Storied Grace

A sermon for the Day of the Resurrection: Easter Sunday
April 9, 2023

What is a nice Easter? A nice Easter is a day with good weather, a day the Easter bunny won’t have to dodge puddles. A nice Easter is a day when the children, somehow, almost magically, dress themselves in Easter suits and dresses. A nice Easter is a day with a good ham, good sides, good wine, good conversation, and good entertainment. A nice Easter is a day with good hymns, with a good (not-too-long) sermon, and some good flowers on the cross. A nice Easter is a day for good family photos. 

It is striking to me that our list of what makes a nice Easter can rattle on without a mention of the cross and empty tomb. And when it does mention it, let’s make it a nice conversation. Let us not dwell on blood and scourging. Let us not dwell on Mary Magdalene, with eyes so spent she cannot cry any longer. Let us not dwell on the fear of the followers hiding out, on the uncertainty of tomorrow. Let us not dwell on sneering soldiers, on self-righteous religious elites so sure they are right, on inept and violent magistrates. Let us instead think on sunshine, and flowers, and family.  

We in America domesticate Easter. We domesticate Jesus, so it should not be a surprise we domesticate the Paschal event and our participation in that great mystery. Our domestication begins in the church. 

We domesticate Easter into a self-help project. As an article in The Economist magazine put it, “History’s best comebacks, from Jesus to John Travolta: Resurrection stories help us look on the bright side of life.” Oh, look at this pretty flower, we say. It dies every year, and then one day, it pops up again, and looks real pretty. And that’s what Jesus is like. And that’s what we are like, if we work hard, if we try hard, if we find the silver lining and don’t give up, if we all hold hands around the world and sing together. Happy Easter! 

We domesticate it to a socio-political strategy. We say, if you think like me, if you look like me, if you vote like me, if you agree with me, then maybe the cross and resurrection can mean something to you. But you have to be like me, and my group, and my party, and my friends, or it doesn’t work. And once we, the true Christians come together and have real political power, we can make things look how we want them to look. Happy Easter! 

Enough already. If Easter is about flowers and becoming pretty people, I don’t have time for it. If Easter is about making people think like us, look like us, vote like us, so we can have political power, I don’t have time for it. If Easter is about us and what we do instead of about God and unmerited grace, I don’t have time for it. Fire me now, because I need to find something better to do. Thankfully, all of that is not what the cross and resurrection are about. Those are cheap knock-offs, domestications. I’m only interested in the real thing. I hope you are, too. 

Let’s not water it down. Here’s the cross and resurrection, neat: God in Christ has come into the world to save us from the power of sin and death, from which we can never escape on our own. Christ, perfect God and perfect man, died on the cross for us. Christ, perfect God and perfect man, was raised by the Father on the third day. This is a historical fact. And because Christ has done that, sin and death have lost their power. We are free. We are free from striving; we are free from shame; we are free from bondage to our past. Through Christ, we can be with God forever in a transformed life of love. That transformed, eternal life starts right now, and it looks like loving God and those around us, especially the most vulnerable who are easy targets and easily forgotten. It looks like serving a different and truer reality: the kingdom of God. 

Jesus Christ isn’t a life coach, nor is he a political mascot. He is the Son of God, crucified and risen. And because of that, it is worth giving up everything to follow him as our Savior, our Lord, our friend. 

My sisters and brothers, we must refuse to domesticate the cross and the resurrection. We must see the death and resurrection of the Son of God for what it is: A universe-altering, earth-rattling, foundation-shaking, God-driven event whose particularity has eclipsed universality, with power extending not for a single moment only, not even from the year 0 AD onward, but echoing throughout the caverns of time and eternity. Its power extends not just to a select few, not just to you and me, not just to people we like, but to all people everywhere. And it changes us. If we live in this mystery, we are really changed by love to love. We must refuse to domesticate the cosmic implications of this event. We must refuse to domesticate the personal and communal transformative possibilities we have because of this event. The universe is different now, so we can be different now and our world can be different now. We must refuse to domesticate the grace and power of God. 

I won’t wish you a nice Easter. And if I go on autopilot and tell you ‘happy Easter,’ please know that I do not mean it. No, the only thing I can wish is for all of us to have a real Easter: an Easter imbued with the radical grace of God; an Easter that changes time and eternity; an Easter that grabs us by the collars and catapults us from our graves of sin and death and into the new life of Christ; an Easter that transforms the way we see ourselves, the way we live in the world, the way we love our neighbors; an Easter purchased by the blood and power of God for millions and for me. Yes, I will wish you a real Easter, an undomesticated Easter, an Easter unafraid to proclaim from every corner, Alleluia! Christ is risen! And because Christ is risen, everything–and I mean everything, for us, and for the whole universe, for all time–has changed, decisively and forever. 

A sermon for the Easter Vigil
April 8, 2023

Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The cross comes first, then glory. The cross comes first, then life and peace. The cross comes first, then forgiveness. The cross comes first, then resurrection. Sometimes we want to shortcut everything, go immediately to glory, to life, to peace, to forgiveness, to resurrection. But we can’t. It all depends on the cross. 

Brian knew something about that. He had walked the way of the cross. It wasn’t the literal way that Jesus walked through Jerusalem, the via dolorosa. But he had walked it in his soul after that car wreck that left him paralyzed from the neck down. He had walked it through the despair of learning he would never walk again. He had walked it through the shame and guilt of coming to terms with his affair before the wreck. He had walked it in humility, as he learned to let his family, like Simon, carry his burden when he could not. Brian knew pain; he had experienced a kind of crucifixion; he had lost it all, been stripped of who he was, of all his self-created dignity. He had walked the way of the cross. 

