You've Got Other People's Mail

Revelation 1:4-8

John to the seven churches that are in Asia:

  Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, 5 and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.

  To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, 6 and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

 7 Look! He is coming with the clouds;

  every eye will see him,

 even those who pierced him;

  and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail.

So it is to be. Amen.

  8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.

Have you been creeped out, mystified, confused, or just plain scared by the book of Revelation?  If so, you may be entitled to compensation in the form of a structured sermon series from someone not looking to control you with fear but give you hope in a hopeless time, just as the original author intended.  

So here we go!  Revelation was a LETTER.  It was written, like all letters, FROM a particular party and TO a particular party… in this case from a particular church leader named John, TO seven particular churches in the Roman province of Asia, which is now the Western coastal region of Turkey.  John knew these churches personally.  They all knew him.  He wasn’t with each of them every week but probably visited them regularly sort of like a bishop would except that in the late first century when this was written, bishops weren’t yet a thing.  

This letter was meant to be read out loud, in one go, in worship like a radio drama so the imagery and imagination would take off together leaving the listener with a hope more profound than if John had just sent them a greeting card with words “BE HOPEFUL!” written inside.  That is ALL Revelation is.  A letter FROM John… TO those particular people in those particular churches, FOR that particular time.  Period.  NOT ONE BIT OF IT was written with a secret divine woo-woo pen that gave it hidden meaning to be found and revealed thousands of years later.  It was not written to us!  This was someone else’s mail! 

With that said… sometimes it can be both interesting and educational to read someone else’s mail!  To me, reading Revelation is like reading an old letter you found in a trunk in the attic that your great grandpa wrote to his sweetheart during the war.  If you can resist the temptation to believe that great grandpa was not ACTUALLY writing to the person who would become your great grandma but to YOU, his yet unborn descendant generations away in secret code… if you can resist THAT temptation… then you might be able to read it and learn something about the way they faced adversity and fear.  What they did to persevere.  How they held onto love even in the midst of horror.  

That can also be true of the letter we call Revelation.  When we read it we can also learn of a time that was plenty dramatic enough without any of the made up, idiotic nonsense people have piled on it over the years.  The original apostles were gone, but the institutional church had not yet grown into being.  Back in Israel/Palestine, Jewish revolutionaries had mixed it up once again with the Roman occupiers resulting in the destruction of the Temple and adding to a critically volatile political/religious instability that fully engulfed the empire, including these seven churches that Paul and his followers had planted.  It was in that atmosphere of incredible anxiety, volatility, uncertainty, and terrible persecution that these churches were trying to figure out how to be faithful while the world around them was an absolutely fully involved dumpster fire.  

And dumpster fire it was!  Wars from Europe to Asia.  Vesuvius erupting in 79, burying Pompeii and covering the region with panic causing darkness.  There was wide spread famine.  Christians became easy scapegoats for everything bad that was happening because they were a minority fringe sect that appealed to the lower classes.  They were regarded as an unpatriotic group of atheists… they had no gods after all… and they met in secret eating flesh and drinking blood!  The fire that burned much of Rome in Nero’s reign was easily blamed on them and even after Nero died, the tyranny didn’t go away.  At the same time, Judaism was pushing out those who saw Jesus as the Messiah.  

The people of these seven churches did not feel part of the Roman world nor did they feel a part of the Jewish world.  They didn’t know who they were or where they fit, or if they fit anywhere at all and they had no idea how their dumpster fire of a world would crash in on them next!  

It is to that particular people, in that particular time… a people weary and worn, who staggered into church carrying all the weight of their dumpster fire world with them that John begins his letter with the proclamation of hope we read in today’s lesson:  “Look!  He IS coming!”  The Lord God who is the beginning and the end… the One who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty… he IS coming.  God sees.  God cares.  God is coming!  Hang in there folks!  THAT was the Pastoral message they needed to hear!  No secret extra hidden message required. It was life giving JUST AS IT WAS WRITTEN!  

Now, when we read their mail 2000 years later we not only get to hear the same promise that God sees, God cares, and God’s coming, but we know it worked!  They hung in there!  The storm of empire ran out of rain, as Maya Angelou reminds us all storms do and THAT my friends is something worth taking home from these other people's mail!  God sees.  God cares.  God’s coming.  And hey!  No secret decoder ring was required to get that message.  Amen.  

BUT...

Luke 24:1-12

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.

