This is a hilarious comedy sketch entitled The Evil Vicar. No doubt he is. But, it seems to me, not everything he says is wrong. In fact, a great deal of what he says is right. He does desperately need to work on his presentation though. At the same time, the “seekers” in the sketch are also skewered for being quite shallow and being unable to recognize that shallowness. Or so it seems to me, anyway. What to you all think?

Audio to follow later this morning.

Metaphors work in different ways. At one extreme, metaphors are simply flowery ways of saying something else that, in plain language, would have been, well, plain. I once heard bishop T. D. Jakes, the pastor of the Potter’s House in Dallas, use one particularly striking example. He was exhorting his congregation—in the cadence that is unique to African American preachers—against the deceitfulness of wealth. “Some of you,” he said, “think money will solve all your problems. But I’m here to tell you that money can make you…” he could have said here, behave strangely. Instead he said this “money can make you crazier than a bed-bug in a bottle of liquor.” I have never seen a bed-bug. I am not a connoisseur of adult beverages. And yet, I have a good idea of what Jakes meant. And when his congregation laughed, I did too.

On the other hand, in science (and in religion) metaphors actually serve to increase our knowledge because they enable us to speak of objects new and unknown in terms that are familiar. Another example. The metaphorical description of the universe as a machine provided the foundation for Enlightenment advances in the natural sciences (especially in the work of Isaac Newton) and in philosophy and mathematics (especially in the work of Rene Descartes). That metaphor has now been replaced. But that over the last 250 years in Western culture it was a major contributor to our understanding of the world’s workings.

Metaphor is the vehicle of discovery. It’s the way human beings use language to come to know the world around them. And when we turn to the Gospel lesson both this morning and next week, it is this second use of metaphor that I want us to have firmly in mind.

The “I am” statements in the Gospel John are seven examples of just this kind metaphor. When Jesus says I am the  bread, I am the light, I am the door, I am the good shepherd, I am the resurrection and the life, I am the way the truth and the life, and I am the true vine, he is explaining to us the truth about himself, about his identity and mission, in words drawn from other spheres of life not simply for dramatic license, but because no other words will do. If we are reduced to metaphor when describing the behaviour of quarks and quasars—of objects in our own universe—how much more so when we try to explain the significance of that little article in the Creed’s, “being of one substance with the Father,” just three words in the Creed’s original language.

Is metaphor an inadequate vehicle in science and theology? Yes. Because the reality it describes will always be exceed the grasp of the language. Is metaphor the only vehicle we’ve got? Yes. Because that is how the language of discovery—both scientific and theological—works.

With that still in mind, we come to the Gospel lesson for the morning: another I am statement. This time, Jesus says, I am the true vine. And, over the next six verses, he elaborates: his father is the vinedresser who tends to the well-being of the vines and his hearers are the branches. Three intersecting images. Each needs further exploration.

First, Jesus is the true vine. You will recall from last week that each of the seven images highlights in different ways the unique way in which Jesus mediates God’s presence to God’s people and, in so doing, judges Israel’s leadership to be a failure. Thus, over against the bad shepherds of Ezekiel 34, Jesus is the Good Shepherd who not only lays down his life for the sheep, but also takes it up again.

Here we have a similar dichotomy drawn from Jeremiah 2 and Isaiah 5 where God’s rejection of Israel is expressed in images drawn from the vineyard. God through the prophet Jeremiah says to the people of Israel:  “I planted you as a choice red vine, true stock all of you, yet now you are turned into a vine debased and worthless.”  Likewise, through Isaiah he says, “What more was there to do for my vineyard than I have not done in it? When I expected it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes? And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured; I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down. “

Jesus and John may be subtle, but there is no mistaking their message. By playing off the prophetic imagery of the failed vines and the fruitless vineyard, they make clear that those who reject Jesus and his message—those who, in the Gospel, are orchestrating his death—are dried up and worthless. Jesus, on the other hand, is he who re-does their mission. Where they fail—and find themselves cut off—he succeeds. He is the true vine who brings life to the branches. He is the source of the divine life that animates the people of God.

Second, the Father is the vinedresser or vinegrower. This image is again carried over from the words of divine judgment in Jeremiah. Just as the covenant God of Israel planted the vine in Jeremiah 2, so now Jesus’ Father tends to the branches here. And he tends to the branches by pruning them. Those branches that are fruitful will be pruned in order that they might be more fruitful. Those branches that are not, will be pruned away, or cut off and burned.

Don’t be distracted by the branches and their fruitfulness or their fruitlessness. For now, focus on the vinegrower. He who will tend to the branches, ensuring those which are healthy become healthier and those which are dead and useless will not infect any others. Notice also that his tending of both the healthy branches and the unhealthy ones is similar—he cuts them. Healthy branches, he cuts clean. He removes unwanted growth. Unhealthy ones, he cuts away. He removes the branch altogether. And the words of Jesus are the vinegrower’s pruning shears. Those who attend to the words of Jesus are already clean. They already have been pruned in order to be fruitful.

Now finally, we can move to the branches. There are two kinds of branches: the fruitful and the fruitless. The only difference between the two is their relatedness to the Vine.  And that relationship is defined in terms of union. But again, the branches are not the point. Jesus is. Jesus is the Vine. Jesus’ words are the means by which the vinegrower prunes the branches. And here, Jesus’ life is the source of the fruitfulness of the branches.

On the one hand, this strikes a note of tremendous encouragement. Rest assured, says Jesus, that I remain in you and because I remain in you, you will be fruitful. And fruitfulness is nothing less and nothing other than experiencing both his love and his joy in their fullness. In effect, he says this: “Because I am the source of your life, because my words are the means by which your spiritual vitality is maintained, you will come to love your brothers and sisters as I have loved you. Because I am the source of your life, because my words are the means by which your spiritual vitality is maintained, you will have joy in its fullness. You can’t help it! It is the inevitable result of being united to me.”