It was a long way. The wreck happened when he was 44. It would take a decade to come to terms with everything. It would take a decade for healing to happen. I don’t mean physical healing; he is still paralyzed. I mean a more profound spiritual and emotional healing. It took a decade for him to feel the forgiveness of God, to accept that his wife had forgiven him, and to forgive himself. It took a decade for him to accept where he was, and to allow his family to care for him without resentment, without humiliation. It took a decade for the depression to lift, for life to come back, for joy to return. 

Brian remembers the day the fog began to lift after that decade. His church had a new priest, and she stopped by to meet him. They sat in the living room, talking. Brian told her, “I just don’t feel like I have a purpose anymore. What can God do with me. All I do is sit in this room day after day; I think; I talk to myself; sometimes I talk to God; I watch the news and I just cry.” 

“Cry?” the priest asked. “Who are you crying for?” 

Brian replied, “I don’t really cry for myself anymore. I cry for the people I see, for suffering in the lives of people I love. I wouldn’t have cried a decade ago, but I cry now, all the time. I guess my pain has helped me feel the pain of others.” 

“Brian,” the priest replied, “Have you ever heard of intercessory prayer?” Intercessory prayer is where we lift up the concerns of the world to God. We are all called to this prayer. But there are some people who have a special vocation of prayer, some folks who are called to be intercessors for the world. People like St. Julian of Norwich, a medieval woman of the 13th and 14th centuries. Called an anchorite, she lived in a small room connected to a cathedral for the entirety of her adult life. She prayed, she gave spiritual direction, she interceded, day in and day out. 

The idea lit something up in Brian. He tried it the next day. “I’m not going to pray for myself today,” he told himself. “I’m going to pray for the people around me.” He began to pray, lifting up concerns to God. He entered into the pain, the distress, the heartache of others, something he could do because he had walked the path of pain, distress, and heartache himself. He didn’t just do it that day, but day after day after day. Like Julian long before him, he became a kind of holy anchorite, bound to a chair physically, but spiritually moving mountains. Before long he was his parish’s intercessor. He and the priest worked together. They had a prayer list put together. They started a prayer team. Brian led them in intercession. Eventually he became a spiritual director, a counselor for people in distress, a teacher of prayer. From his home office, in his chair, unable to move, he opened the unseen world of faith to many. 

Resurrection happened. New life happened. God raised Brian up into something new. As surely as God raised Jesus from the dead, God raised Brian from despair. Like Jesus, Brian came out of the tomb with scars. Brian carried his ordeal in his body. He was confined physically to a chair, but no longer confined spiritually, no longer confined emotionally. The scars, his physical condition, instead of being the thing he hated most, became part of Brian’s testimony to the greatness and power of God. He would say, “Without the wreck, I wouldn’t know how to pray.” 

The cross must come first. But resurrection comes second. That was true for Jesus. That was true for Brian. And it’s true for us. Most of us don’t walk the way of the cross like Brian. We don’t walk it like Jesus, either. We are not given a cross to bear with such intensity. Our crosses are carried in spurts, in small trial after small trial, in one difficulty after another. Our valleys are broken up by mountaintops. We have a reprieve in our via dolorosa, our path of suffering. But we each, all of us, are given a cross to bear at some point. 

But then the third day dawns. Morning comes, as it always must. A new fire is lit. New life is given. God takes those sufferings, those pains, those heartaches, those wounds, and God heals them to make something new. God meets us when we are down, in despair, in the pit, in the grave, with tear stained faces, and God yanks us out of our tombs to faith, to hope, to love, to resurrection and new life. And when that happens, all we can say is Alleluia! Christ is risen, indeed, and my life is the proof.  

A sermon for Holy Saturday
April 8, 2023

How can we understand what is happening today? Truth be told, we come to the edge of words. God in the flesh has been killed in the most godless way, on the most irreligious tool of torture. There was no legion of angels at the last minute, no sleight of hand. He is dead: laid in the arms of his mother, and then taken to a tomb nearby.

One ancient homily tells us what is going on. I usually read that homily today. Probably written by Melito in the first centuries of the church, it expounds on what we read from I Peter. Christ, after death, has descended to hell, to the dead, in order to bring the captives–that is, those who died before–up from their graves and into the newness of life. But if you and I were to enter the tomb today, we would still see the body of Jesus lying there, unrecognizable. He would be cold. He would be stiff. He would stink from decay and from the humiliating ordeal of crucifixion. Lifeless. How can we, on this side of the veil of death, understand this? 

Our collect today says he is resting on the Sabbath. We are meant to see in these holy days a parallel to the story of creation in Genesis 1. We will read that story tonight. In the creation account in Genesis 1, we see a seven-day creation. On day six, God creates humankind, male and female, in his image. On the seventh day, God rests and calls his creation very good. 

In coming to earth to take on our flesh, Christ, God in the flesh, has entered into a project of re-creation: the re-creation of humanity and the entire cosmos. Once in the image and likeness of God, we have been marred by sin and death, and creation along with us. Christ has come to “more wonderfully restore the dignity of human nature,” to bring us back to that first image, to bring us back to our first purpose: relationship with God, one another, and all creation. Thereby, as we sang last night, earth and stars and sky and ocean are freed from that ancient stain of our doing. 

God in Christ makes that re-creation of humanity possible on the sixth day of this Holy Week, on Good Friday, hanging on the cross, defeating the power of sin and death. It costs God dearly. And then, like in Genesis one, on the seventh day he rests from all that he has made–all that he has made possible through this sacrifice. And he calls it very good, indeed. That is what is happening in the stillness of the tomb. 

