Good Friday sermon 2011

“Finished… Completed… Accomplished” Good Friday 2011 Eagle River Ecumenical Svc.

I think I’m ready to start. I brought my sermon. It’s done. Or course, it could probably use a little touching up. There’s that long part in the middle—I’ll apologize for that right now. Or course, it IS Holy Week. I don’t know, if I’d just had a couple more days…

Do you recognize this feeling of regret, gnawing worry, guilt—that something you’ve done isn’t as good as it should be? Maybe it’s a test you should’ve studied harder for. Or something you did at work that wasn’t up to your own expectations. Maybe it was that difficult conversation you had to have with a relative that you think could’ve gone better? Sure, we all know that feeling. That’s a normal part of life for us. It’s human nature.

Today as we look at Jesus upon the cross I wonder what regrets, second thoughts, or wishes he might have had. Do you suppose he hung there thinking “I coulda healed more people. I coulda fit in a few more healings… a few lepers, maybe another exorcism.”

Do you suppose he was wishing he could have had a second shot at the Sermon on the Mount? Maybe put a little polish on the Beatitudes? A few rewrites here and there?

Maybe he was thinking about something he could’ve said to get through to that thick-headed Peter – something to help Judas see the light; maybe something helpful he could’ve said to Caiaphas, or Herod, or Pilate.

But Jesus doesn’t speak about those things from the cross. He doesn’t show us any regrets, self-doubts, second guessing or self-pity. Instead he says, “It is finished.” It is completed, accomplished – everything necessary has been done.

During the season of Lent we give ourselves opportunity for reflection, self-examination, confession, perhaps rites of penance. Lent is definitely the right time for that. Those things have their place. And we know that Easter joy follows. We are always Easter people, even on Good Friday. We never forget Jesus’ resurrection. That too is good.

But there’s a place in between that we need to pay special attention to as well. It’s the place where guilt is finished; where salvation is completed; where all that we need is accomplished. It is a place where we are called upon to set aside our normal self-absorption. A place where we are confronted by our guilt at its more profound level. A place where we can see that EVEN THAT GUILT does not separate us from the love of God. There is a place where, in the face of the most unearthly love, the most divine self-giving, there is nothing we can say. There is a place between Lent and Easter, so to speak, where we are called (for lack of a better way of putting it) to shut up; to stand in silence and just look at Jesus on the cross. There is a time for looking God in the eye. Here, at the cross, is where we do it.

Several years ago I was a chaplain at Northwest Memorial Hospital in Chicago. On the orthopedics ward I met a young man, maybe 20, named Dave. Dave spent several weeks sitting in a hospital bed because after his right leg was amputated above the knee, serious infections had set in. So he just sat around waiting. I came to visit him each day and one day he told me his story. He had been drinking heavily, got into a fight with his wife, got on his motorcycle, tore off down the road and blacked out. He’d been in bed for many days and had not yet been able to bring himself to look at his injury. One day I walked into his room. It was so quiet I though he was sleeping. But he was awake, tears streaming down his cheeks. Without looking he knew it was me at his side. He stared at his stump and said, “I didn’t think I’d ever be able to look at it. Every time I thought about it it just reminded me of the accident and how stupid I was. I was so ashamed. I’d come close to losing my life. I thought about my wife, my baby girl, my mom. I couldn’t bear the thought of how close I came to losing everything—how close I came to hurting them. It scared me. I just couldn’t look at it.

Just now for the first time I had a sudden impulse to look at my leg. I don’t know why. It was like God was telling me it was time. And you know what? It’s not like I thought it would be. When I looked at it I didn’t hate myself. I didn’t think about how close I came to dying. When I looked at it I realized I’M STILL ALIVE! I still have my wife, my daughter, my mom. And he wept. That day Dave was healed. I mean, it was a couple more weeks before the infection left him and he could go to rehab, but that day – that moment – is when he was healed. That day Dave started a new life. It started… when, in silence… he looked.

It’s hard for us to look at the cross. To see anyone suffer that cruelty, the humiliation and the torture of the cross, is so hard. To think that we’re responsible for that suffering only makes it worse. Some just can’t look at it. And yet, there is healing in that sight. We can sing Alleluia on Easter as loud as we want, but until we’ve seen the sight of Christ on the cross we don’t really know what it means.

By the grace of God you have been given the opportunity for healing. You have been promised eternal life. You have been promised new life right now. Don’t be so afraid to look at the suffering of Christ that you wake up tomorrow still beating yourself up with regrets (I should’ve done something more; I still don’t measure up; I’m still just me and that’s not good enough). Look at Jesus on the cross and look and look until your self-loathing melts away. Remember, Jesus died without regrets. Nothing had been left undone. He fulfilled his mission to show us God – to show us what he called the Kingdom of God—a way of life that people live when they recognize that God is God. All that has been done. When Jesus was lifted up on the cross his mission was FINISHED; his work COMPLETED; our salvation ACCOMPLISHED.

Your new life begins when you look at Christ on the cross, then stop thinking about your own worthiness or unworthiness – stop thinking about yourself at all – but accept that all is accomplished, and give thanks to God. Amen.

Making Tough Choices

The news these days has been filled with politicians talking about making "tough choices."  It's in every other sound bite.  Pols are insisting that they must make tough choices and brag that they're willing to do so.  But if one listens carefully you are compelled to conclude that these braggarts are not making tough choices at all.  If I come to the table with my mind made up, insisting that I won't compromise, and won't listen to any other opinions, isn't it clear that I'm not making a choice at all?  My mind is made up!  I'll make demands, but I won't make a choice.

