Terror and Amazement
(Unbound)
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Easter B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
Mark 16:1-8
Would any of us have reacted any differently? Imagine for a few minutes what it would have been like to see your friend, your son, your beloved teacher beaten to that extreme, then nailed to a cross, and then propped up to die a terrible, agonizingly slow death.
We would have been close enough to hear the taunts of the guards, to smell the vinegar-soaked sponge offered up to him, to watch the drops of blood land in the packed, dusty earth at the foot of the cross from his wrists and feet. We would have been able to watch the spear cut into the flesh of his side and watch the blood course down his body and spread out over the place where there had just been drops drying in the dust before. And we would have watched the life literally drain out of him and heard his last cry.
Then we would have helped get the body down, wrap it in some cloth and hurried to get it to the tomb that had been provided before sundown. And that would have been it. End of story.
From that moment in the garden of Gethsemane it was pretty much a foregone conclusion what was going to happen to Jesus. He was bound – by the established procedures and the various interest groups involved – to end up dead at the other end. His fate was sealed. There was only one outcome. And it turned out exactly as any perceptive observer would have predicted. Jesus was arrested on Thursday and was dead by Friday afternoon. It just served to reinforce the idea that “that’s the way it was” for a subjugated people, a people who, for however much autonomy – freedom of self-government – they were granted, they remained under the ultimate control of an overwhelming force, a power great enough to wipe out their entire existence.
So I wonder if they had any idea of what they were starting, these women who loved Jesus and wanted to go properly prepare his body to remain in the tomb. Their lives, their hopes, their dreams had just been shattered. They were a couple of days out from having the rug pulled out from under them once again and they were making the motions necessary to begin to move on. I suspect they were in many ways accustomed to the routine of dream burial. I wonder what earlier dreams they had to lay to rest and turn to more immediate needs of their families, their children, their friends?
That they knew what came next – the bringing of the spices and oils to the tomb – would seem to be an indicator that they had been through this before. Perhaps with a brother or a sister or multiple brothers and sisters, a parent or other relatives … maybe even on a frequent basis, mortality rates being what they were in first century Roman-occupied Palestine.
There was a dreary predictability in it all. The people of Israel were bound by the power of Rome, and there was, once again, despite all the hopes they had placed on Jesus, little they could do to change the outcome. The women were bound for the tomb to repeat what they had probably done too many times in the past.
And then we get the twist in the story. Jesus dies; Jesus is laid in a tomb. A day and a night pass, Jesus is no longer in the tomb.
Of COURSE the first thought is that someone has taken the body. After all, Jesus HAD built up a following. It would stand to reason that, in order to quell any potential uprising by his followers, the body would be removed from the tomb and desecrated in some public way – either beheaded and the head displayed atop a pole at a city gate, or the body re-hung on a cross and left to rot in the sun on one of the roads into Jerusalem – as a warning to anyone who thought they might be able to incite an uprising against the Roman occupation.
That would be the way they were bound to do it. Surely. Certainly. Just as they had done with so many other rebels, rabble-rousers and supposed revolutionaries.
But there was no note from the proconsul left on the slab where Jesus had been placed saying that he had exercised eminent domain over the body. There was no seal posted at the entrance of the tomb to let family members know that they could now view the body at mile marker 3 on the road to Caesarea, northeast of Jerusalem.
Instead, there was a young man in white robes who had a message for them. And he kept it simple. You are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He’s not here. See? That’s where he WAS, right over there. Let Peter and the others know that he’ll meet you in Galilee, just like he told you.
This was the last thing they expected to see and hear. This was NOT the way things happened. You get nailed to a cross, you get a spear stuck in your side, you die, you get put in a tomb, and you STAY in a tomb. That’s just the way it GOES. There’s really no two ways about it.
But apparently, there ARE. But that third way is so far out there, so out of the ordinary, so unpredictable and scary that the reaction IS terror and amazement. How else can we respond when faced with the unimaginable?
In the resurrection, Jesus showed himself to be UNbound by mortal limitations. He DID die, but that was not the end of the story. And in the resurrection, Jesus unbinds US from OUR mortal limitations. We are no longer subject to that overwhelming force, that overpowering impulse to sin, as we were before. Sure, we’re still faced with it, and still will fall into sin, since we are accustomed to it in so many ways, but we are now, as Paul wrote, able to do all things through CHRIST who strengthens us.
What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton on Easter Sunday, 2009?
