Gum Flappin' and Jaw Bonin'

Roman 7: 15-20 and Selected Scripture
Father’s Day 2015

When our kids were younger, we had a cartoon from the New Yorker called “Bad Mom Cards” attached to our refrigerator door. The artist, Roz Chast, obviously a mom, captured the reality of what it means to be a mom in today’s world. Bad Mom Card # 4 for instance is Esther J. who, “ran out of orange juice one morning and served kids orange soda instead.” Or how about Suzie M. who, “Let kid play two hours at Nintendo just to get him out of her hair.” Then there’s Dawn K. who “when daughter left stuffed bear in Grand Union, waited until next day to retrieve it.” Maybe you’re like Lucy L. who “told friend ‘funny’ story about kid and had a laugh at kid’s expense.” Bad Mom #89, Becky O., “while on the phone, told child to shut the h. up, or she would brain her.” You’ve never done that, have you?

Peggy promptly stuck that on our refrigerator when she found it and has passed it on to many other discouraged moms. For in those cards we recognize ourselves and laugh (or cringe) as they expose the paradoxes of parenting. When I became a father I went through a transformation. With the arrival of each of my two children there emerged from within me this person I had never met, a person whom I liked very much—this loving, caring, nurturing, patient man. And I watched him, amazed.
There was another transformation that occurred. Another person who was not as attractive, who was frazzled and angry and impatient. And I was in amazement as I watched him. It was a sort of a Jekyll and Hyde split, a creature who came out of me who was wonderful, and a creature who I didn’t know. Now that my kids are young adults living at home, it’s a different kind of struggle—them reverting back to being and having to be reminded to pick up after themselves and we reverting back to bossy parents. But the struggle is still real.

In Robert Louis Stevenson’s book, Jekyll and Hyde, he starts his tale with this opening: “I stood already committed to the profound duplicity of life, that humankind is not truly one but two. And that those polar twins should be continuously struggling. One of these polar twins, who was the Mr. Hyde character, bore the stamp of the lower elements in my soul.”
I found that there was this kind of polarity in being a parent. In the transformation, a struggle emerged. For you it might be something other than motherhood or fatherhood that brings this struggle to the forefront of your life. It might be your job, an illness, a relationship, or stress that exposes the two people who live within you. I could have just as easily talked about the paradox of marriage, or of teaching, or of being a boss.
Sheila Kissinger, a social anthropologist, talks about what happens to women in particular when they become parents. She writes in her book, Ourselves as Mothers:

Becoming a mother is a biological process, but it is also a social transformation, and one of the most dramatic and far-reaching that a woman may experience. The home is supposed to be a haven of love and good feelings. Thus it comes as a great disappointment to many women that it proves not to be so for them; for it is also a place where the ugliest and most destructive emotions are experienced, where there is disturbing interpersonal conflict and inside four walls these raw feelings are concentrated and mixed together as if in a pressure cooker. She hates what she has become. Happy as a woman may be to have a baby, and although she may enjoy being a mother, she must now pay the price of motherhood—the total and virtual annihilation of self.

We have a family story that on one Mother’s Day I was looking for a comb and couldn’t find any. I usually kept a stash in the bathroom. Anna, being a teenager at the time, would often hijack them and they would pile up in her room. So I marched into her room and said accusingly, “Anna, do you have my combs?” She became very indignant. “Why do you always think I have your stupid combs and no I don’t have any.” There happened to be some clothes on the floor covered by a wet towel. I picked up the towel and lo and behold, there was a comb under it.” I, of course, was very understanding and solicitous. No, I said, “I knew you’d have it! You always take my stuff without asking and blah, blah, blah.” Of course, the poor kid was devastated. I walked out of Anna’s room and Peggy had heard the whole thing. She exclaimed, “Norman, it’s Mother’s Day!” And I said, “Mother, schmother. I want my comb.” So now whenever someone is frustrated or about to pitch a fit we say, “Mother, schmother.”

