Easter Songs and Stories!

Easter Songs and Stories!

John 20:1-18

Dear Friends,

Let me first wish you again a blessed Easter! In my teen years, when I celebrated Easter in the island nation of Sri Lanka where I was born and where my father worked as a local pastor in several rural churches, he always began the Easter service with a wonderful call to worship: CHRIST IS RISEN, and people responded: CHRIST IS RISEN INDEED! How many of you who are here able to recapitulate those same childhood memories and of that kind of a call to worship? Let us try it now.

           I know you like humorous stories. In the good old days when the Syracuse University had a great basketball team in America, a coach prided himself by saying whenever his team played against any other team the stadium would be filled to the brim on that day. So one day during a big match as he looked around the stadium, he found one empty seat there. He was furious. When the half time came he went up and asked that person sitting next to that seat “Whose seat is this”? The elderly lady responded “It belongs to my late husband”. Well! Don’t you have a son, daughter, niece or nephew to fill it? She said “Yes there are. But they are all at the funeral. Friends I am glad that you are here and not anywhere else this morning and if you do get some nourishment to your soul today, please do come back.

              I like the Easter stories of the bible. It evokes excitement and exuberance in my soul no matter whether they are factual or fictional. All the gospels refer to an open grave on Easter morning. All gospels tell us that Jesus appeared to the disciples after the resurrection. Appeared to them on the road to Emmaus, appeared to them in the upper room and displayed his wounded hands. Appeared to them at the sea shore in Galilee, on a night when they failed catching any fish. After the whole night struggle the resurrected Christ directed them to the best spot where they could catch fish. Matthew and Mark and Luke report that Jesus was at Galilee after the resurrection and John refers to the same Galilee as the sea of Tiberius. I have often wondered why Galilee out of all the biblical places. Then I realized that Jesus spent 90% of his ministry in and around Galilee. Capernaum and Tire and Sidon were the places where Jesus fed the hungry, healed the sick, taught the meaning of prayer and preached the message of peace and justice in the Sermon on the Mount. So when we are summoned today to see the resurrected Jesus, we must get to Galilee. We must get to the Galilees around the world, Fairport included. Wherever people are victimized by the systems of oppression, suffer by violence and hunger, wherever the rich exploit the poor the children are forced to work as slave laborers and innocent people are tortured as political prisoners, there is a Galilee. It was on Galilee Jesus touched and blessed the little children and it was in Galilee Jesus pronounced forgiveness to those suffered from Guilt. And now even after the resurrection the Spirit person Jesus makes god’s presence real to us in every appearance, every word and in every gesture.

         Easter transcends our religious and denominational barriers. It is about the goodness of a presence. It is about love and beauty and life in its multidimensional forms. When I served for ten years as a Pastor in the Eastern coast of Sri Lanka our worship services began before dawn around 5:A.M.We dressed in white and went around the town on a procession carrying a lighted candle and sang songs accompanied by guitars, violins accordions and tambourines. As we processed, people in the neighbored also joined us. On our return to the sanctuary around 6:A.M, the organ would peel out the triumphant music in the dark, announcing “CHRIST THE LORD IS RISEN TODAY. We would see then the tropical sun rising over the Indian Ocean and the coconut palms swinging in the breeze. In that setting no matter how much the weight of suffering and sorrow immobilized me, the message of life over death simply overpowered it. The mystery of resurrection became so natural and real.

         In 1980 I travelled to the United States for the first time. I came to Rochester to study in the Divinity school. When I left my country my children were very small and I knew I was not going to see them at least for a year. They gave me an emotional send off and we wept and howled kissed and hugged and the train slowly moved. It was a one night’s journey to the city’s capital Colombo, 270 miles from home and 20 stations in between. As the train stopped in every station even though my family was not there physically I sensed their presence. The next day I came over to London and spent ten days there and flew again from Heathrow to JFK in New York. Even though my family was not with me physically I sensed them in every flight, every airport every stop. Resurrection is not about a physical transformation of a body into some extra-terrestrial beings. It is a way of seeing in the dark. It is a way of feeling connections. Just because you can’t see someone with your physical naked eye, don’t ever say they are gone. Learn to see like an owl. It has a way of seeing in pitch darkness which you and I cannot do. 

