Christ Is Risen Indeed! Alleluia!

Click above to watch a recording of Sunday's Sermon

Easter Sunday

Acts 10:34-43

Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24

1 Corinthians 15:19-26

Luke 24:1-12

(The context of this sermon was 100% written in Canada by a human)

Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen Indeed!  Alleluia!

The sun has risen, the tomb has been cracked open, the world has been transformed. Seven days ago, Jesus entered Jerusalem to a cheering and then a jeering mob. Three days ago, the disciples ate their last meal together, not entirely knowing that the next day, nothing would be the same. On Good Friday, Jesus took his last breath on the cross, and his followers could feel only helpless, hopeless anger. And yet today, on this brilliant Easter Sunday, the world has changed entirely once again. Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen Indeed!  Alleluia!

Over our Lenten journey, we have been asked to consider what we might need to change in ourselves to make the gospel shine more brightly in our lives. What is broken that we might mend? What is neglected that requires our attention? What – and who- are lost that we can find?

If Good Friday is about sitting with all that change and wrestling with our anger at our own failings and those of humanity in general, then Easter morning – this morning – is about transformation. The sun set on one world and rose on another. The followers of Jesus had thought everything was over, but now they knew they had a new beginning. What of their grief, and anger --  did it just vanish? Let’s come back to that.

As human beings, we get so nervous about change. But why? Everything changes. Winter gives way to spring; elementary school becomes high school; work becomes retirement. It is inevitable.  I think we fear it because we assume that change will be hard, and we don’t like to risk not being happy. The disciples, after all, had been hearing Jesus preach every day about new life and God’s grace, and they still thought the death of Jesus was the end of the story. Yet everything happened just as it was meant to. The resurrection happened. Jesus rose from the dead. 

And yet, who is resurrected? A transformed Jesus – the same teacher and healer they know, but also formed into someone new, who had died and risen again. This is the gift we are also offered with Easter – the chance to experience a new beginning, a transformation, to let go of what we no longer want to hold on to, to carry forward what we do, and to rise up to a new day.  Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen Indeed!  Alleluia!

So what do we bring into this Easter Sunday? For many of you, I know, it is not all sunshine.  You cannot leave behind everything that grieves you or causes you sorrow. If your family is like mine, you are also carrying anger and worry about the future of our country and feelings of betrayal by our closest ally. We cannot leave all of it, nor should we want to do so. But on Easter, we are shown how we can transform it into something worthy, grace-centred, and hopeful.

Think of the women, in despair and angry, who found the tomb opened and, Jesus gone, thinking the worst had happened., In that moment it was true, and in the next, Jesus appeared to them, and they ran joyfully to tell the disciples what had happened. Think of the disciples fearfully making plans, angry at themselves for failing to save Jesus, and trying to flee, only to learn that Jesus had appeared outside the tomb. They hit the road, their courage renewed.

And yet, were they all suddenly no longer sad, no longer fearful, no longer angry? Did Easter erase all of the past and reset the day, or did it, in fact, reform the day with all the parts that remained true?

Think of us right now as a country, carrying around all that worry and anger. And yet, for me it keeps transforming. I watch my fellow Canadians buying ‘produced in Canada’ at the grocery store, and I feel inspired. I see the rallying of support online and I feel hope. I listen to a new conversation about what it means to be Canadians – that it means more than just being “not-American” and I feel better. But are my worry and anger gone? They ae not, but they are changed, because they dwell now with hope and inspiration and a sense of what is right.

We talk about Easter as a new beginning, and it is – for us. God is who God ever was; Jesus is who Jesus ever was. But with Easter, we are reminded, in human terms, with the most real-world examples, that even when we think we are alone, we are not. When things seem at an end, look ahead. When we think the stone is set, it is rolled away. Easter is a reminder that we don’t have to carry our mistakes around until they drag us into the ground. We have only to bring them to God to be transformed by forgiveness, and learn from them, and in that way they are changed into lessons from which we grow.  Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen Indeed!  Alleluia!

Now, there is a lot happening in the world, a lot we cannot control. We can spend our time worrying about the things we cannot change, or we can focus on what action we can take. The Resurrection is a powerful reminder of our choice. It was God’s work, and a moment over which we had no control. A gift given to us, like a brilliant sunset on a warm spring day after a long, dreary winter. We don’t make the sun rise, we don’t make the spring arrive, and we didn’t make the resurrection happen. And yet, just as Mary and the women realized, racing back from the open tomb, just as the disciples learned, slipping quietly out of Jerusalem, the choice is how we respond. We decide what to do with the day started by the sun, what kindness we will share, what compassion we will show. We decide to step optimistically into spring, looking for ways to serve. We decide whether to claim the Resurrection for the new start God offers.   

What does that mean in our modern upside-down world? We have a new identity, an upgrade on our old one. This version of us doesn’t save our own skins - for we are already saved. And we don't have to cover our own you-know-whats, because mistakes, as the gospel teaches us through the stories of the prodigal son and the tax collector, are the necessary learning moments of life. We need neither feel shame at our failures, nor boast about our achievements. The resurrection releases us from this. From the shame-mongering, and the one-up-man-ship, and the paralyzing self-doubt. Because we are forgiven—we are resurrected—we are free.  Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen Indeed!  Alleluia!

