March 23, 2008 - "The Risen Gardener"

Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Louisville, Kentucky
Easter Day
March 23, 2008
W. Gregory Pope

THE RISEN GARDENER
Jeremiah 31:1-6; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-18

It’s the story that never gets old. In fact, it has a way of breathing new life into the world every time it’s heard. Are you ready to hear it again?

It happened early in the morning on the first day of the week, while it was still dark. The darkness of grief hung over the whole earth. The Hope of the World, Jesus of Nazareth, had been killed two days earlier.

One of his closest friends, Mary Magdalene, came to the tomb to anoint his body. To her absolute horror, the stone had been rolled away from the entrance. She ran to tell Peter and another disciple, likely John, that Jesus’ body was missing, stolen she believed.

Peter and the other disciple race each other to the tomb. The other disciple wins, the story says, making us think the other disciple is John, the writer of the gospel story. They say it is always the winners who get to write history.

Well Peter is not far behind. They enter the tomb and see that the body is indeed missing. Only linen cloths neatly folded are lying there. And the text says that when the other disciple saw he believed. And then both disciples went back home.

But Mary stands outside the tomb weeping. When she looks inside she sees two angels sitting there, and they ask her why she is weeping. “Because they have taken away my Lord,” she moans, “and I do not know where they have laid him.”

Then she turns away from the tomb and sees a man standing there, not recognizing him to be Jesus, and he too asks her why she is weeping.

Mary says to him, “Mister, if you’ve taken him, please tell me where you’ve put him so I can care for him.”

But that’s not all we are told. The story offers a seemingly insignificant detail. It says that Mary “supposing him to be the gardener.”

Until recently I have always read that to mean that Mary was mistaken. However, thanks to writer Sam Wells, [1] I am now convinced that Mary was right: The One standing before her is the Gardner. It is Jesus The Risen Gardener.

Think about it. This is the first day of the week, and this is a man and a woman in a garden. There could hardly be three more explicit references to the creation story in the Garden of Eden. Standing in this Easter Garden is a new Adam and Eve.

Let’s take a trip back to Eden just a moment.

It is in the garden of Eden that the Bible sets the first man and woman. From the paradise of the garden of Eden we find who we were created to be. God made Adam and placed him in the garden of Eden, the first gardener, at peace with his Maker.

Created in God’s good image to share communion with God and one another and to care for God’s good creation, Adam and Eve (or insert your name and mine) chose their own path rather than God’s path.

A brokenness tears into the harmony as Adam and Eve choose to live outside the boundaries God had set for their own good. They are no longer at peace with their Maker. And they are driven out of the garden.

This is often referred to as the “fall” of humanity - the fall from innocence into sin and guilt. We began our journey to Easter on the First Sunday in Lent reading this very story.

The late Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder has said that our “fallenness” or “lostness” and our salvation have to do with something far greater and far deeper than our sins and their forgiveness. It has to do with our separation from God and our incapacity to do the good. [2]

Apart from God, left to our own desires of pride and greed and lust, we make choices that exceed our limits, that run outside the boundaries God has for us, and we find ourselves lost in the world, trying to survive in a damaged creation we pray is not beyond repair, wondering if we will ever see Eden again, wondering if we as a human race will ever have the courage to do what is right for all the world.

In the novel The Kite Runner, Amir, the main character, receives a call from a long-time friend in Pakistan. Behind the words of his friend, Amir says he hears “my past of unatoned sins.” His friend ends with words Amir cannot get out of his head: “There is a way to be good again.” [3]

This is what we all want, is it not? A way to be good again? Not “good” as defined by others or as a kind of perfection we cannot reach, but the “good” God pronounced us to be at creation. The kind of goodness where we are in harmony with our Creator living in the flow of our Creator’s wishes and will.

Is there a way to be good again?

The further we go in the biblical story, it doesn’t look much better.

There is yet a third Garden in the story that precedes the Easter Garden; it is the Garden of Gethsemane, where humanity fell again as the disciples scattered and hid, just as the man and woman had fallen in Eden, then ran and hid at the sound of God’s voice.

But now here we are three days later, in the Easter Garden where we find there is a way to be good again. A way to be restored, redeemed, transformed. A way to reconnect and be reconciled with the One Who Made Us.

Mary thought Jesus was the gardener. And indeed He is. Jesus came and lived in harmony with his Maker, came not to do his will but the will of God, and open to us once again the gates to Eden.

To use John’s language, Jesus is the Word who was with God in the beginning when God made the garden - the whole of creation, epitomized by Eden. [4]

The Easter Story is quite simply a new creation story. It is as grand as that.

In Romans this Lenten season Paul has been talking about how in Adam, in our fallenness, we are all dying, but in Christ we are all being made alive.

They used to say that when they were driving the cross into the ground for the execution of Jesus they struck a skull; and it was the skull of Adam.

The incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus puts right the fatal error of the fall and gives birth to the new creation.

In a garden the world was lost; and in a garden the world was made new.

In the garden of Eden there was despair - the people cast out, the gates slammed shut.

In the garden of Resurrection there is life and hope. The tomb has burst open. The Easter garden is putting right all that our desires have messed up. In the Easter Garden we learn that the worst that can be done is not all that can be done. Behind and beyond the darkness there is the ever-creating Voice: “Let there be light! Let there be light!”

In the northern hemisphere in which we live, we are fortunate that the Easter garden is a Spring garden. Even though there is a chance of snow tonight, it is the third day of Spring. We normally associate Spring with gardens coming back to life and creation full of living creatures like butterflies. The butterfly is an old Resurrection symbol; new life emerging from the apparent death of the chrysalis. They are all around us in the sanctuary today. A reminder that at the very time when nature’s garden shows the signs of new life God brings life out of death at Easter.

The Easter story taken in all of its fullness means that redemption is not just for individual persons, but for creation itself. The whole cosmos redeemed.

Eastern Orthodox theology uses the language of the “shattered image” to describe the fallenness of creation and of humanity. And that in Jesus Christ God is mending what has been shattered.

If what Christ does in his incarnation, death and resurrection is to restore the divine image in which we were made, then the shattered image of creation is also being restored: A healed imago dei for all creation!

The great fourth century theologian Athanasius puts it this way. He says the divine image within each of us is like a great painting that has been destroyed by the elements; however, the artist doesn’t throw the canvas away, but begins to repaint it to its original glory. [5]

That is the work the Original Artist wants to do in you and me and in all creation: repaint us to our original glory. Matthew Fox reminds us that we were not created in original sin but original blessing. The One who waits for us in the Easter Garden seeks to restore us to shine with the original glory of original blessing. God’s paint brush is already busy at work.

