Making It Real

1 John 3:11-24
Easter 4
April 25, 2021
William G. Carter

For this is the message you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. We must not be like Cain who was from the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous. Do not be astonished, brothers and sisters, that the world hates you.

 

We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another. Whoever does not love abides in death. All who hate a brother or sister are murderers, and you know that murderers do not have eternal life abiding in them. We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. 

 

How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God; and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him.

 

And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us.

In reading the Bible, it helps to survey the neighborhood. We expect the writings of John to command us to love one another. It is John who reports this commandment in his account of the last supper. Jesus turned to his disciples and declared, “I give you a new commandment.” 

According to one tradition, the apostle John, the fishermen from Galilee, made his way to Western Turkey. He settled around the large city of Ephesus and taken care of the mother of Jesus. When Jesus was dying on the cross, he had looked at the Beloved Disciple, “Here is your mother.” John took care of her as if she was his own mother.

Now in his advanced age, the legend says the small Christian community would perk up when they heard brother John was coming to worship. They waited on the edge of their seats. He had been with the Lord. When they saw John arrive and settle in, they asked, “Brother John, do have a word from the Lord?” He would look intently into their eyes, and then croak out the words, “Love one another.”

So we expect him to say this here in chapter three. We expect him to say this half a dozen times in this short letter, including three times in the selection which is today’s text. “Love one another!”

What we don't expect is how he sets this new commandment in the context of the ancient story of Cain and Abel. Remember that one? Cain and Abel were the two sons of Adam and Eve. Each one offered a sacrifice to the Lord. Abel was a shepherd. He sacrificed one of his sheep and God found that pleasing and acceptable. Cain was a gardener. So he burned up some vegetables and called that a sacrifice. The Lord blew that smoke back into his face. It angered Cain.

Rather than direct his anger toward God, and rather than take responsibility for cooking up eggplants and rutabagas and assuming God would enjoy it, Cain picked up a blunt object and struck down his brother. Then he lied about it. God said to him, “Where’s your brother?” Cain said, “I don’t know.” Then he said something foolish: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Well, of course he was.

It may seem curious that John talks about love as the alternative to murder. But this is not curious at all. It is a binary choice. Either we open our hearts to one another, or we bend in upon ourselves. Either we keep one another as brother, sister, kin – or we regard one another to be disposable. Old brother John knows the choice has been around since Cain and Abel. It’s the choice we must make after we have been expelled from the Garden of Eden. It’s the choice that never goes away.

One hot day in July, my wife and I went to hear a talk by Elie Wiesel. It took place in an open-air amphitheater that normally seats up to 5000 people, and 8000 bodies showed up. They were hanging from the rafters. All of us wanted to hear this extraordinary man – born a Romanian Jew, a Holocaust prisoner at Auschwitz, the winner of a Nobel Peace Prize. He was the author of 57 books, many of them reflecting on what it means to be a Jew in a world like this.

His topic for this interfaith lecture addressed a simple question: what does it mean to be moral? He mused with us as fellow children of the covenant. There are moral laws, holy commandments – don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t covet. And yet it is possible to keep these laws while disregarding their intent. Just because the rules are carved on stone tablets doesn’t mean they are inscribed on our souls. Wiesel reminded us how Hitler’s henchmen worshiped in churches on Sundays, and then committed atrocities on Monday morning, never lying, stealing, or coveting.

He went on to remark that many of us confuse morality with superiority, that if we commit to a code of conduct and keep it to the letter, this elevates us above everybody else. We neglect the truth that pride puffs us up. Either we detach ourselves from the suffering that so many encounter in this world. Or sympathy dies as our hearts turn to stone.

“So what makes us moral?” he asked. “Is it not to keep others as our brothers and sisters? To not allow evil to overwhelm the heart and thoughts of its victims by depriving them of the right to hope? In my vocabulary, this step has a name: intervention.”

We sat in silence, stunned because we were hearing crystal-clear truth. And he said, “To be immoral is to be indifferent. To see someone in trouble and decide we do not care. We always have a choice, to stand up for what is right or to do nothing.” There was a long pause, and then he sat down. There was nothing more to say.

I have pondered his words frequently. He was reminding us that “love” is a muscular word, a clear word. Love is not the marshmallow fluff of sentiment. Love acts for the benefit of other people, regardless of whether we like them. You don’t have to like someone in order to love them, at least not in the biblical sense. To love others is to grant them safety, to guard them from evil, to make room for them to flourish, to ensure they have (at least) the basic resources for life, and to welcome them as neighbors.

John says love is the ongoing work of Easter. Either we love in the name of the Risen Christ or we remain captive to a world obsessed with its own destruction. It is an either-or choice. He says, “Whoever does not love abides in death.” That’s clear. And to the Easter people in his church, he says, “We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another.” Love is the evidence of Christ at work among us.

Love is what fuels our mission as Christian people. We see needs and we do something about them. We refuse to remain indifferent. And the activists among us know that it’s frequently awkward to care for other people. We want to affirm their dignity; when we collect canned food, we don’t pull out of the pantry the expired cans of creamed spinach that we wouldn’t dare to eat. We provide healthy, nutritious food to the hungry.