This is the joyful news of Easter.  The Resurrection represents the purest of freedoms. A gift given with no expectation, only the hope that we will accept it and put it to the best of use. The foundation has been laid, the sacrifice made, the grief transformed into hope. Our calling -- our only calling -- is to carry the gospel into the parts of life over which we have control – the people we love, the community where we live, the world we inhabit – to bring it to new life with each rising sun, again and again and again.  Because Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen Indeed!  Alleluia!

We are invited to stand in the shadow of the cross

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Good Friday

Psalm 22

John 18:1--19:42

(The context of this sermon was 100% written

in Canada by a human)

What must the women have been thinking, standing at the foot of the cross on that first Good Friday? Standing there on that hill in Golgotha in the shadow of a nightmare. Jesus – a man they loved, an innocent man, a great and kind man – dying on the cross above them. What must they have felt, wincing as each nail was hammered into his feet and his hands?

Surely, inflaming their shock and grief, they must have felt anger burning in their souls, the anger of those who have no power to stop an injustice they see more clearly than anyone.

What of the disciples, in their place of hiding, knowing what was happening on the hill? Their friend, their teacher, the one who had led them from their ordinary lives, was even then being murdered.

What did they feel? Certainly sorrow. Regret, I imagine, that they had not stood up and done more to save him. Hate, for those carrying out this crime. Helplessness that they could not change it.

And anger, surely, the helpless anger, of those who, having failed to act, must now watch a great friend die, and know they cannot stop it.

And what of the mob, so ravenous to see Jesus on the cross? So quickly switched from cheering to jeering. What would they have been feeling? Perhaps a doubt, creeping in. Perhaps a conscience, whispering too softly to be heard. Most certainly anger, the kind that spews forth when we feel threatened, when we are afraid, when we have been fooled by misinformation, when we are offered an innocent man and told he is not innocent at all, and we believe it because we want to, because this anger – this anger that says “I didn’t get what I deserved” feels so much better than shame.

Let us consider these three angers: helplessness, powerlessness, misguidedness. Have we not felt them all? The anger of the women on the hill when they see what needs to be fixed and yet have no power to fix it; the anger that makes us want to scream -- at life, at God, at anyone -- to stop what cannot be stopped. Have we not felt this as well? The anger of the disciples that cries out in the pain of regret, with rage at what cannot be changed. This anger says, “I am sorry. I did not know.” This anger turns backward upon us, because, like the disciples, we always did know. And who among us can claim never to have been swept up in a mob, raging selfishly for someone else to suffer for a problem we caused or did not prevent or are not prepared to pay the cost of to fight today? This anger says: “You need to pay for doing this to me.” This anger avoids responsibility. This anger drowns out the shame.

These angers exist in our past, our present, and our future. They visit us when we are sitting while a loved one wastes away from a terrible disease that cannot be cured. While watching a family member walk out of our lives who we cannot bring back. History has been a long and weary witness to anger – those unable to save their family being marched off to the ovens in the Holocaust; the victims of racism who have been enslaved by violence and bigotry; the mob that flings its rage out in selfishness and cruelty and turns it back on the harm it causes.

What could Good Friday possibly teach us about what to do with our helpless, or shameful, or selfish anger? Good Friday didn’t work out. Pontius Pilate didn’t find some hidden decency and courage inside himself and set Jesus free. The mob didn’t recognize their own hate, and stop; no, they just kept yelling, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” No sympathetic Roman guard spirited Jesus to safety. No miracle from heaven lifted him off the cross. None of that happened. Jesus died an ugly, painful death. He died nailed to a cross so that he could not even be comforted with a kind touch. On that cross, in the midst of his own doubt and helpless anger, he asked for our forgiveness, at the very time we should have been asking for his. What should we do with that? Where should we take the helpless anger?

Good Friday is the darkest day of our faith: it takes us into the valley of death and makes us complicit in what happens there. It forces us to look at the cruelty and weakness of humanity and see ourselves in that same mob. It teaches us life’s hardest lesson: sometimes, here on earth, good people fall, and nobody picks them up. So we stand in the shadow of the cross and we feel that powerless, guilt-ridden, vengeful anger, and think “What is the point of anything?”

And yet, we know the answer. For Jesus taught us. He taught us when he defended the vulnerable, when he chastised the Pharisees, when he trashed the temple. He taught us that we can be angry, but only for the right reasons, only for other people, only if we use that anger to change the world, only if we wrap it in compassion and tolerance and mercy, and temper it with mindful prayer.

Anger, as Jesus taught, is not useful when it distorts the truth and conceals solutions for its own purposes. When we feel that fierce cry within us that something is wrong, we can bring it to God, who can bear all things. And our anger, once helpless and paralyzing, can become something righteous, and motivating.

And we will see, as the women at the cross will see, that if we could not save the ones we loved, we can still save the gospel in their memory. We will see, as the disciples see, that we can create something honorable from guilt.

