Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Earthquakes and Humanquakes (sermon, Easter Sunday, April 24, 2011)

Acts 10:34-43
Matthew 28:1-10

John Burnett is a reporter who has seen his fair share of disasters over the years. He covered Hurricane Katrina as well as the earthquake that struck Haiti in January 2010. But he says he’s never seen anything like the destruction wrought by the earthquake and tsunami that recently hit the northeast coast of Japan. In one community, a wave 124-feet tall hit the coast -- that is taller than a ten-story building. Burnett describes the destruction he’s witnessed there as “[utterly] apocalyptic.” (1)

Now I know with all the rain and overcast skies it’s been a little hard to tell, but have you noticed that the days have gotten shorter? I know that since the winter solstice, the days are supposed to be getting longer, but actually, since that earthquake in Japan, each day has been shorter by about 1.26 microseconds. That’s 1.8 millionths of a second...so it’s understandable if you haven’t noticed. (2)

The reason the days have gotten shorter is because the earthquake caused the earth’s mass to shift toward the center, which makes the planet spin just a tiny bit faster. The earthquake didn’t just change life forever for the hundreds of thousands of people who lost loved ones, homes, and livelihoods; it changed the very Earth we all live on.

For all of us who share this planet, earthquakes change everything.

Even though he did not live in an age where precise scientific measurements could be used to calculate minute changes in the length of a day, the writer of Matthew’s gospel understood that earthquakes change everything. In his description of the first Easter morning, he describes not one, but two earthquakes, or to put it more precisely, he describes one earthquake and one human-quake.

Matthew knows his Hebrew Bible well; throughout his gospel he quotes passages from it which speak of God’s coming Messiah and alludes to many others. Here, his description of the earthquake that rumbles when the angel rolls the stone away from the tomb recalls the way the earth shook when God descended onto Mount Sinai to speak to Moses, and when the Lord was about to pass by the prophet Elijah. Matthew knows that when God does a new thing, when God is revealed in a new way, the earth quakes and everything changes.

What Louis Zamperini saw in the war changed everything for him. His incredible story is told by author Laura Hillenbrand in the bestseller Unbroken. (3) Zamperini was a an Olympic runner whose dreams were cut short when America entered the Second World War and Louis became a bombardier.

His story is improbable in so many ways; first, that a kid who was a hooligan -- smoking and drinking and causing all kinds of trouble from a very early age -- actually became an Olympic runner is mind-boggling. But then, Louis was one of three crew members who survived when his B-29 crashed into the Pacific. And then he was one of only two who survived more than forty days adrift on the Pacific ocean in a life raft whose meager supplies of food and water were exhausted in the first two days.

Zamperini’s raft finally washed ashore onto a Japanese island, and he and his co-survivor were promptly captured as prisoners of war. For the next year and a half they were beaten, tortured, and starved by their captors. None of the guards were as destructive, cruel, or brutal in their abuse as a man known as the Bird. From his first day in prison the Bird targeted Louis, stalking him like an animal. For no reason, in fits of uncontrollable rage, the Bird would pounce on Louis, beating him within an inch of his life. Hungry, sick, emaciated, and broken, Louis suffered the greatest of all losses at the hands of the Bird: his humanity.

In the end, Louis Zamperini was one of the fortunate men who returned home, but as was the case for many POW’s, his imprisonment continued long after his release. Haunted by the Bird in his dreams, Louis turned to drinking to ease the pain and dull the memories. As his life wasted away, one feeling consumed Louis Zamperini: hatred for the Bird. Louis couldn’t stop thinking of his enemy, and the more Louis became obsessed with him, the more his life fell into disrepair.

Matthew tells us that the Roman authorities were so afraid that Jesus’ followers would steal his body as a way of staging a resurrection that they posted guards at his tomb. When the earthquake hit and the angel of the Lord appeared, the guards were so alarmed that Matthew says they “shook and became like dead men.” The word “shook” there would be better translated “quaked” -- it’s the same Greek word used for the earthquake in verse two. In other words, the guards experienced a “human-quake.” Jesus’ transformation from dead to alive changed the guards in such a way that they went from alive to “becoming like dead men” -- paralyzed by shock and fear.