And we don’t simply throw money at needy people. We use our money to build relationships, to empower people and not demean them. That can be complicated. It may feel good for you and me to give money to a worthy cause – but it feels a whole lot better to make a constructive difference.

A couple of years ago, I invited some friends on our Mission and Justice committee to read a book called “Toxic Charity.” It opened our eyes, cracked open our hearts. It punctured our false pride that we were doing nice things for needy people, mostly as a way to feel better about ourselves – rather than to show up and stick around, becoming as vulnerable as those who had been afflicted.

Robert Lupton, the author of the book, described a lot of our “do-gooder” deeds as part of what he calls the “compassion industry.” It is possible to dip in and dip out as religious tourists, without ever knowing the names or the stories of those we serve.

When I read the book, I remembered a scene from the Port au Prince airport from a mission trip that our church folks took many years ago. As we waited to board our flight home, a church youth group arrived. They wore matching blue t-shirts that read “Haiti Impact Work Camp, July 3-9.” Most of the kids had gotten a suntan that week. Some of the teenage girls were braiding one another’s hair. More than a few carried souvenirs. I wonder what kind of impact those kids actually made. Looked like they had a good week; but did they get their hands dirty? Couldn’t tell.

Loving other people is hard work. It’s good work, the best work there is, but it’s hard work. Because love steps into the gaps that a toxic world creates. Brother John puts the matter succinctly: “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.”

So here is my invitation to you: what can we do together to show the love of Christ to a broken neighborhood? I want that question to always stay front and center for our church.

The first task, of course, is paying attention, and seeing truthfully what is going on around us. We have been living through fourteen months of a pandemic. A lot of good people are afraid. Many are lonely. A significant number have lost a loved one, or lost a job, or lost a livelihood. The social fabric has become unraveled. And many people can’t distinguish which voice is telling the truth about much of anything: the virus, the vaccines, the economy, the level of safety. What can we do to show love? Indifference is not an option.

You have continued to show generosity and we are grateful. The donations to our One Great Hour of Sharing offering were almost twice the size of our goal, and that money is being sent on to national relief offerings. But we have another issue closer to home. Your gifts to our Deacons have far exceeded our expectations. You have given the funds because you want us to express our care – but what might we do? The local food pantry has a surplus of funding, and that’s wonderful. Just this past week, the Deacons bought about 1700 diapers and 4000 baby wipes for a baby pantry in Dunmore. There’s wonderful generosity here. Thank you!

But how can we connect face to face in a time when we need to wear masks? How can we counter the world full of death with the love that gives life?  These are the questions that make love real. We cannot drive by. We cannot phone it in. I think we show up. We listen. We look beneath the surface. We pray – not merely for God to fix what we cannot, but to awaken opportunities among us where we can make a difference by showing love.

John says, “We know love by this, that Jesus Christ laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.” That is the full measure of love. 

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places

1 John 3:1-7
Easter 3
April 18, 2021

See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that he was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Everyone who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous.

 

 

Easter is more than a single day. For the church, it is a season. And in the church’s selection of scripture texts from the First Letter of John, it is a season of love.

 

There is a lot we don’t know about the First Letter of John. No address is posted, so we can’t say this is actually a letter, although we can be sure it was a document that was passed around ever since it was composed. There is no signature, so we cannot say who wrote it. It sounds like the Gospel of John – same terminology, same concerns – but the Gospel of John isn’t signed either. Since we don’t know what it is or who wrote it, we will call it the First Letter of John.

 

What we do know is that John is a leader in an early Christian community. He calls his flock “children of God.” They gather around Jesus, whom they believe is very much alive. The Risen Christ stands at the center of their life together. He is the glue that holds them together. They don’t come together because they have membership cards. Neither do they focus on a building, a program, or an activity. Their center is Jesus. For them he opens up life.

 

And the heart of their life together is love. Thirty times in 105 verses, he speaks of love. That’s a heavier concentration than any other book in the Bible. There is love on every page. There is love in nearly every paragraph. This is striking because love is mentioned a lot, but never defined. Love is indeed a “many splendored thing,” but what kind of thing is it?

 

I ask as the pandemic begins to lift and the weddings begin to be rescheduled. It is my practice to meet with all the couples who want to get married. We aren’t doing a lot of weddings in the church building these days. A few, but not many. The funerals have moved inside, and the weddings have moved outside. But every couple I meet, I ask them to tell me some stories. How did you meet? How long did it take? How did you know? And then the big question, what have you learned about love? And where did you learn it?

 

I ask out of my own general ignorance. There was a time in my life when love seemed to be defined by my hormones. At least I thought that was love; it was probably something else. Or maybe love has something to do with escaping difficult circumstances; daddy was an alcoholic, so let me find somebody who is not. Other times, I wondered if love had to do with companionship. You find somebody to share common interests. You decide to raise children together or join in some other enterprise. And you hope there’s enough glue to make it stick.

