“Gee, that was fun (I especially liked the music) but what does it all mean?”

First Sunday of Eastertide

Acts 4:32-35, John 20:19-31

I’m so glad that Thomas, the Patron Saint of Doubters, always makes his appearance this first Sunday after Easter in our cycle of scripture readings. Because by now, the Easter afterglow has worn off. We’ve sung the hymns, we’ve enjoyed the choirs, we’ve digested the Easter potluck, and we’ve probably even come down off our sugar high from all those chocolate bunnies, peeps and jelly beans. By the way: Peeps? Those are Satanic. They should really be outlawed.

By now, if not before, some of us may be wondering, like Thomas: What the heck was that all about? Do I really believe that story? How do I make sense of this?

So, I’d like to attempt an answer to those questions, with the help of a wonderful book by the well-known Biblical scholars Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan. It’s called The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach about Jesus’ Final Days in Jerusalem. They dig into Mark’s day-to-day account of the week leading up to Easter and, in doing so, give answer to many of the questions that doubting Thomases have.

So, let’s start with the question of Good Friday – Adam’s question from Palm Sunday: Why did they kill Jesus? Did Jesus really have to die? Did God want that to happen?

The most familiar explanation of Jesus’ death is called substitutionary atonement. It’s so familiar, I’m sure at least one of you can tell the rest of us what it means. So, one of you, tell us why Jesus had to die? Right. We’re sinners, and God is offended by this sin – sickened by it. There has to be a sacrifice or a punishment for sin before we can be forgiven, but one of us wouldn’t be adequate since we’re despicable sinners, right? So, it had to be a perfect human being. Only Jesus, the spotless lamb, could do the trick. Thus he is the sacrifice, and Good Friday is good because it is the day that makes God’s forgiveness of us possible. So, Jesus – literally – died for our sins.

A long time ago, I decided that I could not believe in a God that demanded this sort of sacrifice. That someone – namely, his own son – had to be tortured and murdered before God could get around to forgiving us. I knew I did wrong things, but I didn’t think I was so despicable that it demanded the killing of someone else. My own, mortal parents were capable of more love than God seemed capable of – they loved us more like the prodigal son’s father, unconditionally, putting up with our stupid behavior, ready to accept us even before we had “atoned.” If God was that sort of God – a divine child abuser – then I wanted nothing to do with ‘him.’

I think lots of Thomases feel this way, both in and out of the church. If you are one of those Thomases, you might be heartened to know that substitutionary atonement is not the only Christian understanding of “why Jesus had to die.” It took more than 1,000 years for it to become dominant, around the time that St. Anselm, the archbishop of Canterbury, wrote a theological treatise on it in 1097. Over the centuries, it has become the most common explanation. But it’s not necessarily the most Biblical explanation.

It’s true that the language of sacrifice is used in the New Testament, but it is only one of several different ways of talking about the meaning of Jesus’ execution. One way sees the death and resurrection of Jesus as the embodiment of a path of psychological and spiritual transformation that lies at the center of Christian life. Paul expresses this idea a lot, in writings such as “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” The old Paul has to die – has to be crucified – so that the new Paul, the one who is one with Christ, can live.

There’s a lot of truth, I think, in this spiritual and psychological reading of Jesus’ death -- one that many spiritual traditions affirm. It’s a natural human habit to become egotistic, centered in the “small self” with its anxieties and preoccupations. This small self can be both terribly anxious and fearful as well as preoccupied with its own accomplishments and successes. Part of our human task is to die to this small self, and rise again to a new, larger, more expansive self, one grounded in that which is ultimate, grounded in a compassion and peace that “surpasses understanding.” Grounded in God, who is the source of our “true self.”

There are also meanings behind the crucifixion that are much more political – Jesus countered the domination system of his day, a system in which about 1-2% of the population owned almost all the wealth, while the rest of the people lived in moderate to severe poverty. This economic exploitations was joined with political oppression and religious legitimation of the status quo. Jesus challenged the system, the reign of Caesar, with a vision and a passion for the reign of God, a reign where the least were first, and the first were last. A reign where all of God’s resources were distributed equitably among everyone.