Look around this building. It is a nice structure, isn’t it? Padded pews, carpet, lights and indoor plumbing behind me here – and there IS the baptistery – we can even heat the water for you if it is cold outside. We’re able to heat and cool the air in here as well, depending on the time of year. The Fellowship hall downstairs is especially nice on those sticky hot summer days when we have committee meetings or family night suppers. The kitchen can handle a good bit of food preparation going on. It’s a bit dated, but it still serves the purpose. We’ve also got educational space – classrooms – for the different classes that meet during Sunday Morning Bible Study – Sunday School, if you will. It’d be wonderful to see us run out of room someday and find ourselves needing to add onto the building. But that wouldn’t be the reason that Jesus rose from the grave. Jesus rose from the grave to establish his body on earth in the form of his followers.
But if this all burned down tonight, guess what? Jerusalem Baptist Church would still be here. You see, it doesn’t have anything to do with a building. It doesn’t have anything to do with the bricks or the flooring or the pews or the history section downstairs, or the accumulated money in the bank under the Church account.
It has everything to do with us – you and me – the PEOPLE who call themselves members of this body of believers. The church is not and never has been about structures and organizations, associations or conventions. The church has always been about relationships; first and foremost, the relationship between the believer and Jesus, closely followed by the relationship between believers – between those who claim to be followers of Jesus. So how do we distinguish ourselves from the rest of the world?
Frederick Buechner writes in his book Listening To Your Life,
So who are we bound by? Are we bound by the dictates of the world, or are we unbound by the power of the Holy Spirit to resurrect in us a Jesus who would call us to do ridiculous, unexpected, unpredictable things in his name? Are we going to let ourselves be fenced in by the perceptions that the world says constitutes a civil religion, or are we going to consider the possibility that what God is calling us to might not be completely in sync with what the world expects of a good little country church?
I’ve been thinking a lot over the last couple of months about how things are around us. When I meet with other Pastors or other believers, there is always some comment made about how things seem to be deteriorating, and how we need to get folks back into church. Over the last few years I’ve had multiple opportunities to sit in court with someone or one family or another, and the degree to which our society is seemingly disintegrating is directly related to the degree to which we individually neglect our spiritual health. I’m not going to belabor the point that coming to church is a start. It might be or it might not be. I’ve known plenty of people who have rarely missed a Sunday school class or a worship service in their entire life, but you wouldn’t be able to tell anything from their Monday morning conversations and attitudes. I’ve known people who are so in touch with Jesus that I am drawn to them almost like a magnet, but who have not set foot in a sanctuary in years. So going or not going to church is no guarantee of outcome. We DO have to say, though, that a central aspect of the Gospel of Jesus is a call to community – to live in and with others – to support each other through times of hardship as well as plenty. And that can’t really be done effectively if you are not on some level THERE with your brother and sister believers.
And that is what sharing communion is about. Sharing the bread and the cup from one same loaf, from one same bottle, speaks to the fact that we are drawing our life as a community from one same source – Jesus Christ. But it isn’t just a statement about the source, it is a statement about the fact that it is being SHARED. Sharing the bread and the wine or the juice speaks to the call of Jesus to share our LIVES, not just a piece of baked flour and pressed grape extract. But to share ourselves in such a way that we can make a difference – not just in each others’ lives, but in the life of the world around us.
(communion)
We CAN make a difference, you know. When the women ran from the tomb and took the gospel to the disciples hiding in that upper room, and THEY in TURN waited and wondered and eventually also got he opportunity to see the risen Lord, they didn’t do it with the expectation of establishing a little country church in rural Virginia that would last 175 plus years and have nice blue padding on the pews and cream colored hymnals and red and black pew Bibles and a budget of a little over $100,000.00.
What grew out of that was an understanding that what God wanted and provided through Jesus was relationship; a relationship that was both one-on-one with each individual as well as with a group of individuals who gathered together in Jesus’ name. But they didn’t just gather together, they WORKED together, they struggled together, they uplifted each other and encouraged each other, and they held each other accountable and prayed for each other. THAT is what Jerusalem Baptist Church is and is always working towards being even MORE.
Invitation to respond.
Let’s sing together our hymn of response, ‘I Saw The Cross Of Jesus’.
(Unbound)
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Easter B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
Mark 16:1-8
1 When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. 2 And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. 3 They had been saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” 4 When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. 5 As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. 6 But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. 7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” 8 So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.
Would any of us have reacted any differently? Imagine for a few minutes what it would have been like to see your friend, your son, your beloved teacher beaten to that extreme, then nailed to a cross, and then propped up to die a terrible, agonizingly slow death.
We would have been close enough to hear the taunts of the guards, to smell the vinegar-soaked sponge offered up to him, to watch the drops of blood land in the packed, dusty earth at the foot of the cross from his wrists and feet. We would have been able to watch the spear cut into the flesh of his side and watch the blood course down his body and spread out over the place where there had just been drops drying in the dust before. And we would have watched the life literally drain out of him and heard his last cry.
Then we would have helped get the body down, wrap it in some cloth and hurried to get it to the tomb that had been provided before sundown. And that would have been it. End of story.
From that moment in the garden of Gethsemane it was pretty much a foregone conclusion what was going to happen to Jesus. He was bound – by the established procedures and the various interest groups involved – to end up dead at the other end. His fate was sealed. There was only one outcome. And it turned out exactly as any perceptive observer would have predicted. Jesus was arrested on Thursday and was dead by Friday afternoon. It just served to reinforce the idea that “that’s the way it was” for a subjugated people, a people who, for however much autonomy – freedom of self-government – they were granted, they remained under the ultimate control of an overwhelming force, a power great enough to wipe out their entire existence.
So I wonder if they had any idea of what they were starting, these women who loved Jesus and wanted to go properly prepare his body to remain in the tomb. Their lives, their hopes, their dreams had just been shattered. They were a couple of days out from having the rug pulled out from under them once again and they were making the motions necessary to begin to move on. I suspect they were in many ways accustomed to the routine of dream burial. I wonder what earlier dreams they had to lay to rest and turn to more immediate needs of their families, their children, their friends?
That they knew what came next – the bringing of the spices and oils to the tomb – would seem to be an indicator that they had been through this before. Perhaps with a brother or a sister or multiple brothers and sisters, a parent or other relatives … maybe even on a frequent basis, mortality rates being what they were in first century Roman-occupied Palestine.
There was a dreary predictability in it all. The people of Israel were bound by the power of Rome, and there was, once again, despite all the hopes they had placed on Jesus, little they could do to change the outcome. The women were bound for the tomb to repeat what they had probably done too many times in the past.
And then we get the twist in the story. Jesus dies; Jesus is laid in a tomb. A day and a night pass, Jesus is no longer in the tomb.
Of COURSE the first thought is that someone has taken the body. After all, Jesus HAD built up a following. It would stand to reason that, in order to quell any potential uprising by his followers, the body would be removed from the tomb and desecrated in some public way – either beheaded and the head displayed atop a pole at a city gate, or the body re-hung on a cross and left to rot in the sun on one of the roads into Jerusalem – as a warning to anyone who thought they might be able to incite an uprising against the Roman occupation.
That would be the way they were bound to do it. Surely. Certainly. Just as they had done with so many other rebels, rabble-rousers and supposed revolutionaries.
But there was no note from the proconsul left on the slab where Jesus had been placed saying that he had exercised eminent domain over the body. There was no seal posted at the entrance of the tomb to let family members know that they could now view the body at mile marker 3 on the road to Caesarea, northeast of Jerusalem.
Instead, there was a young man in white robes who had a message for them. And he kept it simple. You are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He’s not here. See? That’s where he WAS, right over there. Let Peter and the others know that he’ll meet you in Galilee, just like he told you.
This was the last thing they expected to see and hear. This was NOT the way things happened. You get nailed to a cross, you get a spear stuck in your side, you die, you get put in a tomb, and you STAY in a tomb. That’s just the way it GOES. There’s really no two ways about it.
But apparently, there ARE. But that third way is so far out there, so out of the ordinary, so unpredictable and scary that the reaction IS terror and amazement. How else can we respond when faced with the unimaginable?
In the resurrection, Jesus showed himself to be UNbound by mortal limitations. He DID die, but that was not the end of the story. And in the resurrection, Jesus unbinds US from OUR mortal limitations. We are no longer subject to that overwhelming force, that overpowering impulse to sin, as we were before. Sure, we’re still faced with it, and still will fall into sin, since we are accustomed to it in so many ways, but we are now, as Paul wrote, able to do all things through CHRIST who strengthens us.
What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton on Easter Sunday, 2009?
