soulwerker

A friend of mine sent me a link to a Minnesota Public Radio blog post which pointed out the apparent lack of any sort of serious, thoughtful theological response to the events of last Friday, July 20, in Aurora, Colorado. The author of that piece, Bob Collins, notes:

Given the large number of people who believe in God, and the invocation of God in the aftermath of the tragedy, we are, nonetheless left on our own to try to answer the unanswerable and, frankly, unspeakable question: “What’s the deal, God?”

I would love nothing better than to posit the end all/be all answer on behalf of God — an answer which would make sense of such a senseless act of violence and wholesale slaughter of unsuspecting movie-goers. There is, however, no “answer”. Instead there are plenty of cliches, most of which have already been trotted out for use with little regard as to how such cliches actually sound in times like these. For the most part, folk theology with its accompanying canon of God-talk are of little more comfort than acid drizzled into a ragged wound. Of course this isn’t the intent of the cliche-spreaders. Such words are meant to assure the wounded and the families of the dead that they “are not alone”. While I appreciate the columnist’s appeal for good, theological words, I don’t believe there are words available to adequately bridge the aching abyss of anger, confusion, sadness and grief into which scores of loved ones and survivors have been pushed because of the actions of a solitary young man.

Christians have to exercise restraint in times like these. We can be tempted to offer victims and society at large our formulaic answers to the question, “Why?” Yet every time we attempt to answer the unanswerable, we end up doing little more than reflecting our own biases and opinions — constructing God in our own image — intellectual idol-crafting at its best. While exercising verbal restraint, though, we Christians can be utterly profligate with our message of invitation. We can invite those who are questioning, angry, hurting, grief-stricken, confused or hopeless into our congregational communities. We can offer ourselves as companions on the way toward healing. We can take the risk of walking with others through the valley of the shadow of death, because we claim to worship a God-in-the-Flesh who died a naked, violent, unjust and excruciating death, and in that death overcame the DEATH we all fear. Words will not suffice following a tragedy like Aurora. Our ideas and theories and explanations will fall helplessly into nothingness. As followers of this Crucified God, it’s not our vocabulary that makes a difference, it’s our presence — our willingness to sit in the presence of unrelenting grief and hold our silence while resolutely refusing to abandon those who believe they have been abandoned by God.

Lord of Death and Lord of Life, we live as if we will not die and, so living, live deadly lives. Save us from this living death by engrafting us into your kingdom of life. As people of that kingdom we name now all those recent dead to your care — in particular those killed in Aurora, Colorado last Friday. We look forward to the fellowship of the communion of the saints and pray for those friends who will sustain us for the facing down of the kingdom of death. Amen. (from Prayers Plainly Spoken by Stanley Hauerwas — adapted).

“So they went our and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” (Mark 16:8)

Talk about a cliffhanger!

In spite of later efforts to append a more conventional ending onto Mark’s Gospel, this sentence is identified by most scholars as the final words the Evangelist writes to those who will hear and read his account of the Good News of God in Jesus. No beautiful flowers. No magnificent trumpets or celestial harps. No angelic chorus rustling through the early morning mist. No beatific vision of spic-n-span Jesus, cleansed from the residue of his violent death, and miraculously robed in resplendent, post-resurrection glory. No disciples skipping merrily down the street singing, “Jesus Christ is Risen Today” in anticipation of lamb chops, deviled eggs and a chocolate cake.

Instead, we get a haunting narrative about already grief-stricken women who receive a shocking message from a mysterious messenger. “You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here.” The entire experience is too much for them. They flee. In Mark’s telling, Easter offers very little in the way of serenity and assurance. To the contrary, Easter explodes everyone’s expectations and leaves everyone awash in terror and amazement.

The Easter moment SEIZES these first witnesses. They are seized to the point that their lives cannot possibly return to anything resembling normal. The body of Jesus is gone. Absent a body, what were they to believe? What are we to believe?

The claim Christians have made since the earliest days of the Church has been that, in Jesus, God travels among us as one of us. We celebrate this enfleshment, this Incarnation, this God-with-us, at Christmas. But God-with-us did more than look adorable in swaddling clothes. God-with-us did more than teach us good things and tell interesting stories. God-with-us did more than a few sleight-of-hand tricks to impress us with the miraculous. God-with-us lived the life of a human being. And, at the end, on a Friday afternoon outside of Jerusalem, God-with-us participated in the ultimate identification with the human condition.