           My topic is Easter songs and stories. Here is an Easter song: “Because He Lives,” written by Gloria and Bill Gaither. The song was written in 1971 when our country was going through great turmoil. We have just crossed over the’60s of the Vietnam War, the rise of drug culture, a decade of sexual revolution.        It was a time noted for extreme radicalism expressed by the Death of God theology, and the assassinations of John F Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. Here was a couple – the Gaithers -- who were expecting their third child Benjamin and they struggled and prayed to God as to how were they going to bring up that child in those turbulent days and in the most crucial times. These words naturally sprang up in their hearts and then they composed the music.

           HOW SWEET TO HOLD A NEW BORN BABY, AND FEEL THE PRIDE AND JOY HE GIVES, BUT GREATER STILL THE CALM ASSURANCE, THIS CHILD CAN FACE UNCERTAIN DAYS BECAUSE HE LIVES. BECAUSE HE LIVES I CAN FACE TOMORROW AND THE LIFE IS WORTH THE LIVING JUST BECAUSE HE LIVES.

        Friends! Let me now draw your attention to today’s gospel. It was early in the morning and the grave was empty and Mary saw a person there. She surmised him to be the gardener, but to her surprise, her name was called out “Mary”. And she immediately recognized it was her Lord. She responded “Rabonai”.Which means in Hebrew a teacher or a guide. Actually it is an Eastern concept. “Guru” for us has a deeper connotation than a teacher. For in guru- disciple, relationship, there is devotion and loyalty, great affection and reverence between the two persons. Perhaps those who have seen the musical “JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR” should be able to relate more meaningfully to what I am saying here. Mary Magdalene sings in that musical, I don’t know how to love him for he has changed me. I don’t know how to take this for he moves me. Perhaps her question when she moved closely with Jesus was: WHO IS HE? She stood with Jesus on that Friday and witnessed the whole agonizing scene of crucifixion and now on Easter early in the morning she showed up at the grave, had an encounter with the risen Christ. Perhaps her question was again: WHO IS HE?

         

we want a winner

 We want a winner 041314

Matthew 21:1-11

We all want to win.  We all want a winner on our side or as our leader or our President or as our child. 

Our society has taught us that what’s important is power and control and winning and living large.  And we’ve made that our theology…..what one writer calls a theology of glory, which shows up in our need to have God be in control and always winning, punishing with eventual hell and rewarding with eventual heaven.  Pain and suffering are necessary to win.

No pain no gain…..Winning in athletics, for example, of course costs something:  not just sore muscles, but damage to family and psyche and society.  It’s the price of winning—eye always on the prize.

Today, on palm Sunday, the theology of glory leads us to wave palm branches, and then jump straight to Easter Sunday….eye on the prize, God wins.

True as far as it goes.  But it doesn’t work for me.  The week between PS and ES is real.  Between parade and party lies passion, suffering.  I need a deeper theology….what Luther called the theology of the cross.

Theology of the cross is more concerned with what looks like failure, not winning, with what seems to be disaster, and the absence of God in our desperate and despairing times.  

The people at the palm parade were looking for a winner, because they were desperate and despairing, but they had a clear winner theology and a certain idea of what the winner would look like and do—heal their hurt, trample the occupying forces and give them their independence back.

And what does Jesus do?  Shows up on a donkey.  Already the glory theology is being challenged. Sure, some may have remembered the old prophecy about their savior coming on a donkey, as Matthew later projects, but these weren’t the learned and elite; they were busy greeting Pilate arriving in another parade of glory, with horses, and soldiers and power and glory.

The people at this parade come, like us, with needs, some physical or mental, some social—Hosanna, save us!  Help! 

The forces of death still seem to be prominent in OUR empire today.  Like them, we see sorrow, and humiliation, and disgrace and injustice all over the place.  And it’s real.  As real today as it was for those parade go-ers and Jesus 2000 years ago.  We too seek to transcend that, sometimes by holding fast to Easter, even as a secular holiday, sometimes with practices like meditation and yoga, hoping against hope that winning will win.  We cling more tightly to our theology of winning, that something we can do, or something bigger and more powerful than us, will make it all better. 

But these coming 7 days tell us otherwise.  They call us back to a deeper spiritual reality.  And offer us a just-as-real, but deeper hope.