Easter has come early this year. Earlier than most of us have ever seen. Earlier than all of us will ever see it again. I think it fitting for Easter to come just three days into the season of Spring. It would help if it felt more like Spring and less like the middle of Winter. This Easter, Spring is not in full bloom. Spring is just in its infancy. Give it some time and new life will begin to sprout up everywhere.

So it is with Easter. The resurrection of Jesus was the beginning of a new creation. This new creation was not a new creation fully come, but one which has dawned. The resurrection of Jesus is the starting point of a new creation, a the new world. The resurrection inaugurates a new creation right in the middle of the old one. And so we are born into this new creation by faith. Because there’s still enough of the old creation around for us to believe that’s all there is.

At the end of the biblical story we find yet another Garden in the City of God. It is the vision of a new heaven and a new earth come down from above. It will be the final fulfillment of the promise of Genesis 1.

In the City of God the Tree of Life is planted on each side of the river. The leaves of the Tree are for the healing of the nations. In that Garden nothing will ever again be cursed. The Throne of God and of the Lamb is at the center. There is no night in that city. Nor is there sunlight. The shining face of God is all the light the Garden needs to flourish and grow. Because then God will be all in all.

It is the final accomplishment of God’s great design, to defeat and abolish death forever. It is the rescue of creation from its present plight of decay. [6]

Our task in the present is to live as resurrection people in between Easter and the final day as a sign of Easter and a foretaste of creation’s full redemption. [7]

Easter faith gives us eyes to see the dawn of God’s new creation in the midst of the old. It gives us courage to live by the new creation rather than by the old one:

To live by forgiveness rather than guilt and vengeance.
To work for justice in the midst of the powers and systems of injustice.
To live in the community of the new creation because the divisions and hatreds and bigotries of the old creation no longer count.

Easter faith lets us trust in the God of Easter who says, “Behold, I am making all things new. In this world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”

And while the new creation has not yet fully come we can taste the goodness of its morning light. We can taste it in every experience of joy. We can taste it in every experience of love. We can taste it in every experience of forgiveness, healing and hope.

“The power of Jesus’ resurrection is the power of creation - new creation. The power of death is broken. When Mary turns at the calling of her name, she turns from darkness to light, from despair to hope, from death to life. Not only is the future open; the past is transformed. The possibility of forgiveness means that one can begin to reclaim that past as a friend rather than as an enemy. Life does not need to be lived running away from regrets or running away from death. The power of resurrection is a power beyond description. It is not subdued by death. It has the force of a new creation, a significance as great as God’s original purpose for the world. It is no longer frightened of the past, because the power of forgiveness makes even terrible mistakes redeemable and opens gateways to new possibilities.” [8]

Mary knew who it was when the Gardener called her name.

There is a Gardener who waits for us in Easter’s Garden this very morning calling out our name.

It is our task to listen and follow the voice of the Gardener on the way to goodness and life.

Christ is risen. He is alive. God has begun to put things back to where they were meant to be all along. God wants to put you back to where you were created to be.

The Risen Gardener stands before you now calling your name. Will you look up long enough for him to wipe away your tears of grief and guilt and despair and then walk with him through the Garden of Grace and New Life? He’s calling your name. Do you hear it?

_________________________

1. Samuel Wells, Power and Passion, Zondervan, 2007, 178
2. John Howard Yoder, Preface to Theology, Brazos Press, 2002, 300
3. Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner, Roverhead Books, 2003, 2
4. Wells, 178
5. Athanasius, On the Incarnation, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003, 41
6. N. T. Wright, Surprised By Hope, HarperOne, 2008, 104-105
7. Ibid., 30
8. Wells, 180, 183

Jan 20, 2008 - "Getting Out of a Pit"

Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Louisville, Kentucky
Epiphany 2
January 20, 2008
W. Gregory Pope

GETTING OUT OF A PIT
Isaiah 49:1-7; Psalm 40:1-11; 1 Corinthians 1:1-9; John 1:29-42


Anybody here today sitting in the desolate pit and miry bog of despair? The state of our world or the dark night of your soul is keeping all light from coming in. The wounds of your life - guilt, betrayal, failure, defeat - so encompass your heart you find yourself paralyzed by fear and sadness, silence and weakness. Your knees buckle beneath you. It’s hard to put one foot in front of the other because your feet are mired in the clay of your broken humanity.

Ruth Haley Barton says that the experience of “desolation is the loss of a sense of God’s presence [in our lives]. We feel out of touch with God, with others and with our most authentic self. It is the experience of being off-center, full of turmoil, confusion and maybe even rebellion.” [1]

If that is where you find yourself today, I have a song and a prayer for you. If that is not where you find yourself today, listen anyway. Because chances are there will come a time when darkness and paralysis will be the condition of your soul. And you, too, will need a song.

The song and prayer are found in the worship book of ancient Israel known as the Psalter or Book of Psalms. A collection of hymns and prayers for every condition of the soul and every possible circumstance of human living. From high praise to low blues and everywhere in between. Because somewhere in between is where real hope lies.

Today’s song sings the blues and offers praise. The strange joining of lament and thanksgiving. Interestingly, most psalms have a little of both. And together a song and prayer of hope can be raised.

Psalm 40 is the testimony of one who says there is hope in God. She has waited patiently, hoped intensely for God and has been heard by God and lifted up out of despair. It is often not within our strength to get ourselves out of a desolate pit. The heart is just too heavy to lift us and the feet are just too weak to carry us. This song is a testimony of what God can do.

The psalmist sings of God’s steadfast love and faithfulness. He prays that God will not withhold the mercy needed. He’s searching for a safe and secure place to rest his weary bones in God’s faithful love.

Though the desolate pit is where he lies at the moment, he knows God is faithful and will hear him and lift him up out of the mire, and set his feet upon a solid rock, making his steps firm in God’s instruction, and putting a new song in his mouth.

But right now he is unable to sing. If he tries the only sound will be his tears. Only the deep whispers of his heart, sighs too deep for words - that’s all he can muster at the moment. And God understands. One day though, one day, he knows he will sing again. Because God is faithful and will lift him up.

Such rising from desolate pits and miry bogs often requires patient waiting.

It’s how the ancient song begins - with the pregnant pause of patient waiting.

“I waited patiently.” Which means, “I waited and waited and waited and waited. I cried out to God from the depths of heart to come and lift me up out of my desolation and despair.”

And in the mysterious ways of God and the human spirit, patient waiting was required.

What does it mean to wait?

