Hi, PDX!
That 4-years-late White House report on climate change (see previous post) includes the following language:
Finally, climate change is very likely to accentuate the disparities already evident in the American health care system. Many of the expected health effects are likely to fall disproportionately on the poor, the elderly, the disabled and the uninsured.
Increasingly, those categories describe my wife and me.
A February 2002 report by Physicians for Social Responsibility, titled "Degrees of Danger--Health Effects of Climate Change and Energy in Oregon", found much the same. Six years ago...
When the scientists are essentially telling us that climate change comes down to a matter of looking out for the poor and loving our neighbors as ourselves it reminds me of the lyrics of that Simon and Garfunkel song "Sounds of Silence":
And the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls, and tenement halls...
So even the scientists are telling us what would be the Christ-like thing to do. Then why for so long has addressing climate change been considered an idolatrous thing to do by so much of the church? Why is it still in many circles a sound of silence? And why, for God's sake (literally) has that been true of a so-called born again White House? Born to what?
Father, forgive us; for we know not what we do.
Shalom,
Pastor Roger
Friday, May 30, 2008
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Things that make you go, "Hmmmm...."
Hi, PDX!
Last post was 4/15, six weeks ago. Been a hard six weeks, more than I can share or you want to know. All in all, the past year has been the hardest year of my life; and that may be a foretaste of the feast to come, as some church liturgies say. We'll see, won't we?
Got a letter today from Jim Jewell, COO of the Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN). I've given them a small donation which gets me a subscription to their quarterly magazine Creation Care. It contains good, thoughtful and helpful writing by people of faith. I recommend it. http://www.creationcare.org/.
Mr. Jewell reported that EEN had applied to display at the 2008 convention of the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) held in Nashville in April. The NRB convention staff accepted the application. EEN prepared to go. Then they got notification that the NRB executive committee had reversed the decision of the staff. No reason given.
Think about that a minute. This was the Evangelical Environmental Network that had been denied, not the network of Wiccans, atheists, pagans or Communists. People in the EEN are people who have faith in the Triune God, worship God as creator and take their role as stewards of God's creation seriously. But they can't display to people associated with religious broadcasting. Hmmmm... EEN now plans to buy air time to run Creation Care Minute segments on Christian radio stations. Could be way better than a display at the NRB gig. Bad news turned into good. Hmmmm....
To me, there is no choice but to do the best with what God has given us since we all depend on it for life. So if we take care of creation, don't we help or neighbors who also depend on it? And didn't Jesus say that loving our neighbors as ourselves was parallel to loving God? Hmmmm....
In other news, the Bush Administration was finally pushed into publishing a summary of scientific consensus regarding the effects of climate change. Had been stonewalling on a report that is required by a 1990 law to be produced every four years. Last one was in 2000. Much of the news points us to serious changes ahead, things we should have been addressing as our top priority for years. Hmmmm... Why?
Shalom,
Pastor Roger
Last post was 4/15, six weeks ago. Been a hard six weeks, more than I can share or you want to know. All in all, the past year has been the hardest year of my life; and that may be a foretaste of the feast to come, as some church liturgies say. We'll see, won't we?
Got a letter today from Jim Jewell, COO of the Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN). I've given them a small donation which gets me a subscription to their quarterly magazine Creation Care. It contains good, thoughtful and helpful writing by people of faith. I recommend it. http://www.creationcare.org/.
Mr. Jewell reported that EEN had applied to display at the 2008 convention of the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) held in Nashville in April. The NRB convention staff accepted the application. EEN prepared to go. Then they got notification that the NRB executive committee had reversed the decision of the staff. No reason given.
Think about that a minute. This was the Evangelical Environmental Network that had been denied, not the network of Wiccans, atheists, pagans or Communists. People in the EEN are people who have faith in the Triune God, worship God as creator and take their role as stewards of God's creation seriously. But they can't display to people associated with religious broadcasting. Hmmmm... EEN now plans to buy air time to run Creation Care Minute segments on Christian radio stations. Could be way better than a display at the NRB gig. Bad news turned into good. Hmmmm....