We, of course, do not stop on this seventh day. We know this is not the end. Vindication is coming. The Resurrection, which we will proclaim tonight, inaugurates a new day, a new age. The dawning of the Resurrection takes us to, not the first day of the week recycled, but to the eighth day of a new age. Indeed, early Christians called Sunday the eighth day–a day in time and yet out of time, a day that is the sign of the fullness of life to come, a sign of our hope in Christ, a participation in eternity. Here at St. Alban’s, it should be no surprise that our baptismal font and our columbarium are eight-sided. 

On this sabbath day, this seventh day, we rest with Jesus, in thanksgiving for our new creation that his body and blood have made possible from the cross on the sixth day. And we remember that the eighth day, the day of hope, of new life, of the new age, of eternity, is drawing near.     

A sermon for Good Friday
April 7, 2023

Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Every family has its secrets. They’re never spoken publicly, rarely spoken privately. Yesterday evening I introduced us to Brian. Brian was in a car wreck that paralyzed him from the neck down. It transformed his relationship with his wife and children forever. Brian, always the provider, had to learn the other side of love: being provided for. His paralysis wasn’t a secret. The car wreck wasn’t a secret. Most people wouldn’t have even known there was a secret to be had. But there was one. The secret was the answer to that question, the question everyone had been asking the night of the wreck: Why was Brian out driving so late at night? 

The wreck happened around 1:20 am on a state highway about 25 minutes from his home. The other driver had been impaired; it was his fault. Brian was in the clear as far as that goes. The toxicology report at the hospital proved it. His phone never left his pocket. Tread marks showed he had not fallen asleep; he was in his lane. 

Why was Brian out driving so late? Mandy, his wife, had come up with an explanation well before Brian was out of the coma. He couldn’t sleep, she had said, due to some new medication he had been on. He was working and realized he had forgotten something at the office. Why waste the opportunity? But the truth was, Mandy didn’t know. Mandy had been asleep, like the kids. Mandy only found out when the police officers from the scene handed her his personal effects. Brian was having an affair, and he was on his way to see her. It had been going on for some time. 

No one needed to know. She knew. Brian knew. Everyone else bought the work story. But secrets of that sort are heavy. They are a weight. There is a shame, an anger, a sadness that only Mandy knew as she watched her husband in an induced coma for two weeks, then sat with him as the doctors put humpty-dumpty back together again. And part of her wished they wouldn’t. 

Yes, these secrets are heavy. It was heavy for Brian, once he came to and remembered some things. He and Mandy had the talk in his new reality, in a hospital bed, without feeling from his neck down. He asked her forgiveness. He meant it. She gave it. She meant it, too. But you don’t drop shame so easily. He carried it. The guilt stayed with him.

Sin is a powerful thing. Sin is a cosmic power, a dominion, a realm that can capture our souls. But there’s another dimension of sin: the personal side, the side we feel, the guilt, the shame, the heaviness we carry. 

Sin is a powerful thing, both cosmic and personal. It could only be defeated by God in Christ on the cross. That’s why this Friday is good. That’s why Christ’s suffering is called good. Because it sets the world right. The Holy Trinity defeats that unholy trinity of sin, death, and the devil, and it happens on Calvary. Christ’s sacrifice on the cross is that double cure we need: It deals with sin as a cosmic power and dominion, but it also soothes the soul and brings relief to our personal shame, lifts our own burden of guilt. 

Brian had always been a Christian. He had seen the cross carried in, just as we will in a moment. He had sung the hymns, prayed the prayers. But he didn’t understand the power of the cross until he had to walk that way. Ironically, he began walking that way when walking was no longer a physical possibility. He began that inward journey into his shame, into his guilt, into his transgressions, into his sin. He carried that heavy burden as he sat bound to a bed, confronted with the consequences of his decisions. There were days he asked God why he hadn’t died. That would’ve been easier.   

But he had lived. So he walked the way of the cross, the way of suffering, the way of shame, the way that Jesus walks today. Jesus’s way was a public way, down a street; Brian’s was a secret way, into the recesses of the heart and soul. But it was still heavy. He carried it until he had a dream one night. In it, he saw Christ, crucified, dying, breathing his last, at the foot of his bed. Above Christ’s head was the sign we read about: King of the Jews. And in his dream, next to that sign, there was a smaller note, stained with blood. It read, Brian’s affair. And before he commended his Spirit to the Father, Christ looked Brian in the face and said, “This is for you.” 

I don’t know what your note would say, but you probably do. I know what mine would say. Christ’s message is the same for us: This is for you. Forgiveness is possible for Brian because Christ has paid the price. Forgiveness is possible for all of us because God in Christ has paid the price for sin. God in Christ has died so a new way of grace can be opened up in our lives, freeing us from the weight of shame, lifting the burden of guilt, liberating us from the curse of sin, defeating the power of death and the devil himself. God has paid the price so we can be free and have life and peace. 

A sermon for Maundy Thursday
April 6, 2023

Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

We pray these words on Fridays in Morning Prayer. They also appear on Palm Sunday, as we enter the church to begin our observance of Holy Week. But I wonder if we’ve considered what it means to walk the way of the cross? We usually don’t really consider that until its meaning is made plain in our lives, until the changes and chances of this life visit us with a cross to bear, with suffering, with pain and hardship. We don’t consider what we’re saying until we are already on the road, walking the way of the cross. 

Brian could tell you something about that. A good Christian, he was always in church. He raised his kids in church. It was a priority for him. He had heard those words before; he had heard preachers talk about walking the way of the cross; he had done the awkward palm procession around the building. But he never considered what that meant until he found himself walking that very way, on the via dolorosa, the road of sorrow, the way of the cross. 

At 44 years old, with kids in the middle of high school, in the prime of his life, Brian was in a serious car wreck that left him paralyzed from the neck down. He was in the hospital for weeks. For the first couple of weeks, he was holding on to life. For the next few weeks, they were putting him back together. Then rehab. Rehab that lasted forever. Before he knew it, a year had passed. A journey that began with hope that he would walk again was chastened by reality: He wouldn’t, no matter how hard he tried. Rehab wouldn’t be his miracle. 

