Easter Sunday: ....by name....

4/21

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

 It's a cool but sunny Easter Sunday. Enjoying the gardens in the front yards of the Victorian homes on the walk from the subway to the church. As I near the church,

Beverley Church

I see that the little church's garden needs tending and the grass needs mowing

the garden

but I'm sure Eugene will take care of that. The sanctuary is dressed in white for Easter. And people are arriving. Eugene would like to get coffee for us, but he's reminded we will do that after worship. Geraldine asks what my good word? and I say, "There can be a new beginning for us, if we say, Yes" and she smiles and says "Yes."  I begin the service with "Alleluia! Christ is risen!" and ask the congregation to respond,"Christ is risen indeed!" And soon it is time for my sermon. 

Alleluia! Christ is risen. (Christis risen indeed...)

They thought it was over. The men had all run away. Men do that. they get into big stories, dramas, movements , scenarios. And when it doesn't go well, they're gone. But the women stay. 

Mary goes first. Why? It doesn't matter to her that the dream seems to be over. The movement over. The revolution never came. Doesn't matter. She loved this man. And we need know nothing more than that. Details don't matter. And she will honor the love she felt by going to the grave to take care of business, tend to the body. That's what women do. And she gets there and the stone is gone. So she goes to tell the main men and they go to check it out and see the empty tomb. And what does the scripture tell us they did? That they returned to their homes. Obviously they didn't get it.

So she goes to see for herself. And it's like the ultimate insult. Not only have they killed him, but they won't even allow the body to receive a traditional  burial. She can't even make the right good bye. And so she weeps. (Believe me, I've never really understood that part with the two angels. All I know is they ask her Woman, why are you weeping?)

And just then, Jesus appears. And asks her the same question. And this is my favorite part....she thinks he's the gardener...I mean check this out...he's resurrected for God's sake (Uh, literally...) and he's not shining or glowing or levitating or anything. He's just standing there looking like the most common laborer in the cemetery. Like overalls , or jeans or? Like in those campesino paintings from Solentiname, blue jeans and a guayavera? He looks ordinary.  And she cannot recognize him. 

And then it happens. He says one word, Mary, her name, and she knows it is him in the very deepest part of her heart and soul. He has said her name said as no one else she knows has ever said it. It can only be him. He knows her so intimately, so well, it can only be him. 

Let's think about that a minute. This is not seeing is believing. She doesn't see anything that leads her to believe.....its what she hears and what she hears is her own name. 

So let's stop a minute...when you close your eyes and think about hearing your name called, what does it sound like, who is saying it? When you hear your name called in love, what does it sound like? 

Today is about believing and how does that happen? There are no external verifications. No iphone videos. No facebook, instagram, snapchat. None of that. All we've got are these four stories in this book. And they're all different. And please....don't even try to mash them all together. Each one by themselves is true, it's own complete story. Read them separately. Allow each one to tell its own story in its own voice (that word again) and explore each for its own truth for what you can learn but you know what?  Those stories are not going to cause you to believe or prove anything unless you already believe it.

So what do we do? Do what Mary does.  Listen....and hear your name called...the way no one else can....because Jesus will do that...God  knows you more intimately than anyone else...and loves you anyways....and that's how we know....we come to believe as Mary does when we hear him call our name...

So proof? You want proof? Look to your left, look to your right....we are here. It's two millenia later and we are still here. What we celebrate in communion is this...as Presbyterians, as followers of the reformed tradition, it is not the bread and wine that becomes the living body of the risen Christ, it is us....we become his hands, his feet, his words, his silent touch...

Today is  about resurrection. I don't know many of you that well, but I know any of us at our ages have had our share of deaths. Many of us have risen again over and over again and sometimes we don't want to do it again. But he hears us in our weeping...oh Mary don't you weep don't you moan....and he calls us by name....

If you hear it and know it's him, follow Mary, who in this story becomes the first evangelist. She is the first to say out loud, "I have seen the Lord..."

So if you have heard him, if you have known him, go out from here today and don't be afraid to say it. Don't be afraid to bring good news in a day and time when good news is so badly needed. (Good Lord, sometimes I don't even want to watch  it any more...) Go ahead and say it, "I have seen the Lord!"