Lest you think you are alone in this struggle, the apostle Paul describes this internal struggle of the good and evil in us. “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate to do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good.” In other words, I need restrictions to keep my behavior in line. “As it is,” Paul continues, “it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.”

I think Paul might have been a parent or at least he was very much in tune with human nature. He hits the nail on the head. There is that constant struggle within me where a good person responds to my children, and then this creature I don’t know comes out.

In Robert Louis Stevenson’s work, Jekyll and Hyde, unfortunately, the darkness of Mr. Hyde’s character overshadows the goodness of Dr. Jekyll. But let’s look at the Jekyll character. He was a good person. The novel says he was a well-respected physician, surrounded by good friends who hated to leave his dinner parties because he was so good to be around.
When I became a father, I found a Jekyll inside of me. For the first time there was a person in my life who I loved more than I loved myself. Before I had kids, something I struggled with, and still do—as we all do–were my self-interested tendencies. My life went on my schedule. I did what I wanted, and I did it when I wanted.

Now all of a sudden there was this other person in my life, and I didn’t want to be selfish anymore. Even though I was hungry, I fed him breakfast first (even before I had my coffee, if you can believe it!). Even when I was tired, I was more concerned about his sleep. I was doing unselfish things because I wanted to.

I was becoming a more patient and kind, calm, reasonable, generous, thoughtful, loving person. And I can honestly say the same was true of Peggy. I thought, “I like this. This is a good thing, this person who is emerging.” I learned to love being a dad.

There is another person who comes out sometimes when I am a parent whom I don’t know, and I want to say, “Who is he? What does he want? How can I make him go away?” I remember the first time Nathan got a cold. He would sleep half-an-hour then be up crying for forty-five minutes. Then we’d get him down and half-an-hour later he’d be up again. We tried a hot vaporizer and a cold vaporizer. We tried saline drops for his nose. We tried having him sleep on his stomach or propping up his head on an extra pillow, but nothing worked. During the day, of course, he was all sweetness and light, but at night he turned into the demon child.
On the third night about 3 a.m., Peggy got up with him and he wouldn’t settle down. I finally got out of bed and walked into him room to find the overhead light on, Nathan standing up in his crib wailing and Peggy flat out on the bedroom floor. We tried to brainstorm—what were we gonna do. If she took him at night, I’d take him in the morning and let her sleep in. All the while Nathan was just howling away, until I snapped and yelled, “Shutup.” To which Nathan promptly complied because he was so startled. But then he was so frightened that he started wailing again with even more intensity.

On those days I felt like I was becoming an impatient, frazzled, rude, angry, frustrated person; and I was splitting into two people. Not all parents are like that. I know moms and dads who seem to have an endless supply of patience and kindness for their kids. I admire them. I don’t like them, but I admire them. That is not me.

I used to think that my kids were doing this to me, or maybe it was somebody else’s fault. Maybe if I read the right book I’d get a handle on this. But God was using being a parent to hold a mirror up to show me these two people who lived inside of me, to remind me that this Hyde character had been there all along. Maybe you’re like me and you look at these two faces in the mirror and ask: “What do I do with these two people?”

Let me walk you through four steps that have helped me, and are currently helping me deal with these two people who live inside of me—inside of all of us. As God held up the mirror and I looked at this wonderful Jekyll and this hideous Hyde, the first thing that happened is that it shattered my illusions.

We like to think we’re good people. We read the news online. We listen to “All Things Considered” on the way home from work. We see how awful some parents can be to their children. We’re not like those people. But for me, after becoming a parent, I can no longer hold unequivocally to that truth. I have never hit, or abused, or belittled my children, as I’m sure is true of you. But at times we are all aware that there can be some pretty nasty stuff in us that if unchecked by the grace of God we could do some hurtful things. We would like to say, “Oh, it’s not that bad. All parents do it.” While that may be true, not all parents want to do it. We want to be different.

I’m sure there are times that if we heard ourselves on a tape recorder we would be quite chagrined. What might we hear? “I’m busy. You’re bothering me. What I’m doing is more impor¬tant and I wish you would leave me alone.” You know what I’m talking about. Moments like that are a mirror to me. I saw an easily irritated and annoyed person and I didn’t want that person in my life.