God-with-us breathed his last and offered up his spirit into the Divine Life of the Trinity. In a final act of unrelenting love and extravagant faith, the Son of Mary and Son of God wrapped himself in death. Jesus held nothing back for himself or from us. The surrender was complete. Good Friday ended in darkness. And Easter dawns — not as happy ending, but as confusing beginning.

The Child of Promise is born on Christmas. The Crucified God is lifted high on Good Friday. The Resurrected Lord is born in a grave on Holy Saturday and walks out into the Unfinished Future of God on Easter morning. All he leaves behind are some grave clothes, an empty tomb, a cryptic messenger and some fuzzy directions: “I’m going ahead of you. Meet me out there…on the way.”

Rather than warm the heart, Easter in Mark’s telling grips the gut. Mark’s Gospel doesn’t tie up loose ends left over from Good Friday. Instead, this Gospel account turns Jesus loose from the tomb and out into the world. The women witnesses race away from the scene — seized with terror and amazement. And somewhere along the way, somewhere after those first terrifying and amazing moments, something happened.

Mark doesn’t tell us when it happened. But it DID happen. It had to have happened, or else we wouldn’t be sitting here today, 2000 years after the events Mark records. These women, these first witnesses — however haltingly, however tentatively, however cautiously — TOLD somebody what they had seen and heard. They TOLD somebody and they TOLD it all! They told about the heavy stone being moved. They told about the discarded grave clothes. They told about the mysterious messenger and the message he had given them: “He is not here. He has been raised. He is going ahead of you.”

And the Easter message began to spread. Other Gospels relate Jesus appearing to more of his followers — to a weeping Mary Magdalene in the Garden at the Tomb; to the frightened disciples in the Upper Room; to a couple of dejected believers as they walked toward Emmaus on Easter evening. In today’s Epistle reading we hear Paul relate other appearances of the resurrected Jesus as he recounts his own encounter with the Risen One. Throughout the centuries the story has been told and told and told. “He is risen! He is risen! He is risen!”

There were plenty of people in those first few terrifying days after that first Easter morning who did not believe it. The message wasn’t received with joy by all who heard it. But enough people did believe and enough people did rejoice.

Yes, I know this is the part of the Easter message that makes us nervous. It’s far easier to talk about the renewal of life than to speak about the obliteration of death. It’s far easier to talk about notions of Jesus’ “presence” amongst his disciples than it is to proclaim he got up and got out of the Tomb. Easier to dye eggs and cuddle bunnies than to stand before the impossible story of Easter and allow the Mystery to seize us — to catch us up short with the possibility that we really don’t know it all and that there is more to reality than meets our eyes, or can be externally verified through rational analysis.

There are plenty of people who come to worship — week in and week out, year in and year out, for a lifetime of Sundays — and just can’t bring themselves to believe. They can appreciate the teachings of Jesus. They can recognize a glimpse of the Holy in the life of Jesus. They receive comfort from participating in the life of a community of faith and receiving the Eucharist. They do their best to emulate the example of Jesus as they work and pray and give for the benefit of others in the world who are poor, hungry or marginalized. But they just can’t wrap their intellect around something that doesn’t add up. Dead people stay dead and that’s that.

I’m not asking anyone here to change your mind about the Resurrection today. The great theologian Karl Barth once said, “Belief cannot argue with unbelief, it can only preach to it.” And preaching, telling the Good News is what those terrified women did. It’s what the confused disciples did. It’s what the confounded St. Paul did. It’s what generation after generation of people have done. The people of God have told the story and of the ways that story has changed their lives — and that is preaching and such preaching can be done by anyone, any time, any place (no fancy robes necessary!). Whatever faults and foibles still exist in the followers of Jesus, the fact before us is that the story of Jesus doesn’t end with his death. The next chapter of the story begins on that first Easter and it’s still being written today.