That reality is that new life, new hope, always involves sacrifice, not the no-pain-no-gain kind, that is self-centered, but sacrifice that is self-giving, other-centered.   The kind of sacrifice we’ve seen historically in the 60s human rights deaths, or in the struggle to be rid of apartheid in SA, or peacemakers in foreign lands.  The eye on the prize here isn’t all about me and my winning. Sometimes the self-giving comes in acts of com-passion (quote from Spiritual Literacy)

Nothing new and meaningful comes without self-giving, and it’s no cheap hope that’s offered here-to that crowd nor to us today.  You see, what’s on offer following the com-passion Jesus way means dying…

Dying to the self that pretends

Dying to the certainty that I can go it alone, or that its all about me

Dying to control

Dying to who we think we are

And living….

Living into the true self that knows it is part of something much bigger

Living into the uncertainty of trusting others

Living into giving up control to God’s way

Living into a new identity of compassion, instead of winning.

Not easy.  Sometimes painful, often arduous, and certainly countercultural.  No wonder few follow.

But it’s FULL, abundant, often joyful life, because we go through suffering knowing that death doesn’t have the last word.  Life does.

Here in Jesus we find the answer to our need….not the answer we think we need.

Here in God’s way we find real hope amid real pain.

So what’s your theology?   The theology of glory, of winning.   The all-American dream theology.

Or the theology of the cross, of self-giving, of compassion.

Really?

The question in our last hymn is a real one.  We live in a world of hurt and injustice.  A world Jesus came to touch and heal through compassion, not winning.   Will we answer as he calls us?

The Lazarus Story (theva)

The Lazarus Story!

John 11:17-37

Dear Friends!

Grace and peace are already ours for we belong to the family of Jesus the Christ. The Lazarus story was one of my favorites among the Sunday school classics. For at age 6, I was mesmerized by the power of Jesus to give life to the dead ones. Later on during my seminary years I learnt of two more things about this story. No 1. According to some legends Lazarus was resuscitated at age 30, went away to France with the two sisters, worked there as a Bishop for 30 more years and then died there. No 2. This story is not a miracle story for John uses the word “sign” instead of miracle, which means it points us to something beyond. The signs help us understand the glory of God at its depth. There is both power and powerlessness in God. There is grandeur and a misery as well in the God head. For John the miracle of the water turned into wine is a sign. The healing of the paralytic by the pool is another sign. The sermon you heard last Sunday of a man born blind receiving sight is another sign. With each sign Jesus also gave a theological interpretation. For example with the feeding of the 5000 Jesus pronounced, “I am the bread of life”. What does that signify? If you can live on that Jesus diet the hungry ones can be fed and those who thirst can be quenched. With the healing of the blind man Jesus announced boldly: “I am the light of the world “which means if you follow the light of Christ you can become the light to those who stumble in darkness. With the sign of bringing Lazarus back to life Jesus made a powerful theological statement. “I am the resurrection and the life”, which means If you abide in Jesus’s word, you may be able to help the walking corpses to live life with enthusiasm and dignity.

I do not know the mechanics and the methods Jesus employed to resuscitate Lazarus. But I do know of the criticisms he faced by the sisters. I do know of the instructions he gave to the crowd to bring Lazarus out of the grave. The two sisters were upset that Jesus didn’t show up on time for the memorial service. The professional mourners have come and sang their dirge and gone. However when Jesus arrived at the Bethany home he received comments of accusation: “SIR IF ONLY YOU HAVE BEEN HERE ON TIME OUR BROTHER WOULD NOT HAVE DIED.” These accusations are the most tragic expression of our vanities and helplessness. “If the surgeon had done that procedure right, my cousin would be living today. If the pastor had not made those stupid comments those two families would be still with us in this church today. If the president of our country had consulted the secretary of defense on time we would not have been humiliated in the United Nations’ Assembly.” All of us are great in being Monday morning quarterbacks. Jesus now instructs the crowd at the graveside:  “TAKE AWAY THE STONE”. So they took away the stone. The stone had to be removed for Jesus to resuscitate Lazarus. And stones have to be removed for Jesus to resuscitate the church today. The stones of pride, arrogance and insensitivity need to be removed for us to be a living church. Otherwise we will continue to look like dead people walking. The stones of our dead habits, selfish lifestyle and our indifferent attitudes toward others need to be removed. On Easter morning when I preach I will remind you again of the importance of stone removal. When the three women approached the tomb, they were filled with fear. Who will come to that gave and remove the heavy stone was the reason for their fear? It was early morning hours and to their dismay the stone had already been removed. It can happen again, and again. A secular novelist by the name of Walker Percy in his novel “The Second Coming” says, “IF CHRIST HAS BROUGHT LIFE INTO THE CHURCH, WHY DO THE CHURCHES SMELL OF DEATH?”