A good person does not unleash anger on a defenseless child. If you come over to my house and have a glass of milk; if you spill your milk I won’t yell at you. But we do with our children. We need to learn to say we’re sorry. It’s a very humbling and healthy thing to look your child in the eyes and say, “I’m sorry. I messed up. Will you please forgive me?” How will they otherwise ever to learn forgiveness or the need to say I’m sorry, if mom and dad can’t do it? And I also am reminded that while I can never presume on God’s forgiveness, it is always there. I am reminded that God is interested in redeeming that Hyde-like creature and changing him.

So, after our illusions are shattered, then what? The next step is that I am reminded how much I need God. Have you ever heard your kids talk to each other using the same tone of voice or unkind expressions that you recognize as your own? I remember how embarrassed my mother was when my little sister started saying, “Dammit all.” That kind of stuff drives me to God: “Oh Lord, fix me. Make me less angry, less critical, less impatient. Make me more like you, because I like the results when I inflict kindness on my family. I like what it does to their souls when I’m like you.” There are some days when I say to myself, “Lord, I’m doing pretty good today so far. I haven’t gotten angry or impatient, I haven’t committed any sins that I know of, but in a few minutes I’m going to get out of bed and I’ll need your help.” It isn’t resolve I need. It’s the power of God.

When I saw how much I needed God, a third thing happened: I saw God; I began to experience God more fully. Robert Lewis Stevenson says that the Hyde character in his book bore the stamp of the lower element of his soul. Jekyll, on the other hand, bore the stamp of God. This person coming out of me, this person I saw, reflected who God was. Scripture is loaded with parenting images of God. And as I loved my children with this new, wonderful, overwhelming love—I realized that’s how God loves me.

There’s a passage in Isaiah that says, “As a mother nurses her newborn at her breast, so God is like that with you.” God could never forget you. It goes on to say that as a mother comforts her child, so God will comfort you. As I love my children in all the stages of their lives, I am getting a glimpse of how God loves me. I can honestly say, that I had not known God’s love to the depth that I know it today until I had my children.
The last step on my journey, and it is a continuing one, is this: Because my illusions have been shattered, when I realize how much I need God, and I have seen God’s face, I can now relearn who God is.

My kids have always connected me with God in ways I would never otherwise know. When they were young they helped me appreciate things I had forgotten: their wide-eyed wonder at this marvelous world we live in; their freedom to just laugh their guts out for no obvious reason; their easy acceptance of those who are different—reminded me of God’s marvelous grace. I also learned kayaking and mountain biking and how to deliver newspapers on a snowy Sunday morning before church.

Now that they’re adults they teach me other things…like realizing I have to let them go to make their own mistakes, that they don’t always take dad’s insightful wisdom to heart, that it’s not a good idea to try to be a matchmaker for my son, and that if I could take their pain I would. But they would never otherwise learn that that is part of being an adult too. I learn all about BMW’s, even if I don’t want to and all about indie and underground music.

If you’re honest, you can say that Hyde lives in you. I know Hyde lives in me. But the good news is that Jekyll lives there, too. And I celebrate that person who is like God. It is my prayer this morning that all and dads—and mom’s too—by the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit, will see more of Jekyll and less of Hyde as we live out this paradox of parenthood.

Pentecost 2015
Acts 2:1-21; John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

Pentecost is a major Jewish feast—one of the three great feasts of the Torah called Sahvuoth which our Jewish brothers and sisters are celebrating in Johnson Hall. All the Jewish pilgrims would be gathered in Jerusalem for the feast. It is a feast of seven weeks, seven weeks times seven day is 49 days plus one after the Passover. That is why we have 50 days of the Easter season.

It has two meanings. It’s known as the feast of first-fruits from the garden and the fields. It was a dedication of the early sprouts as a thank offering and in anticipation of a full harvest at the end of the growing season. But there’s more. It’s the commemoration of the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai where the congregation of Israel stood at the base of the mountain where God came down in wind and fire and spoke to them, 50 days after the Passover when they left Egypt as slaves.

