What You Don't Know about the Holy Spirit
Acts 2:1-21
June 12, 2011
Pentecost Sunday
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”
But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o”clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: ‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’
You know, no matter how we try to explain the details of Christian faith, we face an unavoidable problem. The fact is that Christianity can be really confusing, especially for people who are new to it, or who aren't necessarily willing to dig down deep into its mysteries. And the Holy Spirit is part of that confusion.
Both Christians and non-Christians have struggled since the beginning with the Christian understanding of God, which is God as a Trinity. And because we’ve struggled with the Trinity, we’ve had a hard time understanding God as Holy Spirit. The Trinity is a paradox. It has a complex shell that, on the surface, seems to make no sense. But its core opens us to an amazing relationship with God. The problem is that its complex-seeming shell is hard for some people to crack.
What they don’t understand is that the concept of the Trinity was designed to help us form deep relationships with God. It’s based on the idea that God truly is one God. There aren’t three Gods. Nor is there one God with three parts. The Trinity expresses the idea that God is one God, but that we experience and form relationships with God through three distinct experiences of God.
Throughout the centuries, Christians have tried hard to represent this idea of Trinity, and it’s because of Calvin Presbyterian Church’s belief in the Trinity that we find a Trinity symbol in our church logo. It is the triangular symbol that reveals one figure with three tips. The idea is that we connect with God through those tips, yet God is always a whole no matter how we distinctly we experience each person of God.
We can experience and come to know God as Father and Creator, who is our source. This is God whom we experience as being in heaven, somewhat separate from us, but whom we also know loves us more deeply than we can fathom, and created us for something good.
We experience God in Christ. But this isn’t just Christ who lived 2000 years ago. This is Christ who the Bible says was “in the beginning,” and that he was “with God and in God, and all things came into being through him.” In other words, this is God who is the incarnation of God in the world. Christ is God whom we know in Jesus, but this is also God who is in the world, and in each of us. This is God we experience in our own hearts, in each other, in sunsets and mountaintops, and in Scripture.
We also experience and have a relationship with God who is everywhere, who permeates everything. This is God in the Holy Spirit. What I thought I'd do today, as we celebrate the coming of this Holy Spirit on the day of the Spirit, Pentecost, is to give a brief history of the Holy Spirit.
So where does the Holy Spirit first appear? The Spirit initially appears in the very first sentence of the Bible, where we read, “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” Actually, this is not quite an accurate translation of that sentence. One of the problems when we translate from Hebrew or Greek (the original languages of the Old and New Testaments) is that our language is designed differently from them. In English, if we come up with a new idea, we come up with a whole new word for it. That’s not the way Hebrew and Greek work. One word can have multiple meanings, depending on how it is used. And often the multiple meanings are intentional, conveying a richness of ideas at once. That’s the case in this passage. The Hebrew word for “wind,” or ru-ach, doesn’t just mean “wind.” It means “breath,” “life-force,” “breath of life,” and “Spirit.” This passage is saying that in the beginning God’s Spirit flowed across the water. The Spirit was already there, ready for Creation.
We find the Spirit mentioned a chapter later when we read, “Then the Lord God formed human from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the human became a living being.” Again, that work, ru-ach, shows up. The translators translated it as “breath of life,” but it’s more accurate to say that God breathed God’s Spirit into the first human. In other words, the Holy Spirit isn’t just in the world, but the Spirit is in each of us, and since that Spirit is part of the Trinity, that Spirit in us is also Christ’s Spirit in each of us.
From these beginnings the Spirit appears constantly in the Bible. The Spirit speaks to Abraham, calling him to follow into the wilderness. It speaks to and rests on Moses. Then it appears to and rests on the elders and judges of Israel. And as the nation of Israel grows, the Spirit comes to the kings and prophets, guiding David and speaking to Samuel, Elijah, Elisha, Jeremiah, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and more. Throughout Israel's history, God's Spirit rests on leaders, prophets, and even on the enemies of Israel. For example, the king and armies of Assyria and Babylon are seen as carrying out God’s will, with the Spirit, when they attack Israel for their lack of faith.
