Let's Go Fly A Kite (for Christ!)

Genesis 1:1-5; John 20:19-31

            Several weeks later and I still chuckle as I recall the sight.    There, in our backyard, were two Ivy-league educated grown men running to and fro, trying best they could to get a new kite to fly.   They had smartly followed the instructions.  It was obviously well constructed.   But no matter which way and angle and slope they ran together, the kite wasn’t exactly cooperating.   What a sight.  And me standing around desperately hoping we had cleaned up well enough after our dog, Dinah.  The two men were my father-in-law, a retired Christian ethics professor, and my brother-in-law, an engineer.  The kite belonged to my step-son, Crosby, who seemed quite content to let these two relatives have their fun.  I, of course, was snapping live-action digital photos of the whole amusing family moment.

            Have you ever been part of a scene like this?   If there had been more family around, I’m pretty sure they would have also band together to try and get the kite to fly.   I find this happens … when one or two folks can’t get the right amount of uplift to happen, others join in to help out.  But here’s the thing about uplift -- it always needs just the right amount of wind. 

            Our lesson from the Gospel of John reminds us of how grounded the disciples of Jesus felt immediately after the crucifixion.  Everything they’d hoped for, all the sacrifices they’d made to engineer a divinely revolutionary movement, had come crashing down.  They’d failed and betrayed themselves.  They’d failed and betrayed Jesus.  They were afraid of the same fate.  They were in hiding.   All the wind had been knocked out of them.

            And then their risen Lord suddenly, mysteriously appeared in their midst, despite the fact that the door to where they had gathered was locked as tight at their hearts at that time.   Standing in the very center of their grave fear and shame, their sacred mentor and Savior said, “Peace be with you.”   For them, these were powerfully familiar words of healing, harmony and security.   Jesus had previously given this word of peace to a woman he’d healed after she had demonstrated faith by reaching out to touch the hem of his cloak, after making only the slightest bit of trusting contact (Mark 5:34).   These are also the same words he instructed his disciples and seventy others to speak when entering people’s homes while on their mission (Luke 10).  The fallen followers in that room, then, knew this was not just a call of comfort.  It was a call to action.   

            To give them further uplift during this time when getting the Messianic movement back off the ground and out the door felt impossible, the risen Lord breathed upon them.   Resurrection respiration.  Holy wind.  The same wind that blew at the very beginning of this world’s creation. The same wind that the Creator cast into the nostrils of the first human.  Everything about this wind, this breath of God, is about perfect life.   The disciples may have felt like doubting, likely soon to be dead ducks … but Jesus’ return freshly stirred and purified the air around them.  It gave them Almighty oxygen for their suffocating circumstances.   And it is the same life-resurrecting, faith-confirming breath of Christ that fell afresh on the doubts of Thomas.  

            Powerfully lifting up and energizing people is what Jesus’ movement is all about.   Everything he taught by word and example is the opposite of an oppressive force.   It’s all about release from the sin that constantly blows us down, keep us from ever soaring with the love and hope and peace of our Savior.   When folks are falling and failing, be it in body or in spirit, we are called into action to support one another.   We are called to symbolically come together and run with the Holy Spirit so our lives are like flying faithful kites for Christ.   

            Did anybody follow as this year’s Boston Marathon unfolded just a couple of weeks ago?   I know we all did during last year’s horrific tragedy.   Blessedly, this year brought about some truly inspirational stories.  The one that most moved me (and many others) was a photo and a video I saw online, followed by my reading the related story on the Washington Post website.[i]  

            The uplifting moments of which I speak happened after all of the elite runners had long finished the race.   The middle of the pack qualifiers followed next in line.  One of them, a man from Massachusetts who’d run nearly twenty-six miles, passed by the Forum Restaurant.  This was the site of where one of the two bombs exploded last year.   And when this man passed by, it happened to about 3 P.M, the same time as the tragedy.   Blessedly, the only bad thing to happen at that point on Boylston Street this year was that this competitor’s legs were totally giving out.   He was actually one of many who suffered the same, but it’s what happened next that helps this story really takes flight …