I raise this with the couples, I raise this with myself, because this old world is no friend of love. Whatever love is, the world offers a lot of counterfeits.

 

When I was a newlywed (the first time), I was in my least year at seminary and took a class on love. I was sure it would be a piece of cake. The honeymoon in the Adirondacks was fresh in my memory. We had set up house in a high-priced university town. You know the story: we didn’t have much but we had one another. So I signed up for this class on the philosophy of love. The professor’s first name was Diogenes, so I knew he would be a seeker after truth.

 

Well, he was. It was one of the hardest courses I ever took. On the very first day, he denounced greeting cards. Then he ripped into James Taylor songs. Along the way, he made us read an historical study that pointed out that “romance” was an invention from the Middle Ages. It was mostly a rich person’s invention; the poor were too busy to pick flowers and too destitute to give chocolate.

 

I didn’t do very well in that course. I went home and told my wife, “I got a B- in love.” She looked up and said, “Was he grading on the curve?”

 

What kept my grade low was the final exam. Professor Diogenes passed around photocopies of a movie review from the New York Times and said, “Critique the review.” That was our final exam. Everything we had learned in the course came to bear on that single task. The movie was a romantic drama, which I had not seen. I was too busy and too destitute in those days. Roger Ebert, the film critic, said it was just as tell. “Terrible movie,” he said.

 

It was the story of two people in New York who were married to other people. They bought Christmas gifts in a bookstore for their spouses, and the salesclerk wrapped them and accidentally mixed them up. Later, the two meet on a commuter train, meet again, and sparks begin. And you can guess where this story is going.

 

I don’t remember what I wrote for the exam. Probably too shell shocked by the assignment. But a good friend later reported on his poor grade. He said the film sounded like sentimental schlock, like so many other films of the time. He mused how that story would turn out, and whether the two would ever be happy together. The professor wrote a single comment in block letters: “Whoever said that love has something to do with happiness? B-.” I didn’t feel so alone. There was solidarity in my suffering.

 

The point of the story is simply this: the world wants to give us all kinds of substitutes for love. The world tells us love is falling for somebody you meet on a train (never mind you are married to somebody else). Love is entirely a matter of romance (when you are no longer swept off your feet, it’s time to move on). Love is a temporary release from the routines, burdens, and commitments of everyday life. And then, love is supposed to make you happy. That course was thirty-seven years ago, and I think I’m finally learning the lesson.

 

Country music fans know where I got the title for the sermon. It comes from a number one hit by a singer named Johnny Lee. It was featured in the movie “Urban Cowboy” because lead actor John Travolta liked it.

Johnny sings, “I was looking for love in all the wrong places.” He was hitting the singles bars, telling sweet lies, looking for traces to fulfill a little piece of his dreams. He confesses he did everything he could just to get through the night. It was all misdirected, as if love were something he had to chase after, something he needed to pursue out of the hunger in his own soul.

 

In the end, love is something that surprised him. Something that found him. Something he would never discover if he were hungry.

 

This is such an important lesson. Love has little to do with appetite. What appears at first glance to be love is often a shadow of our neediness. Instead of declaring “I wish to commit to you, no matter what,” we look instead for somebody to complete us, to fill some deficit in our soul. And if the day comes when we grow up, and grow into our own skin, and develop a soul, all the superficial attractions may not be enough.

 

So I ask the young couples, their eyes still sparkling, where did you learn about love? What have been the lessons? And sometimes, I tell you, what they report actually does warm my heart.

 

Like the bride who says, “When my mother was diagnosed with depression, my father backed off from his job to give the support that she needed. She said he didn’t need to do that, and he said, ‘You are more important than my work.’ And he proved it by taking the time, stepping up as her advocate, and doing what he could.”

 

Or how about the groom who says, “My mom and dad couldn’t stay married, and my sister and I knew it. But miracles of miracles, they said they would not destroy one another in divorce, and they didn’t. We expected them to fight, but we astonished how they could work together for the common goal of our benefit. Both provided for our educations. Both wanted us to succeed. Both want us to get along in ways that they couldn’t.” That was stunning truth.

 

Or I think of the ways that friends step up when the time arises. Our church has been a marvelous means for people to connect if they want to connect. In this little town of ours where so many neighbors seem anonymous, the church provides a safe place, a level place, to get to know one another. Just the other day, one of our new widows said, “I’m thinking about starting a widow’s group. Nothing heavily structured, just a way to get us together, to talk, to share what we are discovering.” Sounds to me like another expression of love.

 

The world can’t teach us these things. For John, in his Gospel and letters, the “world” is a dark place. It resists love. The world teaches us to consume. To demand. To insist on our own way. To plunder. To express anger through violence. And above all, to lie about everything. That’s why the world doesn’t know as much as it presumes to know. It doesn’t know love. It doesn’t know us. And it doesn’t know God.

