Sunday, May 24, 2020

The Seventh Sunday of Easter

The Word for This Day

FIRST READING - ACTS 1:6-14

⁶When [the apostles] had come together, they asked [Jesus], “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” ⁷He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. ⁸But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” ⁹When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. ¹⁰While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. ¹¹They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”

¹²Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day’s journey away. ¹³When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying, Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. ¹⁴All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.

SECOND READING - 1 PETER 4:12-14; 5:6-11

¹²Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. ¹³But rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ’s sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed. ¹⁴If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the spirit of glory, which is the Spirit of God, is resting on you.

^5:6Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time. ⁷Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you. ⁸Discipline yourselves, keep alert. Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour. ⁹Resist him, steadfast in your faith, for you know that your brothers and sisters in all the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering. ¹⁰And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, support, strengthen, and establish you. ¹¹To him be the power forever and ever. Amen.

GOSPEL - JOHN 17:1-11

¹After Jesus had spoken these words [to his disciples], he looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, ²since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. ³And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. ⁴I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. ⁵So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.

⁶“I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. ⁷Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; ⁸for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. ⁹I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. ¹⁰All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. ¹¹And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”

The Sermon

"What Now?"

I think if the Seventh Sunday of Easter were given a title, maybe it should be called “The Festival of In-Betweens.” This past Thursday was the fortieth day of Easter, the Ascension of Our Lord. This was the day on which Jesus ascended into heaven after his resurrection. Immediately before his departure, Jesus tells the disciples that they will “receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.” So Jesus is gone, and they’re just left waiting for the Spirit to come. When will that be? They don’t know. After Jesus is whisked away into the clouds, you can imagine them saying, “Well, what now? What in the world are we supposed to do?”

And you, St. Stephen’s, are also in an in-between time. You just finished your time of transition. Last Sunday you voted on who your new pastor is going to be. But the next chapter of your life has not yet begun. And all of this takes place while we are still looking at each other on ZOOM. What is this next chapter of your life supposed to look like? Where do we go from here? What now?

Each time a congregation calls a pastor, it is a unique event. This call process we just completed at St. Stephen’s was especially stressful. I couldn’t help but think of our recent experience when I heard the Second Reading refer to “fiery ordeals.” There were lots of challenges everyone faced. A number of St. Stephen’s members have left the congregation during and after the process. It was evident that people on both sides of the debate care deeply about the issues. There was deep conviction expressed from people who landed on the “nay” and “abstain” side of the vote. And there was deep conviction on the part of those of you who voted in favor of Pastor Mandy. As somebody who is relatively new to the culture of St. Stephen’s, it looked to me as if some of the energy in this call process was a carry-over from another fiery ordeal through which you passed nearly a decade ago. That, too, was a difficult, challenging, and painful event about many of the same issues you have been facing now. It seems to me that the pain of that earlier event made further conversation dangerous; it seemed impossible to talk without opening wounds. And I’m not sure whether you ever took the opportunity as a congregation to fully work through those issues in the past decade. It’s been a long in-between. So, we here at St. Stephen’s might feel very much at home standing next to the disciples, staring into heaven, and wondering, “Well, what now? What happens next?”

What does the church think we need to hear on this “Festival of In-Betweens”? Well, in today’s Gospel we continue to listen to Jesus speaking with his disciples the night before he is crucified. We are still in the Gospel of John. For the past two weeks we heard Jesus trying to explain his death to the disciples—trying to prepare them for what is about to happen. But in today’s Gospel, we jump a little further ahead in the events of that evening, and we get to overhear Jesus in prayer with his heavenly Father. This is really a remarkable event, and its significance might pass us by. But please think about what we are hearing in this text: we hear a conversation of God the Son with God the Father. We overhear communication inside the Holy Trinity. This is a leaked divine family conversation. And—you know what—they are talking about us!