We have our very own example today, standing guard in this time of betrayal and friendship broken by our closest ally. We feel helpless to change a government we didn’t elect and can’t control. We feel guilty, perhaps, that we did not think about protecting the values and sovereignty and economy of our own country long before it was under threat. We feel rage, the kind that wants to boo the anthem of the opposing team, even at a kid’s hockey game.

How will we transform that anger into something better?

First, we must own and carry the weight of it. This is what today is meant for. We are invited to stand in the shadow of the cross. To feel all that pain. To own all that anger. To ponder it in our hearts. And to lay it before the cross, to ask God to help us carry it, awaiting the certain answer to guide us forward. Amen.

Why is this night different?

Click above to watch a recording of Maundy Thursday's Sermon

Maundy Thursday

John 13

(The context of this sermon was 100% written

in Canada by a human)

In Jewish culture, a child asks four questions on the Feast of the Passover. These questions provide the impetus for answering the bigger question: “Why is this night different from all other nights?” Jewish people throughout the world retell the story of the Exodus and celebrate the escape of their ancestors from slavery in Egypt. It is a time when they “tell the story to their children, and their children, and their children’s children, so that everyone will know” how God acted in human history to bring freedom to their oppressed forebears.

They tell of the gruesome, bloody death that swept over Egypt. The people of God ran for their lives under the fire and cloud of God’s own protection, with Egyptian soldiers hot on their heels. They remember the waters that miraculously parted to ensure people’s safe passage out of Egypt, and then reconnected to stop their pursuers. The parting of the Red Sea is a story we have all grown up with, a powerful tale of God’s act of intervention.

Now we move ahead, much farther in our faith stories. The baby born in the stable has become a man, the teacher has shared his lesson, the healer has delivered compassion, the rabbi has inspired faith, the devil has been outwitted, and now the journey has come here, to the open gates of Jerusalem and inside.

And again, we ask the same question: “Why is this night different from all other nights?”

On this night, we find the disciples and Jesus alone in a room, eating what will be their last supper together. And we will know there is a betrayer in the room. We will see Jesus bless the food and the wine and enjoy the company of his friends. And we will watch him kneel before them and wash their feet, an act of the ever-loving servant leader as the sun sets and night comes on.

On this night we talk about Jesus’s commandment to love, as we consider the models that he left us. We remember how he took old, familiar things and gave them new meanings for the first time. Foot-washing had simply been a kindness to barefooted travelers after walking for hours on hot sand.

But on this particular Passover night, it became a symbol of love expressed in kindness and in service to others. Recalling that the Altar represents Christ’s body, we strip it bare just as he was stripped of his clothing before he was crucified. Remembering his death on the Cross, we wash the Altar as a dead body being prepared for burial.

But unlike what happened in the Garden of Gethsemane, we do not leave him to pray alone on this night. We surround him with beauty and keep him company as we do what he did, praying for the strength to do what God asks of us as we live on, in a cruel, destructive, and pain-filled world.

“Why is this night different from all other nights?”

For generations people had seen bread and wine raised in a Sabbath blessing to a great and faithful God. But on this night, the same bread and wine became the Body and Blood of One whose death gives life. This ritual offering becomes a new act of sacrifice and redemption—the deepest expression of giving.

And the amazing thing about this gift is that it gives life without destroying life. There is no wage to be paid; there are no slaughtered bodies, no drowned souls. We gather to give thanks for the gift of a God who forgives us, restores us, and calls us to join in the creative act of “making all things new.”

And so it is that, on this night, which is so different from all other nights, we are called not only to be witnesses, not only to remember, but also to carry the touching, healing, and transforming message out into the world that God loved enough to do what had to be done.

Tonight Jesus is calling us to continue the great legacy, to keep it alive by finding new ways to wash feet and nourish bodies and give comfort to people who are in pain. Jesus is what keeps us moving forward with sponsorship and resettlement of refugees, with support for one another as Canadians in this time of trial, and by collecting for the foodbank, and all of the things we do in this place to try to make a difference in the world -to try to bring new life to it. Renewed by the presence of Jesus with us and within us, we take seriously the divine call to bring Good News, to help the hungry, the homeless, the forgotten and the lost.

“What makes this night different from all other nights?” the child asks. And the answer is: everything and, at the same time, absolutely nothing. The story is woven into our faith, but without action it is only a story. We may tell the tale of Jesus’s striving for peace and justice, but it is only words, unless we keep up the striving.

The lesson of this evening is that no matter what the world’s response may be, the wisdom of the gospel survives, the presence of Jesus persists. Let us trust this night, just as the people walking into the parted Red Sea trusted in God. Let us find courage this night, just as the disciples knew the prophecy was coming true. Let us give thanks for a Jesus who would, on this night, kneel before us and show us, for yet another time, how to serve with compassion in the world. Let us always remember the story of this night, for it is different from the days that preceeded it. But Jesus was who he always was, the teacher and healer and rabbi, caring for his flock as one day ended, and the most fateful day of his life on earth was about to begin. Amen.