In a few moments, Shelly, Ben and Kenneth will be baptized into the story of Jesus. They will be buried with Jesus in Baptism and raised to new life by the power of the Holy Spirit. We don’t ask folks to pass a “doctrine test” before they are baptized (and for this, some of us can say, “Thanks be to God!). That’s why we can baptize babies. What Shelly, Ben and Kenneth will receive this morning at this Font cannot be learned from a book. It will be learned by living.

They will all learn to be followers of Jesus just as we have learned — by hearing the stories of Jesus — the stories that are plausible and the stories that are impossible. They will learn to be followers of Jesus by living with this fellowship of followers, here at Trinity Church. They will not simply learn the stories of Jesus. Over time, they will become, just like all of us, participants in the story — living witnesses of the Good News — the amazing and sometimes terrifying Good News that Jesus isn’t back there, captured by words on an ancient page and stuck on a shelf; neither is he behind a rock in a deep, dark cave. He is not back there. He is OUT THERE — going ahead of us! And if we keep the eyes of our faith open, however fleeting or tenuous our faith might be, we might just catch a glimpse of him.

Alleluia! He is Risen.

The Lord is Risen indeed. Alleluia.

Traditionally, Good Friday has been has been a day of solemnity in the Church. A day of fasting. A day of once again placing ourselves in the story of the Passion as it is read. This is the day when we kneel before the cross and ponder the Mystery of the Death of God. This is the day when the prayers are a wide-ranging set of intercessions — meant to alert us to the reality that this Death of Deaths brings to life the WHOLE WORLD, not simply to each of us individually. This is a day when we confess into thin air without hearing the familiar assurance of absolution. This is a day when we depart the church building in silence without the benefit of a blessing or the closure of a dismissal. We simply leave — disoriented by the experience of being here and not quite sure about what to do next.

In the Prayer Book, the assumption is that this day will be a Eucharistic fast as well. No celebration of the Holy Eucharist is permitted. No holy food and drink. The clear intent is that we are to leave here today hungry for the comfort of the Eucharist, but with that hunger unfulfilled. In a culture overstuffed with food and everything else, and which feels entitled to getting what it wants when it wants it, to leave a liturgy absent the spiritual comfort of the Holy Meal can be disorienting.

The custom at Trinity for many years has been to offer Communion from the Reserve Sacrament — that is, Bread and Wine previously consecrated at another celebration of the Eucharist. This distribution is in pastoral consideration for those, who, for whatever reason, were unable to make it to the Maundy Thursday liturgy. But notice there will be no words spoken today when you receive it. Communion will be distributed quickly and in silence from standing stations at the food of the Chancel steps. Eat if you desire, but give some thought to getting in line, coming forward and passing by the Bread and Cup. Think about what it might mean to leave here “unfed”, to hunger for Jesus until Easter morning. Consider what it might mean to deprive yourself of that which brings you such spiritual comfort.

But why all the bother? Why all the fuss? Is the liturgy for Good Friday simply meant to activate some sort of personal guilt complex so we can all feel BAD about Jesus’ death again? Are we merely engaging in the time-honored practice of ladling yet another heaping helping of guilt upon ourselves? Will working ourselves up into an overwrought sadness and carrying more guilt out of here than we brought with us in the first place make us more “holy”…or better followers of Jesus?

The Christmas narrative makes the bold proclamation that, in Jesus, we experience “Emmanuel” — God with us. God doesn’t simply manage human history from the safety of eternity. God enters our history, and with it, the limitations of time and space.

God comes to us. In the flesh. With a BODY. God walks among us. God lives with us and gives us glimpses, through words and actions, of what it might be like if we were to take up the Eternal Life of God’s Kingdom, and leave behind the siren song of the Kingdom of Sin, which can only lead to Death.

We’re used to hearing, in our Scriptures, in our liturgies and in particular, on Good Friday, that Jesus died “for” us. My friend and Christian author, Diana Butler Bass, in the spirit of Julian of Norwich, and carrying forward the Good News of Christmas calls us to remember that in the Crucifixion, God doesn’t just die for us. God dies with us.* On Good Friday, we witness God’s complete identification with the human condition — because to enter human life fully means to live until there is no life. To be fully human, God must to only live our life, but die our death as well.