Alleluia! Christ is risen! (Christ is risen indeed!) 

And so we share our prayers and make  our communion. Geraldine sings a solo, shares her music.

Bob abd Geraldine

It's a joyous day as her family has come to be with her. Grandchildren and great grandchildren. 

Geraldine's family came

Soon we will go downstairs where Eugene has put white covers on all the chairs and the good china is out. They will share an Easter dinner together. I won't eat much since I'm heading to Bushwick for brunch with my boys, bringing them eggs I colored last night.

Eggs for my boys

I do have to try some of the traditonal mac'n'cheese that seems to be part of most special occasions. It is Easter.

Eggs fro my boys


Alleluia! Christ is risen.
Christ is risen indeed!






Gospel John 20:1-18

1Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. 2So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” 3Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. 4The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. 6Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, 7and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. 8Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; 9for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. 10Then the disciples returned to their homes.


11But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; 12and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. 13They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” 14When she had said this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 15Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” 16Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). 17Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”  18Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

Easter 2016: We each must find our own resurrection

3/27

EASTER 2016

And this is our Easter, 2016…

We enter into our newly remade Chapel and marvel at the work that has been done. It started with Jean and her volunteer crew from Sacramento. Then continued with West-Park volunteers. Don and his last team were here late last night until we were all ready. And Pat and Leila came early this morning to decorate. It has truly been a labor of love. And Leila and I have, as usual, dyed eggs to share with people. 

And so our Easter reflection…

Alleluia, Christ is risen!

Christ is risen indeed! Alleulia!

And so we begin our Easter in 2016. As Christians have for milennia. I remember when I worked in Pittsburgh, my neighbor Greek Orthodox priest throughout the whole season of Easter would greet me with a handshake and those words..Christ is risen…and I would respond Christ is risen indeed …

What do you remember? Of your childhood Easters? I remember I never enjoyed Easter as much as Christmas. Two many brooding hours in church the week before. Maundy Thursday. An endless 3 hour 7 last words service… But the word Easter brings images of cool spring to my mind. (And even  the day in Pittsburgh it snowed!) Church. Always a glorious choir and special anthems. At home, an Easter egg hunt for the plastic eggs, filled with treats, my parents had hidden around our yard.  A custom my sister has continued.

There would be lunch…a ham, always….and augratin potatoes….we each received an Easter basket with the two largest items a chocolate Easter bunny and  a giant egg, from the famous Sarris candymakers down the road. And in our earliest years at the old house with a half an acre and room for a garden behind the chicken coop, special child sized garden tools so we could participate in the  gardening. So a feeling of warmth….what images come to your mind?  I will confess, the Easter bunny left me long before Santa Claus.

Before I go on…look around…let this be an image for Easter 2016…a restored chapel….do you remember when we first returned? The ruins? A roof with exposed lath? The last two weeks have all but finished the process of bringing this place back to life…

Don at work...

Keep this picture in your mind…as well as thanks for all who have made this happen….and some very long hours…

When Don's crew finished....

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

Christ is risen indeed!

It’s a statement…not a question. In a few short words, the why of our presence here…

These are our witnesses…

Mary Magdalene

Peter

The one Jesus loved…..

Mary goes because of love. She hadn’t run away from the crucifixion scene like the  others, the men had. She finds the stone rolled away. Stop a minute…..why was the stolen rolled away? To let Jesus out?  Or to let the disciples in? She assumes he’s been taken away. (Not an illogical idea…he was only in Simon’s tomb temporarily)

Peter and the other go running…the one gets there first…sees but does not go in..Peter arrives,  pushes him aside and with his typical lack of impulse control, rushes in.  And then the other comes too…and believed…what did he believe? Other than that Jesus was not there?

Then they go home…what? Why?

Mary is there again. Weeping. She sees two angels …why did they not appear to the men? Were they waiting for her?

And then, my favorite scene, where she mistakes  Jesus for the gardener…Note…there is no halo, no shining robes, maybe blue jean (green jean?) overalls…like the simplest humblest of people…

She doesn’t recognize him until she hears his voice. Hears her name in a way only he said it. And then she knows. (When you hear your name being called, whose voice is it?  A parent? A lover?  Whose voice?) It’s a scene almost as intimate as the anointment and the washing of feet with her hair…only John gives us this intimacy…

She wants to hold onto him, but she can’t….