Look around this building. It is a nice structure, isn’t it? Padded pews, carpet, lights and indoor plumbing behind me here – and there IS the baptistery – we can even heat the water for you if it is cold outside. We’re able to heat and cool the air in here as well, depending on the time of year. The Fellowship hall downstairs is especially nice on those sticky hot summer days when we have committee meetings or family night suppers. The kitchen can handle a good bit of food preparation going on. It’s a bit dated, but it still serves the purpose. We’ve also got educational space – classrooms – for the different classes that meet during Sunday Morning Bible Study – Sunday School, if you will. It’d be wonderful to see us run out of room someday and find ourselves needing to add onto the building. But that wouldn’t be the reason that Jesus rose from the grave. Jesus rose from the grave to establish his body on earth in the form of his followers.
But if this all burned down tonight, guess what? Jerusalem Baptist Church would still be here. You see, it doesn’t have anything to do with a building. It doesn’t have anything to do with the bricks or the flooring or the pews or the history section downstairs, or the accumulated money in the bank under the Church account.
It has everything to do with us – you and me – the PEOPLE who call themselves members of this body of believers. The church is not and never has been about structures and organizations, associations or conventions. The church has always been about relationships; first and foremost, the relationship between the believer and Jesus, closely followed by the relationship between believers – between those who claim to be followers of Jesus. So how do we distinguish ourselves from the rest of the world?
Frederick Buechner writes in his book Listening To Your Life,
If the world is sane, then Jesus is mad as a hatter and the Last Supper is the Mad Tea Party. The world says, Mind your own business, and Jesus says, There is no such thing as your own business. The world says, Follow the wisest course and be a success, and Jesus says, Follow me and be crucified. The world says, Drive carefully---the life you save may be your own---and Jesus says, Whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
The world says, Law and order, and Jesus says, Love. The world says, Get, and Jesus says, Give. In terms of the world's sanity, Jesus is crazy as a coot, and anybody who thinks we can follow him without being a little crazy too is laboring less under a cross than under a delusion.
So who are we bound by? Are we bound by the dictates of the world, or are we unbound by the power of the Holy Spirit to resurrect in us a Jesus who would call us to do ridiculous, unexpected, unpredictable things in his name? Are we going to let ourselves be fenced in by the perceptions that the world says constitutes a civil religion, or are we going to consider the possibility that what God is calling us to might not be completely in sync with what the world expects of a good little country church?
I’ve been thinking a lot over the last couple of months about how things are around us. When I meet with other Pastors or other believers, there is always some comment made about how things seem to be deteriorating, and how we need to get folks back into church. Over the last few years I’ve had multiple opportunities to sit in court with someone or one family or another, and the degree to which our society is seemingly disintegrating is directly related to the degree to which we individually neglect our spiritual health. I’m not going to belabor the point that coming to church is a start. It might be or it might not be. I’ve known plenty of people who have rarely missed a Sunday school class or a worship service in their entire life, but you wouldn’t be able to tell anything from their Monday morning conversations and attitudes. I’ve known people who are so in touch with Jesus that I am drawn to them almost like a magnet, but who have not set foot in a sanctuary in years. So going or not going to church is no guarantee of outcome. We DO have to say, though, that a central aspect of the Gospel of Jesus is a call to community – to live in and with others – to support each other through times of hardship as well as plenty. And that can’t really be done effectively if you are not on some level THERE with your brother and sister believers.
And that is what sharing communion is about. Sharing the bread and the cup from one same loaf, from one same bottle, speaks to the fact that we are drawing our life as a community from one same source – Jesus Christ. But it isn’t just a statement about the source, it is a statement about the fact that it is being SHARED. Sharing the bread and the wine or the juice speaks to the call of Jesus to share our LIVES, not just a piece of baked flour and pressed grape extract. But to share ourselves in such a way that we can make a difference – not just in each others’ lives, but in the life of the world around us.
(communion)
We CAN make a difference, you know. When the women ran from the tomb and took the gospel to the disciples hiding in that upper room, and THEY in TURN waited and wondered and eventually also got he opportunity to see the risen Lord, they didn’t do it with the expectation of establishing a little country church in rural Virginia that would last 175 plus years and have nice blue padding on the pews and cream colored hymnals and red and black pew Bibles and a budget of a little over $100,000.00.
What grew out of that was an understanding that what God wanted and provided through Jesus was relationship; a relationship that was both one-on-one with each individual as well as with a group of individuals who gathered together in Jesus’ name. But they didn’t just gather together, they WORKED together, they struggled together, they uplifted each other and encouraged each other, and they held each other accountable and prayed for each other. THAT is what Jerusalem Baptist Church is and is always working towards being even MORE.
Invitation to respond.
Let’s sing together our hymn of response, ‘I Saw The Cross Of Jesus’.
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