Given how threatening this vision was to the status quo, the execution of Jesus was almost inevitable. Not because of divine necessity, but because this is what empires do to people who publicly and vigorously challenge them. Jesus’ passion for the reign of God to come on earth, as it is in heaven, got him killed.

I cannot affirm that Jesus died for the sins of the world. But I can affirm that Jesus was killed because of the sin of the world. I cannot believe in a God that demanded the death of Jesus to make “him” less angry at the rest of us. But I do believe in a God who wills the death of no one but who can turn even the worst thing into a very good thing.

Which leads me to Easter… just what was that very good thing?

Now, some people say that that very good thing was that Jesus’ corpse physically rose from the grave. God transformed his dead body into one that lived again – that was able to talk and walk with his friends, eat food with them, appearing in a form that could be seen, heard and touched. This unique event in history means that Jesus really is the son of God, and that Christianity is true. And it demonstrates once and for all that death is dead – that we, like Jesus, will also be resurrected in heaven after we die. I know that many people – some of us, I think – believe that this is the good news, and if you can’t believe this, then you aren’t really a Christian.

But what about the doubting Thomases among us who can’t quite say yes to this? Is this really the only way we can understand Easter? I don’t believe it is.

To start with, there are mixed messages from the biblical accounts about what form Jesus takes after his resurrection – does he have a physical body like ours? Or is it some sort of transformed spiritual body – one that still bears our physical traits (like scars) but one that is also capable of appearing suddenly in rooms and perhaps even being in more than one place at a time? Or a vision? Paul – Acts. (You know, we in modern Western culture tend to disparage visions. We see them as hallucinations, as deviations from reality. And lots of times, they might be. I’ve been around enough schizophrenics in my time. But I believe they can also be disclosures of reality.)

Some biblical scholars believe it’s quite possible that the Gospel writers are using the language of parable metaphor rather than of historical reporting to talk about the events around Easter. Maybe they’re not expecting us to take this as historical fact. Maybe they’re expecting us to take this as a profoundly true metaphor.

To me, at some level, none of this debate about what happened to Jesus’ physical body matters. Something spectacularly wonderful and earth-shaking happened on Easter morning. Physical body or not, vision or not Jesus lives. He continues to be experienced after his death, though in a radically new way. He lives. John Dominic Crossan puts it so well, “The essence of Easter is that despite his crucifixion, Jesus was for his followers alive, present, and empowering them to do the work of Kingdom still. That’s the only mystery and the only miracle and, as far as I’m concerned, it’s more than enough of both.”

Jesus lives, and because of that, his followers go from a group of dispirited, fearful people hiding behind locked doors to a group of bold, fearless “missionaries” – people who continue to announce and embody the good news of Jesus in the same way that he did while live. Listen to what Acts says about these early disciples (Acts 4:32-35):

Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no
one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was
held in common. With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the
resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not
a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and
brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles' feet, and
it was distributed to each as any had need.

This is the only miracle and mystery I need – that Jesus is alive and present enough to empower these people to throw off their fear and risk the same death Jesus had so that they could proclaim and live out his vision for the reign of God. The only miracle and mystery that I need is the that Jesus was alive and present enough to empower Ahmed, the guy from the children’s story, to do something as crazy as give away all his food to his hungry neighbors.

Jesus lives and that means that God has said “yes” to Jesus and “no” to the domination system that executed him. Jesus lives and that means that God has said that he is Lord of the earth, not the death-dealing powers that crucified him. Matthew puts it this way: That God has given the resurrected Jesus “all authority in heaven and on earth.” We may cringe when hear this, seeing in it a triumphalist claim that Christianity is the only way, that you have to believe in Jesus or else. I’m not at all sure that’s the way Matthew means it. I think he means, Jesus is Lord, which means that the Caesars of the world aren’t. Jesus is Lord, not the domination systems that oppress the poor to benefit the wealthy and the powerful. Jesus is Lord, not the religious systems that legitimate this oppression, nor the religious systems that marginalize and exclude whole groups of people.