After Jesus celebrated his last Passover with his disciples in the Upper Room, 49 days plus one after his first Easter, the signs and wonders of Mt. Sinai are repeated in Jerusalem. The God who spoke at Mt. Sinai now speaks to all who are gathered in Jerusalem, like delegates from around the world. But this is different: from now on God will speak in human voices, in every language in every land to get the good word out. In Jesus you get just one flesh-and blood, only begotten son; with the Spirit you get diversity, multiplicity, and ever-unfolding manifestation of God’s work through ordinary people like you and me.

It’s the feast of first-fruits. If Israel was the first-fruits of the people of God, now it’s the time to bring in the whole harvest of all nations, ethnicities, and orientations to become God’s people too, to receive the Holy Spirit, and bring all their gifts to God, the fruits of their own languages and music and traditions and cultures and history. With Jesus it’s one; with the Spirit it’s you the many. What Jesus has done by his life, death, resurrection and ascension is that God is in you with all your warts and wrinkles and beauty marks, using your aptitudes and gifts. Jesus couldn’t speak English; you can.

Jesus said it was better that he go away, because why he was with us in the flesh he was one particular person, taking up one space on the planet. But now that the Spirit of Jesus is on us think of what we can do. In John 14: 12 he said, “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” Just think of the hospitals, schools, clinics, churches, micro-businesses and development projects that have been built in his name. Yes, we also have the black eye of trying to westernize foreign people and aligning with colonial powers, but there are hidden histories behind that.

Pentecost is often the Cinderella of the Holy Trinity. We can wrap our head around God the Father, our Heavenly Parent and Creator. Jesus makes sense too—a human being just like us, living with life’s daily struggles, our brother, friend and Savior. The Holy Spirit is more difficult. How do we relate to an invisible spiritual entity? Perhaps that is why the biblical writers used word pictures and metaphors to get at something that frankly is unexplainable with ordinary language. The scriptures give us four images of the Spirit: wind, fire, water and earth. Let’s take them in the order.

The first one wind, is also breath. In the Hebrew Ruach mean wind, but it also means breath or Spirit. In the Greek wind is Pneuma and also breathe. So this of breath of God is the soul of God, if you will, God’s inner life, which God breathes into us. This is the soul that never is exhausted or expires, a soul that is pure love and faithfulness even inside our unlovely infidelities, the breath who forgives your sins and inspires you for do so for others.

You can’t see the wind, but you can certainly see the evidence of it. Look at how a straight wind flattens a forest like the trees were match stick. Maybe, like me, you wonder where the heck the Spirit is some days. The world is going to hell in a hand basket. The baby’s crying, you can’t find your keys, it’s trash day and you forgot to put it out again. It feels like anything but the breath of the Spirit. But fear not. Paul says the Spirit prays through us with sighs and groaning too deep for words. What you feel in yourself is the pressure and movement of the Spirit which rubs against your guilt until it is cleared away, makes you grieve until your grief is don, and erodes your selfishness until your self is made smooth. We call this inner spiritual work sanctification. It’s the process of growing more and more Christ-like as the Spirit expands your capacity to love, and inflates you to fill all those empty and inner places so quietly that you won’t feel it at all.

The second image is fire and fire is the presence of God. The burning bush in the desert, the flame of God’s power on Mt. Sinai, the pillar of fire by night to guide the Israelites from Egypt, the tongues of fire alighting upon the disciples at Pentecost. This is another sign of God’s own self. The Holy Spirit is both God’s energy and God’s own personality. And God is not tame like a fire is not tame. God can burn you in judgement when your conscience burns or your shame feels like fire with in. But the fire of God will also comfort you and warm you and keep you safe against the cold.
The third image is water. The Holy Spirt is the living water who satisfies your thirst and brings life to your dry and dusty soul. It’s the water that Jesus said would flow from your inner being. (John 7:38) The image Jesus uses is from Genesis 2:10 where God planted a garden in Eden and out of that garden four rivers flowed to water the earth. So with you, the Spirit rises out of you into the life you make, mixing God’s water with yours to keep you running fresh and purge you pollution.

