The Risen Jesus Gives Us Everything We Need

 

April 9, 2023 – The Sunday of the Resurrection: Easter Day, Year A

Acts 10:34-43; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-18

© 2023 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon is available here. Video of the entire service is available here with the sermon beginning around 22:50.

I want to tell you something that I have kept quiet for a long time—something that will probably embarrass my children: I am a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Now, I will admit that these days, when I watch reruns of the show, they don’t always hold up. Sometimes they’re too cheesy even for me. But I grew up loving nothing more than spending Monday nights on the couch with my father watching the crew of the Enterprise explore the galaxy in every new episode. 

On Monday night, March 26, 1990, the episode “Allegiance” debuted. In the first scene, Captain Piccard is kidnapped from his quarters, and an imposter takes his place. The real Piccard wakes up in a holding cell alongside a handful of other prisoners. As the episode progresses, the audience watches as the group of prisoners—each representing a different alien species—encounters one problem after another. One of them, a naturally aggressive species, is unable to eat the food that is provided by their captors. Another, belonging to a race of avowed pacifists, begins to think that he might be killed for food. Some in the group want to try to escape, while others refuse to cooperate. In one scenario after another, Piccard and his fellow captives get tantalizingly close to opening their cell door only to discover another barrier they have to get past.

Eventually, Piccard realizes that it’s all a game—that there’s no way to escape. Their captors have brought them there to test them—to observe how different species will handle one agonizing setback after another. Once he recognizes that they’re just rats in a maze, he refuses to participate, and the alien species conducting the research returns him to his vessel. 

I first saw that episode when I was nine years old. A rerun came on a few months ago, and I found myself appreciating it in a whole new way. Now, as a parent, priest, and spouse, I often feel like I’m in the midst of a sociological experiment, being tested to see how I will approach an unsolvable situation. Do you ever feel like that? Do you ever feel like life is just one big game in which you don’t quite have what you need in order to succeed? If you just had a little bit more time or a little bit more money, you could really get ahead. If you were just a little bit faster, a little bit smarter, a little bit luckier, then things would really start to go your way.

Sometimes life feels like one unsolvable problem after another. And religion, with its unrelenting invitation to be better, to try harder, to become holier has the power to make things even worse. On Easter Day, however, we gather together to hear the good news that, because Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead, there is no situation in front of us that God has not already solved, and, whenever we encounter one, we know that we have already been given everything we need.

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and found that the stone had been rolled away. She didn’t bother to look inside or check around the tomb. Instead, she turned and ran, certain that Jesus’ body had been stolen from its resting place. Peter and the other disciple raced to the tomb to see it for themselves. When they got there, they looked inside and explored every inch and found only the linen grave cloths lying on the ground. They knew that the tomb was empty, but still they did not understand that Jesus had been raised from the dead. So they returned home. 

Mary stayed there weeping, overcome with sorrow that not only had Jesus been killed but now his body had been stolen away, leaving her with grief piled upon grief. Even when Jesus came and spoke to her, she thought he was the gardener until he said her name. For us, it’s hard to appreciate just how impossible it was to understand what had happened. Before we came to church this morning, with the benefit of two thousand years of received testimony, we knew that Jesus had been raised, just as he had promised. But there was nothing that Mary and the disciples could do to put the pieces together on their own. Not even the empty tomb and the linen wrappings left behind were enough for Jesus’ closest friends to see and believe that he was alive—that he had triumphed over death exactly as he had told them he would.

The gap between us and what we need to solve all our problems might only be as thin as a strand of human hair, but, when it comes to fixing what is broken in our lives, it might as well be an infinite chasm that none of us can cross. Yet standing on the other side of that chasm is the risen Jesus, who sees us and calls out our name: “Mary!” As soon as she heard Jesus speak her name, Mary’s doubt and confusion, her grief and disbelief, evaporated. She had seen the Lord! And the risen Christ then sent her on to carry the good news of the resurrection to his disciples in order that their work of sharing that same good news might begin. All that was missing—everything that they needed, everything that hadn’t made sense—suddenly came clear. They couldn’t find it on their own, even when it was right in front of them, but when the risen Lord came and found them, he gave them everything they needed.

Our job isn’t to figure it all out on our own. Our job is simply to meet the risen Lord. In the decades that followed that Easter Day, the apostles didn’t travel around the Mediterranean teaching people that they should love their neighbors as themselves, giving them more impossible work to do. The world didn’t need Jesus to teach them that. That is a truth as ancient as civilization itself. Instead, the apostles took with them the good news that Jesus Christ had been raised from the dead. It is Christ’s victory over death that makes loving our neighbors the way God calls us to love them possible. It is the risen Christ who gives the world everything it needs to make God’s loving reign a reality.