On the other hand, Jesus’ words here in verses 4-6 also strike a note of judgment. Apart from union with him, with the true vine, the branches will not be fruitful. Those who refuse to abide in him can do nothing. Those who do not find their source of life in him will not find it elsewhere. Rather, they will die. Those who cut themselves off wither. They dry up. They become useful only for firewood. This dichotomy is as stark as the previous one. In Christ, “much fruit.” Apart from Christ, nothing.

Now, what does this have to do with us? Let’s deal with each of the interrelated metaphors in turn.

Jesus is the vine. The source of our life, in other words, is him. His words. His life. What a wonderfully organic image! One that we need to keep firmly fixed in our minds and hearts especially as we attend to our part in God’s mission here in Sudbury. For this image highlights again just why we come to church in the first place. Why we’re not, as a colleague recently put it, Rotary Club with bread and wine.

There’s nothing wrong with Rotary. I’m a member of the Sunrisers myself. But the church is not a service club. The church’s mission is not a matter of duplicating a service club’s work. The mission of the Church is no less and none other than to take the very life of Christ from here into the world, so that that life may judge and redeem, prune and heal, redeem and rescue God’s good creation. Indeed, the Church doesn’t have a mission. Insofar as the Church is animated by the very life of Christ, it is the mission.

In just a few moments, we are going to present ourselves at this altar. Through bread and wine, we are going to take the life of the Risen Lord into our lives and at the same time, we are going to be taken into his risen life. And then, we’re going to be sent out so that in all we say and do, that life will spill over into God’s world! Mission is not a checklist for followers of Jesus; mission is participation in the life of the Incarnate Son and taking that life to the world. Inviting others into the life of Christ—that, and nothing else, is the mission of God undertaken in and through us, God’s church.

The Father is the vinedresser. The responsibility for the health of the plant is his. It is not our responsibility to prune the plant. It’s God’s. How we want to prune the plant! And do so in the strangest of ways! We want to take on the health of the church as our project, and weed out or cut away the dead wood, the dried up branches. What a joy to know that that’s not our job! The health of the plant is the vinedresser’s responsibility. And he will do the pruning.

And God will do so how? Through the words of Jesus. We are the branches. Jesus’ words prune us and make us fruitful. If we come to participate in the life of Jesus through the sacrament, we come to submit ourselves to the pruning work of the words of Jesus in the reading and the proclamation of the Scriptures.

Have you noticed that in all of this, we have spoken about mission and never once said anything about this or that programme, this or that initiative, the latest thing to come from Synod office? There’s nothing wrong with any of those things. They are merely tools, however. The mission is organic. The mission is, having been pruned by the word of Jesus and fed by the life of Jesus, we will take that life out into the world to share it as extravagantly, as prodigally, as the Father has with us! Not because we are under obligation, but because we’re so full of Christ’s life that we can’t help it.

Grant us therefore gracious Lord so to eat the Flesh of your dear son and to drink us blood, that we may evermore dwell in him and he in us! Amen.

Well, here  is the talk I gave to the Annual Clergy conference for the Diocese of Algoma yesterday. It runs just around 37 minutes. Who’s on your list?

Today, Jesus says to us, “I am the Good Shepherd.” It is hard for us, in an increasingly urbanized environment, to enter into the image that Jesus gives us here. We know little of sheep or shepherds and less and less about livestock in general. Sara, for example, flirts with vegetarianism from time to time and is quite unhappy when we serve a roast—be it chicken, pork or beef—because she knows where the meat comes from. Weiners and baloney, on the other hand, are just fine. Presumably because they don’t look much like meat.  The point being, even though she is only two generations from farm life, she has very little conception of where her food comes from. The family farm, its sights and sounds and smells, are not familiar to her. They’re foreign and perhaps a little frightening.

This is neither a good nor a bad thing. It’s simply a part of her life. Sara’s distaste for meat points to something that is a problem for more and more of us all the time. The more we are alienated from the land, the less that agricultural metaphors have purchase on our imaginations. And of course, the Bible was written by people who lived very close to the land, and whose images are fuelled by that relationship.

So here we are with “I am the Good Shepherd,” and we might not know what to do with it. Some of us, particularly if we have grown up in church, might want to read this saying through some pretty romanticized visions of Jesus the Good Shepherd. Visions that have been captured in the paintings of Werner Salman and his many imitators. In Sallman’s classic, a haloed Jesus dressed in white cuddles a lamb in one hand and holds a shepherd’s staff in his other. He is surrounded by white sheep—only one is black. They are walking out of a valley, into a lush field, beside a quiet stream. Of course, this is a rather soft-focus reading together of the 23^rd Psalm and our Gospel Lesson. The sheep are being led by the Good Shepherd along the paths of righteousness beside still waters.

But is that what is really going on when Jesus takes this title as his own? When Jesus says, “I am the Good Shepherd,” does he have quiet pastoral images in view? I don’t think so and I want to tell you why and what difference it makes this morning.

The first reason has to do with the context of the saying in John’s Gospel. “I am the Good Shepherd,” is one of John’s seven “I am sayings” which have an object. Do you know them? I am the bread of life; I am the light of the world; I am the gate; I am the good shepherd; I am the resurrection and the life; I am the way, the truth and the life; I am the vine.