The last image is the earth. That’s the place we all inhabit and where the Spirit is active. There is not artificial separation between the secular and the sacred. If you are filled with the Spirit all that you do is sacred. When we think the Spirit is our there or God is up there, we get the idea that God is like Superman who will swoop in whenever we need help or in trouble. But it is the Spirit who animates everyday life. The life of God is in the sap of the trees that feed the trunk and leaves. It is the power of the universe that keeps the stars burning and the planets in orbit. The Spirit is what fires the synapses in our brains and the love in our hearts. Of course, we know how to explain these things scientifically—it’s photosynthesis and gravity and neurons, but it’s in this stuff of life where we usually see the Spirit.

So you see, the Holy Spirit love diversity even as in the One Lord Jesus we find our unity. Even in the midst of our halting, passing and provisional efforts, mixed and broken, even those are places where the Spirit of God is active if we have the eyes of faith to look for it.

That is you members of this church. In spite of your mixed up, over worked, stressed out, frustrated selves you must believe in yourself as the work of God. Despite how broken and beaten down you may feel, you can believe in yourself because as the Church universal says in the Apostles’ Creed, “I believe in the Holy Spirit,” and that makes all the difference.

Mark 11: 1-8
Easter Sunday 2015

What are you afraid of? There’s a lot to be afraid of in this world isn’t there? This past Tuesday the sun hadn’t risen at Garissa University College. Most students slept in their beds. A few had woken up to head to early morning prayers when five radical Somali Islamists (Al-Shabaab) gunmen stormed their campus and slaughtered 147 students who were identified as Christians. Why kind of a world do we live in?

This week Gov. Jerry Brown of California inaugurated a mandatory 25% reduction in the use of water because of the “mega-drought” the state is experiencing. Climatologists report that the 2013-2014 rainfall season is well on its way to becoming California’s driest period in more than 400 years. Climate scientists are saying that the extreme weather patterns we are experiencing from record cold, snowfall, wildfires, and heat are only the tip of the ice berg as our climate continues to change as the planet heats up and upsets weather patterns. That scares me. And it will be worse for our kids and grand kids.

Dr. Atul Gawande’s national best seller, “Being Mortal,” has opened a national discussion on the way American’s die. His basic thesis is that ¬mortality has become a medical problem instead of a human one. About 28% our insurance premiums are spent during the final months of our lives to keep us alive through heroic, expensive measures because we are so afraid to die. Yet mortality is the one big thing medicine cannot fix.
And what about the quiet fears we carry inside of us? On the outside we can be polished, professional, and put together but inside we hear voices from our families, friends, teachers, ex-spouses that still wound us: you’re stupid, you’re too fat, you’ll never amount to anything, you’re no good, why can’t you be like your sister?

When I was the pastor of a church in Cambridge, I remember walking through Harvard Yard with a church member who was a graduate student their earning his Ph.D. in philosophy. That’s no mean achievement. I remember him telling me, “You know 75% of us still think the admissions department made a mistake.” That can be terrifying feeling. Someday everyone will find out I’m really a fraud.

So where do you go for hope during those times when we’re scared out of our wits, when the world seems like it’s spinning off its axis? The situation for the disciples between Good Friday and Easter wasn’t much different. Their world was turned upside down, all their categories were shifted, their paradigm of how the world was supposed to work was no longer useful. When they joined Jesus in his procession into Jerusalem last Sunday, the last thing they expected was that their Master would wind up being crucified. The furthest thing from their minds was a crucified Messiah.

In the ancient world crucifixion was reserved for particular classes of people: people who committed especially violent crimes, people who engaged in sedition against the Roman government, and slaves who rebelled against their masters. In other words, crucifixion was essentially a device used by the Romans to terrorize dangerous populations into submission.

Consequently, to be crucified meant you were in a class of subversives, the worst of criminals, and rebellious slaves—in other words, to be at the bottom of the societal heap, to be the scum of the earth, to be a danger to society. In the ancient world, the response to anyone who had been crucified was instinctive revulsion. This is what Jesus faced some 2,000 years ago as he trudged toward Calvary. “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.”

