Showing His Scars

 Happy Easter!

Did you know that the Risen Christ appeared in the dark, at night?

A few nights ago, JD heard that a man had tried to kill a police officer and was now on the loose in Jacksonville.  We locked all the doors to our house and let our black lab loose because she is great at barking when strangers come to the door. I wasnt really scared but I was a bit nervous.

That's what we do at night.  We shut our doors, lock them and then turn on inside lights. We try to shove away the darkness or sleep through it. 

The disciples locked the doors of the house where they were staying in Jerusalem because they were afraid that the Jews might just come by and arrest them. They were truly scared.  Jesus had been arrested at night and look what had happened to him.  Doors locked, check.

Then the Risen Christ appeared.  He couldn't be kept out. Christ does not let shut doors stop him. Nothing that we say or do can stop the Risen Christ from coming to us if he wants to. I think that he comes to us all the time.

When the Risen Christ appears, the first thing he does is say, "Peace be with you." Another way of saying this is "Don't be afraid," for peace is the opposite of fear.  He wanted us to be at peace the way we were once in Eden, at peace and not afraid.  He wanted us to not need to hide any longer.

And then, to help us not be afraid, Jesus did something so intimate and so odd.  He showed the disciples his hands and his side.  These were the places where he had been hurt.  Nails had been hammered through his hands. His side had been pierced with a sword.  And the first thing he did was to show the disciples his wounds.

As many of you know, I grew up in an old New England family where the common practice was to recount your accomplishments every year at the family reunion.  My grandmother would ask, without flinching, "What have you done this year, dearies?"  We were expected to recount degrees, awards, jobs, travel and other impressive activities.  It was like a competition.  The one who gets into the most prestigious college wins.  The one with the most money wins.  The one with the most accolades wins.  It was a boasting fest, but underneath it all was this terrible insecurity that comes from not really knowing if you are truly loved.

When I was thirteen, I was invited to a Christian retreat for all ages.  It took place at a boarding school in New England.  People came from all over the country and met in small groups called families.  And something happened in those family groups that I had never experienced before. Instead of telling each other how great we were, we talked about our pain.  And this was with grown ups.  A man in his twenties (who seemed old at the time to me) cried because he was afraid to go back to graduate school and all he wanted to do was to become a teacher. A woman was struggling with depression and could not stop crying.  

In the course of one week, I felt that I knew these people in ways that I had never known another human being before. They opened their hearts to each other and to me.  I found them beautiful and complex and full of wonder.  And, best of all, I began to understand that my own struggles and insecurities were not crazy at all, they were what made me who I am.

There is a scene in the movie About Time when a mother meets her son's new love.  Instead of trying to impress each other, the mother asks the young woman, "What are your worst faults?"  At first, the young lady looks started, but she answers with candor. She says, "I can be incredibly insecure...." The mother smiles and says, "Yes, cant we all?" 

She says, "I have a terrible temper at times."

The mother says, "Well, how else can we get them to do what we want?"

The young woman says, "I have a weakness for your son."

And the mother says, "So do I, but lets not tell him..." And she smiles.

In just five minutes, these two women not only met but began to love each other.  Because they shared their wounds.

We all want so badly to be happy and to have it all together, but it is our pain that marks us.  It is our struggles that shape us into the people we are.  When Christ came back, he wanted us to no longer be afraid.  He wanted us to trust him and so he showed us his wounds.

And the most incredible thing to me is that Jesus brought his wounds with him into the resurrection life.  The scars, which can be so ugly, were not covered over or erased in heaven.  They were marks of his own identity.  He brought himself to resurrection.  That is how Thomas knows him, by his wounds.

Don't shut your doors to one another.  Don't pretend that you have it all together, that you are happy all the time and never struggle.  We scare one another when we pretend like that.  Instead, open the doors to your heart and share with others who you truly are, your struggles as well as your joy. Tell them about your grief, your loneliness, your wish that things could have turned out differently.  We cannot see Christ in one another if we are always pretending to be perfect.  The Risen Christ did not return perfect.  He returned scarred.  And he was so beautiful.