Jesus says some remarkable things about us. He says that his disciples—and that includes us—have been entrusted with the very words of God. He recognizes that his disciples live in the very same relationship that Jesus has with his Father. Disciples are actually taken up into the life of God! Jesus says to his Father, “All mine are yours and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them.” The glory that belongs to disciples of Jesus is the very same glory that Jesus shares with the Father. What is glory? In the Bible, glory is the radiance and the specialness of God. The Hebrew word for “glory” is wonderful; it is kabod. And kabod means “heavy, weighty, important.” Disciples who are in Christ share in the weighty importance of God that goes back even before the Big Bang. Whoa! That’s really kabod; that’s heavy!

It's hard to wrap your head around that. The best you can do is just let yourself get carried along in the mysticism of this poetry. It’s like Jesus talking about “vines and branches”—about how his life is all tangled up in ours—but here it gets carried to a whole new cosmic level. All our lives, says Jesus—his and ours—are all tangled up in God! And all of this mystical poetry just builds and builds until Jesus finally gets us to the punchline—to the revelation and the reason why you and I have been taken into the story of God. And here it is: “that they may be one, as we are one.”

Uh-oh. I think we may be in trouble.

Right now, it doesn’t feel like the word one describes us very well. We’ve just come through a vote after a very impassioned debate. One side appears to have been “victorious” and the other side thinks it has lost. And it’s obvious that there are a lot of deep feelings and maybe more than a few wounds on both sides. We may not feel as if we are “one” right now.

But this issue about the unity of the church isn’t just about us here at St. Stephen’s. It’s really about the totality of the Christian enterprise—the “whole Christian church on earth.” It’s hard to describe the church as “one.” The history of the church, beginning very shortly after Jesus’ ascension into heaven—is a huge story of arguments and splits and fracturing and divisions. The church does not appear to be one at all! It’s a loose collection of thousands of smaller groups, all claiming to be one in Christ while we argue and debate and very often judge each other. Each argument we have seems to end up splitting us further. So here’s the question with which we need to wrestle this day: How can the church be one?

Very often we Christians think we will be one when we all agree. The church has spent lots and lots of energy trying to get everyone to agree. And, yes, agreement is essential for parts of our common life. Some things simply come down to yes or no. It’s that way when it comes to deciding whether someone will be your pastor; you don’t get to have only a part of a person come to serve you as your shepherd. So you have to find a way to make decisions. Either you have to have a bishop who picks your pastor on your behalf and settles the arguments right then and there, or you do what we do in the ELCA: we vote, and the majority’s decision is final. We can make it a little less chaotic by raising the majority to two-thirds, but in the end, people often think of themselves as winners or losers, especially if the decision seems controversial.

But there’s an interesting thing about seeking unity in the church through agreement: it simply doesn’t seem to work very well. Through the centuries, the more the church insisted on agreement, the more divisions took place because people often disagree. Forcing agreement ended up fracturing the church.

As I said before, some issues need agreement, and when they do, we simply have to do the best we can. But when Jesus prays that we may be one as he and the Father are one, I don’t think he has agreement in mind. If you don’t base the unity of the church on agreeing, then what will hold us together? Well, we’re in John’s Gospel, right? And in this book the answer often comes back to what Jesus says on the night before his death: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” The unity of the church will be found only when we are able to love each other as we have been loved by God in Christ.

People who love each other, really love, are capable of staying together even when they disagree. When we love each other, we value the other person for who they really are—not what we demand for them to be. That is how God loves us. God loves diversity—just look at all these different faces and personalities in these Hollywood Squares! A church that finds its unity in love will begin to celebrate the diversity of the people in the community. We don’t all think alike—isn’t that wonderful? The Holy Spirit’s wisdom comes to me not when you think the way I do but when I am surprised by the insight or the experience that sets you apart from me. We hear the Spirit’s voice not in everyone speaking the same thing in a monotone but—as we will discover next week—when a hundred different languages are all jabbering at the same time.

So, what now? What happens next?

If unity is found in love, then we don’t have to wait until we all agree before we can be one. If we love as we have been loved, we will discover that all our diversity and our different ways of looking at things will become for us the very channel by which the Holy Spirit works in and through us to make the life of Jesus go more deeply into the world. Here’s the bottom line: We can be one, we are one—here, now—in the love and in the name of Jesus.