            Not far behind him was an Illinois man named Dave Meyer.   Later recalling for the press what he experienced, he said, “I made the turn onto Boylston Street, I looked up and saw the finish line and I thought: Thank the Lord. I was just focused on getting there and getting some water.   I could see the other runner in front of me, his legs were wobbly. He looked like he was about to go down.  At that point, my time didn’t make any difference to me … I knew how important it was that I finish. So I knew it was important that he finish.”[ii]    So he caught up and took upon his shoulder the almost lame man’s arm.   But the weight of this lift was too much for two exhausted individuals.   They would have collapsed together were it not for a veteran marathoner from Texas named Jim Grove.   He joined the support with the little strength he had left.   In great pain and silence, the three men progressed toward the finish line.   That’s when the Massachusetts man’s legs totally quit.    Seconds later, a Minnesotan man named Mike and a Seattle accountant named Kathy offered their help.    All of the injured man had at that point been lifted above the pavement.  As the five of them passed by the crowds, they were showered with triumphant cheers.  Buoyed by it all, the man being carried by these sudden teammates gave a shout just before the edge of the finish line – “Let me walk it.  Let me walk across the finish line.  I need to finish.”   They made the collective decision to put him down.   Each one of them was able to then complete the race individually.  These five athletes of the 118th Boston Marathon quickly became an international symbol of perseverance and hope.

            They could have stayed away from this epic event — they could have let hate, terrorism, fear and violence keep them locked behind safe doors.  They could have said evil wins.  But the love of running as well as compassion for the pain of others from last year’s bombing inspired them to stand up and go — and in going out and getting back into the race they told the world that together they were stronger.  “Run as One,” “Boston Strong,” and “Everyone Finishes the Race” ... these were this year’s Boston Marathon slogans.  It was no longer every runner for themselves; it was no longer just about the best time.   This is what Easter does for those of us who run the race of life as Christians.  It’s been run.  Our Lord has won it … for us.   It’s about our strength and unity through the victor Jesus Christ.  We are “One in the Spirit,” “We are the Body of Christ,” “We Will Lift Each Other Up” … these are our Easter slogans.

            I’ll add one more slogan to this – “Let go fly a kite … for Christ!”   Let’s be sure to keep focusing our time and energy on lifting up one another as well as all our neighbors near and far.   Let’s keep doing so through prayers for whatever is weighing folks down.   Let’s keep doing so through practical actions that provide much needed support.   Let’s keep doing so by faithfully welcoming the fresh stirrings and refreshing breezes of the Holy Spirit.    May our every breath be filled with resurrection respiration!  Amen.  

             

             

           

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[i] http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/04/22/the-story-behind-that-boston-marathon-photo-of-runners-carrying-a-competitor-toward-the-finish/

[ii] Read more at: http://nesn.com/2014/04/how-boston-marathoners-carried-collapsed-runner-toward-finish-line/

Faith On Our Foreheads

Psalm 1, Revelation 22:1-5

                During worship one Easter morning, a fellow pastor sat down on the chancel steps with a group of children to offer a special message just for them.    She started their time together by asking, “What do we celebrate today?"  One of the kids happily replied, "It's when Jesus rides around the world on a sleigh giving gifts to good children?"  "No," said the pastor, "You are thinking about Santa Claus and Christmas."  A different child piped up, "It's when Jesus flies around shooting arrows at people so they'll fall in love?" "No," came the reply, "You are thinking of Cupid and Valentine's Day."  The pastor was almost afraid to call on the next child raising her hand.  But this child said, "It's when Jesus died on the cross. They buried him in the tomb. And then Jesus arose from the dead."   The pastor smiled with enthusiasm for this faithful answer and with relief that she didn’t have to talk about leprechauns and lucky green clovers.  “Yes, that’s the right answer to what we celebrate today!  Thank you!”  But the girl’s hand shot right back up as she blurted out, "Oh, and pastor, I forgot to say that if Jesus sees his shadow today we'll have 6 more weeks of winter."

                Oh, so close!   What a shame.  Especially since the fully faithful answer was written on the forehead of every child sitting there, the answer revealing that Easter is about being released from sin and death to be fully and newly alive with God.  It wasn’t physically written there, of course, as if with permanent marker.  Or, at least I hope not.   That would lead to some serious questions about Sunday School best practices!   I mean that if anyone of any age is seeking to answer the question about what is celebrated on Easter, they need only look at one another’s foreheads and be reminded.  In doing so, a fresh remembrance about the deep and practical meaning of baptism should always be found.

                In our Presbyterian tradition, a sacrament is an earthly sign associated with a promise from God (John Calvin).   There’s really nothing quite as earthly as water.   About 71% of this world’s surface is water covered.  Add to this the water that exists in the air as water vapor, the water in the ground as moisture, and the water that’s within each of us.  About 55-60% of our bodies are made of water.   So, as a sign of God’s intimate connection with us and this whole world, water is symbolically quite perfect.

