More than Survivors (August 14 sermon)

(The readings for the day were from Genesis 45, where Joseph reveals his identity to his brothers; Romans 11 where Paul affirms God's mercy, and Matthew 15, where a Gentile woman teaches us about the kingdom of God.)

Many of you know Audrey, who's part of our staff team in the church.  Well, she and I just discovered that we both love a television series called "I Survived."  Each episode shows how real, everyday people found themselves in terrifying, near-death scenarios and came out on the other side.  Audrey and I went back and forth for a while this week about the girl who was attacked by a shark and the waitress who escaped an armed robbery (all the while Ray is standing by politely nodding) and we both agreed that the reason we like the show has nothing to do with the terrifying, near-death scenarios, but with the way the people tell their stories.

See, on "I Survived," the survivors are the ones who narrate events.  Three people take turns telling what happened to them from beginning to end, then reflect on why they think they made it out of their situation.  And while you're sitting there with your jaw on the floor, wondering what in the world you would do if your boat capsized in the middle of the ocean, or you were kidnapped by armed rebels and held for ransom, here is this person who it really happened to, sitting up straight, clean and dressed and not falling apart, recounting their trials honestly, in full emotional detail, and attempting to make some meaning of why they survived and what has happened since.  I'm absolutely sucked in to these stories, and I'm more than absolutely fascinated by what I take to be these individuals' unbelievable, unimaginable, sheer human resilience. 

Now we're all resilient.  You couldn’t get out of bed every day if you weren't.  Resilience describes how a person deals with change, challenge, disappointment, trauma, upset - how she or he is able to recover or return from a sentinel event.  I've heard resiliency described as "bounce-back," but the peppiness of that term doesn't honor the range of things that draw on our reservoirs of resilience.  Everyday disappointments and ailments require resilience, but when we think about people who are truly resilient, we imagine children who suffer trauma and loss and continue to hope and love - or who are bullied, but continue to try and to study and to dream.  We imagine people who are diagnosed with diseases and face treatments that are painful and mysterious and that reorganize one's whole life and identity.  For the rest of my life, when I hear the word "resilient," I will think of families I knew as a hospital chaplain who sped into the ER at three-AM, sat in a cubicle clutching a cup of coffee, and walked away a few hours later, bereft of a person who was alive when they woke up that morning.  They were actually able to physically stand, say good-bye to us, and to go home.  You can add any number of things to the list - but we all have an idea, we have all lived the kind of resilience that is possible at the extremes of human experience. 

In fact, we've got an example of it right in front of us this morning: Joseph shows greater resilience than any other person we've met in Genesis this summer.  Everything starts out okay for the poor guy - better than okay!  He's Jacob's favorite son … but dad doesn't do a great job of hiding it.  To make matters worse, Joseph is a bit oblivious.  He dreams his whole family will bow down to him one day, and instead of writing this interesting little item down in his papyrus diary, he opens up his mouth and lets everybody in on the secret.  His older, stronger, even less appropriate brothers first throw him in a pit, then get enterprising and decide to sell him as a slave.  Later on, when they're feeling remorseful, they remember that he pleaded in anguish to be set free and return home with them. 

But Joseph is resilient!  He takes in the reality of what's happened to him, he adjusts, and he moves forward.  He does so well and is so resourceful and responsible that he rises to a place of prominence in his master's household and gains admiration and esteem.  Yet with all that positive attention comes the wrong kind of attention.  Joseph's accused of a crime he didn't commit and ends up in the Egyptian slave prison we heard about last week.  From low to high to lower.

While he's in prison, though, Joseph repeats the pattern of resilience and recalibration that served him so well as a slave, and again rises to a place of responsibility and respect.  He interprets the dream of Pharaoh's cupbearer, and when that man goes back to the palace, he recommends Joseph to the ruler.  Pharaoh himself is so pleased with Joseph that he appoints him "steward" of all of Egypt, responsible for every human being, every rock, every stalk of grain that Pharaoh oversees.  The scene where Pharaoh restores Joseph, when he gives him back the dignity that people have been trying to rob him of his whole life, is beautiful - it's like Cinderella sliding her foot into a glass slipper: Pharaoh covers Joseph in fine garments, heaps gold chains around his neck, and puts him in the chariot of his second-in-command.  He makes everybody take a knee in front of Joseph.  Resilient Joseph is, literally, rehabilitated.