Sermon by Pastor Ron Roschke

Sunday, May 10, 2020

The Fifth Sunday of Easter

The Word for This Day

FIRST READING - ACTS 7:55-60

⁵⁵Filled with the Holy Spirit, [Stephen] gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. ⁵⁶“Look,” he said, “I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!” ⁵⁷But they covered their ears, and with a loud shout all rushed together against him. ⁵⁸Then they dragged him out of the city and began to stone him; and the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul. ⁵⁹While they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” ⁶⁰Then he knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” When he had said this, he died.

SECOND READING - 1 PETER 2:2-10

²Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation—³if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

⁴Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and ⁵like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. ⁶For it stands in scripture:

“See, I am laying in Zion a stone,

a cornerstone chosen and precious;

and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”

⁷To you then who believe, he is precious; but for those who do not believe,

“The stone that the builders rejected

has become the very head of the corner,”

⁸and

“A stone that makes them stumble,

and a rock that makes them fall.”

They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.

⁹But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

¹⁰Once you were not a people,

but now you are God’s people;

once you had not received mercy,

but now you have received mercy.

GOSPEL - JOHN 14:1-14

[Jesus said to the disciples:] ¹“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. ²In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? ³And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. ⁴And you know the way to the place where I am going.” ⁵Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” ⁶Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. ⁷If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

⁸Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” ⁹Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? ¹⁰Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. ¹¹Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves. ¹²Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. ¹³I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. ¹⁴If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.”

The Sermon

"I Am...You Are"

There is a nice counterpoint happening in today’s readings. In today’s Gospel Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” And the First Letter of Peter says, “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation.... Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people.” I want to take a few minutes to think about how those two readings connect with each other. One says, “I am.” The other says, “You are.” And together they raise a very important question: “Who will we be?”

Jesus says, “I am the way.” In Greek, Jesus says he is the “hodos.” It means, “I am the road” or “I am the highway” or “I am the journey.” It’s a wonderful word picture. A road is an incredible piece of engineering that allows people to get from Point A to Point B. The Romans in Jesus’ day were astounding engineers. Rome was able to create an empire because these people knew how to build roads—highways that crisscrossed the Mediterranean world, roads that allowed people thousands of miles apart to be able to get to each other and be with each other and stay connected. Their engineering was so skilled that you can go all over Europe today and see roads the Romans built over two thousand years ago.

“I am the road,” says Jesus—“the path.” Roads are built for a purpose. They are not an end in itself. You don’t look at a road or think about a road or admire a road. No, for a road to be a road somebody’s got to travel on it. So when Jesus says “I am a highway” what does he have in mind? Who is supposed to travel on this road? Well, I think it’s you and me! So you see, right from the beginning it works this way: “I am...you are.” Who Jesus is defines who we are supposed to be, what it means for us to be “people of God.”

If Jesus is a highway then it means that you and I are on a journey; we are people “on the move.” This image of Jesus as a road was so powerful that long before Christians were called “Christian” they were known as “The People of the Way.” “Being Christian” implies that we are involved in an unfolding adventure. Our history, our past, our stories are important—every highway has some kind of beginning; we have come from someplace, and that matters. Where have you come from? Today is Mothers’ Day, and it reminds us that each of us has a history. There are important people who launched us on our journeys. It’s good to have a day when we remember and acknowledge how we got to where we are this day—the important ways that our parents have shaped us and helped to define our path.

Every highway also has a destination. Our identity has a future as well. A road takes you somewhere. If Jesus is the highway upon which we are invited to travel, it means that Jesus has tied up his identity and his destination with our own. Jesus has a future—and that future is you and me, us together—dreaming the future of Jesus, the unfolding adventure, the way! Jesus says that same thing another way in today’s Gospel; he says, “Where I am, you will be also.” Where we are, there Jesus is, for we are now his body, his presence. We go where Jesus is. We take Jesus into the world because we are his people. “I am…you are.”

Jesus also says, “I am the truth.” We might say, “Well of course, Jesus is the truth.” Jesus is God, and God must be the truth—right? Would we expect Jesus to say, “I am the lie”? But please think about these words for a moment: “I am the truth.” He does not say, “I speak the truth” or “I will reveal the truth to you.” No, he says, “I am the truth.” In other words, the truth is a person! What can that possibly mean?