For us, the meaning of the cross of Jesus is an abstract theological question. For early Christians, it was a question that turned their stomachs. For us today, the cross has become a commonplace, almost trite symbol. It is seen on top of churches, or dangling from a necklace, or added to the charm bracelet of a little girl. But this was not the case when the New Testament was written. The cross represented the most brutal form of death by torture. To talk about the cross in the ancient world would be like talking today about instruments of torture like cattle prods, acid baths, or water-boarding. To wear a replica of a cross around your neck would be like wearing a miniature electric chair or gas chamber around your neck today. It was not something done in polite company or the topic of conversation at cocktail parties.

None of Jesus’ disciples stood at the foot of the cross and exclaimed, “He died for me!” If they stood there at all, it would be in abject horror. They were in panic. They were in fear. And they didn’t have an inkling about what this awful event might mean. When you talk to someone today who knows nothing of the Christian faith and mention the cross, he or she will probably just look at you oddly. Not so in the ancient world. Just to mention the cross was in poor taste. And to suggest that someone should believe in a person who had been crucified was just a bad joke. In fact, there are a number of ancient graffiti that have been discovered which portray Jesus on the cross with an ass’s head rather than a human head. The implication is that those who worship someone who is crucified are asses themselves.

With this appreciation of the stigma attached to those crucified, we can understand the reaction of the women as they went to the tomb the next morning: “they were afraid.” That’s how Mark ends his presentation of the Easter story. “They were afraid.” Mark’s account of that first Easter is a meager and disappointing story. It does not finish with joyful tears but with confusion and fears.

Three women, Mary Magdalene, Mary mother of James, and Salome, went to the tomb at about dawn to place perfumes on the body. Even though it was still dark, just before dawn, when they got to the tomb they could see that someone had already rolled back the stone. There was a man in a dazzling white robe. He tells them that Jesus is alive! He tells them to go back and tell the men who were disciples what has happened. You might think that would delight them. But no, it confused and frightened them.

And they [the three women] went out and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

Mark’s story ends “not with a bang but a whimper.”

If we stay with Mark at verse 8, there is no story of Mary Magdalene meeting Jesus near the tomb, there are no excited women running to tell the other disciples their good news, there is no Peter and John running to the tomb to see for themselves, there is no story of the walk to Emmaus and the breaking of bread, and no story of Jesus greeting his friends behind locked doors. Mark’s account is brief and inconclusive. Just three women suffering shock.

For my part, I am content if Mark decided to end it at verse 8, with the women confused and keeping quiet about their weird experience at the empty tomb. That seems to be nearer to what I might expect to happen. That would make it similar to Luke’s story where we are told that when the women do try telling the male disciples, but they are met with disbelief: “These words seemed to them an idle tale”. Such confusion and disbelief rings true to me. It makes an immediate connection with the world as we know it—a world full of shock.

You go down to breakfast and suddenly become aware that a seat at the table is vacant. You see something funny on television and say, “I’ll have to tell Mary about this.” But then you remember that Mary has gone, slipped into death. You pick up the phone to ask John about some business deal, only to recall that John died last month. After 24 years with the same firm, you find out the company is “downsizing” and you’re no longer needed. We shake our heads in disbelief as we read another newspaper story of parent’s killing their children. Yeah, shock. That’s a lot of life.

Matthew, John, Luke all end the story of the resurrection by telling more stories of resurrection appearances, of warm reunions with the disciples and joy. Mark says that, even though the women were told to “Go!” and to “Tell!” they didn’t because they were afraid.

Today, in our hymns, in the music of Easter you will hear joy, majesty, glory, praise, but I don’t think you’ll hear much fear. Maybe Mark wants us to think about the good news at Easter as not only joyful, majestic, and glorious but also as fearful. The women felt fear. When you think about it, being met by a once dead man is a fearful thing to contemplate. On one level, it’s the stuff of horror movies.

