Sunday, April 15, 2018

Resurrection Witnesses

Sermon for April 15, 2018
Grand Opening of HJ's Youth and Community Center
1 John 3:1-7; Luke 24:36b-48

We gather today to praise God for the gift of resurrection, as we do throughout this season of Easter.  But today, we see that gift in a particular way as we celebrate what God and this congregation have done together over the past six years, culminating in the new HJ’s Youth and Community Center, which we open this morning.
I will resist the temptation to start at the beginning of the story – as past senior warden Greg Bentz likes to say, I won’t take us back to, “First, the earth cooled.”  Suffice it to say that six years ago, past-past senior warden Steve Rock and I began talking with Sean and Sarah Murray, and Blake and Megan Hodges, about leading an effort to celebrate our centennial and advance God’s mission at St. Andrew’s.  At that point, both the Hodges and Murrays had two preschool-aged kids running through the halls of the church – Evan and Emma Murray, and Oliver and Charlotte Hodges.  Today, as we celebrate the culmination of the Hodges’ and Murrays’ efforts, Oliver Hodges is closer to dating age than to the first day of kindergarten.  Time flies when you’re having fun.
 There are many thank-yous to offer, but we’ll save those for the ribbon-cutting at the end of the service.  What I hope to do in the next few minutes is encourage you to see that building across the street, and maybe see yourself, in a new way.
First, we have to go back to today’s Gospel reading (not quite when the earth cooled).  Last Sunday, we heard the story of Jesus appearing to his friends on Easter night, as told in the Gospel of John.  Today, we get the same story, as told by Luke.  Again, it’s only been a matter of hours since Mary Magdalene and the other women found the empty tomb.  A few hours after that, two disciples encountered Jesus on the road to Emmaus, seeing him revealed as they broke bread for dinner; and they ran back to Jerusalem to tell their friends.  Now, as the disciples have come together later that same night to share these incredible stories, “Jesus himself [stands] among them” (Luke 24:36).  How he got there, the story doesn’t say, but his friends are “startled and terrified,” thinking “they were seeing a ghost” (24:37).  Maybe they’re remembering that they didn’t exactly stand with Jesus when the going got tough.  Maybe they’re afraid haunting is the punishment for their faithlessness.  But Jesus assures them it’s really him, not his ghost.  “Touch me and see,” he says, “for a ghost doesn’t have flesh and bones, as you see that I have” (24:39).  By the way, he asks, do you have anything to eat?  Resurrection works up your appetite.
It’s Jesus, all right – in the flesh.  It’s the person his friends knew, complete with wounds in his hands and feet and side.  He looks like himself and sounds like himself and still likes broiled fish for dinner.  But … he also walks through locked doors.  He breaks bread with his friends and then vanishes into thin air.  It’s Jesus, in his own body … but not exactly the same body.  It’s a resurrection body, the fulfillment of what we’re created to be, even more in the image and likeness of the God who made us, an in-breaking of heaven on earth.  What are the disciples supposed to do with that?
I think we’re experiencing something similar with the new HJ’s.  Hang with me for a minute.  I think this building is something like a resurrection body … and we’re just beginning to see how it works and what we’re supposed to do as we live into this new reality.  Where, in the old building, we once struggled just to hear each other talk in the “big room,” now we have state-of-the-art sound and video.  Where, in the old building, we were lucky to find an aging coffee maker that worked, now we can grind and serve our own blend of Roasterie coffee, for ourselves and for people coming by.  Where, in the old building, we tried to keep the youth and Scouts out of the chamber of horrors that once was the old Y’s locker rooms, now the youth and Scouts have beautiful spaces where you’d actually want to invite a friend.  And to oversee the ministry that will happen there, we’re blessed to have Jean Long taking on new responsibilities as our minister for younger adults, youth, and families; and just this week, we hired Zach Beall as our new community coordinator to oversee HJ’s, and market the space, and build relationships with people who use it.  You’ll meet Zach at HJ’s later this morning.  It’s all very, very new … and it’ll take us all a little while to see how this resurrection body of HJ’s lives and breathes.
 But it’s not just the building across the street that’s been made new.  I would dare say that the Body of Christ in this place, the family we know as St. Andrew’s, is beginning to stretch the sinews of its resurrection body, too.  We’re learning that we are more than we sometimes imagine ourselves to be, in the day-to-day grind of church life.  We’re building our muscles for mission to the people among whom God has placed us.