 

But this is precisely how God breaks through. God does not need any of us. God was doing fine before we were born. God is spinning the planets alone. God is painting the neighbor with forsythia blossoms. God is waking up the green grass without our help. God doesn’t need us – but God chooses us. John says, “Beloved, we are God’s children.” The adoption papers were signed at our baptisms, and God says, “You belong to me. You are my beloved children.” Love is a commitment.

 

And the commitment is unconditional. God’s claim on our lives has nothing to do with how good we are, nor how bad we used to be. We did not earn our heavenly status. It just came. Pure gift, unconditional gift. This is another place to discern whether it is love: did we have to fake it, dress up for it, gulp down mouthwash and brush our air to become acceptable – or did it surprise us by how gracious it is? Love is 200 proof grace.

 

And the end of love – the final work of love – is to transform us, and inevitably make us lovable. Old John inserts a few lines that we use again and again when we baptize a new one:

 

Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed.

What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. 

And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

 

Love is the work of God, in us, among us, between us, and beyond us. It is the purifying work of the Risen Christ, who takes us as we are and promises to make us more like himself. He purifies us by removing the world’s distractions and untangling the world’s distortions. What remains is the truth: that God sees us as we are, knows what we have done, receives us in his mercy, and makes something better out of us.

 

This is the work of love. Love is the work of Christ after Easter. So we will pick this up again next week, and the weeks following. For now, we listen for Christ to call us as the beloved children of God.

(c) William G. Carter.  All rights reserved.

Easter in the Future Tense

1 Corinthians 15:19-26
Easter
April 4, 2021
William G. Carter

If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

In case anybody wondered if a pandemic could shut down Easter, here we are! For the second year in a row, we celebrate this day through a dispersed community. Some are here, some are taking part at home, some are scattered to the four winds. And this is our big day. It is not an exaggeration to declare Easter is the reason our church exists. 

A few years ago, I chuckled when I heard an international reporter on CNN as she described the events in Jerusalem. “All across the globe,” she reported, “Christians are preparing to mark their holiest day. Easter was the day long ago when Jesus allegedly arose from the dead. Christians are gathering to remember it.”

Allegedly she had it right. Easter marks an event from the past. Centuries ago, something happened in a graveyard outside Jerusalem. It was a rare event, never repeated, difficult to imitate, hard to explain to young children. A young Jewish man was raised from the tomb. He appeared to the people who knew him. We remember the resurrection. We mark it with glad songs and joyful worship.

Mark’s story is as good an account as any. At dawn, three women take burial spices to anoint the dead body of their friend. He died on the eve of a holy day. He was placed in a tomb in a hurry. A huge gravestone was rolled in front of the entrance. The women have their spices, are almost at the tomb, but realize the stone will have to be moved away. Suddenly they look up to discover that has already been done. Stepping into this weird sight, they see a young man sitting up. It isn’t Jesus, but apparently he knows him, for he refers to him by name.

“Don’t be shocked,” he says. “You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth. He isn’t here. He has been raised. Tell the others, especially Peter, that he has gone ahead to Galilee. All of you will see him there.” And they run out of the tomb, terrified, too shocked to say anything. He is alive…allegedly. Ever since, there have been field reports that he is on the move.

It has always been an unsettling story. There’s not enough evidence to satisfy a Doubting Thomas. Yet the tomb has been opened and Jesus isn’t in it. That’s just enough for a lot of us. We fill the silence with triumphant music. I’ve often wished we could bring in a brass quartet and amplify the proceedings, but the Roman Catholics booked last year’s trumpeters twelve months ago.

Truth be told, as glorious as that might be, it does cover up the mystery at the heart of it all. What actually happened? And what does it mean?  Allegedly, says the lady on CNN, Jesus was raised from the dead. OK, we will have to take that on faith. But what does it mean? What does it really mean?

Maybe it means that life is stronger than death. That’s a good message. The daffodils in my front yard brushed off two inches of Thursday’s snow to sing hallelujah today. And the grass is starting to green up. Spring is here, we hope. Life is back. But let’s not confuse the cycle of the seasons with a one-time resurrection in Jerusalem. For the record, I do believe life is stronger than death. But I believe Easter means something more than that.

Maybe it means that love is stronger than the grave. That’s a good message, too, and I believe it. I have seen it. When we lose someone we love, a part of them stays with us. Yes, it is brutal having them torn from our arms for the very last time. We long to hear their voices again and the silence can be deafening. We grieve deeply because we love deeply. Grief is our protest against every loss. It is proof that love continues forever. But as important and true as that is, Easter is even bigger than love.

Maybe it means that life goes on, and we can be instructed by the life of the One who died. The church wrote down the things Jesus said so we can continue to hear his voice. We wrote down accounts of what he did so we can keep doing them. There are lessons to keep learning and tasks to pursue. We could do a lot worse than to be like Jesus, to love like Jesus, to do what Jesus did. And as important as all of that is, Easter is far greater.

