My friend and colleague Don Niederfrank has a line that goes: it’s easier to pray “thy will be done” than it is “that they may be one.” Meaning it’s a lot easier to try to do God’s will and let the chips fall where they may than to stick around and deal with people.
Don’s point often exasperates me. He’s a lot more interested in compromise than I am. And yet, he does have a point. Seeking unity is difficult. In fact, it’s a great big pain in the patootie.
A few weeks back, Mary and I were looking at the UCC bulletins for Easter, and this is what we saw.
What the dilly-o?
All throughout Lent, I have been yammering on about hope. I, err, hope that you will forgive me one more sermon on the subject before we go on to work another thread for a while.
I have been suggesting that we find hope in all kinds of unexpected places, and today, I want to give you one more. This may in fact be the most dubious of them all, though finding hope in a bureaucratic memo was certainly a doozy. But I do believe that there is a message of hope in these three little words: he was raised.
And so it has come to this: our last, best hope turns out to be a poor man executed with common criminals.
Which is in turn to say: our hope finally rests on death and abandonment.
As some of you know, Passover began last night, and runs through April 16th. Passover typically coincides with Easter because, as the gospels tell us, Christ was crucified at Passover, becoming the sacrificial lamb of the holiday. Easter and Passover very rarely exactly coincide because, well, just because. It gets kind of complicated.
Point being, the two stories - the story of Jewish liberation from slavery in Egypt and the Christian story of liberation from sin and death - are inextricably linked. Jews tell the Passover story each year, fulfilling the commandment to remember God’s liberating action. And here we are, doing the same thing by reading from the book of Exodus. It seems appropriate.
Christians look back at the Passover narrative and see the story of Jesus in it. We can’t help it. The way the gospels tell us about Jesus’ death and resurrection is in terms of the older story. Which stands to reason, if you stop to think about it. The people who wrote the gospels were Jews talking to other Jews about something completely unprecedented. It’s little wonder that they would fall back on stories that were well known to their communities.
I hasten to add that I don’t mean to suggest that the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection aren’t “true.” I simply mean to say that whatever the facts are, the story has to be shaped one way or another.
It’s also worth remembering that the way we are used to telling this story isn’t the only one possible.
Isaiah 50:4-9a, Philippians 2:5-11 & Mark 11:1-11
Time for an object lesson this morning, I think.
- If I held up this icon and told you that it proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that Jesus Christ existed and that he is your Lord and Savior, what would you say to me? Probably not, right?
- What if I held up a cross? Still no, I’m guessing. It’s a symbol, doesn’t require you to believe anything by itself.
- But what if I held up a Bible and told you that it proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that Jesus Christ existed and that he is your Lord and Savior? You might say okay to that. Or you might not. You might say, well, the Bible is great and all, but there’s more to my faith than the Bible alone.
- Or what if I lifted up the church, this gathered community, and said “The fact that such a group is possible demonstrates that Christ is at work in our lives”? You might go for that. Or you might say, “Oh heck no,” depending on who’s sitting next to you in the pew and how they smell.
None of these things, I would be willing to bet, would constitute proof to you in a scientific sense. We can prove very easily that a bowling ball and a tennis ball fall at the same rate. All we have to do is drop them off the balcony and observe them bouncing off the pews to prove that. That’s simple.
But proving that God exists is not so easy. It’s even more difficult to prove that God exists, and that he (or she) works for our good in the world. In fact, in a strictly scientific sense, it can’t be done. read more…