Then, in the early pages of the New Testament, the Holy Spirit enters Jesus in his baptism, and leads him out into the desert, where Jesus wrestles with his own human nature—a nature that would diminish the Spirit if it could, just as we often diminish the Spirit in our lives. It really wasn't until after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension that the world discovered the full force of the Holy Spirit. First, Jesus breathes the Spirit onto the disciples, giving them the Spirit’s wisdom and a deep and holy awareness of God all around them. Then, on the day of Pentecost, the Spirit comes into the early Christians, which is the experience we read about today. We’re told that the Spirit allows them to speak in all different languages, and that the flame of the Spirit rests on each of them.
That’s the history of the Spirit in the Bible, but Christianity doesn't just teach that the Holy Spirit was God at work in the world in biblical times. We believe that the Holy Spirit is completely available to each and every on of us today. We believe that in each and every one of us the Spirit is ready to come into our lives, if we want the Spirit in. The problem is that too often we modern Christians struggle with that idea. We’re not sure we want the Spirit to be that close. We’re a bit uncomfortable with God being that intimate. It’s somewhat easy to believe in God who is in heaven, looking down with smiling benevolence, but do we really want God to be as close to us as each breath? What if we open up to that Spirit and it challenges us to live a different life, to change in ways that call on us to give up things we hold dear?
The temptation of all Christians is to hold God at bay. In fact, many denominations slip into doing just that. That’s how both the Quaker and Pentecostal denominations started. They were both reactions to churches that were holding off the Spirit. The Quakers, during the 17th century, were so determined to become radically open to the Holy Spirit that they used to quake while they prayed—quaking because they were experiencing the Spirit. The Pentecostal faith started in 1903 at the Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles in direct response to the Christian churches of the time that had become so staid that they left no room for the Spirit. And many of these Pentecostals reported that they had an experience much like the Christians 2000 years earlier on the day of Pentecost.
The Holy Spirit isn’t just available for Quakers and Pentecostals. Right now you have the power to let the Spirit become a power in your life, but you have to choose—just like the early Christians chose. Being open to the Spirit doesn’t mean we have to quake or speak in different languages. Most people don’t have those kinds of spiritual experiences. Most of us who experience the Spirit experience the Spirit as a gentler, guiding, empowering, and coincidental/providential force.
I’ve experienced the Holy Spirit many, many times throughout my life because I've made a choice to be open to the Spirit. I experience God's Spirit working in me all the time, and often in really simple, unassuming ways. For instance, over the years I’ve noticed often that if I get overwhelmed and start running out of time during the week, the Spirit helps me. Many of you have learned that I have an open door policy. If you or anyone else shows up to my office during the week, I’ll stop whatever I’m doing and talk with you. What that can mean is that sometimes I run out of time to get all that I need to get done. And during those weeks when I’m completely overwhelmed, I’ve been amazed at how people will call me up and cancel appointments with me, and not because I’ve asked them to. It’s as though the Spirit is looking out for me. I get calls from those with appointments telling me that they have to see a doctor and the only time was the same time as our appointment, or they have to pick up their kids, have to get a crucial task done, or something like that. The Spirit takes care of me.
I’m not alone in my experiences. Calvin Presbyterian Church has made the choice to become open to the Spirit, and I’ve seen time and again how this has led to God-incidences. I’ve mentioned over and over one of the biggest coincidences. Back in 1999, when we were in the middle of a capital campaign to renovate our sanctuary, start an endowment fund, and discern whether to build onto the church or not, one of the houses (what became Faith House) came up for sale. We were able to buy it outright because of the money we had gathered during the campaign. We had left the second year of the campaign undesignated, saying that we wanted to see what God had in store for us. Because we were in that second year, and had money from the campaign and from the sale of the church manse (a house the church had owned that the previous pastor had lived in), we were able to buy the house outright. The next year a second house (what has become Charity House) came up for sale, and we were able to buy it with the rest of the money we had on hand. Two years later, we were able to buy a third house (what has become Hope House) by taking out a mortgage paid for by the rental of Charity and Hope houses. Without all of those houses, we would never have been able to do our renovation and expansion four years ago. This is how the Spirit works with those who are ready and open to the Spirit.
The Spirit isn’t just available for pastors and churches. The Spirit wants to work in all of our lives, to help us wherever we are: at work, at home, with friends, with difficult and important tasks, in mission, and in ministry. It doesn’t matter where, the Spirit is here to be in our lives and make a difference.