All seven highlight the absolute uniqueness of Jesus’ place in God’s saving work. They do so in two ways. First, notice the object. The first one is bread—that is, food—food that Jesus will go on to tie to his very flesh and blood. Unless we eat this food, he says, we do not have life. Light—not just any light either, but the light of life. Whoever follows Jesus will never walk in darkness. The gate—whoever comes into the sheepfold through Jesus will have abundant life. I am the resurrection and the life—uttered in front of the tomb of Lazarus, Jesus thus declares himself the enemy of death. I am the way—in response to Thomas frank acknowledgement that he does not know the way to the Father, Jesus says plainly, the way to the Father is through me. And finally, I am the vine. The life that comes from God, the life that makes us truly alive flows through me and into you. So, Jesus says, live in me. Abide in the vine. Each object points to the absolute singularity of Jesus. Each highlights the truth Jesus expressed in his nighttime conversation to Nicodemus: “This is how God loves the world: God sent his only Son.”

The second way in which the “I am” sayings highlight the uniqueness of Jesus revolves around his use of the phrase I am. Ego eimi, in Greek. In each of the above sayings, in Greek grammar, the construction we translate as I am is not so much wrong as it is unnecessary. It makes for very awkward reading in the original language. John’s Greek is usually quite polished. Again, just as we said when we talked about the temple cleansing in this Gospel, for a blunder, this is too big. So why are the declarations composed in this way?

I am, you will recall, is God’s very name. When Moses stands before the burning bush and asks, whom shall I say is sending me, what does God say? God says, “Tell them I am is sending you.” Jesus here, in saying these things in this way is uniquely identifying himself with the very presence and person of God. Indeed, there are seven more I am sayings that lack an object, that highlight Jesus’ daring claim even more. “I am, I the one who is speaking to you,” he says to the woman at the well. “I am. Do not be afraid” he says to the disciples on the sea. “You will die in your sins unless you believe that I am,” “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am,” “Before Abraham was, I am,” all said to his enemies. “I tell you these things before hand so that when they take place you will know that I am,” he says to his disciples at the Last Supper. And finally, when the soldiers come looking for Jesus in the Garden, he identifies himself simply as “I am.”

When Jesus says “I am,” our ears should perk up. When Jesus says I am, our hearts should begin to race. These are not words to be greeted with a shrug. These are words that get us to the heart of the Gospel. Words that declare to us the identity of the One sent from God, the one who is the glory of God—God’s visible presence—sent to the world not to condemn but to save it. Simple images that express the profundity of God and of God’s inexhaustible love for the world he has made and is redeeming.

So what is Jesus saying to us when he says, “I am the Good Shepherd,”? He is, saying something very clearly about himself as the God’s one and only Son. The one who, in himself is the glory of the God. The one word of God from all eternity who has taken our flesh and dwelt among us. In and through this image, he is disclosing himself as the saving act of God. I am the Good Shepherd.

But just what is he saying about himself? Can we think ourselves past or through our own difficulties with the image? Difficulties given to us by our alienation from the land and at least 50 years of bad Christian art? I think we can.

As Jesus himself unpacks the image of the Good Shepherd, the image is very unlike Sallman’s painting. Indeed, it is very unlike Psalm 23. As far as Jesus is concerned, what makes the Good Shepherd good is that, unlike the hired hand, he actually will lay down his life for his sheep. The Good Shepherd is one who will literally lie down in the opening to the sheep fold, there to sleep, to keep the sheep safe and the enemies outside. The Good Shepherd is one who knows all the sheep, and the sheep know him. In both ways, the good shepherd is not like the hired hand who, at the first sign of trouble—a wolf—runs away and leaves the sheep exposed and unprotected, to be snatched and scattered. The Good Shepherd knows the sheep—is invested in the sheep’s lives—in a way that the hired hand is not.

This is not imagery drawn from the 23^rd Psalm. It is, rather, imagery taken from the 34^th chapter of Ezekiel. A chapter in which the false shepherds—that is the political elite of God’s people—are judged for leaving the sheep—the people themselves—exposed to enemies and even worse, consuming them. And God pronounces judgment on these bad shepherds—“I am against the shepherds. . . .” God says through the prophet, “I will rescue my sheep from their mouths, so that they may not be food for them.” Then God says he will shepherd his people. He will find them. He will bring them back to the land. God will set up one shepherd, God’s servant David, and David will shepherd the sheep. And God will make with the people a covenant of peace.

That’s what lies behind Jesus self-description. That is what is to inform our understanding of Jesus as the Good Shepherd. When Jesus says he is the Good Shepherd, he says that the bad shepherds ofIsraelare judged with his coming. They have harmed the flock of God’s people and will do so no longer. The Good Shepherd is here. He will gather the sheep into the one fold. He will seek out the natural sheep of the fold and those that come from another. He will gather Jew and Gentile. And there will be one flock and one shepherd.

And how will he gather? How will he rescue? How will he keep his sheep so that no enemy will be able to snatch at them and devour them? He will lay down his life for his sheep. He lays it down of his own accord. And he takes it up again.

Now why does this metaphor continue to matter for us?

This metaphor matters because it does disclose the identity of Jesus. Like all the I am sayings, this one does give us a glimpse of the saving person of our Lord. He is Ezekiel’s good shepherd. The Shepherd who is both God and God’s servant David. He is the one who will gather the sheep.

The metaphor matters because it sets forth the nature of the saving work of our Lord. He will do the gathering, the protecting, the rescuing of the sheep at the great cost of laying down his life. He does so freely, not as a victim of powers beyond his control, but as one who is in control throughout. He lays down his life of his own accord and with the power to take it up again. On this fourth Sunday of Easter we celebrate that he has taken it up again. And because he has, his laying down is not in vain. His cross is not meaningless. His death is not the death of just one more under the reign ofRome. His death, his laying down of his life, is the one great rescuing act of God in which the bad shepherds—both ancient and modern—are judged and all the wolves who would harm the sheep defeated. Because he has laid down his life, the sheep are safe. None shall perish; none shall be snatched from God’s hand.