Rarely is biblical waiting a passive activity. Sometimes it is done alone in silence, but not always.

One of the least favorite places in a hospital is the waiting room. If someone we love is having surgery, the waiting we do there is rarely passive. Our heart descends into our stomach. We pray intensely for our loved one’s well-being.

Waiting is often active. It is an act of faith, hoping intensely in God with every fiber of our being. And we have the strength to wait better when others are with us.

I wonder if such an active waiting was not part of Jesus’ invitation to Andrew?

In our gospel lesson, two invitations are offered.

The first invitation is to search our hearts.

Looking over his shoulder and seeing John’s disciples following him, Jesus turns and asks, “What are you looking for?” This is a question we manage well most of the time: “Oh, I’m looking for my keys or my cell phone. I’m looking for something to wear.”

However, when Jesus asks the question it disarms us and makes us feel uncomfortable. What can we answer? “I’m looking for whatever it takes to get me through the day. I’m looking for meaning in my work. I’m looking for love and happiness and home. I’m looking for justice and peace in the world” (though nothing would startle us more than actually finding them!) Jesus’ question reminds us how little we reflect on our searchings.

In the time of patient and hopeful waiting we search our hearts and see if we can discover why we are in despair. How did we fall so far? Who turned the lights out? Did we take a wrong turn? Sometimes there are no answers. But sometimes we can find clues.

Sometimes our desolation is the pit of lost wandering. We don’t know what we’re looking for. We have no sense of direction. And we find ourselves despairing of purpose and meaning.

At the very beginning of this story, John the Baptist introduces Jesus to his disciples as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

It is enough to peak their curiosity.

And it is a fine introduction to Jesus. For he came to embody God’s forgiving grace. And if you search your desolate heart and find that you are buried in the pit of sin and guilt, then in Jesus you have found what you are looking for: Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Patient, hopeful waiting calls for us to search our hearts for what we are really looking for.

Jesus offers a second invitation.

First Jesus asks “What are you looking for?
Then Andrew asks, “Where are you staying?
And Jesus says, “Come and see.”

Pastor Lillian Daniels says about this conversation: “Jesus has gone from being the Lamb of God to a guy having some other guys over at his place.” [2] I’m sure it’s to watch the NFL Conference Championship games.

Or is this something more?

On one level, the disciples truly want to know where Jesus is staying. But with the language John uses here he wants us to know they are really asking, “Jesus, where are you abiding?”

Abiding. A good Johannine word. It travels all through the gospel. We are told early in chapter one that Jesus abides close to the heart of God. That is his deepest residence. Jesus wants us to know it can be our ours too.

“What are you looking for?” Jesus asks.
“Where are you abiding?” The disciples want to know.
And Jesus responds with an invitation: “Come and see.”

“Come and see” invites us to a place we have never been. It is an invitation to spend time with Jesus as you search for your heart’s deepest longing, your life’s truest abiding place.

Later in John’s Gospel, Jesus urges his disciples to “abide in me as I abide in you.” Jesus offers himself to John’s disciples as the place for them to abide.

Part of what it means for us to wait is to spend time in the waiting room where Jesus abides, resting in his presence, prayerfully searching, allowing God to strengthen us and raise us up out of our pit, making our steps secure.

Waiting, searching, abiding is holy, necessary work. And in the waiting, searching, abiding, God comes to us with a new song and new life.

And then we sing and we testify to others of what God has done for us.

The psalmist tells the glad news of deliverance with unrestrained lips to the congregation. He has shared of God’s faithfulness, salvation and love.

When Andrew found in Jesus the one his heart had longed for, the first thing he did was to go and tell his brother Simon Peter, “Simon, we have found the Messiah.

What about you? What story of deliverance do you have to tell?

When has God lifted you up out of a desolate pit and miry bog?

When has God set your feet upon a rock and made your once frail steps now secure?

When has God put a new song in your mouth?

Tell some one about it. Because you can be sure that there are those even now in a pit of desolation and despair, waiting to be lifted up, wanting to know if there is reason for hope. The testimony of your life can lead others to place their trust in God.

Part of your testimony and song is to tell of God’s deliverance.

Another part of your testimony and song is to live a life of faithfulness, taking delight in God’s will.

Sometimes it may be our inability to discern God’s will, our confusion that has us mired down. However, if we will search our hearts and abide in Jesus and wait patiently in hope for God, a word will come and guide our steps.

The testimony of our lives is to live in trust and dependence upon God, listening for God’s instruction, walking with feet willing to do God’s will.

The psalmist reminds us that there will be other gods tempting us to go astray, leading our feet into ungodly places. God wants those who delight to do God’s will, those whose obedience is not just external, but springs from a heart upon which God’s law is engraved. The proper sacrifice is the offering of the obedient self.

Tomorrow we honor the life, work and memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. One who knew a great deal about desolate pits and miry bogs. On the night before he died, with threats breathing down his neck, King offered these now famous words of hope. He said,

I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will.

Another prophet of another day, a prophet named Isaiah, says that to do God’s will is to live like King, as a servant of God, giving one’s life as a light in a world where it sometimes seems the light has gone out. Snuffed out by hatred and bigotry, self-seeking greed and pride.

We are called to walk in the light of God’s will, living lives of love and compassion, serving the world around us, singing our song of testimony as witnesses to God’s saving help.

That is the song from the ancient hymnbook of Israel.

There’s another song in a less-than-ancient hymnbook that mirrors the one from the psalmist. It goes like this:

In loving-kindness Jesus came
My soul in mercy to reclaim
And from the depths of sin and shame
Through grace he lifted me.

From sinking sand he lifted me
With tender hand he lifted me
From shades of night to plains of light
O praise his name, he lifted me.

When you find yourself in despair: Wait patiently. Search deeply. Come and abide in the heart of God. And God will hear you and lift you out of despair. God will draw you up out of the desolate pit and miry bog and set your feet upon a rock and make your steps secure. God will put a new song in your mouth. A song of testimony and praise to the God who is faithful. And in the brightness of God’s new day we will live as God’s servant, as a light in a desolate world.