But to what end?  Joseph has withstood hardship that rivals anything we can imagine: betrayal, abandonment, forced labor, libel, imprisonment.  And now it looks like he's gotten back more than he ever had. But in truth, there's still something out there, a daily stressor siphoning resources out of Joseph's resilience reservoir, demanding that he respond, adapt, assimilate every hour of his life.  Think about this: Joseph was put in the chariot of Pharaoh's second-in-command.  So what happened to the other guy?  Where's the chariot's former occupant?  Joseph met the cupbearer in slave prison, where that man was chucked at the whim of an all-powerful, capricious ruler.  Joseph's security depends on the will of a person who could change his mind in an instant, and Joseph's life up until this point hasn't shown him that bosses - or brothers - can be trusted.  Now Joseph has to be resilient because he has to withstand living in constant fear.  He has to be able to function - and function well - knowing that the rug can be pulled out from under him at any moment. 

This is where resilience needs a boost.  Resilience is the power of survival, and survival is basic.  Before anything can get better for you, you've got to get through it.  You have to survive.  The theological importance of resilience can't be underestimated: it's part of creation, it's part of sustenance - of ongoing life; it's part of persistence and endurance, and it's a gift.  But we're created, sustained, we persist and endure because we are made for redemption.  That is our end.  Resilience is how we survive, but redemption is how we thrive, and we are meant to thrive. 

Thriving is hard, though, because in our lives we learn all the same lessons that Joseph does.  We learn that people can hurt us.  We learn that people who were here today can be gone tomorrow.  We learn that nature and commerce and our own bodies can turn on us in a second.  And if we look to things that are shifting - to things that are subject to change, like Pharaoh's mind - we learn to live like we're always looking over our shoulders; like we are always waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Be it others' approval, be it outward signs of success, be it the permanence of the structures and institutions around us, if we place all of our trust in those things, it will take every bit of our resilience just to  pray that they will still be there tomorrow. 

What makes the difference then?  How do you make the leap of faith from resilience to redemption, from surviving to thriving?  How do you go from living life cautiously, with your nails dug in - especially if you've been hurt - to living life redemptively, with your hands wide open - especially if you've been hurt?

I get a glimpse of that difference when I see young children hope and love as though they can’t help it in the face of disappointment.  Or when I would see or hear from those families in the hospital about how their lives were unfolding in the wake of grief.  I glimpse the difference in  people here who share stories of divorce or illness, or challenges with family and employment and trust gone awry.  In these instances the difference is in meaning-making.  It's in being able to perceive how God may be moving and creating not only in resilience but in the aftermath of everything that requires us to be resilient.  And meaning-making is more than a matter of interpretation - it's part of how God puts something new into the world.  The people who talk about the terrifying things that have happened to them on the television show "I Survived" all have something to say about this, from having a very vague notion that they’re alive because there is something left for them to do, to having new relationships, new insights, a new sense of purpose or mission or new ability to help others that wasn't there before.  In the face of challenges, they have been resilient but their eyes have been open to all of the points of light piercing the darkness and pulling life together again in bright new constellations.  By the grace of God they have perceived a new story being told and have wandered into it by faith, with trust. 

And when this happens, something changes.  When we ask God for the strength to see new possibilities where doors were closed, to form new relationships where others were broken, to cultivate different abilities when limitations set in, we change, the world changes, and that is redemptive.  When a person asks God to make meaning where there was once chaos, that is the difference between hanging on - survival alone - and between a world reborn - thriving.  That is us partnering with God to turn the stuff of our lives into the stuff of miracles.  That is God's healing, renewing work alive today as it was in the beginning. 

Which is why we don't have to totally despair about Joseph.  Because however fearful he may be, however hampered by past hurt and present limitation, he has started this process of meaning-making.   There’s a famine in the land, and today Joseph’s brothers have come to Egypt for food.  They have no idea that the man in front of them is the boy that they discarded, and Joseph has a choice.  He can survive, and have nothing to do with them.  He can even be generous and send them away with food, but never reveal who he is.  Nobody would judge him for that.  Instead, he perceives an opportunity.  He probes them to find out if they’re sorry, to find out how they are caring for his father and other brother, and in the end, Joseph cannot help but choose reconciliation and create a space of redemption in the world around him that never existed before.  When he reveals himself, his brothers try to apologize to him, but he shoots for the sky, way beyond their single, fateful misdeed to its ultimate outcome: a relationship of affection that never existed between him and them, a supply of food for a hungry nation, lives preserved and renewed out of events that could have been just "hardships." Later on, he explains it like this: "even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good."

The difference between resiliency alone and redemption born of resiliency is a matter of trust and freedom and openness.  It’s a matter of praying the one prayer that this woman utters in our Gospel today, “Lord, help me,” and believing that God is flooding you and me and all the earth with redemptive possibility even when we can’t see it.  It’s resurrection in the fullest sense of the word: coming back to life each day, and breaking life open with the astounding possibility of each day.  And it happens because the same God who gives us the strength to survive gives us the power to thrive. 

 

Sermon preached by the Reverend Danielle Thompson at St. Chrysostom's Episcopal Church in Chicago, IL on Sunday, August 14, 2011.

Looking ahead to the Third Sunday in Easter: Luke 24:13-35

That very day, the first day of the week,

The first Easter Day

two of the disciples

What you and I are – disciples, followers of Jesus.

were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him.

It is characteristic of these beautiful stories of the visible presence of the risen Jesus, that the disciples do not at first recognize him. The writers seem to be saying, it is really him, it is Jesus – however he is (to use the great word of Paul) changed.

And he said to them, "What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?" They stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas,

It is not surprising we do not recognize the name, because there was a wider group of disciples of Jesus beyond the original twelve – a wider group of men and women.

That wider group includes all those who have followed Jesus as disciples down through the centuries. And includes you and me today.

answered him, "Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?" He asked them, "What things?" They replied, "The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him."

Then (Jesus) said to them, "Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?"

“Was it not necessary” – characteristic of the Gospels to say that Jesus “must” do what he did. I believe the “must” – what was necessary – was that Jesus face what came in self-giving love, not running away, taking on suffering inflicted on him.

Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.

Jesus had a profound sense that in his ministry of self-giving love he was fulfilling all that had been spoken and written about who God is, and who the Messiah was to be, and what faith means, in the Hebrew Bible.

As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, "Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over."

For me these simple words “stay with us” are among the most beautiful in the New Testament. They were not sure who this was, but asked him to stay with them. So we ask the risen Lord, who we cannot see, to stay close to us.

So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.

This was evening on Sunday, the first Easter, and on the evening of the Thursday before he had done exactly the same thing – he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them” – and it was when he did it again that they recognized him.

Just so in the Gospel on Easter Day (John 20:1-18), when Jesus was present with Mary Magdalene, it was when he spoke her name, when he said simply “Mary” as he had so often before, that she recognized him.

They said to each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?"

I believe the risen Christ draws near to us when we read the Gospels, when we read the Bible. I believe God the Holy Spirit – dwelling within us – lights up passages and phrases and images in the story as we read it. Not always, not everything, but we should pay attention to phrases or images that catch our attention.

That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. They were saying, "The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!" Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

Risen Jesus, be known to us in the breaking of the bread.

(Raymond Webster)

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)

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[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 Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday

Liturgy of the Palms: Matthew 21:1-11; At the Eucharist: Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 31:9-16; Philippians 2:5-11; Matthew 27:11-54

If you happened to jog through Lincoln Park earlier in the week, you would have seen something a little out-of-the-ordinary – or out of time, at least.  Canons erupting, men in porkpie hats, women in hoop skirts?  In April, 150 years ago, the American Civil War began, so right behind the Chicago History Museum up here, and all over the country, groups of re-enactors got together to pitch tents, drink chicory coffee, and, most importantly, to stage mock battles.  You might wonder why anybody would do this – why people would spend their free time dressing up in old-fashioned clothing, eating hard-tack, and reliving an unhappy and tragic event, like a battle.  Well, the Tribune reported the words of one re-enactor, who insisted that we, as a country, “have lost sight of what the Civil War was all about … great honor, courage, bravery ….”  He and his friends re-enact because, again, in his words, “[The Civil War is] a part of American history and we have to keep that alive.” 

The re-enactors kind of gave me a jolt this week, not because they were discharging firearms, but because their actions and ours seem to eerily coincide.  More than any other time in the year, Holy Week is when we re-enact, explicitly, the days leading up to Jesus’ death.  And if you want drama, forget Gettysburg – today we’ve got the highs of the liturgy of the palms and the lows of the passion narrative.  We’ve got Jesus’ arrest, trial, and crucifixion, and for the next six days we’ll keep replaying all of the things that happened to him in the last week of his life: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and all the way through Thursday when he’ll have one final meal with his friends, and Friday when Jesus will die.  We’ll be there for all it.

We’re in good company, too, with all of this re-enacting.  It’s exactly what Jesus is doing when we see him today, riding into Jerusalem on a little colt.  The tip-off is in the hollers of the crowd as they throw their jackets and some tree branches on the road in front of him.  Hosanna to the Son of David!  Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!  This is a psalm the people are shouting, and it’s not just any old psalm.  It’s Psalm 118, which is the last part of the Hallel, a group of psalms that Jewish people in Jesus’ time and Jewish people to this day say during major festivals like Passover.  Jesus is actually enacting the story that happens in the psalm: a new king arrives at the temple and is greeted by the people inside with eagerness and desire, because they want to be saved.  Their prayers are answered when the king strides through the temple gate, walking in step with Jesus years later as he ambles into town on the back of a donkey. 

It goes even further than this, though.  Jesus has a reason to be in Jerusalem.  He’s there to confront the powers that oppose him, and to preach God’s kingdom.  But something else happens, right?  Passover.  Jesus is in Jerusalem for Passover, to keep the feast, just as he’s always done.  The Last Supper, the final meal with his friends, the thing that we re-enact on Maundy Thursday, is a Passover meal, with Jesus presiding.  And Passover is the great re-enactment of the defining moment in the history of Israel, the passage from bondage to liberation that lies at the center of who God is for the Jewish people.  Jesus and his friends would have spent the night recalling the story of the Exodus, with this intention, quoted from later Passover texts: “In every generation let each person look on himself as if he came forth from Egypt.  It was not only our ancestors that [God] redeemed, but us as well did he redeem along with them.”  So Jesus falls in line with time as he enters Jerusalem; he falls in line with time as he observes Passover – and the preacher Barbara Brown Taylor notes that he falls in line with time as he and his friends sing at the end of their seder meal.  Because they must have sung the same Hallel, the song Jewish people sing at festivals, the song that the crowd shouted at Jesus as he approached the city gates on Palm Sunday. 

So there are layers and layers of memory going on here, especially when you get to us.  You have the Hallel, and Jesus entering into Jerusalem as the king does in the Psalm, as well as Jesus singing the Hallel at the end of the Passover meal.  And you have the Passover itself, the great festival of remembering that Jesus and his friends were commanded to keep, where Jesus told the story of deliverance from slavery right when he was preparing to deliver us from sin, to be our Passover.  Then you have Jesus’ own command, which you’ve heard before, and which you’re going to hear again in six or seven minutes: “do this for the remembrance of me.”  And so not only during Holy Week, but every week we get wrapped up in this repeating circle of events, this repeating cycle of storytelling, these repetitious actions that we believe make a difference for how we live and how we live with God. 

What kind of a difference, though?  How is our re-enacting anything more than following a command?  Or keeping a family tradition, or acknowledging a precedent?  How is what we do different than what the Civil War re-enactors are doing as they try to raise awareness about American History?  Are we just waving palms around in order to get a feel for what a palm was like in the first century?  Are we just bringing the crucifixion to the front of our minds so we can be mentally prepared for Easter? 

The re-enactors may have more to teach us than we think.  Because if you’ve ever known a Civil War re-enactor, you know that the guy I quoted from the Tribune wasn’t telling the whole truth.  Sure, they want to preserve battlefields and build historical consciousness.  But that’s not why you camp out in costume in a city park.  You camp out in costume because you want to be there.  Meaning, you want to be living in April, 1861, if only for a day.  You want to physically participate in something you otherwise have no access to.  Civil War re-enactors have a Passion for something that didn’t happen to them.  But we have a Passion for something that did happen to us, and that keeps happening to us.  In Jesus, as participants – as sharers – in his body, we passed through the sea; in Jesus we ride into the city while the people who would later kill us sing our praises; we keep the feast of bread and wine where the whole history of God’s creation is prayed out loud, again and again; and in Jesus we suffer, and we die … and then we discover that something else is more powerful than suffering.  Something is more powerful than death.  Just under the surface of everything, just waiting to overtake everything in any given instance is the power of resurrection, the power of new life that is Easter’s answer to Holy Week.  The power of new life that is God’s answer to everything that wants to kill us.  The defining moment in our ongoing history, that we re-enact again and again and again, just by being alive is this: resurrection, resurrection, resurrection – year after year after year, minute after minute, after minute. 

This week, as we re-enact the events leading up to Jesus’ death, as we actively remember the highs and lows of his last week in Jerusalem, we’ll find ourselves falling in line with time in a way we don’t usually experience.  What you’ll be participating in is Jesus’ own life; what you stand to discover is your own life; and the thing that’s yours to claim, is new life: the power of God living in you, now and always.    

Sermon preached by the Reverend Danielle Thompson on Sunday, April 17 at St. Chrysostom's Episcopal Church in Chicago, IL at 8:00 AM and 11:00 AM.

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.