                The amount of water used in the sacrament of baptism is not as important as understanding the spiritually symbolic mark it leaves upon us forever.  As we just experienced a few beautiful minutes ago, I use very little water.    And while I wasn’t trained to do this, it’s a matter of personal preference that I always make the sign of the cross with the water after naming the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  I do so while declaring the traditional language about how the person being baptized, be they two, twenty or many decades old, has been “signed and sealed as Christ’s own, forever.”   In this way I remember, and help us all to remember, that baptism is “the sign of the birth that is not of flesh and blood but that comes as a gift [from Christ].”  

                By the sacred signpost of our baptisms, we locate ourselves.  We identify how and where we are truly alive.   Biblically speaking, we find ourselves living “between the river of Eden and the river of the heavenly city.”   We are not “wandering aimlessly” but moving from one to the other” because “God has a purpose, and pursues it relentlessly.  In this assurance we have hope and life.  In the water of baptism, God sets before us both the start and the conclusion of the divine story, thus revealing the purpose of this movement from creation to consummation.”[i]   

                The purpose, of course, is the promise of Easter.  It is the almighty, liberating, life-affirming power of our Lord in action.  We who are baptized into the life and the death of Christ share in new life with Him through His resurrection.   This new life is shared on earth as it is in heaven.   Baptism is not, therefore, just a blessed assurance of eternal life.    It’s the here and now, deeply personal, daily influence that inspires us to live into our release from the destructive power of sin that’s been freely gifted to us by our Lord.   It’s about constant spiritual cleansing through the Holy Spirit.  It’s about being Jesus’ disciples in our homes, in the company of friends, in our places of education and vocation, and most especially through active participation in congregational community.

                The profound and practical power of baptism is stunningly, symbolically depicted throughout the Bible.   We see it as bright, clear crystal waters.   These pristine waters stream through the center of our lives, splashing and cleansing us all day long, all this life long and on into eternal life.   They wash away the ash marks of our sin so we can see our common identity in Christ indelibly imprinted upon us.

                When we daily pay attention to the flow of this crystal bright, cleansing river of life, we can’t help but delight in the Lord.   And as Psalm 1 teaches, we then consciously choose to live into all the ways we are being deeply nourished and sustained by the promise of Easter.  As the Holy Spirit streams this Good News through the world-wide community of Jesus’ disciples, they cease acting hostility toward God and one another.   They grow to bear God’s good fruit.  This produces healing for all people.   As bearers, we see the radiant, resurrected, life-restoring face of Christ everywhere.                  

                There’s a great song about this written and performed by a favorite Christian artist of mine named Chris Rice.  It’s called, sensibly enough, “The Face of Christ.”    His musical style is catchy folk very similar to the style of James Taylor and David Wilcox.   And most all of his lyrics and tunes are hauntingly beautiful.   In this song, this baptized brother in the faith sings about spending time with a homeless person and a person in prison.  He does so to illustrate the words of this chorus -- “How did I find myself in a better place? I can’t look down on the other guy’s face, cause when I stoop down low, look him square in the eye, I get a funny feeling, I just might be dealing, with the face of Christ.”     This realization, of course, leads to learning to love selflessly and sacrificially, to truly loving our neighbors as we ourselves want to be loved.

                All fruit holds seed.  And so “As our lives are lived out for Christ” bearing good fruit, “the seed of the Gospel is “released into the world so that it will land on others, prayerfully taking root.[ii]    By faithfully being together as individuals and families in worship, study and service, we keep ourselves rooted and grounded in Christ.    This is why it’s vitally important to be part of a church community.   Every congregation is a Gospel grove!  And thus a place of secure spiritual growth for many generations of family.  Just look at all the good fruit in this place!

                Devotional writer Gerald Whetstone reminds us exactly how being in a Gospel grove gives us strength for our entire life journey.   He does so in a way I can really relate to, since I’ve been blessed to stand amidst the giant redwoods found in Muir Woods National Park in Marin County, CA.    Anyone else here been there?    We would expect that these magnificent trees would have a very deep root system.   I can’t imagine trees that are 200 to 300 plus feet tall would be loosely anchored.   Yet it turns out they actually have a rather shallow root system.    So how do they stand so big and strong for very many years?   They grow in groves – “Each tree intertwines its roots with the others, giving them tremendous strength.”   