_______________

1. Ruth Haley Barton, Invitation to Solitude and Silence, Intervarsity, 2004, 123
2. Lillian Daniels, “Grand introductions,” The Christian Century, January 2-9, 2002, 19

Jan 27, 2008 - "Becoming One"

Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Louisville, Kentucky
Epiphany 3
January 27, 2008
W. Gregory Pope

BECOMING ONE
Isaiah 9:1-4; Psalm 27:1,4-9; 1 Corinthians 1:10-18; Matthew 4:12-23

A man was walking along San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge when he saw a woman about to jump. He called out to her, “Please, don’t jump!”
She said, “Nobody loves me.”
He said, “God loves you.”
She said, “I do believe in God.”
He said, “Are you a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim?
“I’m a Christian,” she replied.
“Me too,” he said. “Small world. Protestant or Catholic?”
“Protestant.”
“Me too! What denomination?”
“Baptist.”
“Me too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?
“Northern Baptist.”
“Me too. Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?”
“Northern Conservative Baptist.”
“Well that’s amazing. Me too! Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist or Northern Conservative Reformed Baptist?”
“Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist.”
“Me too! Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Region or Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Eastern Region?”
“Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Region.”
“It’s a miracle! Me too! Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Region of 1879 or Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Region of 1912?
She said, “Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Region of 1912.”
The man gasped and shouted, “Die, heretic!” and pushed her over the rail.

We laugh because as Baptists we can identify. Our arguments over being a Moderate Baptist Faith and Message of 1963 Christian or a Fundamentalist Baptist Faith and Message of 2000 Christian have been known to get rather heated. We haven’t pushed anyone over the rail that we know of, but we have slandered character and destroyed careers.

There’s a hopeful event taking place in Atlanta week called the New Baptist Covenant. Several from our congregation are planning to make the pilgrimage. It is an attempt to gather together Baptists of all different stripes in order to present a united Baptist public voice for justice and religious liberty and compassion for the poor. Hopefully no one will get pushed from the top of the Georgia Dome. We will be in prayer for them as they gather.

The Call to End Division and Unite

In Paul’s letter to the Corinthian Christians he issues a call for an end to quarrels and divisions. He challenges them to unite for the sake of the gospel. It seems the Corinthians were choosing sides and labels by which to identify themselves and in the process losing their sense of purpose.

To unite people is always difficult work, whether it be denominations, congregations, co-workers, or people in any relationship.

I heard of one man who was having difficulty making this unity thing work in his marriage. He came in for marriage counseling about six months after the wedding and said, “Preacher, I know that we pledged back then to be one, but I didn’t know that she’d be the one.”

There are those in marriages, relationships, work settings, and congregations who want to be the one.

In a diverse congregation such as ourselves where you are unwilling to listen to the dictates of your pastor, unity can sometimes be a struggle. With differing opinions on missions, evangelism, worship, scripture, homosexuality, politics, and sanctuary temperature, it is easy to choose sides and create division.

Follow Jesus

That is why it is so important that we keep our focus on the uniting call to follow Jesus.

In our gospel lesson for today, walking by the sea of Galilee, Jesus saw Simon Peter and Andrew fishing. We read the story last week of their meeting Jesus, and his invitation to “come and see,” to spend some time with him and search their hearts and see what they thought of him. How much time has passed since the two encounters, we do not know.

Now he extends a different kind of call. It is a call to repent, to change their lives, and to follow him. Jesus says he will now make these fisherman fish for people. And they drop their nets and follow.

Then Jesus found two more brothers, James and John. They were mending their nets in a boat with their father. Jesus calls out to them. And they leave the boat and their father, and follow Jesus.

What does it mean to follow Jesus?

Well, it doesn’t focus on a belief system. As much as I enjoy theological conversation, Jesus wasn’t big on systematic theology. He didn’t provide a master plan of evangelism. He didn’t give us a theory of biblical inspiration. He didn’t tell us how to read scripture. He didn’t say a word about homosexuality. He just said, “Follow me.”

And our decision to say yes to that call is what unites us. We are united in the waters of baptism as the one Body of Christ when we utter the confession, “Jesus is Lord.” We are all trying together to follow Jesus.

What does it mean to follow Jesus?

Repentance

It begins with repentance. In his first words of public ministry Jesus said, “Repent, change your life, for the kingdom of God is at hand.”

What is it about our lives that needs to change as we seek to walk in the way of Jesus? Well, let’s look at what Jesus did.

The Ministry of Teaching / Preaching / Healing

Matthew tells us that when Andrew and Peter, James and John left their fishing nets, they went with Jesus throughout Galilee, listening as Jesus taught in the synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom.

At the end of Matthew’s Gospel Jesus summoned the disciples to go into all the world and teach all that he had taught them. And what did he teach?

At the heart of his teaching was something he called the kingdom of God, a way of ordering our lives so that God’s dream for the world becomes reality.

It is the dream of a world where there is justice for the poor, freedom for the oppressed, and forgiveness for the sinner.

Jesus would be an advocate for justice and the poor. He would offer freedom to those long held captive and oppressed by legalistic religion. He would join the prophets before him in calling for justice and an end to oppressive governments and economic systems that kept people poor.

Jesus is the embodiment of the prophet Isaiah’s message. He is our saving light of joy shining in the dark gloom of anguish.

Jesus befriended those in the dark anguish of loneliness, people who thought they had no friend, and found themselves to be God’s friends. He broke down barriers that separated people from one another. Forgiveness flowed from him, from God through him, like cleansing waters, the deep healing of our souls.

Jesus brought healing to the dis-eased. He embraced lepers, healing them with his touch. He spoke love, healing us with his words. He called the lowly and the fallen to follow him and find hope and purpose. Jesus brought healing to the diseased and the sick. And he calls us to do the same.

Seeking the Face of God

Such a life of teaching, preaching, and healing calls for a change in us. It is a life shaped for the well-being of others and the transformation of the world.

To follow Jesus calls for repentance, a turning of the face to seek God’s face. This morning’s psalmist sings of seeking God’s face. “Come, my heart says, seek God’s face! Your face, Lord, do I seek. O God, do not hide your face from me. For You are my salvation.”

To follow Jesus, to live according to God’s ways, is not about seeking our own path and saving our own face. The psalmist says it’s about seeking the face of God, consciously dwelling in God’s presence all our days, beholding the beauty of the Lord, inquiring and learning God’s ways. Paul says it’s about the cross, the way of self-giving sacrifice which will appear as utter foolishness to the world, but it is God’s way of saving the world. So take up a cross and follow.

Conclusion

That is why we are here. This is what unites us. Together seeking the face of God, beholding the beauty of God’s justice and freedom, healing and forgiveness, learning God’s ways and sharing what we’ve learned as we walk together in the way of Jesus.

We follow Paul’s counsel to agree on these basic things and put an end to petty quarrels and divisions over lesser things. To stop taking sides and be united in one mind and purpose. For Christ is not divided. But the world wouldn’t know it by looking at the church today.

Sometimes I’ve thought we ought to join every Christian organization and denomination that would have us. At least we would be doing all we could to connect with as many Christians as possible.