To me, there is no choice but to do the best with what God has given us since we all depend on it for life. So if we take care of creation, don't we help or neighbors who also depend on it? And didn't Jesus say that loving our neighbors as ourselves was parallel to loving God? Hmmmm....
In other news, the Bush Administration was finally pushed into publishing a summary of scientific consensus regarding the effects of climate change. Had been stonewalling on a report that is required by a 1990 law to be produced every four years. Last one was in 2000. Much of the news points us to serious changes ahead, things we should have been addressing as our top priority for years. Hmmmm... Why?
Shalom,
Pastor Roger
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Just Askin'
Hi, PDX!
Whole buncha words have come your way from me. Now it's your turn. Gonna start asking you questions. You tell me what you think. Really! Please... Y'all can respond to one or more of the following. We'll start with three questions, one for each person of the Trinity.
1. Complete this sentence: The goal of the United States of America is__________.
2. At John 10:10, Jesus says he came around so that his followers "might have life and have it abundantly." What do you understand by having life and having it abundantly?
3. Jesus comes back for a weekend and spends it with you. Surreptitiously. No, he's not having the "big second comeback", just hanging out for a weekend for old times' sake. You offer to take him to church with you on Sunday, and you ask if he has a denominational preference. Jesus gets a very puzzled look on his face and says, "Denomination? What's that? Whatever for?" You reply:______________________________.
OK. There you have it. Fire away.....
Shalom,
Pastor Roger
Whole buncha words have come your way from me. Now it's your turn. Gonna start asking you questions. You tell me what you think. Really! Please... Y'all can respond to one or more of the following. We'll start with three questions, one for each person of the Trinity.
1. Complete this sentence: The goal of the United States of America is__________.
2. At John 10:10, Jesus says he came around so that his followers "might have life and have it abundantly." What do you understand by having life and having it abundantly?
3. Jesus comes back for a weekend and spends it with you. Surreptitiously. No, he's not having the "big second comeback", just hanging out for a weekend for old times' sake. You offer to take him to church with you on Sunday, and you ask if he has a denominational preference. Jesus gets a very puzzled look on his face and says, "Denomination? What's that? Whatever for?" You reply:______________________________.
OK. There you have it. Fire away.....
Shalom,
Pastor Roger
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Double Dude II
Hi, PDX!
My apologies for an absence far longer than I had planned. Our daughter's life has taken a real tumble, and Dad has been called into service to help again. Family. It's what we can still have when all else is gone.
Thomas. Jesus told Thomas, "Do not doubt but believe." That's what we think Jesus said because that's how our English-language Bibles translate the Greek. The above is from NRSV, but most others will be similar. Sounds like flipping the light switch, something you do on your own, something you could do with enough self-help books under your belt--or your bed.
My translation: "Stop becoming unfaithful and instead faithful. Stop becoming a person without faith and instead a person with faith." That's much closer to the Greek, and it might enable us to see a more prolonged rather than instantaneous process here. It's more like going on a journey than simply opening a door that is done in an instant.
Something else that cannot be translated from the Greek to English. The verb is a middle voice verb. English only has active voice (subject is doer of the action) and passive voice (subject is receiver of the action).
In the middle voice, the subject participates in the action. Hmmmmm....? You mean we don't just manufacture faith and believe all by ourselves? No, we don't. It's a journey we go on with Jesus through his Spirit.
Jesus invites Thomas to stop turning away and start turning toward Jesus so that they can go on the journey together. It's a lifelong deal.
Maybe some of you have had instantaneous faith experiences. You are probably a distinct minority in this world. Most of us have the Double Dude experience, and Jesus actually blesses it.
Jesus extends his wounded hand. Take it and start walking along. Start looking for the beginning of that journey rather than thinking you will see the destination before you have ever begun. It's a process. Lifelong.