Furthermore, these women were among the disciples of Jesus who, just a couple of days before had deserted Jesus in his great hour of need (15:40-41). If Jesus is back from the dead, what will be his attitude toward those who deserted him and fled into the night when the going got rough?
I believe their fear lay even deeper than this. If Jesus has been defeated, crucified, dead, and buried, then what we suspected about the world is true. Evil is powerful. Yes, there are sometimes brief bursts of goodness, but eventually it all ends in death. Who cares? It all ends at the cemetery in dust, forgetfulness, finitude, and extinction.

So stiff upper lip, no need to whine; eat, drink, and be merry, make the most of the moment. Thoughtful, sober folk like you know how to get on in life even with the knowledge that you and all you love are terminal. A bit bleak, but I expect you can take it. Become a stoic, a cynic, a romantic, or just try not to dwell upon it. We all have various resources for dealing with Good Friday, the cemetery, the stone before the tomb, and so on.
But if Jesus is raised, if the stone is rolled away and life outlasts death and God has the last word then…there is some reason for the women to fear. The facts of life and death are turned on their head. Nothing is secure and fixed now. Jesus is raised. God is loose, on the move.
He has been raised; he is not here…Go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.

Now that’s awesome. If it’s true, then you will not walk out of here in the same way that you came in. The point is this: if God has raised someone from the dead who was crucified, whom the world pronounced as despicable, and calls him Lord, then we can no longer hold on to the common values of respectability that are characteristic of normal human society. All of our assumptions about what constitutes right and wrong, about what is worthwhile, about what really matters-—all that has to be revised and reversed. To worship a crucified and raised Messiah means an utter transformation in all that we hold important.

At the 50th anniversary of the birth of the United Church of Christ, I heard Bishop Desmund Tutu speak of the miracle of South Africa. “If you told me a decade ago that South Africa—a nation brutalized by apartheid, a country filled with hate, violence, and oppression—would be free and that Nelson Mandella would be our president, I would tell you that you were crazy.” But you know what, people worked and prayed and boycotted. The church in South Africa and the world took up its prophetic call and said No! to this heinous injustice, sometimes in the face of extreme repression. And it was done without violent revolution. Tutu remarked that sometimes Christians say to him, “I can’t believe this happened.” “Why,” he asks. “Weren’t you praying for us?” “Yes,” they reply. “Then why are you surprised?” he’ll ask. We’re surprised because it’s not supposed to work that way. Were in awe when resurrection power actually shows up.

But that power is not only out there. It’s right here in this sanctuary. It’s right here in human hearts. It’s right here in ordinary lives, like yours and mine. The angel in the gospel today says that Jesus rose, that he is not there, that he has “Gone on ahead of you to Galilee.”

Do you know where Galilee is? Well, it’s nowhere special. It is where Nazareth is, the hometown of Jesus. Why mention the name of the place at all? There is nothing special about Galilee. It could be Milton or Mattapan or Melrose. Maybe that’s why it’s mentioned. The extraordinarily raised-from-the-dead Christ returns to the ordinary Galilee. It seems to me that, in these gospel details, a claim is being made. That claim is that Easter has something to do with the ordinary. The risen Christ is raised, but he is raised into this world, our world, where everything that lives, dies; where the stock market can be at 14,000 points one week and 7,000 the next; where every day those whom we love are leaving us, departing the scene, and so are we.

So now what? Keep doing what you were doing. Go back to work. The gospels show the disciples all going back to work. After all, Easter, “The first day of the week,” was the Jewish workday. At the beginning of the workweek after the rest of the Sabbath, they go back to what they were doing in daily life. Everything was getting back to normal now, after the events of the past violent weekend. And the risen Christ was raised on that day, that ordinary, beginning-of-the-work-week day.

And it’s this same Resurrected One who shows up in our ordinary lives. Our God was raised into the ordinariness of life, in the midst of financial crises, global conflict, and human stupidity and wickedness. Now, everything has been redeemed. Death does not have the last word. The resurrection breaks out everywhere. Shocking. Awesome.