Lazarus story speaks more of life than death. In fact when Jesus heard of the news of the death of Lazarus he said to his disciples “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep come let us go and wake him up.” In an ancient Indian book of Ethics (Thirukkural) this is how death and life are so vividly portrayed. ”Birth is to wake up as death is to sleeping, and both are natural occurrences and they illustrate the impermanence of life”. A well-known Indian sage by the name Tagore, who was a recipient of the Nobel Prize for English literature, wrote:” DATH IS NOT EXTINQUISHING THE LGHT-IT IS PUTTING OUT THE LAMP-BECAUSE THE DAWN HAS COME”. However every time when I think of my own death I am horrified. Nobody knows when I will face my death. We may talk of the clinical death, the legal death and the spiritual death. We may say that when there is a cessation of respiration, cessation of blood circulation and cessation of brain function, death happens. Jesus said in this story, those who live and believe in me shall never die. What does that mean? Who am I? Am I just a body and a mind? Am I just a bunch of arteries and veins, the left and the right hemispheres of brain? Or is there something more? Did God form me from the dust of the earth and breathed into my nostrils the breath of life? Am I still a living soul? What happens to this soul when my body decays? Think about this!

The shortest sentence of the whole bible is found in this story. “Jesus wept.” Jesus wept because he cared for a person called Lazarus. Jesus wept because he loved the Bethany family. Jesus was a person of love. Jesus with his love can remove all the stumbling stones in our midst. What then is the message of the Lazarus story? It is simply this:  When we weep and feel the pain of being human, crushed by the weight of the circumstances of life, struggles to get on with life itself, there is one who understands our feelings and our emotions. There is one who will weep for us.  For hundreds of years, year after year during the 3^rd and the 4^th and the 5^th Sundays in Lent we have been hearing the same stories; the Samaritan woman’s story, the story of the man born blind and the Lazarus story. In the early church after 40 days of the long hours of study and discussion they asked some hard questions. Perhaps these stories helped them towards self-examination or self-diagnosis. I know we need them today to know more about our own selves.

A story is told of a patient who was complaining to his physician of a pain in several places. The doctor asked him to indicate where it hurts. He pointed first to his leg, then to his side and finally to his head. “Every time I press in these places it hurts”, he said. After a careful examination, the physician diagnosed his problem. “You have a broken finger”.

 The Samaritan woman reminds me to ask the question: Where do I thirst? The man who was born blind helps me to pose a question: In what ways am I blind?  Helen Keller once said “the saddest thing in the world is people who can see but have no vision”. And the Lazarus story raises to me the question: What part of me needs resuscitation and revivification?

The Lazarus Story!

John 11:17-37

Dear Friends!

Grace and peace are already ours for we belong to the family of Jesus the Christ. The Lazarus story was one of my favorites among the Sunday school classics. For at age 6, I was mesmerized by the power of Jesus to give life to the dead ones. Later on during my seminary years I learnt of two more things about this story. No 1. According to some legends Lazarus was resuscitated at age 30, went away to France with the two sisters, worked there as a Bishop for 30 more years and then died there. No 2. This story is not a miracle story for John uses the word “sign” instead of miracle, which means it points us to something beyond. The signs help us understand the glory of God at its depth. There is both power and powerlessness in God. There is grandeur and a misery as well in the God head. For John the miracle of the water turned into wine is a sign. The healing of the paralytic by the pool is another sign. The sermon you heard last Sunday of a man born blind receiving sight is another sign. With each sign Jesus also gave a theological interpretation. For example with the feeding of the 5000 Jesus pronounced, “I am the bread of life”. What does that signify? If you can live on that Jesus diet the hungry ones can be fed and those who thirst can be quenched. With the healing of the blind man Jesus announced boldly: “I am the light of the world “which means if you follow the light of Christ you can become the light to those who stumble in darkness. With the sign of bringing Lazarus back to life Jesus made a powerful theological statement. “I am the resurrection and the life”, which means If you abide in Jesus’s word, you may be able to help the walking corpses to live life with enthusiasm and dignity.