I think I told you once about hearing Yvette Flunders, the lesbian African-American pastor of City of Refuge, here in San Francisco. She said, to a group of mainly white feminists, that she had been called on the carpet for using the patriarchal word “Lord.” But she refused to stop using that word because calling Jesus Lord meant that the homophobia that threatened to kill her spirit was not Lord; Jesus was Lord, not the racism that wanted to bring her down; Jesus was Lord, not the sexism that told her she couldn’t be a pastor, that wanted to keep her in her place. She went on to get ordained and to found a multiracial, multi-class church that has a vital, multi-million dollar foundation to aid those living with HIV/AIDS, especially in the African-American community. Yvette Flunders is one of the most powerful people I have ever come across and, I believe, it’s because Jesus lives and Jesus is Lord.

May this same Jesus be alive for us, present for us, continually empowering us to do the work of the Kingdom in our time and our place. Can I get an “amen” from the doubting Thomases?

Amen. Alleluia.

"Icons of Resurrection"

Easter Sunday
Isaiah 25:6-9, Mark 16:1-8

When faced with disaster, with the death of your dreams and – more importantly – with the death of a real, live person whom you loved, whose warm hand you had just held days before – the first step is to bury the dead. Properly, and with love. This is what the three women know, Mary Magdalene, Mary and Salome, the ones who go to Jesus’ tomb early on the first Easter. You awake before dawn and carry pounds of expensive oils, spices and herbs a mile or more to the tomb. You go, despite the fact that you have no idea how you are going to roll back the stone, weighing tons, that sits in front of the tomb carved from rock. You’ll figure that out when you get there.

The important thing is to bury your dead. To unwrap the body – in this case, the bloodied and bruised body – and rub oils mixed with the perfume of herbs and spices all over it, caressing this body that is already stiff, loving for the last time this flesh, making the body smell sweet and fragrant again, giving the dead man back the dignity that he gave you in life. The important thing is to love bodies, to honor them even when you can no longer protect them from death.

Afterwards, the women will figure out what the next important thing is to do. Perhaps it will be to make breakfast for their grieving friends. Perhaps it will be to hold each other while they weep. Perhaps it will be to tell the story of how he died – sharing the horror they each witnessed. For these women were the only ones who stayed with Jesus while he died. It was excruciating to watch. Perhaps that was why his male disciples fled – or maybe they did so because it was too dangerous for them to be there. The Roman authorities didn’t expect women to be subversives as readily as men. In any event, the women were the only ones who kept vigil at the cross while he died. Most likely, they simply wanted this man, their beloved friend, to know that he was not going to die alone. The important thing is to know that you are not alone.

They were ordinary people doing the important work that needs to be done, that always needs to be done, even amid violence, confusion and chaos. They are so ordinary their three names are not mentioned in any other place in the Gospels save for at the crucifixion and on Easter morning. (Magdalene) And yet, these three ordinary women are one of two icons of the Resurrection found in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. You should all have this icon – it was in your order of worship. It’s called “The Holy Women at the Tomb,” although its more traditional title is “The Spice Bearers.”

The Orthodox tradition believes that icons can be as revelatory of spiritual truths as words are. Maybe moreso. Because of that, there’s lots of icons in the Orthodox tradition – except for icons about the Resurrection, the main event in Christianity. This is because the Orthodox faith sees the Resurrection as a deep Mystery, one that cannot be captured in word or picture.