And so she goes. And announces to the disciples, and so she becomes the first witness…

Resurrection….you know 20-40% of people who lose someone very close  report an appearance of the one who has died…maybe it’s  not so remarkable…..

In Latin America, when names of martyrs are read the people respond, Presente!.....present…here with us even now..

In the end, not about evidence, or proof or persuasion…no external verification…no twitter feeds, face book posts, snapchat or instagram…..

But a witness to what we have experienced…and there will be no other poof…

Have you seen the Lord? What can you proclaim? Each of us must find our own resurrection. Standing together in solidarity but  in the end, find our own.

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

Christ is risen, indeed! Alleluia!

And this is our Easter, 2016…

It's Easter Sunday

4/5

It’s Easter Sunday. My friend Uli  from Berlin and I have come from the site of All Angels’ Church in Central Park. Where the foundation stones have risen from the buried Seneca Village. On a chilly morning, Uli played his violin, first a traditional German  Easter hymn. And  then Jesu joy of man’s desiring. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6OgZCCoXWc).

Uli plays violin in Central Park

We stop for coffee along the way.

At the church, Stephen S at work. Pat K and Larry are decorating the place for Easter. Lilies will line the steps. Jed (http://www.jeddistler.com/) is preparing the musicians for the service. Andre is back and Olivia is here with her cello and Jeremy M has a new Easter suite. 

Easter musicians with Pastor Bob: Jed, Olivia, Jeremy and Andre

The congregation is arriving. Regulars. Friends we haven’t seen in awhile. Neighbors. Visitors from Texas. It feels good.

We open with Alleuia, alleluia, alleluia! Sung to the tune of Will the circle be unbroken…and the traditional Easter greeting:

One: Christ is risen!

All: Christ is risen indeed!

Our OPENING HYMN  is the traditional Jesus Christ Is Risen Today. Andre does his free jazz interpretation of  Psalm 118: 1-2, 14-24. The Epistle lesson is in  1 Corinthians 15: 1-11 which contains one of my favorite verses: By the grace of God I am what I am and God’s grace to me has not been in vain..which I’ve set in a  doo-wop style.

And then the Easter story from John 20: 1-18.

¹Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. ²So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” ³Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. ⁴The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. ⁵He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. ⁶Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, ⁷and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. ⁸Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; ⁹for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.¹⁰Then the disciples returned to their homes.

¹¹But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; ¹²and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet.¹³They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” ¹⁴When she had said this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. ¹⁵Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” ¹⁶Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). ¹⁷Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” ¹⁸Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

-¹Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark……early in the morning…while it was still dark…

What it’s like…early in the morning…sometimes I wake…I hear the birds…their first stirrings…and I know the day is about to begin….again…If you’re in Central Park, you look across, the sun is rising out there, in the east, above the 5^th Avenue apartments..before the first runners arrive..….something peaceful and quiet…can you bring to mind a sunrise you remember?

 I remember that morning, on the steps of St. Paul’s Chapel…a few weeks after 9/11 . We (our West-Park team) had  been serving food to  first responders, rescue workers, soldiers, police, sanitation workers….all night long…the pit of Ground Zero still smoldering behind us, ash falling from the sky….and yet ….there was something about the certainty of dawn rising again….

That’s when Easter comes to us….while it’s still dark…my friend Uli and I went on a Good Friday march…a stations of the cross…commemorating innocent black and brown lives lost to police violence …stopping at symbolic places of the mass incarceration movement…like the courts…and the TOMBS…finishing at 1 Police Plaza…in the month of March alone more people were killed by police than in the last eleven years in the United Kingdom….let’s be clear….it’s still dark out there…

We want to come to this resurrection morning and have it all be ok…but each of our lives are still unfinished in some way…maybe some of us have experienced the fullness of new life, of new beginning….but  for most of us, we can just now hear the birds….but it’s still early in the morning…

Let’s follow our witnesses…

Who do we have?