One of the most gut-wrenching pieces of art in Western Christianity is a 16th century painting commonly known as the Isenheim Altarpiece. It is an extraordinary, complicated piece of art, originally hung in the hospital chapel of a monastery. The cover of the altarpiece depicts the Crucifixion of Jesus, not as an event, but as a meditation on suffering. The Body of Jesus is emaciated, elongated and distended. The fingers are splayed like that of an arthritic. The shoulders and elbows appear dislocated. The feet are gnarled, filthy and hideous.

Hung in a hospital at a time when death couldn’t be as easily hidden from view as it is now, this painting undoubtedly served as a reminder for patients that Jesus not only suffered for them on the first Good Friday, he continued to suffer with them in their disease and distress. There Jesus was — God in the flesh — there on the cross, arms stretched wide to receive the suffering of all people for all time. Even the peasant folk in Isenheim. Even the burb folk in Wauwatosa.

We spend so much time attempting to avoid death in general, that to face into the brutal death of Jesus, even after all these centuries is still sickening for most of us. We want to think happy thoughts, but Good Friday won’t allow us to wiggle out of spending time with the horror of Jesus’ death. Good Friday is also a stark reminder that death awaits us all — all of us go down to the grave. Remember we are dust and to dust we shall return.

We avoid and deny sufferings and deaths of all sorts, don’t we? The suffering of guilt, shame or anger. The death of a relationship that could not be repaired. The suffering of disappointment. The death of a dream. The suffering of old age. The death of youth. The suffering of disease. The death of health. The suffering of poverty. The death of economic security. The suffering of war. The death of peace. There are hundreds of deaths — monumental and minimal — complete with their associated sufferings, which will greet us throughout our lives. And then, one day, we we will face the Death from which there will be no waking without the promise of resurrection.

Standing before the Cross today, we are reminded that we don’t walk through any of our deaths alone. Whatever death may come our way, Good Friday testifies to us that this Jesus, this Emanuel, the God-with-us, breathes his last and offers up his spirit into the Divine Life of the Trinity. In a final act of unrelenting love and extravagant faith, the Son of Mary and Son of God wraps himself in death. Jesus holds nothing back for himself or from us. The surrender is complete. It is finished.

*You can read Diana Butler Bass’s Good Friday Sermon at: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/dianabutlerbass/2012/04/good-friday-being-with-jesus-at-the-cross/

In his book, The Undertaking: Tales from the Dismal Trade, Thomas Lynch describes what happens in funeral homes when a body is received and prepared for burial. The body is, among other things, stripped and washed. The washing is carefully accomplished. A final act of respect afforded every person’s body entrusted to the funeral home. Young and old. Rich and poor. Male and female. A body decimated by disease. A body broken in an accident. A body riven by a bullet. Every BODY gets the same treatment. Everybody gets bathed.

When I first read Lynch’s account, I couldn’t help but reflect upon how he made the entire action sound…so exceedingly intimate and dare I say it? Sacramental.

In the hands of the undertaker, bodies aren’t treated as pieces of meat. Rather they are afforded the dignity of what they are — the mortal remains of the human beings who once lived, laughed, loved, worked, played, jumped, danced and wept in them. We all may go down to the dust, but the undertaker will prepare us for the journey.

For all of the nakedness that seems to permeate our culture, we remain ill at ease with bodies — particularly dead ones. As one author has put it, we are so uncomfortable with dead bodies, these days the dead aren’t even invited to their own funerals. We prefer “memorial services” and having the dead whisked away from our sight. We often quickly disperse the ashes so that we don’t have to confront the finality of a dead body being lowered into the ground.

The discomfort with dead bodies also translates into an uneasiness about the bodies we walk around in day in and day out. Think about it. We do our best to figure out ways to manage our clothing so we can accentuate the positives of our physicality and minimize those things we deem negative. From the Biblical perspective, we’re in good company — the first thing Adam and Eve did when they recognized their nakedness was to cover up.

At Christmas, we gather around a manger of hay and ogle sweet, little Jesus Boy, while happily ignoring Mary’s unseemly sweat and the pain-filled groans that filled the air as she labored intensely to push him into this world. We conveniently forget about the rustic smells of the cattle cave mingled with the odor of blood (the odor that has, from the beginning, been a part of every successful delivery). We mentally wrap Jesus in gleaming white swaddling clothes and sentimentally place him in a Febreeze-scented manger, convinced that, even in this unsanitary environment, he surely smelled of Baby Fresh lotion and Downy fabric softener.

