The Tomb is Empty!

John 20:1-20

“I have seen the Lord!”  --John 20:18

As we have journeyed through another Holy Week, we have sat at table with Jesus and his disciples in the upper room and stood beneath the cross of Jesus. We have witnessed our Lord’s sorrow, suffering, and death.  We have heard the cry of the One who was forsaken for the sake of the forsaken; for all of us who have ever been touched by the brokenness, evil and mortality of the human condition.  And then…

And then?

We come to an empty tomb.

What will you see when you look into the empty tomb on Easter morning?

Mary Magdalene looked and saw insult added to injury.  First her Teacher had been crucified unmercifully and now it seemed like someone had stolen the body.  What must she have been feeling?  Shock?  Anger?  Dismay?

Peter goes into the tomb and sees the linen wrappings lying there and he simply sees what his eyes see.  We don’t know what he felt or thought or how he reacted.  But, later that day, he is with the other disciples locked behind closed doors.  Afraid.  Paralyzed. Uncertain.

The Beloved Disciple goes into the tomb, sees the same thing Peter did, but he believes.  But what, exactly, does he believe?  Does he believe Mary’s report that the body has been stolen or does he believe something more is going on?  John tells us none of them fully understand what has happened.  Bewilderment.  Puzzlement.  Curiosity.

The tomb is empty.  What do you see?

Like these disciples, we can see a lot of different things when we look into the empty tomb on Easter.  What we see depends a lot on what we bring with us as we look in and see the folded grave clothes.  Our vision can be shaped…  and clouded… by our own shock, fear, and bewilderment, our life experiences and expectations, what we have been taught and the values we carry.  Some try to explain it away.  Others just take it for what it is and leave it at that.   Still others believe, or at least want to.

But what does it take to look into the empty tomb and see resurrection and new life?  What does it take to behold something which truly transforms and changes our lives and how we live them?   What is it that opens our eyes and moves us to shout with Mary and the other disciples “We have seen the Lord!” to whoever we meet?

Well, with Mary…  it was the sound of her name on her Teacher’s lips.

With Peter and the Beloved disciple it was a word of peace spoken in the upper room.

Like Mary, Peter and the Beloved Disciple, it is ultimately Jesus himself who opens our eyes.  The Word made flesh who still dwells among us through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit breaks through with a word of peace or the sound of our own name.  The Word breaks through in the scriptures or a sermon, or a bible study, or the witness of a disciple or the compassion of a friend or the kindness of a stranger.  Easter happens whenever we are touched with hope in the midst of despair, light in the midst of darkness or life in the midst of death.

The cross assures us that God is with us even in the depths of suffering, sorrow and death.  The empty tomb guarantees that suffering and sorrow and death will never have the last word.

And that Good News truly changes everything!

Blessed Easter,

Bishop Mike.

Thanks for reading!

Gates of the Forsaken

Mark 11-15

 “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?”  --Mark 15:34

On Sunday, the Christian world once again begins our journey down the Via Dolorosa, Latin for “The Way of Sorrows” or the “Way of Suffering.”  For eight days, we accompany Jesus of Nazareth from the gates of Jerusalem, through the gates of hell and on through the broken gates of death to resurrection.   The journey begins and ends in celebration and rejoicing, but in between, Jesus endures challenges from without and within, evades the cunning traps of religious leaders, experiences the betrayal of friends, the cruelty of power, the disdain of the masses, the agony of torture and a slow and horribly painful death.   In the end, after all that he has faced, he cries out the haunting first lines of Psalm 22, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabchthani?” which means, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”    He cries out the words of every human being who has ever experienced challenges from without and from within, traps, betrayals, cruelty, disdain, agony, torture or painful death.  He cries out the words of humankind held in bondage by the brokenness, evil and mortality of the human condition.

In that moment, in that moment, I believe God, the great Creator of the vastness of the universe, identified most fully and completely with all God’s human children.  With you.  With me.  With your neighbor next door and on the other side of the world.  And that saves us.  Makes us whole.  Frees us for eternity and for right now.

Paul puts it this way in Romans 8,  “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  (vs. 38-39)

It is a promise and a guarantee that God stands with us, steadfast, unshaking, unwavering, in the darkest and most awful moments of our lives…  even and especially when we feel totally and completely forsaken by everyone and everything -- even God.  Oh, and also in all those hard or even sort-of irritating times short of that. 

That’s the wonderful, mysterious paradox of the cross.  That’s the wonderful, mysterious power that allows us to transcend all the crap the world throws at us and gives us the capacity to love and the will to act with compassion, mercy and forgiveness.

If we simply skip from the gates of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday to the broken gates of the empty tomb on Easter Sunday, I am afraid it’s easy to miss the point and the passion and the power of the whole week.  To understand, we need to go through the gates of hell with Jesus…  or more accurately, we need to hear, once again, that he willingly goes through the gates of hell with us. 