On Thursday we heard how this rural preacher called Jesus, who advocated for mercy and not sacrifice, who cared more about real people and their needs, than putting on a perfect religious performance, gave his disciples one final command, to “love one another.” Then on Friday we heard the story of how this rural preacher’s Way of love, diversity, compassion, justice, empathy, radical inclusion, equity, and mercy crashed headlong into the Empire’s Way of power, hatred, greed, manipulation, marginalization, oppression, and violence.  In short, on Friday we heard the story of how Jesus fought the law… and the law won… leaving him and what every Empire calls a “weak and ineffective” Way of love, compassion, justice, and mercy, both dead AND buried.

BUT…  and that’s where we pick up the story today… with that first word of today’s Gospel… BUT.  BUT on the first day of the week, at early dawn, the women came to the tomb.  Can you feel how incredibly powerful that thing they did that morning really was?  They didn’t make their way to the tomb knowing that Jesus had been raised from the dead.  NO!  They made their way to the tomb absolutely SURE he was NOT!  They were the ones who had stayed and watched him die.  They were the ones who had kept their eyes open when most had turned away.  They were the ones who had watched his dead and lifeless body placed in that tomb.  They were the ones who knew better than anyone else, that when an Empire puts a person in a hole…any sort of hole… that person stays in that hole.  BUT… they went out that morning to do the next right thing anyway.  WOW!  wow. 

Pastor Martin Niemöller, before he was arrested by the Nazis and sent to a concentration camp, read to his congregation a piece from Matthew’s Gospel that reminds disciples in every age that we are to be “the salt of the earth”…“the light of the world.”  The rising Nazi movement in the 1930’s wanted churches to fall in line.  To support them or at least stay quiet.  (What’s old, it seems, is new again.)  Pastor Niemöller insisted however that the Church stay “salty.”  He told them our faith has a distinct message… a “saltiness.”  Our saltiness proclaims hatred, racism, Religious Nationalism, anti-semitism, and transphobia to be sins.  Our saltiness proclaims every human being has equal worth, dignity, and deserves due process.  Our saltiness proclaims that it is the poor and the meek, the widow and the orphan, the foreigner and the refugee, the demonized and reviled that have God’s most profound blessing.  It is that saltiness that reminds us nothing can separate us from God’s love and so we MUST stay salty! 

BUT… not salty just for saltiness sake.  We are to stay salty so that we can do the next right thing… like the women did that first Easter morning.  We are to add our saltiness to those voices who speak out boldly against evil.  We are to add our saltiness to those who lift the lowly, welcome the stranger and heal the broken.  We too are called to do the next right thing… seeking out ways to enhance the flavors of love, peace, healing and justice.  That’s what salt does, you know, it enhances flavors and you and I are called to be salt.  We’re called to lift up, bring out, and enhance the bits of the world that bring out life, even in the midst of death.

  

Niemöller also told his people they were called to be light to the world.  He told them we too often worry that the gale force, blow hard, winds of Empire will put out our flame and because of that we are tempted to hide our light away under a bushel basket and wait for the winds to die down.  BUT… Niemöller reminds us... Jesus said, AWAY WITH THE BUSHEL!  Put your light on a candlestick!  It is not for us to worry about the light.  That is God’s worry.  Our calling… like the calling of those women on the first Easter morning… is to shine the light we have directly into the darkness by doing the next right thing… no matter how small or insignificant that next right thing might feel to us in the moment.

  

These stories of Holy Week have hit profoundly harder this year, than in any other year of my life.  The darkness feels darker.  The pain seems deeper.  The hopelessness more profound.  BUT… and THAT is the word for Easter this year… BUT… those incredible, amazing women have shown us what to do.  They’ve shown us that when the dark is at it’s darkest, when the pain is at it’s deepest, when our hopelessness is at it’s most profound, the thing we are called to do is to get up and do the next right thing.  Why?  Because, as those women showed us, it is in walking that path along the Way to do the next right thing, that we too will get to see that the stone has been rolled away.  That there are men standing their in dazzling clothes.  That there is light shining where before there was only darkness.  That the end is not, in fact, the end at all, that there is relief from the pain and that there is reason to have hope.

Those women have the message for us this Easter!  They are showing us that it is simply in getting up and walking that path to do the next right thing that we too will discover that Jesus and his Way are not, in fact, dead and buried forever as every Empire always insists, but that Jesus and his Way of love, compassion, empathy, justice, radical inclusion and peace are NOT there in the tomb.  That they are very much alive and as you and I walk toward doing the next right thing in the current Empire's dark shadow, we too will find that Jesus and his Way are far from dead and buried.  We too will find that in fact they have risen… risen indeed.  Alleluia!  Amen.  