What Christian faith and our passage teaches is that the Holy Spirit is available in all of our lives, but to let it work in us, we have to want it to work. We have to wait, be ready, and let the Spirit in. And there’s no magic way of doing it. All we have to do is to want the Spirit in our lives, to ask it to enter our lives, and to let it in.
Amen.
Resurrection Stories: Sharing the Resurrection
Matthew 28:16-20
June 5, 2011
Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Have there been people who have made a faith difference in your life? I’m talking about people who have shared their faith with you at some point in their lives, and because they did it changed your life. I’ve had several of these kinds of people in my life, and as I look back, in many ways they’ve been the difference between my living a good life, and my living a selfish life.
My father was one of these people, and sharing his faith with me has made a tremendous difference. He never preached to me or my brothers and sister. In fact, he didn’t really talk about faith that much unless we asked him about it. But there were times when we would be talking late at night around the kitchen table, and we would ask him why church was so important to him. He would say things like, “It’s important because it’s where I say thank you to God. God has blessed me in so many ways, and I’ve done nothing to deserve it. But when I go to church I can thank God, and it’s also one of the ways I hear God speaking to me. Without God I’m nothing.” He would also say things like, “I don’t see how you can live without faith. God has done so much in my life. God’s given me you guys, our house, our friends, my career. I see it all coming from God.”
Even though I walked away from church at age fifteen, these kinds of talks stayed with me. When I struggled in my life at age 24, it was these talks that brought me back to the church. It wasn’t being preached at, it was being spoken to by a person of faith who spoke simply, personally, and authentically about God.
My father was one of these people, but over the years I’ve had a number of these kinds of people in my life, and all of them made a difference because they shared their faith. It’s the simplicity and authenticity of their sharing that made a difference. I’ve also been spoken to by a large number of Christians who have tried to share their faith in an aggressive, sales-pitch way, and I think I became a Christian despite them. They turned me off, but the ones who spoke plainly and honestly made the difference in my life.
The fact is that sharing our faith really has a tremendous power to change lives. Unfortunately, most of us are shy about our faith and have a hard time talking about it with others. I’m not sure why, but even as a pastor I’m often afflicted with this shyness. Is it because of our culture’s emphasis on separation of church and state? That may be part of it. Certainly there seems to be a powerful push from our culture to deny our faith and to keep it private from others, lest they be offended or attack us for speaking publicly.
Do we keep our faith private because talking about faith makes us too vulnerable? I think this certainly can be the case. There are many people who look down on religious folk, and to share our faith makes us vulnerable to their criticism or denigration.
I also think we may keep faith private because we think that we have to have everything figured out if we are to talk about our faith. We all feel so inadequate to put to words what we think and feel deep down. It’s also hard for us to talk about our experiences of God, especially if they haven’t been flashy or like a thunderbolt. Most of us experience God simply and quietly. Also, we’ve been so turned off by Christians who think they have it all figured out, and who come across like Christian know-it-alls, that we worry that we’ll come across that way if we share our faith. We worry that we’ll turn people off.
Still, whether you think you have it figured out or not, the fact is that all of us have a calling from God to share our faith. This calling is in our passage for this morning. Basically there are two GREAT callings in the gospels: the Great Commission and the Great Command. Our passage for this morning comes from the Great Commission, where we are told by Jesus to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” Jesus is saying that we have a responsibility to share our faith, but that faith has to be rooted in the other great calling, which is the Great Command. You know what the Great Command is. It’s found in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and it is a command that “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” We can’t take part in the Great Commission without the Great Command, but we also can’t live out the Great Command without a desire to take part in the Great Commission. When we start to really fall in love with God, it leads us to want to share God’s presence with others.
The problem we have today is that in many ways our churches are split between the two. Evangelical churches often emphasize the Great Commission as the main thing, while de-emphasizing the Great Command. Meanwhile, we Mainline Christians emphasize the Great Command, while de-emphasizing the importance of the Great Commission. We are called to do both, but how we do it is unique to each situation and to each of our personalities and faith stories.