I know that love is the answer. I know that selfless, sacrificial love is what it takes for the world to become the place of God’s dreams. I know that love is how poverty and hunger are put to death. Love is how violence and greed are finally defeated. Love is how hatred and bigotry and jealousy are wiped off the face of the earth. Love is how I become a better parent, a better priest, and a better spouse. But I also know that there is nothing I can do to solve those problems on my own. None of us can. Like rats in a maze, just when we think we’re getting ahead, human nature pops up again, and we’re back where we started. If it were up to us, we’d be doomed from the start. But the good news of Easter is that it isn’t up to us at all.

I don’t come to church because I want to be a better person, and I don’t raise my children in the faith because I hope that they will learn how to treat other people with respect. We come to church because this is the place where we proclaim that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. This is the place where death becomes life, where loss becomes gain, where love triumphs over all. And that alone has the power to change our lives. We are here to meet the one whom God raised from the dead. We are here to hear him speak our names. We are here to partake in his body and blood. We are here to see that God has already defeated everything that stands in the way of love taking charge in the world. We are here to let the risen Christ show us that he has already given us everything we need.

All We Can Do Is Pray

 

April 7, 2023 – Good Friday

Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Hebrews 10:16-25; John 18:1-19:42

© 2023 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon will be available soon. Video of the service can be seen here with the sermon beginning around 28:45.

In John’s gospel account, after telling his disciples that one of them would betray him and announcing that he would be taken from them, Jesus prays. In a red-letter edition of the Bible, except for words that introduce his prayer, all of John 17 is red. In that high-priestly prayer, Jesus prays for his disciples—that they would be protected and that they would be one. He prays for those throughout the world who will come to know God’s love because of the work that those disciples will carry out. And he prays that the glory of God will be revealed in what awaits him and that eternal life will be given to all who see and believe.

After that, John tells us, Jesus and his disciples set off across the Kidron valley to a place where there was a garden—a place that they knew well. John doesn’t tell us why the disciples met there frequently, but the synoptic tradition, which is reflected in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, helps us know that the garden was for them a place of prayer. In those accounts, instead of praying in the upper room before setting out, Jesus and the disciples go to the garden to pray. You might remember that, according to that tradition, each time Jesus comes and finds the disciples sleeping, he exhorts them to stay awake and pray so that they will have the strength to meet the days ahead of them. In the end, though, the outcome is the same, and we inevitably come to the arrest, torture, and death of our Lord supported only by prayer.

It turns out that the only thing we can do in the shadow of the cross is pray. Over the centuries, the church has struggled to figure out what sort of liturgical response is appropriate for Good Friday. In part, that struggle has arisen from a clear conviction in the western church that the Eucharist should not be celebrated on this day. Although the Divine Office of the eastern church has always been a part of their Good Friday observances, in the west, we have traditionally looked for other ways to remember Jesus’ death on the day when Jesus died on the cross.

In Jerusalem, as early as the fourth century, the faithful processed from the Garden of Gethsemane, where they had prayed through the night, into the city just as dawn was breaking. They read the story of Jesus’ trial at the governor’s headquarters. They stopped to pray at the column where Jesus had been scourged. After a break to return to their homes and rest for a while, they came to the church that had been built at Golgotha. There the relic of the true cross was laid upon the altar, and the people walked past it, kissing it or touching it with their hands or their foreheads. From noon until three o’clock in the afternoon, they stood in the courtyard outside the church and listened as all of the Old Testament prophecies and New Testament passages that alluded to Christ’s passion were read, stopping to pray in between each reading. Then, at three o’clock, the passion according to John was proclaimed, and shortly thereafter the service ended. 

Christians in communities and churches away from the holy city, unable to walk the Via Dolorosa themselves, developed their own ways of commemorating Jesus’ death. Over the centuries, as fragments of the true cross were distributed throughout the world, similar acts of devotion—kissing and touching and reverencing those fragments—became common. Eventually, even in places where no relic of the cross was kept, the faithful drew near to a substitute cross, offering their silent prayers of adoration to the instrument upon which salvation was wrought. But, long before the creeping to the cross became common practice, the act of hearing the story of Jesus’ death and responding in prayer was central to the church’s Good Friday worship.

In our service today, our focus remains on hearing the passion and responding in prayer. In our Good Friday liturgy, the Solemn Collects are the defining element of our worship. Once we have beheld the death of Jesus, we kneel together to pray for ourselves and for the whole world. Scholars believe that this particular form of prayer may have been composed as early as the second century, and they note that the biddings or calls to prayer, which the deacon will read, likely were written before the collects themselves. That suggests that, even before the church had decided what words to say in prayer, God’s people felt a clear and undeniable urge to pray after they had seen the cross of Christ.

Today, the only thing we know how to do is to pray. In the silence that follows each bidding, we will pray first for the church, then for the nations of the world, then for all who suffer, then for those who do not yet know the love of God, and finally for ourselves. The collects that follow each silence are designed to bring together our unspoken prayers and longings in a unified expression. In each case, because we have seen what is offered and accomplished on the cross, we bring to God in prayer the brokenness of the world and of our lives, asking God to draw into the divine life all that is in need of redemption and restoration. In the cross, we have seen God’s love poured out for the sake of the world. In faith we recognize that all our hopes must find their fulfillment there. 