But tonight (and for the next few days), the Gospel story bombards us with the sights and scenes of the Jesus who lived among us BODILY. Jesus isn’t an “ideal” or a “mythology” or a “concept”. This Jesus had a BODY…a Body that was tired, a Body that was beaten, a Body that was bloodied, a Body that was tortured, a Body that was suffocated by the most advanced execution technology of its day, a Body that breathed its last and died. Not a pretty, peaceful death, but a death of violence, scorn and derision.

But on the night before his death, we see Jesus at dinner with his friends. Before dinner, he lays aside his tunic and takes up a towel. Before the Romans can strip him of his clothing and his life, Jesus strips himself for service. He kneels before his students to wash their feet.*

Given what we hear Peter say to Jesus, I think we can assume people were just as ashamed of their feet in the 1st Century as we are of ours today. Feet hang out in the most difficult of places. In Jesus’ day, feet were mostly uncovered — so they bore the difficulties of dirt and rocks. Feet were calloused and knotted and bruised and scraped and cracked and dirty. Only slaves — the people who lived at the bottom of society — were charged with washing feet.

Jesus takes the role of a slave and washes feet. Finally, even Peter succumbs and allows the dirt and grime to be stripped from his feet by Jesus. The irony here, of course, is that in only a few, short hours Jesus will himself be covered in dirt and grime as he falls repeatedly under the weight of the cross on his way to Golgotha.

When Jesus completes the cleansing ritual, he tells his students, “If I, your Teacher and Master, have done this for you, then you ought to do it for one another.”

We hear these words and immediately we begin to sound an awful lot like Peter: “My feet are my business! I’ve got callouses, corns and bunions. I’m worried about the smell. Having a stranger wash my feet is way to intimate of a thing to do out here in front of God and everyone else.”

We may resist washing each other’s feet, but we will all readily fall in line to eat the Holy Meal. Somehow we’re not as offended by hearing Jesus say, “Take, eat. This is my BODY. Drink this. This is my BLOOD.” (Or it’s as if we haven’t heard him at all.) We can spiritualize the Eucharist. we can abstract it from Jesus’ death. WE can make it a symbol or a memorial. We may be able to turn the Eucharist into a head game, but we can’t make a head game out of feet.

When we think about feet, we come nose to toes with our physicality. We are BODIES…and Jesus was a BODY too! God’s story of salvation isn’t about rescuing souls. God’s salvation is about resurrecting BODIES. God preserves us, Body and Soul. We are a package deal. Every inch of our bodies gets redeemed in Baptism and resurrected on the Last Day — ALL of us! Even our feet!

Tonight, after we’ve washed feet and commemorated Jesus’ gift to us of his Body and Blood, we will engage in a custom that has been a part of Maundy Thursday liturgies for centuries. We will STRIP the altar. Members of our Altar Guild will assist the clergy and acolytes as we remove the candles, the vestments, the ornamentation, the linens and everything else behind the rail that can be moved. The altar will stand before us — naked and exposed.

Then, the Deacon and I will bathe the altar. We will do this, not because it’s dirty, but in an act of contrition and respect. We are preparing it for the death that is Good Friday. When the service is completed this evening, we will darken the sanctuary and leave in silence. I ask that everyone here leave in silence as well. Standing before the stark nakedness of the altar, can there be any other response?

Maundy Thursday strips us of our pretenses. Maundy Thursday strips us of our denial. Naked we came into this world. Naked we will leave it.

Jesus showed us the way to strip for service and to stand in dignity when every last shred of dignity is stripped away. As Jesus’ friends, we see his example and hear his invitation, “As I’ve done for you, so you do for one another. Take and eat. Take and drink.”

With naked feet we walk to this altar. With naked hearts we stand before God. With empty hands we receive the Body broken and the Blood poured. And wonder of wonders…we are clothed in Christ’s righteousness even as we are stripped for Christ’s service.

* The inspiration for this sermon came from an article by The Rev. Dr. Richard Lischer, professor of homiletics at Duke Divinity School. The article appeared in the March 21, 2012 edition of Christian Century and is titled: “Holy Week and the Art of Losing: Stripped Bare”.