At a trial, the bailiff asks the witness, “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?” Truth is what really happened, what really is. It is accuracy. The truth is reliability, the assurance you can trust the results. Truth isn’t a matter of opinion. It doesn’t matter what I want the truth to be or what I’d like the truth to be or how I spin the truth to get it to work for my predetermined objectives. The truth cannot be manipulated to serve someone’s purposes or goals and still remain the truth. Jesus says, “I am the truth,” and that suggests that the truth has to do with him and with how I relate to him. The truth is about relationships. The truth is about trustworthiness. Can I trust you, Jesus? And he says, “Absolutely!”

And here’s the part that really takes your breath away. He is the truth because he is undeniably, absolutely, unconditionally for you. “You mean so much to me,” Jesus says, “you are so important to me that I would die for you. Why, I have done it already! This is what you mean to me. This is...Truth! You can stake your life on it. You can stake the future on it. Stick with me,” says Jesus, “and you will get from wherever you find yourself right now all the way to Point B!”

The truth that is Jesus also becomes the truth that is us. “I am…you are. Who we are—our very identity—is defined by who Jesus is.

Did you pay attention to that First Reading today? It’s about Stephen, the first deacon in the church and the first martyr to die for his faith. This is Saint Stephen! St. Stephen’s, this is you! Of course, it’s important that Stephen dies because he is a follower of Jesus. But what is just as important is how Stephen dies. Did you happen to notice how many details in the story of Stephen’s death mirror the things we heard on Good Friday about the way Jesus died? Stephen prays, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” And when Jesus dies, he says, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” As Stephen is dying, he says, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And when Jesus dies, he says, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Jesus died…and Stephen died. But Stephen died in a way that looked very much like Jesus’ death. “I am…you are.” Stephen is a disciple of Jesus, and that means that his identity and Jesus’ identity are fused together.

Jesus makes one more point; he says, “I am the life.” The one who is the journey and the truth must also be the life. He is so truly “Life” that not even death can overcome him. He is the light shining in the darkness, that the darkness cannot extinguish. He is the Word that defines everything—life, space, time, the beginning and the ending—the Word that makes the definitions and calls everything into being. He is the very definition of what it means to be fully, abundantly alive.

Journey! Truth! Life!

I am! You are!

It is mystical, almost magical. It says so much more than we can ever comprehend. We cannot control it—not even by understanding it. We must simply let it be, let it become. “Let there be...the same power of God’s language that creates light and sun and moon and days and seasons and a universe. Let there be history and a story. Let there be mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, people who care. Let there by a church named St. Stephen’s and let it become what it is meant to be. Let it be Jesus’ presence here in this place. Let there be people who have discovered that the truth about themselves comes in the shape of a cross and is as surprising as an opened, empty tomb. Let this community become a highway for our God. Let it be claimed by baptismal water and sent into this world with good news—the unbelievable truth that God is making all things new! The truth that the dead are being raised to life—Here! Now! That there is no such thing as a hopeless situation! Let these saints be filled with the truth that is a person, that they may be a sign to their neighbors and families and friends and even to their enemies. Let them dive so deeply into Jesus’ story that they become him! Let them be so fully alive in him that the power of his resurrection life radiates through them and from them like gigantic, cosmic lightning bolts—raising the dead to life! Feeding the hungry! Filling the world with music and song! Let them be the sign that God is raising the world to a new hope—a hope that encircles this globe and every person in it! Let this people be flung into the world, to so many different places and adventures, and even across the street to their despairing neighbors. Let them be filled with hope and good news because they are the highway, the journey for God. And they have encountered the truth and it has made them abundantly alive and lively. And let it all happen in the name of the one who says “because I am, you are”—this name that makes all good things happen, the name which is above every name in heaven and on earth, the name that is our life and our hope, the name of Jesus.

Sermon by Pastor Ron Roschke

Sunday, April 26, 2020

The Third Sunday of Easter (A)

The Word for This Day

FIRST READING - ACTS 2:14a, 36-41

^14aPeter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed [the crowd], ³⁶“Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.”