I do not know the mechanics and the methods Jesus employed to resuscitate Lazarus. But I do know of the criticisms he faced by the sisters. I do know of the instructions he gave to the crowd to bring Lazarus out of the grave. The two sisters were upset that Jesus didn’t show up on time for the memorial service. The professional mourners have come and sang their dirge and gone. However when Jesus arrived at the Bethany home he received comments of accusation: “SIR IF ONLY YOU HAVE BEEN HERE ON TIME OUR BROTHER WOULD NOT HAVE DIED.” These accusations are the most tragic expression of our vanities and helplessness. “If the surgeon had done that procedure right, my cousin would be living today. If the pastor had not made those stupid comments those two families would be still with us in this church today. If the president of our country had consulted the secretary of defense on time we would not have been humiliated in the United Nations’ Assembly.” All of us are great in being Monday morning quarterbacks. Jesus now instructs the crowd at the graveside:  “TAKE AWAY THE STONE”. So they took away the stone. The stone had to be removed for Jesus to resuscitate Lazarus. And stones have to be removed for Jesus to resuscitate the church today. The stones of pride, arrogance and insensitivity need to be removed for us to be a living church. Otherwise we will continue to look like dead people walking. The stones of our dead habits, selfish lifestyle and our indifferent attitudes toward others need to be removed. On Easter morning when I preach I will remind you again of the importance of stone removal. When the three women approached the tomb, they were filled with fear. Who will come to that gave and remove the heavy stone was the reason for their fear? It was early morning hours and to their dismay the stone had already been removed. It can happen again, and again. A secular novelist by the name of Walker Percy in his novel “The Second Coming” says, “IF CHRIST HAS BROUGHT LIFE INTO THE CHURCH, WHY DO THE CHURCHES SMELL OF DEATH?”

Lazarus story speaks more of life than death. In fact when Jesus heard of the news of the death of Lazarus he said to his disciples “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep come let us go and wake him up.” In an ancient Indian book of Ethics (Thirukkural) this is how death and life are so vividly portrayed. ”Birth is to wake up as death is to sleeping, and both are natural occurrences and they illustrate the impermanence of life”. A well-known Indian sage by the name Tagore, who was a recipient of the Nobel Prize for English literature, wrote:” DATH IS NOT EXTINQUISHING THE LGHT-IT IS PUTTING OUT THE LAMP-BECAUSE THE DAWN HAS COME”. However every time when I think of my own death I am horrified. Nobody knows when I will face my death. We may talk of the clinical death, the legal death and the spiritual death. We may say that when there is a cessation of respiration, cessation of blood circulation and cessation of brain function, death happens. Jesus said in this story, those who live and believe in me shall never die. What does that mean? Who am I? Am I just a body and a mind? Am I just a bunch of arteries and veins, the left and the right hemispheres of brain? Or is there something more? Did God form me from the dust of the earth and breathed into my nostrils the breath of life? Am I still a living soul? What happens to this soul when my body decays? Think about this!

The shortest sentence of the whole bible is found in this story. “Jesus wept.” Jesus wept because he cared for a person called Lazarus. Jesus wept because he loved the Bethany family. Jesus was a person of love. Jesus with his love can remove all the stumbling stones in our midst. What then is the message of the Lazarus story? It is simply this:  When we weep and feel the pain of being human, crushed by the weight of the circumstances of life, struggles to get on with life itself, there is one who understands our feelings and our emotions. There is one who will weep for us.  For hundreds of years, year after year during the 3^rd and the 4^th and the 5^th Sundays in Lent we have been hearing the same stories; the Samaritan woman’s story, the story of the man born blind and the Lazarus story. In the early church after 40 days of the long hours of study and discussion they asked some hard questions. Perhaps these stories helped them towards self-examination or self-diagnosis. I know we need them today to know more about our own selves.

A story is told of a patient who was complaining to his physician of a pain in several places. The doctor asked him to indicate where it hurts. He pointed first to his leg, then to his side and finally to his head. “Every time I press in these places it hurts”, he said. After a careful examination, the physician diagnosed his problem. “You have a broken finger”.

 The Samaritan woman reminds me to ask the question: Where do I thirst? The man who was born blind helps me to pose a question: In what ways am I blind?  Helen Keller once said “the saddest thing in the world is people who can see but have no vision”. And the Lazarus story raises to me the question: What part of me needs resuscitation and revivification?