelyn lived in Spain, she remembers being awakened early in the morning…by the smell. The sheep would arrive shortly after, with bells tinkling and dogs barking and shepherds after who made sort of barking noises at them too. Sheep do, as Jesus says, know their shepherd’s voice. In fact, they will even learn the sound of their shepherd’s truck, according to one friend who replied. And they need the shepherd. They have a tendency to wander off and they need to be sheared. Sheep that aren’t sheared become a host for various pests. So in the very act of giving up their wool, the sheep is being served as well, helped, healed. All these comments are from people who know far more about sheep than I do.

Sheep can be difficult to manage. Perhaps that’s why centuries ago, people taught dogs to do it for them. This is what one of my friends had to say about his personal encounter with a sheep.

Early in my ministry, I had the brilliant idea of introducing live sheep into our annual Christmas Eve pageant. I imagined fluffy peaceful creatures that would make the pageant “come alive.” I located a small farm in a rural part of town and inquired of the availability of the sheep. The farmer said that he and his family would be away on Christmas Eve, but I would be welcome to come by the farm and borrow a sheep or two if I would return them after the pageant was over.
So, decked out in my best suit, I arrived at the farm, climbed over the stone wall surrounded the pasture, and managed to corral one of the sheep (who did not want to be corralled).   I wrestled the critter into the back seat of my small car.  I was covered with oily dirt by then (the natural state of sheep)and was dismayed that the animal didn’t know car behavior.  In trying desperately to escape, it wailed and made a mess of the basket (think urine and feces).
There was no way THIS sheep was going to be allowed into the church for the pageant.   I had to keep it in my garage and invite any of the children who wanted to see the Christmas sheep to walk across the street to the parsonage garage, but even then I was terrified it would bolt out the door and be lost in the night.
Eventually I gave up, covered my car’s back seat with a plastic tarp and delivered the sheep back to its pasture.  
I learned my lesson.   I also learned that when the Psalmist compares people to sheep, it isn’t a compliment.

That’s us. We’re the sheep. And, at least according to Timothy, it’s not a compliment.

Are you the Messiah?”

“Are you the Messiah?” That’s the question Jesus is answering and the people asking want a quick answer so they can go back to warm homes, have a glass of wine, have servants or slaves wash their feet and have light the Hanukkah candles. Their whole program is to be perfect, follow the rules, do what they’ve done before but do it better and they figure the Messiah will be the best of them, a powerful leader who will rise to the top. They’d like to rise with him. But they’re asking Jesus and Jesus is a shepherd. He’s not looking for rich donors: he’s speaking to sheep, gathering his sheep, and his sheep are stinky. They don’t have anyone to wash their feet, they don’t have homes to go to in many cases. Most powerful people don’t even see them; they’re invisible. But Jesus sees them and they hear him, that’s why the crowds gather everywhere he goes. Jesus sees them and he looks at them like a shepherd. That means he cares for them. When his disciples urge him to send a crowd of his sheep off on their own to find food, he turns to them and says, “You give them something to eat.” The most common complaint about Jesus in his own time is that he eats with sinners. He does, just like a shepherd sits down with his sheep for lunch. They know him; he cares for them.

Jesus sees his sheep; his sheep hear him. He sees them the way a shepherd sees sheep. That is, he expects them to produce. No one herds sheep for the fun of it; you herd sheep, care for sheep, towards the day they will be sheared, the day they will produce the wool others will use to keep warm. In fact, according to one person who wrote to me, if sheep aren’t sheared, parasites burrow into their skin and they get sick. So the sheep have a purpose; the shepherd cares for them so they can achieve their purpose.

All we like sheep…

I titled this sermon, “All we like sheep…” because if, like me, you grew up in certain traditions, you can hardly help saying the next few words from the prayer it begins: “All we like sheep have gone astray.” Jesus isn’t here to enjoy the richness of the successful: he’s here to gather up the straying sheep. That’s me. That’s you. That’s us.

Whenever we think we’ve gotten ahead, whenever we think we are above, or beyond, he’s there to gather us, remind us: all we like sheep have gone astray. And when we know that, when we hear his voice, then we don’t need to ask if he’s the Messiah, we don’t need to ask who he is at all: we hear his voice, we know he is our shepherd. We know because we know that having gone astray, he can lead us back to the green pastures mentioned in Psalm 23.