³⁷Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?” ³⁸Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. ³⁹For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.” ⁴⁰And he testified with many other arguments and exhorted them, saying, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” ⁴¹So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added.

SECOND READING - 1 PETER 1:17-23

¹⁷If you invoke as Father the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds, live in reverent fear during the time of your exile. ¹⁸You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, ¹⁹but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish. ²⁰He was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake. ²¹Through him you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God.

²²Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart. ²³You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God.

GOSPEL - LUKE 24:13-35

¹³Now on that same day [when Jesus had appeared to Mary Magdalene,] two [disciples] were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, ¹⁴and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. ¹⁵While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, ¹⁶but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. ¹⁷And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad. ¹⁸Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” ¹⁹He asked them, “What things?” They replied, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, ²⁰and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. ²¹But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. ²²Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, ²³and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. ²⁴Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.” ²⁵Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! ²⁶Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” ²⁷Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.

²⁸As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. ²⁹But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them. ³⁰When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. ³¹Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. ³²They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” ³³That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. ³⁴They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” ³⁵Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

The Sermon

"Second Thoughts"

This coming week we will find ourselves at a very significant cusp in our pandemic journey. We have lived as companions of the COVID-19 virus now for over two months. We have seen it not only take 200,000 lives around the world but in our own country we have watched it kill 50,000 Americans and put 26 million of us into unemployment. We have been part of a huge experiment that no one alive has ever witnessed—the attempt to cut us off from each other in order to protect our lives. Look! Here we are this morning worshiping together on ZOOM! But now, all of that may start to change this coming week, as quite a few states in our country attempt to lift some of the bans and orders we have been using, and as we try, little by little, to restart the economy.

I don’t think this is just the stuff of Nightly News. I think today’s Scripture readings suggest this is also a moment of incredible spiritual importance for us. And I hear the Word of God this day asking us to think deeply about what is going on all around us. There is a common theme that runs through all three of today’s readings. They place before us the possibility that we live in a critical time. There’s a great Greek word for that. None of today’s readings use it, but the idea of it is everywhere. The word is kairos. It is one of the Greek words for “time.” A kairos is not clock-time or calendar-time. A kairos is a critical time—a once-in-a-life-time. A kairos is a time that asks us to make some important decisions and resolves. And each of today’s three readings has something to say about what that might mean.

In the First Reading from the Book of Acts, we are continuing to hear Peter preach to the crowd that had assembled for Pentecost in Jerusalem, just fifty days after Jesus had been crucified. Peter is speaking to many of the same people who, just weeks before, had assembled as a mob and were shouting “Crucify him! Crucify him!” Peter’s sermon to them is one of the gutsiest pieces of preaching ever attempted. He says to this crowd, that had been so recently incited to violence, “You crucified Jesus. God raised him from the dead.” There is lots to unpack in this!

First, when the crowd had screamed “Crucify him!” weeks earlier, we need to remember that screaming this slogan was a political action. Good Friday wasn’t, first and foremost, an episode out of a Bible pageant. This crowd was fueled to fever pitch by political passion. It had all the energy and anger of a raucous political rally. The crowd had turned on Jesus because he had frustrated their political dreams—that Jesus would lead them in liberation from their Roman oppressors. Their disappointment and disillusionment from decades of hard times boiled over into calls for violence. What Peter is claiming in his sermon is that through the resurrection of Jesus, God had overturned their political choice in demanding Jesus’ crucifixion.

So where’s the kairos in all this? It shows up in one very powerful phrase. Luke, the author of the Book of Acts, says that the crowd was “cut to the heart.” What a tremendous phrase that is! Cut to the heart. It means that Peter’s preaching had forced them to re-evaluate their former political choices. As Peter lays out for them the implications of the choices they had made, there was a kind of collective gasp. “Oh my God!” they were thinking. “What have we done? And what will we do now?”