Easter and the Heart of a Child

My son Max has fears at night.  I talked to him about mentioning his fears to you this morning.  I told him that I didnt have to share them with you. "Will it only be at the six o'clock service?" he asked.  "Yes," I answered.  "Well, that is OK," he said. "It will be mostly grown-ups and they must be really nice and really believe in God if they get up so early, so they wont make fun of me."

So please consider yourselves among the select few that Max has allowed to know about his fears. 

Max is nine. He alone of my three boys gets afraid at night. He hates to be alone in the dark.  We have tried everything: lighting candles, handling rosaries, singing songs and praying, but when he is alone in the dark, he gets really and truly afraid.

"What are you afraid of?" I asked.

"I am not sure...monsters...maybe...I dont know..." His fears are so primal, so serious and old that he cannot even verbalize them. The only thing that seems to help is when I come and sleep under his bunk bed. 

Do you remember the song The Servant Song?  There is this beautiful verse that reads, "I will hold the Christ light for you, in the night-time of your fear."

The resurrection is something that cannot be explained with rational words. So for thousands of years, Christians have reinacted this ancient service called the Easter Vigil as a way of showing what resurrection is.  The Easter Vigil used to go on all night.  It begins in the dark, in the place of all of our fears.  And in that darkness, a fire is kindled. Light comes out of the darkness, out of nothing itself, just like it did at the very beginning of creation when God said, "Let there be light."

Resurrection is light coming into the darkness. It happened when all was lost and Jesus was dead. He came back to us from out of nowhere. And he told us that there is light at the end of the dark tunnel of death, that the sun will rise again even after we die, that life cannot and will not be extinguished for those who believe.

I will hold the Christ-light for your in the night-time of your fear.

In his book, The Logic of Eternal Joy, Jerry Walls argues that the notion of heaven is dying in American culture today. Both heaven and hell are becoming obselete, he claims. No one believes in heaven anymore. We think that its a childish notion. Something that may exist but can never be rationally explained.  There is no need to prepare for something so amorphous. He writes that Americans don't believe in heaven because we are afraid that it will be boring. "Our ancestors were afraid of Hell; we are afraid of Heaven. We think it will be boring."

How could there be life after death?  How could we just go on existing?  The notion overwhelms us.  Will we sit on clouds in boring stagnation? How could God possibly make the light continue without it getting stale, old, boring?

It is true that heaven is a childish notion. It comes from the very heart of a child.  Jesus tells us that we must be like children to enter the kingdom of heaven.  For the child who is having a great time, there is no boredom in repetition. It is like the little boy, who, when bouncing on his daddy's knee, says, "Do it again! Do it again!" That is what God is like.  Every morning, when the sun rises, God says, "Do it again! Do it again!" to the sun. And every evening, God says, "Do it again! Do it again!" to the moon.  G.K. Chesterton writes, "It may be that God has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we." God is never bored, but eternally playful, eternally joyful.

Today we will baptize a man named Peter. For decades, Peter, who was a non-practicing Jew, has been wondering about baptism. For decades, he has thought about it. And on this morning, as the sun begins to rise, we will begin a new life for Peter, a new relationship with God.

Peter, this is quite literally the most radical thing you have ever done or will ever do.  A life begins today that is beyond all of our comprehending, a life that is anything but boring. And all you need to do is trust in it.  You enter heaven today.  Open your heart to the possibility that God waits for you, playfully waiting to dance with you in heaven.  The dance begins now, Peter, at this baptism.  So keep awake. Watch for signs of God's love, signs of the dance. The sun is rising and you are about to experience something totally new. This is just the beginning.

When you celebrate Easter, don't think so much about eggs or bunnies, think about the fire that is kindled in darkness, the light that comes out of nowhere.  Think about the fact that you need never be afraid again. Think of that verse, "I will hold the Christ-light for you, in the night-time of your fears."