The guards weren’t the only people there that morning. Two women, Mary Magdelene and the other Mary, had come to see if what Jesus had said would come true. Certainly these women must have experience a human-quake of their own, but the angel quickly reassures them: “Do not be afraid.” Then he invites them to “come, see the place where he lay.” The angel invites the women to see with their own eyes that Jesus is no longer a dead body lying in a tomb, but that the tomb is empty. The women see for themselves. And what they see changes everything.

Louis Zamperini’s life had hit rock bottom when his wife dragged him to a revival hosted by an up and coming preacher named Billy Graham. The first time Louis attended one of Graham’s rallies, his message didn’t stick, but the second time it did, and when Louis encountered God, it changed everything. Overwhelmed by God’s love and grace, Louis began taking responsibility for his life. He quit drinking and salvaged his marriage. He returned to Japan and confronted his captors, offering them the grace God extended to him. He looked into the tomb where he had wasted away since the war and saw that it was empty. Louis Zamperini experienced resurrection.

Back at Jesus’ tomb, the angel wasn’t done with the women yet. After telling them to come and see the empty tomb, he tells them to “go quickly and tell his disciples.” If these women had kept what they had seen to themselves, we wouldn’t have Matthew’s gospel or any other gospel.

The same is true, of course, with Zamperini’s story. If he had reconciled with his wife and found a decent job and gone on to live a quiet life, Unbroken wouldn’t be a bestselling book. What makes his story relevant to us is that Zamperini spent the rest of his life sharing it, telling people how God raised him from death to new life. Over the years, he spoke to hundreds of groups about his ordeal, his anger, and the peace he found with God. Louis Zamperini experienced a humanquake that changed him forever...and he testified about it to the end of his life.

The story we come to celebrate today doesn’t end with Jesus’ empty tomb...the story can’t end there. And it can’t end here, in this sanctuary, either. Like the women, we receive the invitation to come and see the empty tomb, but we also hear the command to “go quickly and tell!” Without the testimonies of each new generation of Jesus’ disciples, this story is an empty one with little purpose or power.

The novel Peace Like a River by Leif Enger is one of my top five books of all time. It is a beautiful story of faith and love and the importance of testimony. At one point two characters are talking about faith.

“Don’t you ever doubt it?" Davy asks his friend.

“And in fact I have,” the friend replies. “And perhaps I will again. But here is what happens. I look out the window at the red farm - for here we live, Sara and I, in a new house across the meadow, a house built by capable arms and open lungs and joyous sweat. Maybe I see our daughter, home from school, picking plums or apples for Roxanna; maybe one of our sons, reading on the grass or painting an upended canoe. Or maybe Sara comes into the room - my darling Sara - with Mr. Cassidy’s beloved rolls on a steaming plate. Then I breathe deeply, and certainty enters into me like light, like a piece of science, and curious music seems to hum inside my fingers.

“Is there a single person on whom I can press belief? No sir. All I can do is say, Here’s how it went. Here’s what I saw. I’ve been there and am going back. Make of it what you will.” (4)



Once we have seen the empty tomb, once we experience our human-quake, all we can do is testify. Don’t get me wrong, whether you tell anyone about it or not, the resurrection is still true. But unless we see the places in our own lives where God brings new life from what looked like death, unless we see resurrection and then go and tell others, “here is how it went. Here is what I saw,” then the Easter story makes little difference.

What have been the “human-quakes” in your life? What has God done for you that changed everything? Whatever it is, that is where your testimony begins. And it doesn’t have to be an monumental as what happened to Louis Zamperini; most of us simply don’t have stories that dramatic. But we all have resurrection experiences, even if they’re the kind that only change us in minute increments, like the 1.8 millionths of a second recently shaved off the length of a day by the Japanese earthquake.