The metaphor matters because it tells us the truth about ourselves. We’re sheep. Under the misrule of bad shepherds, we have been scattered, lost, and undone. We have been left exposed to enemies that, if they would, would devour us. We are, in other words, helpless. We need to be rescued.

And the good news of the Gospel on this fourth Sunday of Easter is, we have been. The Good Shepherd has come. He has laid down his life and taken it up again. He is gathering his sheep. And in the end, there will be one fold and one shepherd.

Testing Scripture: A Scientist Explores the Bible

John Polkinghorne

Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2010

Demonstrating that one can be both faithful and modern in the practice of Christian faith has been the driving concern of John Polkinghorne’s large publishing record, which has mainly centered on the relationships between science and religion for several decades.  As a theoretical physicist and Anglican priest, the bulk of his work has skewed toward the academic end of the spectrum. His new book, however, is a welcome turn to the popular.

In this book, originally published in the UK by SPCK (2010) under the title Encountering Scripture, Polkinghorne offers a simple, accessible understanding of the key themes and contents of the Christian Bible that is at once faithful and modern.

Testing Scripture is laid out straightforwardly, with opening chapters giving an overview of just what is meant by Scripture (chapter 1) and a short argument that the Bible initiates and contains a process of theological development that did not end with the closure of the Christian canon. Even the highest view of Scripture as a species of divine communication must admit, says Polkinghorne, that Scripture has to be received and interpreted, that that process is always ongoing, and as a result the results of reading are never entirely fixed. So it is that a modern reader can have a very different understanding of Genesis 1 than a pre-critical one, and yet both are faithful readers of Scripture.

The remaining chapters turn to the Scriptures themselves, beginning with a reflection on the creation accounts, continuing with good advice on how to acknowledge the presence of ambiguity and even darkness in the pages of Holy Scripture, and concluding with chapters on the Old Testament, the Gospels, Paul’s letters and the later New Testament. Here, readers will find—among other things—sensitive and straightforward suggestions about how to understand the two creation accounts, how to deal with much of the violence that permeates the pates of the Old Testament, and sensitive treatments of both the virginal conception and the resurrection of Jesus.

Testing Scripture is an important book because it represents a challenge to a very unlikely set of bedfellows, namely, the New Atheists and those biblical obscurantists who together agree with David Hume’s insistence that one has to choose between reason and faith. While there is very little in the book that will be regarded as controversial by most readers, the fact that it is Polkinghorne—whose CV will survive the sneers of the most dogged Ditchkins disciple—who writes does give it considerable weight.

That Polkinghorne writes to a popular and broad audience is also to be commended. Hopefully, his book will remind many that in the midst of an increasingly shrill shouting match about the relationship of religion and science, faith and reason, a reasonable faith can be embraced.

In November, 2008, I was told that I was no longer required at the place where I worked. That as of July 1, 2009, I would be out of a job. Truth be told, I had seen it coming. For a long time. I had been looking for a position in a similar field since 2006, but to no avail. So when the axe fell,there wasn’t much of a career back up plan in place.

I cannot begin to describe how breaking the next few months were. Being expected to walk in to a place that, for all intents and purposes, had rejected me and pretend that everything was fine when it wasn’t produced an incredible amount of anxiety. I had so identified with the job-I even lived right next door-that I could not conceive of myself outside it. And now, it was gone. Where was I? I was lost.

In the midst of all that struggle, the Watoto children’s choir came to campus to sing. Perhaps you’ve heard of them. Watoto is a village for children orphaned by HIV/AIDS in Uganda. A village where they are raised, educated, taught a trade, and rescued from a life of poverty and premature death.

The children of Watoto are children who have seen death full in the face. They are children who have far more right than I-newly looking at an extended period of unemployment-to be angry at the world of adults, whose mistakes and sins had visited consequences upon them for no fault of their own. Far more angry than I-who had over identified with a job—with the world in general for giving them the rawest of deals. Far more angry than I-lost in my feelings of self-pity-with God whose plan, if he had one at all, seemed to have left them long behind.

And yet, they were happy. They sang. And when they sang the joy radiated from their faces and through their words. This is the refrain of one song they sang to us: I am not forgotten. I am not forgotten. I am not forgotten. God knows my name. He knows my name.

They were still the orphans of HIV/AIDS. They were still struggling toreach a level of prosperity that is well beneath what most of us enjoy. Nothing in their objective status had changed because of that song. But God knew their name. And that was enough.

And I knew then that God knew my name too.

Did I get a job the next day? No. I was out of work for over a year. Did my struggles end? No. I still had to get up and go back day after day until the school year was over. And once it was over, I had to get up and not go back. Both the going and the not going were very, very hard. Nothing was objectively made easier by hearing those orphaned children singing that  song. But God knew my name. And I knew that God knew. And that madea difference.

Job losses, deaths of loved ones, serious illness-all of us can point to significant anxiety producing events in our lives. What makes them loom so large that they impinge upon our relationships with our families, our friends?

Well, with all this newfound time on my hands, I began to reflect and read about anxiety. One book I re-read was by the Lutheran theologian Ted Peters. It was called, Sin: Radical Evil in Soul and Society. It is Peters’ conviction-and I think he is right-that the significant lifealtering events produce anxiety because they force us more than other events to confront our mortality. They force us to confront the fact that we will die. And not only will we die, but the world will continue on as though we had never been.

I don’t know that that is true in every case. But it was certainly true in mine. Losing my job forced me to confront my own replace-ability. Walking into school and seeing the place get along without me set in front of me the inconsequential nature of my being. It placed before me the fact that the last such departure would be permanent and while a few would miss me, I would be forgotten quickly and the world would continue on.