The Sheep go home

We read Psalm 23 at Bill Ferber’s funeral on Friday. I think it’s been read at almost every funeral I’ve ever attended. I understand how someone like Bill who was a church member and a Christian most of his life would want that read. What’s interesting is that people who know nothing else about faith, who have almost no church experience, also know it. It seems no matter who we are, no matter where we’ve been, what we’ve done, we all want to come home to this vision.

The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff– they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD my whole life long.

Where are you going? Where are we going? All we like sheep have gone astray. But if we listen for the shepherd’s voice, surely we will hear it; if we follow it, we will get where he means to take us.
Amen.

Never Mind

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A Sermon for the First Congregational Church of Albany, NY

by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor – Copyright 2016 All rights reserved

Third Sunday in Easter/C • April 10, 2016

Click here for an audio version of this sermon being preached

Isn’t it amazing how life can change in a moment? I used to be the kind of person who would carefully plan all the stages of a trip. I had my airline reservation printed, hotel, car, each of them laid in a folder in consecutive order. I got annoyed when planes were delayed; I got angry if my car or room wasn’t ready. But when Jacquelyn became a flight attendant and I started flying space available, I was introduced to traveling without any assurance. I had to learn that even though I had a plan, things could change, the world could say “Never mind” to my plan. Of course, there are many times, may circumstances where we go along as if our lives were on rails like a train. Then something happens and suddenly it’s as if someone said “never mind” to our whole plan, our whole life, and we’re starting over.

Life After the Cross – Never Mind

It must have been like that for the disciples. For a few years, they’ve been following Jesus through the villages of Galilee, up and down the roads, then on to Jerusalem and its crowds. All along he was there; all along, they thought something great was going to happen. They saw him heal; they heard him preach. They’d been present at amazing, miraculous events.

Surely they knew what the prophets had said; one day God would send someone who would be a Messiah, who would lead a great movement to renew Israel. They must have known their history, how God inspired Moses to lead their ancestors out of Egypt, how Joshua led them to claim the promised land, how David created a kingdom among God’s people, how that kingdom though fallen had risen again and then been recaptured by Judas Maccabeus.

So the idea of someone who would stand at the head of a great movement, a military movement, was in their collective memory; it was the frame they put around Jesus. We get bits and pieces of this expectation. When Jesus asks who they think he is, Peter responds, “the Messiah”. But when he connects that to a cross, they argue with him. They themselves are found arguing about who is going to be first in his kingdom, a moment he uses to teach them servanthood. So even if they didn’t know exactly what to expect, they must have expected something great, something victorious.
Now it’s as if God said, “Never mind.” Jesus is gone, dead, buried, and even though they’ve heard the tomb is empty, even though Peter himself saw the empty tomb, every story about this time after Easter suggests they didn’t believe Jesus had risen. So many things can happen: perhaps someone stole the body, perhaps the burial wasn’t done properly. All those stories were floated later. Who cares, really? Empty tombs don’t inspire; nothing doesn’t get you something. It’s easier to just believe God said “Never mind”, one more dream dying, one more dream shattered, one more never mind in a life of never minds.

Back to the Old Plan

So they do what people often do when a life plan ends. They go back where they were before it all began. They’ve gone back to Galilee, back to where it all started. They’ve gone back to what they used to do: fishing. How long have they been doing that? Doesn’t time seem to stop sometimes when your whole plan, your whole life, has run into one big “Never mind?” But it doesn’t seem to be working; they go out fishing and don’t catch a single thing. Have they lost the touch? Bad luck? Who knows? It seems the new plan, to go back to the old plan, is getting a big never mind as well.

It’s just then, when they come back to shore, hungry, depressed, quiet the way you are when everything has failed that they meet this guy on the beach. Who is he? No one knows. He calls them children. That may seem kind but actually since the word for children and slave is about the same it may have come across as strange. Maybe it sounded like he was recognizing how hard they worked. Next thing, he’s giving directions and somehow they feel compelled to do what he says: “Cast the net on the right side.” Is it just that nothing else has worked so why not or something mysteriously compelling about him? All we know is that as the net fills up and one of them recognizes something in the man on the beach. “It is the Lord!” he says and Peter—Peter who always rushes in, whether it’s the right thing or not—Peter can’t help jumping in and wading ashore.