Shalom,
Pastor Roger
My apologies for an absence far longer than I had planned. Our daughter's life has taken a real tumble, and Dad has been called into service to help again. Family. It's what we can still have when all else is gone.
Thomas. Jesus told Thomas, "Do not doubt but believe." That's what we think Jesus said because that's how our English-language Bibles translate the Greek. The above is from NRSV, but most others will be similar. Sounds like flipping the light switch, something you do on your own, something you could do with enough self-help books under your belt--or your bed.
My translation: "Stop becoming unfaithful and instead faithful. Stop becoming a person without faith and instead a person with faith." That's much closer to the Greek, and it might enable us to see a more prolonged rather than instantaneous process here. It's more like going on a journey than simply opening a door that is done in an instant.
Something else that cannot be translated from the Greek to English. The verb is a middle voice verb. English only has active voice (subject is doer of the action) and passive voice (subject is receiver of the action).
In the middle voice, the subject participates in the action. Hmmmmm....? You mean we don't just manufacture faith and believe all by ourselves? No, we don't. It's a journey we go on with Jesus through his Spirit.
Jesus invites Thomas to stop turning away and start turning toward Jesus so that they can go on the journey together. It's a lifelong deal.
Maybe some of you have had instantaneous faith experiences. You are probably a distinct minority in this world. Most of us have the Double Dude experience, and Jesus actually blesses it.
Jesus extends his wounded hand. Take it and start walking along. Start looking for the beginning of that journey rather than thinking you will see the destination before you have ever begun. It's a process. Lifelong.
Shalom,
Pastor Roger
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Double Dude: Thomas
Easter light be with you all!
Jesus' disciples had real world names, even nicknames. Simon Bar-jonah was nicknamed Kepha in Aramaic, Petros in Greek. We translate those as Cephas and Peter. In other words, Rocky. Jesus gave him that name. Jesus called James and John the "sons of thunder". Was he describing their personalities, or body functions after they ate fiber? Andrew means "manly guy". Philip is literally "friend of horses". Horse Dude. Thomas comes from the Aramaic "Thoma", twin. Double Dude.
We know him, unfortunately, as "doubting Thomas", today a metaphor like "good Samaritan".
Maybe it's time to go back and re-read John 20 with open eyes and minds instead of two millennia-worth of predispositions.
So Jesus was raised from the dead... So....? Big deal! What does that mean, exactly? Do we have a genuine answer that comes out of our own life experience? Or do we only have 2K years' worth of stale sermons to regurgitate?
John 20 is the evangelist's answer to the question, "What does it mean?" John answers through two people: Mary Magdalene and Thomas.
Thomas is my hero. Thomas has guts. Consider John 11:16. Jesus, who has been blacklisted and marked for death by the religious establishment in Jerusalem for healing on the Sabbath, proposes to return to the Jerusalem slum of Bethany to bring life to his dead friend Lazarus. Everyone knows it could be a fatal decision. It is Thomas who says, "Let us also go, that we may die with him." Not Peter. Not James, John or Andrew. Thomas. Double Dude.
We begin the story in question at John 20, verse 19. Don't forget that this is set on the evening of the day when Mary M. has come running in with news far bigger than the empty tomb personally inspected by Peter and another disciple. "I have seen the Lord!" Mary exclaims.
Should have blown the doors off the disciples' safe-house. They are hiding behind locked doors "for fear of the Jews." Still. Even after they know that Jesus is no longer dead. So is "for fear of the Jews" more of a statement about the Jews? Or about the disciples themselves? Ponder that.
Jesus appears among them, gives them his peace (twice) and the gift of the Holy Spirit, without which they are unable to grasp the meaning of the resurrection or have faith. Hmmmm.... Jesus shows them the physical wounds in his risen body, but Double Dude is not there to see. So when the rest of the gang relates this encounter with the risen Christ and how they now believe, Thomas is at a significant disadvantage.