Those muscles have been strong before.  In the parish archives, there’s an article from the Kansas City Star about St. Andrew’s purchasing the Southtown YMCA in 1990.  The early ’90s was a missional time in the life of this congregation, under rector Jeff Black.  The church also bought four houses just to its south to put in a parking lot to help gather people for worship – and parishioners moved those four houses, intact, across town on huge trucks, in the middle of the night, to make the homes available to others through Habitat for Humanity.  That new parking lot made it easier for people to come and be formed into the disciples Jesus wants us to be, witnesses of the power of resurrection.  And the old Y across the street offered a point of connection with the neighbors around us.  In that article in the Star, retired bishop of West Missouri and St. Andrew’s member Arthur A. Vogel put it like this – and I know some of us can still hear Bishop Vogel’s clear tenor voice saying it:  “In God’s name, we are to make a difference in the world.  The purchase and use of that property, we hope, will enable the presence of … St. Andrew’s … to make a greater difference in the wider community around Southwest High.  It will give the church a chance to have an increased variety of services it can offer people, and we would hope that it would become a center for wider community concern.”1
The idea was to draw people around us into relationship with the God who loves them more than anything.  That wasn’t just Jeff Black’s crazy idea or Bishop Vogel’s crazy idea.  That’s Jesus’ crazy idea.  In the Gospel this morning, as his friends are trying to figure out this resurrection body of his, Jesus lets them know that, actually, the reality of resurrection has changed them, too.  Munching on broiled fish with his friends around the table, Jesus opens their minds to understand that he is, indeed, the messiah they’d been waiting for, despite his agony and apparent failure on the cross – that he’s defeated sin and death for all time and offers his friends eternal life starting right now.  And Jesus opens their hearts to understand themselves differently, too – “that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed to all nations,” he says, “beginning from Jerusalem,” beginning from the table where they sat that night.  “You are witnesses of these things” (Luke 24:47-48).
And so are we.  HJ’s is not just a shiny new toy, an impressive conclusion to a capital campaign.  HJ’s is an icon – a window into heaven, an image of the mission God has given us here: to proclaim the grace of Jesus Christ, empower people for ministry, and serve people within and beyond our church.  An icon helps us remember realities that lie just at the edge of day-to-day life.  It helps us see the thin places where heaven and earth intersect, and where the power of God breaks into this world whose boundaries we think we know.  This icon across the street should remind us – every time we look at it, every time we walk into it, every time we invite someone else to come enjoy it – this icon across the street should remind us we are witnesses of resurrection called to trust in the truth and the power of God, called to invite others to experience life that’s more than the daily grind.  Resurrection bodies testify that death is not the end, no matter how hard life can be.  Resurrection bodies testify that God wants to heal us of our brokenness, and make us jump to our feet in the power of new life.  Resurrection bodies testify that, even though we may not yet see the kingdom of heaven in all its fullness, we will – for “we are God’s children now … and when [Christ] is revealed, we will be like him” (1 John 3:2), healed, renewed, and empowered to build healing relationships with others.  We are witnesses of these things.
In fact, as we go into the new building this morning, I invite you to experience the cloud of witnesses that is … us.  Revel in the power and potential of the family walking through those doors.  Check out the list of names near the coffee bar – 269 gifts from 433 members and friends of this congregation, the cloud of witnesses who made Gather & Grow possible through their generosity.  On that list, you’ll see the depth and breadth of our parish family – witnesses as young as Emma Murray alongside witnesses who now see Christ face to face, like Walt Walton, and Bob and Connie Smart, and Deacon Peg Ruth.  Equipped with our resurrection bodies, empowered by hearts beating the rhythm of new life, we are sent by the risen Christ to proclaim the astonishing truth of love we can barely fathom: that God always gives us second chances, that God always longs to heal what divides us, that God always welcomes us back home.  Each time you see that building across the street, or walk into its rooms, remember:  You are witnesses of these things. 