Tony Campola has learned how to do both. Do you recognize his name? He is a very popular evangelical speaker who lives in the Philadelphia area. He is well known for teaching evangelicals how to care for people and share the Gospel in a Great Command way. A number of years ago he was in another city to speak at a conference. For whatever reason he couldn’t fall asleep. So, at 2 a.m., he got up and walked to a diner across the street from the hotel. As he sat at the counter eating a doughnut (not the kind of food I’d probably choose to eat if I couldn’t sleep, since it would keep me awake for the rest of the night), in walked two prostitutes who had just finished their evening’s work. They sat on either side of him and talked with the owner of the diner and his wife, who was in the back cooking. Campola was a bit uncomfortable.
In the midst of their conversation, one of the prostitutes mentioned that tomorrow was her birthday, but that she had never had a party. Campola perked up. He said, “Well, then, why don’t we have a birthday party for you tomorrow morning at 2 a.m.? I’m in from out of town, but if the owner here can bake a cake, I can bring party hats and stuff.” They all looked at him as though he was strange, but they agreed.
The next night Campola went into the diner at 2 a.m., and saw that the owner and his wife had baked a cake. In walked the prostitutes. Campola handed out the hats, and they all sang happy birthday. The prostitute was teary-eyed. She then asked if, instead of eating the cake here, she could take it home since she had never had a birthday cake at home. They all agreed, and she left. After a short time of silence, the owner of the diner said to Campola, with a puzzled look, “Hey, you’re a Christian, aren’t you?” Campola smiled and said yes. The owner then said, “And I’ll bet you’re a preacher, too.” Campola said yes. Then the owner said, “What kind of preacher are you?” Campola said, “The kind that has birthday parties for prostitutes at 2 a.m.” He then talked a bit about his faith, not in an aggressive, live-my-way, judgemental manner, but in a simple, ‘this is the difference God has made in my life” manner.
He never found out what kind of impact he made on them, but I’m also not really sure it matters. What mattered was that he shared his faith, much in the way St. Francis said to share faith. Francis said, “Preach the Gospel always. And if necessary, use words.” That’s what Campola did. That’s what we’re called to do.
The point is that all we are called to do is to share our faith in some way. We’re not responsible for converting people on the spot. We’re only responsible for offering them hope. And sharing this church is part of offering them hope.
When I pray over the church each week at the end of worship, I do so with both the Great Command and Great Commission in mind. I pray us out, asking God to lead all of us to share God’s love in faith wherever we are. We have a Command and a Commission to follow everyday. The question is whether we are willing to look for opportunities to do so everyday.
Amen.
Resurrection Stories: Overcoming Fear, by Connie Frierson
It is still Easter everyone. For a week of Sundays we are celebrating Easter and this sermon series is exploring what the resurrection means, what difference does it make that Christ was raised. What was the profound change in the universe? There was a little boy who heard the phrase “Christ is Risen.” He asked his mom what that meant. She explained that Jesus died on the cross was buried and rose from the dead. And the little boy exclaimed, “Jesus is a Zombie?” Scary huh? What if the meaning of the resurrection is to wake the dead? That doesn’t sound like the Holy Family. That sounds like the Adam’s Family. That’s even scarier. But what if the meaning of the resurrection is waking us up from grip of fear?
Well if the purpose of the resurrection is to free us from fear the bible has a funny way of going about it. It is a toss up which is scarier the crucifixion or the resurrection. But I am laying odds on the resurrection. The Crucifixion is a true horror story, a gruesome death with God forsakenness, darkness at noon, blood and water. This is an agonizing, violent, bloody and dark death. But for sheer shock value, Easter morning has it beat. The Resurrection is completely unexpected. Death by crucifixion is cruel but common. We are all too familiar with the cruelty of humans to humans. But the Resurrection is scary and unique. On Resurrection morning: An earthquake strikes with incredible force. An angel looking like lightning in snow-white clothes throws away the tombstone. The burly and courageous guards shake violently and faint dead away. Jesus, who was dead, "suddenly" pops up in front of the visiting women, (who evidently were made of sterner stuff than the guards) and says "Boo!" The women who witnessed this were seized with "terror and amazement" (Mark 16:8). Fear and great joy combine. What an emotional roller-coaster ride.
Fear is personal and it touches us in ways we don’t always expect and in ways that we can’t always rationalize. Who here is afraid of spiders? Who is afraid of heights? Who is afraid of public speaking? Ah you see there is the number one fear. In fact more people are afraid of public speaking than are afraid of death, our second biggest fear. As Jerry Seinfeld noted, that means that more people who rather be in the coffin than giving the eulogy. Fear is so personal. Yet if the purpose to the resurrection was to defeat our old enemies of sin and death, how would that affect us? What if we could be free of night terrors or even better to be free of the day terrors too?