No doubt that’s exactly what the disciples were thinking on that first Easter morning. The one on whom their hopes and dreams had rested; the one whom they had been convinced was David’s heir, the promised one, who would remove Rome and restore the glory of Israel had been crushed. He was dead. And from death, there was no coming back.

Few would miss him. His disciples would, of course. But now they had to think about who would put food on the table. Now that had to wonder whether the blood-vengeance of the Jewish elite and the Roman governor had been sated or whether it would come looking for them. Would Matthew go back to collecting taxes? Peter and Andrew, James and John-back to their nets? Would Simon the Zealot, having been deceived by this revolutionary Jesus, find another around whom to hang his hopes for political liberation? All these questions would push the memory of Jesus even amongst those closest to him to the margins. They had to forget now and get on with life.

His family would miss him-even if they were a little embarrassed by his eccentricity. Even if they had desperately wanted him to just come home, take up the family business, and settle down to a quiet life. Even if they did not understand just what he was doing tramping around the Galilee with a rag tag few dozen young men and women, many with their own questionable pasts. They would miss him. But the death that claimedhim would eventually claim them too. And soon, he would recede into themists of time and be forgotten.

And the anxiety provoked by his death-even it would soften over time. Until the day when his disciples and his family whether felled by disease or age or the unnatural interventions of the powerful, they each joined the one they named Meesiah on the far side of forgetfulness,swallowed up in the anonymity of time.

And then, Mary-Mary who loved him more than the rest-burst into the grief heavy room with her announcement: “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we do not know where they have laid him!”

And Mary with Peter and John and maybe some of the rest ran back to the tomb to see just what was going on. What were they thinking? Could they not leave him alone? Could they not leave us alone? They won. Caiaphas, you and your goons had your way. Pilate, you washed your hands and let your soldiers be as sadistic as they wished. You won. Why can’t you let him be in his grave and us be to face whatever future we can rebuild.

They were lost. And the fact that they were lost must have weighed on them as they ran to the grave to see what further humiliation had to be heaped upon them before the whole depressing affair could be put behind them.

John got there first and looked in; Peter, being Peter, pushed past him and went right into the cave. They saw. John even believed. But his belief didn’t go all the way to understanding. And having seen, they went home. They went back to their brooding. They went back to trying to make sense of their lives.

But one did not.

Mary-first to find the tomb empty. Mary stayed behind and wept. Mary could not yet move on. Mary was still lost. Lost -lost in the loss of her Lord. And she wept.

Not willing to accept that yet another humiliation had been heaped upon her and her Lord, she looked into the tomb. But it was empty no longer. Two white-robed messengers, now sitting on the corpse-bed, asked her why she wept. “They have taken away my Lord,” she sobbed. He is lost and so am I. And she turned and saw one whom she thought was the gardener. And he asked her the same question: “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?”

“Sir,” whatever respect and courage she has left is now summoned, “if you have taken him, tell me where he is and I will tend to him.” If I must be lost, if I must be undone, if I must go the way of my Lord into the qrave, then at least let me go with him, be lost with him, be undone beside him.

And Jesus said to her, “Mary.”

The risen Christ remembered her name. The One who had indeed gone ahead of her into death remembered! Not only was he not forgotten, but neither was she. Her name on his lips, his risen lips. “Mary.”

Death was no longer the great barrier.

Mary

Death as no longer the final resting place of all to be forgotten.

Mary.

Life had won.

Mary.

Death had been defeated.

Mary.

In the uttering of her name, the Risen One found his first apostle. His first messenger. Not only did he restore her to herself, but he commissioned her to proclaim the good news. Go and tell my brothers, he says, Mary, you are not lost; Mary you are found. Mary, your life is not wasted; Mary you have a job to do.

Mary, of course, is not the only name he remembers and presents before his father. When Peter’s last act was to deny his Lord, the Lord remembered his name too. When Stephen so identified with his Lord that he made Jesus’ dying prayers his own, the Lord remembered and stood to welcome his faithful witness.

And when we who have been united to him are about to be undone by the fear of death, The Risen One remembers our name. He remembers our name and he speaks it. And in speaking it, he refuses the last word that death hopes to write over our lives. In speaking it, he promises that life-his risen life given to us by his Spirit in bread and wine-that life will have the last word.

I am not forgotten. I am not forgotten. I am not forgotten. God knowsmy name. He knows my name.

HEre is a link to the mp3.

(I am told good preachers know when to borrow a good sermon. I don’t know if I am a good preacher, but I know when I hear a good sermon. This sermon is based on one first given by my friend and colleague, Doug Harink).

Jesus was an epic fail. No doubt about it. He was a failure.

I mean, think about it for a minute. What did he do that accomplished lasting change?

Sure, he calmed storms. But they came back, as storms do. He didn’t actually change the weather. The storms came back and no doubt sometimes they did so when other fishing boats were out there on the sea. Fishing boats that didn’t have the advantage of the Son of God asleep in the stern. What of them? Why was there no “Peace. Be Still,” to calm the waves that swept of the countless sailors and fishermen since the first century?

And he healed people. Withered arms strengthened. Blind eyes given sight. Ears opened. Lepers cleansed. Demoniacs restored to mental and spiritual health. Even the dead raised to life. But what lasting difference did it make? Each one of those miraculously healed bodies went back to the normal cycle of decay and death one nano-second after Jesus’ spoke his words of healing. Each one of the five thousand he miraculously fed was hungry the very next day. And where was Jesus then?

Where was Jesus when Lazarus of Bethany felt the pain of death a second time?