Peter tells them what they need to do to address this kairos in which they now find themselves. He can describe it with one simple word: “Repent.” This, too, is a great Greek word: metanoia. Metanoia means to change your position, to have a new heart and a new mind, to go beyond the way you had previously been thinking. There is a close connection between being cut to the heart and changing your mind. Often it’s not easy to really, fundamentally change your way of thinking. We don’t have serious second thoughts unless we absolutely have to. Very often it’s pain that forces us to rethink our most basic convictions. So here’s the first set of questions we need to consider. Have you been cut to the heart? Have you ever experienced a time when your options ran out for you so dramatically that you had to think things through from the beginning again? Is this perhaps where all of us find ourselves right now in the midst of this pandemic? And could God hide out in such extreme landscapes, inviting us to be raised from the dead?

OK, on to the Second Reading. There is an interesting phrase here that invites us to push this line of thought even further. Here, too, the author of First Peter is inviting his readers to think deeply about the meaning of Jesus’ story, and he says this: that Jesus was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake. He also tells them they have been ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors. Like Peter in his Pentecost sermon, so this Second Reading says that we are at a great crossroads, a cusp. In this present moment we find ourselves framed between the ultimate bookends—between God’s plans set before the Big Bang, and finding ourselves in the moments before “the end of the ages,” before Judgment Day. That is what a kairos is like. It invites us to get back to two sets of basic question. First, what are the basic principles—those things “from the beginning”—that come before any decision or action? In other words, what is universally true, hard-wired into God’s plans for the universe from its foundation? And second, when we must give a final account of who we are and what we did—when we come to the final judgment—what kind of world will we want to have constructed? What kind of world do we want to live in? The author of First Peter can answer both sets of questions with one word: love. He says we must have genuine mutual love, love one another from the heart. Love for our neighbor is the test that shows whether we have been “born anew of imperishable seed.”

In todays’ Gospel, these two disciples walking with a stranger do not, at first, know they are at a kairos point. Far from it! They are dejected, depressed, disillusioned, and worn out. You can see it in their shuffling gate and drawn faces. They’ve had it. The only energy they seem able to muster is their incredulity over the lack of awareness of their traveling companion about everything that has been filling the headlines the past couple of days. And this stranger invites them to dive into their despair by asking them the most simple question, having only two words; he asks, “What things?” It is an invitation for them not only to tell what has been happening but, especially, what has been happening to them! His invitation for them to recount the past three day’s headlines is, at the same time, the excuse for them to pour out their hearts to him. With these two words—What things?—it’s as if he is saying, “Don’t just tell me what has happened; tell me what it has been doing to you.” And they do tell him! All the pain, disillusionment, and brokenness comes gushing out of them in a flood of emotion. Those two words—What things?—shows that he’s not just willing to walk the seven miles with them and share a supper with them; he is also willing to let their broken dreams be his own, to share in their disillusion and pain. He is broken with them, broken for them. And that is why, when he breaks the bread at supper, they know who the stranger is! He is the one broken for us!

Where are we, now, on this Eastertide journey in the year 2020? Where are we as we approach this important kairos moment with this deadly COVID travelling companion? What do we want to happen next? Do we just want to go back to business as usual, take up our routines as if this virus hasn’t happened, as if the virus is irrelevant? First of all, that could prove to be deadly. We know that from the last time a novel virus appeared in 1918. Americans did a fairly decent job of quarantining and protecting themselves and by the summer, it appeared that life had gotten back to normal. They went about business as usual, and when they did, the virus came back at them with unimaginable fury. The tens of thousands of deaths they experienced in the first wave became millions of deaths globally because the passion for personal liberties had become more important than love for neighbor, igniting a firestorm of sickness and death.

Do we want to take COVID to heart? In the past few weeks the pandemic has shown an honest picture of what our society is like. We have seen the weakness of a society structured by medicine-for-profit. Our failure and inability to care or support the weakest among us is staring us down. But we have seen other amazing wonders: jelly fish swimming in the canals of Venice, cities strangling in smog suddenly filled with clean air. Do we really want to go back to the way things were? Will we be return to our former futile ways or could we possibly be willing to be changed by this critical moment in which we find ourselves?

Jesus invites us to think about it, and then he immediately disappears to give us space where we can make up our minds. We have a kairos. What shall we do? Let’s think about that this week—in the name of Jesus.