There is a man in Wisconsin trying to do his part to unite the Body of Christ. One dark night he went around his town and painted over all the different church names. When they arrested him, he said, “God told me to do it!” The jury didn’t buy it, but who knows?

The Lord is our light, says the psalmist, lighting our path as we live through our differences and all that we cannot fully understand. Which is a lot. The Lord is our light and our salvation, saving us from ourselves and the enemies that seek to divide us.

To borrow a line from another psalmist God prepares a table before us in the presence of our enemies and invites us to become friends with our enemies and eat together at God’s table.

A Baptist minister spent a couple of days at a Catholic Retreat Center. When he checked in he told one of the ministers that he’d like to come to Mass and understood that he shouldn’t take communion. She said, “No, please share communion with us.” Surprised, he said, “Thank you, I didn’t realize that was okay.” She smiled and said, “Well, after all, no one will know who you are.”

The truly good news of grace is that no matter who we are, God welcomes us to the table. At this meal God is here to deliver us from the enemies of unity like narrow vision and prejudiced hearts, so that we won’t exclude anyone whom God welcomes. This table unites us. It helps make the world look like the kingdom of God.

And besides, at this table, God knows who you are, and God calls you by name, and says, “Come and dine. You are welcome here.”

Feb 10, 2008 - "The Tell-Tale Heart"

Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Louisville, Kentucky
The First Sunday in Lent
February 10, 2008
W. Gregory Pope

THE TELL-TALE HEART
Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7; Psalm 32; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11

TEMPTATION

In the film Hollowman, a group of young scientists believe they have discovered a way to make a person invisible. Their leader volunteers for the experiment. And it works. After an evening of secret mischief and murder he says to his friend, “It’s amazing what you can do when you don’t have to look at yourself in the mirror anymore.”

Have you ever thought about what you would do if you were guaranteed no one would ever know? Would you act any differently if you never had to face yourself in the mirror?

If you were to ask these questions to the writer of the 32nd Psalm, I think this wise poet would remind us of a mirror that we cannot avoid. It is the mirror of our lives we call the soul or the conscience - that terrifying, yet ultimately saving gift of God. It will eventually remind us of what we have done, and if we refuse to acknowledge our deed, and receive the grace and confession of repentance, it will begin to eat away at us from the inside out.

The temptation to act in the hope that no one will ever know is perhaps the illusion that deceived Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. It seems that the temptation was no big deal. After all, it was just fruit.

But the issue had to do with ignoring limitations and crossing boundaries - good, healthy, God-given boundaries - meant to protect them from knowledge too great for them to handle. Crossing those boundaries would lead them to a place of no return.

The temptations Jesus faced in the wilderness also had to do with ignoring limitations and crossing boundaries - turning stone into bread, jumping from the temple testing God by foolishly risking his life, and to worship at the feet of abusive, coercive, evil power with all the kingdoms of the world at his disposal. Jesus endured temptation with the help of scripture, prayer and fasting, choosing to live within the limits of his humanity and God-given calling.

SIN & GUILT

Adam and Eve, on the other hand, took the plunge, then went into hiding and blaming. And their story is our story. At one time or another, we have all made choices to live beyond our limits, to cross the boundaries. Choices that sent us East of Eden, living outside the Garden, struggling and toiling, battling the demons within and without.

It appears this morning’s psalmist has likewise taken the plunge. It is a testimony, an offering of truth, a painful reminder and a powerful warning that even in the face of grace sin has consequences.

Whatever you call it - sin, transgression, iniquity, failure, mistake, trespass, or debt - we cannot escape the impact, the guilt, the damage to ourselves and others that accompany our sinful, self-centered deeds. To varying degrees our sin will find us out.

What about you? What are the sins that haunt you this day? Is guilt eating away at you? Perhaps it’s a desire for revenge that enrages you, or acts of vengeance already done. Is it some long ago deed buried deep in your conscience? What is your sin? Where is your guilt?

It must be named, you know. It will not go away. It will do its damage, even if silently. The psalmist gives testimony to the agony of a guilty conscience, and how it can both produce sickness and be worse than any physical malady. For when we choose to live with our guilt bottled up inside, remaining silent, there will come an inward groaning, a dis-ease within.

The psalmist says, “I kept silent and my body wasted away. My insides groaned all day long.
Day and night I felt as if the heavy hand of God was upon me. I was weak. All my strength was gone. My soul was like a parched desert, desperate for streams of living water.”

Do you hear the heavy darkness of guilt in the life of this silent psalmist? It is a darkness that cannot be lifted apart from the grace of confession.

ILLUSTRATION: THE TELL-TALE HEART

Do you know the story of “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe? Some of you may remember Poe, that giddy optimist who always looked on the sunny side, whose writings always bring a ray of sunshine to the human heart. Right?

Poe tells the dark story of a man who for no good reason decided to kill his neighbor. He does the deed certain he can escape the punishment of jail and the prison of a guilty conscience.

In the middle of the night when the deed was done another neighbor had heard a loud shriek coming from the dead man’s room. She reports it to the police. When they arrive, the killer leads them to the room of the deceased. They sit down and begin to talk.

The officers ask questions. The killer responds confidently and at ease. But as the officers linger, the killer’s head begins to ache. His ears begin to ring. He grows pale yet talks louder hoping to drown out the noise of his guilty conscience, noise that sounds to him like the beating of the dead man’s heart. He begins to pace the floor as the ringing steadily increases. This ringing reminder of his guilt drives him almost to the point of insanity.

Finally, he comes to believe that anything would be better than this agony. So in misery he screams out his confession: “I admit the deed!”

I have come to believe that deep down we all of us want to be fully known. We want to share our secrets. We want our sins confessed and forgiven with whatever reparations made.

Because we know that guilt will tear us up inside. Remaining silent will make us sick. Confession is the only healing medicine.

CONFESSION

This inward guilty groaning moves the psalmist out of silence and into speech: “I can be silent no longer. I will confess my sin to the Lord.”

Not an easy place to come to, is it, the place of confession? Our pride must fall and we must express our need for something, for someone beyond ourselves. We have to remove our rose-colored glasses and look at ourselves honestly in the mirror and admit what we have done. And then we must turn from the mirror of our own reflection into the mirror of God’s grace and tell the truth.

Confession is truth-telling. It is giving voice to our sin and guilt. And it is healing. We see this happening to the psalmist who moves from the silence of guilt to the speech of confession. There is a grace-filled healing when we give voice to our guilt and our sin.