He cleansed the Temple. He tossed out the money changers and the sacrifice sellers and challenges the peace the Temple elite had made with Rome. But so what? The very next week, if not sooner, the tables were back in their stalls. The money was being handed over. The animals were being prepped for slaughter.

Nothing had changed. Not. One. Thing.

And nothing has changed, has it? We are still victims of natural disasters—earquakes and volcanoes and tsunamis and tornados and things as simple as the coldly efficient and utterly ruthless law of gravity continue to cause suffering across the globe.

Our bodies still grow old. They still hunger and thirst. They are still susceptible to disease and death. All the walks for life and runs for the cure and bikes to the Bay for heart health haven’t cured us. They have prolonged our dying. After all the medical breakthroughs of the last century, the human mortality rate remains rock solid at 100%.

Religion is still the field of the huxter and the charlatan. It is still the playground of the most wicked human beings who would prey on the piety of the devout and the vulnerable.  Politicians still lie and cheat

Nothing has changed. Not. One Thing.

Or, maybe, just maybe, everything has.

“So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.”

What ifJesus is right? What if power is not power to decide who gets healed and who doesn’t, who lives and who dies. Who gets fed and who goes home hungry.

What if piety is not about carving out a religious space free from the political?

What if politics is not about manipulating the masses? What if religion isn’t about fleecing the faithful?

What if the real meaning of power, the real meaning of religion, the real meaning of politics is disclosed not with sword and legal code and money bag, but with a towel, a bowl and a pitcher?

Has everything changed?

What if, as Jesus stands before Annas and Caiaphas, as he stands before Herod and Pilate, as he stands before Jew and Gentile, powerbrokers all what if he’s not the one on trial?

What if, as Jesus is beaten and flogged and nailed to a cross, as he is hoisted high between heaven and earth in a judgment passed to mollify the mob, what if he is the one passing judgment?

And what if he is trying and judging not only Annas and Caiaphas and Herod and Pilate? What if he is trying and judging all those who came before and after? What if he is trying you and me?

Well, it’s only a what if. Only an interesting speculation. Only  a whisp of fantasy if that one single life is—as remarkable as it was—finally, just another life broken by the wheel of history.

It is desperate and finally false dream if in fact  just like every other preacher and revolutionary and peacenik before or since, he lies cold and silent and dead.

But stop for a second. What if, really, everything has changed?

What if Mary and the other women, when looking for Jesus’ body saw in the tomb a young man, dressed in white and very much alive? What if he really did say to them “Why do you seek the living among the dead?”

What if, Peter and John went running to the tomb and peered in only to find it empty?

What if Mary clung to One who was not in the end, the gardener, but the Crucified and Risen Lord who knew her by name?

What if, with the soldiers outside and the disciples hiding inside, the Risen One who was and remains the Crucified one really did appear to them and say to them, “My Peace I leave with you?”

What if he’s not just another revolutionary dead and gone?

What if the tomb is empty?

What if he really is the Judge judged in our place? The judge who has crossed the line of his justice and stood with us and for us and in our place.

What if the world around us, the world that our senses and our culture insist is true is in the end, the desperate dream of a sinful world hoping against hope to get rid of God?

What if the real world is the world in which a crucified body was made alive again? What if the real world is the world in which a tomb once full is now empty?

What if power, politics and religion really are defined by a bowl a pitcher and a towel?

What if Jesus wasn’t an epic fail after all?

A link to the mp3 is here.

Palms and Passion

As many of you know, my wife, Rachel, is a Mennonite. What you might not know is that English is not her first language. Her first language is Low German or Plaut Deetsch.

When we were dating and first married, this language barrier was a little formidable for me. I remember distinctly one Easter family gathering, with the men all sitting the basement of Rachel’s grandfather’s house and the women all sitting in the kitchen. (That’s another story for another day). Anyway, the men—Rachel’s grandfather, my father-in-law, Rachel’s uncles and some cousins were all laughing and carrying on in low German when one of Rachel’s aunties took up my cause.

And from the kitchen came the call: “Speak English. Tim can’t understand you.”

To which Rachel’s grandfather replied, “He’ll learn.”

And of course, the gathering continued in Low German.

Well, I didn’t learn. Not really. I can catch words here and there when I’m listening to a conversation. But not enough to really understand and certainly not enough to join in.

But I do want to tell you about one word that is particularly fitting for today.

That word is scheiff.

Scheiff means “bent” or “crooked” or “not quite right.” If a corner is not square, off by just a little, it’s scheiff.

Palm Sunday is scheiff. It is a Sunday when we parade around downtown Sudbury with palms and a donkey celebrating the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. We might even sing “Ride on King Jesus! No one can hinder thee!” We enter into our worship with song and with dance only to continue our worship by reading the story of Jesus’ execution, the cries of “Hosanna to the Son of David” replaced by “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!”

That’s scheiff. The two parts of our worship don’t fit. They’re bent. They’re crooked. They’re off.

But this is no accident. No liturgical lapse comparable to a carpenter’s misjudging an angle.  This is on purpose.

This collapsing of the First Sunday and the Friday of Holy Week into one service is meant to remind us that the very ones who heralded Jesus as he came into the city on a donkey very  much like Rollie were the very same ones who called on the Pilate and the Romans to release Barabbas and crucify Jesus.

The very same people.

Why? Why in four short days would they go from naming to killing a king?

There might have been many reasons. Fear. This man may well be the Messiah. But what if he’s not? That’s a niggly question that no doubt many had in the back of their mind as the Hosannas rang in Jerusalem’s crowded streets on that Sunday morning. A question that would have sharpened when the so-called Son of David went straight not to the Roman garrison, but to the Temple courts, and expelled not the Gentile occupiers of God’s land, the oppressors of God’s people, but the very ones who made Temple worship under occupation possible. A question that would have grown in the mind as Sunday gave way to Monday, then Tuesday, and Wednesday and nothing happened.