I have a story of fear and hope of my own. As so many of you know my husband Allen died very suddenly in July 2006. And darn it all, he died the first day of a three-week vacation time. The first two weeks we had planned lots of home projects. But the third week we planned a vacation with the boys and my sister and her husband to Myrtle Beach. All of that changed. But after the funeral I decided that going to Myrtle Beach was what we would do any way. It would get us away; break up that time of deepest grief. My nephew, David, came along in Al’s place to help ride herd and distract Nate and March. David, Nate, March and I would fly down. My sister and her husband would drive. We arrived about seven hours earlier than my sister, played in the sand and the ocean then went back up to the condo to shower and eat. But later in the long summer’s twilight I walked down to the beach to walk by myself, while David watched the boys in the condo. The beach was virtually empty. I had it to myself, so I could cry and struggle with God and with Grief. The thing that I yelled at God again and again was the demand to know that Allen was well, that despite death, Allen was well. As I walked I saw the full moon rising on the ocean. It was a golden path from where I stood on the beach to the edge of eternity on the horizon. I thought, “OK God, I get that Allen has just gone ahead. But it is not enough.” I thought of that poem about the distant shores that makes a metaphor of a ship sailing out of sight for death and imagine the joyful greeting at the other shore. That poem has been a great comfort to many and in fact was a comfort to me at other times. But on this twilight of deep grief it was not enough. I wanted to know that Allen was well not some stupid metaphor of ships and shores and shining paths of light. I looked up again and saw a huge tall cumulonimbus cloud like a giant column. But as I looked the cloud looked like a fantastic pointer, an arrow to heaven. Now you have to know that Allen as a fighter pilot had a special fondness for cumulonimbus clouds. Evidently they were great fun to zoom around and in air-to-air combat could be used with great efficiency for hide and seek. But on this twilight, I was not comforted by a big puffy cloud pointing to heaven. It was not enough. I remember angrily telling God that cloud had no significance whatsoever, that in the next minute it would turn into a puffy dragon or a unicorn. I demanded God to spell it out. I wanted to know that Allen was well. I looked up into the twilight and there was a contrail, that is the vapor left behind in the stream of a jet. Allen loved contrails. One never came overhead that Allen didn’t point to it and guess about the type of plane or its destination. But this contrail was in a perfect A for Allen, spelled out above the pointer column of cloud, above the shining path of the moon on the ocean. God had spelled it out for me in a language that was so particular and unique to Allen and my relationship. Allen was well and it was enough. I stood staring at that shining path and that cloud and that giant contrail of an A for about ten minutes. My eyes couldn’t open wide enough to take it in. I was dumbfounded and grateful and comforted. Then my cell phone rang. I tore my eyes away from the sky to rummage through my windbreaker pockets for my cell. It was my sister calling. They had just crossed the line into Myrtle Beach. They would be there in just a few minutes. I ended the call and looked up. There was the moon. There was the shining path. But that huge cloud was gone. The contrail was gone. I scanned the sky looking for wisps of the cloud, smaller clouds that get broken up by the breeze. But there was none. The sky was completely clear. All gone in a one-minute phone call.
What do we make of stories like this? Was it a psychotic break? A hallucination brought on by grief and salt water? I recall Paul having a vision of heaven and not knowing if he was in the body or out of it. Well I knew I was in my own body, standing outside the condo, a few feet from the steps across the dunes. This was a message of comfort and faith. This was a resurrection message to drive out fear.
Christ’s message to the Mary’s was do not be afraid. Meet me in Galilee. This is not a total rejection of fear. I have to say some fear is built into our life for life to continue. Good fear is what keeps us from playing in traffic. But Christ is making a new claim for fearlessness in the resurrection. Don’t be afraid so that you can meet me. You can go tell my brothers that we are reconciled and we will meet. You can be people of joy, even after the horror of the crucifixion. You can let go of fear so that you can embrace life. You are not plodding round the year unknowingly passing up your death date till death takes you. You are living now with the knowledge of resurrection to come. So we don’t live like we are dying. But we live like those who are resurrected.