How do I know that? Because of something that the Apostle Paul says. He writes to a small congregation in Greece. Not only are they small, they are a mess: chaos in the pews, division between rival parties, questions about how to act and what to do. And do you know why they are a mess? Precisely because Christ has been raised from the dead. Everything they thought settled has been tossed up into the air. Old routines were disrupted, old habits were confronted, old expectations were flipped upside down. And it’s all because of the resurrection!   

I think of a great line from a short story by Flannery O’Connor. “Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead, and he shouldn’t have done it. He thrown everything off balance.” Indeed. It fits.

You think thirteen months of a pandemic is disruptive? Imagine having a living Savior at the center of your lives! You thought you had everything figured out. You thought you had that wise Jewish teacher nailed down – but he didn’t stay nailed down. And he didn’t stay safely out of sight in a sealed-up tomb.

Paul says Easter is disruptive. It’s the best kind of disruptive. It jumps off that old script that we know so well, that life only leads to death. I heard it in one of the hymns a few nights ago, on Maundy Thursday. Maybe you know the verse:

Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day / Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away.

Change and decay in all around I see / O Thou who changest not, abide with me. “(Abide With Me”)

With his eyes illumined by the resurrection, Paul says, “Now, wait a minute. Wait just a minute. Jesus changed. He reversed the decay. We thought joy grew dim, and glory passed away, but we were wrong. He is alive. We caught a glimpse of the glory. Dimness was dispersed.” Something is afoot!

Hey Paul, does this mean we are going to stop dying? He says, “No, every person dies. Death began with a human being after the Garden of Eden. All of us die in Adam.”

So Paul, what does this mean? He says, “All of us will be made alive in Christ, for the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being, who is Jesus our Lord.”

To explain this, he draws on a picture from nature, when that first sign of a harvest pokes its head out of the ground. It was the evidence of the “first fruit” of something much bigger.  For us, the analogy could be the first arrival of a trustworthy vaccine against covid-19. We hoped for it. We waited for it. There were field reports that it was coming. 

Suddenly it happened – and that dark, heavy cloud over our heads began to break up. And I can report, as somebody who has had my vaccines, I feel free in ways that I haven’t felt in a whole year. We’re not all the way there yet. In fact, we have a good distance yet to go. But we have a taste of what is coming.

Paul says, “Now you understand Easter!” All die in Adam, and all shall be raised in Jesus. But keep the order straight, he says. First Jesus is raised, as the first fruit of the harvest, and then we will follow.

Now, I don’t expect the nice lady on CNN to understand apocalyptic eschatology, even though that’s what Paul is talking about. In fact, I have to spell out apocalyptic eschatology to a good number of our flock. Maybe I need to spell it for you. What Paul is telling us is that Easter is bigger than life, larger than love, and greater than any moral lesson. Easter is pointing us to where everything is going. 

God’s broken creation is going to be healed. Everything twisted out of shape will be forgiven and restored. This tired, old world, so bent on its own destruction, is going to be spun in the right direction. And thanks to Jesus, God is finally going to win.

This is why Easter causes such a disruption. Resurrection confronts the powers of Death. Resurrection is the means by which God serves notice on anything that opposes God’s gracious and just rule over all things. They will not stand. 

We often think of “death” in terms of a loved one. Somebody dies, and it is a death with a small “d.” Easter takes on that death, but in a comprehensive way. Death also comes with a Capital D, in today’s text, Paul calls that “the last enemy.” As somebody notes,

(Capital D) Death is out to steal life from human beings, but it does not stop with individuals. Death wants to capture territory, to possess principalities. It desires to dehumanize all institutions, poison all relationships, set people against people in warfare, replace all love with hate, transform all words of hope into blasphemy, to shatter all attempts to build community, and to make a mockery of God, faith, and the gift of life.[1]

Easter announces that Death with a capital D is going to be destroyed. Do you know what that means?

• Poverty caused by human selfishness will not stand.
• Cruelty caused by abuse will be equalized.
• Violence provoked by fear will be dismantled.
• Ignorance caused by the willful resistance to truth will fade away.
• All the toxins that enslave us will have their power broken.  
• And the meek shall truly inherit the earth.

For Christ is risen. He is the first evidence of the gracious dominion that God has intended from the beginning. We pray every day, “thy kingdom come.” Easter means it’s coming. It's really coming. And we will see it if we take part in it.

I realize this is a lot to take in, especially if you were expecting a pep talk about looking on the bright side, or tips on how to stay cheerful when you don’t feel like it. If you were looking for proof of something invisible, if you were looking for evidence of something that happened a long time ago, I can only tell you what I know: the evidence is in the kingdom’s mission. The proof comes through serving the Risen Lord whom we cannot see.

Here is the message we proclaim together: Jesus Christ is risen. He is risen from the dead. He is risen to rule over all things until he has put “all his enemies under his feet.” This is the truth. This is Easter in the future tense.  

 

(c) William G. Carter.  All rights reserved.

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[1] Thomas G. Long, Accompany Them with Singing: The Christian Funeral (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009) pp. 38-39

 

Covenant in a Cup

Mark 14:17-25
Maundy Thursday
April 1, 2021
William G. Carter

When it was evening, Jesus came with the twelve. And when they had taken their places and were eating, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me.” They began to be distressed and to say to him one after another, “Surely, not I?” He said to them, “It is one of the twelve, one who is dipping bread into the bowl with me. For the Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that one by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that one not to have been born.”