Not. One. Thing. Romans—still in power. People—still under the thumb of a nation that knew not the God of Israel. See? He’s just another pretender, the religious leaders would have said. Manipulation by their religious leaders may well have turned that exacerbated that fear it into suspicion.

And still, nothing happened. It wouldn’t have been very long until suspicion fermented on its own into the anger that flowed from expectations unmet. The Romans, one week on, were still in power. The money changers had set up their tables again. Business continued in the Temple as usual. Our leaders are right. This rabbi from Nazareth is just another pretender. Better to be rid of him before the Romans take it out on us.

So it’s fairly easy to see, when we spread the story over four days, just how something that appears to be scheiff isn’t so. Still, it is a good reminder that the very ones who called for Jesus to be crowned were calling for his cross.

But again, there’s more to it than that.

Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble.

The liturgy of the Palms and the Passion is constructed in such a way as to remind us that we were there. We put ourselves there in the procession today. We made ourselves part of those crowds. The biblical world and the world of Sudbury collapsed in that moment. And we were there.

And if we’re there for the proclamation, the celebration, the joy, then we are there for the call, the near panic, the anger. Our Hosannas replaced by our crucify him.

Were you there? Yes. And so was I.

I was there when they crucified my Lord. I held the scabbard when the soldier drew his sword. I held the dice when they pierced his side. That’s Bono’s and B.B.King’s answer to the old spiritual’s question. And it is true.

And that is the bent-ness, the crooked-ness, the scheiffness that the liturgy of the passion points to.

It is the bent-ness that runs through the heart of every human being. It is the bentness that the Christian tradition names as sin.

As we enter into Holy Week, that sense of gone-wrongness, that desperate awareness that things are not as God intends, that we are not as God intends, is supposed to grow. It is supposed to sharpen. We cannot, at the cost of our own souls, look at the passion narratives and pass the blame to someone else—the Romans, the Jewish leaders, the mob, whoever. The blame falls on all of us.

This story is scheiff, this story is crooked, bent, and gone wrong because we are.

Now, here’s the good news.  

If we are there on Palm Sunday, we are there on Good Friday. And if we are there on Good Friday, we are there on Sunday morning. We are there with the women as they make their way to the tomb only to hear the words, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?”

We are there with the disciples in the locked room, hearing the words, “Peace to you.”

We are there with the disciples whose hearts burn within them as the Scriptures are opened, and who see with the eyes of faith when the bread is broken.

“I held the dice when they pierced his side. But I’ve seen love conquer the great divide.”

We would See Jesus

The time has come at last. Jesus has raised Lazarus from the grave, thus putting into motion the events that will culminate in his death. He has entered Jerusalem from Bethany riding on a donkey in deliberate fulfillment of the prophetic words of Zechariah. So impressive is Jesus’ reputation that even Gentiles are seeking him out. And this is where we pick up the story on this 5^th Sunday of Lent.

Now there were some Greeks, says John, among those who went up to worship at Feast.  The feast, we know, is Passover. By his entry into Jerusalem, Jesus has declared himself to be the Messiah, the long awaited deliverer of Israel. Reports among the people of the miraculous restoration of Lazarus of Bethany from death to life are spreading like wildfire. Many, says John, are believing in Jesus. Jesus’ own critics can’t dismiss this: “See, this is getting us nowhere,” they say. “Look how the whole world has gone after him.” And indeed, John is at pains to show the truth of these words, for with his mention of Greeks, he intends to show that this is, in fact, what is happening. Even Greeks are searching Jesus out.

          “Pardon me, could you tell us where Jesus is? We would like to meet him!” After a bit of fumbling—after all, it’s probably a sin to even talk to a Gentile—somebody plucks up the courage. “I don’t know where he is. But look, there’s Philip. He’s one of Jesus’ disciples. He’ll know where to take you.” And so the Greeks corral Philip. “That man over there said that you know Jesus, that you know where he his. We would like to see him.” Now Philip is also a believing Jew, and he knows the quandary that he now is in. He should just tell them to get lost; that the Messiah is for the sheep of Israel; that Jesus is too busy to have anything to do with them. He’s about to open his mouth, but he stops. Something tells him this would not be a good thing to do. So, Philip acts like most of us would—he passes the buck. “Let me check with my superior. Andrew, these men—they’re Gentiles!—want to see Jesus.”

And Andrew, being no wiser than Philip, passes it up the line again. “Jesus, I know you’re busy, but there are two uhm Gentiles here to see you.” And what does Jesus say: “Send them away.” No. “Send them in.” Again no. He says, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”

There is probably no more loaded sentence in the entire fourth gospel. The hour—the time, the climax of Jesus’ ministry is now at hand. It wasn’t at hand when Jesus turned the water into wine. He plainly told his mother, Mary, that “his hour had not yet come.” But now, at least two years on and in a different city, the hour was at hand. With the finality of a stop-clock, events had started ticking towards an explosive conclusion.

Second, Jesus here refers to himself as the Son of Man. While that title is Jesus favorite self-designation throughout Matthew, Mark and Luke, it is rare in John. When it is used, readers ought to pay attention. The Old Testament allusion is to a vision recorded by the prophet Daniel (7:13f). After a terrifying vision of beasts, Daniel tells us that he then saw one like a Son of man coming with the clouds of heaven into the presence of God, there to receive glory and power, and to be installed as the king of an everlasting kingdom. By drawing attention to that passage, John’s Jesus underscores the weight of what he is about to say: “to be glorified.”