Sometimes confession of sin must be made to a friend; sometimes to an enemy; sometimes, if a public sin, even to the congregation and community. But all sin must be given voice in the presence of our gracious God, who heals our dis-eases and forgives all our iniquity. God is fully willing to forgive, but to feel the healing flow of cleansing grace our secret silence must first be broken through contrite confession.

FORGIVENESS

It is through confession that forgiveness is fully known. It is in giving voice to our guilt that the parched soul finds living waters of grace. Confession is like opening the floodgate of a great dam. When there is no confession, the waters pile up behind the dam, the land on the other side grows dry, and immense pressure builds on the wall. But as soon as the floodgate of confession is opened in the presence of God, the waters subside, the pressures diminish, and the waters of forgiveness flow freely creating new life in the decadent heart.

It is, to use the psalmist’s words, like “the flood of mighty waters,” a torrential flood where sins are drowned and the sinner is saved.

It is in baptism where sins are washed away in the waters of God’s love, drowned in the ocean depths of God’s grace. Never, never to rise again.

But we rise. We rise from the waters of baptism clean, healed, and hidden in the arms of God. We rise forgiven. And to know forgiveness is to feel joy in your bones. It is to feel the blessing of God deep within your heart.

Can you see that the blessed one is not the perfect one, but the one who has courageously faced up to their sin and had their sin forgiven?

This psalm is about honesty with God. The simple testimony of the poet, who has tried every other way, is that there is no other way. Silence before God brings only torment and grief. But honesty with God, opening your heart in confession and repentance, devoid of deceit, is to open your life to the blessed healing of forgiveness and find your heart embraced by the faithful love of God.

The apostle Paul put it this way: As participants in Adam’s story, there is brokenness and sin and death for us all. But through Christ, there is life and grace for all.

Feb 17, 2008 - "New Birth"

Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Louisville, Kentucky
The Second Sunday in Lent
February 17, 2008

W. Gregory Pope
NEW BIRTH
Genesis 12:1-4a; Psalm 121; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17

Change. Sometimes we want it. Sometimes we don’t.

On the whole, we humans don’t take to change easily, even when we know we need to. We are creatures of habit, and any change - even change for the better - is experienced as loss and a reason for grief. With the pace of change accelerating as it is, we are even more hesitant to let go of the known.

This is regrettable, because every one of us has some changes we need to make. We all need to be re-formed to some degree. To let go of some bad habits and to take hold of some good ones. Just ask the people closest to you, if you dare. Maybe they’ll be honest with you, or at least send you an anonymous letter.

It could be that your friends wrote in your high school yearbook, “Stay the way you are and you’ll go far.” But when you look at your life now, you really haven’t gone that far, and you realize it’s probably because you stayed the way you are.

We all need to change at least a little. And some of us need to change a lot. There are times in life when a little fine tuning can make all the difference, but there are other moments when we need to change stations completely because we’ve been dancing to the wrong music. You’ve been listening to Billy Joel who tells you “don’t go changing because he loves you just the way you are” when actually your soul needs to be hearing Sheryl Crow tell you that a change will do you good.

Sometimes we need a complete overhaul, a 180 change of direction, a total makeover, a new beginning, a fresh start.

It may be that lately you’ve found yourself deep down really wanting to change, but finding it almost impossible. Maybe the change you desire is in your character or your job or some relationship or your home.

Perhaps the story we read from Genesis sounds good to you. You wish God would come to you as he did to Abraham and say, “Pack your bags. I’m about to give you a new start in a new place. And through you I’m going to bless many people. You’re gonna know your life matters.”

Are you looking for a change? A new start?

Sometimes we are forced into a new beginning. I think of those who are gathering on Sunday evenings these days for the Divorce Recovery Workshop. Their new beginning may have been beyond their control, the choice of their partner. Or they may have reached a place where they had to leave what they knew behind and start over.

New beginnings often come with an attraction and a threat. The attraction of starting new and fresh. As well as the threat of uncertainty. Sometimes clinging to what we know can fell more comfortable than what we don’t know.

It’s like leaving for college - (said with joy) You’re finally on your own! There’s no one to tell you what to do! But then again - (said with fear) You’re on your own. Yes, there were some restrictions at home, but there was also security.

It’s like starting a new career. It’s exciting, but the old place was safe and known.

It’s like a child getting a fresh sheet of drawing paper. She gets to start all over again, but she has to decide where to begin.

Or, as is the case with our scripture lessons, you’re looking a new way of seeing, living, and understanding faith. There is the attraction of a faith beyond black and white that helps you live with the gray ambiguities of your life. But there is also the threat of losing the false peace of certainty and easy answers: “Just somebody tell me what to believe.”

New beginnings are almost always both an attraction and a threat.

I think Nicodemus understood both the attraction and the threat of change. Nicodemus was a man highly respected but seemed to be looking for something more. Perhaps his faith and spiritual life has dried up and he’s searching for new insight into God.

He comes to Jesus, the story tells us, at night. Why? Does he want to keep his interest in Jesus a secret? Is he afraid of what people would think of a learned scholar of scripture asking questions of an untrained carpenter from Galilee?

Or could it be that Nick has come to Jesus at night because night is when we finally get still long enough to hear the rats gnawing behind the walls of our faith? Is it because in the darkness when we’re alone with our thoughts is when it is hardest to deny something isn’t right about our lives and something has got to change?

Whatever’s going on in the life of Nicodemus, he has seen and heard enough about Jesus to know that he is a prophet and a teacher sent from God. He tells Jesus as much.

But Jesus is suspicious of a faith based on seeing and hearing and then weighing the evidence, drawing logical conclusions with very little commitment or risk or willingness to change. So he gets to the heart of the matter and hits him right between the eyes with the truth: “Nicodemus, unless one is born from above one cannot see the kingdom of God.”

Now what does that mean? There is confusion here. The word Jesus uses for “above” as in “born from above” can also mean “again”or “anew.”

Nicodemus thought Jesus told him he must be born “again.” For he says to Jesus, “How can someone be born again when they are old? Can you reenter your mother’s womb?”

But Jesus didn’t say he had to be born “again.” Jesus said, “If you want to be able to see the kingdom of God, you must be born “from above.”

It’s interesting that as popular as the expression “born again” has become it is a reflection of Nicodemus’ misunderstanding of what Jesus actually meant.

But old Nick doesn’t get it. He’s too smart for his own good. Education, experience, age can do that to you. It can set you up for failure, make you proud, make you think you know everything when you really only know a little and not all of that is true. A lot of the time before you can learn something new and change, you have to let go of what you think you know. Intellectual pride can be the greatest obstacle to change.

One cannot literally be born again when you are old, but one who would have eyes to see the kingdom of God, the ways of God in the world, must be born from above. A new birth from above.

But one can hardly blame old Nick for misunderstanding. Jesus rarely respond with clarity. As one writer put it: “Jesus seems congenitally incapable of giving a straight answer.”

Jesus tries to explain more about this new birth to Nicodemus, telling him it is a birth of water and the Spirit. Are these the waters of baptism we hear rustling? Perhaps. But one thing that is clear is that this birth from above is a birth of God’s Spirit within us.

We cannot make the changes within ourselves that need to be made in order to see the kingdom of God in this world. It will take the work of God’s Spirit.

That’s what Paul was telling the Romans as he talked about Abraham. Abraham dared to trust God to do what only God could do. We have to trust God to change us instead of trying to change on our own. The change needed in each of us to see the kingdom of God and live the ways of God in this world is a job that is too big for us. We could never do it for ourselves no matter how hard or how long we worked. It’s something only God can do. Only God’s grace can change us. It is sheer gift.

How it happens is as mysterious as the wind, the wind, Jesus said, that blows where it wills. You can hear the sound of it, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with the work of God’s Spirit in our lives. There are spiritual practices of worship and prayer and meditation and service in which we can engage and through which God can work. But the work of God’s Spirit in our lives is mostly a mystery. You can’t pin it down to three points or twelve steps or a sinner’s prayer.

There are ambiguities in the change we call conversion. And we are warned here, I believe, against trying to engineer our own change, our own new start, with self-administered therapies. A rebirth from above is required.

However change occurs, it continues within us as we remain open to the wind of God’s Spirit in our lives. With new birth we need time to grow into the new creation God is helping us become. It is God, said Paul, who calls into being that which did not previously exist, bringing to life what was dead.

All true and lasting change does not begin with you and me. It is a birth from above and changes us beginning on the inside.

And know this: As you seek to open your heart to the God who can change you, God does not condemn you. For God so loved the world, John says, that God sent Jesus not to condemn the world but to save the world, and our trust in him, not ourselves, keeps us from perishing and enables us to enter eternal life, which is the life of God that can be ours even now. God in love embraces us to reform us into the person God created us to be.

The stories of Abraham and Nicodemus confront us with an opportunity that is the most welcoming and the most unsettling thing we could imagine: the chance to begin again, to be born from above, to depart on a new adventure, a new way of life, a leap in the dark, led by the uncertain, dangerous, yet faithful, presence of God. To be led by the Spirit is to live at risk because the Spirit blows where it wills. Like the wind.

Or the tide.

In the movie “Cast Away,” Tom Hanks plays a man whose plane has crashed and he is the lone survivor, exiled on an island for several years. One day he catches the tide and rides the current back out to sea. He is rescued and returns home to find that his fiancé has moved on, married to someone else. She was certain he had died.

In a moving soliloquy, he sits on his couch and says, “One day logic was proven all wrong because the tide lifted, came in, and gave me a sail. And now here I am. And I know what I have to do. I have to keep breathing. Because tomorrow the sun will rise. And who knows what the tide could bring?”

He was glad to be alive, but the circumstances of his life were not the circumstances he wanted. And yet, this new start was the one he had to live with. He had to live with it. And he had to keep breathing.

You and I have to keep breathing through the changes we want but never seem to come and the changes we do not want but come anyway.

Through whatever may come or not come, the Lord is our help, says the psalmist. The Lord who knows our going out and coming in. The Lord who will keep us from this day on.

You and I have to keep breathing. Because tomorrow the sun’s gonna rise. And who knows, who knows what the tide could bring?

March 16, 2008 - "Passing Through Graveyards"

Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Louisville, Kentucky
Palm / Passion Sunday
March 16, 2008
W. Gregory Pope

PASSING THROUGH GRAVEYARDS
ON THE WAY TO EASTER
Ezekiel 37:1-14; Psalm 130; Romans 8:6-11; John 11:1-45

For the past two weeks I have prepared sermons that I have been unable to preach. Two weeks ago I was away for the death of my grandmother. Last week it was the snow. But on Monday as I thought about it, last week’s readings fit the occasion on this Palm-Passion Sunday.

We’re one week away from Easter. Along the way we have to pass through graveyards. The cross always precedes the empty tomb. Those who do not have the stomach for it come for the Palm Sunday parade, but you won’t see them during the dark days of Holy Week; they will show up just in time for the trumpets on Easter morning. The rest of us will hang on to each other as we enter the Darkness before the Dawn.

Maybe that is why the lectionary gives us these stories of resurrection and new life before Easter. I used to think the lectionary should save these texts ‘til after Easter. It seems like we’re jumping the gun. Like when we sing Christmas carols during Advent, bowing to congregational and commercial pressure.

You would think that John and the lectionary might place this story after the resurrection. But here it is, like a public announcement just before crucifixion that here is One among us who has the power of life and death.

There’s another reason this story is fitting today. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke the event that sealed Jesus’ fate was the day he lost it in the temple. And in their accounts that event took place during the last week of Jesus’ life. In John’s Gospel the temple scene occurs early in Jesus’ ministry and it is the raising of Lazarus that seals Jesus’ fate.

Our texts for today ask us to walk through two graveyards on the way to Easter. Graveyards can be depressing places, can’t they - landmarks to friends of yesterday. But we will find that today the graveyard is full of new life.

The prophet Ezekiel was led to a valley of dry bones, a symbol of Israel in Babylonian exile. There is nothing of the power of life about them. And the question is: Can these bones live?

Have you been there? The place where hope seems lost. You feel cut off from all sources of life. You can’t get out of bed because you can’t find anything worth living for. A dream has died and there is no life in your bones. You look at Ezekiel’s vision and you see what feels like your life.

Ezekiel is told by God to prophesy to the dead bones. And he does. And before you can see “Stephen Spielberg,” this valley of bones has begun to rattle and come to life, covered in flesh, full of the breath of God.

This is good news to those who feel dead inside. There can be newness of life, even on this side of the grave.

Once again we see God playing in the dirt. A couple of weeks ago, Jesus took the blind man and with mud restored his sight. And today in the valley of dirt God takes dry bones and recreates new life, breathing into flesh and blood the breath of life. And God is still breathing new life where hope seems gone.

When we move from a graveyard in Babylon to a graveyard in Bethany, we read about a friend of Jesus named Lazarus who had become ill. The sisters of Lazarus had sent Jesus the message: “Lord, the one whom you love is sick.” Yes, even Jesus had friendships of deep love.

When Jesus heard the news he said, “This sickness will not end in death but to Gods’ glory.”

And then for some curious reason Jesus remained where he was for two more days. And then he tells the disciples, “Let’s go to Bethany.” They know that will only stir up trouble. They protest: “Rabbi, the religious leaders just tried to stone you there. And you want to go there again?” Only Thomas seems game. Be it conviction or sarcasm he says, “Let’s go so that we may die with him.” However it is said or meant, they go.

When Jesus arrives in Bethany, he discovers that Lazarus, whose sickness Jesus said would not end in death, has been dead four days. Jesus says he’s asleep, but will later affirm his death.

Martha meets Jesus outside Bethany and in her grief she cries out, “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.” Her sister Mary will say the same thing when she sees Jesus.

Have you ever uttered their words? You have had to walk through graveyards of friends and family, some of them taken way too soon. This congregation has done so many times. Most recently with Justin Ford, 26 years old. I thought to myself the day he died, having left the home of his friend, no one should have to walk through a room full of grieving 20-year olds.

How many parents have gathered at the graves of their children and spoken Martha’s words in some form, “Jesus, if you had only been here, if you had only done something, my loved one would not have died. Lord, why didn’t you do something?”

Perhaps you found your voice in the psalmist’s prayer we sung a moment ago, a cry out of the depths from a situation of deep need and powerlessness, from a soul so parched you can hardly muster a prayer.

There is a childlike hope in Martha’s plea. “But Lord,” she continues, “even now, I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.”

Jesus says to her, “Martha, your brother will rise again.” She affirms her belief in resurrection. She says, “Yes, I know he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”

Jesus then puts life and death and resurrection in a whole new light. He says, “I AM the Resurrection and the Life. Those who believe in me, even though they die will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never truly die. I am the Resurrection, Jesus said, death has no power over you anymore. I am the Life; in me you find eternal life, the life of God that flows through you forever.” There is a life that does not end with death.

Martha responds to Jesus with a confession of faith as momentous as Peter’s. (It is interesting that we only remember Peter’s and not Martha’s. In John’s Gospel we only get Martha’s confession.) She proclaims, “I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”

When Mary arrives she weeps at the feet of Jesus. And then we find the shortest verse in the Bible, two words: “Jesus wept.”

Why was he weeping?

Was he a picky eater and knew the casseroles were coming at the visitation? Perhaps.

Or was he a UK fan grieving their fall yesterday at the hands of that Georgia basketball dynasty? I doubt it.

Why was Jesus weeping? Did he not know he would raise Lazarus momentarily? Most likely. And yet he wept, I believe, for the same reason he weeps with us today beside the grave of a parent, grandparent, brother, sister, child, friend. Jesus weeps because our grief breaks his heart.

It is a picture we must never forget: the weeping Christ.

Two weeks ago, for the first time in my life I sat with the family at the graveside. It was my family. My 84 year old grandmother had died. I learned what many of you already know, and that is, not only is your own grief profound but there is the heart-breaking pain as you watch your own family grieve.

That’s part of what I believe was going on with Jesus. He was weeping his own sorrow over Lazarus’ death, and he was weeping the sorrow of Mary and Martha. He was weeping over death’s power and for the ways in which we give it more power than it deserves.

Scripture says not only that Jesus wept but that his body shook violently. It shook with anger at the death that stalks this world. It shook with the enormity of what he was facing and how alone he was.

Fred Craddock calls this the Gethsemane scene in John’s Gospel because there is no recording in John of Jesus praying and weeping in the garden of Gethsemane. It is here that Jesus weeps and shakes with dread over his own approaching death. He knows this next miracle, this last sign, will be the deed that seals his fate.

As the crowd saw him weeping, some of them said, “See how he loved him so.”

Then Jesus says, “Take away the stone.”

Martha objects, “Lord, no. By this time his body will have begun to decay and there will be a stench.” The authorized King James Version poetically states, “Lord, he stinketh.”

That gets to the point, doesn’t it. Death stinks. Be it a 26 year old, an 84 year old, or any age, death hurts.

But Jesus says, “Did I not tell you that if you believe you would see the glory of God? Take away the stone.”

Have you noticed that everyone in this story is focused on preventing death, just like most of us, but Jesus is focused on outliving it!

They take away the stone. Jesus prays for their ability to believe. And then after the prayer he lifts a cry. It was like a war cry that attacked death’s stronghold. It was like an exultant roar calling forth life: “Lazarus, come out!”

And Lazarus does. He comes out from the tomb, grave clothes fluttering about his body.

And Jesus says to the onlookers, “Unbind him and set him free.”

Lazarus walks out of the grave, but he’s still wearing his grave clothes. Even though he is alive, he is still bound by the trappings of death.

Jesus’ call to unbind him and let him go is another kind of Resurrection and Life. It is a call to break free from the dark tomb of death that pervades your very being. Being alive, merely existing, isn’t enough. We must be unbound and loosed from all that is killing us. And that’s a kind of resurrection that can happen today. A new creation can be born amidst the old creation. A new creature inside this human body.

The journey to Easter’s Resurrection requires that we walk through a graveyard before we arrive at the empty tomb. There must be a dying before there can be a rising:

A dying of the false self with all its false and compulsive desires.
A dying of the proud self that thinks it can live without God.
A dying of the sinful self, trapped in the cycle and web of sin.
A dying of the hopeless self, afraid to hope, bound in despair.

What kind of death and resurrection do you need this Holy Week?

We would no doubt prefer a God who would rescue us from death, especially when death comes way too soon. But what we have instead is a God who resurrects from the dead, working through death instead of around it - creating life in the midst of grief, creating love in the midst of loss, creating faith in the midst of despair - a God who wants us to know that the only road to Easter morning runs smack through the darkness and death of Good Friday.

Whatever Good Friday grief you’re living through right now, whatever tomb you feel may be closing in upon you, whatever spiritual dryness or physical death may threaten you, there is One who walks with you who is Resurrection and Life. And he calls you to trust him this day and to know in your heart of hearts that the words will sound for you as they did for Lazarus. The voice of Jesus will call out to our valley of dry bones, “Rise and come out! It’s the day of resurrection.” And God will breath into us the breath of life. It can happen even on this side of the grave.

For Jesus said to a grieving Martha, “I AM the Resurrection and the Life.” Not “I will be” but “I am” - right here, right now and forevermore. Trust that good news. There is a power loose in the world that is stronger than death, stronger even than our fear of death. It is the power to carry us through this week and lead us through the graveyard and out the other side.