Thomas has guts. He has the guts to say out loud what everyone else was thinking. Thomas states the problem for every human being in relation to God. Unless Thomas is able to see, he will never believe. He will never be able to believe.
Thomas nails it. Thomas asks the question on behalf of the other 6.9 billion of us who were not in the room either. Thank you, Double Dude!
A week later, Thomas gets his chance. Jesus again appears. Thomas states his case quite opnely to Jesus, asking for only what the other disciples have already received, the ability to "see" Jesus as the crucified one who is no longer dead.
Jesus complies. He doesn't say to Thomas, "Get outta my face, you faithless fool!" He presents his hands and his side saying, "Touch. See. Believe. And by the way, not everyone else will get ths chance. But rest assured that the witness of my resurrection that you provide is genuine, and I will bless it with my Spirit and with faith. It will be effective for all who come after. That's how things will work from now on."
That's mighty good news for the rest of us who were not in the room.
If you have faith in Christ today it is because somebody told somebody else who told somebody else--for two thousand years. Somebody made it possible for you to "see", which in John's gospel is always how one comes to believe. For John, seeing is believing. The book is all about seeing. You didn't get there all by yourself, now, did you?
Who had the guts to help you "see"?
More next time about Jesus' words to Thomas: "Do not doubt but believe". The Greek says something a bit different from what we have always heard. 'Til then, happy seeing!
Shalom,
Pastor Roger
Jesus' disciples had real world names, even nicknames. Simon Bar-jonah was nicknamed Kepha in Aramaic, Petros in Greek. We translate those as Cephas and Peter. In other words, Rocky. Jesus gave him that name. Jesus called James and John the "sons of thunder". Was he describing their personalities, or body functions after they ate fiber? Andrew means "manly guy". Philip is literally "friend of horses". Horse Dude. Thomas comes from the Aramaic "Thoma", twin. Double Dude.
We know him, unfortunately, as "doubting Thomas", today a metaphor like "good Samaritan".
Maybe it's time to go back and re-read John 20 with open eyes and minds instead of two millennia-worth of predispositions.
So Jesus was raised from the dead... So....? Big deal! What does that mean, exactly? Do we have a genuine answer that comes out of our own life experience? Or do we only have 2K years' worth of stale sermons to regurgitate?
John 20 is the evangelist's answer to the question, "What does it mean?" John answers through two people: Mary Magdalene and Thomas.
Thomas is my hero. Thomas has guts. Consider John 11:16. Jesus, who has been blacklisted and marked for death by the religious establishment in Jerusalem for healing on the Sabbath, proposes to return to the Jerusalem slum of Bethany to bring life to his dead friend Lazarus. Everyone knows it could be a fatal decision. It is Thomas who says, "Let us also go, that we may die with him." Not Peter. Not James, John or Andrew. Thomas. Double Dude.
We begin the story in question at John 20, verse 19. Don't forget that this is set on the evening of the day when Mary M. has come running in with news far bigger than the empty tomb personally inspected by Peter and another disciple. "I have seen the Lord!" Mary exclaims.
Should have blown the doors off the disciples' safe-house. They are hiding behind locked doors "for fear of the Jews." Still. Even after they know that Jesus is no longer dead. So is "for fear of the Jews" more of a statement about the Jews? Or about the disciples themselves? Ponder that.
Jesus appears among them, gives them his peace (twice) and the gift of the Holy Spirit, without which they are unable to grasp the meaning of the resurrection or have faith. Hmmmm.... Jesus shows them the physical wounds in his risen body, but Double Dude is not there to see. So when the rest of the gang relates this encounter with the risen Christ and how they now believe, Thomas is at a significant disadvantage.
Thomas has guts. He has the guts to say out loud what everyone else was thinking. Thomas states the problem for every human being in relation to God. Unless Thomas is able to see, he will never believe. He will never be able to believe.