The great preacher Barbra Brown Taylor said, God "is not in the business of granting wishes. God is in the business of raising the dead, not all of whom are willing." That is us. We are unwilling. Perhaps it is too good to be true, too much to take in, too much to hope for. Those words, “too, much, too good, too much” are words of fear. We try to protect ourselves by hoping little. But this fear doesn’t protect us. It keeps us trapped in disbelief, in the ordinary and prevents us from rushing on in joy to meet God.
One thing we can say about Jesus is that he had this profound awareness of God. And it was this awareness that led him to challenge injustice, to live with compassion toward others, to be filled with inner calm and happiness. His life had a “raised up” quality. He was awake. He was truly alive. One can say that Jesus was raised up long before Easter. And what Jesus was about was this: He said, you, too, can be awakened. You, too, can be raised up, resurrected, alive. The reign of God is right under your nose, he said, and you can live in it. You, too, can know true happiness, peace and freedom. The same power that raised Jesus—giving him new life, freedom and joy—is able to raise all people. And so in this sense we are raised with Jesus. In the last verse in Matthew, Jesus says, “Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” We can experience the same life-giving presence of God as Jesus did. His spirit is with us.
Resurrection is a mysterious, ever-unfolding process in the lives of each generation. It is something we experience in the here and now. We experience the here and now when we are not blinded and paralyzed by fear. In the words of the Persian poet, Rumi, “Jesus is here, and he wants to resurrect somebody”! Let it be us. Amen.
Well if the purpose of the resurrection is to free us from fear the bible has a funny way of going about it. It is a toss up which is scarier the crucifixion or the resurrection. But I am laying odds on the resurrection. The Crucifixion is a true horror story, a gruesome death with God forsakenness, darkness at noon, blood and water. This is an agonizing, violent, bloody and dark death. But for sheer shock value, Easter morning has it beat. The Resurrection is completely unexpected. Death by crucifixion is cruel but common. We are all too familiar with the cruelty of humans to humans. But the Resurrection is scary and unique. On Resurrection morning: An earthquake strikes with incredible force. An angel looking like lightning in snow-white clothes throws away the tombstone. The burly and courageous guards shake violently and faint dead away. Jesus, who was dead, "suddenly" pops up in front of the visiting women, (who evidently were made of sterner stuff than the guards) and says "Boo!" The women who witnessed this were seized with "terror and amazement" (Mark 16:8). Fear and great joy combine. What an emotional roller-coaster ride.
Fear is personal and it touches us in ways we don’t always expect and in ways that we can’t always rationalize. Who here is afraid of spiders? Who is afraid of heights? Who is afraid of public speaking? Ah you see there is the number one fear. In fact more people are afraid of public speaking than are afraid of death, our second biggest fear. As Jerry Seinfeld noted, that means that more people who rather be in the coffin than giving the eulogy. Fear is so personal. Yet if the purpose to the resurrection was to defeat our old enemies of sin and death, how would that affect us? What if we could be free of night terrors or even better to be free of the day terrors too?
