Jesus' Last Week

This is my tenth Holy Week serving on the Bishop's staff as Canon to the Ordinary. For twenty years prior to that, first as an Associate Rector in Westport, Connecticut and then as Rector in Holden, Massachusetts, the week was like running a marathon. (To be very clear, I've never run a marathon; it's just a simile!)

Over these past ten years, I've participated more often than I had expected but never with the full array of liturgies. I've subbed in for clergy on sabbaticals or family leave; I've preached Maundy Thursday or offered a reflection on Good Friday. I've preached also at the Clergy Renewal of Vows/Chrism Mass on the Tuesday of Holy Week. In other words, I've had some connection or other. 

But this year is different. I'll be in the pews all week long. I'm ready for that. I'm also thinking about what I won't have a chance to say from the pulpit. This post replaces that as a panorama of the entire week. 

My own thinking about the meaning of the week and especially of Palm/Passion Sunday was transformed by reading The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus's Final Days in Jerusalem. I commend it to preachers and hearers of sermons alike. 

This is NOT a review of that book which, to be honest, I read a long time ago. Rather, what I remember/learned from that book may be helpful for this post, which is really about faith and politics. 

In my work, even more now than in the parish where I had pastoral relationships with members of my congregation, I hear (almost always from the right) that the Church needs to stay "out of politics." Then they mutter something about "separation of Church and State" which almost always leads me to believe they have no idea what they are talking about. What they really mean to be saying is they don't like the politics they perceive as "liberal" or progressive that characterizes the Episcopal Church these days. What they mean is that they don't want the Church to speak up about racial reconciliation, or gun violence, or discrimination against the LGBTQI population. What they almost always mean (even when they say "stick with Jesus") is that they wish we would speak against abortion and stand for "traditional family values." They see their issues as "moral" issues and label the moral issues of gun violence, systemic racism, climate change etc. as "political."

They are wrong. 

I'll save a post about how "in those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered" for some Christmas. I will just say here (as I've said many times before) that IS a political statement if ever there was one. Jesus wasn't born anywhere. He was born somewhere - and even on the edges of Roman Imperial Power it was in the air he breathed and the water he drank. 

What I'll say about Jesus' final days in Jerusalem is that they were also political. Borg and Crossan make the compelling case that Jesus' entry into Jerusalem was a counter-demonstration against Roman Imperial Power "on the other side of town." Whether or not they are right about that, the language of the day is filled with politics: David was a king, after all, so what might a Son of David be? Hosanna in the highest! 

The tension in Jerusalem is thick in Holy Week, as it still can be in the City of Salaam - of peace. Jesus appears before Pontius Pilate. Whatever one might claim about his guilt or innocence, it's a political trial. His death is on a cross as a dangerous rabble-rouser. Crucifixion is the preferred Roman method of enforcing the death penalty. Regardless of one's theology of the atonement (what does it mean that Jesus died for the sins of the world?) the reality which is not mutually exclusive is that he was killed for the same reason that people like Martin Luther King, Jr and Ghandi and Steven Biko were killed: by the powers-that-be. 

I'm weary of people who use and misuse theology to spiritualize the gospel of Jesus Christ. We can argue about the best political responses but saying Christian preachers need to "stick with Jesus" is, to put it in the most charitable possible words, "ill informed." You cannot talk about Jesus apart from the politics of his day. And ours. 

I invite readers of this post who, like me, will be sitting in the pews this next week to pay close attention to the readings and hear them again for the first time. Recall that the liturgical context for even being in Jerusalem was that it was Passover. Don't Christianize Passover - please! Instead find a Jewish friend who will invite you to their table to remember another story from another empire, Egypt, and another emperor, called Pharaoh. Hear the story again, for the first time as the drama unfolds and we hear the Passion read aloud, twice if we go to church on Palm Sunday and Good Friday. 

And if you are a preacher, be not afraid. Allow the texts to speak to our context. Most definitely make it about Jesus. But don't make Jesus disembodied from the time and place and circumstances that led to his death on a cross, so that when God raises Jesus from the dead and the tomb is empty, we will have a deeper appreciation for what that means in this time and place. 