1. Gray, Helen. “KC church buys the Southtown YMCA.” Kansas City Star, June 9, 1990. F-10.  

Monday, April 2, 2018

Live Like Love Wins

Sermon for Easter, April 1, 2018
John 20:1-18

So, for the first time in 62 years, Easter has fallen on April Fool’s Day.  For people in my line of work, it hardly seems fair.  It’s not like the Resurrection is an easy thing for people to believe anyway; and today, in the back of our minds, we’re kind of expecting an April Fool’s prank.  Maybe the snow’s enough.
I don’t know how our current calendar would translate back 2,000 years, or how close to April 1 that first Easter morning would have been.  But the first half of this resurrection story from John’s Gospel certainly leaves Mary Magdalene feeling like a fool.  She comes to the tomb before sunrise.  The story in John’s Gospel doesn’t actually say why she’s there.  Maybe she’s been up all night; maybe she’s going to the tomb to grieve.  Whatever brings her there, what she finds is horrifying: the stone sealing the tomb has been moved away, and the body is missing.  It’s awful enough that Jesus is dead; now someone has desecrated his body, too. 
So, she runs to get Peter and another disciple, thought to be John.  The two guys race to the scene, and look inside, and hesitatingly go into the cave; and they see Mary is right … which is no surprise to Mary but may have surprised the two of them.  Then, the guys unhelpfully turn around and go back home.  And Mary’s thinking, “Wait, what?  You’re leaving me here to deal with this?  Really?”  And she breaks down in frustration and grief. 
Then, when she looks into the tomb, she sees two angels there; and they ask what must have felt like a completely unhelpful question: “Why are you weeping?”  Mary shoots back, “Well, why do you think?  They’ve taken Jesus away, and I don’t know what they’ve done with him.”  Then she turns around and sees the guy she imagines to be the caretaker, yet one more unhelpful man asking stupid questions.  “Why are you weeping,” he asks; “whom are you looking for?”  Though she’s completely frustrated, she decides not to let him have it, but she cuts to the chase instead: “Look, if you’ve taken Jesus away for some reason, just tell me and I’ll go fix it.” 
Now, Mary may have felt like a fool, but it turns out the joke’s on Satan.  The one thing the power of sin and death didn’t see coming was God’s choice to enter into death so people could live forever.  Satan didn’t understand what C.S. Lewis calls “the deep magic,” the cosmic victory that comes when the innocent champion battles sin and death, and wins.    
Of course, Mary Magdalene had heard Jesus talking about crazy ideas like that – that he’d be arrested, and killed, and on the third day rise again.  And she’d witnessed the last three days, as his friends rejected him, and the authorities tried him and beat him and hung him on a cross for subverting the Empire.  The rising-again part would begin to make sense days and months and years later, the way the disconnected threads of a story come together to weave the tapestry of a great ending.  But in the moment – as she went to the tomb that Sunday morning, and dealt with the unhelpful guys around her, and tried to figure out how to pick up the pieces after a grave robbery – in that moment, she must have just felt like a total fool.  After all, she had bought what Jesus was selling; she went all in, gave her heart completely – and then watched every hope fall apart.  And finally, to make it all just that much harder, she was the one who got stuck cleaning up the mess.  Foolish, foolish – it can just feel foolish to give your heart to hope.
Nobody wants to feel like a fool, but religion does that to us sometimes.  The Church tells stories about virgins having babies, and blind people suddenly gaining their sight, and five loaves of bread feeding 5,000 people, and dead men walking out of tombs.  Right.  It doesn’t take much Google searching to find experts who can explain it all away.  By the same token, it doesn’t take much searching to find religious people explaining away those rational explanations by telling you that if you dare to think critically and don’t swallow the whole story hook, line, and sinker, then you’re damned to hell.  It can make you feel like a fool either way, believing it or not.
But there’s a different kind of fool – a holy fool, an Easter fool, a fool for Christ’s sake.
That’s what Mary becomes in the rest of the story we heard this morning.  As she stands there, sobbing, trying to get the guy she thinks is the caretaker to do his job, Jesus does the simplest but most powerful thing.  He speaks her name: “Mary!”  She’d know that voice anywhere, and she turns to see him for the first time that morning.  She hears her heart’s own song when the risen Christ calls her name. 
And she knows the fools’ errand that lies ahead of her.  Now it’s time to go find those unhelpful guys once more but with a very different message, one they’re not likely to buy.  That conversation may have begun with a little attitude – I think we could forgive Mary for that.  “Hey, Peter and John,” she says to the fearful disciples.  “Thanks a lot for running home and leaving me holding the bag.  Guess what?  The body’s not gone.  He’s alive.  He’s risen.  You can tell me I’m crazy, but I’m here to tell you:  I have seen the Lord.”  