Thomas nails it. Thomas asks the question on behalf of the other 6.9 billion of us who were not in the room either. Thank you, Double Dude!
A week later, Thomas gets his chance. Jesus again appears. Thomas states his case quite opnely to Jesus, asking for only what the other disciples have already received, the ability to "see" Jesus as the crucified one who is no longer dead.
Jesus complies. He doesn't say to Thomas, "Get outta my face, you faithless fool!" He presents his hands and his side saying, "Touch. See. Believe. And by the way, not everyone else will get ths chance. But rest assured that the witness of my resurrection that you provide is genuine, and I will bless it with my Spirit and with faith. It will be effective for all who come after. That's how things will work from now on."
That's mighty good news for the rest of us who were not in the room.
If you have faith in Christ today it is because somebody told somebody else who told somebody else--for two thousand years. Somebody made it possible for you to "see", which in John's gospel is always how one comes to believe. For John, seeing is believing. The book is all about seeing. You didn't get there all by yourself, now, did you?
Who had the guts to help you "see"?
More next time about Jesus' words to Thomas: "Do not doubt but believe". The Greek says something a bit different from what we have always heard. 'Til then, happy seeing!
Shalom,
Pastor Roger
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Easter lilies
EASTER
Lying long in loneliness
crucified by its own cares
A heart, hardened, hiding
In a silent, solitary sepulchre
of stone.
Dusty
Desert
Dry and seeking solely seed
to make it green
The heart, once sown
from a clear blue sky entices rain
And lilies bloom where lately seeds of love were lain.
He is not here.
He is!
Risen!
Easter blessings!
Pastor Roger
(c) 1970 by Roger D. Fuchs. All rights reserved.
Lying long in loneliness
crucified by its own cares
A heart, hardened, hiding
In a silent, solitary sepulchre
of stone.
Dusty
Desert
Dry and seeking solely seed
to make it green
The heart, once sown
from a clear blue sky entices rain
And lilies bloom where lately seeds of love were lain.
He is not here.
He is!
Risen!
Easter blessings!
Pastor Roger
(c) 1970 by Roger D. Fuchs. All rights reserved.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Collision Course: Mary Magdalene
Morning in the 'burbs...
Sometimes I look out my window and wonder why I live here. It's not like the compact little street of apartment buildings, small shops and businesses, tea houses, bakeries, the ceramic tile factory and the muffler shop in Yalova, Turkey where Jean and I first lived. I'm a farm kid by background and a city kid by the majority of life experience. The 'burbs are neither. I don't like lawns, but this patch of land that we are five mortgage payments from owning outright also gives us a garden space. My "farm". Seems like most of the area is on a collision course with what we are, though.
Several things were on a collision course in the gospel according to John as Jesus is crucified and laid to rest. But I realize that for most of my church-going history, almost no Easter preacher could ever say why Easter was so important except that it had somehow bought us resurrection--at some undefined time in the future, after we had died, whenver it was that Father God decided to send Jesus back to earth to at last usher in the fullness of the kingdom of God and take our glorified bodies to Heaven.
We had the details of what happened down pretty well. But what did it mean, for God's sake? No male preacher was ever able to say in ways that connected with me. I didn't feel any resurrection in my life.
I never thought about that much--indeed, couldn't see it--until I began to listen to John who told us the meaning of Jesus' resurrection through the eyes of two people in chapter 20: Mary Magdalene and Thomas, the twin. Ladies first. Thomas next week.
Mary of Magdala. We don't know much about her except that she seems to have lived on the s--t end of life until Jesus found her. Was she a prostitute? Had she been raped or sexually abused as a child? Was she homeless, divorced? Did she have a crooked nose, bad skin, ugly teeth? Did she have mental illness, the "seven demons" that were reported to have been cast out of her?