Dead End. Emphasis on Dead

John 13:1-17, 31b-35

Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” Jesus said to him, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.” For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, “Not all of you are clean.” After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.

When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

There was not ONE person in the room that night who was unaware of what was happening around them in their world.  As clearly as YOU can see what is happening in the world around YOU tonight, THEY could see clearly what was happening around THEM in THEIR world.  It’s not that they were clairvoyant, any more than any of us are, but they could do the math.  You add one ruthless empire with the world’s largest military to a group of sellout religious leaders focused primarily on their own wealth and power and then you try to divide that by a rural preacher who proclaims a God of non-violence, love, compassion, mercy, and justice… and well, that math just isn’t gonna math, is it?  The answer to that equation isn’t going to be something we find on the other side of the equal sign.  The answer to that equation will be violently removing the rural preacher from the equation entirely! 

Everyone in that room could see that far ahead, but no further.  Beyond that it didn’t look like there WAS any future.  It was like a blind ally… a complete and total dead end… with the emphasis very much on DEAD.  So what do you do when you face what looks like a solid brick wall, dead end future?  How do you go on working and acting and being in the world when the Way you've been following is now completely blocked?  

Peter went with denial… its not just a river in Egypt you know.  Cutting off an ear is an idea.  Judas went with “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” which continues to be a popular strategy even today.  Still others handled this dead end by locking the doors, turning off the lights, and pulling the blankets up over their heads.  I’ve been very tempted to just throw up my  hands and hit the road… I hear Emmaus is lovely this time of year.

Jesus knew his disciples would be stuck as they faced a future that looked like a total solid, no way out, dead end.  That’s why on this night Jesus told his disciples… his disciples then and us disciples now… HOW to get through those times that look for all the world like a totally solid, no way out, dead end. Jesus told his disciples there was no need to give up.  Lashing out, violence, and revenge were not the answer.  He didn’t suggest finding someone to blame or point fingers at and he didn’t recommend lying in bed with the covers permanently pulled up over our heads… no matter how good that might sound!  Instead… Jesus says, when you look at the world and all you can see in front of you is a bricked off blind ally dead end of a future… THAT… THAT… IS WHEN YOU MOVE THROUGH that bricked off, blind ally, dead end of a future BY LOVING ONE ANOTHER.  

It wasn't a suggestion.  This was Jesus’s final command.  LOVE ONE ANOTHER.  When the road ahead is impossibly, completely, and totally blocked, love one another.  When the witness of the Messiah and the prophets… the witness for justice, mercy, and empathy is labeled as SIN… LOVE ONE ANOTHER.  When the sacrificial love of neighbor is demonized… LOVE ONE ANOTHER.  When the world is going completely, profoundly, unbelievably, maddeningly off the rails…  LOVE ONE ANOTHER.  When every logical calculation, reasonable thought, notion of justice, professionally researched conclusion and time tested truth is being replaced by hatred, conspiracy theories, violence, lies, ignorance, and just plain ugliness… when all that is happening… THAT is when we must come together and LOVE ONE ANOTHER.  When we look into the future and all that we had expected and hoped for and planned for has been replaced by a bricked up blind ally with no room to turn around… Jesus tells us THE way to deal with that… is to LOVE ONE ANOTHER.  

Tomorrow we will hear the story of our God’s PASSION.  It is the story of the Way of Jesus… (the Way of love, diversity, compassion, justice, radical inclusion, equity and mercy)… dramatically colliding with the dead end, brick wall, blind ally Way of Empire… (the way of hatred, power, might makes right, marginalization, and violence.)  Tomorrow we will hear the story of just how much the Way of Empire DESPISES the Way of Love… LOATHES the Way of Love… HATES the Way of Love… the Jesus Way… We’ll see that the Way of Empire HATES the Jesus Way…THIS much!  (stretch out arms)  

But in tonight's story… even though they all see it coming… Jesus doesn’t stop the Way of Jesus and the Way of Empire from colliding.  Instead, Jesus tells his disciples then and his disciples now HOW we are to live through those horrible times.  For genuine disciples of Jesus there is just ONE way.  Love one another.  With maximum humility we are to start with our neighbors that the world sees as the least, the last, and the lost, and we are to sacrificially love one another.  We are to sacrifice our own egos and put what is in the OTHER’S best interest before our own.  THAT is what it means to love one another.