That first year was torturous. Brian was an independent guy. He prided himself on hard work, on providing for others. Suddenly he found himself provided for. He had no choice in the matter. If you asked, he would tell you that getting bathed in the hospital by nurses and orderlies was bad enough. But then he went home. His relationship with his wife and children changed overnight; it had to. He couldn’t do anything without their help. His wife bathed him, changed him, helped him eat. He had been home for two weeks when his oldest son had to clean him after he used the restroom. Brian was humiliated. This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. 

If you asked Brian, his wife, his children about love before the wreck, I don’t know what they would say. But they loved each other. Maybe they would say, love is like going to games and cheering each other on. Love is like going the extra mile to make someone feel better. Love is cleaning out the gutters. Love is a feeling you get when you’re hugged. Love is wiping the silent and secret tears of your son after he loses the championship game. 

If you asked Brian, his wife, his children about love after the wreck, I know what they would say. Love is being there to help when someone can’t help themselves. Love is being faithful even when life is turned upside down. Love looks like heaving someone into a chair, helping someone on a toilet, making sure someone’s pillow is just right because they can’t adjust it. Love is lived in real ways–it’s not just a feeling, it’s an action, sometimes an uncomfortable or inconvenient one. 

I think Jesus is showing his disciples, and us, something of this at the Last Supper tonight. While the other gospels focus on the meal itself, John takes us to another scene. He shows us footwashing, the master stooping to care for the servants. Jesus equates love with footwashing: Just as I have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet, he says. Jesus is saying that love, real love, is shown in decisions, in actions, in servitude, like in washing someone else’s feet. Love is not some amorphous feeling, a warm fuzzy. Love is a gritty thing, a real thing, an enacted thing. Love gets you dirty; it puts you at the service of another; it takes you to uncomfortable and inconvenient places you hadn’t imagined before–master washing servants’ feet, wife and children caring completely for a helpless father. 

I think most of us are comfortable with being the ones who show up, who do what needs to be done, who show love in concrete ways, who do the foot washing. But what about the other side, Peter’s side, Brian’s side? Peter and Brian are a lot alike, I think. Stubborn, strong, determined. Peter tells Jesus, you will never wash my feet. Why? Because that’s not how it’s supposed to work. Peter will wash Jesus’s feet all day, without blinking, without thinking. He loves Jesus. But to let Jesus wash his feet? If someone else in his family had been in that wreck, Brian would have shown up. He would have cared, he would have cleaned, he would have waited hand-and-foot without a thought, without a hesitation. Because he loves his family. But like Peter, he wanted to tell his wife, his children, you will never wash my feet. You will never clean me up. You will never dress me. You will never… 

Sometimes love doesn’t look like washing feet; it looks like getting your feet washed. Love looks like deep vulnerability, allowing someone to do something for you that you could never do for yourself. It looks like Brian putting his pride to the side, forever, and letting his family care for him. It looks like Peter sitting in the chair and letting Christ wash his feet. It looks like all of us, under the power of things we cannot control, allowing a Savior to feed us–this is my Body, this is my Blood–because we can’t feed ourselves, we cannot sustain ourselves spiritually. It looks like allowing our Savior to wash us, because we cannot clean our own souls. It looks like allowing that Lord to die for us, because we can’t pay the price. 

The Christian journey is about learning to love–learning to really love in concrete ways, like Jesus tells us, washing one another’s feet. But the Christian journey also looks like getting our feet washed, learning to accept the love and grace of a God who came to save us, because we are helpless in ourselves. And sometimes, learning that side of things, learning that powerlessness, that need for grace, that need for love; sometimes that’s the hardest thing of all to learn. But here’s the deal: We will never learn love until we learn vulnerability. In truth, it’s something we must learn on the road, on the way of the cross, as our feet are washed by another, as we’re fed with food we cannot provide. 

A sermon for the Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday
April 2, 2023

Something is wrong and must be put right. Today we come to the end of our Lent sermon series, in which we have focused on the cross of Christ and how, through the cross, God in Christ does what we cannot and makes everything right again. We come to a final, but far from the final, image: on the cross, Christ, as both priest and victim, makes the atoning sacrifice for all sin. The early Christians would have primarily understood the cross through this lens of sacrifice. Sacrifice and blood make us squeamish today. We are far removed from the sacrificial system of the Old Testament. For our ancient forebears, however, sacrifice was a fact of life.

There are many kinds of sacrifice in the Old Testament. We won’t go through them now, but there is a general principle at play, especially when it comes to sacrifices for sin. Through the sacrifice of an animal without spot or blemish, a person with spot and blemish (that is to say, with sin) was able to be brought into the presence of God. The greater the sin, the greater the cost of the sacrifice. And here’s the important thing: while this seems foreign to you and me, the sacrificial system was all about grace. It was all about God, in patience and kindness and love, giving his beloved people a means to come into his presence. It was about God, in grace and compassion, giving the people a way to be restored into relationship with him. 

That, of course, is what the crucifixion is all about. God in Christ goes, willingly, to Jerusalem. Christ takes the initiative in the role of the priest. And once there, he becomes the atoning sacrifice. He is able to take, unlike any animal, the full weight of our sin upon himself, so that, through his sacrifice, we can be reconciled to God and brought into relationship with God. Christ does all of this as grace, in compassion, because of love, to bring us into a relationship. There is no cost God is not willing to pay to cover the gravity of our sin, to bring us to his heart. 

If we want to really understand what is happening at Golgotha, the Crucifixion must not only be a question of history. It cannot be confined to art and church trappings. No, we must see ourselves there. We must see our sin dealt with there. We must see it as a sacrifice for us. We must, as John Donne said, see Christ write our names in the blood of the Lamb slain for us, so that we can come into full relationship with God. We must see love at the cross–love, not in the abstract, but a specific love for our specific lives. 

We must see ourselves in Judas, as he lurks away to make his deal, and in Peter, denying Christ in the courtyard. How often we sell Jesus out, sneaking from the grace that God has on offer in order to take things into our own hands. How often we hide our light in the darkness, hide our love in the crowd, hide our Lord behind the facade of something more expedient and convenient, safer.

We must see ourselves in the crowd that day, crying, “crucify him.” We cry “crucify him” as we allow hatred to fester, and make peace with oppression, and justify inaction against injustice, and make excuses for violence and tyranny in the name of order and safety. 

We must see ourselves at the Pavement, in the seat of Pilate. We are in that seat when we give in to fear and cower because of pressure, because of popularity, because of prestige. We know what’s right, but fear takes over, and we lose heart. 

We must see ourselves in the fickle and fleeing disciples, once so committed, now overcome with terror and hiding out. We decide to go our own way, to lose heart when the going gets tough. God has abandoned us, we think, as the sky turns black and the earth shakes. And so we hide, unaware that God is active in the middle of the hardship, accomplishing what we cannot, carrying us to grace, calling us to life. 

We must see ourselves in the Roman soldier swinging the hammer. He has done it so many times he probably isn’t affected anymore. Desensitized to the violence. “It’s just a job,” he says, “Just the way things are.” And he goes home that night to a good dinner and a good family like he has done so many times. And we, desensitized to the sway of evil, ignore it and say it’s just the way things have to be. 

For all of this and much more, Christ, the high priest and victim, becomes the sacrifice for every sin. He becomes the sufficient and perfect sacrifice, whose blood is shed for Judas, for Peter, for Pilate, for the weeping women at the cross, for fleeing disciples, for the Roman executioner, and for us. The sacrifice that need not be repeated because it is enough for eternity, for all sin. 

“His blood be upon us and upon our children,” the people cry. Christians have used this verse to justify violence against the Jews for centuries. Anti-semites and hate groups today know this verse. They miss the point. But we cannot afford to miss it: Christ’s blood is upon us–it’s upon every person in this story, from the weeping woman to that Roman soldier with the hammer.  It’s upon every person on the face of the earth; it’s upon every person in this room; it’s upon us all to cover us and to cover our sin, as grace and with love. That’s the whole point of sacrifice. Once covered, we are given the means of grace, the hope of glory, the promise of forgiveness, the love of God’s heart. Our names are, indeed, written in the blood of the Lamb that is slain; and because of that, our names can be written in the Book of Life, marked as Christ’s own forever. 

A sermon for the Fifth Sunday in Lent
March 26, 2023

“A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing.” All the former Lutherans will know those words well. A text and tune composed by Martin Luther, this hymn evoques the image of Christus Victor, Christ the Victorious, even in the face of sin, death, and the evil one. Christ Jesus is the right man on our side, the man of God’s own choosing, in whose victory we share. 

Throughout Lent we have been talking about the cross and how the cross accomplishes our redemption and atonement, or our at-one-ment with God. Today we are talking about the cross through the lens of Christus Victor, Christ the Victorious, the Christ of Luther’s hymn. The cross is the place where Christ defeats the powers of sin, death, hell, and the grave, and opens up avenues of grace, mercy, forgiveness, and life. This action of God in Christ does not depend on us; it is accomplished by God and God alone as pure grace, pure gift, pure love. 

We certainly see that in today’s readings. Ezekiel is set down by God in the middle of a mass grave. Dry bones are scattered about, a defeated army, the signature of death. “Can these bones live?” God asks the prophet. The prophet wisely responds, “O Lord God, you know.” God says he will make those bones live again; God will bring forth a new creation from this field of nothingness; God will cause life where death was thought to reign supreme. The bones come together; the muscles and sinews and connective tissue are laid over; skin and flesh cover the new beings; the breath of life is breathed into them. 

In John we see the final sign of Jesus’s ministry before his passion and death. Lazarus, Jesus’s friend, is sick and dies. We know the story; Jesus raises him from death. Jesus says to Martha, “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 die. Do you believe this?” This very question is posed to us today; it is posed to us when we come to the tomb and there is already a stench; it is posed to us when we step foot in those valleys of dry bones in our lives. 

In both readings, God brings forth life because God desires to bring forth new life. God inaugurates something new because God desires to do so. God shakes the tombs and raises the dead because God says death and sin will not have the final word over creation. God gets the final word. However, both the valley of dry bones and the raising of Lazarus are signs pointing to something greater. They are not the thing in and of themselves. They both point to the ultimate victory of Christ over the powers of sin, death, hell, and the grave, a victory wrought through the cross and resurrection. On the cross, Jesus goes to the front line against sin and death, and accomplishes what we cannot. As I’ve said, something is wrong and must be put right. We cannot do it. Only God can do it, and God in Christ does do it from the cross.

Through the cross, God has made something new. When God in Christ descends to that valley of dry bones, when God in Christ descends into a sealed tomb like Lazarus, he does so to break it open. God in Christ does so to break it all apart from the inside out. As one theologian said, “The victory of Christ [on the cross] creates a new situation, bringing the rule [of sin and death] to an end, and setting [us] free from their dominion.” 

And yet, if this is true, how come there is sin and death still? How come evil still seems to reign supreme? How come the status quo continues on, seemingly unabated? How come tornadoes sweep through small, rural towns, a violent instrument of death and destruction? How come children suffer, and wars rage, and hunger is everywhere, and disease breaks down, and lives fall apart, and brokenness abounds? Is Christ really the victor? And if he is, then why does the psalmist today–why do we so often–cry to God out of the depths of anguish and despair, grief and death, shame and sin, brokenness and pain? 