The One who is in himself the glory of the one and only, full of grace and truth, the One who was in the beginning with God and who was God, the One through whom all things were made, the One who was made flesh in order to live among us, now(!) his hour to be glorified has come.

And what triggers this momentous sentence? What triggers this momentous sentence is a group of Gentiles coming to Philip and Andrew and asking to see Jesus. Now that the Gentiles want to see Jesus, it’s time. The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.

But how? Perhaps when Andrew, Philip, and the other disciples heard these words their hearts leapt. The redemption of Israel was at hand. The Romans were about to be removed. The Son of Man was about to be installed by no less that God himself as king of an everlasting kingdom! Who’ll sit on his right? Which one of us is the greatest? Boy, the Romans are sure going to get theirs! We will help Jesus lead the armies of heaven finally to free the land, to restore the people, to enlighten the nations, to remove an the unjust rule of an unclean nation.

And Jesus starts talking about death.  This hour; this hour toward which his whole life had been building this hour; this hour in which he would come into his kingdom as the Son of Man; this hour means his death. These words signal not only the climax of Jesus’ ministry, they also signal the end of the disciples apocalyptic dreams. Whatever is going to happen, it’s certainly not what they had been expecting. I imagine their jaws dropping as Jesus goes on to say, “My heart is troubled, and what shall I say, ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason that I came to this hour. Father glorify thy name!”

I can only imagine the gravity and grief that slammed into Philip’s heart as each word spilled of Jesus’ tongue. I imagine him looking from Andrew to Peter to James and John looking for some kind of insight, some kind of hope. “What on earth is Jesus talking about? He can’t mean what I think he means!” But the faces he sees are as blank as his own. “I HAVE GLORIFIED IT! AND WILL GLORIFY IT AGAIN!” Just in case the disciples didn’t yet get it—and it’s clear that they didn’t—Jesus words have just received the highest approval. “This was said for your benefit,” says Jesus. “Don’t look dumbfounded. Even if you don’t understand, it should be clear to you now that I know whereof I speak.”

“Now the hour is here. Now the judgment of the world is at hand.  Now the prince of this world will be driven out. Now, when I am lifted up, I will draw all people to myself.” Jesus is about to be glorified. He is about to be revealed as the great eschatological judge who will come to establish the reign of God on earth. He will judge rightly, overturning all the unjust verdicts, liberating all the captives, expelling the false ruler, the prince of this world whose time is at an end. He is about to be shown to be God’s One and Only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. He is about to be re-invested with the glory that was his by right, which he had before he became flesh, which he laid aside, which he  will now take up again. And he will do so by being lifted up. By being betrayed by a fried. By being condemned by a kangaroo court. By being scourged beyond recognition. By being mocked by those he came to rescue. By being nailed, wrist and ankle, to a cross. By being raised up, somewhere between heaven and earth, there slowly to suffocate. This, says Jesus, is his hour. The time of his glory. The time at which the fates of the world, humankind, and the devil will be forever sealed. The time when Jesus will come into his kingdom.

But how? How can suffering humiliation and death be glory? The answer of the Gospels, and indeed of classical Christian theology, is simple. We don’t know. Indeed, we can never know. We cannot explain it. It’s not our job to explain it. All we can do is describe it as rightly as we can in order that we can worship as rightly as we can.

The great doctrines of the Christian faith, and the atonement—the reconciling of sinful human beings to God, by God, for God’s glory alone—is one of them, are not ever to be regarded as explanations. They are descriptions.

The doctrine of the atonement is best understood in the same way. How can humiliation, suffering and death really be a manifestation of Son of God’s glory, honor, and power? The Bible tells us to think of it as a victory. Jesus came to engage in a battle with the principalities and powers who enslave human beings, and indeed hold all creation hostage. At the cross, the final conflict is engaged. And where in Adam, we are conquered, Christ is victorious. And his victory is ours.

The Bible also tells us to think of the death of Jesus as a legal verdict. In Adam, we all stand before God condemned as willful, deliberate, despisers of God and his law. But Christ, who is no less than God himself, chooses to cross the line and to stand with us. In his death, he bears in his body the consequences of our sins so that we may be declared to be righteous, right before the face of God.

Finally the Bible also tells us to think of the death of Jesus as a sacrifice. Sin had made us dirty. And the dirt has excluded us from covenantal fellowship with God and with each other. The blood of lambs and goats could purify us outwardly, but ultimately something more was needed. Something to cleanse our very consciences. Jesus, in his death, offered an atoning sacrifice which washes away the stain of sin and in so doing reconciles human beings to God and to each other in an everlasting covenant. One that will never be put away.

None of these metaphors, for that is what they are, functions as an explanation. They do not tell us how Jesus, on the cross, lifted up from the earth, accomplished our reconciliation. They underline in three different ways that on the cross he did so. That on the cross he did it for you and me. That on the cross, he was our champion wrestling to the ground the principalities and powers and holding them up to ridicule. That on the cross, he was the one great sinner, who bore his own righteous judgment so that we would never have to. That on the cross, he was the spotless lamb whose life freely offered cleansed the consciences of all who were unclean, cut off from God and from each other. That on the cross, lifted up from the earth, he really did draw all people to himself. That on the cross, lifted up from the earth, he really did reconcile men and women to God. That on the cross, lifted up from the earth, he really was glorified.

Oh irony of ironies that we should look at an instrument of execution and see there our only hope. That we should look death in the face and see life. That we should look defeat in the face and see victory. That we should look suffering in the face and see glory. That we should look to the execution of a Jewish man 2000 years ago and see there, our final victory, our not-guilty verdict, our final sacrifice. And yet, that is what John bids us do. Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness for the healing of the children of Israel, so Jesus himself was lifted up that all who would look to him would live.