                Much the same, we should never live a solitary life as baptized disciples of Jesus Christ.   The good fruit spoken of in Psalm 1 -- the good fruit of happiness, of not following the advice of anything hostile to God, of meditating day and night with delight in the Lord – is best achieved within faithful community intertwined by the common root of Christ’s love.   To put this in the more formal way I studied some twenty years ago, “Because baptism is incorporation into Christ’s church, it is inescapably a corporate rite.  Baptism without a congregation present is a bit like a wedding at which only one of the prospective marriage partners arrives.”[iii]

                Praise God, we aren’t going to have six more weeks of winter.  It’s going to rain a lot, I’m sure, but welcome the wet upon your foreheads.  Be reminded of your baptisms.    And don’t fret if you see shadows.  This is actually a good thing, a sign of new life always springing forth, for it means we are standing in our Lord’s light.   Amen!

                 

                               

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[i] Laurence Hull Stookey, Baptism: Christ’s Act in the Church, pp. 16-18

[ii] http://home.pausetoponder.org/liketree.htm

[iii] Stookey, p. 69

Holy, Forgiven

Psalm 32; John 20:1-10

Easter 2014

            With great humility, love and joy I have wonderfully good news to share with you all this morning.   It’s the good news of why we are faithfully gathered this hour.  It’s the good news that forever forms and reforms us as Christians.   It is quite simply, yet also profoundly, this – in Jesus Christ you are wholly forgiven!

               You are totally and completely forgiven of the sin you spiritually inherited as part of the human race.   You are forgiven for worshipping false gods, for living in self-righteousness, for failing to daily demonstrate what you faithfully profess.    You are forgiven of that which you feel convinced you can never forgive about yourself or about another person.   Every aspect of sin’s rebellious influence on your heart and mind and unique soul has been ultimately covered and conquered by the amazing grace and endless love of God in Jesus Christ.   You are wholly forgiven, and thus, you are called upon to live a holier life after the example of our Lord.

            This blessed gift of forgiveness did not at all come about according to our understanding of “fair play.”   We can thank Shakespeare for first putting the words “fair” and “play” together in print.   It was used to convey a courteous rapport between opponents in a confrontation.   It went on to influence the rules of conduct expected of Medieval Knights.  They were, for example, never to attack an unarmed enemy or the weak and innocent.   

            It suffices to say that what the powers of the Roman Empire and the Jewish Temple did together to Jesus of Nazareth was not fair play.   He had not led an armed rebellion.   He had fulfilled, not forsaken, the ancient laws of Israel.   Yet he was arrested and did not get any kind of fair trial.   And adding insult to injury, what his closest disciples did at the end of Jesus’ life was also not fair play.   They denied ever knowing him and thus sold out his message of God’s kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.   The absence of fair play led to Jesus being arrested, flogged, mocked and crucified. 

            Had you been there when they crucified our Lord, wouldn’t you have expected Him to have decried this grave injustice from the Cross?  To openly lament, dare I even say “preach” about how unfairly he’d been treated?  Don’t we all do this when we are even slightly wronged?   

            Yet there is no written record of such words.   Instead, heard from the Cross were words that convey the very heart of our Savior’s work, the very words that should be forming and reforming all aspects of our lives.  These are the words found in Luke 23:34 – “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.”    

            Didn’t know what they were doing?  Really?   It sure seems the Roman soldiers and the self-satisfied religious leaders knew what they were doing.  It sure seems their plan had gone quite perfectly.   But Jesus wasn’t referring to what they knew of their plan and how very well they had executed it.   He was referring to the fact that none of them, nor any of the disciples up to that point, had truly known God’s plan.   They had not fully understood their sin or Jesus’ identity.   Nor had they recognized that their actions were helping inaugurate the Messiah’s reign.   They’d been too lost in sin, too obsessed with their self-righteous, self-aggrandizing notion of fairness.   The only fairness they could see was to do away with the man so offensively challenging their steadfast traditions, their entrenched authority, their violently successful power plays.    

            Jesus alone knew the devastating depths of holy judgment against all the accumulated sin of humankind.   Instead of executing it according to His authority as the Son of God, he chose instead to empty himself of holy power and allow himself to be executed for it.   He sacrificed Himself for your salvation and of all humankind.   So it was that with his final breaths, and with supremely selfless love, Jesus spoke aloud of forgiving our sin.