While Christ’s victory on the cross has won an objective victory over sin, death, hell, and the grave, these powers are still allowed to rule in the present age. It will not be until the coming again of Christ at the end of the age that the fullness of God’s kingdom will come. So we must take Christ’s victory on faith–not an intellectual faith alone, but a faith that makes us live differently in this present age, a faith that sustains us even in suffering, a faith that compels us to live in the victory of our God even as we are called to carry a cross, a faith unafraid to look evil in the face because we know it will not win.  

Martin Luther’s hymn would go on to say: “And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us; we will not fear for God hath willed his truth to triumph through us; the prince of darkness grim, we tremble not for him; his rage we can endure, for lo! his doom is sure, one little Word shall fell him.” The little Word Luther is talking about there is the Word of God, the Word made flesh, Christ Jesus the Victorious. When Luther wrote that hymn, he wrote the tune to sound like a dance. Through that little Word, through Christ and his cross, we can dance, Luther was saying. We can dare to dance a jig, even in the face of evil, sin, and death–even on the head of the devil himself. 

It reminds me of a story about the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu during the height of Apartheid South Africa. As he got up to preach his sermon one day, the doors at the back of the cathedral burst open, and troops, armed, filed down each side of the church. They had been sent to intimidate, to threaten, to remind Tutu and the congregation of the power of fear and death. 

The late archbishop was not a big man. He was rather small, with a funny voice and an even funnier sounding laugh. But what he lacked in physical appearance, he certainly had in spiritual fortitude. He could stand there unafraid, because he knew that because of what Christ had done on the cross, God, in the end, will conquer over sin, over death, over fear, over every power that seeks to destroy the creatures of God–and even over oppressive Apartheid. Armed with that conviction and that conviction alone, he looked those soldiers in the eyes and he said, “Why don’t you join the winning side!” Then, with a laugh, he started dancing down the center aisle of the church. He danced and danced, and the congregation got up and danced and danced, and they all poured out into the streets dancing and laughing and singing and stomping on the ole devil. 

We have seen the power of sin and death and evil in our world and in our lives. There is brokenness in us and around us, and sometimes it looks like a valley of dry bones, like a tomb with a corpse covered in bands of cloth. But hear me now: sin, and death, and evil, and fear, and every power that corrupts the creatures of God–they have all been put on notice by the death and resurrection of Christ. Their end is coming; the strife is over; the battle is won; new life has already begun. We are not seeing these powers in force–no, we are seeing the last gasps of their dying empire. So with faith, with the cross in view, firm in our conviction, even when those powers do their worst, we join the winning side. We cast our lot in with Christ the Victorious. And like Luther, like Tutu, with all the saints and angels, we even dare to do a jig on the head of that old serpent. 

A sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent
March 19, 2023

Something is wrong and must be put right. We can’t do it. Only God can do it, and God does it through the cross. Throughout Lent, we have been focusing on this question of how God accomplishes this on the cross. On the first Sunday in Lent, we said we are justified, made righteous through the righteousness of Christ. The cross opens up an avenue of grace for our justification, which we are granted at our baptisms into Christ’s death. Then we saw the cross as recapitulation: God in Christ writing a new story from a new tree, the cross, becoming the new Adam, so that we can share in the new humanity. Last week, we said Christ substituted himself for us, taking the just penalty for our sins so we can be free. Today we see the cross as ransom and redemption: Christ goes behind enemy lines, pays the price for our souls, and redeems us into a new relationship. 

Ransom and redemption are popular themes in our culture. How many movies have we seen that center on hostage negotiation? This is rooted in real life. We have read the stories in the paper, seen them on the news. But it’s not just prisoner swaps and hostage negotiations, it’s also buyouts. The news from the banking sector this week shows us that we need someone to step in and pay the price when things collapse, to secure futures when the bottom falls out. 

And yet for as popular as these themes are, we like our redemption, our ransom, to be free. We don’t like to pay the price. We don’t like the cost involved. We want the SWAT team to storm the building before the gold is transferred. We want to get out of the negotiation without having lost anything of value. We have a different outlook, of course, if we step into the scenes ourselves. If we’re the ones being held, if we’re the ones in danger, if we’re the negotiating chips. We have a different view, indeed, because we see what is at stake: our lives. 

Beyond our culture, though, we need to understand what ransom and redemption mean in the Bible. “I know my redeemer lives,” says Job. “And he shall stand on the last day upon the earth.” In the Old Testament, redeemer had a particular meaning. The redeemer was the relative who stepped in when things got out of hand, the kinsman you would call to pay the ransom, the one whose number you had memorized in case you ever found yourself in a jail cell with one phone call. Your redeemer was the one who had your back, who would guarantee your safe return, who would even put their body and their own safety on the line in order to save you. 

We say those words from Job in the burial service. It’s one of the passages of Scripture I sing as we bring the body into the church. While the Old Testament presents us with this idea of a redeemer and ransom-payer, the New Testament gives us our definitive and final redeemer and ransom-payer: Jesus Christ who redeems us from the clutches of the enemy, who pays the ransom by his blood from the cross, all before we even know what’s going on. 

Our gospel reading was John chapter 9. A man born blind is healed by Jesus on the Sabbath. But he’s blind; the only thing he knows is that the man called Jesus spread mud on his eyes and told him to wash. He is berated by the religious authorities. They go into an extended interrogation, even bringing in the man’s parents. It almost feels like one of those hostage situations. There are conspiracy theories afoot, claiming this isn’t really the blind man. Finally, when everything reaches a fever-pitch, they throw him out of the synagogue. Abandoned, Jesus visits him again. “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” Jesus asks. The man replies, “who is he, sir? Tell me so that I may believe in him.” Jesus says, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.” The man sees Jesus, his healer, for the fullness of who he is, and he worships Jesus. Worship is only appropriate for God, so this man, blind for so long, is the only one who sees that Jesus is divine. 