Love is the Way through.  Not just the way through Jesus’ Passion two thousand years ago, but love is the way through every seemingly hopeless solid brick wall dead end that people of Faith encounter throughout history.  SO, when you open your window and look outside… when you open WINDOWS and look outside, and when all you can see is what looks like a completely, impossibly, wrecked future, a total blind ally, and an absolute dead end… with an emphasis on dead… remember for yourself and do the kindness of reminding one another what Jesus told us about how we are to live through times like these… We are to love one another.  Love one another.  LOVE ONE ANOTHER.  Amen.  

The Review Table

John 12:1-8

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

This is the last Sunday in Lent before Palm/Passion Sunday.  So for today, I thought we would sit with Jesus, Mary, Martha, Lazarus and Judas around the table and have them help us review what we’ve worked on this Lent.  We actually began this Lenten series before Lent even began, on Transfiguration.  Do you remember?  We began by noticing where in our bodies we carried the weight of the world these days.  We took that weight and worked it like clay in our minds until it became a personified form.  Then we named it, wrote that name on a stone, and by doing that injected that stone with all that weight and darkness.  Then we left those stones right there for God to watch through Lent so we wouldn’t have to carry it all.  Were you able to do that?  Leave it?  Not pick it up again?  

For the first Sunday in Lent, do you remember what we worked on?  Judas, in today’s Gospel gives us a reminder. “Mary” he says, “You SHOULD not waste that expensive perfume.  You SHOULD sell it and give the money to the poor.”  Judas SHOULDED on Mary!  Didn’t he?  SHOULDING sets us up unrealistic expectations which leads to disappointment and depression, so that was the first Cognitive Distortion we gave up for Lent.  

The second Sunday we worked on Control Fallacies.  The lie that everything is our fault OR the more common version which is that we have NO influence and we are all just helpless victims.  The people at the dinner party in today’s Gospel lesson faced a horrific week to come. It would have been easy to give into the idea they were nothing but helpless victims, but what did Martha do?  She brought to mind the people she loved and moved toward them with a kindness, making them a meal.  Mary did the same, bringing to mind someone she loved, Jesus, and then moved toward him with the kindness of anointing his feet.  In moving toward the ones they loved with kindness, they proved to themselves and to those around them that they were NOT helpless.  Even with a horrific week ahead, they proved to themselves and the world that they still had the power to do kindness in the world.  

The third Sunday we met Mr. Don Music and the Cognitive Distortion of Catastrophizing… focusing exclusively on the negative and filtering out and dismissing anything positive.  Jesus taught us how to push back on that distortion with the Parable of the Fig Tree.  It was with gratitude and generosity that the gardener fought back against the ALL or NOTHING thinking of the vineyard owner.  In today’s Gospel Mary reminds us again how that works.  Facing Jesus’ coming death it would have been easy and frankly incredibly understandable to Catastrophize the days to come, but Mary pushed back on that temptation with generosity… that was a $45,000 block of perfume with which she showed her gratitude for all that Jesus had done.  

Last Sunday, Bishop Pipho helped us work on giving up Stinkin’ Individualistic Thinkin.  The parable showed us the dramatic difference between going it alone and living in community.  The dinner party in today’s Gospel puts an exclamation point on the power of community.  Lazarus shows us how simple, quiet presence speaks VOLUMES in community!  Martha was able to use her gifts to do the kindness of cooking only because they had gathered in community.  Mary was only able to demonstrate the power of generosity and gratitude because they had come together in community.  Even Judas, with all of his cluelessness, brokenness, and flaws, was given one more opportunity to see the world the Jesus Way simply because he showed up in this gathering of community.  

The powers of darkness at work in our world today are Legion.  They even seek to turn the values we have been taught by Jesus and the prophets… things like empathy and compassion, generosity and gratitude into sins.  But this little group pushed back on the darkest of darkness.  They showed up for one another around the table.  Lazarus never said anything, and in his silence reminded us that having the right thing to say is often overrated.  Simple, quiet presence is often what is needed most.  Martha reminded us that no matter what might lie ahead, we can always move with a kindness toward those we love.  Mary reminded us that community gives us a chance to push back on the darkness with gratitude and generosity and even Judas reminds us that in community we are always given one more opportunity to see the world the Jesus Way. 

It was empowered by community that they all walked into the week ahead, still able to love God and love neighbor… still able to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly through life and even through death… and on into resurrection.  

The evil at work in our world will continue to bring the darkness, but here in community we remind one another that we are neither helpless nor without help.  May we, like this small group gathered around their table, dedicate ourselves to gathering around THAT table, where we, like them will receive the light of Christ… a light so bright that it shines in the darkness… a light so powerful no darkness can overcome it and take that light with us and shine it into whatever the future holds for us.  Amen.