            It’s really important to realize that this meant more than giving humankind an eternal mulligan for all that had ever been done against God.   As prominent Bible scholar N.T. Wright has pointed out, to be forgiven of sin is the same as being released from death.[i]  Jesus’ prayerful proclamation from the Cross announced that he was in the process of personally securing our release from all that causes spiritual and physical death.  And so when Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter and another disciple Jesus loved found Jesus’ tomb empty, they realized he’d risen from the death-grip of sin and the Good News became wonderfully clear – all God’s children had been wholly forgiven.   

            As Jesus’ followers, fair play goes beyond our abiding by long standing cultural rules about how to treat one another equally well.    The measuring stick for what is fair and what is unfair in all our human relationships and for God’s relationship with us is the Cross of Jesus.    As Easter people, as people who believe in the forgiveness of sin, in life beyond death and in Christ’s kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven, how are we to apply this eternal measure to our everyday lives?   Through our Lord’s ongoing saving grace and through our steadfast faith, we will do so by striving to live holier lives that above all exhibit our belief in the forgiveness of sin.   Again, this means more than absolving guilt, it means helping ourselves and others experience spiritual release from the constantly present, life-oppressing, fear-inducing and destructive power of death.    In the love of Jesus Christ, when we say “I forgive you” it’s really the same as saying “I release you to be more alive.”  

            I dearly wish this Easter Good News meant that none of us on this earthly plain would ever again have to suffer sin and its consequential spider-web ways that cause us to die a little every day.   I wish our holy release was complete, that we all were not stuck waiting for a final culmination when our Lord comes again in glory.    We are in the great company of every Christian in the world over the past couple thousand years on this count.   

            What I believe can help us all is to feel a kinship with the earliest followers of Christ.  Theirs was a very pregnant expectation of the Risen Lord’s return.  But time passed on and on.   Rather than growing in disappointment and resentment, instead of daily decrying that the delay just wasn’t fair, they instead kept striving to live holier lives.   They kept increasing their faithful trust in the Holy Spirit driven, living and liberating presence of the Risen Lord.   They perhaps realized, as I encourage us all to do today as well, that’s God’s eternity can’t be measure by our sense of time and that Jesus Christ is indeed the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13:8).  Indeed, as the Psalm 90 declares, a thousand years in God’s sight are like a day just gone by.   

            And those first church members understood that being forgiven, released from sin and it’s ultimate consequence of death, was about more than just getting “individual sinners right with God.”  They understood Easter as a “whole way of life, the new covenant way of life in which the restoration which God offered to all who believed in Jesus was to characterize families and communities, worldviews and life-paths.”   When coming upon “anything amiss in human relations or society” they expected one another to “move heaven and earth to put it right, to restore things to the way they should be.”[ii]    One of my favorite N.T. Wright quotes says it this way – “Jesus’ resurrection is the beginning of God’s new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven.”[iii]

            Practicing forgiveness as we’ve been forgiven is never easy.    We are generally more adept at holding fast to our hurt and grief, at fearing and avoiding the topic of death then accepting and feeling degrees of release from it all with faith and love.   I promise that you’ll have a front row seat to the myriad of complex human emotions and ways they can deeply complicate our relationships, especially with family, if you attend our upcoming production of the play Lost In Yonkers.  

            Yet what Marjorie Thompson in her Lenten study on the topic of forgiveness says is also most definitely true.  She declares that if we care to listen, there are countless stories of forgiveness all around us and that “we are resilient creatures, capable of throwing off shackles of bitterness and discovering more about ourselves and others over time.”   She further affirms that we can all “begin to see that rage, grief and lust for retaliation can easily trap us in a self-imposed prison of hate that corrodes our soul’s energy and peace” and that “choosing forgiveness is one of the most freeing and healing choices we can make in life.”[iv]

            Hear again the Good News that makes every single day Easter day.  He is Risen!  You are released!  In Jesus Christ we are all wholly forgiven.   May we joyfully depart from this gathering with spring in our steps, eternal hope in our hearts, a desire to be in constant worship, and eager to express our gratitude for this most holy gift of forgiveness through daily life-affirming, Lord praising words and actions.  Amen!

           

    

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[i] N.T. Wright Evil and the Justice of God, p. 90

[ii] http://ntwrightpage.com/sermons/Easter07

[iii] N.T. Wright Surprised by Hope

[iv] Marjorie Thomson Forgiveness: A Lenten Study, chapter 5