Which means the two icons of the Resurrection they do have must be pretty important, pretty significant. They have to carry a lot of mystery, a lot of meaning. I shared the other one with you last Easter, the one called “The Descent into Hell,” which depicts Christ riding into the darkness of hell on the cross and bringing the Divine Light even there. You have in your hands the other icon of the Resurrection from this tradition: The spice bearers. Three ordinary women doing the important work of loving: Bringing the spice of their presence, the ointment of their love to the tombs of life.

We know these people. They rarely make the news. But they know the important thing to do, and they do it. They clean up after disasters. They soothe the scared child who wakes up from a nightmare in the middle of the night. They counsel the drug addict they know will use again. They invite a grieving friend over for dinner. They counsel students and employees in distress, even though that isn’t part of their job description. They plan vigils at the gates of San Quentin and Lawrence Livermore labs. They set up clinics in rural Indonesia. They bring the spice of their presence, the ointment of their love to the tombs of life.

When I was in Louisville, Kentucky recently, attending a workshop for ministers who had gotten sabbatical grants, one of the presenters mentioned a recent trip he had taken to Burundi, where he had the chance to meet a remarkable woman named Maggy Barinkitse. Maggy had encountered the tombs of death in a way I pray none of us ever will. In 1993, she tried in vain to protect her co-workers and friends from a band of murdering Tutsis who came to the Catholic bishops’ residence where she worked. Her punishment for trying to do so was to be tied up and forced to watch while 72 of her Hutu friends and co-workers were killed. Faced with violence and death beyond imagining, Maggy found herself in a tomb wider than the world. But I’ll let Maggy tell her own story. This a video made by the Opus Prize for Faith-Based Entrepreneurship, a prize sponsored by Catholic universities and a prize Maggy won last year. (Video can be found at http://www.opusprize.org/winners/08_Barankitse.cfm.)

Finding herself in a tomb wider than the world, Maggy did the first important thing: She buried her dead. Like Mary, Mary Magdalene and Salome, she risked her life to care for bodies, even those she could no longer protect from death. And then, Maggy did the next important thing in her power to do: She scrounged up enough money to pay the Tutsi killers a ransom for 25 children belonging to friends they had just killed. She began to raise these children as her own, along with 7 other orphans – four Hutu and three Tutsis – she was already raising.

Maggy kept on doing the next important thing. She kept on bringing her presence and her love to Burundi’s tombs and -- years later – she has helped 30,000 orphans, giving them families and homes and jobs, a cinema, a swimming pool, a hospital. I’m sure Maggy could have imagined none of this in the devastating days and weeks following the massacre. Like the women walking to Jesus’ tomb, she had no idea how she was going to roll back the stone of death.

But she kept on showing up at the tombs of death – and, miraculously, she found that God was there. She found that the stones guarding the tombs of death kept getting rolled away, beyond her knowing how, beyond her ability make it happen. She found that Christ’s light could penetrate any darkness, including her own. She found that evil and death could never ever have the last word. She found resurrection. And she has become an icon of the resurrection. An icon of the light of Christ that can be found in the darkest places of death.

You know, this icon of the resurrection you have in your hands isn’t called “The Empty Tomb,” although the empty tomb is shown there. It would seem to make a great name for one of two icons of the resurrection. It would underscore the main point of Easter, right – that the body isn’t there?

Instead, the icon is called “The Holy Women at the Tomb,” or “The Spice Bearers.” The empty tomb is important, but maybe it’s not the only important thing. Maybe, just as important, is the three spice bearers, the three holy women doing what was in their power to do. Doing the next important thing. Loving bodies, caring for them. Bringing their spices, their presence, their love to the tombs of death. By doing so, they also found that evil and death can never have the last word. They found resurrection. And they became icons of the resurrections.

Look at these women. And see in their faces, your own face. For you are an icon of the resurrection, just as surely as Mary Magdalene, Mary and Salome. You are an icon of the resurrection, just as surely as Maggy Barinkitse. Christ descended into the darkness of death and brought to it the light that will always, always outshine the darkness. And now, we are the icons of that light. We are the ones who bring to the tombs in our lives the spice of our presence, the ointment of our love. We are the ones who – as Maggy says -- say no to violence and death, and yes to the love, yes to the life. We are the spice-bearers. We are icons of the resurrection. Amen. Alleluia.