 

While they were eating, he took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to them, and said, “Take; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, and all of them drank from it. He said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Truly I tell you, I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”

 

 

All through the long season of Lent, we’ve been talking about “covenant.” As the Bible reports on God’s long relationship with people, covenant is the recurring theme. Covenant comes up again and again in the pages of scripture. So we may find it curious that the only time Jesus speaks of covenant is right here, as he points to a cup.

 

We have turned the moment into a sacrament. The Last Supper has become the Lord’s Supper. We observe it in the darkness of Maundy Thursday. We celebrate it in the daylight of Easter morning. Many Christian fellowships practice the sacrament more frequently than we do, some of them every week, some of them every day.

 

All Christian people have leaned in on the words, “Take, this is my body. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.” Despite the good attempts by theologians to explain what happens when we eat this bread and drink this cup, most of us will settle for this sacrament as a mystery. Tonight we are reminded that the mystery is not in the cup, or what happens in the cup. The magic is in the relationship.

That's what a covenant is: a relationship. However else it is defined, covenant is the living connection between two parties. Sometimes the connection is close. Sometimes the connection is distant. But as long as there is a connection, the covenant is still alive.

Some would reduce covenant to a contract, merely a legal documentation of the relationship. The party of the first part hereby agrees to the party of the second part, and so on. People like this reduce a marriage to a prenuptial agreement. Here’s what is mine and what remains mine, and that is yours. There is no love in a contract. Agreement, yes. Expectation, certainly. But no love. Merely specified obligations.

The prophet Jeremiah dreamed of a covenant with God inscribed upon on the heart. That is a worthwhile vision. But the sad reality about religion comes when it is reduced to a list of rules. The context of everything holy is the relationship. “Take, this is my body. This is my blood of the covenant, poured out for many.”

A dozen Jewish men recline around the banquet table with Jesus. They, and those with them, remember Passover. They remember how God said, “I brought you out of slavery in Egypt.” And here is Jesus at the head of the table, declaring in essence, “I bring you out of slavery to yourselves.” That is the essence of sin. It leads only to death. And Jesus points to the cup and offers them a way out, a new Exodus from the worst kind of slavery.

This is the magic. This is the mystery. At the heart of it is a paradox. What sets us free from the sin that leads to death is drinking the cup of death. Jesus says, “This is my blood of the covenant.”

According to Mark’s book, Jesus says this after they drink. After all of them drink. I never noticed that before. I suppose he does that because, if he had mentioned they were drinking blood, they might have passed on the cup. These men were Jews. They know blood is the very life within a living creature. That is what the ancient kosher laws proclaim.

They remember what was written on the ancient scrolls of Leviticus. “For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you for making atonement for your lives on the altar; for, as life, it is the blood that makes atonement.” (Leviticus 17:11)

Here is the gracious mystery. “This cup is the blood of my covenant.” Drink my life. Drink all of it. Take in every drop. Let it work its magic and set you free. This is what Jesus offers to his friends. This is what he continues to offer to us. And he waits to see if we participate in the mystery by taking his life into our life. 

That continues to be an open question. For while he makes this life-giving offer, he also predicts how those closest to him will fall always short. That is the story that follows our sacrament. It’s not only Judas Iscariot who stumbles and sells out. It’s Simon Peter, too, full of bravado until the moment of testing. Or James and John, nicknamed the “Thunder Sons,” who fall asleep in the Garden when he asks them to watch and pray. In the end, it is every one of them, scurrying away in the dark to save their own skins when he has offered to save their souls.

That is precisely why Jesus offers them the mystery, the abiding relationship. “This cup is the blood of my covenant… for you, and for many.” He doesn’t offer the covenant in a cup because his people are perfect. He offers it because he loves them, because he wants to keep working in them, because he wants to free them from the tyranny of their own willfulness and fill them with life. His life.

So we gather again at his invitation. Not because we are spiritual aces. Not because we have figured out all of life’s mysteries. Not because we have unblemished records. We gather because we belong to him. And we welcome his cleansing grace and his liberating love.

After we drink his cup, this time we choose to watch with him through the night. We will abide with him for he always abides with us. And we will live for him when the new day dawns.

 

© William G. Carter. All rights reserved.  

Priest and Sacrifice

Hebrews 9:15-28
Palm / Passion Sunday
March 29, 2021

William G. Carter

For this reason {Christ] is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, because a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions under the first covenant. Where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive. Hence not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood. For when every commandment had been told to all the people by Moses in accordance with the law, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the scroll itself and all the people, saying, “This is the blood of the covenant that God has ordained for you.” And in the same way he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.