Once there, they discovered everything they need is already set: bread, grilled fish. I love the note that says that the net didn’t break. That detail makes this story for me: who else but someone who’s spent hours mending nets would think of it? So there they are: on the beach with the Lord, eating breakfast. Some have said that just as there was a Last Supper, this is the First Breakfast.

On the Beach

So there they are: in some ways it must have seemed like all their fears, all their grief has just received in its turn a great Never Mind. But then, when they’ve all had breakfast, Jesus takes Peter aside and asks him this question: do you love me? What did Peter think? Last week I talked about the song, Tradition! from the musical Fiddler on the Roof. There’s another song in the same show when Tevye, the father, is discussing a daughter’s impending marriage with his wife Golde. He says, “She loves him”, and then he asks Golde, “Do you love me?” She rolls her eyes and says,

For years, I’ve washed your clothes
Cooked your meals, cleaned your house
Given you children, milked your cow
After years, why talk about love right now?
But Tevye persists: do you love me? And Golde thinks,
Do I love him?
For years, I’ve lived with him
Fought with him
Starved with him
For years, my bed is his
If that’s not love, what is?

At the end, she says she does love him—and that it doesn’t change a thing.

Do You Love Me?

“Do you love me?” It’s a question we all ask, one we all need answered. “Do you love me?” Jesus asks Peter. Remember Peter? Brash Peter, one moment proclaiming Jesus is the messiah, the next arguing so violently with him that Jesus calls him a devil. One moment proclaiming his ultimate loyalty; the next sitting in a courtyard denying he ever knew Jesus. “I never met the man!” Peter says. I wonder if, when Jesus asked, “Do you love me?” Peter was thinking of that moment. I wonder if he was remembering how Jesus said he would deny him three times before dawn and Peter said “never” and then indeed, not once, but just as Jesus said, three times, denied him, betrayed him. “Do you love me?” How do you come back from that guilt? How do you come back from that moment? Do you apologize? Do you grovel? What do you say?
“Do you love me?” Jesus asks. the first time, Peter says, “Yes, Lord, you know I love you.” Like a married spouse yelling, “love ya” as they walk out the door, the unthinking response: “Do you love me” sure, Jesus, whatever. Jesus responds: tend my lambs. And he asks a second time, a deeper time: “Do you love me?” I think that’s when Peter must have realized the pretense was over; I think that must have been when Peter’s front began to crumble, when the moment of betrayal came back to haunt him.

“Feed my sheep”, Jesus says. And then, I imagine Jesus looking right into his eyes, knowing as he always knew, what was behind Peter’s eyes, knowing and yet asking once again, “Do you love me?” and when Peter, perhaps crumbling now, says yes; once again, Jesus says, “Feed my sheep.” This is the moment Peter became an apostle. This is the moment when Jesus came to him and said: “Never mind!” All those misunderstandings along the way? Never mind! Go feed my sheep. Those times you denied me? Never mind! Go feed my sheep. The fact that you went back to your old life? Never mind! I’m giving you a new life and a new mission: feed my sheep.

Now, I imagine most of us have at least one story about a time we thought we were on the way, pursuing a plan, on a mission and suddenly something happened that said, “Never mind!” and suddenly we were sitting there like a person who just slipped on a patch of ice and fell down. So perhaps you know how Peter felt. And today, this day, this very day,

Never mind: feed my sheep

Jesus is speaking to us just as he did with Peter and the others. Whatever we think about our future as a church, whatever plan we have, Jesus has this to say: “Never mind—feed my sheep”. How? He doesn’t say; he leaves that for us to figure out, just as he does with Peter. What he seems to have in mind is in that confusing little bit at the end about being bound and taken where Peter doesn’t want to go. Certainly he knows that despite all our plans, we are going to have to live when the plans fall apart. Life is full of never minds. In the midst of them, just this counts: how we answer the question Jesus asks, “Do you love me?” and whether we are every day doing something, everything, to feed his sheep.

Amen.

Where’s Jesus?