"Descending With Jesus"

Palm Sunday
Mark 21:1-11, Philippians 2:5-11

And so it begins. We’ve been through Lent, our season of prayer, our season of preparation for this very time – this Holy Week we are now entering, the most sacred time of the Christian year, this week that contains the central teaching, the central Mystery of the Christian faith.

And we begin at the heights, as does Jesus. Both symbolically and literally. Symbolically, because Jesus is at the height of his popularity as a teacher and leader. After spending most of his ministry in the hinterlands — outside the Beltway as we might say in this country — he’s about to enter the seat of power: Jerusalem. He’s making plans for his triumphal entry into this “capital city,” where many of his followers expect him to foment revolution, take over, take charge.

And he’s making these plans, literally, in the heights — in the town of Bethany, which is located on the eastern flank of the Mount of Olives. Standing at this spot, you overlook the entire city of Jerusalem. It’s one of those places we have plenty of here in the Bay Area. The East Bay Hills along Skyline Drive, the top of Mt. Tamalpais, Twin Peaks — a place you go to get a sense of the big picture, to look out over your world and imagine you can see it whole. One of those places where you can see clearly and lay good plans.

And so, Jesus does plan. Quite a bit. Of the 11 verses Mark devotes to the story of the procession into Jerusalem, more than half of them are about Jesus’ preparations for the event. There’s plenty of political and spiritual symbolism packed into his plans. First, he’s starting from the Mt. of Olives, the location from which the Jewish people expected the final battle for Jerusalem’s liberation to begin.

Then he sends for his provisions, which are not what any other kingly leader would call for. Instead of asking for a horse — the animal associated with warrior kings — he gets a colt, not even a full-grown donkey! Can you imagine a grown man riding this? His feet probably are dragging on the ground. I think people right away would get that he’s mocking the grand processions of the Roman military as they march into Jerusalem, strutting their stuff — their massive war horses, their leather armor, their gleaming helmets. Here’s Jesus, in his procession, riding a little donkey, with his feet dragging on the ground, unarmed. It’s a grand bit of street theater.

And the crowds are loving it. They treat him just as they would a triumphant national hero. They spread their branches and cloaks before him as a symbol of honor. They shout “Hosanna,” which means “God saves.” “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David.”

It doesn’t get any higher than this. This is Barack Obama at the Democratic convention. The crowds are going wild. They’re hanging on his every word, his every movement. He can’t say a sentence that doesn’t get applause. What a high! Most public figures, most leaders, do everything they can to stay there. To keep their approval ratings as high as possible.

But Jesus doesn’t. Instead, he chooses to descend. Literally, he descends from the heights of the Mt. of Olives into the city of Jerusalem. And he also, symbolically, descends — from the relatively safe hinterlands into the place of power, into Jerusalem. Jerusalem is the place where the authorities levy taxes and create unjust laws that make the poor even poorer, even more hungry and hopeless. And Jerusalem is the place where this inhumanity, this death can be confronted. But this is what also makes it a dangerous place — because here, the powerful people threatened by Jesus’ teaching, can get to him.

I have a picture, which was on my wall the entire time I was growing up. It shows Jesus sitting on the Mt. of Olives, looking over the city of Jerusalem. He’s sitting in a remote spot, surrounded only by trees and rocks and sky, and he’s looking down, down into the valley where Jerusalem lies. Down into the streets crowded with Roman soldiers with hair-trigger nerves and Jewish peasants with revolutionary dreams, down into the palaces of cruel leaders quick to quell any sign of unrest, down into the cross-marked landscape where the Romans regularly execute troublemakers.