 

Thus it was necessary for the sketches of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves need better sacrifices than these. For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made by human hands, a mere copy of the true one, but he entered into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer himself again and again, as the high priest enters the Holy Place year after year with blood that is not his own; for then he would have had to suffer again and again since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself. And just as it is appointed for mortals to die once, and after that the judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

 

Over the years, our church has worked with a lot of kids. We do our best to explain this coming week. We tell them it’s Holy Week, the last week that Jesus was with us before he went to heaven. A lot of things happened this week, leading up to Easter, the day that God raised Jesus from the dead. One way to understand this week is to understand that some of the big days of Holy Week have a name.

Today is Palm Sunday. There is joy in the air, glad songs of praise. We shout a great word: hosanna! It’s a word that creates a buzz. We lift it from one of the Psalms, Psalm 118, which is a Passover psalm. All the people were gathering in the city to celebrate the great feast of Passover, when God rescued them from slavery. “Hosanna” means “rescue.” Rescue us, save us. Hosanna!

When the crowds saw Jesus, that’s what they shouted. Rescue us, save us! Hosanna! They put their cloaks on the street, a poor person’s red carpet to welcome him. And they cut branches from palm trees and waved them as a sign of victory. They heard about his power. They saw him heal the sick and feed the hungry. They rejoiced that he was riding right into the city.

Some of the people knew Jesus was riding down the hill to face trouble. Indeed, the first few days after Jesus arrived, he had nothing but trouble. The city leaders questioned him, attacked him, tried to trip him up. But Jesus answered every question. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, he dismissed every challenge. The hosannas ran true from Palm Sunday.

The next big day was Thursday. We call it Maundy Thursday. The name comes from the Latin form of the word “mandate,” as in “I give you a new mandate, a new commandment, to love one another as I have loved you.” This is what Jesus said as he gathered his friends to celebrate the Passover feast. They shared the story of how God brought them out of slavery in Egypt, leading them with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.

With the grand traditions of that feast, Jesus and his friends remembered how their ancestors had suffered. They broke the bread of affliction. They remembered the ten plagues, the terrible power of God, the smearing of lamb’s blood over the doorframes. And they poured the cups of blood-red wine.

Suddenly Jesus broke into the old tradition with new authority. He held the bread and said, “This is my body broken for you.” He poured another cup and said, “This is my blood, poured out for you.” And then, he took a towel and a basin of water, and he washed their feet as if he was their servant. Then he looked at them again and said, “Love one another. This is my mandate.” Maundy Thursday.

As we recount all of this, the kids are still with us. They get it. Then we get to Friday. We tell of the horrible crucifixion. And somebody always asks, “Why do we call it Good?” What’s so good about Good Friday? No matter how we’ve answered the question, no matter how quickly we’ve moved on to Easter, resurrection, and all the hallelujahs, it is a question to consider again and again. Some Christians believe it is the most important question of all.

What’s so good about Good Friday? The quick answer is that Jesus died for our sins. But what does that mean? We’ve heard a lot of broken sermons about this, bits and pieces of extracted doctrine. Preachers and teachers toss a lot of theories and theological equations into the air. Before we latch onto any of one of them, let’s confess the obvious. Jesus died because of our sins. All the accounts of his death agree on this point.

It's easy to blame the Jewish leaders who were threatened by him. It’s obvious the Temple priests were offended by him. The Roman officials wanted to squelch any trouble by this troublemaker. They were brutal in exerting their power. And then there is crowd of those who shouted hosanna on Sunday and crucify on Friday. It was the same crowd, as far as the four Gospels were concerned. Jesus was crucified because we put him on the cross.

This is the hardest truth to face about Holy Week. If we had our druthers, we would skip from Palm Sunday to Easter, from hosanna to hallelujah, and pretend Friday never happened. But the reality is we put him on the cross. This was the human response to the grace of God that we encountered in Jesus of Nazareth.

It is difficult to face this. Want to know how difficult it is? Try having a conversation with someone about gun violence. Families disagree. Friendships break down. Polite people want to change the subject.

Just the other day, after ten people were shot in a Colorado supermarket, I saw something offensive on Facebook. Normally I try to mind my own business. Don’t try to convince somebody on the internet they are wrong. Just let it go, keep moving. But this time I couldn’t do it. After some otherwise normal person was ranting how the government was going to take away all his guns. All I wrote was, “It sounds to me like you are afraid.” Well, that set off an internet powder keg, some back and forth, some piling on. I couldn’t understand the fear, the anger, the demand for blood.

And then I remembered what we did to Jesus. Call it sin. Call it brokenness. Call it rebellion against the God who commanded, “Thou shalt not kill.” God gave us that commandment because God knows what we are capable of doing. Jesus was the best person anybody ever met, and we had to get rid of him. He was completely innocent, and we nailed him to the cross. How can we call it Good Friday?

This was a problem in the early church. People expected a glorious Messiah. The primary expectation of the Messiah is that he would never die, he would live eternally. The crucifixion was a scandal. It’s there, even in some of our Easter stories. “We thought he was the One, but he was killed as a common criminal.” And even after the resurrection, the critics would ask, “What do you mean, God’s Son was nailed to a tree?” Certainly, the cross has always been a mystery. We’ve had a lot of time to think about it.