Making a fist is one of the easiest things to do.  Unclenching a fist is a lot harder.  It's no challenge going through life in a monotone "I'm tough, I'm tough, I'm tough."  That's easy.  Someone with no maturity, no imagination, no guts, and no soul can do that.  It's actually a lot more difficult to unclench one's fist, one's face, one's mind.  Only when we LISTEN to one another, and seriously consider each others' views are we able to make a tough choice or any choice at all.

A sermon on John 11:1-45

 Pay Attention!

Why did Jesus stay away? Why did he stay away from Lazarus's house when he learned that Lazarus was sick? Was he careless? Was he cruel? Was he showing off? Why the cryptic language about what he was doing? “This illness is not unto death; it is for the glory of God.” “Lazarus is dead; and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe.”

At first reading it sounds as though Jesus might've played a cruel trick on his good friends Lazarus, Mary and Martha. It sounds as though he used them-- “oh, here's a dead person I can raise back to life. Watch this; this is going to be great!” Does that sound like the Jesus we know? No, it doesn't. I don't think that's what he was doing.

When we look a little closer at this text, it seems to contain a lot of little details about the timing and geography of this event. It suggests to me that Jesus was well aware that he was going to go to Jerusalem and do it soon. And he knew darn well what was going to happen to him when he did. He's thinking quite a lot about his disciples: Are they ready to be on their own? Do they understand who Jesus is and what they're supposed to do? Jesus has to be wondering--Are the disciples going to freak out? Are they going to run away? Are they going to assume that the mission is all over and there's nothing left for them to do but go back to fishing?

Jesus is thinking about these things as well as other aspects of his showdown in Jerusalem when he discovers a way to give his disciples some timely experience with life and death; an opportunity to see for themselves that death is not the final word. Jesus wanted them to see a stone rolled away from a tomb door and the dead raised. Lazarus presented Jesus with that opportunity.

Jesus talks to Martha about her faith in him. He talks to his disciples about their faith in him. At first glance it sounds as if he's talking about their faith in his ability to raise Lazarus. Instead I believe he's talking about their faith – or not-- in Jesus' ability to rise from the dead himself.

Why does Jesus grieve just before he raises Lazarus? Doesn't that seem odd? He knows Lazarus isn't going to stay dead. But he's looking around and seeing Mary and Martha grieving, their friends from the city grieving (some of whom Jesus must've known), and he sees his own disciples grieving – because certainly they had met Lazarus and his family before. Jesus cries when he sees how these dear ones will grieve for him.

How could Jesus have made this lesson any clearer? In both cases, Lazarus and Jesus, there was mourning and crying. In both cases there was a body in a grave for days. In both cases there was a cave to serve as a tomb, with a stone rolled in front of the entrance.

It doesn't appear that anyone received the intended message, namely, that if Jesus raised Lazarus surely he could rise too. No one got it. But, honestly, I can't say that I blame them. I've heard about resurrection all my life, but for the people there – Jesus' disciples and all the folks in Bethany – they'd never heard of such a thing before Lazarus. And death is hard. You can't expect someone experiencing the death of a loved one to believe and trust and hope for something as strange and new as the defeat of death. I believe Jesus knew that. That – in part-- is why he cried, because he saw that despite all that he'd said and done, when it was his time to die, his friends and followers would assume that death had won, and they would cry.

We're no different. We tell each other the stories of Lazarus' and of Jesus' death and resurrection year after year, from generation to generation-- because we need to hear it, as often as we can-- because the idea of life after death still strikes us as...dubious.

What happens if we don't keep ourselves immersed in these stories? What happens if we don't teach them to our children? What happens if we don't pay attention? Then pretty soon we start to lose our familiarity with the idea of life after death. It's hard enough as it is, to keep ahold of that idea.

You know, this event, the raising of Lazarus, is a turning point in the Gospel of John. Up to this point, Jesus' popularity grows, his enemies get more upset, his miracles become more pronounced, he popularity grows, his enemies get more upset... but Jesus crosses a line here. When Jesus displays power over death his enemies stop just talking about Jesus and start putting a plot into play. This was just too much.

• Raising up the status of children was bad;
• raising up the status of foreigners was bad;
• raising up the status of women was worse;
• saying that he was the doorway to God and not the Temple and its priests – that was a frontal attack against them; that's bad!

But raising the dead? Really? Erasing the lines between life and death changes everything. It's too much. The priests have nothing like this. This makes the priests... irrelevant. Who is going to care about sacrifices in the temple when one with god-like power is walking around the suburbs? Who knows, maybe people will even turn on the priests! They never gave the people hope! They never raised the dead! Someone with the power of life over death could defeat the whole Roman Empire. Keep in mind that in the Gospel of John, Jesus is killed just before Passover. The Lamb of God is killed while the priests are killing the Passover lambs. It's all part of their plot to avoid a riot during Passover.

What they didn't know was that Jesus was bigger than Passover, bigger than the Temple culture, bigger than the Roman Empire. What they didn't know is that Jesus was the Christ, Israel's God-with-us, the long-awaited Messiah.

But we know. And knowing that we have hope in which to die. And just as amazing... hope in which to live.