I have a story of fear and hope of my own. As so many of you know my husband Allen died very suddenly in July 2006. And darn it all, he died the first day of a three-week vacation time. The first two weeks we had planned lots of home projects. But the third week we planned a vacation with the boys and my sister and her husband to Myrtle Beach. All of that changed. But after the funeral I decided that going to Myrtle Beach was what we would do any way. It would get us away; break up that time of deepest grief. My nephew, David, came along in Al’s place to help ride herd and distract Nate and March. David, Nate, March and I would fly down. My sister and her husband would drive. We arrived about seven hours earlier than my sister, played in the sand and the ocean then went back up to the condo to shower and eat. But later in the long summer’s twilight I walked down to the beach to walk by myself, while David watched the boys in the condo. The beach was virtually empty. I had it to myself, so I could cry and struggle with God and with Grief. The thing that I yelled at God again and again was the demand to know that Allen was well, that despite death, Allen was well. As I walked I saw the full moon rising on the ocean. It was a golden path from where I stood on the beach to the edge of eternity on the horizon. I thought, “OK God, I get that Allen has just gone ahead. But it is not enough.” I thought of that poem about the distant shores that makes a metaphor of a ship sailing out of sight for death and imagine the joyful greeting at the other shore. That poem has been a great comfort to many and in fact was a comfort to me at other times. But on this twilight of deep grief it was not enough. I wanted to know that Allen was well not some stupid metaphor of ships and shores and shining paths of light. I looked up again and saw a huge tall cumulonimbus cloud like a giant column. But as I looked the cloud looked like a fantastic pointer, an arrow to heaven. Now you have to know that Allen as a fighter pilot had a special fondness for cumulonimbus clouds. Evidently they were great fun to zoom around and in air-to-air combat could be used with great efficiency for hide and seek. But on this twilight, I was not comforted by a big puffy cloud pointing to heaven. It was not enough. I remember angrily telling God that cloud had no significance whatsoever, that in the next minute it would turn into a puffy dragon or a unicorn. I demanded God to spell it out. I wanted to know that Allen was well. I looked up into the twilight and there was a contrail, that is the vapor left behind in the stream of a jet. Allen loved contrails. One never came overhead that Allen didn’t point to it and guess about the type of plane or its destination. But this contrail was in a perfect A for Allen, spelled out above the pointer column of cloud, above the shining path of the moon on the ocean. God had spelled it out for me in a language that was so particular and unique to Allen and my relationship. Allen was well and it was enough. I stood staring at that shining path and that cloud and that giant contrail of an A for about ten minutes. My eyes couldn’t open wide enough to take it in. I was dumbfounded and grateful and comforted. Then my cell phone rang. I tore my eyes away from the sky to rummage through my windbreaker pockets for my cell. It was my sister calling. They had just crossed the line into Myrtle Beach. They would be there in just a few minutes. I ended the call and looked up. There was the moon. There was the shining path. But that huge cloud was gone. The contrail was gone. I scanned the sky looking for wisps of the cloud, smaller clouds that get broken up by the breeze. But there was none. The sky was completely clear. All gone in a one-minute phone call.
What do we make of stories like this? Was it a psychotic break? A hallucination brought on by grief and salt water? I recall Paul having a vision of heaven and not knowing if he was in the body or out of it. Well I knew I was in my own body, standing outside the condo, a few feet from the steps across the dunes. This was a message of comfort and faith. This was a resurrection message to drive out fear.
Christ’s message to the Mary’s was do not be afraid. Meet me in Galilee. This is not a total rejection of fear. I have to say some fear is built into our life for life to continue. Good fear is what keeps us from playing in traffic. But Christ is making a new claim for fearlessness in the resurrection. Don’t be afraid so that you can meet me. You can go tell my brothers that we are reconciled and we will meet. You can be people of joy, even after the horror of the crucifixion. You can let go of fear so that you can embrace life. You are not plodding round the year unknowingly passing up your death date till death takes you. You are living now with the knowledge of resurrection to come. So we don’t live like we are dying. But we live like those who are resurrected.
The great preacher Barbra Brown Taylor said, God "is not in the business of granting wishes. God is in the business of raising the dead, not all of whom are willing." That is us. We are unwilling. Perhaps it is too good to be true, too much to take in, too much to hope for. Those words, “too, much, too good, too much” are words of fear. We try to protect ourselves by hoping little. But this fear doesn’t protect us. It keeps us trapped in disbelief, in the ordinary and prevents us from rushing on in joy to meet God.
One thing we can say about Jesus is that he had this profound awareness of God. And it was this awareness that led him to challenge injustice, to live with compassion toward others, to be filled with inner calm and happiness. His life had a “raised up” quality. He was awake. He was truly alive. One can say that Jesus was raised up long before Easter. And what Jesus was about was this: He said, you, too, can be awakened. You, too, can be raised up, resurrected, alive. The reign of God is right under your nose, he said, and you can live in it. You, too, can know true happiness, peace and freedom. The same power that raised Jesus—giving him new life, freedom and joy—is able to raise all people. And so in this sense we are raised with Jesus. In the last verse in Matthew, Jesus says, “Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” We can experience the same life-giving presence of God as Jesus did. His spirit is with us.
Resurrection is a mysterious, ever-unfolding process in the lives of each generation. It is something we experience in the here and now. We experience the here and now when we are not blinded and paralyzed by fear. In the words of the Persian poet, Rumi, “Jesus is here, and he wants to resurrect somebody”! Let it be us. Amen.
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