That’s where the text for today steps in. It comes from the letter to the Hebrews, an anonymous sermon from an early Christian leader. It is a dense document, not easy to understand. If I were to announce, “We’re going to study the letter to the Hebrews,” some people would miss. Especially the second week.

But if we can listen to chapter nine, some of the fog may roll away. The preacher is talking about Jesus. That’s what preachers do. And this preacher refers to Jesus as a priest. At a human level, that’s curious. Jesus wasn’t related to any priest; Joseph was a woodcutter. At most, the Bible says Mary had a distant relative named Elizabeth, and her husband was a priest. Jesus wasn’t a priest. Except, Hebrews says he was a priest.

What does a priest do? A priest stands between God and the people. A priest bridges the gap between God and the people. The preacher from the book of Hebrews says Jesus is a new kind of priest.

·         The old way was to send a priest into the Jerusalem Temple on behalf of the people.  The new way is to see Jesus go into God’s very presence on our behalf.

·         In the old way, the priest sprinkled the blood of an unblemished lamb seven times on the seat reserved for God. In the new way, Jesus is like an unblemished lamb, who offers his own blood on the cross.

·         In the old way, the priest offered a sacrifice for every sin, which meant he did so over and over and over.  In the new way, Jesus offered one single sacrifice – himself – and he did it only once.

·         The old way required the priest to repeatedly convince God to be merciful and forgiving. In new way, Jesus doesn’t need to convince God of anything.

As a priest, Jesus offers a sacrifice in the presence of God. It resembled the sacrifice the priests offered in the old house of God. The greatest difference between the old way and the new way is summed up in a single word: once. Three times in our text, the preacher says, “Jesus died once.” Not again and again. Not Friday after Friday. Not year after year. Once. It is a revelation of God’s forgiveness.

On the Friday of Holy Week, the human race nailed the Son of God to a cross. Looking from below, it was the worst thing we have ever done. And in response, from above, what does God do? God listens to the priest Jesus, who enters his presence to say, “Father, forgive them.” (Luke 23:23) God declares, “They are forgiven.”

As the letter to the Hebrews declares, Jesus is like God and can help us. And Jesus is like us and will help us.

The deep magic of Christian faith happens when we accept with complete trust that the High Priest’s work has been done. Sin is forgiven and released. The priest has made the final appeal on our behalf. He has offered the one sacrifice that can release us. He has reconciled heaven and earth through his work on the cross.

And this is the covenant that God makes with us through Jesus. Jesus is our priest. And Jesus himself is the sacrifice. There is nothing we can do to erase the power and authority of what Christ has done on the cross. He has done the work for us. Our work is to claim the finality of his work which has been done once.

But there’s the rub. Guilt hangs overhead like a shadow. Regret lingers. Fear creates hostility. Rebellion casts off responsibility. We doubt the sufficiency of the cross. Sometimes we remember things that God has long since forgotten.

In his book, The Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning tells a fun little story about a woman who claimed she was having visions of Jesus. She was a Roman Catholic, and the word spread all over the diocese. The archbishop heard about her and called her in for a meeting. He asked, “Is it true, ma’am, that you are having visions of the Lord?”

“Yes,” she replied.

The archbishop said, “Next time you have a vision, ask Jesus to tell you the sins that I confessed on my last confession.” The woman was stunned. She replied, “Did I hear you correctly, your grace? You want me to ask the Lord to tell me that sins you have confessed?

“Exactly. Please call me when you hear from him.” She departed.

A week and a half later, she called and requested a meeting. The archbishop agreed. He asked, “Did you do what I asked?” “Yes,” she replied, “I asked Jesus to tell me the sins you confessed in your last confession.”

He leaned forward. His eyes narrowed in anticipation. The archbishop said, “What did the Lord say?” She took his hand, looked into his eyes, and said, “Your Grace, these are his exact words.” Yes, what did he say? “Jesus said, ‘I can’t remember.’”[1]

Jesus reveals the God who loves us enough to let go of our sins. That’s why the favorite New Testament word for forgiveness is “cancel.” Whether we call them “debts,” “trespasses,” or “sins,” they are cancelled. Not by us, but by the One they offend. Christ the priest offers the one sacrifice that sets us free. He will not cling to the terrible things we have done or left undone. Nor does he want us to keep doing them. So it’s our work to cancel them, too.

Even before we get to Easter, the cross announces our sins are forgiven. And when God raises up the very Christ that we crucified, it is further confirmation that this is the way of God in a world like this. God wants to take the very worst that we can do and transform it. God wants us to proclaim this Good News and to join Christ in his mission to take in the world for repairs, moving all of us toward the day when all things shall be redeemed.

We are forgiven through Jesus Christ, who is both priest and sacrifice.

So that’s the reason, that’s the only reason, why Good Friday is good.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] Brennan Mannin, The Ragamuffin Gospel, (Sisters, OR: Multnomah Publishers, 1999) pp. 115-116.