Whatever we think of when we reflect on how God has resurrected us and given us new life, whatever gratitude fills our hearts when the power of the empty tomb resonates in our lives, that is our Easter story. That is what we are called to go and tell others: “here is how it went. Here is what I saw.” Alleluia. Amen.

Endnotes:
1. “Reporter Recalls Covering Japanese Quake, Tsunami,” All Things Considered, NPR News, April 18, 2011.
2. "Japan Earthquake May Have Changed Earth’s Axis,” Talk of the Nation, NPR News, March 18, 2011.
3. Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. Random House, 2010.
4. Leif Enger, Peace Like a River. Atlantic Monthly Press, 2001, p. 311.

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Holy Saturday - Easter Is Coming!

To help you navigate the distance between the tragedy of Good Friday and the glory of Easter Sunday, here is a brief video that reminds us that faith is all about perspective.

To see the video, click here: Easter Is Coming.

Blessings to you as your Holy Week journey comes to an end.

Please join us for a pancake breakfast from 8-9:30a.m. tomorrow and Easter Sunday worship at 10a.m.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Thursday of Holy Week

1 Corinthians 11:23-26

For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me." For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

"You show your love by dying." George Herbert begins "The Agonie" like this:

"Philosophers have measur'd mountains,
Fathom'd the depths of seas, of states, and kings,
Walk'd with a staffe to heav'n, and traced fountains:
But there are two vast, spacious things,
The which to measure it doth more behoove:
Yet few there are that sound them: Sinne and Love"

After describing sin, he says this of love:

Who knows not Love, let him assay
And taste that juice, which on the cross a pike
Did set again abroach; then let him say
If ever he did taste the like.
Love is that liquor sweet and most divine,
Which my God feels as bloud, but I, as wine.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Tuesday of Holy Week

John 12:20-24

Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.


hope









A Holy Week Prayer

I thank you, Lord Jesus, for becoming a human being

so I do not have to pretend or try to be God.

I thank you, Lord Jesus, for becoming finite and limited

so I do not have to pretend that I am infinite and limitless.

I thank you, crucified God, for becoming mortal

so I do not have to try to make myself immortal.

I thank you, Lord Jesus, for becoming inferior

so I do not have to pretend that I am superior to anyone.

I thank you for being crucified outside the walls,

for being expelled and excluded like the sinners and outcasts,

so you can meet me where I feel that I am,

always outside the walls of worthiness.



~Father Richard Rohr

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Monday of Holy Week



This week I will be collaborating with my husband, Derek (pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Akron), to offer daily evotionals that the church will send out by email. I will also post them here. If you would like to receive the emails, please send a request to fppchurch@gmail.com.

Blessings to you on this holiest of weeks.

Amy

Monday:

Matthew 21:12-17

Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer’; but you are making it a den of robbers.” The blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he cured them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the amazing things that he did, and heard the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they became angry and said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read, ‘Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise for yourself’?” He left them, went out of the city to Bethany, and spent the night there.


Jesus Cleansing the Temple by Jeffrey Weston



On Palm Sunday we began Holy Week by celebrating Jesus as our King. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus' entry into Jerusalem is immediately followed by the so-called cleansing of the temple. When Jesus arrives at the temple, his behavior seems a bit out of character. He "drives out" those who were buying and selling goods, "overturning the tables" of those changing money and selling doves to pilgrims for their sacrifices. After this, he cured the blind and lame; people who lived on the margins of the community, cast aside because their disabilities were falsely attributed to their sin.


The lesson for us is clear: Jesus is as passionate as he is compassionate! He isn't just a humble king, he is also a mighty judge, doing what is necessary -- even expressing his anger productively -- to ensure that God's love is available to everyone, and not just the ones who can afford to buy it. In today's lectionary passage from Isaiah we are reminded that God's chosen one "will bring forth justice to the nations" (Isaiah 42:1-9). As we follow Jesus to the cross this week, may we receive his passionate attempts to cleanse us from self-serving habits that harm others and keep them from knowing God's love.