I encourage you not to skip the observance of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday this Holy Week.  Walk the Way of the Cross.  Feel the cry of the One who was forsaken for the sake of the world in the depths of your soul…  and then…

Well, we’ll talk about that next week.

Peace,

Bishop Mike

Thank-you for reading.   Blessed Holy Week.

Daylight Savings Time (And other bright ideas)

John 3:14-21

[Jesus said,] “…those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”  John 3:21

Being a “night person” I’ve always liked the idea of daylight savings time.  Shifting the lengthening sunlight from the morning hours (when I’d rather be sleeping) to the evening (when I am much more awake) works for me.  Though “daylight savings time” as we know it didn’t officially start until Germany enacted it in 1916, the idea of shifting the clocks to correspond more closely to the solar day has been around at least since Roman times.  The idea was to save energy and reduce the need for artificial light.  Because humans are mostly diurnal, we tend to get more done with the lights on. 

Light and darkness have been used as metaphors for good and evil probably since the dawn of time.  The Gospel of John is no exception.  In this week’s text, John’s Jesus uses darkness and light to refer to how people respond to the love of God reflected in and through the Son.  Like light and darkness divide the day and night, so belief and unbelief separate those who live in the light of God’s love and those who do not.   The light of God’s love is a constant, it’s what we do with it and how we experience it that varies.  Our belief does not save us, God does, but if we chose to stay in the dark God’s healing light won’t have much of an impact on our lives.  It’s not our decision that saves us, God does, but to live in the light of that gracious Gift is what God intends for us.  As Ephesians says, “For we are what God has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”  (2:10) Luther’s Small Catechism puts it this way, “I believe that by my own understanding or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him, but instead the Holy Spirit has called me through the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, made me holy and kept me in the true faith…”  (Apostles’ Creed, Article 3).

The cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ is like God’s “daylight savings plan.”   The life, death and resurrection of the Christ adjusts the light so that we can do what God created us to do and to be in a world so often shrouded by the darkness of sin, evil and death.  The question each of us must answer is not “what must I do to be saved?” but “what do I do now that I am?”   Or…  “How do I live now that the lights are on?”

Jesus answers that question too.  In the light of God’s great love for us and for the whole world, he teaches us to reflect that love for one another, for our neighbors and for the whole world.  In service and witness, in lives of gratitude and praise, in acts of forgiveness, mercy and compassion, we radiate with the light that shines in the darkness.  In us, and in our deeds, as Jesus says, God’s light is seen more clearly, and God’s love is known more fully.  Because, after all, we get more work done with the lights on!

Peace,

Bishop Mike

Thanks, as always, for reading!  (Don’t forget to “spring forward” on Saturday night…)

The Wisdom of the Cross

1 Corinthians 1:18-25

The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.  –1 Corinthians 1:18

On Thursday morning, it was just me and the driver in the shuttle from the airport.  The driver was in a talkative mood.  He started by saying that he didn’t like smart phones very much because they distracted people - - particularly the drivers he needed to negotiate around in his work.  He said he had dropped cable, saved a lot of money and bought an old fashioned antenna.  “I’ve stopped watching the news.”  He told me.  Then, he began to talk about his grandfather, who “told me the truth and the difference between right and wrong when he was a boy.”  And then about his mother who, at 89, still helped him make sense of his life and the world.  We finished our ride with a discussion about the importance of family and not letting your work consume you.  There was a lot of wisdom packed into that short ten minute drive.  Wisdom about what, in Lutheran circles, we would call “vocation.”  His concerns grew out of his understanding of what it takes to live a meaningful life in what can be a challenging world.  He didn’t know what I did for a living until the very end of the conversation.  I was just another traveller who happened to jump on his shuttle.  But, when he heard that I was a pastor, he told me I had a hard job, “convincing people who don’t always listen about the ways of God.”

I share this encounter because it reminded me that there are people all around us all the time who are trying to make sense of the worlds we inhabit.  They are asking deep questions of meaning, and searching for signs of hope and hopefulness in a world often bereft of both.  As we meet these neighbors, how, I wonder,  can the power of the cross speak to these searchers in a way that can be heard and experienced?  But maybe that’s the wrong question to ask.  It’s backwards.  It assumes we have the wisdom to impart when, in fact, maybe we are the ones who need to hear God speaking wisdom through those we encounter, especially from those who the world might call “the least of these.”   As Paul says a few verses later,  “But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.”  (1 Corinthians 1:27-29). 

In truth, we all wrestle with the questions of vocation and meaning the shuttle driver was asking.  The saving power of the cross is the Good News that God stands with us in the midst of the questions, the struggles and our attempts to make sense of an often senseless world.  Perhaps, by listening more for the voice of God in those we meet, out there, in the world, we can, together, more fully experience the power of God at work between us.  Perhaps, as we ride together, we can come to know that the wisdom of the cross can and does give life its meaning and grounds for hope.

Peace,

Bishop Mike

Thank-you for reading.