The Fifth Sunday in Lent

This Sunday I am preaching at Christ-Trinity in Sheffield, one of our "Lutherpalian" congregations. It's been a privilege to support them during their rector's sabbatical. Today's readings can be found here.

Over these past few weeks in Lent we’ve explored three very interesting encounters between Jesus and others. I was with you three weeks ago when we talked about Nicodemus. I was at Christ Church in Rochdale two weeks ago, where I spoke about Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well. I think Bishop Jack preached here then. Last Sunday was Jesus and the man who was born blind. I’m not sure who preached here. Peter?

So since we’ve been on a roll, one might argue that in today’s gospel we get a fourth encounter. But in some ways it is more complex and quite frankly it’s harder as a preacher to know which way to go with it. It’s not a simple one-on-one encounter. At first glance it might seem like this is an encounter between Jesus and Lazarus; after all Lazarus was dead at the beginning of our narrative and walking around in a daze by the end. Maybe. But here’s the thing: Lazarus speaks not a single word in this text.

We could come at this from the perspective of Jesus’ encounter with the disciples, and in particular, Thomas. Jesus has only a few days earlier “slipped away” from Judea where he was almost stoned to death. The disciples are completely aware of that and therefore are pretty anxious about going back. But Thomas bravely speaks up: “Let us go with him so that we may die with him.” This is one of those great disciple ironies that all the gospel writers love; the disciples never seem to get it. So Thomas is willing to go back to Judea with Jesus to face death. But the joke here is that in they are returning to see new life.

Or we could see this as an encounter between Jesus and “the Jews.” I need to say a word here before we go any further, and that is to just notice that this translation “the Jews” is unfortunate on so many levels. It is clearly not referring to all Jewish people then or now. That is obvious since Mary and Martha and Thomas and Jesus and Lazarus are all Jewish. They are not Christians!

What the phrase really means is “the temple leadership” in Jerusalem. They are nervous about Jesus, a northerner who doesn’t conform to their expectations about what the messiah is supposed to do (or even what a good rabbi is supposed to do for that matter.) Jesus is in conflict with that group. Yet there is nuance here we need to notice as well because when Jesus comes back to pay his respects to Mary and Martha we discover that they are already there to sit Shiva and that they have brought along hummus and feta and pita for the family to eat. These temple leaders, as it turns out, are pretty good at pastoral care and they are there for Mary and Martha in their hour of need. They are not bad people; but simply (as religious people are prone towards) a bit narrow-minded in their theological perspectives.

The second thing, however, to notice is that they are blown away by Jesus in this encounter and we are told that some of them did believe in him because of this sign.

So we could look at Jesus and Lazarus, or Jesus and Thomas, or Jesus and the Jews. But for me the energy in this encounter is in the exchanges between Jesus and his two friends, Mary and Martha. Sisters. We know from other texts about how they are pretty different, as sisters can be. Mary is reflective and interested in just sitting and talking while Martha always seems to be running around the kitchen. But in this text we see that they are also similar, as sisters can also be. Both confront Jesus with the exact same words, words that carry with them the hint of an accusation: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Those words have energy for me because at some level they are words that many of us think (even if we do not utter them) when we lose someone we love, especially someone in the prime of their life. The text doesn’t say, but if all these friends are roughly contemporaries then that would mean that Lazarus is a young man in his early thirties when he dies. We know (as people a week away from Holy Week and as readers of John’s Gospel) that Jesus is not too far himself from meeting an untimely death. But in this moment, in this encounter, it is Lazarus who is dead. We aren’t privy to the coroner’s report. We only have these words of these two grieving sisters that if Jesus had been present, then this tragedy would not have happened.

Our Lenten journey began on Ash Wednesday when we remembered that we are dust, and to dust we shall return. Whether we have had a lot of experience with death or only a little to this point in our lives, it is the one certainty even more real than taxes. For all of us. None of us will get out of this life alive. Yet very often death still catches us off-guard. Even though we know it is given only one day at a time as a gift, it sneaks up on us. Even when we have been living a good, long, and happy life it can happen, and that can feel unreal and unfair. These emotions are only magnified when someone dies before their prime.