Monday, April 18, 2011

Days Like This (sermon, April 17, 2011, Palm Sunday)

Philippians 2:5-11
Matthew 21:1-11

Just in case you may have dozed off for the first twenty minutes of the service, let’s be sure we are all on the same page here: today is Palm Sunday. It’s worth reminding ourselves of that because, believe it or not, there is quite a bit of controversy over how Christians should observe this day. For many of us this is simply Palm Sunday, no more, no less. It is a day of celebration after a long Lenten season when we focused on sin and repentance. It is a time to remember that the crowds who got it right -- at least for a moment -- as they proclaimed Hosanna to the Son of David, the one who came to save us.

But there has been some concern among ministers and church leaders that by making Palm Sunday so celebratory, we have caused people to miss out on Holy Week, since most people will not attend services on Maundy Thursday or Good Friday, missing out then, on the darker side of Holy Week, the stories of Jesus’ betrayal, crucifixion, and death. It is this concern that has led many churches to brand this day “Passion Sunday” and focus not on Jesus’ entry to Jerusalem but rather on the events of what we call the Passion -- Jesus’ arrest, trial, and crucifixion. Some churches even try to cram everything into one service, creating a Palm-slash-Passion Sunday experience.

This debate in the church reflects a larger issue in our culture, one that a researcher named Brene Brown highlighted in a recent lecture. She started by describing the opening scene of a movie a family is in a car, traveling on a windy road. A light snow is falling and the radio is tuned to a station playing holiday songs. “Jingle Bells” comes on the radio and everyone starts singing along. Brown then asks her audience to predict what happens next.

What do you think is going to happen?

Well, if you believe that what will happen next is a car crash, then you stand with the majority. Sixty percent of people say that the next thing that happens is a car crash. Another 10-15% have equally fatalistic answers, only more creative: the camera cuts to the oncologist and the terminal diagnosis he’ll reveal to this family the day after Christmas; or the family arrives at grandma’s house and finds everyone there dead.

Our expectation that anything that looks this good will necessarily be followed by tragedy parallels our own experience. Brown goes on to say that in her research, most of the people she interviews describe experiences that verge on bliss -- looking at their sleeping children, spending quality time with aging parents -- only, in the next moment, to imagine something horrible happening to the ones they love. (1)

As proven by the Palm-versus-Passion-Sunday debate, people approah Holy Week differently. Some of you would be perfectly happy to skip over the celebrations of Palm Sunday and get to Thursday and Friday -- after all, you know the worst is coming and you’d rather just get it over with. Or maybe pain and suffering is your reality right now and you take comfort it Christ’s suffering, knowing that because of it, he understands yours. Others don’t want to face the pain and suffering of this week at all, you’ll take the celebrations of Palm Sunday and the joy of Easter and forget all about what comes in between.

But the truth is that we can’t pick and choose which events of this week we want to dwell on. We can’t pick and choose because if we do, we will miss the point of what -- and, more importantly, who -- this week this about.

Palm Sunday is a celebration of who Jesus is. Matthew is determined for us to focus on this question; his account of this story ends with the whole city in turmoil and people asking: “who is this?” This is the question Matthew wants us to ponder. And one of the most important answers to this question is that Jesus is king. But, as Matthew goes to great pains to point out, Jesus is not your typical king, one who rules his subjects using fear and violence, as so many kings of the past did and so many dictators of the present do.

Jesus is a king who sets an example of humble obedience to God, an obedience described so beautifully in the reading today from Philippians. This passage reminds us that Jesus’ story is not a rags to riches story, but rather a riches to rags story. “...though [Jesus] was in the form of God, [he] did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death--even death on a cross.” As our king, Jesus calls us to follow him on this path of humble obedience to God, obedience which calls us to serve others even as he served us.