I imagine that Jesus is sitting there, wondering if he should do this. Wondering if he should descend. It would be so easy to choose to stay in Bethany, to stay in that simple little village. It would be so easy to choose to return to the Sea of Galilee, 90 miles away from Jerusalem, where he did most of his healing and teaching. He could go back there, be a beloved regional teacher and have a good, long life. But he chooses to descend.

Maybe it was a choice he made even before this. In what is thought to be one of the oldest Christian hymns ever written down, Philippians 2:5-11 says, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.” Jesus descends. He becomes one of us, to experience our bondage, to experience our pain.

We got it wrong this morning. We shouldn’t have been ascending the stairs waving our palm branches, we should have been descending them if we really want to follow in Jesus’ footsteps. But most of us avoid this descent, if we can. The crowds singing his praises don’t get this. In fact, some of the same people cheering him during this procession will turn on him later when it becomes clear that he is not going to be the conquering leader. Not even his disciples get it. They’re always trying to talk him out of this descent, no, you won’t need to suffer. You’re our leader! You’re going to save us — that’s why we’re shouting hosanna, right? You’re going to save us, to conquer the oppressor. Right?

No one really gets that the core choice of Jesus’ existence will be to descend, for the sake of love, into the mindless cruelty of the world. There, he will expose himself to the full force of the powers of death. For the sake of his befuddled disciples, for the sake of the fair-weather crowds, for the sake of the diseased, of outcasts, of women, of children, he descends. He descends to confront — with the full force of love — all that is unlovely and unloving.

Of course, we who choose to follow Jesus also must descend. It’s our existential choice, too. The Mennonite poet Julia Kasdorf had an uncle who, following Jesus, also chose to descend into the mindless cruelty of the world and meet it unarmed, with only his love:

Uncle
At nine I knew what Jesus would do
if he got C.O. just for being
born Mennonite. He’d go anyway, like you.

In the name of peace, he’d race
an ambulance through the screaming streets
of Saigon. He’d grow a moustache to show
he wasn’t a soldier – a speck
on the camera lens, Grandpa insisted.

He’d take a generator to a village
in the hills where golden children
would run behind him yelling, “Mother
F*****.”

He’d thrust brilliant green blades
of rice into the fields where men’s legs
and the torsos of water buffaloes exploded
when plows struck bombs in the mud.

When the planes returned, he’d
load whomever he could into the only car,
drive to a refugee camp, and
there give up at last, as you gave up bearing that war
on your tall, blond body.

Lost across the continents for months,
you returned to us,
the uncle of someone else,
gaunt as a corpse, pale and haunted.
and when you could barely finish
a child’s portion at Howard Johnson’s,
that was the only miracle I could grasp.
(From Sleeping Preacher)

Yes, we got it wrong this morning. We shouldn’t have been ascending the stairs. If we really want to follow in Jesus’ footsteps, we too need to descend. I don’t know what that means for you, but I have some idea of what it means for me. As much as I would like to stay in the heights, be above it all, to not look into the mindless cruelty of the world, I know that that is where I need to go if I choose to follow Jesus. It means I can’t avoid suffering — my own or yours or the earth’s. I’m not going to be called to Vietnam during a war like Julia’s uncle, but I am called to enter those places of pain when I come across them and be the presence of love as best as I can.

And it means I can’t avoid this coming week, as much as I want to sometimes. You know, I really don’t like Holy Week. I hate the passion story. Because I can’t hear it, and not think of all the people who have been and are being tortured, who have been and are being betrayed by those they love, who have been and are dying alone and forsaken. But we can’t avoid this suffering if we want to walk through Holy Week.

This week that is coming is holy but not because of suffering, even the suffering of Jesus. Rather, it is holy because of the inexplicable and immeasurable love that prompted that suffering. So, as we make our descent, onto the streets of this city, back to our homes, our workplaces; as we make our descent into the suffering of this time and this place; as we descend with Jesus into this Holy Week, may we carry with us that love — that central teaching, that central Mystery of our faith. Amen.