My dad died suddenly when I was a freshman in college. He was 37. I suppose in my own way I wondered where God was when that happened and why my dad wasn’t spared. But I also remember being in the funeral home and thinking it wasn’t real, that my dad was just asleep and any minute Jesus might say, “Richard, come forth” and like Lazarus he would.

Of course it didn’t happen that way. He stayed dead, and the next day we stood around the gravesite in the Green Gates Cemetery in Hawley, Pennsylvania and I knew for sure by then that he wasn’t going to get up. And I think it’s only natural in moments like that to pray that half-accusing, half-desperate prayer: Lord, if you had been here my brother, my sister, my father, my friend, my child…would not have died.

There is at least some part of all of us that wants God to give us lives free from pain, free from those moments in the funeral home or standing at the grave of a loved one. We want God to just make death evaporate and disappear so that we don’t have to face it, so that it won’t happen to people we love and care about. We wish that we wouldn’t have to feel that much hurt and grief and sadness.

But that isn’t the God we get, my friends. Not on the fifth Sunday of Lent and not even on Easter Sunday. We believe in the resurrection of the dead, not the absence of death. All created things are born and die; that is simply what it means to be created and not the Creator. There is no “get out of death free” card! Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.

But that isn’t the end of the story.

Next weekend your rector will be home. He has been changed by this time away, even if it was not exactly what he planned for. He is carrying his own grief, particularly that of losing his own father recently. I know you care deeply for him and his family; keep doing that.

But you have been changed as well. I’ve so very much enjoyed sharing some time with you and I am so grateful for Peter’s ministry with you over the course of these three months. I’m glad to be taking some time today to celebrate that. I think the plan here in Sheffield went very smoothly even if Erik’s plans did not.

Now what? Next week we turn the calendar to April and to Holy Week. You’ll hear the story of the Passion together, the story of how Jesus was betrayed and denied by his friends and put to death on a cross by his enemies. Jesus himself wrestled in the Garden of Gethsemane about whether or not it needed to unfold this way. And as he was dying some people taunted him because they thought that if he really was the Son of God, then maybe he should pull out that “get out of death free” card. But it doesn’t work that way—not even for him.

“I am resurrection and life,” Jesus says to those two grieving sisters. And to us, across the centuries. Not I will be or I once was, but I AM. Christ is alive. That is our song not just at the empty tomb on Easter morning but it is our song whenever we encounter loss and grief and pain in our lives. Christ is alive! Let Christians sing! Not confined to ancient Palestine but here, and now. This is our song by the gravesides of those whom we love but see no longer. Even at the grave we make our song. You know how it goes – I’m not supposed to say the word quite yet but it’s on the tip of our tongues and we’ll be unable to hold those songs of praise in on Easter morning. The “a” word!

That song doesn’t immunize us from death. Rather, it allows us to not be so afraid of death (with God’s help) and then to see our way past death to new and abundant life. It allows us to trust that death will never get the last word. Never.

Mary and Martha mistakenly thought that somehow Jesus’ presence would remove death, that Lazarus wouldn’t have died if Jesus had been there. It’s an understandable feeling but it doesn’t work that way; Jesus’ presence doesn’t negate death, but rather gives us hope that when we die life is changed, not ended. Our dying and our grief and our confusion are never the end of the story, because we believe that love is ultimately stronger than death and that hope is stronger than fear and together they reveal new life, and new possibilities. When someone near and dear to us dies it does not mean the relationship ends. The veil between them and us is real, but it’s also thin.

If we dare to trust that, then Easter morning keeps breaking in on us. I won’t be with you on Easter morning but you know the bold claim that will be made. Why do you look for the dead among the living? He’s not here. He’s alive.

Indeed. He is resurrection and life, even now. And to the end of the ages. Thanks be to God. And thank you all for being such a fabulous community of faith.