When we ask ourselves the question of this day: “who is this man Jesus?” we discover once again that in our faith the answer lies in the tension between two opposites. As New Testament scholar Frederick Dale Bruner puts it, “Jesus must be defined in two ways: he is the crucified Messiah (16:13-21), the modest King, the lowly Lord, the human God...deny either Jesus’ true deity or his true humanity and the spell of the gospel is broken.” (2) This story of Jesus’ entry into the holy city of Jerusalem reminds us that Jesus is God, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, ruler of all creation. And Jesus is a human being, riding on a humble donkey, struggling, just as we do, to obey God in the face of his own anger, confusion, and fear over what’s to come.

This week there was an article in the New York Times which begins a bit like the scene Brene Brown describes in her lecture: Nathan and Elisa Bond are “about as ordinary a 30-something couple as you could find in Brooklyn.” He is a 38 year-old artist and teacher; she is a 36 year-old who works for a real estate broker; their daughter, Sadie, turned one last fall...okay, so right about now you’re thinking something bad is coming, right?

In this case, you’re right. After months of gastrointestinal problems, Nathan finally got a colonoscopy and learned that he has stage 3 colon cancer. Awful, right? Heartbreaking, even. But probably not enough to get your story in the New York Times. What happened next is what makes this story unusual. Just nine days after Nathan’s diagnosis, Elisa went for what was supposed to be a routine mammogram after having felt a lump in her breast a few months earlier. She assumed it was just another cyst like the ones she’d had before. But this time, the lump was cancer. And it had spread...to her liver, pelvic bones, and spine. Stage 4. (3)

In her blog, Elisa writes about their dual cancer diagnosis, and in a post a couple of weeks ago, she reflected on what happened when their story went “viral,” as they say, and people around the world -- friends and strangers -- heard about them and rallied around them. Here’s what she wrote:

Nathan and I are deeply, deeply grateful for and in awe of the global outpouring of love, support and inspiration. I mean literally GLOBAL. Who could ever have seen this coming? I guess it's happened before. ... It's just that you never imagine it's going to be you, or rather, we never imagined it would be us. None of it. We never imagined one of us having cancer. We never imagined both of us having cancer. We never imagined both of us having cancer at the same time. We never imagined our family and friends rallying to our side with one goal in mind, a happy ending. We never imagined that that goal would be shared with people all over the world. And we never imagined we would feel so blessed for all of it. That's the thing about [awful] situations. They can give you more blessings than the burden itself. They can teach you more than you wanted to know. They can heal you beyond your pain.

Don't get me wrong. If I had the choice for Nathan and I NOT to have cancer, I would take it. In a heartbeat, I would take it for Sadie's sake, for our parents and for all those people who love us and worry about us. We didn't choose our diagnoses, but we do choose to be in a state of gratitude. There is too much love and healing coming our way not to feel blessed. (4)


In this incredibly difficult time in their lives, Elisa and Nathan have discovered a truth that Brene Brown’s research has also uncovered: when we numb ourselves to the difficult emotions in life -- pain, fear, anxiety, sadness -- we also numb ourselves to the good emotions -- joy, contentment, serenity, bliss. Much as we might try, we cannot selectively choose which emotions to experience. We can either receive them all or block them all. If Elisa and Nathan weren’t able to fully experience the fear and despair of their current situation, they also would not be able to find the blessing in it.

What is true of Jesus’ story is also true of ours: sometimes, the days that fill us with joy will end in tragedy and sometimes the days that fill us with dread will surprise us with a blessing.

Today is Palm Sunday. It is a day of celebration as we gather to acknowledge with joy and thanksgiving that Jesus is our King, the Son of God, who came down to earth, who became fully and completely human, so that for you and me and Nathan and Elisa and Sadie, and all of God’s children, death will not have the last word. But that is next week’s story -- Easter’s story. Today is Palm Sunday and Jesus is King.

Endnotes:
1. See Brown’s lecture online here.
2. Frederick Dale Bruener, Matthew A Commentary, Volume 2:The Churchbook Matthew 13-28. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1990, p. 353.
3. Tara Parker-Pope, “A Couple’s Knot, Tied Tighter by Dual Diagnosis,” April 11, 2011. Online here.
4. http://familybondingtime.blogspot.com/2011/03/good-bad-and-chemo.html