Jesus is taking my place under Max's bunk bed, slowly but surely.  Max is realizing that Jesus is all he needs to chase away the darkness.  In fact, he has been there all along.

Hard Core Love: A Palm Sunday Sermon

Last week, I went to Richmond, Virginia to preach at St. Stephens Church.  A beautiful church, it is located in a historic neighborhood full of gorgeous homes.  The azalea bushes were just blooming and the weather was perfect. The congregation is huge, about double our size at least.  They have six services on Sunday and five full-time priests. The people are successful, hard-working, well-educated Episcopalians.  Discussion at both my Saturday workshop and Sunday forum was rich and engaging.  I could tell that they listened to my sermons.  And yet, there was something missing for me.  I missed you.  I missed my home. I missed the Cathedral.

Life here in the Urban Core is messy.  Just a few days ago, I encountered a young man who for the past year and a half has been telling me he has been given three months to live.  Deeply troubled, he suffers from schizophrenia, is chronically homeless and constantly wants to get on a bus and leave town.  He wanders in the core asking people for money and telling them that he is going to die. He smells bad and always wants to give me a hug. 

Why come here to the Cathedral?  Why come to the heart of a city that is full of homelessness, empty buildings and there isnt even a Starbucks? Why am I drawn here like a magnet?  I came to be your Dean because you were in the urban core.  Maybe its because I grew up in the inner-city of New Haven, where a gang war was going on.  I remember a lady being raped across the street from our house and my dad going out with a baseball bat at night.  I was chased by a homeless man when I was in third grade.  So why do I keep coming back?  And why do you come?

Jesus knew that something terrible would happen in the city.  He knew that his death was approaching. He rode into the city of Jerusalem with the knowledge that there was pain in front of him.  He could have stayed outside the city, roamed the Galilee, played it safe, but he didn't.  He rode into the city publicly, so that everyone could see where he was going.  He chose to come to the urban core to die.

I guess that there are many kinds of love.  There is romantic love.  There is love of life, where you find a beautiful place to live and just relish life and rest and good food.  And then there is this hard core love, the kind that propels you to go where life is hardest and do your best to help.  Mother Theresa had that kind of love when she went to Calcutta to work with the poorest of the poor.  She knew it would be hard.  She knew that she would die doing it.  And she knew, like Jesus did, that resurrection would be found on the other side.

In the Old Testament, cities are hubs of sin and suffering. Adam and Eve were originally created to live in a perfect garden.  But after the fall, after their son Cain murdered his brother Abel the first thing that Cain did was to build a city. The city was the antithesis of Eden, full of sin and darkness.  From that point on, cities are places that anger God. The people of the city of Babel tried to build a tower to touch God and this made God angry so God destroyed that city. Sodom was almost destroyed for its sin.  But Jesus changed everything when he came because he loved the city. He would sit on a hill above walls of Jerusalem and cry for its people.  For Jesus too, the city was a nexus of all that was wrong with humanity, but he chose to enter into it and suffer inside it.  Jesus died in the city for us and that changed everything.

I find it incredibly important that, in the book of Revelation, a picture of heaven itself is painted and heaven does not look like a garden.  Heaven looks like a city, a city perfected and redeemed by God, with streets of gold, where God himself is king.

There is no doubt that, in the Bible, redemption occurs in and through the city. The book of revelation does not talk about the salvation of just one soul.  It is the entire city of Jerusalem that is saved. There is no salvation without the salvation of the city.

 Jesus chose to ride into town and face the music.  He moved through agony itself only to bring us life on the other side. Now that is hard-core love. That is love at the core.  Somehow, the cross has always been most present in the city. And if you are the kind of hard core Christian that does not avoid the cross but understands that Easter can only be found by facing the cross and moving through it, then eventually you too will end up serving God in the urban core. Because here life is hardest.

Who are we?  We are a people who follow Jesus into the heart of the city.  We love at the core. We find that resurrection is only possible when we look at the cross itself, when we follow Jesus into the city and seek to love God there. Thank you for being here with me.