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EasterWorshipArea2

by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor
Easter Sunday/C • March 27, 2016
Copyright 2016 • All Rights Reserved

An Audio Version of the sermon may be heard here

Easter began with a hunt in my childhood home. Christmas presents were eagerly displayed under a tree but Easter baskets were hidden, secreted and had to be found. Sometimes the search went on so long that my mom would start giving huge hints so we’d find them and get ready for church. Once, I remember searching fruitlessly for my basket, behind the couch, under the piano, everywhere I could think to look. Finally my mother said, have you looked up? When I did, there it was, hanging in plain view from the curtain rod. Have you looked? It’s a good question for Easter because the heart of Easter is learning to answer the question, where’s Jesus?

Where’s Jesus?: On the Cross?

Where’s Jesus? Not on the cross. That doesn’t astonish us as much as it should. We are used to executions that take place in sterile, hidden places, with a sort of macabre medical motif. The Romans—and it’s the Romans who executed Jesus, make no mistake, the Jewish authorities had no authority to crucify anyone—took a different tack. They made execution public, using its terror to enforce discipline. Crucifixion doesn’t kill from the direct injury of the nails, it kills over a long time as the unsupported diaphragm gives out and the victim drowns even in the sea of air, gasping, dying, crying out. Exposure adds to the process and the death usually took days. The crucified were left hanging there, an lesson in the violence waiting to destroy anyone who opposed the power of Rome. “Where’s Jesus?” Anyone who knew he had been crucified would have assumed he was on a cross, dying, crying, gasping out his last breath.

But the gospel accounts unite in telling us that Jesus died quickly. While his friends hid, he pronounced a final prayer and, according to the gospel, “breathed his last”. It’s near the sabbath, which begins at sunset on Friday. His friends go to the Roman governor and ask for the body; after expressing his surprise at how quickly he died, Pilate lets them take the body down. They quickly stash it in one of the cave tombs around Jerusalem. These tombs were excavated as mausoleums. Typically, a corpse would be wrapped in linens, anointed with oils, and placed on a platform. Later, they would be put into a niche in the wall. Families would gather at the tomb at times to remember their departed, as we might walk in a cemetery. Apparently Joseph of Arimathea owned such a tomb and when Jesus is taken down, he’s placed there hurriedly, no time to finish preparing the body since the sabbath is beginning.

Where’s Jesus? In a tomb sealed by a stone, then. The earliest Christian tradition about Easter includes this detail. Paul wrote to the Corinthian Christians about 20 years after the events and quoted a tradition that included Jesus being buried. All the accounts of Easter include the tomb. Later tradition will embellish the story, adding guards and a gardener. But the earliest answer to the question of where’s Jesus is harsh and simple: buried, in a tomb, shut up in the darkness, like a doll that used to mean something but is now stored away in a box in the attic.

Where’s Jesus?: In the Tomb?

Where’s Jesus? The women making their way through the almost dawn darkness of the first Easter are sure they know. When the sabbath ended the night before, it was too dangerous to go out in the dark. Now as first light breaks, they are on their way. Imagine them getting up before sunup, dressing in sadness, hardly having needed to plan because they know what’s needed. There’s a song by the Cowboy Junkies with the line, “It’s the daughter who’s left to clean up the mess.” Where are Peter and John and James and all the other disciples? We don’t know; later we’ll hear about them hiding behind locked doors. It’s the women who followed Jesus, it’s Mary of Magdala, reviled by some, lifted by Jesus, who rises above her grief, gathers the spices to anoint the body and moves through the dawn darkness, perhaps with others at her side. It must have been a quiet walk; dawn does that. What do they talk about? Not about where’s Jesus; they know the answer. Their only question is how to get to him, how to roll back the heavy stone that imprisons him.

So they walk out of the city, sure they know what’s coming, certain of where Jesus is. Yet the story tells us that when they came to the tomb, the stone was rolled back already. Like Christians in every age, they were worried about the wrong problem. Now they come near; now they see the tomb, now they go in. They discover the tomb is empty. Where’s Jesus?

The women are perplexed; it’s such a odd, simple word isn’t it? Suppose you went to a funeral home to say goodbye to a good friend, signed the book, stood in the greeting line, walked finally to the casket, it’s ornate top raised, looked in and saw—nothing. Would you be startled? Would you gasp? Would you wonder what happened? The women are at a tomb, knowing Jesus is there—but he isn’t. I wonder what they said, I wonder at the looks between them as they stood in the musky, damp smelling tomb, holding a basket of spices that are now useless, ready to do a job that will never be done. Where’s Jesus? Not here: not where they expected, knew he would be.

“Why do you seek the living among the dead?”

Where’s Jesus? According to Luke, the women encounter two men in dazzling clothes; Matthew says they met an angel, while Mark simply pictures a young man sitting where Jesus’ body should have been. Luke says they were terrified; Mark that they were amazed. Isn’t it always so when we encounter angels? The first thing angels usually say is, “Don’t be afraid.” It’s hard when you think you’re walking along, knowing where you’re going, and you walk into something God is doing. They are amazed, terrified, perplexed. Have you ever had something happen that changed you forever? They are changed: they are in a tomb, ready to deal with the dead, and in the next moment they are amazed by the living. “Why do you seek the living among the dead?”, the visitor asks and it’s a good question, a question we might ask today. What are you seeking? Did you come to see the resurrection explained, justified, proved? That’s asking for the dead among the living. The gospels have no proofs, no explanations. All they have is this absolute account: Jesus was dead and buried—and came back to his friends, met his friends, inspired his friends. They were living and suddenly there he was, living with them.

We have some experience of this. In The Grapes of Wrath, we hear the story of Tom Joad, a man who takes up the cause of poor people as his own. When he leaves his family, he says,

…maybe like Casy says, a fella ain’t got a soul of his own, but on’y a piece of a big one…’ll be all aroun’ in the dark. I’ll be ever’where—wherever you look. Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there…I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad an’—I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when our folks eat the stuff they raise an’ live in the houses they build—why, I’ll be there.…. [John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath]

Where’s Jesus Today?

Where’s Jesus? Ever since Easter, Christians have had to answer and their answers take them to different places. I used to go to a church where we sang a lot about blood and the cross. They were most comfortable talking about Jesus on a cross; they wanted him to stay there, I think, and leave running the world to politicians whose programs take no account of the generosity and openness Jesus preached. Jesus on the cross is safe: he’s busy suffering for us so we don’t have to do anything about suffering ourselves.

Where’s Jesus? I’ve spent most of my life with Christians who are happy to leave him in the tomb. “A great teacher”, they say, as if we can extract from him a set of principles alone, separate from Jesus himself, a bunch of moral maxims that can keep us from having to wonder about a power that can actually raise someone from the dead. Moral maxims can live comfortably in a rational world; resurrection can’t. Resurrection says all our plans, all our rationality, don’t begin to encompass God’s power. We think it all stops with a tomb but can’t answer what happens when the stone is rolled away.

Where’s Jesus? Not on the cross: so we don’t have to fear the cross, live on the cross, forever. Where’s Jesus?

Not in the tomb: so we don’t have to fear the tomb, live in the tomb, live with the tomb as our destination.

Where’s Jesus? He’s where he always was: where people hurt, healing them, where people despair, giving hope, where people pray, hearing them. This is why we spent six weeks slowly working through his prayer, the Lord’s Prayer, learning to pray with him. For when we truly pray with him, he is present with us, his healing, his hope, his call become ours and we become his. This is an important distinction. A lot of Christian imagery, a lot of Christian songs speak of “My Jesus”. The Christian story is not how Jesus becomes mine but how I become his.

Finding Jesus

Mary and the others came back to the disciples with their tale of an empty tomb. And it would be a great happy ending if the disciples had fallen down, praising God, believing. But that’s not what happened. As Luke says, “they thought it was an idle tale.” Only in the following days and weeks did they find an answer to the question, “Where’s Jesus?” So if you are wondering, if you can’t believe the women today, this morning, don’t worry, don’t turn away. Neither did Peter, neither did John; neither did Matthew or James or the others. They had to go on farther to find Jesus. Come back next week and the weeks to come because we are going to be thinking about how they answered the question and how we can find our own answer. More importantly, we’re going to think about how they found Jesus and how we can.

Where’s Jesus? One thing is clear: if you want to find Jesus, if you want to go where Jesus is, the path is simple. Go where he’s going: find someone hurting, help heal them, Go where he is: somewhere private and quiet, praying the Lord’s prayer. Go where he is: where hope is sown, believing in God for the growth, for the harvest. Where’s Jesus? Go look: you’ll find him. He’s where the gospel so often tell us: on the way. Go look; go find, go follow.

Amen.