Sermon by Pastor Ron Roschke

Sunday, April 12, 2020

Easter Day (Cycle A)

The Word for This Day

FIRST READING - ACTS 10:34-43

³⁴Peter began to speak to [the people]: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, ³⁵but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. ³⁶You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all. ³⁷That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: ³⁸how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. ³⁹We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; ⁴⁰but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, ⁴¹not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. ⁴²He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. ⁴³All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name."

SECOND READING - COLOSSIANS 3:1-4

¹If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. ²Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, ³for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. ⁴When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.

GOSPEL - JOHN 20:1-18

¹Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. ²So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” ³Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. ⁴The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. ⁵He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. ⁶Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, ⁷and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. ⁸Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; ⁹for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. ¹⁰Then the disciples returned to their homes.

¹¹But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; ¹²and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. ¹³They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” ¹⁴When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. ¹⁵Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” ¹⁶Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). ¹⁷Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ ” ¹⁸Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

The Sermon

"Mind the Gap"

When she comes to the tomb that Easter morning, Mary Magdalene is not looking for Jesus. She doesn’t have to look. She knows exactly where to find him. Dead is dead, and one thing dead people do not do is wander around.

Mary Magdalene has come to the tomb so that she might grieve. While the other evangelists tell us that the women come that Sunday morning to anoint the corpse with spices, John has Mary coming empty-handed. She carries no supplies with her. She has no specific task to perform. She comes here alone, with her grief. And only in this way does she come on a search—as if she were looking for something. What had happened? Why had they all been so mistaken in following the man from Nazareth? Where had they all gone wrong? She was not looking for Jesus but only for the answers to her questions.

Those are Mary’s intentions as she makes her way into the garden that chilly April morning. She is not looking for Jesus but rather for something else—some ill-defined hope that there may be comfort for her pain, something that might fill the empty hollow of the grief that has carved out this pit in her insides.

So Easter starts with a gaping hole—at first within her. But as she rounds the corner and makes her way past the last bush, the tomb really stands as a gaping hole—a scar in the rock, an emptiness, a shocking, abhorrent vacuum. What now? Not this! Grief upon grief! Wasn’t it enough that they crucified him? Wasn’t it enough that the whole world hated him? Wasn’t it enough that they spit on him, tortured him, beat the life out of him, nailing him to a piece of wood? What more could they want? Even his dead body, his corpse—as if, somehow, death itself would not be enough for them!

And now—she really was looking for Jesus.

And this is where Easter begins—not with fancy music or beautiful flowers or alleluias supported by trumpets. No, Easter begins with emptiness, this abyss into which Mary Magdalene gets thrown. Just when we think it has gotten as bad as it can get, it gets worse. And this is where good news begins!

This is a strange Easter, I know. How do we celebrate resurrection life in the middle of a pandemic? There are so many things missing! We cannot sit next to each other, or share Communion, or exchange the peace of the Lord. We are trapped in our little Brady Bunch video boxes the same way we are trapped in our homes. I want to suggest to you, however, that our unusual circumstances give us opportunity to experience Easter in an especially authentic way this year—unlike any Easter we have ever experienced before. We need to sit outside Jesus tomb and see—really see—what is missing. There is a gaping hole! It is an empty tomb. Pay attention to that!

If you have ever been to London and ridden the subway, you may have noticed the sign posted over every subway car door. It says, “Mind the gap!” We Americans would say, “Watch your step,” but as usual, the British have a more accurate way to use the English language! Mind the gap! Pay attention! You may think something is there but it isn’t—and that is terribly important! Your well-being, maybe even your life, depend on you paying attention to what is missing.

Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb thinking she will know where Jesus will be found. He is not there. She runs to get two disciples, and they discover that all there is to be seen is some flimsy pieces of cloth that once served as his burial shroud—one piece for his face and another for his body—only cloth, but no Jesus. Mary sees two angels, seated like bookends on the slab where his body should have been—one at the place where his head should have been, and one to mark his missing feet. Where is Jesus? Not here! All we have to look at is this negative space in between where he should have been but where he is missing. Mind the gap!