One thing is for sure, whatever she had come out of she found a fresh start among the followers of Jesus. I'm sure she had a servant's role in the group: cooking, shopping, serving, laundry, sewing, mending, whatever. I have no idea how the disciples regarded her or treated her. Roles were deeply cast back then, and expected. But for the first time perhaps in her whole life she must have felt love, acceptance and even the favor of God, protection from abuse, clucking tongues and preying males.
Imagine this fresh start in life being crushed, puverized at the foot of the cross. Look at the world through Mary's eyes and let that view soak awhile. It's one thing to have lived without much hope. It's another to have been given hope so briefly, only to have it ripped away by the public torture and execution of your hope giver.
One more thing. Handling a dead body, as the women who followed Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem did, would have made them ritually unclean, very unclean. Mary M. was used to that. She'd probably been considered unclean most of her life. For "good" people a huge stretch, for Mary a way of life.
After the crucifixion, the male disciples are anything but an inspired bunch. They sequester behind locked doors, scared to death. Mary goes to the graveyard (surely in the company of other women, but Mary M. is the one John shines his spotlight on) just as it is getting light on the first day of the week. She wants to finish the job of preparing Jesus' body for burial. By her own admission she goes expecting to find a body, nothing else.
It is gone! Nothing but an empty hole and cloth body wrappings...
She rushes back to town, alerts the disciples. Peter and John run out to the tomb, find it empty, see the folded shrouds and "believe". Believe what? That Jesus is gone? But what else? They don't really know yet, and John doesn't say, except that they have no biblical basis to hope for or expect anything but a dead end at Jesus' grave. The guys go back to Jerusalem. At least they have a "safe house" to go to.
Mary? Mary stays. She stands weeping outside the tomb. Why?
Did it ever occur to you that Mary had nothing to go back to? The one shred of remembrance of the new life she had been given was the body of Jesus. Now even that is gone.
Empty. Devastated. Crushed. Hopeless. Inconsolable. What else could she possibly have felt? A stranger asks why she weeps, whom she seeks? Then the stranger she doesn't recognize calls her by name, and she returns the recognition. Instantly she has her arms wrapped around him like a tree intending to never let go.
Jesus says she must let go of the old Jesus she knew in order to inherit the one who will never leave her and be present through water, Spirit, bread and wine, community, the kingdom of God.
Mary heads back to town, stumbling at first, I'll bet, in her overwhelmed state. Then I'll bet she begins to run. The meaning of the empty tomb finally begins to sink in!
Nothing ends here. This is where it begins! Mary has her life given back to her again. It might be fair to say that Mary has her life given to her for the very first time.
Why does Mary get to be the first person on the planet to see the risen Christ and proclaim, "I have seen the Lord!" My only answer: at that moment in time no person on the planet had such a desperate need to see.
From nothing to being filled. From death to life. Emptiness is where God begins. God always starts with nothing. At the beginning that's all there is. Same is true for God's new beginnings. Perhaps even in your own life. Pretty fantastic collision course!
There wasn't just one resurrection that day. There were effectively two. Or perhaps 10 billion, including yours.
Christ is risen, and so are you. Thanks be to God! Amen.
Pastor Roger
Sometimes I look out my window and wonder why I live here. It's not like the compact little street of apartment buildings, small shops and businesses, tea houses, bakeries, the ceramic tile factory and the muffler shop in Yalova, Turkey where Jean and I first lived. I'm a farm kid by background and a city kid by the majority of life experience. The 'burbs are neither. I don't like lawns, but this patch of land that we are five mortgage payments from owning outright also gives us a garden space. My "farm". Seems like most of the area is on a collision course with what we are, though.
Several things were on a collision course in the gospel according to John as Jesus is crucified and laid to rest. But I realize that for most of my church-going history, almost no Easter preacher could ever say why Easter was so important except that it had somehow bought us resurrection--at some undefined time in the future, after we had died, whenver it was that Father God decided to send Jesus back to earth to at last usher in the fullness of the kingdom of God and take our glorified bodies to Heaven.