Our ransom and redemption work like that. Paul says that while we still were sinners, Christ died for us, the ungodly. When we were blind and didn’t know what was happening, before we could even believe in the Son of Man, before we knew who he was, before any of our works, before everything, Christ came to ransom us, to redeem us, to heal our blindness and pull us into his light. Christ came to liberate us from the enemy, but such redemption comes at a cost: the life of the Son of God, the blood of the Son of Man. There is a debt, a cost, a price to be paid, and only God can pay it. So God does pay it, in love, without a second thought, by dying on the cross. 

That says a lot about God. It says a lot about God’s nature, which is love all the way through. It says a lot about what it means to sing, “Jesus loves me.” The cross is what love looks like. But this also says a lot about us. It says a lot about you and me and every person who ever walked the earth. It says: We are worth it to God. Our lives are worth redeeming to God. The ransom is not too much to be paid for God, even though it costs everything. Your life, your soul, and your relationship with God are worth the cross. And if you were the only person to ever live, your life alone would be worth it just the same. One person’s soul, in need of redemption, in need of ransom, would take God in Christ to death on the cross. 

Sometimes we can feel like that formerly blind man, cast out, rejected, alone, afraid. We can feel abandoned. But then Jesus comes by. The cross comes into view. I hope it reminds us of our worth in the eyes of the Almighty. My friend: God so loved the world, God so loves you right now, that God gave, without a second thought, his only Son, so that when we believe in him, we can have everlasting life. The ransom paid, the redemption won: our life with God is the reward. Our relationship with God is what it’s all for. So that leaves us, like the man in the gospel, with just one question: Do you believe in the Son of Man?   

A sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent
March 12, 2023

What would be enough? What would be enough to correct, to rectify, to make up for, to forgive all of my past, present, and future wrongs? What would be enough to make the world right again? What on earth could be enough? 

Repentance is not enough. That is probably an odd thing to hear from a pulpit, but I stand by my words. Don’t believe me? Just ask the mother whose child is killed in a car wreck due to buzzed driving. The teenage driver apologizes. Repentance is important, but it is not enough. Their repentance doesn’t bring back that child; it is not enough to reverse sin and death. 

Accountability is not enough. Another odd thing to say from the pulpit, but again, I stand by it. Don’t believe me? Just travel to South Carolina and ask the Murdaugh family. Alex Murdaugh, unrepentant, will have to spend his life behind bars, but accountability is not enough. Accountability is important, but it won’t bring back Maggie and Paul; it is not enough to reverse sin and death.  

In the suffering of this world, in the wake of sin and death, we come to these two conclusions: Repentance is not enough, and accountability is not enough. We need stronger medicine if we want these things to change, if we want the curse of sin and death to be broken. We need help from outside ourselves to save us from ourselves. 

Throughout Lent we are talking about the cross and how it accomplishes our atonement. We can talk about the atonement as at-one-ment: How God makes us one with him again, bringing us back into relationship after the rupture at the Garden of Eden, defeating the power of sin and death, reversing the curse. God does this on the cross. As I’ve said, something is wrong and must be made right. We cannot do it. Only God can do it by the cross. 

How the cross brings about our redemption is a great mystery. It does it in a lot of ways we will never get to the bottom of. No single theory or image is enough to explain it all; we need to consider the cross from many angles. Last week we talked about recapitulation. God in Christ writes a new story, becomes the new Adam, so we can share in a new humanity. Another way is through substitution. The substitution is Christ stepping into the ungodly place of all humanity, and in his godly perfection, taking the judgment for our sin upon himself and dying in our place on the cross. 

There is a straightforward and powerful logic to the substitution: 

1. Because of the Fall, all of humanity is enslaved to sin and death. That includes you and me. There’s nothing we can do to save ourselves from it. 

2. Because of the Fall and our enslavement to sin and death, there is suffering and injustice in the world. Repentance and accountability, while important, are not enough to break the power of sin and death. 

3. In order to save us, God must step in. God does this through Christ who lives and dies in perfect obedience to the Father. 

4. On the cross, Christ dies in our place, taking the just punishment for our sin on himself, thereby freeing us to live for God in newness of life. 

Here’s how St. Paul puts it in our reading from Romans: “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly [that’s you and me].” Paul continues, “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” Christ died for us. Christ died for our sin. Christ died to free us from sin and death by taking our place, because we could never do it. It’s as simple as that. 

St. Anselm of Canterbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093-1109, said it this way: “Christ freed us from our sins, and from his own wrath, and from hell, and from the power of the devil, whom he came to vanquish for us, because we were unable to do it, and he purchased for us the kingdom of heaven; and by doing all these things, he manifested the greatness of his love toward us.” 

More recently, Karl Barth, a Protestant theologian of the 20th century, put it like this: “The very heart of the atonement is the overcoming of sin. It was to fulfill [the] judgment on sin that the Son of God as man took our place as sinners. We can say indeed that Christ fulfills this judgment by suffering the punishment which we have all brought on ourselves.”

To effectively accomplish this for us, Christ’s death could not be any death. Fittingly, it had to be a shameful death on the cross, the death reserved for enslaved persons in the Roman world. Theologian Fleming Rutledge explains, “Jesus’ situation under the harsh judgment of Rome was analogous to our situation under Sin. He was condemned; he was rendered helpless and powerless; he was stripped of his humanity; he was reduced to the status of a beast, declared unfit to live and deserving of a death proper to slaves.” Rutledge’s point is that is what sin has done to humanity since the Fall. It has rendered us unhuman, out of relationship, separated from God and one another, full of shame and guilt, enslaved to the power of sin and death. Christ’s death, and the manner of it, must deal with that reality.