Are you looking for Jesus? Where should you begin? Not in the places where you expect to see him. Start with the emptiness instead. Begin with the negative spaces. Look into the gaping crevices waiting to be filled, the hollowed-out caverns of grief, the vacuum of your disappointments where once your wish dreams glowed. Are you looking for Jesus? Don’t focus first on what you expect: trumpets or flowers, the beauty of the liturgy, the majestic cadence of ancient prayers. Savor the empty darkness, the landscape of your disappointments, the wounds and scars life has given you. Do not run from your grief. Look at what is happening to us. Pay attention to the distance between you and your neighbor as you practice social distancing. Could Jesus be there? Mind the gap!

Mary comes expecting to know where Jesus is to be found, but only to discover this scandalous emptiness—a violated grave and a missing corpse. And even though she has a vision of angels and pours out her heart to them, and even though she looks straight at the Risen Lord, still she does not see him! She thinks he is the gardener!

Are you looking for Jesus? You might be staring at him and not know what you are seeing! If you have come to worship every week, you might think you know where Jesus is to be found—in familiar hymns that you imagine make Easter “Easter”, or in the safety of a memorized liturgy, the familiarity of prayers you have heard for a lifetime. What draws you here today? Habit? Or sense of duty? Is it loyalty to a struggling institution? All those are wonderful qualities that bring together good and dedicated people. But Jesus may be somewhere else.

Are you looking for Jesus? If you find yourself here only because it’s Easter, there is a surprise waiting for you—Jesus will be here again next Sunday. You may discover that the Risen Lord always meets us with a surprise. Let me give you just one hint of the surprise that awaits you if you come back one week from today: Jesus will be here again, but he will come among us with the greatest shock of all. He will come here to show us his crucifixion wounds—his hands, his feet, his side. What are those wounds doing in Eastertide? Why should the Risen Lord be wounded? What in the world does Easter mean if Jesus carries his wounds, or wears a face mask, into his new age? What would that mean? And could our wounds be part of his Easter life? Well, stay tuned for further developments on that one!

Are you looking for Jesus? Then be sure to listen to how Peter preaches a sermon at the home of Cornelius. (This was today’s First Reading.) Cornelius is an outsider to the story of Jesus. He’s a Roman and not a Jew. He’s a centurion, just like the army officer who watched to make sure Jesus was crucified. Peter considers Cornelius outside God’s grace. And Peter preaches this sermon in utter astonishment because Cornelius has been keeping Peter awake at night—well, not really Cornelius himself but dreams about Cornelius that God keeps sending to Peter. In these troubling dreams God keeps taking all the things that Peter thinks are unclean and God keeps saying, “What I have made clean, you must not call profane.” Peter is about to be swept up by a revolutionary breakthrough in his thought—that the story of Jesus is not exclusively the property of insiders. It is especially meant for outsiders.

If you think that church is for good people—well, it’s not. If you think that the church is only here to make distinctions between right and wrong, or between the right kind of people and the wrong ones, there’s a great surprise waiting! The problem, you see, is that all too often, in spite of what Christians say they believe, the church gets this one dead wrong! If you happen to be one of those unfortunate people who got told by pious Christians “You’re going to hell!” there’s good news. God’s been looking for you to tell you that those who judged you got it all wrong. And if you have been one of the people doing the judging, maybe this is the season for a resurrection and a transformation.

If we have come together week after week thinking Jesus will be inside a building, maybe we were wrong. Perhaps Jesus is waiting for us out in the world—waiting to greet you in the face of the stranger.

Mind the gap!

The Risen Christ is here today making good on a promise. The promise is so great it will take fifty days—all of Eastertide—to unpack it, and really, after that, a whole lifetime and more to figure out what’s going on. But already the first hint of that revelation is given in the words of today’s Second Reading:

...if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

Are you looking for Jesus? He is much closer than you imagine—as close as the gardener! Look around you this week and see his body. A part of him may stare at you out of your television. And he looks out and greets others through your eyes. The Lord is Risen indeed! Mind the gap! That is where you will discover the Risen Christ! In his name.

Sermon by Pastor Ron Roschke