I think religion can make us feel like fools sometimes because religion gets tempted to confuse mystery with technicality.  Humans – especially human institutions – like to think we have things figured out.  We sleep better that way.  We also sound much smarter that way.  Everyone wants to have the answers, right? 
But you know what?  Think about the Church’s No. 1 answer man, St. Paul.  He was Christianity’s first theologian, and we have all those letters in the New Testament that show just how confident he was that his answers were right.  But you know what else St. Paul was?  He was Christianity’s first fool – other than Mary Magdalene, I guess.  At least he was the first one to see himself that way and write it down.  He was making the point that the “eloquent wisdom” of worldly knowledge doesn’t hold a candle to the power of the cross and the empty tomb.  “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing,” he said, “but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God” (1 Cor 1:18).  I may sound foolish, but “we are fools for the sake of Christ.” (1 Cor 4:10)   
It’s OK to be a fool in the world’s eyes because the greatest truth of all time is mystery that runs counter to everything the world knows.  If that truth were really knowable through intellect alone, then we’d be right in striving to conquer the complications, and tame the technicalities, and find a universal theory of everything.  Maybe if we all had brains like Stephen Hawking, that would be possible.  But you know, Stephen Hawking has now come to the end of his life, and my hunch is that his attention has shifted now, from being wrapped up in so much logic to being wrapped up in so much love – whether or not the math proves it’s real.
God is deeply mysterious, but God is not deeply complicated.  Neither is resurrection, despite all the ink that’s been spilled over the centuries trying to prove or disprove it.  The deep mystery of life, the deep mystery of God, is this: We find new life when we choose to live in the hope that love wins, even when the world says you’re a fool for thinking so.  Now, on any given day, you may or may not feel that love.  But feeling love isn’t the measure of following the one who brought resurrection to the world and who offers it to you right now as the story of your life.  Feeling love is great, but it’s also fleeting.  What lasts, and what grows into greater power than you can imagine, is the hope of love, the practice of love, the investment of yourself in the long game of love. 
You know this love.  It’s the love of showing up for your kids’ never-ending soccer games or wrestling meets or piano lessons, when there are a million other things you need to do that day.  It’s the love of going to counseling with your spouse or partner, even though it’d be so much simpler just to walk away.  It’s the love of a real conversation with someone who looks different from you, or votes different from you, and taking the risk to learn his beloved story.  It’s the love of putting yourself into relationship with others to grow your faith, or serve people around you, or work for your community’s well-being.  It’s the love of high-school kids going down to Theis Park last weekend to say out loud that they’re tired of living in the fear of gun violence.  That kind of foolish hope that love wins becomes resurrection, even in the here and now, when we believe in the power of love enough to live it out.  Jesus told his followers, “Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and if you do not doubt in your heart but believe that what you say will come to pass, it will be done for you.  So, I tell you,” he said, “whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” (Mark 11:22-24) 
Sounds pretty foolish, right?  Tell that to the high-school kids in Florida who decided it was time to start a national movement to choose a future without school shootings.  Tell that to any couple who’s chosen to reconcile and build love back stronger than they’d ever known it before.  Tell that to any of us who’ve prayed people we love back from terrible illness or injury.  Tell that to Mary Magdalene after she saw the risen Christ.  Change happens.  New life happens.  Resurrection happens – if we take the foolish risk to believe that love wins.
So, it’s April Fool’s Day.  It’s the day when we’re supposed to poke around at the edges of what we know to be true and push against the boundaries of our well-enclosed lives.  Well, I want to invite you today, with Mary Magdalene, to take the risk of being a fool for Christ’s sake.  I want to invite you to take the risk of living in hope, even though the world wants to sell you a different story.  Because here’s the mystery we celebrate this morning: Light shines through the darkness.  Death is not the end.  Life is eternal, and we’re only in chapter 1.  Hope overpowers despair.  Love wins – we just have to act that way.