In taking our place on the cross, substituting himself for us, God in Christ takes the just penalty for our sin. God in Christ enters into our desperate and shame-filled situation. God in Christ dies in our stead, so that we can live forever in him. God in Christ does it, because we could not do it. The righteous One dies for the ungodly, for you and me, so that we might become righteous through him. 

Our feeble attempts at repentance and accountability are, in the end, incomplete. We can’t solve what is wrong on our own. God knows that. But in love and mercy and compassion, God says, “I’ll do it for you.” God in Christ, the Son, the second Person of the Holy Trinity, walks the way once marked for us and for all of humanity, from judgment to Calvary. Because Christ has walked that way for us, you and I, the ungodly, can walk a new way, from forgiveness to life. 

I began by asking what would be enough to forgive all of my past, present, and future wrongs, to make things right again? All of our efforts at repair are never enough; our striving is never enough to conquer the power of sin and death. What on earth would be enough? God–only God. God in Christ has come to earth to be enough. What Christ has done on the cross is enough. Enough to make things right again; enough to break the power of sin and death. It’s more than enough, for you, for me, for our sin, and for the sin of the whole world. 

A sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent
March 5, 2023

Molly and I are quirky in a lot of ways, I suppose, but here’s one example: At one point, we had named all of our plants. There’s a little fir tree in a planter outside our front door; its name is Douglass. We had Iggy the Azalea. Rick and Judy Hampton once gifted us an aloe vera plant; its name is John Wayne. But the strangest one of all is our apple tree. It’s in our front yard, at one corner of our house. It’s old for an apple tree; you can tell just by looking at it. It’s twisted and its bark has been formed by all kinds of weather conditions. Its name: Jesus Christ the Apple Tree. 

The name comes from an 18th century poem, which says: 

The tree of life my soul hath seen,
Laden with fruit and always green;
The trees of nature fruitless be,
Compared with Christ the Apple Tree.

For happiness I long have sought,
And pleasure dearly I have bought;
I missed of all but now I see
‘Tis found in Christ the Appletree.

This is typically considered a Christmas carol, but it has resonances that fit well with Lent if we consider what we are saying: Christ is the true tree with true fruit that leads to true life. Last week, we read from Genesis, from that story of another tree that led to sin and death. But Christ reverses that curse from his own tree: the cross. And it is from that cross that we find the fruit we have always sought: life everlasting and a restored relationship with God. 

Today, we are considering the cross as recapitulation, which has everything to do with these two ancient trees. As I said last week, so I will say again: Something is wrong and must be made right. We cannot do it, but Christ can and does on our behalf. Christ saves us from the power and tyranny of sin and death by his cross.

Recapitulation, in short, refers to Christ taking our place. We read last week that sin and death came into the world through Adam, through the fruit of that first tree in the Garden of Eden. Recapitulation is all about how Christ rewrites that story. Instead of the story ending in a curse, because of Christ, it ends in the blessing of life. Christ becomes the new Adam, and thereby gives us a new humanity, through his cross. 

This is what Jesus means in the gospel today when he says, “so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” Christ is lifted up in our wilderness of sin to rewrite our story and to bring healing and wholeness. Christ is lifted up on the cross to destroy the power of sin and death and to give us a new ending, a new narrative, a new hope. 

We join this new story through our belief in him. Belief, however, must be more than just an intellectual belief. It has to do with where we put our ultimate trust, and then living that way. Jesus is inviting Nicodemus to this kind of trust. It only happens when we are reborn to new life, reborn into this new story, reborn into this new hope, reborn out of the curse of sin and death and into the blessing of redemption and life eternal. That happens for us at baptism, when the righteousness of Christ, which is the righteousness of God, is given to us as grace, as pure gift. That gift allows us to live a different way because we now belong to a different story. Christ has become the new Adam for us so that we might share in his new story, liberated from sin and death. 

There’s an ancient question: Where was the Garden of Eden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. An old tradition says the cross stood where that tree was once planted, thereby replacing it. Christ and his cross, the Appletree, are found in the exact place where Adam came under the Power of Sin and Death because of the first tree. That’s what recapitulation is all about. John Donne, a 16th century English poet, beautifully takes up this theme: 

We think that Paradise and Calvarie, 
Christ’s Crosse and Adam’s tree, stood in one place.
Looke, Lord, and finde both Adams met in me; 
As the first Adam’s sweat surrounds my face,
May the last Adam’s blood my soul embrace. 

Not only do the cross and the tree of Eden meet at Calvary, but they also meet in every human heart, groaning for rebirth. They meet in our own souls, yearning for redemption as children of God. They meet in our very bodies, in our outstretched hands at a Communion rail, as we wait to receive the fruit of that new tree, the fruit of the cross, the life-giving Body and Blood of our Lord. 

The old story we have been given, the story from Adam and the tree, the story of sin and death–this old story need not hold sway in our lives. For that old tree has been uprooted and overturned. It has been replaced by Christ and his cross, that new Appletree. Here’s the end of that poem I began with: 

With great delight I’ll make my stay,
There’s none shall fright my soul away;
Among the sons of men I see
There’s none like Christ the Appletree.

I’ll sit and eat this fruit divine,
It cheers my heart like spirit’al wine;
And now this fruit is sweet to me,
That grows on Christ the Appletree.

This fruit doth make my soul to thrive,
It keeps my dying faith alive;
Which makes my soul in haste to be
With Jesus Christ the Appletree.