First Mary, remember, she doesn’t know what has happened…for all she knows, all she will find is a body…it is love that has brought her..everyone else., all those brave men, turned and ran when it looked like once again everything they had put their faith in had come to nothing…once again hopes raised and then…clearly this one was NOT the one…but he had loved her….helped her reclaim herself…and that love brought her back…she didn’t need a conquering victorious hero...she would honor the one who had loved her.

Remember…the Bible is not a history book…this is

not a news report…Imagine them telling their stories…Imagine social media…Facebook..checking in, Simon’s tomb…

Or imagine , if you will, tweets…

@marymag

Hey…stone’s rolled away tomb’s empty…#wtf

 Yes Mary doesn’t care…this one had loved her…and regardless of how it all turned out…that was enough….love drew her back…

She goes to tell Peter and John…they MUST go to see for themselves…they find the stone rolled away and note this detail…

the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself…..what is this telling us? (One of my colleagues said, Jesus  cleaned up the place before he left…) and they just returned to their homes.

This story  is mainly about  Mary…

1.   She assumes  it’s a grave robbery or political plot

2.   She doesn’t recognize Jesus…no halos, no flowing robes, flashing lights, glowing robes.. he looks like a gardener…( a friend says..because he was a gardener..) a simple working man…like you or me..

3.   She only recognizes him when  she hears her name, her own name said in  that intimate way only he could say it…then she knows…love drew her there…love showed her the truth…

Can you feel the intimacy of this?

Listen…whose voice do you hear?

Can you hear the voice of Jesus that close, that intimate?

So how are we supposed to know? We who weren’t able to be there?

The earliest witness in the Bible  is not the  gospels…but Paul…writing only decades later…he never saw the risen Lord in the flesh…but he heard his name too…His experience of the appearance is the same as theirs even though he never sees Jesus in the flesh…and the key factor for Paul…as for me…is experienced GRACE….

50 years ago this weekend, Martin Luther King, Jr was assassinated….yet he is still very much with us…Archbishop Romero said They can kill a bishop but I will rise again in  the Salvadoran people.

Story of woman’s witness…on the subway…At the Good Friday stations march, an African-American woman described being groped on the subway. When she got off at the next stop, she saw two police. Then hesitated. What would they do to the black man who had  groped her? It’s complicated she said. I give up my body for you….

This afternoon, people will march in Harlem…the people rise…is the rallying cry…

Then there is this… I remember my grandmother warm and soft wrapping me in her arms. Her last few years were stolen by Alzheimer's. She would curse at the nurses. Not know me. It was unpleasant to go there. That was all I could see. And then, while doing her funeral, I felt her warm arms around me again. She had been returned to me.

So…how do we know?...We know because we are here ….today..because we believe…or want to believe…and will believe or live our way towards believing…

As we celebrate our Eucharist today, let us remember, it is we who are the risen Christ…we together the risen body….Amen.

We prepare for prayer by singing

Be not afraid, sing out for joy! Christ is risen, Alleluia!

Be not afraid, sing out for joy! Christ is risen, Alleluia!

Hugo asks for prayers for his daughter Anna, going in to the hospital for tests tomorrow. Later I will have  special prayer with him and Arcadia. And I will feel his strong hug.

For our offertory, Andre sings the haunting  Now the green blade riseth as an art song.

For our Eucharist reflection, Jeremy plays his Easter suite accompanied by Olivia. A steady stream of people come  forward to receive.

Receiving the eucharist from Deacon James and Elder Nirka

And we conclude with Beethoven’s Joyful , Joyful We adore Thee. As we gather in a circle, I almost feel tears. As she does every year, Leila has Easter eggs for the congregation.

One of Leila's eggs

 I feel the grace of the people accepting and trusting me as pastor. I could stop right here. Feeling this beauty.

And all say: Alleluia, Amen!

                                       ****

Easter will continue…as the Koreans are coming in, I skype with Micah and Dan in Berlin. Later I will go to the Riverside rehab facility with a lily and communion for Deacon Ruby and Elder Philip. 

Serving Easter dinner

Stall later, we will gather at the women’s homeless shelter at SPSA to share Easter dinner with the guests. Kate provides not only ham but lamb as well.

It was a beautiful Easter. Easter as it should be.

Alleluia, Christ is risen.

Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia.