Looking ahead to the Seventh Sunday in Easter: Acts 1:6-14 & John 17:1-11

When the apostles had come together, they asked Jesus, "Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?" He replied, "It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.”

This is a good verse to remember when people announce a date when the End (the Last Judgment, the Second Coming) will take place.

Then Jesus gives the version of the Great Commission in Acts. (The passage commonly called the Great Commission is at the very end of Matthew -- Matthew 28:16-20, our Gospel on June 19, Trinity Sunday. We will heart Jesus say: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…”

The Risen Jesus said to his disciples – and says to us, his 21^st century disciples:

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."

“you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you”

The Holy Spirit is God present with us, dwelling within us (Paul said our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit.) The Holy Spirit gives us strength and wisdom and love to give – in order to follow Jesus on his way of self-giving love.

“you will be my witnesses … to the ends of the earth.”

What does it mean to be Jesus’ witness?

· To tell his story.

· To tell the Good News of God’s saving love for every person in the story of Jesus.

· To tell the Good News in both Word and Sacrament. Baptism and Eucharist themselves witness to Jesus.

· To witness in our lives – in loving service.

· We remember that beginning with Stephen in the Book of Acts, followers of Jesus have witnessed to him by literally laying down their lives for him. The word “martyr” comes from the Greek word for “witness.” If we are called someday to lay down our lives, may God give us courage and faithfulness in that hour. We are all – each one of us – called to follow Jesus on his way of self-giving love, the way of discipleship, which always costs something.

· Witnessing to Jesus can mean telling our own story, of what Jesus means in our lives. Sharing our own journey can help others discover their journey.

When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.

In the Hebrew Bible the cloud was one of the great images of the presence and action of God. The Hebrew people were led through the wilderness by a pillar of cloud by day. The cloud covered Mount Sinai when Moses went there, to be with God. The cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, that first – portable -- ancestor of the Temple in the wilderness. For me it is an especially good image of the presence of the unseen God, who comes to us as Holy Spirit – unseen like the breath we breathe.

While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven."

The followers of Jesus went back to Jerusalem. The list is interesting – it includes the 11 who left of the original 12 disciples, plus the women, including “Mary the mother of Jesus.”

All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer…”

I have a special love for these days of prayer between Ascension Day (June 2 this year) and Pentecost (Sunday, June 12).

When they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day's journey away. When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying, Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.

John 17:1-11

Our Gospel today (John 17:1-11) is the long prayer, prayed by Jesus on the night before he died. Introducing this passage, William Temple wrote: “We now come to what is, perhaps, the most sacred passage even in the four Gospels – the record of the Lord’s prayer of self-dedication …” (Readings in St. John’s Gospel, page 307)

In the Fourth Gospel God’s glory is the self-giving love we see in Jesus, above all when he laid down his life for us on the cross.

Jesus looked up to heaven and said, "Father, the hour has come;”

This is one of three times in John’s Gospel when Jesus said his hour had come. When we think about when it happens, it is always something of a shock and surprise. For it is when the story of his cross had begun.

How is that an hour of glory, let alone the hour of glory? It is in no way a glorification of suffering – it is also the hour judgment when the evil done by human beings to cause suffering is shown for what it is.

But it is the hour when Jesus faced what came – faced evil – in self-giving love. That is the very nature of God – the primary characteristic of God. We see God’s love in everything Jesus did and said, but above all when we see him love completely on the cross.

“ glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.

Listen now to Jesus’ prayer for all of us – all those in every generation and place around the globe – all those given to him by the Father.

"I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. "

He prays that we all may be one, as he and the Father are one. The search for unity in the Christian Church is rooted in this prayer of Jesus.

(Raymond Webster)

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The Bible texts of the Old Testament, Epistle and Gospel lessons are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Church of Christ in the USA, and used by permission.

Looking ahead to the Sixth Sunday in Easter: John 14:15-21

The dove is an ancient symbol of the Holy Spirit.

The passages we read last Sunday and read this coming Sunday from the fourteenth chapter of John’s Gospel are words of Jesus after the Last Supper in the Upper Room in Jerusalem on the night before he died.

I think we read them in this Easter season because the night before he died Jesus was speaking about going away and not being seen (“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe”), and now we are coming the end of the period of time after the first Easter, when the visible appearances of the risen Jesus were coming to an end.

The timeline of that brief period of visible appearances in the Book of Acts is forty days. So, on the church calendar, we keep the fortieth day after Easter as Ascension Day (this coming Thursday, May 2.)

We are told in Acts that the followers of Jesus spent the next nine days in prayer in Jerusalem until the Day of Pentecost, when they received the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Pentecost comes from the Greek for fifty, and was already the Greek-Jewish name for a Jewish festival fifty days after Passover. Now it became the name of the new feast, fifty days after Easter.

So we will keep the fiftieth day of Easter, Pentecost, the third great feast of day of the church year, on Sunday, June 12.  

With this timeline in mind, we turn to this Sunday’s Gospel passage.

Jesus said to his disciples, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”
This is a repeated theme of Jesus on the night before he died. His new commandment (in Latin novum mandatum, from which we get the name Maundy Thursday) was and is to love one another. If we love him, we show it by loving one another.
“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate,”
“Advocate” is a fascinating word in the original Greek – Paraclete. You may see references to the Paraclete.
“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.”
The Holy Spirit – the Advocate – is the Name of God who is present with us, dwelling within us. Paul writes that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. “he abides with you, and he will be in you.”
"I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.”
I believe Jesus meant not only coming at the End – in what is called the Second Coming – but is truly present in the Holy Spirit.
Jesus died and was buried and on the third day rose. For a brief time he was visibly present with his friends. I believe this was given so they, and we, might know he was truly risen. Then he was no longer visibly present.
Where was he? With the Father. Where is that? In heaven. Where is that? Where God is. Where is that? Beyond us, bigger than us, transcending us – hence the imagery of up, of Ascension.
But also with us.
When the unseen Holy Spirit comes to be with us, to live within us, God is truly present and at God’s heart lives the risen Jesus.
God loves us with the love we see in Jesus. The Holy Spirit  
There is a direct continuity between the compassion and love Jesus showed the blind beggar on the road one day, and the love God gives you and me now.
“In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.”
We will live in heaven. And we will live in the new life here on earth.
“On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them."

(Raymond Webster)
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The Bible text of the Gospel lesson is from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Church of Christ in the USA, and used by permission.

Sermon preached on the Fifth Sunday in Easter: Youth Sunday

Acts 7:55-60; Psalm 31.1-5, 15-16; 1 Peter 2:2-10; John 14:1-4

To me, and to many others who are Christians, this is an extremely important Gospel. Here, Jesus is telling us that by believing in him, we are believing in God. He says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” a very famous line. But in this Gospel, with so much explanation from Jesus, and Jesus telling us about some of the core beliefs of Christianity, we also see doubt. We see questioning from Phillip who wants some kind of proof, visual proof of the father. I believe that every Christian has to face this kind of doubt at some point in their lives, and in the end it makes their faith stronger.

I faced a sort of doubt a couple of years ago. Doubt doesn’t necessarily mean that you don’t believe in God anymore, it can just mean that your relationship with God isn’t as strong as you would like it to be. Maybe you haven’t prayed as much as you feel you should, or you haven’t gone to church in the past couple weeks. Well, about a year and half ago, this doubt began to creep up on me. I still loved God, and I still believed in God, but I felt like I could be doing more to be making my relationship with God stronger. That is when our Youth Minister, Charles Murphy, told me about a Episcopal Diocese of Chicago Youth Event called Happening. Happening is an event with around 60 youth from Episcopal churches all around Chicago and the suburbs, who come together for a weekend twice a year to talk about God, in a relaxed, comfortable, and safe setting. Everyone is welcome, whether you are the strongest Christian, or you are having your doubts, or want some proof like Phillip did. Well, at Happening, my relationship with God was strengthened. I saw God in all of these youth, most of whom I had never met before. But, they opened their arms to me, a stranger, and welcomed me. It was an amazing experience. I felt like I began to get to know God, and it was through others. I was doing things that I never thought I would do, and meeting people that I never thought I would.

And although the event that I went to, Happening, was something specifically made for youth, I think that we can all have these moments at any time in our lives, moments when our relationship with God is strengthened, maybe after a time of questioning like Phillip had. It can happen anywhere, especially in the church and our church. It could be at a foyer dinner, or even just talking with a friend at coffee after a church service.   But keeping your mind and heart open is important. Because if you close yourself off, it’ll be tough to have an experience like this. And we do this, keeping ourselves open, by doing simple things. Simple things like listening to what another person is saying, or by caring for someone and helping them when they need help. Being there for people. And don’t forget to talk to God. He is always there, listening. And he will help you, if you need that sign. He certainly helped me when I needed that, and he will help you get a chance too. A chance to strengthen your relationship with God.

I am still participating in Happening today, I’ve been to three others after the first one I told you about, and now I’m on steering committee for Happening. I have now realized what Jesus was talking about at the end of this gospel. That he is the father and the father is in him. It just took some very special people in the church to help me to realize it.

(Sermon preached by Michael Begel on May 22, 2011 at St. Chrysostom's Church in Chicago, IL at 11:00 AM.) 

Looking ahead to the Fifth Sunday in Easter: John 14:1-14

Gospel for this Sunday: John 14:1-14 “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”

This Sunday’s Gospel is one of the most well known and well loved passages in John’s Gospel. The scene is back on Maundy Thursday, the night before Jesus died. It is part of the long discourse or talk Jesus had with his disciples, following the Last Supper, and also following the foot-washing -- when Jesus gave his disciples (back then, and you and me today) his example of loving service.

Jesus said, "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house there are many dwelling places.

So Jesus calls us to trust that there is a dwelling place prepared for you and me, with him, in heaven.

A word about the use of the word “Father” for God.

In traditional classic Christian theology, God is not male. The Book of Genesis states that God created men and women in the image and likeness of God.

I believe Jesus – and then the New Testament writers – use the very human word “father” as a sign of the relationship between Jesus and one he called “Father.” As someone who is both a son and a father I am fully aware of how human and fallible the word is – but I am also aware of the power of the relationships our human words “father” or “mother” or “spouse” or “lover” describe.

Why can’t Jesus just say “God.” Well, as the early church found thinking about exactly this, Jesus was both truly human and divine Son of God. Our picture of “God” includes both what Jesus was getting at using the name Father, and also – in addition – Jesus himself (part of the meaning of this passage).

Well then, we could, theoretically, in this kind of study, make up a word to substitute for “father” – perhaps a long German-style “The-One-with-whom-Jesus-has-a-relationship-at-the-heart-of-God.”

But maybe it is better to stick with the human word, remembering its humanness and remembering it is a sign.

In all four Gospels, Jesus has sense of relationship with the one he called Father. Twice there is a record in the New Testament of his use of the Aramaic familiar word “abba” – our “daddy” or “papa”. I was walking along Michigan Avenue one day, and happened to be near a family, and couldn’t help but hear a young man – college age? – call his dad “abba”. A sign of the intimacy of the relationship between Jesus and the one he addressed in such familiar loving terms. The great scholar Joachim Jeremias drew out this use of ”abba.”

Jesus invites us into that intimacy by giving us the word “Father” to use in our own prayers. By giving us the Lord’s Prayer. And also remember the Eucharist is a prayer addressed to the Father, in the Name of Jesus the Son.

“if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.

Where he is, we will be – for me this is the wonderful definition of heaven.

“And you know the way to the place where I am going."

Thomas is the one who speaks up. So in chapter 11 he spoke up to say let’s go to Jerusalem with Jesus and die with him. So he doubted in the Easter story. And now he asks this great question. May we make the question – and Jesus’ answer – our own: :

Thomas said to him, "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?" Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life.

One of the seven “I am” statements.

“No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Except through the self-giving love we see in Jesus.

“ If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him."

A major theme in John’s Gospel is that we cannot see God, and God sent Jesus so we might see in him what God is like.

Philip said to him, "Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied." Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”

What we see in Jesus is that the primary characteristic of God’s nature is self-giving love.

“How can you say, `Show us the Father'? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves. Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it."

Anything that accords with the Father’s will. Anything of love.

The Bible text of the Gospel lesson is from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Church of Christ in the USA, and used by permission.

(Raymond Webster)

Sermon preached on the Fourth Sunday in Easter

 Acts 2:42-47; Psalm 23; 1 Peter 2:19-25;  John 10:1-10

There’s power in a Name.  If you doubt this, think about how it feels when somebody gets your name wrong.  Or ask a child what it’s like to hear their full, Christian name spoken by an unsmiling parent with crossed arms.  Names are powerful because something about your core identity, your unique and substantial presence in the world, is communicated by your name.  In fact, you may know that an early Jewish tradition forbade speaking or writing God’s name – it’s why God is always called “The LORD” in the Old Testament, because that’s a more respectful substitute. For the Hebrew people, God’s identity was bound up in God’s name, and wasn’t something to be handled, or grasped at by humans.  It was something only God had the power to reveal.  So, for example, when God confronts Moses in the burning bush and Moses asks, “Who should I say you are?  What’s your name?”  God says, “I am who I am.  I will be who I will be.” 

Given all that, isn’t it interesting that Jesus has a name?  A real, human name that can be spelled and spoken, and recorded on a census in Bethlehem.  Just by virtue of having this kind of a name, we get a sense of what Jesus is about: here’s a guy who wants to share his identity with us.   Jesus is in the world because he wants the world to know who he really is.  His proper name itself – Yeshua, like the name Joshua – sheds light on this.  It means “God saves.”  “God rescues.”  But Jesus gives himself another name today.  He makes his own burning-bush-“I Am”- statement, and gets specific about what it means.  First, he says “I am the gate,” which makes sense.  Jesus is the way to the Father; Jesus opens onto the Father.  So if we were standing around, listening to him say this, we might think that he’s a special person; somebody like a prophet, somebody who has an extraordinary relationship with God.  He doesn’t stop there, though.  Jesus says “I am the gate,” then he says, “I am the Good Shepherd.”  And this is where he crosses a line. 

We hear “Good Shepherd,” and think very romantic, pastel sorts of things about meadows and kindness and sparkling brooks, none of which has anything to do with actual shepherding.  Shepherding is tough work, and shepherds are tough people.  But if they’re good at what they do, then they’re totally wedded to the welfare of the sheep – they have a complete stake in what happens to each one, and they’re skilled at keeping them together, keeping them safe, feeding them and protecting them.  When we talk about Jesus being our shepherd, friendliness and leniency isn’t what’s going on – a good shepherd is fiercely and decisively devoted to the sheep, come what may.  Shepherding means being tenacious and judicious.  It’s something weighty, something authoritative.

And authority is the problem here – it’s the line that Jesus crosses.  Where his flock is concerned, a good shepherd has implicit authority.  And the people Jesus is talking to definitely understand that fact – because they already have a good shepherd … somebody else was called the Good Shepherd way before Jesus, and that somebody was God.  Yahweh was the Good Shepherd.  Right there in the writings of the prophets, it says, “I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down.”  It’s in the famous words of this morning’s Psalm.  So when Jesus says, “I am the Good Shepherd,” he’s naming himself with the name of God; he’s naming God with his own name, and he’s claiming a power and an authority that belong to God alone.  Because of this, Jesus provokes the people around him to grumble a question – an awful, destructive, yet very familiar question about identity, “Who in the world does he think he is?”  “Jesus, you just called yourself the Good Shepherd … who do you think you are?”

I don’t know about you, but I don’t have to ask anybody what it feels like to hear those words.  “Who do you think you are?”  This is the pernicious little question that lies at the bottom of all of our shakiest feelings about ourselves.  It’s the question everybody has to face and conquer, in some way, if they’re going to do anything that God put them on this planet to do.  We hear this question – our kids hear this question – in so many places and so many ways, spoken and unspoken.  Think about people like Martin Luther King, Jr.,  or Mother Teresa who heard “Who do you think you are?” hurled at them, and uttered in their silent thoughts again and again as they worked for justice and cared for the dying.  Think about the nameless numbers of people for whom racism, sexism, homophobia, or poverty has taken root in that question, put to them by the world: “Who do you think you are?”  But think about yourself.  Even if your own life feels pretty normal, how often have you thought about what you’d like to do with it – some change you’d like to make or some dream you want to fulfill – and heard that question, aloud or silent: “Who do you think you are?”  How often has there been a person you’d like to get to know better, and before you could talk to them you had to answer that question in the back of your head, “Who do you think you are?”  How many of you think about the church, and what you want from it, and what you need from it, or about God and what you’re wondering or seeking, even what you’re angry with God about, and ask yourself, “Well who do I think I am?” 

The good news, the Gospel truth, is that we know who we are.  There’s this strange, breathtaking sentence buried in the book of Revelation, where Jesus is speaking to John in a vision, and he says, “To everyone who conquers … I will give a white stone, and on the white stone is written a new name that no one knows except the one who receives it.”  This is your true name, your most authentic identity.  When Jesus was being audacious, and calling himself the Good Shepherd, provoking confusion and anger for some people, those who were really listening to him would have heard him say that a good shepherd calls his own sheep by name.  This name, the name that the Shepherd knows you by and that he uses to speak into your heart and into your life is your true name, known only to God, untouched by any entity who would seek to undermine you with that question, “Who do you think you are?” 

Who you are is a child of God, a sheep of Jesus the Good Shepherd whose identity is God and whose authority is real because he is God’s revelation, he is God’s “I Am who I am.”  He is God’s name in the flesh and he shows us that God’s identity is self-giving love, the kind of totally invested love that causes a shepherd to lay down his life for the flock.  Who you are is a person who has been named, by God, to work for justice and care for others.  Who has been named, by God, to live unharmed, free from any ‘ism’ that would hem you in.  Who you are is a person who has been named, by God, to be in community with other people and with the very God who created you – to live and love and pray without fear, and without limit.  All you need to be that person is a shepherd – and you’ve got him.  All you need to do is listen for him to call you by name … and there you will find the power of God.

(Sermon preached by the Reverend Danielle Thompson on Sunday, May 15, 2011 at St. Chrysostom's Episcopal Church in Chicago, IL at 8:00 AM, 11:00 AM, and 5:15 PM - the above version reflects changes made before the evening service.) 

Looking ahead to the Fourth Sunday in Easter: John 10:1-10 ("Good Shepherd Sunday")

In the sermon this week, I think I will focus on the issue of “identity.”  The verses that are coming back to me again and again are these: “He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.  When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice” (John 10:3b-4). 

The whole passage of Scripture also contains two of Jesus’ important “I am” statements, which lend themselves to the theme of identity.  But let’s look at them on their own for a moment, apart from any theme, and consider the images that they paint.  As I’ve said, this blog is a good place to explore some of the details or research that inform the sermon, but won’t be evident in the sermon.

First, Jesus says “I am the gate” in verse 7.  This is a pretty intriguing statement, and one we tend to forget about when it’s paired with “I am the good shepherd.”  When Jesus says that he is a gate, he indicates that he is the way, the means by which a person finds God – or in the context of John 10, the means by which one enters “abundant” life (v. 10).  Notice the freedom that a person gains in relationship to Jesus: the person for whom he is the gate “will come in and go out and find pasture” (v. 9).  When one draws close to Jesus, he or she discovers true freedom and finds pasture everywhere. 

Jesus also says, famously, “I am the good shepherd” (v. 11).  He defines this in a positive and a negative way.  On the positive side, the good shepherd does something – he “lays down his life for his sheep” (v. 11).  This is the definition of self-giving love, which Jesus exhibits in his death.  On the negative side, the good shepherd is not something – he is not a “thief” or a “bandit” whose interests are not only selfish, but are destructive.  In John 10, Jesus is still speaking to the leaders gathered around the man born blind, who are refusing to celebrate that person’s health in their quest to undermine Jesus.  He is pointing to them as bad shepherds.  One biblical scholar, Jay Wilcoxen (an American Baptist pastor who lives here in Chicago), notes that by the time people would have been hearing and reading John’s Gospel, they would have had in mind various rebel movements that ended disastrously during the Jewish War of 66-73.  People may have questioned whether every zealot had the overall community’s best interests at heart. 

The failure of the leaders in John’s Gospel and the failure of the rebel leaders John may have wished to evoke point to the important thing about these “I am” statements: Jesus is the one making them!  His shepherding ministry is the pattern of all spiritual leadership, and his authority – grounded in self-giving love – is our only hope for living authentically with God and with one another.   

(Danielle Thompson)

Sermon preached on the Second Sunday in Easter

Acts 2:14a-32; Psalm 16; 1 Peter 1.3-9; John 20.19-31

Back in my hometown, there’s a church that stopped saying the Creed.  Not as in they left it out one Sunday, or banned it from their worship services – they actually stopped saying the Creed in the middle of saying the Creed.  Somewhere between “We believe in one God” and “We look for the resurrection of the dead,” this big group of people ran out of steam, collectively, and instead of picking back up and finishing, everybody just turned and looked at one another.  Somebody who was there explained it like this: “we didn’t know if we actually believed what we were saying, and we realized it all at once.”   

There’s no better time of the year to tackle issues of belief than Easter. During Easter, everything we claim to believe is right there, in our faces, every time we walk through those doors.  At Christmas, we focus a lot on family and friends, and on themes that are very comforting and affirming, like birth and adoration.  But Easter packs a big theological punch with less of the softening effects of cultural celebration.  Easter is all about church, and church at Easter is all about death and resurrection, or in those creedal words: “For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate.  He suffered death and was buried.  On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures.”  Each of our readings today is pounding home this message of resurrection and the imperative to believe: Peter tells a crowd about the resurrection and persuades them to join the community of believers.  Then he writes a letter to another group of Christians, reminding them that Jesus’ resurrection means hope and commending them for believing in him even though they weren’t there to witness his ministry or see his resurrected body. 

And then there’s Thomas, the church’s poster child for doubt and belief, who misses out on Jesus’ appearance to the disciples, and has to hear about it second-hand.  When he does, Thomas doesn’t hug his friends and jump up and down, laughing because things are working out just like they’re supposed to.  No.  He says, “Show me.  Let me see.  In fact, let me touch Jesus, and I’ll believe, too.” 

Ray does a good job of dispelling the image of Thomas as a doubter.  A couple of weeks ago he called him Courageous Thomas because he was willing to go to Jerusalem and be killed with Jesus.  And sure enough, here in our story we can see that the popular image of Doubting Thomas isn’t quite right.  Thomas is more needful than doubtful.  Notice that he doesn’t say to the disciples, “You’re lying,” or “You’re drunk.”  He doesn’t ask them to prove how they knew it was Jesus.  He just says, “I need to see him.”  Thomas needs something tangible.  And frankly, this was true for all of the disciples.  It doesn’t seem that the report of the women at the tomb had fully convinced this nervous group of people locked away together on Easter night.  But nevertheless, Jesus appeared to them.  He didn’t write them off for requiring something more.  He didn’t send a mole to tell them that he was alive, testing to see if they’d accept the news without balking.  Jesus came to them and showed them his hands and his side.  They got to see him, and believe.  Thomas is asking for the same thing. 

We can’t escape the fact, though, that despite whether or not the disciples could believe one another’s testimonies, what happened to Jesus – his resurrection – is something that he had told them to watch out for.  Before he was ever arrested and crucified, Jesus said that he would die and rise again on the third day.  So it’s Jesus’ own words about himself that his appearance to his disciples literally substantiates.  Jesus understands that these physical people need to see his physical body in order to believe in the resurrection.  And this isn’t some instance of divine condescension, God getting down on our level so that we get it.   Jesus came back as a body.  Jesus didn’t come back as an idea, or a thought, or even a ghost but as a person with arms and legs and hair, and a person is meant to be seen and touched.  Jesus wasn’t a vending machine of signs and wonders who simply gave anybody what they wanted whenever they asked for it.  Jesus appears to the disciples and to Thomas, not because they demand it, and not because they can’t believe, but because that’s how they believe.  When Jesus says, “do not doubt, but believe,” he’s not chastening Thomas for needing to see him; he’s acknowledging what Thomas needs.  

But then Jesus nods in our direction, doesn’t he?  He throws in something for those of us who are left, two thousand years later, standing up every Sunday and reciting our belief in the resurrection with no wounded man standing in front of us, holding out his palms and turning to show us his side.  Jesus says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”  So if the disciples get to see, if Thomas gets to see, if Jesus doesn’t begrudge them their need to be in the same room with him, in the flesh, what about us?  What do we get?  We’re every bit as human as they, so we still need to encounter him – we can’t go on thoughts and ideas alone.  But how?  How do we see Jesus?  How do we believe? 

Well … it’s different for us.  It’s not harder, because seeing Jesus wasn’t the whole picture, even back then.  The disciples could look at Jesus, but they still had to see him for who he was – they still had to recognize him as “Lord.”  We have the testimony of all of the Peters and Thomases who stood with this man and knew him to be God, so when we look for Jesus, we know what to expect.  Here, incidentally, is how our job is different: we have to look for him.  We have to seek him out, and to be aware of when he is seeking us out.  And there are some things to know about this.

For one, it isn’t easy to do.  It requires looking at our lives in a different way.  It requires a paradigm shift, where we stop seeing the world in terms of failure and success, profit and loss, beginning and end - all of the ways we’re used to thinking about things - and start seeing the world in terms of death and resurrection: dying with Christ and rising with him to a new kind of life. 

It also requires cultivating, nurturing within ourselves a constant sense of expectancy.  It means we’re ready and waiting for Jesus to appear in any situation at any moment.  In the room where an infant is being born and in the room where an aged person is dying; on a street bright with morning light, and on a street where a man is wandering without purpose, alone and ill.  In the promises that two people make in a marriage ceremony, and in the tired shoulders of the spouses whose partnership is floundering.  Jesus isn’t the infant; he isn’t the man or the couples or the dying person.  But this is where he shows up.  This is where he is waiting for you, in the flesh, asking you the only question that really matters: “Do you believe in Resurrection?  Do you believe that I put death to death?  Do you believe that all of this can live again?  Do you believe that my risen body means eternal hope?”     

This is how we see Jesus.  Our answer to his questions is how we believe.  Think what you want to about the church that stopped saying the Creed – if nothing else, they make a point that belief is not robotic assent to a list of propositions.  Belief is living your life – your new kind of life, risen with Christ – committed to hope, committed to healing, committed to reconciliation … committed to resurrection.  Belief is hearing the news that Jesus is risen – just like you heard in these Scripture readings today, and you’re hearing in this sermon now – and also seeing it.  Also opening your eyes and your heart to the people and places all around you that need your hope, your health, your peace … your belief … and looking there for the body of the resurrected Jesus. 

“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”  Blessed are we because we see him differently – we see him all around us, he permeates our world – and where he is, there is our belief. 

(Sermon preached by the Reverend Danielle Thompson on May 1, 2011 at St. Chrysostom's Episcopal Church in Chicago, IL at 8:00 AM and 11:00 AM)

Looking ahead to the Second Sunday in Easter: John 20:19-31

Today’s Gospel reading contains two stories: in the first, Jesus appears to his disciples and in the second, Jesus appears to Thomas.  Several noticeable – even provocative – statements form the scaffolding of these stories, and indicate some important points.

20:19: …for fear of the Jews….  This is an uncomfortable phrase, to the extent that when Scripture is read publicly, “the authorities” are sometimes substituted for “the Jews” to indicate specifically who the disciples were afraid of and why they were afraid of them.  The people gathered in the locked house were reeling from Jesus’ arrest and execution and did not want the same thing to happen to them.  The author of John’s Gospel, however, is drawing a parallel between those disciples and the community to which he writes.  This was a Jewish community increasingly in conflict with mainstream Jewish institutions and Roman authorities in their time.   The important thing to note is not who the disciples were afraid of, but that they were afraid. 

20:19: … ‘Peace be with you.’  This was a conventional Roman greeting, but Jesus’ use of it here and in verse 21 is different.  The second time he says it, the disciples have just recognized him as “Lord.”  The peace which he brings, therefore, is more than conventional.  It is God’s peace, which Jesus had promised to give to all who follow him.  Only God’s peace can drive out the disciples’ fear.

20:27: ‘Do not doubt, but believe.’  Jesus’ exchange with Thomas is popularly interpreted as a story about doubt and belief.  Another way of looking at it is as a story about how we believe.  New Testament scholar Gail R. O’Day notes that the fearful disciples gathered in the locked house were no heroes of faith: they didn’t believe the women’s report about the resurrection, or else they would have been out looking for Jesus!  Instead, he came to them and showed them his physical body.  Thomas missed out on this, and was asking for the same thing that the other disciples had received.  Jesus didn’t chastise him, but offered himself again.  His statement, ‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe,’ is a nod to the generations of believers reading the Gospel who were not able, like Thomas, to touch Jesus’ resurrected body. 

20:31: But these are written so you may come to believe ….  For the author of John’s Gospel, the written accounts of Jesus’ resurrection function for us (generations of successive believers) in the way that Jesus’ physical presence functioned for the disciples.  Like Jesus’ body, the Scriptures acknowledge our need for substance, for tangibles to ground and support our faith.  One issue that John’s author was keen to address was Docetism, the belief that Jesus was human only in appearance, and not in reality.  William Temple underlines the importance of John’s overall theme, the Word became flesh, in light of this concern.[1]  Jesus is really present – embodied – in Scripture, in sacraments, and in one another, and these are not crutches that artificially support belief, but are the real substance of faith. 

(Danielle Thompson)

---

[1] William Temple, Readings in St. John’s Gospel (Wilton, CT: Morehouse Barlow Co., 1985), 79. 

Sermon preached on Easter Sunday

Acts 10:34-43; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-18

Happy Easter!

My dear friends,

I wish you much joy in the risen Christ this Easter Day. In the words of one of the Easters collects, may we “live with him in the joy of his resurrection” – both in heaven – and may those we love be with him in his joy in heaven – and here, day by day, in this life.

… with him in the joy of his resurrection

I have a favorite book and a favorite sentence from my Lenten reading.

A friend emailed me asking if had I heard of Helen Vendler’s recent book on Emily Dickinson. Not only had I heard of it, in December I got a copy of it at the Seminary Coop Bookstore to have as a sort of stocking gift for Eve and myself for Christmas, and hid it away – and it was still in its hiding place, and it was still tucked in its hiding place when my friend emailed at the beginning of Lent.

If you Google Helen Vendler, you will find at least two good interviews with her about writing this book. In one in the Harvard Gazette she says she started to read Dickinson at age 13, when she had to memorize some of the poems. Although in another interview she notes those were the “bad” old versions, she called them. Dickinson’s family made some rather substantive changes to her work, tidying up – the New England phrase gussying up comes to mind – her punctuation and word choices! But good for Helen Vendler’s teachers for having her memorize. At exactly the same age, my English teacher Vaughn Ketchum made us learn passages of Whittier and Longfellow I still quote. A bit later a French teacher had me memorize La Fontaine. One day in Paris, in the park by the Marmottan Museum, we came across a monument to La Fontaine with a fox and a crow and a piece of cheese – and I started reciting and gathered quite a small crowd …

Maître Corbeau, sur un arbre perché, Tenait en son bec un fromage.

This has been a cold Lent – the Day School is having a supper Wednesday cancelled the night of The Snowstorm – to celebrate helping a school in Haiti. The Websters have spent some evenings in front of the fire. The rectory living room over in the residence building is my favorite room. I had a New England skepticism about a gas fire in the fireplace when we first moved here – it is not like a real fire in New Hampshire – but I have learned an important way it is not like a wood fire is that it is a whole lot easier to deal with. My phobia about leaving a fire burning when we go out or go to bed is quite solved by simply turning the gas off. And we are not living on Cape Cod or New Hampshire with wood stacked outside the door, but in the middle of downtown Chicago and it is a whole lot easier not to have to carry wood in. And our two cats stretch out quite contentedly in front of it.

This Lent I have had some quite lovely peaceful evenings in front of the fire reading. Helen Vendler – she takes a Dickinson poem and then comments on it. I think of Emily Dickinson in her upstairs room in the house in Amherst – the house and room still there (although the furniture from her room is at Harvard) – hard at work, a hard working poet. Her solitude not crankish but intentionally making a place of creativity and indeed hard work and great new beauty. Emily Dickinson was not conventionally religious – not conventional in a lot of ways – but important in the Christian life, in the spiritual life to value poetry and beauty and using the gifts I believe God gives.

And also in front of my fire, reading the latest Henning Mankell mystery (yes, yes, my Swedish pronunciation is not correct). Just before moving here, my spiritual director at the Society of Saint John the Evangelist suggested I read a mystery story while on retreat, along with the Gospel – to relax – and he gave me a Sarah Paretsky to read (complete with a murder in, if I remember correctly -- Winnetka).

My favorite Lenten sentence

My favorite Lenten sentence was in a book I was re-reading, -- good to re-read old friends, for me especially poetry. We intentionally re-read the Bible all the time – fascinating to me how I hear new things, sometimes new meanings and sometimes I say to myself I never heard that before. I believe the Holy Spirit, God living within us, lights up words and phrases and images – I love the Quaker phrase, the Inner Light. So God speaks to us by means of the Scriptures.

And it was reading an old book that I came across my favorite phrase from this Lent – something I have read before but struck me anew. I should preface this favorite quote by saying that for me there are several different meanings of darkness in the Bible.

The most immediately familiar is the contrast of light and dark – very present in John’s Gospel. In our reading from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel this year, Jesus called us to let our light shine before others – I love teaching the kids This little light of mine/I’m going to let it shine.

Reinhold Niebuhr (he and his brother Richard graduates of Elmhurst College) in 1944 wrote his great book The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness which is still important and relevant.

As Easter Christians we are called to bring light to the dark places – “where there is hatred, let us sow love … where there is darkness, light. In Matthew 25 Jesus said when we serve the least – when we feed the hungry or visit the sick or welcome the stranger we serve him. We set the tall Paschal Candle in the church today, symbol of the presence of the risen Christ – may we bring his light.

That is probably the most immediately familiar meaning of darkness, set against the light.

But there is quite another meaning of darkness – a meaning found in today’s Gospel – the beautiful dark and night when we encounter God who we cannot see.

The Easter Gospel

In today’s great Gospel (John 21:1-18), Mary Magdalene came to the garden the first Easter morning, while it was still dark. When she was left alone, weeping, she saw someone she mistook for one of the gardeners working there. It was Jesus – in one of these beautiful appearances the first Easter, given for a very short time (Acts has the Biblical time of forty days). Quite characteristic of these stories that she does not recognize him until he spoke her name, “Mary” – he is the same person, yet – Paul’s great word set to music by Handel – yet changed.

She encounters him in the darkness and night -- we even more for we are not given this visible presence and indeed he tells her plainly not to hold on to that.

“this dark night of living fire”

Sitting in front of the fire at home, I came across this phrase in St. John of the Cross. The poet wrote of

… this dark night of living fire

St. John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul

Translated by E. Allison Peers

Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959, page 136

… esta oscura noche de fuego amoroso

San Juan de la Cruz, Obras Completas

Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 2005, page 549

For that is where we meet God, in the dark and night, for we cannot see God.

God sent Jesus to us, as a human life – a truly human being, truly God but also truly human. So we might see – in a person we could see and remember and listen to and picture -- the glory of God’s love for every human being. For me, for you – not one left out, not one forgotten.

Jesus died and was buried and rose from the dead and is at the heart of God the Trinity, and when God draws near, he draws near.

Risen Jesus, you are God with us.

You invite us to stay close to you in your story – we can listen, meditate, picture, use art, use poetry, use music – hymns and choirs – to bring alive your story. You speak to us by your story, you draw near to us by your story.

You invite us to share your Supper – to take and touch and taste these signs of your presence.

You call us to serve you by serving anyone in any need. Where there is ignorance, to teach and bring learning. Where there is sickness, to bring healing. Where there is loneliness, to be there. When a stranger comes, to welcome.

Woven through all these things we see and hear and touch and do, you meet us in this dark night of living fire. In the Temple within us.

Where we do not see, nor do we hear. But you are there. And call us to trust your presence and love – trust that God loves us with your love, and we accept your love and thank you for it, and return it, in the fire of love you kindle.

Risen Jesus, may we live close to you in the light of Word and Sacrament and in the beautiful night of the presence of God – the night of meeting and being together, of God being with us.

Loving us. Each one. With us. Amen.

(This sermon was preached by the Rev. Raymond Webster, Rector in St. Chrysostom’s Church, Chicago, Illinois on Easter Day, April 24, 2011.)

Looking Forward to Easter Sunday: John 20:1-18

Noli me tangere: The Risen Jesus and Mary Magdalene in the garden the first Easter dawn. Fra Angelico, Florence, San Marco

EASTER GOSPEL TEXT: Easter Day (John 20:1-18)

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him." Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She said to them, "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him." When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?" Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away." Jesus said to her, "Mary!" She turned and said to him in Hebrew, "Rabbouni!" (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, "Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, `I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'" Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, "I have seen the Lord"; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

The Bible texts of the Gospel lessons are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Church of Christ in the USA, and used by permission.

COMMENTARY by the Rev. Raymond Webster

These comments on the Easter Gospel above are from my Easter Sermon in 2010. I want to wish you a very happy Easter.

On Easter Day we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. On a day in our history, Jesus died on the cross, in love for us. He was buried and on the third day rose. The heart of the Christian faith and hope is that when we die, when those we love die, we will be with him in the new life in heaven.

With him. I have printed above, as something of an Easter present, a photo of the fresco of the today’s Easter Gospel, painted in the 1400s by Fra Angelico, in Florence, Italy. Fra or Brother Angelico was a Dominican friar. This is one of an extraordinary series of frescoes of scenes of the story of Jesus he painted in a Dominican monastery of San Marco in Florence. The last time we were there my wife Eve told me, that the building just next to San Marco was the main building of the University of Florence when she was a student there.

Fra Angelico shows the scene where Mary Magdalene has come to the garden, and encounters the risen Jesus. It was just before dawn, and in the dark she thought he was one of the gardeners in the place, so Fra Angelico painted Jesus holding a gardener’s hoe.

Fra Angelico painted the original in the room of one of his brother friars. The original is big, my memory is life size. Fra Angelico painted a fresco in each of the monks rooms.

In the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew Jesus told us that when we pray we are to go into our own room and shut the door. Paul said that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. We go into our room, we go within ourselves to the place inside where we think and feel and hope and fear and know and wonder – and there God gives us the stories of Jesus to remember and listen to and picture.

Our Easter Gospel is this story Fra Angelico has pictured.

While it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the place where they had buried Jesus. She had been there when they took him down from the cross, and the mother held him in her arms for a time, and then they brought him here to this garden and buried him.

That first Easter morning, in today’s story, when someone was there in the dark she thought it was one of the gardeners, and she spoke to him. And then she heard him speak her name, perfectly simply -- Mary.

And she recognized him. It was Jesus. And she said in recognition, “Rabbi.” “Teacher.”

Then he said to her what is often the title in Latin of paintings of this scene, Noli me tangere, don’t hold on to me, do not hold on to this risen visible presence, given for a short while so you and the others might know what has happened, that he has been raised from the dead, that God who was with you in him is with you again in him. Truly with you. Present.

Jesus would not remain visibly present. He would ascend to the Father – to the heart of God, where God is. Beyond us, other (and so the imagery of up) and also – and also, deep in the tradition of the Hebrew Bible, out of the theology of God’s presence in the Hebrew Bible – also with us. Unseen. Present.

We listen for his voice in the stories of what he said and what he did. .

We take the bread and wine as signs of God’s presence with us in him, in his love.

And he is with us, to offer forgiveness, friendship, purpose, calling, vocation – God calls each one to follow him as his disciple. His last words in Matthew, the Gospel of the Sermon on the Mount, are his Great Commission to go into all the world and make disciples of everybody. Our mission of empowering and enabling and teaching.

And at the heart of it all, he who is risen and living at the heart of God is with us to love with us with the love we see in his story, in his cross – the living love given to us and if we accept it and trust it and live in it, we forget self and love with something of his love and die to self and come into his new life.

Mary Magdalene left the garden and went and told the others she had seen the Lord – the first witness to the resurrection, the first preacher of the gospel good news of Easter.

A happy and blessed Easter in the love of Christ!

(These comments are based on a sermon preached by the Rev. Raymond Webster on Easter Day, April 4, 2010 in St. Chrysostom’s Church, Chicago.)

Sermon Preached on the Fifth Sunday in Lent

I am the resurrection and the life ...

Ezekiel 37: 1-14; Psalm 130; Romans 8:6-11; John 11:1-45

I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord;
he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live;
and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.
(Book of Common Prayer, page 469)

These words of Jesus are a direct quotation from today’s Gospel (John 11:1-45) and open every Episcopal burial service – every burial service from the Book of Common Prayer. Every one I have officiated at over forty years:

When I was first ordained, a curate in suburban Boston. And then when I was rector of parish on the edge of urban Boston – the other night something brought back to me a tragic incident, when a parishioner was badly burned in a fire, and the long vigil over a week with her at Boston City Hospital, where they took wonderful care of her in the burn unit and then I read the words opening her funeral. As I would read them in the center of Manhattan, then on Cape Cod, and since 1993 here.

I am the resurrection and the life -- woven through those years of ministry are these words of Jesus – sometimes said with one or two people present in the church or at the graveside. Once in New York City with three people present, my wife and (then little) boy and the parish secretary who had been the three people present at the person’s baptism. Sometimes in a church filled with people, the church so full people standing in the doorways, as I read the words coming down the aisle before the casket.

The words are exactly the same, the words sung by the choir of Westminster Abbey as a princess was brought into the church, the whole world watching on TV -- I am the resurrection and the life -- the intent exactly the same, to speak the word of the resurrection.

And whatever we have or have not done, in St. Chrysostom’s Chicago, we have faithfully done just that: spoken the word of resurrection: the core belief of Christianity that on a day in our human history Jesus died and was buried and on the third day rose. Our hope is that when we die, when those we love die, we will be raised to the new life in him.

So on the Fifth Sunday of Lent, on the threshold of Holy Week which begins next Sunday, Palm Sunday, we find ourselves celebrating the great central message of Easter. What gives? What’s going on? Well, every Sunday is a feast of the resurrection of Jesus.

And we come to Holy Week remembering that the passion and death of our Lord is the self-giving in love of one who is risen from the dead and present with us -- I believe – present in word and sacrament. It is why I love having Holy Communion amid the deep solemnity of Good Friday – for it is the day we remember the self giving love of the one who lives at the heart of God and is present with us at God‘s heart. The one who is God with us, Emanu El, God here, with us, loving us. Whatever happens.

I mentioned that story when I was a rector, the first time, on the edge of urban Boston, and had a long vigil driving to Boston City Hospital to visit a very badly hurt parishioner. I do not remember the exact year, but I was around twenty seven. It was my first experience with a severely burned person. I have great admiration for doctors and nurses who care for them. What brought this to mind last week was the visit of an old friend who is just such a doctor.

All those years ago, I had been trained to visit in the hospital, the program for seminarians at Massachusetts General Hospital. I did go, faithfully. I remember the great kindness of the nurses to this young priest, explaining what was happening. It was deeply jarring. One learns how to deal with that, it is part of the spiritual life of a priest, well, part of the spiritual life of any disciple of Jesus.

A winter’s night in St. Stephen’s in the South End

One winter night, after visiting, I dropped into an Episcopal Church not far from Boston City Hospital – St. Stephen’s in the South End. It has had a long ministry in the city – at another location a hundred years ago Bishop Brent was rector when he became Missionary Bishop of the Philippines. The night in the mid 70s I dropped by, something was going on in the parish house, and the door was open and I slipped through and into the church, where it was completely dark, except for lights from outside coming through the high windows – street lights. And the flickering candle by the aumbry, where the bread and wine are kept . However broken life was, God is present, loving in Christ, even if only it seems a small flickering candle flame on a cold winter’s night.

The resurrection of Jesus speaks to our future, our hope we will be with him but also just as much to our here and now, and the promise God is with us. Loving us in him.

Today’s story took place before the first Good Friday and Easter and indeed the opening of the story is directly related to what lay ahead.

A hesitation and a temptation

Because Jesus hesitated. It was a human hesitation. It was not cowardice. I remember being told only a fool is never afraid. Courage is what you do with your fear or apprehension and when there are choices and hesitations. Am I up to it? Can I do it? Can I take it? Very human. Very human to run away. It takes courage not to run away. t to.

The story opens with Jesus getting word that his close friend Lazarus was very sick. Lazarus and his sisters Mary and Martha lived in Bethany a village, as the story tells us, about two miles from Jerusalem.

If you walked, if you walk today from Bethany to the city, you will soon (two miles) find yourself at the top of the Mount of Olives, looking down to a narrow valley, with the Temple Mount rising on the other side. It was the road Jesus would take on Palm Sunday – a very visible way of coming into Jerusalem.

For Jesus, going to his sick friend meant going to Jerusalem. When Jesus said he was going, his disciples tried to talk him out of it. The same thing is recorded in Matthew, Mark and Luke – that when Jesus said he was going to Jerusalem, the disciples were not happy. It comes up at a different point in the story in Matthew, Mark and Luke (the writer of John characteristically going their own way) but the basic reaction of the disciples was the same in all four. In Mark, it was when Simon Peter spoke up against it, Jesus snapped back, uncharacteristically stern, in the tension of the temptation not to go – “Get behind me, Satan!” (Mark 8:34)

The temptation was there (he was in every way tempted as we are, yet did not sin) – the great temptation was to run away. It still is one of the great temptations.

It was Thomas who spoke up and said, said, Let us also go that we may die with him. Courageous words, although Thomas and the others would run away except for John and the women.

The only one of the men standing beneath the cross was John. The others were gone.

Jesus went to Bethany, to find everyone in mourning. He spoke to Martha and then Mary. In the face of our human experience of loss and sorrow he said the great words, I am the resurrection and the life.

“I am” -- one of his I am statements, one of seven in John’s Gospel – four of the seven in last Sunday’s story and today’s and the Good Shepherd chapter in between – four of the seven – I am always doing percentages, 57%. In the face of our human experience of death he said, I am the resurrection and the life, and calls us, calls you and me, to believe -- which for me is primarily to trust in God’s love. Trust that when we die we will be held in the love and compassion and mercy and forgiveness we see in Jesus of Nazareth in the Gospel stories. That is what heaven is like, it is like him, it is being with him. I am the resurrection and the life,

And then when he went to the tomb he wept. He loved and cared so much.

Then he had them open the tomb and called Lazarus out.

So may the risen Christ one day call each one of us, out of death into life.

(This sermon was preached by the Rev. Raymond Webster, Rector, in St. Chrysostom’s Church, Chicago, Illinois on Sunday, April 10, 2011, the Fifth Sunday in Lent.)

Looking ahead to the Fifth Sunday in Lent: John 11:1-45

Opening scene: Jesus gets word his friend is sick

Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, "Lord, he whom you love is ill." But when Jesus heard it, he said, "This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God's glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it." Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.

The writer gives us a picture of how much Jesus loved these three, Lazarus and his sisters Mary and Martha. There is an emphasis on how much he loved them. And there is also a perplexing hesitation. Jesus stays where he is two days longer.

Then after this he said to the disciples, "Let us go to Judea again." The disciples said to him, "Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?"

Bethany was (and is) just down the road from Jerusalem. If you take the road, as Jesus would on the first Palm Sunday, from Bethany, you come to the top of the Mount of Olives. Directly ahead, across a narrow valley, rises the Temple Mount, where at the time of this story the great Temple in Jerusalem stood. Jesus went down the Mount of Olives to enter the city – in the most visible way possible – on Palm Sunday.

Going to Bethany was in effect deciding to go to Jerusalem. There was a hesitation on the part of Jesus. The reaction of the disciples was to try to talk him out of going.

Jesus answered, "Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them." After saying this, he told them, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him." The disciples said to him, "Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right." Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, "Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him."

Courageous Thomas

I remember many years ago, the Church of Scotland preacher James Stewart (1896-1990) said that Thomas should be called “Courageous Thomas” rather than “Doubting Thomas” because he was the one to speak up to urge them all to go with Jesus, whatever the risks of going near Jerusalem.

Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, "Let us also go, that we may die with him."

Jesus goes to Bethany and talks with Martha

When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him." Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again."

Here is the promise of resurrection.

Martha said to him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day."

Then Jesus says another of the seven “I am” statements:

Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”

These words are quoted at the beginning of the burial office, the funeral service, in the Book of Common Prayer, and are read at the opening of every funeral in St. Chrysostom’s parish.

“Do you believe this?" She said to him, "Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world."

Jesus died and was buried and on the third day rose, and our central Christian faith and hope is that when we die, or those we love die, we will be raised with him.

This is the center of what the church – of what St. Chrysostom’s, Chicago – has to say to the city and world.

When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, "The Teacher is here and is calling for you." And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to him, "Lord, come and see." Jesus began to weep.

A deeply human moment. Even tighter in the King James Version: Jesus wept. As the Nicene Creed emphasizes, Jesus was Son of God, and also human, born of a human mother. He was born and he would die. He ate meals and loved. And faced with the death of a friend, he wept.

So the Jews said, "See how he loved him!" But some of them said, "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?"

Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus

Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, "Take away the stone." Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, "Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days."

An extremely earthy real human comment.

Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?" So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, "Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me." When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!"

So may we each hear Jesus one day call us, to come out of death into life with him.

This was the great sign of the resurrection which was coming soon, when Jesus would die on the cross, and be buried, and on the third day rise.

The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go."

Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.

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The Bible text of the Gospel lesson is from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, and used by permission.