We had the details of what happened down pretty well. But what did it mean, for God's sake? No male preacher was ever able to say in ways that connected with me. I didn't feel any resurrection in my life.
I never thought about that much--indeed, couldn't see it--until I began to listen to John who told us the meaning of Jesus' resurrection through the eyes of two people in chapter 20: Mary Magdalene and Thomas, the twin. Ladies first. Thomas next week.
Mary of Magdala. We don't know much about her except that she seems to have lived on the s--t end of life until Jesus found her. Was she a prostitute? Had she been raped or sexually abused as a child? Was she homeless, divorced? Did she have a crooked nose, bad skin, ugly teeth? Did she have mental illness, the "seven demons" that were reported to have been cast out of her?
One thing is for sure, whatever she had come out of she found a fresh start among the followers of Jesus. I'm sure she had a servant's role in the group: cooking, shopping, serving, laundry, sewing, mending, whatever. I have no idea how the disciples regarded her or treated her. Roles were deeply cast back then, and expected. But for the first time perhaps in her whole life she must have felt love, acceptance and even the favor of God, protection from abuse, clucking tongues and preying males.
Imagine this fresh start in life being crushed, puverized at the foot of the cross. Look at the world through Mary's eyes and let that view soak awhile. It's one thing to have lived without much hope. It's another to have been given hope so briefly, only to have it ripped away by the public torture and execution of your hope giver.
One more thing. Handling a dead body, as the women who followed Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem did, would have made them ritually unclean, very unclean. Mary M. was used to that. She'd probably been considered unclean most of her life. For "good" people a huge stretch, for Mary a way of life.
After the crucifixion, the male disciples are anything but an inspired bunch. They sequester behind locked doors, scared to death. Mary goes to the graveyard (surely in the company of other women, but Mary M. is the one John shines his spotlight on) just as it is getting light on the first day of the week. She wants to finish the job of preparing Jesus' body for burial. By her own admission she goes expecting to find a body, nothing else.
It is gone! Nothing but an empty hole and cloth body wrappings...
She rushes back to town, alerts the disciples. Peter and John run out to the tomb, find it empty, see the folded shrouds and "believe". Believe what? That Jesus is gone? But what else? They don't really know yet, and John doesn't say, except that they have no biblical basis to hope for or expect anything but a dead end at Jesus' grave. The guys go back to Jerusalem. At least they have a "safe house" to go to.
Mary? Mary stays. She stands weeping outside the tomb. Why?
Did it ever occur to you that Mary had nothing to go back to? The one shred of remembrance of the new life she had been given was the body of Jesus. Now even that is gone.
Empty. Devastated. Crushed. Hopeless. Inconsolable. What else could she possibly have felt? A stranger asks why she weeps, whom she seeks? Then the stranger she doesn't recognize calls her by name, and she returns the recognition. Instantly she has her arms wrapped around him like a tree intending to never let go.
Jesus says she must let go of the old Jesus she knew in order to inherit the one who will never leave her and be present through water, Spirit, bread and wine, community, the kingdom of God.
Mary heads back to town, stumbling at first, I'll bet, in her overwhelmed state. Then I'll bet she begins to run. The meaning of the empty tomb finally begins to sink in!
Nothing ends here. This is where it begins! Mary has her life given back to her again. It might be fair to say that Mary has her life given to her for the very first time.
Why does Mary get to be the first person on the planet to see the risen Christ and proclaim, "I have seen the Lord!" My only answer: at that moment in time no person on the planet had such a desperate need to see.
From nothing to being filled. From death to life. Emptiness is where God begins. God always starts with nothing. At the beginning that's all there is. Same is true for God's new beginnings. Perhaps even in your own life. Pretty fantastic collision course!
There wasn't just one resurrection that day. There were effectively two. Or perhaps 10 billion, including yours.
Christ is risen, and so are you. Thanks be to God! Amen.
Pastor Roger
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