On this day, there is nothing for us to produce or accomplish. All we can do is watch and pray. To see Christ die upon the cross—to hear him say, “It is finished,” and to watch him breathe his last—is to encounter more than a miscarriage of justice. Good Friday is not an inspirational moment, born of a tragedy, that demands from us a bold and decisive response. It is, in and of itself, the perfect and complete satisfaction of all that is amiss in the world. It is the means by which God reconciles and restores us to union with God and each other. The only possible response to what God has done is for us to enter into it through prayer.

Today, I urge you to bring the deepest needs of your life and of the world into the cross through prayer. Let your prayers be the channel through which everything around you that is broken comes into contact with God’s perfect love. Bring your doubts. Bring your sorrows. Bring your hardships into the cross in prayer. Bring your family. Bring this community. Bring this broken world into the cross in prayer. Bring everything that is affected by greed and violence and hatred and sin into the cross in prayer. See again what God has done, and use your prayers to enfold into Christ’s outstretched arms all that is in need of repair. Start with yourself. Feel that embrace. Allow your prayers to carry with you the burdens of your heart. Believe again that God’s love has no limits, and let that love draw you into the cross of Christ through prayer.

We Wash Because We Know

 

April 6, 2023 – Maundy Thursday

Exodus 12:1-14a; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-17; 31b-35 

© 2023 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video of the service can be seen here with the sermon beginning around 22:00.

I don’t mind washing someone else’s feet. I wouldn’t want to do it all day long, and there are some feet I’d rather not touch, but, in a highly symbolic setting like this one, in which the washing of feet is more of a liturgical gesture than an ablutionary act, it doesn’t bother me to pour water over someone’s feet, rub them tenderly with my hands, and then dry them carefully with a towel. It’s letting one of you wash my feet that’s the problem.

I’m guessing that the discomfort to which Peter gives voice is one that many of us feel: “You will never wash my feet.” There’s something about just sitting there passively, not doing anything to help out, and letting someone we know—a friend, a mentor, a parishioner, a priest—wash that part of our body which we likely do the least to take care of that makes us highly uncomfortable. 

 In the ancient world, there were servants for that. Or, in a modest home, the host would provide the necessary equipment for you to do it yourself. But the one who welcomed you to their table would never greet you at the door and then take off your sandals and start washing your feet. It’s the reversal of roles that makes us feel the way that Peter did. We can go to the nail salon and give our feet to someone who does it for a living, but, when the person we’re prepared to dine with is also the one who washes our feet, we don’t know what to do. It’s easier when you can throw a tip at it and keep it professional.

But, for Jesus, this was more than a symbolic gesture or a provocative act. It was a deep reflection of his identity and the identity into which he calls each one of us. Washing someone else’s feet and letting them wash ours, too, is about knowing who we are and the one to whom we belong.

Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father…During supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself…You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand…Do you know what I have done to you?…If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them…By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

This whole passage is about knowing and serving. Jesus knew that he belonged to God, that he had come from God, and that he was going to God, so he got up from the table and tied a towel around his waist and began to wash each of the disciples’ feet. John the evangelist wants us to recognize that it is because Jesus knew who he was that he stooped down to wash the disciples’ feet. But wouldn’t we expect someone who knows that they belong to God the way that Jesus does—someone who knows that he is even God among us—to sit back and wait on others to come and wash his feet? 

Instead, Jesus shows us that the more fully one belongs to God the more completely one must empty oneself out in the service of others. Traditionally, we might use the phrase, “Know your place,” to remind someone that we think they belong beneath us—that they shouldn’t stray above their appointed station—but Jesus shows us that true knowledge of our place in the economy of God, as beloved participants in the divine life, compels us to get down on the floor and wash one another’s feet. That isn’t because we are worthless to God but because what it means to be precious in God’s sight is to love others in humble service. 

Our God is the one who becomes a servant for the sake of the world. Our God is the one who loves the world by pouring Godself out in a complete and total self-offering. If that is true about our God, then it must become true about us as well. We do not wash each other’s feet because we are the least in the household of God. We do so because Jesus Christ has made us one with God and one with each other. And, as uncomfortable as it makes us, it also means that those who would serve us in Jesus’ name do so not in a socially threatening reversal of roles but as an expression of their own self-understanding as those who belong to God. So we must let them wash our feet, too.

We cannot become our truest selves until we learn that, at our core, we are servants of one another. And we stand in the way of other people becoming their truest, fullest selves when we refuse to allow them to love us back in that same way. These days, even in the fanciest houses, there is no one waiting at the door to wash your feet when you arrive. But this strange act of service, which we offer tonight, is a way to offer ourselves back into the service of God by recommitting ourselves to serving one another in God’s name. 

When we wash another’s feet and allow someone else to wash ours, we get a glimpse into the divine nature and see again that together we belong to a loving, serving, self-giving God. This is who we are because this is who God is, and tonight—together—we come to know that more fully.